The Fun Continues!

Just West of Orlando, book 2, is available on Amazon as a paperback or ebook!
Please click here, The O'Brady Brunch: This is the Story of a Mean Old Lady and give it a read. Sample below.

Blurb: 
 "What happened to the toilet seat?"
 I flipped on the light to make sure I wasn't mistaking the situation. Nope. The seat was gone.
 "Taye, did you take the toilet seat off?"
 "No, Mum, why would I do that? That's not the kind of thing a little kid would do."
 I sighed, my hand on my forehead. "The same reason you took apart the ice machine. The same reason you opened the pipes under the kitchen sink. The same reason you put all the cleaning products in the freezer! Which is to say, who knows?"
 Taye's little boy face looked so innocent. "It wasn't me. It was probably a gremlin."
 I rolled my eyes at him, about to scold him for his nonsense, but then I thought better of it. If a vampire could buy the farmhouse up the road, and if the cranky leprechaun woman across the cul-de-sac could harass fairies, why couldn't a gremlin steal my toilet seat?
 
Pick up this funny, warm-hearted Paranormal Women's Fiction novel and escape to a world just west of Orlando.
Click here to find it on Amazon.

Sample below:
I coaxed my worn Explorer through our Central Florida neighborhood with the windows halfway down, the rumble of its engine echoing back at me off the vehicles on either side of the road. It's a working class neighborhood, and since most people were home for the evening, the street was lined with cars on both sides in many places. Getting an SUV in and out of my house can be a little like driving a garbage truck down a European alley in a Borne movie.
Most people had their Halloween decorations up and lit even though the big night had just passed, but I didn't judge. Most of us wouldn't get things put away until the weekend, or maybe the one after that. That's one of the things I love about this neighborhood. It's nice and generally well-kept, with landscaping ranging from patchy Bermuda grass and wild palms to immaculate lawns and Disney-like flowers and shrubbery. As long as we don’t let the grass go to seed for too long or leave our garbage bins in front of our houses, the HOA usually leaves us alone.
It was Thursday night, and I was on my way to Vlad's house to pick him up for his first recovery meeting. There are fewer houses at his end of the neighborhood because it borders a swampy wooded area, so as I got closer, the road opened up and I picked up the pace a little.
Having more nature and fewer people is usually nice in that it's quieter and less likely to smell like cigarette smoke, but in this case it only makes Vlad's sprawling, rundown farmhouse at the top of the gentle hill all the more intimidating. Unlike the rest of the properties in our neighborhood, which range between a quarter and a third of an acre, Vlad has several acres of unkempt grass, broken down fences, and woods that have been wild for decades.
The house itself is a haphazard pile of additions covered in gray-green mold, and has few windows that haven't lost at least one pane over the years. I turned left into his long, unpaved driveway, not for the first time glad I had an SUV for driving through the sand and patches of grass.
I pulled up in front of the sagging porch and waited, rolling the windows all the way down to allow for plenty of ventilation to support my deep breathing. The air was cool and crisp, but this close to the house it had a musty smell. I'd spent a lot of time there over the past few days, and I might have even said that Vlad was becoming something of a friend, but this was going to be my first time alone with him, and that made it a completely different thing.
Vlad genuinely intended to never drink blood again, but having multiple people around gave him some accountability, and me a sense of security. Being in the car with just me would be something like leaving an alcoholic alone in a hotel room with a free wet bar.
And that's why I had eaten a heap of garlic at dinner. Actually, I had been going crazy with garlic for weeks, ever since I began to entertain the possibility of Vlad being a vampire. It was getting to the point where I felt self-conscious about it leaking from my pores.
The truth is that I have loved garlic since some time before adulthood, and always ate more than my husband thought was normal, so eating tons of it didn't seem too terribly far out of character. But even if it wasn't out of character, I was starting to smell it on myself, so it was probably time to consider cutting back. Soon.
Now that I've confessed my garlic-related insecurities, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Renee Marie Morales. I'm a home school mother of one unusual child, wife to a handsome and loving husband, and an avid cook and baker, wannabe gardener, aspiring artist, and budding paranormalist. My life had never been boring, but it was getting to the point where a little monotony might be nice.
Now that introductions are out of the way, let's get back to Vlad and his creepy old house. Vlad had exceptional hearing, as well as other heightened senses, so I felt confident he knew I was there. When he didn't appear, I gave two polite taps of the horn to let him know I was waiting. He had made it clear that he was nervous about going to a recovery meeting, so I figured he was taking his time to come out.
Finally, he emerged from the shadows of his vast living room and locked the warped front door behind him with a click. As he plodded down the stairs, I saw that he was wearing his typical dark dress pants, shirt, and jacket. At some point, we were going to have to do a makeover of not only his house and eating habits, but his wardrobe. We tried not to laugh at him, but sometimes it was hard. This is Central Florida, just west of Orlando, and you're much more likely to see a manager or churchgoer in shorts and a T-shirt than in the kinds of clothes Vlad wore.
As he settled into the seat beside me, Vlad gave me a sideways look with those big green eyes of his. "You didn't have to eat a head of garlic," he said, twitching his long, pointed nose in discomfort. He has a deep voice, and speaks with a stereotypical vampire accent mixed with something else. Why? Because he's the epitome of a stereotypical vampire—originally from what is now Transylvania—with the exception of his being in recovery.
"No offense, man, but it seemed like a good idea. We have a ten minute drive, and I didn't think it would be right to tempt you."
He leaned toward the window. "I am not some teenager trying to quit smoking, and you are not a box of cigarettes I can't live without. Blood empowers me, and of course I enjoy it, but I can stop drinking."
My aging Explorer jerked as I put it into reverse to turn around, but then shifted smoothly into drive. We started back down toward Sparkling Lake Drive. We were cutting it awfully close to daylight for Vlad. In a flatter area, the sun might still have been above the horizon. I said, "Actually, it sounds a lot more like a typical addiction than you might think. Not everyone uses substances to get high or forget their troubles."
"Do they use them to live forever?"
"Well, no…" The conversation wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to change the topic. "Are you feeling okay? You always look a little washed out for a non-white guy, but I think you look worse than you did yesterday."
"Why, thank you," he said sarcastically. "On the contrary, you look much better."
I really did look better. My tan skin was still a bit blue from being dyed, but it was barely noticeable, and the swelling in my face from being shot pointblank with paintballs had almost completely healed. I hadn't yet decided how to deal with the blue that had contaminated my hair's usual red streaks, but that was a job for another day. "I'd like to keep it that way. No more sneaking around in people's houses or chasing paranormals. But seriously, how are you?"
"I feel tired," he sighed. "It's been three days since I've had anything but non-animal sustenance. It makes me weak. My senses are going, too."
"Maybe when you don't have a superhuman sense of smell, my garlic breath won't force you to hang your head out the window."
He barked a sharp laugh. "Even if I had no sense of smell at all, I could still taste it."
With a frown, I reached into my purse for some gum. It was possible that he was just pulling my leg, but I couldn't help worrying that he was right.
We took back roads and streets all the way to the church building where the meeting was held, and pulled into the lot right on time.
"It's a shame they have to host it in a church," Vlad said.
"Most of these kinds of things are," I said with a shrug, creeping along as I waited for a parking spot to call to me. "Don't worry. Sure, they preach a little, but no one is going to force a confession out of you, or douse you with holy water or anything." I laughed, but he looked stricken. "They don't even do holy water here," I assured him.
"I'm more afraid of burning up when I cross the threshold."
We jerked to a stop as I slammed on the brake. "Is that really a thing?!"
He swallowed hard, looking away into the orange sky. Then he burst out laughing. "That was wonderful!" he gasped. I had never heard a genuine laugh come from him, and there was something magical about it. "Your face!" he cried, still laughing.
He was hundreds of years older than I was, but he was a child telling his first real joke, and I was a surprised mother relishing his development. I started laughing, too, and didn't stop as I parked and got out. "That was a good one," I said, although I laughed more from joy than from his teasing. It was amazing how he had transformed over the past few days. Yes, he was still himself, but he was a better version. He wouldn't learn how to build relationships overnight, but the fact that he wasn't planning to feed off of us was already helping him interact less awkwardly.
Fortunately, he was right, and he entered the building without being incinerated. I introduced him to a couple of men as we worked our way to my usual seat in the large group meeting in the auditorium, making a point to catch the man who led the men's chemical dependency support group so Vlad would know who he was going with later.
It had been a couple of weeks since I had made it through the worship without crying, but my stress level was so much lower now that Vlad wasn't my enemy. Vlad looked out of place to me, his washed out vampire skin giving him a decidedly dead appearance, but it's possible that I saw what I knew was there, and not what other people would see. He was clearly uncomfortable throughout the musical portion, but he listened to a woman's testimony with interest.
After that, we went our separate ways for our support groups. It was nice to share some good news, although I couldn't help thinking about how I hadn't told my husband about Vlad being a real vampire. I don't know why it was so hard for me, but it was. My husband, Blyth, had thought our son and I were nuts for suspecting Vlad of being 'off', and for breaking into Vlad's house and everything. Vlad would have been willing to prove his vampirism to ease my conscience, but I knew he wasn't comfortable with the idea. The fewer people who knew about him, the safer he was. Anyway, he wasn't acting as a vampire anymore, so it didn't really matter, did it?
Vlad was hungry after his meeting, and I can always use a cookie, so we went to the fellowship hall for snacks. I wondered if Vlad would end up gaining a bunch of weight from eating in place of consuming blood, like people often gain weight after quitting smoking and other drugs.
While I chatted with friends, Vlad sat and ate his vegetarian snacks, not engaging. This was a change for him. In the past, he had been quick to try to make friends (otherwise known as meals).
"So," I said as we got back into the Explorer. "Do you think you'll come back?"
He had changed, but he still looked sinister in the cab's overhead light. Then again, a Gerber baby might look sinister in that light, so it probably wasn't worth remarking on. "It was weird," he said. "But I think I understand what you find appealing about it."
I grinned. Spending three to five minutes sharing one's emotions without interruption was indeed both weird and appealing. "Good." I backed out of my space and started home. "Hey, do you want me to come over tomorrow when the inspector is there? I'm not an expert, but I might be able to help come up with questions."
"You are unnervingly interested in getting my house in shape," he said.
I had not-so-secret plans to turn it into a bed and breakfast. "It's just exciting, that's all."
"Of course," he said dryly. "But yes, I would appreciate your presence. And I always enjoy Taye's company." He sighed. "I'm glad you gave up on killing me, even if you do stink of garlic."
"Me too."
​Click here to find it on Amazon.