New Adele Gossling mystery from Tam May

 

The Carnation Murder
Tam May
May 2022
Dreambook Press
360 pages
Ebook $2.99
Print $12.99
 
Buy on Amazon 
Barnes and Noble 
 
About the Book
Can a forward-thinking woman help the police solve a murder in a backward-thinking town?

Smart inquisitive, and a firm believer in the new progressive reforms, Adele Gossling seeks a new life after the devastating death of her father. So she flees the big city of San Francisco for the small town of Arrojo. She plans a life of peace and small pleasures running her own stationery shop and living in her own house.

But peace is exactly what she doesn’t get when she discovers her neighbor dead in her gazebo. The police think they have a firm suspect: the young man who was secretly engaged to the victim. But Adele and her clairvoyant new friend Nin Branch suspect the young man is innocent. In spite of the raised eyebrows from Arrojo’s Victorian-minded citizens, she and Nin set out to prove Richard Tanning didn’t do it. But if he didn’t, who did?

Can Adele and Nin solve this puzzling case involving a striped carnation, a diamond ring, a note, a muddy pair of boots, and a broken promise? Or will Richard hang for a crime he didn’t commit and the real killer go free?

 
My Review

From the moment Adele roars up to Arrojo, California’s downtown in her newfangled automobile and confronts the hobsnobs, I rooted and cheered for this firmly kind progressive young woman. It’s not easy trying to live the life you want; definitely not when you’re a single young woman in 1904. Adele sets up housekeeping in a classic abandoned home and sets up a stationery business with her inheritance from her late father, a San Francisco attorney. Adele’s handsome single brother, Jackson, a former detective now at loose ends, occasionally comes to check on her, and the two of them become embroiled in a murder investigation after an unfortunate neighbor girl’s body is discovered in Adele’s gazebo.

May did a great job of establishing several suspects and unique plot twists. I love mysteries and truly wasn’t completely certain about the identity of the murderer until the end. Adele gradually turns the hoity toity neighbors into allies and friends, and Jackson learns to find peace with his own special set of policing skills. Fully fleshed characters and well-researched for era and setting, readers who like mysteries with strong female sleuths and unique characters will enjoy this first book in a new series.

 
About the Author

As soon as Tam May started writing when she was fourteen, writing became her voice. She writes engaging, fun-to-solve historical cozy mysteries. Her mysteries empower readers with detailed plots and a sense of “justice is done” at the end. Her fiction is set in and around the San Francisco Bay Area because she adores sourdough bread, Ghirardelli chocolate, and the area’s rich history. Find more at http://www.tammayauthor.com

New Adventure Novel for YA

Stranded on Castaway Island
Amy Laundrie
Young Adult Adventure
April 2022
Henschelhaus Publishers
262 ppg
Print $9.95
Ebook $8.95
Buy on Barnes and Noble or Amazon

About the Book:

Ex-best friends Annie and Mirra are shipwrecked and must try to survive on a remote island near Nova Scotia inhabited only by wild horses—or that’s what the fourteen-year-old girls think at first. Then they discover warm embers and strange footprints.

My Review:

With so much mean-girl activity going on, it's wonderful to read a story about the importance of listening to others, and acknowledging our fears and tears. Friends don't have to be copies of each other, as Annie and Mirra, once best friends but estranged, learn when they find themselves in dire straits. Mirra's desperate attempt to show off by boating away with a storm coming in strands them on an island in the Atlantic. Their survival now depends on working together. Each girl has a unique personality-driven idea about food, shelter, exploration and escape, but it's when they combine forces to confront danger that they learn how to listen to each other and understand the preciousness of what they’ve lost and gained.

Told primarily through Annie, this middle grade adventure will sure to please the younger reader in your family. Great summer read!

About the Author:

Amy Laundrie taught elementary school for over thirty years. She loved sharing her love of nature, animals, and stories with her students. She writes survival adventures, picture books and young reader stories. She's also a weekly columnist and has collected her favorite pieces and included them in an adult memoir called LAUGH, CRY, REFLECT: STORIES FROM A JOYFUL HEART. Visit her at www.laundrie.com.

Write Now Literary presents Tansformational book tour

 

 

Write Now Literary is pleased to be organizing a one-month book tour and book giveaway for Naked & Not Ashamed: The Transformational Devotional Experience by Chanelle Coleman. The book tour will run May 2- 27, 2022. 

ISBN: 979-8985407600

Genre: Spiritual

 

   

Chanelle Coleman Wesley is a native of Milwaukee Wisconsin. She is the creative powerhouse of CeCi’s Ink, an innovative storytelling company that conveys stories through poetry, books, playwrights, blogs, fashion, and motivational speaking. Chanelle is significantly inspired by her late mother’s, Brenda J. Coleman, penchant for prolific storytelling and developing a strong sense of faith. As a survivor of abuse, Wesley believes in passing on the communication skills she developed to cope in those environments. She is also an accomplished playwright with her latest project, a gospel stage play entitled The Beautiful Truth About an Ugly Lie to be released soon. She strives to empower individuals who have lost their ability to advocate for themselves by challenging them to recognize the power of their voice. Her greatest accomplishment, however, forever remains becoming a mother to her six beautiful children and “GiGi” to her two adorable grandchildren.

Naked & Not Ashamed is a transparent conversation between Sisters. One that allows both the writer and reader to expose themselves without fear or sense of condemnation. It’s a journey towards healing that allows us to dialogue without masks, charades, or pretense. We explore familiar stories of women in the Bible. These powerful narratives of trial, triumph, failures, and flaws show the resiliency, redemptive and transformative power of encountering Christ. I also reveal personal experiences of my own Christian walk with all its ups, downs, twists, and turns. But the most amazing part of these chronicles is you! Right now, you are writing your story. Are you living with pain, grief, and regret that needs to be released? This book is designed to help you see your own undeniably powerful narrative. I want to challenge you to see the hand of God in your life and urge you to find the ability to tell your story. We accomplish this through journal prompts, activities, prayer, etc.

Tony instantly began screaming and yelling. I continued to bite down harder. I continued biting and grinding my teeth until I couldn’t bite anymore. I let go. He fell back onto the bed. I jumped up out of the bed, my heart was pounding, terrified I opened the door, and I was met with darkness. Hurriedly I ran out past the dining room, through the hallway to the kitchen. Panicked, I reached the back door. I began pulling on the door, but it was locked. Fear seized me as I began fumbling with the knob trying to unlock the door. The latch finally twisted up and I raced up the back-hallway stairs. At last, there was light. I ran as fast as I could through the open kitchen door. The light continued to welcome me as I forged ahead running through the hallway past the bathroom and my aunt’s and grandparent’s bedrooms, the dining-room and into the living room to the couch where my grandmother was sitting. I distinctly remember her shocked expression as I pounded towards her as she sat there speechless, on the couch holding my baby brother. I felt relieved and a sense of security momentarily came over me until my grandmother spoke. She stared at me, with her mouth opened in shock. She screamed, “Chanelle, you’re naked! Where are your clothes?” Momentarily, I had forgotten that I was naked, but the awful realization of my nakedness began to cover me like a garment. It was the evidence of my pain, humiliation, and fear. I stood there breathlessly as I gasped, painting for air, naked and ashamed, I told her my story. 

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10 E-books and One paperback

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Tour organized by Write Now Literary Book Tours

 

New inspirational thriller from Anita Klumpers

A Murder of Crows 

Anita Klumpers 

Romantic Suspense 

c. April 2022, Prism Book, Pelican Book Group 

347  pp

$5.99 ebook

Buy on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Publisher book store

About the book

On a video call, Paulina Deacon watches her friend follow a frenzied murder of crows through the woods. Moments later, Pauli is horrified when John stumbles upon three men and is murdered. In fear for her own life, she drives until she finds herself in the small town of Brier, Wisconsin. She reinvents herself as Polly Madison and is quickly hired to work doing odd jobs at a rehabilitation clinic.

Hal Karlsen has poured his life in to the Sweetbrier clinic helping people with addictions. When Polly arrives with her secrets, he is equal parts irritated and intrigued.
Terror follows Pauli to this small town and grows stronger each day as she finds her place in the tiny, welcoming community. Slowly, she begins to open up to Hal. As they work together to uncover exactly who is after her and why, their friendship deepens.

He pledges to keep her safe. She swears to protect the clinic. But can either live up to those promises while the danger increases daily? And will those murderous crows drive her mad before they figure it all out?

My Review

Crows gather at the oddest times for the most intriguing reasons. When they flock at the apparent murder of her current crush in a back wood in North Dakota where Pauli had been substitute teaching and coaching, she naturally relates the behavior to peril. After trying to place calls to the sheriff and not knowing what else to do, Pauli drives across two states until she comes to a tiny town in Wisconsin that seems a safe harbor until she can sort out the oddness of her life.

Restrictions on contact with the outside world limit Pauli’s ability to learn about the events surrounding the murder. When she’s forced to rely on strangers, however kind and eager to help they are, things begin to unravel in her new little world of honesty, faith, and odd jobs, exercise and knitting classes at a local institution helping everyone from the rich and famous to every-day folk with their addictions. Crows continue to flock at times of danger, and when the stakes deepen, Pauli must decide who and how much to trust. Trust isn’t just a conditions between humans, she realizes. Matters of faith and putting her trust for her soul in the right place is her best therapy. The rest is frosting.

Anita’s story of rescue and finding home in a place of strangers all trying to heal together is a delight. Readers who enjoy tales of adventure and peril wrapped up in love and faith will love A Murder of Crows.

About the author

Anita Klumpers is Midwest born and bred, except for a brief and exhilarating few years in Denver when she was small. She received a teaching degree sometime in the previous millennium and used it mostly to homeschool her three sons. These days Anita chases her grandchildren around, waving books at them and suggesting everyone cuddle up for a good story.

Good stories are her passion, especially if they are well-written, have a dose of humor, just a tickle of romance, and a decidedly non-gory mystery. On the other hand, she lists Frankenstein and Fahrenheit 451 as two of her favorite books. Go figure.

Creating skits was Anita’s first foray into writing. Always up for a challenge and a reason to postpone defrosting the freezer, she tried her hand at a full-length novel. It only took five years, but she did it!

Daily (honestly) she marvels at how much she loves coffee and her husband; her family, friends and church. Even more, she is astonished at how much she is loved by her Lord and Savior.

Regionalisms in Writing

My husband came home from fishing the other evening to find me all hot and bothered, 

pacing in circles and waving my arms.

 He chuckled, but kept a healthy distance. What was going on?

“Needs fixed,” I sputtered. I paced some more. “I hate, hate, hate it when writers don’t use the proper ‘to be’ before a transitive verb.”

We agreed the first person from whom we’d heard that peculiar construct was a Hoosier. Not like Wisconsin doesn’t have weirdeties, but, as my brother who's lived in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and is a world traveler says, the national evening newscasts are the final word: Midwestern accents and sentence structure are correct, if boring and homogenized.

My hissy fit had actually started a couple of hours earlier when I ran across the first such usage in a novel I was proofreading. I sighed and passed over it, then…came the second one. I perused the publisher’s particular style guide and, finding nothing, pounded out a message to get permission to correct.

“Hmm,” the publisher, who I respect highly, wrote back. From Pennsylvania. “I never realized that I do that too. Ignore it.”

The third usage had me flying around the internet on my editorial broomstick looking for examples I could call them all out on, proving this speechifyin’ was just plumb wrong. As wrong as the actual published book I happened to be reading for quasi-pleasure where ever’one said “plum crazy” and the like ’bout three times a chapter. Needless to say I was already cross-eyed with fury at authors. Who. Don’t. Bother. To learn the rules before breaking them. I learned from one article on the 'net that dialect is different from regionalisms which generally refer to geography.

I found an internet site that explained the usage which drops “to be” first started in Pennsylvania where the chocolate needs stirred and made a narrow swath across the middle states to Montana where the fence wants repaired. The usage supposedly puts an immediacy in the action and removes future tense.

It’s still WRONG. It will always be wrong. And it MIXES TENSES. I would recommend joining the American Dialect Society, but their word of the year in 2015 was the singular “they.” The world is just going to heck in a hand basket. Isn't lazy writing one of the seven deadly sins? I can feel the monumental lean of language drift dragging us all down with it.

Two adult beverages and a piece of pie later, I was calm enough to sort through my feelings on the matter. Of course in dialog fiction writers can and should use a gentle indication of character uniqueness which will often include local dialect after a fashion—at least to establish scene and time frame. Particularly if he's a pirate or a Quaker or she's a non-native speaker of whatever language. But there’s that trust factor with your editor. In my first published book my editor, a preacher’s wife from Ohio, absolutely refused to believe we have three-day funerals in Wisconsin. Another rep from Michigan didn't think a three-point turn—which I thought was on every state’s driving test, but I’m totally not going there—on a fire road would not pass the universal reader comprehension test.

But how much is too much, and when do we standardize our stories so our international audience will be able to feel comfortable reading our work no matter when and where it’s set? Regarding dialect, authors who read widely in many genres and types of media will capture a natural rhythm and pattern of language. Y’all authors who listen to television shows will hear how local shows, perhaps local cable or local news, compare to nationally syndicated shows, or even nationally syndicated shows with multiple hosts from different parts of the country. It’s okay to show how some folks may drop word endin’s or a consonant when looking for a pahking spot. Gently. Within reason. Not constantly to distraction. If one character from Ohio has a lawn needs mowed, by golly, let him mention it—maybe once. If a Hoosier has some warshing ta do…let him get on wid it. In conversation. Not in text. If it’s repeated in narration from more than one perspective, then we have an AUTHOR INTRUSION ALERT. Are you awake now? AUTHOR INTRUSION ALERTS are never a good thing in fiction unless it’s a running gag—like Death narrating The Book Thief.

If the regionalism or local custom is not critical to the story, don’t use it, even if it means obeying your cussed editor. On the other hand, if your story takes place in the Great North Woods, in which fire roads or lanes are cut between great timber stands in rural areas where roads are few and far between and your character is fleeing criminals while driving these back roads, lost as all git-out, and you have to stop and 'splain a fire road to non-native Wisconsin readers, it would slow the action, doncha know? THE CURE: You the Author can establish a way to make sure the reader understands this concept before your chase scene, you betcha, without demeaning native folks who can’t imagine anyone else not knowing about the need to get firefighters to the middle of a dense forest to fight fires.

The moral of the story is Go Gently with Colloquial Language, use regionalisms to establish quirk, setting, time frame, but don’t impale it into your story-telling technique.

This article first appeared on Author Culture in 2016.

Western romance and giveaway

Join me and several others in this Western romance special promotion. Sign up for the giveaway.

Enter to win a $40 Amazon US or Amazon Canada gift card

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Open Internationally. You must have an active Amazon US or CA account to win.

Runs April 19 – April 28, 2022.

Winner will be drawn on April 29, 2022.

Rafflecopter Direct Link – 

https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/92db7750165

Event Link –

https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/western-fiction-romance-event

N. N. Light

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How to move from partisan bickering

 

 

Seeking Truth: How to move from partisan bickering to building consensus

Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr.

Inspirational, Epistemology, 292 pp

April 26, 2022, Energion Publications, Gonzalez, FL

ebook $8.99

Print paper $24.99

Buy on Barnes and Noble

Buy on Amazon

About the Book:

We live in a world that is not governed by Truth. Disagreements surround us. Recent Presidential elections are hotly contested and won by the narrowest of margins. Charges of misinformation, fake news, and bias abound. Everyone claims they are correct; they have the Truth.

Seeking Truth looks at both the philosophical and practical issues of Truth to understand how we come to know what we know and why we disagree so much. More importantly, it lays out how we can disagree in ways that avoid division and polarization and instead move to build a consensus on the Truth.

Seeking Truth addresses things like how to think about what you believe, how to handle disagreement and errors positively, how do you know if you are open-minded, and how to make better decisions.

Seeking Truth uses a lot of examples to make this case. To avoid current disputes, most are drawn from history, as people in various times and settings sought to understand how nature works, what happened in a particular event, or what is the best way to proceed or govern ourselves. Science, history, politics, business, all of these areas involve Truth in one way or another.

Get Seeking Truth to become a better thinker, a more critical thinker, and one who moves closer to the Truth.

My Review:

Using examples from our past in science and philosophy, politics, and communication, Hushbeck sets out to show us a more perfect way to disagree while not having to be of the same mind in his compelling book, Seeking Truth. It’s a big topic and timely as the world has become more polarized in action and reaction. Hushbeck’s approach to guiding readers on this journey out of the pit of partisanship is a thoughtful, pedagogical study of applying critical thinking to distill “absolute, objective truth.”

The book is not terribly long but well detailed and covers considerable ground from the antiquities to recent US polls of opinion. The book is divided into three main parts with digestible chunks: one – a study of history to set the table for establishing truth; two – how disagreement and error shape society and understanding; and three – a reasonable guideline for purposeful discussion. It’s not an easy read, but honest and forthright and best of all, sensible and objective.

I appreciate the examples from science and history about how theories of elements, disease, and energy have evolved as the methods of testing improved; how the Lincoln-Douglass debates of the mid-nineteenth century US show that complexities of context shape public opinion, echoing down through the generations.

Moving beyond bickering can only happen when people are willing. “Reason does not work on those who embrace irrationality,” Hushbeck points out. “For some, truth is just a power structure, a tool for oppressors to use on the oppressed.”

Offering plenty of advice for defining and refining disagreements and errors and avoiding repression and censorship, Seeking Truth is not an answer, but a process. Reaching a common goal is a commitment, a constant testing of theory and practice, and keeping communication open. “Hopefully, if a side consistently loses because of bad arguments, they will seek to develop better ones. As a result, the level of discussion will improve.”

We are fallible, Hushbeck concludes, but learning better arguments “can only improve the process of seeking and bringing us all closer to the truth.”

 Recommended for readers interested in learning more about applying and practicing critical thinking.

 

About the Author:

Elgin L. Hushbeck Jr. has been many things over his life, author, hardware engineer, software developer, manager, small business owner, educator, lecturer, and family man. He wears many hats, but there is a common thread throughout. Mr. Hushbeck has been an Evangelical Christian for over 40 years.

Mr. Hushbeck's background includes academic studies in religion, history, and engineering, culminating with a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, and Master's degrees in both Christian Apologetics and an MBA/Technology Management. As an engineer, he worked for several engineering and technology firms, including five years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. There he was part of a team developing a high accuracy GPS receiver. He was also part of the Voyager Flight Team for the encounter with the planet Neptune. His wife Hanna also has dual Master's degrees, one in Nursing with an emphasis in Informatics, and the other in Applied Computer Science. From 1999-2007 they owned their own company, which designed and developed databases and custom software applications for small businesses.

Mr. Hushbeck has taught at the University of Phoenix, and most recently for Rassmussen College. He has taught, among other things, classes in Information Technology, Computers Science, and Business. He also taught critical thinking both to students and to other faculty. http://www.hushbeck.com

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