Tuesday, October 1, 2019

BWL Publishing New Release and Free Read for October 2019

October New Releases
Click cover for Purchase Information
A Park Service backpacking trip turns deadly when hikers are caught in a steep canyon during a flash flood. Three hikers are swept away, but a rescue team recovers four bodies. Park Service Investigator Doug Fletcher teams up with rangers Jill Rickowski and Liz Carpenter, and Navajo Nation Policeman Jamie Ballard. They hike river bottoms and arroyos searching for the origin of the fourth body, leaning on each other to overcome their fears, cultural differences, and emotional baggage. In the process they forge bonds that will last past the end of the investigation.
“A grueling wilderness manhunt, relentless suspense, and a deadly climax. Washed Away delivers.” Brian Lutterman award-winning author of the Penn Wilkinson mysteries
 “Washed Away combines the excitement of wilderness adventure with the suspense and action of a crime thriller.” James O’Neal author of The Devils Came in from the Country and the Riley series of historical novels



 
 Daisy’s War is a historical romance set on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent during World War One. Daisy is too young to join the WAAFs like her glamorous sister Sylvia and opts instead to work in the NAAFI which serves the sailors and soldiers stationed in the dockyard and garrison with snacks, cigarettes and toiletries. She has vowed to stay true to Bob, her childhood sweetheart. But Bob is serving overseas and she fears he will not return. Enter tall handsome soldier Christopher, known to his friends as Lofty.







Seventeen-year-old Will and his four friends escaped from a tropical island fortress then fought for freedom on a monstrous prison ship.  Now they reach the mainland and dock their small cruiser in the harbour of a large city, hoping at last to find answers to their origins.
At first the city is deserted, but soon drones attack them from above.  At night, sicko adults, diseased, angry and hungry, hunt them down relentlessly.  Will, Quentin, Fiona, Rose and Kevin are on the run again, knowing that capture can’t be long from coming.
When it does – what awaits the teens behind the high walls and barbed wire of the sinister research hospital, in which robots prowl the wards and sicko humans are processed like cattle?  And what lies deep inside the mysterious mountain known as the Citadel?
 Reviews
‘A thrilling and satisfying end to a terrific trilogy’ – Bruce McBay
  ‘One of the most exciting YA thrillers I’ve ever read’ – Susan Trapp
  ‘Post-apocalypse suspense done right’ – Joanne Lindau

Protecting his hometown was easy, but Sheriff Brad Davidson had learned the hard way the price of personal involvement. Risking his life, no problem, risking his heart, that was another issue. Love was a complication he had no desire to take again…ever. Until he came across a woman unconscious in a back alley. Without warning his life got complicated.

Dana Barrett, a young widow with four young children, looks for a fresh start in a small town. Malicious gossip ruined her life once and she swears to never let it happen again. While Dana struggles to keep a professional relationship with the attentive sheriff who’s stealing her heart, her painful past raises an unswayable wall between them.

The entire town is convinced Sheriff Davidson is the answer to Dana’s family and the town’s future.  But can they convince her that not all gossip is meant to be destructive? Sometimes you need to risk it all.



October Free Read from BWL Publishing Inc.is a historical mystery from
Diane Scott Lewis.  Click the cover to visit Diane's page and download your PDF copy.

Who murdered Lady Pentreath? The year is 1781, and the war with the American colonies rages across the sea. In Truro, England Branek Pentreath, a local squire, has suffered for years in a miserable marriage. Now his wife has been poisoned with arsenic. Is this unhappy husband responsible? Or was it out of revenge? Branek owns the apothecary shop where Jenna Rosedew, two years a widow, delights in serving her clients. Branek might sell her building to absolve his debts caused by the war—and put her out on the street. Jenna prepared the tinctures for Lady Pentreath, which were later found to contain arsenic. The town’s corrupt constable has a grudge against Branek and Jenna. He threatens to send them both to the gallows.

Can this feisty widow and brooding squire come together, believe in each other’s innocence— fight the attraction that grows between them—as they struggle to solve the crime before it’s too late?

Five Star Review from Historical Novels Reviews
Set in 18th century Cornwall, all Jenna Rosedew’s husband left her was an adolescent apprentice and a struggling apothecary shop. When Lady Pentreath’s death is deemed murder, Jenna is the first person to come under suspicion as she prepared all the dead woman’s medicine. But why would Jenna poison someone at the risk of her own livelihood? When Branek Pentreath has reason to call on Jenna, he informs her is he is putting up the rent of her shop, or does he too think she killed his wife? Jenna finds herself attracted to the man, but any connection between them could be construed as motive for murder.

Ms Scott Lewis’ portrayal of a couple trying to come to terms with conflicting emotions in an unsympathetic setting is thoroughly enjoyable. Jenna is no simpering female with no clue as to where to turn, she has her own methods of protecting her livelihood, and being accused of killing one of her clients isn’t something she is going to accept without a fight.

Branek Pentreath is also gravely misunderstood. He is not simply a heartless, ruthless mine owner, but a man of principal struggling with a failing business, suspicion from his neighbours and a growing attraction to a woman he shouldn’t even have noticed.

Ms Scott brings all the threads of this heart-warming story together into a satisfactory ending. I hope to hear more about Branek and Jenna.
HNR

Monday, September 30, 2019

“You want jam, don’t you?” By Margaret Hanna


Click here to visit Margaret Hanna's BWL Author page for information and purchase links
 

                                                     
One of the joys of writing fiction, historical or otherwise, is imagining and developing dialogue between your characters. Dialogue can advance the plot, reveal nuances of your characters’ personalities and illustrate a situation. Are your characters happy? Sad? Angry? Worried? Let them tell you through their words.

Dialogue can lurk behind what is written in historical documents. When my grandfather moved the farmstead and built the new house clear across the section in 1917, he moved more than the buildings from the original homestead site. All the garden plants came, too, as these diary entries prove:

Wednesday, November 14, 1917: dug rhubarb
Monday, November 19, 1917: dug up plants & fruit bushes in old garden. Planted same in new garden in pm.
Thursday, November 22, 1917: planted raspberries

Did Abe and Addie discuss this at all? Perhaps the conversation went something like this:

Addie: When are you planning to move the garden plants over?

Abe: Can’t right now. We’re too busy building the barn and the new house. It will have to wait till next spring.

Addie: You’re not too busy to scrape out that slough now, though.

Abe: That’s different. We need the pond to collect water for the livestock. We’ll move the garden come spring

Addie: And next spring you’ll be too busy with seeding and harrowing. Then come summer, you’ll be too busy with summerfallowing and breaking new land. Next thing you know, it will be fall and you’ll be too busy with harvesting. You want raspberry jam and rhubarb pie, don’t you, so move those plants over now before the snow flies. Otherwise there’ll be no jam next year.

And so, the garden was moved.

Of course, maybe it didn’t happen that way at all. Maybe Abe merely announced one morning at breakfast that he was moving the rhubarb today, and all Addie said was, “Okay,” and went back to wiping Bert’s nose or punching down the bread dough or doing one of the thousand and one things that a farmer’s wife had to do back when there was no electricity and running water.

Now, there’s a boring bit of dialogue.

                                                                          * * *
You can read about the move, and Addie’s best Christmas present ever, in Chapter 16, “A New House,” in “Our Bull’s Loose in Town!”: Tales from the Homestead. Here’s my imagined bit of dialogue (in this case, monologue) that started the move:

            August of ‘16, things came to a head. Bert had been fussing all day; he was teething. Edith wouldn’t stop running around and eventually she knocked over one of my freshly cleaned lamp chimneys and broke it. I scraped my knuckles on the wash board and they were raw and hurting. The dog had upset the basket of freshly washed clothes, so I had to rinse them off again, which meant another trip to the barrel and heating up more water on the stove. I was tired, it was hot, the house was hot, the wind wouldn’t stop blowing, the stove wouldn’t burn properly, and I was in no fine mood. Abe and Mr. Little came in wanting supper just as the potatoes boiled over. I lost my temper right proper and gave them both barrels.
            “I’ve heard that a farm has a big mouth, but why does that mouth feed only one-half of the farm? Why is it that you can get new machinery and the horses can get new harnesses and you can find the time to build a new granary, but I have to put up with a two room house with an old used granary for the summer kitchen and a cranky old cook stove and water I have to pail out of the barrel.” I turned to the stove and stabbed the potatoes over and over. “Supper isn’t ready yet, so just bide your time.”


Sunday, September 29, 2019

An AWOL Character Returns

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My first novel, one where the main character moved into my head and literally would not be let me alone, not to sleep, not for work, or even to quietly clean my house. Nanina talked and talked and talked for six months straight and I had to stay up half of every night typing like crazy just to get it all down. Miss Gottlieb's story of love, of magic, of music and of madness set me on the full time writer's path some forty (!!) years ago.  

Sometimes, after starting out with a rush and talking away like crazy, a character can decide to take a holiday--sometimes permanently. Actually, this is more like "going AWOL" for the hapless author, who may have a book contract to complete. This is one of the hazard's of being the kind of writer who is working their way through a planned series of linked stories. I once was far more "prolific" --the favorite description of all all agents who are shopping a writer to an editor--but my own little well of inspiration dried up about a year ago.

I believed I was done--written out. Instead of mourning or getting bent out of shape, I've been trying to Zen my way through the absence. After all so many years of story telling, there was certainly a sense of loss, but I was determined not to brood or feel sorry for myself, but simply to take a "wait and see" attitude. 

Recently, however, I've received cage rattling, from not one, but from two characters, the leads in two quite different unfinished novels. One is pure, unadulterated romance (Aphrodite help me!). The other is Zauberkraft Green, which was supposed to be the third story in my "Magic" series. As the name suggests, these are historical novels with a fantasy flare, stories which cross a lot of genres, from Gothic to Adventure to Horror and Romance. 






                           


Zauberkraft Green's main character is Charlize, who is the grandchild of Caterina, who is the heroine of the strongly romance-inflected Zauberkraft Red. Charlize is also the niece of Goran, Caterina's first born son and the shape-shifting hero of Zauberkraft Black

Typically--at least, what I'd come to expect from Charlize after we became acquainted--was a lot of ADHD precocious chatter, even a certain bitchiness. Then, just as suddenly as she had begun, her voice vanished from my head. 

I'm beginning to think she didn't want  to talk too much about the things that frightened and threatened her, because, hell, what I do know about those elements of the story frighten me too. However, all of a sudden, right about the dark of the moon a few days ago, Charlize began to speak  again. This blog is a kind of celebration that she's taken it upon herself to reappear and (maybe) finish the darn story.

Or at least, I hope so! I don't want to go on too long about her reappearance or gloat. As everyone who writes, or aspires to, knows, these gifts from the Spring of the Muses must not be taken for granted.  A lot of work and even more concentration will be necessary to turn whatever odds and ends she shares into the spooky journey I hope that Zauberkraft Green will eventually be. 

BTW, all three of these novels are Regencies, even if the first two have a European setting instead of the traditional Lyme Regis or Bath. Young teen Charlize, however, has been adopted by an Englishman, a kindly gentleman who has made an honest woman of her beautiful mother and moved them all to London, so here they are at least, proper Regency people, living where they are supposed to: in the UK. 

Wish me luck! I'm sure I'll need it.


~~Juliet Waldron
(Happily hearing voices in her head again!)




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