WHAT'S IN YOUR FUTURE (or present or past?) by Shirley Martin

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Fortune-telling is as old as civilization. You may recall the biblical story of Joseph (Book of Genesis, Chapter 37 and following chapters.) Sold into slavery by his resentful brothers, Joseph was taken to Egypt. There, he gained the Pharoah's attention because of his ability to interpret dreams. The Pharoah told Joseph of his dreams, and Joseph interpreted them to mean that Egypt would have seven fruitful years of harvest and seven years of famine. The Pharoah realized that he should store corn from the fruitful years so that he would have a supply of grain to distribute during the seven years of famine. (More on dreams later.)

Scrying is another form of prophecy. It's not necessary to have a crystal ball; any reflective surface will do. The scryer must have absolute silence and clear her/his mind of all distracting thoughts. If the scryer has a certain piece of information she is seeking, e.g., the location of a certain person, she should concentrate on that before beginning scrying, then put it out of her mind before focusing on the task at hand.

Now, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I think there is validity to scrying. I can't give a reason for my belief but can only say that there may be logic connected with the skill.

In my fantasy romance, "Night Shadows," Fianna,the heroine, flees home to escape an unwanted suitor. She escapes to Moytura, the capital city of Avador.  Forced to support herself, she obtains a position as a fortune teller at a tavern. She has a magic mirror that enables her to look into the past, present, and future. She thus supports herself by the money she earns as a fortune teller.

Seances were probably more common during the Victorian period than they are today, although no doubt many seances are held during our time..The word "seance" means sitting. A group of people meet for a metaphysical purpose.  Usually six to eight people are involved in this gathering, and they usually sit with a medium who is the channel through which the spirit communicates. There may be a variety of reasons for holding a seance, but mostly the object is to contact the spirit of the dead. The majority of seances are held in the late evening.

Some seances meet solely to hold a "rescue," aimed to help those spirits that don't realize they are dead and enable them to cross over.

Tea leaves can be used as a means of prophecy. In my latest fantasy romance, "Magic Mountain"

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there is a scene in which the elven king reads the tea leaves of the human heroine, Princess Olwen. This method of prophecy was a favorite around the time of the last century and up to the 1930s and '40s. Gypsy Tea Rooms were popular at that time.

After the tea is drunk, there should be very little of the leaves left in the bottom of the cup. The client tips the cup and rotates it three times before upturning the cup in the saucer. Then the cup is turned right side up, and the diviner studies the pattern of the tea leaves as they are distributed about the inner surface of the saucer. How does this process reveal anything about the past, present, or future? This method of prophecy, called tasseography, has an elaborate interpretation system, so for both the client and the diviner, it apparently reveals the desired revelation.

Astrologers believe that there is a very real relationship between the heavens and the earth. They believe that every element of the cosmos influences the whole. Originating in Mesopotamia, this art has been practiced for 5,000 years. The sun signs are the names of the twelve main divisions of the zodiac: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. One of my fellow authors, Janet Lane Walters, has done astrology forecasts in the past, along with a partner. Some day I'd like a forecast done for this most untypical Leo.

Known as the Sleeping Prophet, Edgar Cayce was an American mystic of the twentieth century. While in a trance, he answered questions ranging from healing, wars, Atlantis and future events. He used his mystical powers to heal people. While asleep, he was able to diagnose a person's sickness and pronounce the cure.

Not all of his prophecies have been realized. We have yet to discover Atlantis.

There are many more means of prophecy, enough to fill a book. But this list may give you and idea of how important fortune-telling is to people, and the different ways of achieving these revelations.

Now to return to the subject of dreams. There are four levels of sleep, and dreams usually occur in the theta level, and usually, too, with the REM (rapid eye movement) stage.

I believe we are all psychic to some extent; I know I am. And I believe that dreams can tell people about the past, present, and future.

Years and years ago, (more years than I care to count), my youngest son attended kindergarten. A neighbor friend had a son in kindergarten at the same time, so we walked our boys to school together. One morning, I told my friend about a dream I'd had the night before. It was a short dream but so vivid I woke up with tears in my eyes. I saw a small private plane crash to the ground and burst into flames. My friend and I discussed the dream for a few minutes, both of us saying we hadn't seen anything in the news about a plane crash. I forgot about the dream until about fifteen years later when my friend's retired husband was taking flying lessons. He crashed the plane and it burst into flames, killing him instantly.

Please check out my website at www.shirleymartinauthor.com

My books are sold at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noible, KOBO, the Apple 1Store and other sites where ebooks are available online.

Books We Love's Tantalizing Talent ~ Author Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

       I was born in New Westminster, B.C., Canada, and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. While raising my own family, over the years I also worked as a bartender, hotel maid, cashier, bank teller, bookkeeper, printing press operator, meat wrapper, gold prospector, warehouse shipper, house renovator and nursing attendant. I also began my writing career. But I don't write in just one genre. Sometimes I have a story idea, write the manuscript and then decide what genre it fits. My past writing has consisted of historical and travel articles, seven travel books, four mystery novels, and two science fiction novels.

       I was taught in school that Canada doesn't really have an exciting history. Right now I am trying to dispel that myth by writing Canadian historical for young adults/adults, the first two of which are: West to the Bay and West to Grande Portage.

       My mystery novels are Illegally Dead, The Only Shadow In The House, and Whistler's Murder all in The Travelling Detective Series (boxed set), and the stand alone novel Gold Fever. My science fiction novels are The Criminal Streak and Betrayed in my Cry of the Guilty-Silence of the Innocent series.

       I love change so I have moved over thirty times in my life, living in various places throughout Alberta and B.C. I now reside on an acreage on Vancouver Island with my husband and three cats.

West to the Bay

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In 1750, Thomas Gunn, along with three friends, join the Hudson's Bay Company and sail from Stromness on the Orkney Islands of northern Scotland to York Factory fort on Hudson's Bay. They believe they are starting a new and exciting life in what is called Rupert's Land, but tragedy follows them, striking for the first time on the ship. At the fort Thomas finds his older brother, Edward, who had joined four years earlier. He also meets Little Bird, sister of Edward's wife, and her family.

During the first year Thomas takes part in the goose and duck hunts, the fishing, the woodcutting, Guy Fawkes Day, the Christmas celebrations, and the burial of a friend. He also deals with the snowfall, the cold, the boredom, and a suicide, and learns how to survive in the lonely and sometimes inhospitable land.

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West to Grande Portage

On his sixteenth birthday Phillippe Chabot is told that his brother-in-law has hired him to be a voyageur. He will be paddling west from Montreal to Grade Portage to trade supplies with the Indians for furs. He is overjoyed and receives all the appropriate clothing from his family as birthday gifts, even a tobacco pouch.

As the loaded canoe brigade gets ready to leave, his cousin, Jeanne, accepts the proposal of marriage yelled at her by the clerk who is going along to keep track of the trading.

Unfortunately, disaster strikes the brigade as the men paddle the rivers, make their portages, and get onto the sometimes violent and unforgiving Lake Superior. In Montreal, the city is ravished by a fire and many residents perish before it is extinguished.

Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

The Schuyler Sisters

A Master Passion

 

Seen from a certain angle, the Schuyler girls were fairy tale princesses. They had white wigs, French dresses and a daddy who owned most of upstate New York. They had other identities, too, as frontier girls, occasionally in peril because their father’s kingdom really was land which had once belonged to the first people who'd come here. This backstory is a familiar feature of the early days of America, how plantations--that obscuring euphemism--took root, their aim to "tame"  (harvest) all they could get from a bountiful "wilderness.” 

That's not the foreground of my stories. The girls are. They drew my  interest particularly because I'm deprived--an only child. I've had to research the experience of siblings. As I read about the life that these girls lived, I realized that Margaret, Elizabeth and Angelica literally grew up together. Dutch ladies they were, but you could almost call them "Irish triplets", these same sex sibs born bam-bam-bam in 1756, 1757, and 1758. How could they not be emotionally entwined?

Back to the fairy tale idea. As it happened, these Schuyler girls each grew up and each one married a handsome prince.

Margaret was the youngest and the last to be married. She chose a life in the old-time Hudson Valley Dutch style, which, by that time, was already passing away. She married a van Rensselaer—her cousin, a boy she’d known all her life, whose family owned "the other half of upstate."  Land was the basis for her husband's wealth, though this, i8n the next generation would prove impossible to keep.  It was a safe and well-nigh predictable marriage--even though her father was, as usual, incensed because it began with an elopement--so romantic it was almost de rigueur for any spirited 18th century lady of fashion.
 

 Margaret Schuyler van Rensselaer

Elizabeth, the middle sister, married a wanderer, a fortune-seeker, a self-taught knight in shining armor who sometimes, like Sir Lancelot, went completely mad. Her life overflowed with drama, and she was nowhere near as materially comfortable or secure as the other two sisters, but she always knew who she was: her husband's "Queen Bess." She bore eight children and raised every one in a time where this wasn't a given. She lived almost until the Civil War, still standing by her man and his reputation fifty years after death had parted them.
 

 Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton "Betsy"

 

Angelica was, by all accounts, "the fairest of them all." She picked for herself a dashing lord of the material world, a buccaneer with a credible alias as an English gentleman. Her daring husband knew how to conduct a lady out an upstairs window and down a ladder in the middle of the night, away to a forbidden marriage. After the romance was over, he became a businessman with the stamina to write insurance all day and gamble all night. With his position and money, he took Angelica to London, and to Paris where her wit and beauty enchanted royals as well as the brilliant and the notorious.

Angelica Schuyler Church

 

Of these ladies, I’d imagine that only Betsy would ever have stood before a blackened, cavernous fireplace with a stick of wood or a ladle in hand, directing the business of her kitchen. The complex odors of a wood fire, which seem to us moderns like camping, would have filled the room and saturated clothing. Mrs. Hamilton wouldn't have worn her good dresses down in the cookshop, barely even for a visit. A certain amount of greasy smoke would have been everywhere, necessitating a spring cleaning that ended with a white washing. There was little of the new stove technology in her world, except, perhaps, in the better city homes she shared with her husband in Philadelphia and New York.

 

Like the English great houses, these early American “mansions” would not have been in a rush to modernize. The best they could do was to create a wing to house a kitchen, often a one story addition to the back of the house. In the cities, the kitchen would be down stairs--way downstairs!

There were plenty of hands—labor both slave and free—and plenty of fuel, for the menfolk are busy chopping down the great northeastern boreal forest, consuming it for building and energy, for shipping and industry. She might not have dirtied her hands scrubbing the floors, but she’d know how it should be done, and she wouldn’t hesitate to explain it to you while you worked on your knees before her. She wasn’t retiring, although she probably wasn’t taller than five feet. Nothing shy about this lady within the confines of her home; she was a Leo and a Schuyler, too, after all.

 

The Grange, NY, NY

Alexander Hamilton's final home

Upon which he spent entirely too much money.

 
Theirs is a delightful family/historical story, three women living through such a profound transition. I only wonder that it hasn't been retold more. It's been an honor and a delight to attempt to try.

 

 

 

~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic

 

Books We Love Launching its St. Patrick's Day Contest

It's Time for The Wearing of the Green.

Books We Love has made a deal

with this guy. Click the Pot of Gold.

Enter our contest to win some

of his hidden Gold.

ONE LUCKY WINNER WILL WIN

2015 United States Proof Set

OR

  2016 Canadian Mint Set

PLUS

  One Print Copy of A Master Passion by Juliet Waldron

 featuring Alexander Hamilton, The US First Secretary of the Treasury

 

Or

One Print Copy of West to the Bay by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

featuring the Hudson's Bay Company and their recruits from the British Isles

AND FIVE LUCKY WINNERS WILL WIN ONE OF THESE 

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Cowboys and the Wild Wild West by Connie Vines

I love my tech toys but I am also a history buff.

I thought I’d share some interesting findings.  Since I spent summers in Texas as a child, I had inside information on several facts.  The other snippets came from watching the History channel and reading a multitude of historical documents.  The information is in parentheses are my personal discoveries.


Feral camels once roamed the plains of Texas.

The U.S. Camel Corps was established in 1856 at Camp Verde, Texas. Reasoning that the arid southwest was a lot like the deserts of Egypt, the Army imported 66 camels from the Middle East. Despite the animals’ more objectionable qualities—they spat, regurgitated and defied orders—the experiment was generally deemed a success. (Camels can kick side-ways with all four feet.)  The Civil War curtailed the experiment and Confederates captured Camp Verde. After the war, most of the camels were sold (some to Ringling Brothers’ circus) and others escaped into the wild. The last reported sighting of a feral camel came out of Texas in 1941. Presumably, no lingering descendants of the Camel Corps’ members remain alive today.


Billy the Kid wasn’t left-handed.

A famous tintype photograph of Billy the Kid shows him with a gun belt on his left side. For years, the portrait fueled assumptions that the outlaw, born William Bonney, was left-handed. However, most tintype cameras produced a negative image that appeared positive once it was developed, meaning the  result was the reverse of reality. There’s another reason we know Billy the Kid was thus a right handed. His Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle--Winchester only made 1873s that load on the right.


The famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral wasn’t much of a shootout and didn’t take place at the O.K. Corral.

One of the most famous gunfights in history—the shootout between the three Earp brothers (Morgan, Virgil and Wyatt), Doc Holliday, Billy Claireborne, the two Clanton brothers (Billy and Ike) and the two McLaury brothers (Frank and Tom)—didn’t amount to time-frame often depicted on the Silver Screen. Despite the involvement of eight people, the gunfight only lasted about 30 seconds. Furthermore, the shootout didn’t take place within the O.K. Corral at all. Instead, all the shooting occurred near the current intersection of Third Street and Fremont Street in Tombstone, Arizona, which is behind the corral itself. (I have visited the area.  Tombstone is brutally hot in the summer. The incest large. ) Bloodshed made up for the brevity.  Three of the lawmen were injured and three of the cowboys killed.


The Long Branch Saloon of “Gunsmoke” fame really did exist in Dodge City

Anyone who watched the television show “Gunsmoke” is well acquainted with Miss Kitty’s Long Branch Saloon of Dodge City, Kansas. What viewers may not have realized is that the Long Branch really did exist. No one knows exactly what year it was established, but the original saloon burned down in the great Front Street fire of 1885. The saloon was later resurrected and now serves as a tourist attraction featuring a reproduction bar with live entertainment. According to the Boot Hill Museum, the original Long Branch Saloon served milk, tea, lemonade, sarsaparilla, alcohol and beer.

What did Cowboy really eat?

Cowboy food used a limited number of ingredients, partly because imported foods were expensive and partly because they needed food that kept well on the cattle trail. Coffee was an essential part of breakfast, which was large and high in fats and protein. Lunch was commonly beans, and dinner generally included something sweet like vinegar pie or apple dumplings. Because a large percentage of cowboys were of Mexican origin, spices and flavorings of that cuisine were popular.
Cowboys loved "mountain oysters," sliced and fried calf testicles. These were harvested in the spring when preadolescent bulls were castrated so they would be steers. (Served with horseradish sauce and are very tasty).

The Wild West was Wild.

But when it comes to Western Romance--it's all about the booths, Stetson, and the cowboy who wears them.

Happy Reading,

Connie Vines

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Visit my website!

Evolution and morphing of a manuscript - by Vijaya Schartz

Getting to the end of writing DAMSEL OF THE HAWK (scheduled for release April 20, 2016), I cannot help but look back upon my first brainstorming sessions for the plot of this book. How it evolved since then amazes me. Then again, it happens with all the books we write. The semi-finished product as I near "the end" goes far beyond my expectations. It's a good thing.

I know many writers write from a rough draft. I never could. When I tried, I had to throw it away and start the novel again from the beginning without looking at the draft. Although I'm a plotter, my plot is never set and constantly evolves with the characters' reactions as the story unfolds. New villains appear out of the shadows, creating different conflicts and changing the backdrop and the course of the story. As I research minor details, better ideas come along and change everything again. Characters are forced to deal with unforeseen situations. The black moment is not what I predicted at all. Until the denouement, I do not know what the theme of the story is. That's what keeps me writing, what keeps me intrigued, what keeps me excited about my characters, what keeps the story alive in my mind, brimming with possibilities.

As I discover the heart of my story, that's usually when the final title comes to me. This book had several working titles in the six months it took to write it, none of them worthy of mention. Damsel of the Hawk appealed to me because of its medieval feel, and the tight connection to the heroine and her circumstances. This is also when I start looking for images to inspire the cover designer for the cover. I've been blessed for this Curse of the Lost Isle series:

  

 

The inability to write from a complete draft is what prevents me to participate in events like NANOWRIMO. That draft written in a month would be of no use to me. So I write my novels from a rough outline, ten pages or less, one paragraph per expected chapter, with the beginning, the main scenes, the major plot twists, and the expected ending. I leave plenty of room for change, to implement new ideas as they come, adding more chapters to the outline. Often, it means I have to go back to the beginning and add or rewrite several scenes to accommodate a new plot line, introduce a new character, give the reader clues, or foreshadow a future plot twist. It works for me. I don't mind rewriting as I write.

Then, when I have a complete story with all its intricacies and its nuances, comes the real work, the polishing, the fleshing out, the recasting of every scene to make it part of the whole. Emphasizing the theme, adding emotion, polishing the action scenes, the love scenes, making the reader part of the story by adding more setting and sensory details... That's usually the last month in my novel writing process.

Can you tell I love writing? Well, I do.

DAMSEL OF THE HAWK

Curse of the Lost Isle Book 7 (standalone)

Available for pre-order in early March:

1204 AD - Meliora, immortal Fae and legendary damsel of Hawk Castle, grants gold and wishes on Mount Ararat, but must forever remain chaste. When Spartak, a Kipchak warrior gravely wounded in Constantinople, requests sanctuary, she breaks the rule to save his life. The fierce, warrior prince stirs in her forbidden passions. Captivated, Spartak will not bow to superstition. Despite tribal opposition, he wants her as his queen. Should Meliora renounce true love, or  embrace it and trigger a sinister curse... and the wrath of the Goddess? Meanwhile, a thwarted knight and his greedy band of Crusaders have vowed to steal her Pagan gold and burn her at the stake...

In the meantime, catch up with the Curse of the Lost Isle series at:

 Amazon - Barnes & Noble - All Romance eBooks - Smashwords - iBooks - Kobo

 Vijaya Schartz
 Blasters, Swords, Romance with a Kick
 http://www.vijayaschartz.com