Books We Love's Tantalizing Talent ~ Author Joanie MacNeil

Hi, my name is Joanie MacNeil and I’m an Australian contemporary romance author. You can find me at http://www.bookswelove.com/authors/macneil-joanie/

While most of my novels are set in Australia, two of my earlier books are set in Scotland. My novels are a blend of sweet and sexy heart-warming stories about new love and second chances. I hope that some of my stories will make you smile.

As home, family and friends are important to me, I have blended these elements into some of my novels.

Story locations are usually places I’ve visited. I love to travel with my own romantic hero and later this year we plan to spend some time visiting countries we haven’t travelled to before. Maybe I will be inspired to set future stories in these new and interesting places.

While my introduction to romance reading began with historical romances, I was drawn to write shorter contemporary stories.

Three of my Books We Love novels, all contemporary romance and set in Australia:

The Trouble with Natalie

No Boundaries

December Heat

The Trouble with Natalie

Amazon

Natalie Harrigan knows from past experience that men are trouble, and having a man in her life is not on her agenda. She'd much rather focus on her career. Success in her new appointment to the coveted position of CEO in the recently established Training Advisory Council is her number one priority and she intends to prove she will be the best CEO ever.

Enter Luke DeMarco: newly appointed Director of Public Affairs in the Training Advisory Council, and her young brother’s best friend. Luke DeMarco has always loved Natalie from the moment he first set eyes on her at eight years old. Now, twenty years later, she’s more woman than ever, and Luke’s not too worried about the twelve years difference in their ages. Surely his gentle wooing will convince Natalie that age is no barrier to love? But Natalie is his boss. Will she allow him to move from their boardroom to her bedroom?

Amazon

No Boundaries

Attractive Paige Delaney is more woman than Jack Shannon wants in his life, though he's in serious need of her award winning skills in web design. Paige believes her sexy new boss thinks he's God's gift to woman. Both are single parents with shattered dreams and damaged hearts, having suffered betrayals of trust in previous relationships. Each desires to love and be loved, but they are afraid to trust the opposite sex again.

When Jack moves into his new house and discovers Paige is his next door neighbor, their protective barriers and personal goals are threatened. Is it fate or their teenage children conspiring to push them together?

Amazon

December Heat

Following the death of her husband, Nicolette Oliver concentrates on re-establishing her career as a dancer, though still dealing with emotional issues relating to her life with Mark. When his friend appears on her doorstep, Nicolette honors her late husband’s invitation and invites Jake to stay.

Jake Harrigan has always been attracted to Nic and sees her as untouchable, even though she is now on her own. They are opposites, their lives and expectations literally worlds apart. Drawn into a romantic interlude, the parting is difficult when Jake returns to Europe to resume his career as TV news journalist and Nic moves to Sydney to begin rehearsals for the show that will resurrect her career.

Jake returns to Australia to see Nic again and also to finalize details with his network to sail around the world making documentaries. Will Jake follow his heart and ask Nic to give up all that she’s worked for and sail away with him?

Spring Forward? They're Kidding, Right? by Gail Roughton

It's almost that time again.  Next Sunday, you'll awake to that time when man, in his infinite wisdom, exercises the power to stroke his ego by imposing Daylight Savings Time on a helpless populace, thus supporting his ILLUSION that humans, as the superior of the species, can even control time by manufacturing more hours in the day.  I don't know what genius came up with the idea of manipulating time. One of the big Eastern Syndicates, I suspect.  Because what, exactly, does Daylight Savings Time do? Other than upset most folks' internal circadian clock, I mean?

Think about it.  Does setting your clock ahead one hour REALLY give you more hours in a day?  No, it does not.  In  the early weeks of the change, it makes you get up in pitch black and it adds a little bit of pre-sunset time to the end of the day.  By the middle of summer, you're getting up in the light again, unless you're someone whose job requires you to get up at 5:00 a.m., and if you like to go to bed early -- like that someone I just mentioned who has to get up at 5:00 a.m. -- then you're going to bed in the light.  'Cause it won't actually get dark till close to 9:30 p.m. down here in the Deep South.  Think about it for a minute. Here's this poor mother with three small kids.  Let's say, seven, five, and three years in age.  Since they're not teenagers, they've probably been up since at least 7:00 or 8:00 a.m.  And even if the three year old still takes a nap, you can bet your booty the seven and five year old don't, or if they do, it's under so much protest it's hardly worth the effort.  So this poor mother, who has absolutely NO time that she can call her own till the kids are asleep, can't even THINK about suggesting bedtime till close to 10:00 p.m. because what kid alive is going to go to sleep in the daylight?  It's got to have been dark at least thirty minutes before a young child is going to unwind enough to actually go to sleep.  There's that Circadian Rhythm thing again.  You know, the built-in internal clock in most lifeforms that respond to LIGHT and DARK?  That thing that Daylight Savings Time so arrogantly attempts to manipulate to his whim?  (Needless to say, I'd never survive in Alaska.)

I get particularly upset at this time change because when I was a child, back in the Dark Ages, THIS was the original time.  The time we're in right now.  We didn't "Fall Back" because we didn't have to "Spring Forward".  They left time alone.  The sun rose around 6:00 a.m. and it got dark around 8:30 p.m. Nobody expected it not to.  Nobody wanted it not to.  Ah, life was simpler then. Then some genius had to come up with this revolutionary idea to increase "energy efficiency".  I especially remember this line being chanted back in the winter of 1974-1975 when the first oil crisis hit.  The country stayed on Daylight Savings Time for the entire winter.  Because it "saved power".  I was in college that year, and I had an eight o'clock class.  I didn't live at college, I commuted, which meant I was up at 6:00 and on the road by 6:45.  I went to class in the dark, and it was only just beginning to get light when I walked out of my 8:00 o'clock class at 9:00 o'clock.  The floodlights were still on, all over campus.  So PLEASE explain to me how that saved any energy? It's quite simple.  If it's dark in the morning, folks turn on the lights.  If it's dark in the evening, folks turn on the light.  And really.  Be honest.  Is there a house or an office building so flooded with natural light that nobody turns on the lights during the day?  No, there is not.

So America, I implore you.  Stand up as one and send forth your message when you are told it's time to spring forward!  Tell them your spring has sprung!  As for me, I'll be manipulating things that I CAN manipulate.  Like the worlds I create in my books.  Where the characters do as I tell them -- Oh, dear Lord!  Now I've gone over the deep end myself.  My characters NEVER do what I tell them!

Find all Gail Roughton titles at

Books We Love

Amazon

Kobo

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

You can also visit at her Blog and on Facebook

March Releases from Books We Love

Paranormal Liaisons: Rising from the Civil War's Ashes
by Troy Seate 

On a sloping hill overlooking the poetically named little town of Sugar Creek, Tennessee rests an old cemetery where, in the 19th century, people buried their dead. The old timers call the strip of land The Resting Place, but local legend suggests it is anything but restful. To the east in Washington D.C., a family deals with life amidst a nation still recovering and rebuilding from the Civil War’s debacle. Into a mother’s life befalls the tragedy of losing a daughter. It is but one of many unsettling events that occur, but it proves to be the linchpin for paranormal events to follow.
These are tales of fear and confusion; horror and tragedy. It’s also about loss and betrayal, and how life’s fabric can unravel in the most shocking and tragic of ways. Two towns, one north and the other south of the Mason-Dixon Line, deal with supernatural speculation in the American Civil War’s aftermath. 

http://amzn.com/B01CFXNBLE  

Seducing the Chef (At First Sight Book 1)
by Janet Lane-Walters 

Seducing the Chef - Allie Blakefield, editor of Good Eatin' wants to do a feature on Five Cuisines a restaurant across the river from NY City. Her father forbids the feature and won't say why. She's not one to sit back and be ruled by someone. She borrows a friend's apartment. While leaning over the balcony she sees a handsome dark haired man doing a Yoga routine. He looks up and she is struck by the Blakefield curse. Love at first sight.
The pair start a hot and heavy romantic interlude. She visits the restaurant and is recognized by Greg, the chef's mother. The woman goes ballistic and the affair is broken. Can Allie learn what's going on and rescue her love?

http://amzn.com/B01AVHGRBW  

Someone Like Him
by Ann Herrick 

City girl, country guy. Will opposites attract--or clash?

When New-York-City girl Emily visits her cousin Janelle in Oregon, Emily wonders how she'll survive the wilderness. Janelle wonders if the wilderness will survive Emily's visit--and if she can convince her cousin to help save part of an old-growth forest.
Meanwhile, Emily also wonders if a big-city girl can get along with a county guy--named Bret. Under forest canopies and by crystal-clear waters she struggles with her growing attraction to him. But they're so different. Whoever thought she'd fall for someone like him?

http://amzn.com/B01CJXQEFK

 

Books We Love Insider Blog: More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by...

Books We Love Insider Blog: More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by...: 17th Century Physicians Dissecting a Body  My era is 17 th century London when medical doctors used hanged convicts to study anatomy...

More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by Katherine Pym

17th Century Physicians Dissecting a Body 

My era is 17^th century London when medical doctors used hanged convicts to study anatomy. They would cut up the dead to see how men and women’s organs worked. Plague victims were also dissected. Opening the body, physicians who survived the pestilence found evidence of the buboes on lungs and other innards, or so they wrote.

The Royal Society used live animals to experiment on, like transferring blood from one dog to another then documented the results. Generally, one dog lived (the one receiving the gift of blood) and the other (who gave the blood) died. Unfortunate.

Body Snatcher at Work

Into the 18^th century the laws changed. There were fewer hangings and more deportations to penal colonies. This caused slim pickings in the London cadaver field.

Medical men faltered a bit, then someone came up with an idea. Why not snatch bodies from the grave? I mean, no one will know. The dead person won’t care. For the fellas digging up the bodies, they can take rings and gewgaws left on the body as an added incentive. Everyone’s a winner.

Well, not really. Families of the dead and gone got wind of these ‘body snatchers’ and protected their loved ones with a mortsafe (dictionary.com says a mortsafe is a heavy iron cage or grille placed over the grave of a newly deceased person in order to deter body snatchers.). These would be used until everyone felt certain the poor dead person wouldn’t be ‘fresh’ enough for dissection. 

Mortsafe

During the early 19^th century if you were caught digging up a body you could be heavily fined or deported. Not fun, but hey, the reward was worth the danger. Men in the medical field took the bodies no questions asked. Everyone was happy—or so one would think. Unfortunately, greed got in the way of a good thing. 

A man in Edinburgh owned an inn for pensioners. One fellow died owing Mister Hare £4 which annoyed him. Along with another fellow (Burke), Hare removed the pensioner’s body from the coffin, filled the said box with something equivalent in weight; then hid the cadaver in an empty room down the hall. The parish authorities took the coffin away, blissfully unaware there was no body in the box.

Hare and Burke sold the body to a physician for £7, 10s, making a tidy profit. The process was relatively safe. No middle of the night dig in a cemetery. No worries of getting caught, being fined or deported. The men did not suffer driving rain or snow down their collars while at a dig, nor did they have to fret over sharp winds that could easily blow off their caps. Their new boots and carpets remained clean from graveyard dirt. (After all, the men had to spend their newfound wealth somewhere.) Hare and Burke had found a sweet deal at the pensioners’ inn.

Hare loved this new, lucrative end of the business. When another pensioner dropped off the twig, he and his partner repeated the process, but when another pensioner took too long to pop off, they smothered him with a pillow. It was worth the effort, for they received £10.

After a while, the inn ran dry of almost dead persons so Hare and Burke lured vagrants, drunks and prostitutes into their fine abode. They plied them with drink then smothered them after passing out. If they wouldn’t obey by slipping into a drunken sleep, “Burke would pin him down while Hare smothered him, holding his hands over the victim’s nose and mouth.”

As you would expect, Hare and Burke became reckless. “First, they killed Mary Paterson, a voluptuous 18 year old—so free with her body that it was recognized by the physician’s medical students.” When they “murdered ‘Daft Jamie’, a familiar, good natured imbecile who made his living running errands on the streets of Edinburgh”, suspicion raised its dark brow.

The men were eventually arrested. Burke hanged before a large crowd some say that numbered in the 30,000’s. His body was dissected on the physician’s table he and Hare had sold so many bodies to.

But Hare escaped this wicked end by giving state’s evidence, which meant he pointed his finger at the physician and his assistants. While in the school, the physician was stormed by a mob but police intervention saved his life. Even though he protested his innocence, he lost his profession and was hounded out of town.

And so goes a sad, woeful tale of murder and other horrible deeds.

~~~~~~

The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York 1975

All pictures come from Wikicommons, Public Domain

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If something works, it works. By Diane Bator

Writers love words.

We love them so much, in fact, that we cram as many of them into one sentence, sometimes without really saying anything or being extraordinarily superfluous with our vocabulary to the point no one understands what we just said.

That's where a great editor comes in.

No matter how experienced the writer, everyone needs a second or even a third set of eyes to read through their work and clean up the extra words, the flow of the timelines, and even the typos spell check doesn't pick up. Sorry, writers, spell check isn't perfect either.

Many publishing houses have their own editors and a traditionally published author may go through several different edits before their work is published. Even Stephen King and J.K. Rowling have editors.

For a lot of beginning writers, especially those of us who do not have an English degree, and people who self-publish, editing is just as daunting and can create anxiety in our stomachs. Where do we start when there is no editor who will not cost us a mortgage on a small house?

Critique groups are a great place to start. Find an online forum. Find a Facebook group. Make connections. Before you trust anyone with your baby, aka your novel, be sure to read a sample of their work. Even if you're not a great editor, you should be able to read and understand their work as well as pick up on errors, grammatical and otherwise.

Writing groups can be local or online as well. Many of these groups offer critiques from group members. Just remember to take their input with the proverbial grain of salt. Not all the advice people give will be helpful, some will be more than willing to help hone your piece, some will be happy to simply tear it apart until you want to give up and crawl into a cave with something stronger than sugar in your coffee.

If you let several people read your work and several people make similar suggestions, be open to re-reading and editing. On the other hand, if only one or two people point something out, it may just be their own personal preference and making changes will be up to you and not vital.

Unless they're family.

Word of advice, don't give copies of your work to your entire family and expect a positive, good critique. Not unless Uncle Bill is an editor for a major daily or works for a publishing house. Expect kind words and to hear how great it is. That doesn't mean it is. A neutral third party is always best.

Good editors and critique providers abound on the internet. Just keep in mind, you not only get what you pay for, but you still have the final say about what you end up publishing.

Writing guru Natalie Goldberg gives the best advice on editing your work:  "Be willing to look at your work honestly. If something works, it works. If it doesn't, quit beating an old horse. Go on writing. Something else will come up."

Just never give up!

Diane

You can find my Wild Blue Mystery series on Amazon and through Books We Love. My books can also be ordered into any bookstore in Canada.

HOLIDAYS BY MARGARET TANNER

AN AUSSIE IN LAS VEGAS - MARGARET TANNER

What can I say?  All the razzle dazzle, flashing lights and excitement, we loved it.

We stayed in the older part of Las Vegas at a casino called the Four Queens in Fremont Street. Unbeknown to us there is what they call the Fremont Experience every night. A domed roof that was several hundred yards long was the venue for an incredibly colourful laser show. There was music, bands, performers and people walking around dressed as Elvis Presley, Batman, Superman, Mary Poppins, Dracula and heaps of other well known characters. Not forgetting the show girls, decked out in their skimpy costumes, fans and feathers. It was amazing, bus loads of tourist came down every night to see the display, but we were right in the thick of it, standing at our hotel door.

Many of the casinos on Las Vegas Boulevard - The Strip, have themes. We visited Paris Las Vegas which was very French with a giant Eiffel Tower as the main feature. You could actually take a ride right to the top, but for us unfortunately, it was too windy, so we missed out. Someone told us that the Eiffel tower here was exactly 1/3 the size of the Eiffel Tower in France, but it was still a huge structure. While we were there I bought the most decadent French pastry I have ever eaten. It was to die for.

New York New York, was another interesting casino, Circus Circus was actually like being at the circus, we were only there for a short time, but watched a world class juggling act. Hubby won $100 on the pokies so he was happy. I wanted to stay and keep trying our luck there because he was on a winning streak, but he grabbed his money and ran. Another very interesting themed casino was Treasure Island, and the name truly said it all. It really did look like an island from one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s books, pirate ship and all.

We went through the Bellagio, luxury personified. Unfortunately, this poor Aussie author didn’t have enough pennies in the piggy bank to be able to afford to stay there.

Did I mention the shopping? Wow. So cheap. We had to buy an extra suitcase to bring home all the goodies that we bought.

All in all we had a wonderful time. The only downside was the trip home, talk about the flight from hell. We were diverted to Sydney because the plane was running low on fuel, then after sitting on the tarmac for an hour, a passenger became ill and had to be rushed off in an ambulance, then security stepped in because the passenger’s luggage was on board and he no longer was.  Three hours later it was all sorted out, and we took off and headed home to Melbourne.

Website: http://www.margarettanner.com/

ADAM’S FRONTIER BRIDE (WESTERN ROMANCE)

Can a wealthy rancher ever hope to capture the heart of a beautiful English rose?

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