by Lehua Parker | Oct 8, 2014 | Adult Fiction, Book Reviews & Announcements
Eyes of Persuasion by Adrienne Monson is an afternoon’s escape into a world of dressing for dinner, marriage as high finance, and a lady who intends to stay that way despite her uncle’s gambling debts. It’s a romp through polite English high society that isn’t afraid to take a side trip down the steamier side of the docks.
Lady Isabeau Maybrick’s got a deeper secret than playing detective or dress-up—a paranormal superpower that would put her life in jeopardy if anyone knew about it. She’s a modern thinking woman in a repressive historical past, so it’s no surprise that the unconventional Everette Radcliff turns her world upside-down.
Eyes of Persuasion is the kind of book that’s best read with a hot beverage and a plate of cookies. It’s an easy, entertaining read that will leave you wanting more. Readers who like historical romances are sure to enjoy the paranormal twist on an (almost) bodice ripper plot.
Eyes of Persuasion by Adrienne Monson available as an eBook or trade paperback from Amazon.
Connect with Adrienne Monson
Web site: http://www.adriennemonson.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/adriennemonson
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/adriennemonson
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6584385.Adrienne_Monson
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/adriennemonson
by Lehua Parker | Oct 5, 2014 | Island Style, Mainland Living
Knowing when I was going to get mail used to be a simple thing. Never on Sundays. Around 11:20 am Monday through Friday and around noon on Saturday. There was no reason to keep checking the mailbox—one delivery a day brought all I was going to get until the next time the mailman made her rounds.
Yeah, our mailman was a lady, but we still called her the mailman. When I was little I thought the word was mail ma’am. I also thought the song Cherish You was all about cherry shoes, but that’s another blog post.
Growing up in Hawaii, I could predict when I might get a card or letter from my mainland family. Christmas and birthdays were a sure thing. Presidents’ Day, Groundhogs Day, Flag Day—not so much. I’d haunt the mailbox the week before an anticipated arrival but ignore it the rest of the time. A kid can only get so excited about Hawaiian Electric bills, Longs ads, and mail addressed to Resident.
But with email, you just never know. Any second somebody could be sending that all important message, the one you didn’t know you were waiting for until it arrived. I find myself reaching for my smartphone and checking my inbox way too often in meetings, watching tv, at kids’ soccer games—even church. I’m starting to feel like Linus with his blankie.
I’m not ADD. I can choose when I’m going to pay attention and can sustain that attention for a scarily long time when I’m engaged. My problem is low boredom threshold.
It’s easier to let people think I’m ADD.
by Lehua Parker | Sep 30, 2014 | Blog Tours, Guest Posts, & Interviews
The Brothers Washburn are Berk and Andy Washburn, two talented brothers from a sprawling family who re-imagine their days growing up in Trona near Death Valley with a certain twisted genius. Pitch Green, Book One in the Dimensions in Death series introduced us to Camm and Cal who with the help of the FBI reveal some of the noxious secrets hiding in Trona. Just in time for Halloween, Mojave Green, Book Two is ready to sweep readers back to the desert for more suspense, horror, and thrills.
The Brothers Washburn stopped by to chat about their experiences.
Pitch Green and Mojave Green are the first two books in The Dimensions in Death young adult horror series. Based on a scary story we used to tell as kids to our siblings and friends, these books combine horror, suspense and mystery, moving at a breathtaking pace as our protagonists fight for their lives while they battle a monstrous evil presence hiding in and around an old, deserted mansion in a small mining town, located near Death Valley in a desolate part of the Mojave Desert.
The mansion was built almost a hundred years ago by an eccentric genius, who got funding and structural specifications from a clandestine source of ancient wealth and knowledge. One night the genius was mysteriously slaughtered, and ever since, children and other defenseless animals in the Trona area have been disappearing without a trace on a regular basis. In the first book, Pitch Green, we meet two teenagers, Camm and Cal, who are destined by wit, pluck and luck (not always good) to become the balancing force against the unearthly predator, who came to call the mansion home. Our heroes are hurled from one scene of horror to the next. Though their intentions are good, they don’t understand what they’re facing, and by the end of the first book, a door has been left open to predations on an even grander scale.
When we were writing that first book, we thought that writing the novel with the best story we could tell was the hardest part of the business. But, when we started looking for a literary agent or publisher, we were surprised to discover the getting a novel published is in many ways more difficult than writing it. Surely getting your book published was the hardest part. But, when we started marketing our book, we were surprised to discover that building a fan base was the most difficult part of the business. We’re still building a fan base and that’s still difficult, but we understand now, there may still be more surprises down the road.
In the second book, Mojave Green, a call from her best friend, Cal, brings news Camm had hoped never to hear. Children are again disappearing from Trona. Has the unnatural creature they killed last year returned to life or has the ancient Searles Mansion spawned a new menace? Ignoring dire warnings from federal agents, the pair take a road trip home with unsuspecting school friends in tow and discover the situation has gotten worse. With giant predators seemingly coming out of nowhere, enigmatic forces tear the friends apart, pulling Cal into another world, where his chances of survival are slim. Finally coming to terms with her feelings for Cal, Camm desperately seeks help where she can, even from the dead, but can a rogue agent and other peculiar misfits help her uncover the long-lost secrets that she needs to rescue Cal and stop the inter-dimensional attacks? The destiny of her own world may lie in Camm’s young hands.
In the second book, the desert around Trona is the setting where much of the story takes place. And, the desolate desert environment is a perfect stage for this kind of story. While the events are limited only by our imaginations, the location of each event is firmly anchored in the reality of what is Trona and the desert around it. All the landmarks described in the book actually exist and their descriptions add to the bleakness of the story. A desolate landscape works well as a backdrop for giant, marauding, alien predators.
In the third book, Green Death, both Camm and Cal are tested to their limits. Cal is whisked back to the alternate world by federal agents to find his friend Lenny and to help implement a process to control the random transition of life forms between the two worlds. Cal will ultimately have to face the deadly, giant Mojave Green before his work is through. Camm will have her own demons to fight and cannot avoid a show down with the undead, ravenous green rat that is determined to eat her alive. And behind it all, the gargantuan mansion still stands in its eerie, creepy splendor, a mausoleum of yet undiscovered ancient secrets. As everything comes to a climax, who will be left alive? Who will be left behind? And what will be the destiny of our own world?
Can’t wait. Thanks for stopping by, Berk and Andy. Mojave Green is published by Jolly Fish Press and is available as a trade paperback and eBook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine book retailers.
Connect with The Brothers Washburn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrosWashburn
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBrothersWashburn
Blog: http://www.thebrotherswashburn.blogspot.com
Goodreads: Berk Washburn; Andy Washburn
by Lehua Parker | Sep 29, 2014 | Mainland Living
My sixty year old neighbor at the end of the cul-de-sac phoned late this afternoon. We live in an area with only six homes over about 30 country acres, so it’s not your typical suburban cul-de-sac. Two of her horses were loose and she’d been chasing them for hours from property to property. She was calling me to see if anybody was home—besides me, since she knows I’m crap at horses—who could hop on one of our horses to help her wrangle hers home. Last seen her horses were munching on grass in a field near my house and she was worried they might get out on the busier road.
I felt terrible when I had to tell that none of our horses were at the house. They were all having a last summer hurrah at what I thought of as Pony Heaven—a wooded 100 acre parcel a few miles away filled with meadows, hills, and a running stream. In a few weeks they’d be back to their boring corrals at our house, stuck there through the long, cold winter. But for now all the summer parades and horse shows were over, and they were living the horsey high life.
She was tired, angry, and thoroughly over her rotten horses. Of course, her husband was out of town. Another ten minutes of chasing them, and I think she would’ve gotten a gun. She knows I’m not a horse person, so any of my suggestions—grain buckets, more help corralling them—was given a sniff of derision and a snapped, “I’ve already tried.” Frustrated that I didn’t have the solution she wanted, she hung up.
My husband had heard enough of my side of the conversation to know horses were loose and was already putting on his shoes. “I’ll come,” I said.
“You don’t have to. I got this.”
“She says they’re really naughty.”
“It’s okay.”
I grabbed my shoes, too. “How about I just go spot them for you?”
“Okay.”
I went out the front, down the road, and over to the field she’d last seen them. There they were, bold as brass, nibbling on the far side on top of a hill. When they spotted me watching them, they squealed and ducked behind the hill.
Yeah, they know they’re being bad.
A few minutes later my husband walked up the road carrying a couple of halters and a bucket of grain he’d snagged from our horse trailer.
“You’ve seen them?”
“Just over the hill. Want me to come?” I asked.
“Nah. Just stay here in case they make a break for it and head to the road.”
Off he went.
When he got close, the horses started to run, so he stopped, looked away from them, and stood shaking the bucket, the halters held out of sight behind his back. The horses moved away from him and started eating again. Working an angle, he moved closer to them, still holding and shaking the bucket. When the first horse turned to look at him, he immediately turned his back to them and moved away, walking toward their house. The horses looked at each other and started walking quickly toward him. When they got close enough to nudge him, he turned and showed them the bucket, then kept walking away. They hurried to keep up with him and nudged him again. He stepped sideways and let them have a taste of the grain in his bucket. Then he walked away. They chased. He stopped and gave them more grain, this time slipping a lead through their headstalls. Caught, they meekly followed him back to their corral.
It took all of five minutes.
Later when I asked him about it, he said horses are a lot like people. They like to think they are getting away with something they shouldn’t. They like to think they are in charge. Chasing them only makes them think they are winning. You have to walk up with something they love and then deny it to them. You’re the boss and they have to recognize it. They have to decide they want what you’re offering more than freedom. You have to be the one that fulfills their desires. You make them come to you. You start with a bucket of grain, but you act like it’s all yours. They want it. You give them a taste and ignore the dangling ropes and halters for the moment because if you grab at them too soon, they’ll sense a trap and bolt. You make them love you. And once they do, you slip the halter or rope around them and they forget they’re much bigger and stronger. They’ll go exactly where you want them and will do what you ask of them.
Wow.
My horse whisperer of a husband thinks horses are just like people. Boggles the mind when you think it through, doesn’t it? Politics. Religion. Peer pressure. Professional organizations. There’s something to this.
What’s your bucket of grain, who’s holding it, and what freedoms are you giving up to eat it?
by Lehua Parker | Sep 26, 2014 | Adult Fiction, Book Reviews & Announcements, Jolly Fish Press Titles & Authors
Teri Harman’s Black Moon, book two of the Moonlight Trilogy, continues the story of Willa and Simon, young adults taking those first steps into a grown-up world of magic, witches, soul mates, trials, and too many talents. It’s a fast-paced and engrossing read that expresses all the confusion of perfect love that isn’t perfect, leaving home to share one’s life with another, completing magic trials to prove one’s worth, and, oh, saving the world.
I won’t mention the guilt Simon oozes because of the deaths in Blood Moon (book one) or Willa’s anguish in wanting to save someone who won’t let her in. I won’t say a thing about the balance of light covens and dark covens and how truly twisted the dark can be when it seeks to control the powers of the earth on the night of the black moon. And I can’t tell you about the whole terrifying plot around being extraordinarily gifted magically and the suspicion and doubt having too much talent can cause. I can’t tell you any of these things because that would Ruin the Story.
And this is one you’ll want to read for yourself.
Black Moon by Teri Harman is a New Adult paranormal thriller with a romance twist sure to delight readers 16 and older. Published by Jolly Fish Press, it’s available in trade paperback and eBook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other purveyors of fine books.
Connect with Teri Harman
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTeriHarman
Website: http://teriharman.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeriHarman
Connect with Adrienne Monson
