BWL Publishing Inc. New Releases October 2020

Windmaster Golem

Kiansel, sister to the current Oracle of Givneh, is expected to one day assume the mantle and lead the temple’s followers. Her emerging powers force an impossible decision. Turn her back on her family and heritage to study the way of magic or follow the teachings of the oracle.

Banishment to a remote village as healer, a position he despised, fueled Relliq’s desire for revenge. The discovery of a mythical city and an army of clay soldiers provided the means to control all mages--including the one he wanted most—Kiansel.

Brodie, weaponsmith for the School of Mages couldn’t refuse the archmage’s request to act as escort for a healing team fighting a curse upon the land. But how can a man without any magic of his own fight a curse or protect a friend from an invisible stalker.

 

 

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https://bookswelove.net/henderson-helen/

Sylvia's Secret

Life as a WAAF in wartime England is not as glamorous as Sylvia Bishop had anticipated, although in letters home she tries to keep up the pretence for her sister Daisy. Then she is posted to a new RAF station and her work becomes more interesting. She is put in the Photo Intelligence unit and becomes very good at her job. Frustratingly, she cannot tell Daisy or anyone else what that entails as she has had to sign the Official Secrets Act.

 

Her secret job is not the only thing that inhibits Sylvia from confiding in her sister. She has fallen in love with handsome Wing Commander Hugh Smythe, a forbidden love as he is married. If their relationship is discovered it will mean scandal and ruined careers for both of them. 

 

Sylvia desperately tries to forget Hugh and concentrate on her very important work. But how can she when she works so closely with him?

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https://bookswelove.net/grieve-roberta/

 

 Begotten

On the verge of destruction, Kessav is shocked when his wife refuses to accompany him to a new land. As the ground splinters under her feet, Luna, a kitchen slave, is terrified. She finds Kessav in the market, fires exploding all around them. He takes her with him where they leap into an energy field to land in ancient Sumer, 4500 BCE. Their new world is clean with no fire belching from rents in the earth, but Elam, Kessav’s old friend, is furious over the wife's desertion and shows bitterness and hatred.

Kessav builds a new life but holds secrets from Luna, and Luna fears telling her secrets would destroy Kessav. After the loss of their firstborn to the great goddess, will their love bind them together? Will Elam exact a cruel revenge?

 

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 https://bookswelove.net/pym-katherine/

  

Mother Shipton and the Sister Witches

The Shipton history is complicated. Some families have a guardian angel. The Shiptons have a guardian ancestor who whizzes through the centuries and jumps right in whenever one of her girls is in trouble. 

All the girls have power and they’re watched over by elder sister Lillian, who takes her job as family trouble shooter seriously.  There’s no shortage of trouble to be sorted out either and even with their own powers each of the girls needs help. First Katherine's oilman fiancé disappears in the Gulf of Mexico, and then Irene's world champion saddle bronc rider fiancé is sabotaged and in danger of being trampled by a bucking bronco. 

The spider-web of trouble stretching between these three modern sister witches might be too much for even a time-traveling guardian angel to handle on her own.

 

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https://bookswelove.net/pittman-jude/

 

 Whistling Up A Ghost

Peter and Jenny Rogers return from their honeymoon to a pile of wedding presents including the deed to an old house. They open presents from the residents of Whistling Pines Senior Care Center ranging from thoughtful, to thrift shop purchases, and “what is that?”

Taking a break from the gift opening party, they tune in to a live news broadcast and watch the historical society president open a time capsule found during demolition of the band shell. The opening ceremony turns grim when a rusty pistol and a newspaper clipping about an old murder are revealed.

The Whistling Pines rumor mill runs amok as the retired residents offer up murder motives, stories about the victim’s checkered past, and a multitude of potential murderers. Despite his full-time job as Whistling Pines recreation director, Peter gets dragged into the time capsule murder investigation.

Jenny’s son, Jeremy, is convinced their new house is haunted when boxes jump from shelves, a radio turns itself on, Christmas stockings appear under the fireplace mantle, wedding gifts rise eerily out of boxes, and ghostly events interrupt their sleep. They start to ask themselves if the house is a gift or a curse…until the ghost is revealed.

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https://bookswelove.net/hovey-dean/

Featured Author Renee Duke

 

Visit Renee's BWL Author page for book and purchase links

 My name is Renee Duke, the Renee being an offshoot of Irene (pronounced, preferably, if people simply must use it, in the British way, I-Reen-ee), but I never much liked the name ‘Irene’, and at some point in my teen years managed to train almost all but my parents to address me as ‘Renee’.

Born just ahead of a snowstorm to an English mother and Scottish father, I was the youngest child in my family and the only girl. Since brothers came with the house and the bulk of my same-age cousins and neighbourhood playmates were boys, I was somewhat of a tomboy growing up. I did play with dolls and hold tea parties, but my parents’ ability to deck me out in smocked frocks ended as soon as I could dress myself, after which attempts to get me into any kind of frock, or even a skirt, did not go well. (Unless the garment in question was a kilt. Kilts were okay.)  And after the age of eleven, I did, grudgingly, have to accept wearing a skirt or summer frock to school, as they were part of the uniform.  I wasn’t terribly keen on the felt hat, either, but at least it wasn’t a straw boater, like at some halls of learning.

Before that, of course, I attended primary schools, in which uniforms were not compulsory. Back in the late 1950s, some teachers of five- and six-year olds might have been pleased to have some of their charges come to them already able to read and write, but mine was not among them. We were supposed to learn the school’s way. No one had actually taught me to read, but my mother read to me and my brothers a lot and, as with Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, it was something I just picked up. There wasn’t much the teacher could do about it, since the know-how was already there, but she could, and did, put the cursive writing on hold (that being the form my brothers used and I copied). I found printing much more laborious and time-consuming, but was forced to print until I reached what the school considered the ‘proper’ age to start cursive two years later.

That, however, was just the physical aspect of writing. The creative aspect – that of constructing a story in the mind and transferring it onto paper – came when I was about seven or eight and my teacher (a vast improvement over the earlier one) put several topic sentences on the board and told us to write a story about one of them. Until then I hadn’t really thought about how the books, magazine stories, and comic book scenarios I devoured came into being. They were just there for my enjoyment, like the crayons I coloured with and the toys I played with. That someone had thought them up, and that I could, too, was a revelation. I had, admittedly, told stories to people verbally, but those had only been retellings of stories I’d been told. Including one a four-year-old me treated fellow train passengers to whilst travelling up to Scotland with my mother and second brother. Instead of regaling my captive audience with one of my mother’s perfectly proper tales, I went with one of my father’s less than proper tales, which a man and a young woman sharing our carriage found amusing, but two old ladies did not. A mother-embarrassing point in the trip that I’m sure my father heard about when we got home.

But to get back to my first school composition, I went all out, coming up with not just a story about the life of a banana peel (my chosen subject), but chapters, chapter headings, page numbers, and illustrations (me being, at that time, under the delusion I could draw).

From then on, I wrote stories in school and out.  In school, some teachers were more encouraging than others, most notably Mr. Smith of Garston Lane Primary, who had me do a series of early readers for the Infants class and showed me and three friends how to ink up the school printing press and roll out copies. His only mistake was to go off to the staff room and leave us to it, which resulted in him returning to four ink-covered eleven-year-olds.

I kept writing in my teens and early adult years, and began doing so professionally in the late seventies, with my first article appearing in The Living Message in 1978 and my first short story in The People’s Friend in 1981. Story and article sales to other magazines followed, but I did not turn my attention to books until I retired from teaching in 2012. My Side Trip sci-fi duology is aimed at young adults, the Time Rose time travel series, for which my latest release, Generations Five, is the prequel, at a slightly younger demographic, but adults enjoy my books too.

Comfrey, Cat Warfare, and Green Tomato Sauce

The Commoner and her King

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(Crawling out from under the bed to write this.) 

I grew Comfrey in my garden this year and the resulting plants are enormous tall spiky things with leaves that are reminiscent of tobacco. Comfrey was once used in teas, but no more. This is because we've learned that it is toxic when taken orally. Herbalists no longer recommend  it either as tea, or to be used as a wash on an open wound. 

                                                                          Feral Garden

However, the leaves and roots do contain allantonin, a protein that encourages cell division and thus healing. Traditionally, it was used as a wrap for broken limbs and injured joints. The leaves contain a storehouse of other good things --calcium, potassium, phosphorus & vitamins A, C and B12. It sends down a long taproot--sometimes as much as ten feet--to fetch nutrients up to the surface from deep in the soil. 

Why did I plant it? Well, I'd heard that it serves as an activating ingredient for compost piles or simply as a beneficial mulch dug into the garden at the end of the season. Starting it from seed on a windowsill was an early COVID project for me. The seeds must be stratified (chilled) for several weeks before planting in order for them to grow.

Comfrey has pretty purple flowers which I'm enjoying here at the end of the season. The late season pollinators are big fans too and for that reason alone I'm glad I planted it. I will chop it and dig it into both compost and garden after the first frost and and then hope for a flourishing garden next year. 

Right now, I’m typing around a gray love-sucker of a cat, our two year old gray neutered tom, Tony. He was named after Anthony Bourdain, so I should not be surprised at his over the top behavior. He's  charismatic and cuddly, but, sometimes, he's a wicked jealous cat bully.

The villain of the piece

After a few minutes of my typing away, Tony jumps down and slinks away, heading to the other side of the living room in order to mess with Kimi who was enjoying a sunbeam and minding her own business. Inspiring a PTSD attack in one of your emotionally vulnerable housemates and initiating a running battle is a sure-fire way to get my attention away from the keyboard and back to him—the place where it clearly ought to be. 

This is negative attention-getting, according to a long ago child psych course. A decade ago after this kind of inter-pussy cat escalation, I would have put Tony outside so he could test himself against the semi-urban jungle for a few hours daily. That can tone down the rambunctions of a boy cat, but I don’t want to risk losing him. 

                                                     Let's stare at Kimi until she freaks 

Moreover, I no longer want to be an accomplice to a cat's (quite normal) serial killer proclivities. If outdoor cats stuck to mice and voles--and, dare I suggest, maybe even a few of those bulb nabbing chipmunks--I wouldn’t mind so much, but my last outdoor cat--the legendary B0B--bagged way over the limit of native songbirds. My toleration of this will (no doubt) negatively affect my Karma.  

So, these days, my cats stay inside.

With three cats, I could write buckets on the hausfrau trials with multiple cat boxes, but I will spare you the gory details. 

What we house-bound humans are learning is that we must continuously work on integrating this three cat family. These particular cat-onalities continue to evolve and change, just as do the behaviors of the COVID-bound humans who reside here with them.   

And, last but not least: Green tomato pasta sauce!  Yes, this is delicious. I'd never seen a recipe before, but decided I'd try when it stopped raining here about five weeks ago. I was sick of lugging water to the large tomato pots at the end of tour lot and decided to quit. (A week after I took the plants down, it rained--naturally.) 

But as I stripped the vines I knew that some of these fine large green tomatoes would ripen but others would never get there. I used the smaller fruits in the following eyeball-it-as-you go sauce recipe. 

Green tomatoes chopped--the recipe I based this upon used 4 lbs. 

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

garlic cloves--I used 5, but we like garlic

one medium finely chopped onion

red pepper flakes or red pepper to give it a bit of heat

basil--I would say 20 leaves because it's another seasoning we like

You may bake it at 400 degrees in the oven until it reduces--about an hour--or d0 as I did, and throw it all in the crock pot and let it cook down together. 

Serve with pasta (linguini is a nice base) topped with 

pecorino romano cheese

More basil leaves 

and, if you are independently wealthy--a handful of pine nuts.  

We ate ours without the pine nuts and it was still delicious. This was one of those "plan-over" concoctions, where there was plenty left over for the next day.

~~Juliet Waldron

All my Historical Novels

What Do Bats Have To Do With Halloween? by Connie Vines

Even though we are still practicing social distancing during the Pandemic, many of us are pulling out Halloween decorations we've stored away. Or, purchasing items at local stores. 

After all, Halloween is fun!  At least in my house.

I'm not into scary, give-the-children (or me) nightmares.  It's all about the

dressing up, decorations, and "Halloween food."

Past meals have featured: Deadman-Over-Worms (meatloaf shaped like a gingerbread man with his arms at his side, on a bed of wheat spaghetti pasta). Bleeding (strawberry puree) Cemetery Cake, Bloody Fingers (hot-dogs shaped to resemble fingers). My granddaughters are positively ghoulish with glee while painting on the catsup blood. And, of course, their is the ever-popular Jell-O mold of the Frankenstein Monster's brain on the dessert table.

So what is your decoration of choice? Jack o' Lanterns, black cats, witch hats? 🐱 

Or, perhaps bats (my personal favorites). How did these gentle mammals, not-counting the vampire bats who do like to snack on hot-blooded livestock, become associated with the spooky season, anyway?

There are a few different theories: 

They're nocturnal 🌙

Experts say that nocturnal animals are often associated with death and darkness. "They engage in mysterious activities in the dark and so they have been cloaked in superstition since ancient times." Stanford University classics scholar Adrienne Mayor told National Geographic. And bats are particularly spooky.

 "The combination of dark gray, brown, or black shades with cryptic nighttime habits evoked a sense of awe and fear back in the time when the only lights at night were oil lamps and wax candles." 

And (those poor bats) because they often lived in caves, gave them a historic "association with the underworld". 

They are an in-between kind of animal 

Bats are the only flying mammal, and some cultures consider them a 'liminal' animal--not quite bird, not quite mammal. Something else liminal? Halloween. "One of the main themes of Halloween is liminality--the in-between-ness. It's between one state and another state; between growth and death; between fall and winter. 

Blame Bram Stoker 📖

It wasn't until Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, that bats could change at will. "Dracula" is one of my favorite classic novels, I must confess-- but I'm not buying the evil reputation heaped upon the bats. 

I'll hang my Halloween bat decorations with a smile. 

Those little creatures save us between $3.7 and $54 billion in pest control services every year. They also help pollinate of 700 plants, including many we love to eat. It's the distorted Jack lantern's faces and the scarecrows that give me the fright. 

Do you have a favorite Halloween tradition? 

 How about a Autumn or Halloween soup?

I enjoy Pumpkin Soup After removing the seeds, etc. from the center, I oven-roast my small pumpkin. I then dice up 1/4 - 1/2 of the vegetable before tossing into my crockpot.

 

There are many pumpkin soup recipes, feel free to share your favorite :) 

Add roasted and diced diced pumpkin in your crockpot or InstaPot (crockpot setting).

 2 cloves of garlic, smashed 

1/2 tsp. ginger 

 2 large yellow onions (sauté in Instapot or in a skillet on the stove top.) 

 Add 2 cups of chicken stock or water 

1 tsp. Cinnamon

 1/2 tsp. Nutmeg 

 1 tsp. salt

 1/2 cup Heavy cream or milk (me)  

2 cups water 

Remember adjust the ingredients to the amount of soup 

you plan to make.

If you do not have a pumpkin you may substitute 2 - 15 oz. cans of Pumpkin puree (not pie filling). 

Cook on a low setting 6 hours; high setting for 4 hours. 

When finished cooking use an immersion blender and blend soup until smooth. 

Top with a bit of sour cream and roasted pumpkin seeds (I purchase my packaged.)

Happy Halloween! And the Perfect time to settle with a cup of tea and a good read 🍵

Connie 

  

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