Books We Love's newest release from the legends of Haida Gwaii

http://amzn.com/B00UBARFE8

What if a native legend came back to life and was saddened by the destruction of his people, their culture and their environment?

What if that legend was the Haida creator god Raven and he spirited away the girl you were falling in love with?

What if you didn’t believe in native spiritualism and found yourself battling Raven with only a shaman to help you?
Inspired by true events that took place on the Queen Charlotte Islands, Raven's Lament centers on a journalist who investigates a killing tied into the destruction of old-growth forest and becomes tangled up in a spirit war. He finds love and meaning as he encounters a centuries-old Haida prince, formerly imprisoned along with Raven in a rare Golden Spruce tree.



Endorsements:

"After being stranded twenty kilometers from the nearest road at the tip of Rose Spit, Haida Gwaii, and having to push his spanking new SUV a few kilometers along the beach before the tide came in and we ran out of booze, my first reaction on being asked to write a back cover blurb was, “over my dead body." Some people will do anything to get an endorsement.” Susan Musgrave

From the lands and legends of the Haida Gwaii of Northern British Columbia Canada comes a paranormal suspense rich in traditional lore mixed with modern environmental concerns and forgotten taboos. You won't be able to put this one down until you've reached the surprising conclusion. Jude Pittman, author of Healing Spirits, Book 1, Bad Medicine

Diorama Card by Cheryl Wright

I am very lucky to be part of a tight-knit group of cardmakers on Facebook. When one of us finds a new-to-us idea, we share links, then challenge each other to attempt the card technique in question.

Recently someone found these fabulous cards, and a video on how to make them. I am talking about Diorama cards.

They are a little fiddly, and they do use slightly more cardstock than a regular card, but they are worth the extra effort for someone special.

This card was my first attempt. I had to watch the video a second time as I was having some difficulties, but it turned out okay in the end.

From the outside, it looks like a regular card, but when you open it, it's a whole different story:

There is so much scope for these cards, and you really could get carried away if you let yourself.

If you would like to see the video instructions, or would like to view a masculine version of this card, go here.

Thanks for looking!

Til next time,

Links:

My website:  www.cheryl-wright.com 
Blog:  www.cheryl-wright.com/blog
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/cherylwrightauthor 
BWL website: http://bookswelove.net/authors/wright-cheryl/

Stephen King: My Favorite Teacher by Joan Hall Hovey

The year was 1984, a lovely summer’s day and I was sitting in the packed, buzzed audience waiting for Stephen King to appear.  To say I was excited is an understatement. Uncool? Totally. I’d bought my hardcover copy of his book Different Seasons for him to sign.  I wouldn’t be denied. I had all his books in hardcover – Carrie, Cycle of the Werewolf, Danse Macabre, Salem’s Lot -  there would be  many more to come. He was my hero in a time when I was already much too old to be star-struck.  I’ve read that it is mainly teenagers who are addicted to Stephen King’s work, and I was hardly that.  Though probably immature.  I’m at a much more more advanced age now and that hasn’t changed, and I hope it never does.  Stephen King was  the Elvis Presley of the literary world.

I hadn’t had a novel published yet; that was still a dream, floating somewhere above the horizon. But I’d written and published some articles and short stories, enough to make me eligible for a travel grant through the NB Arts Council to London, England to the writers workshop at Polytechnic Institution  on Marylebone Road, aptly across the street from Madam Tussauds wax museum.  Stephen King would be a panelist, along with authors P.D. James, Robert Parker and some others.  I was eager to hear all the celebrated authors, but I’d flown all this way from New Brunswick, Canada to see and hear Mr. King. 

He came into the large room through the back door and I swear I knew the instant he did.

You couldn’t miss the rising buzz of the audience, of course, the shifting of bodies as people turned to look, but I also felt the change of energy in the air. On stage, Stephen King joked about his ‘big writing engine’ and I had heard (within my third eye – yes, it can hear) its power, its purr.   Or maybe there’s more to it.

As he talked to us about writing, he spoke about seeing with that third eye.  The eye of the imagination.  He told us to imagine a chair.  Then he said it was a blue chair.  I saw it clearer now.  He added the detail of a paint blister on the leg of the chair.  Now I saw it close up, with my zoom lens.  We hung on his every word.  He was funny and brilliant and entertaining, and we learned. Everything he said was not necessarily something brand new, but were reminders to pay close attention to details.  To always tell the truth in our writing.  I even got to ask a couple of questions.   And his answers to all our questions were thoughtful and insightful.   I try to pass along a few of those lessons to my own students.

Stephen King has been teaching creative writing to aspiring and even established writers for decades, long before his wonderful book On Writing came out.  Such a gift to writers that is, regardless of the genre you write in.   I am gushing.  I don’t mind. It’s true. I have been fortunate to have had many highlights in my life –  an anniversary trip to Niagara Falls with my wonderful husband, the births of my children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren – a trip to the Bahamas with my eldest son – my own first novel published and several more after that - and I have to say that that workshop in London, England, where Stephen King spoke to us about writing, is right up there.  Thank you, Mr. King.

I want to leave you with a quote from an interview with contributing writing for the Atlantic, Jessica Lahey, published in The Atlantic,  Sept  2014.  She asked him if teaching was craft or art.

“It’s both,” he said.  “The best teachers are artists.”

Stephen King is an artist on every level.   He tells the truth.  In his fiction.  And in his teachings.

~~

By Joan Hall Hovey, author of The Deepest Dark

www.joanhallhovey.com

All in a Day's Work Or How to Make Good Use of a Distraction by Tia Dani

Since there are two of us, wouldn't you think we could finish a book in record time? Sure, we both have busy lives. We have husbands, kids, grandkids, housework, other careers and hobbies (well, Tia has hobbies, Dani just plays) but that's another blog for a later time. Like we said, we are both fully committed to our writing.  So what happens that we can't seem, to finish a project?

Life happens. Not always in a mundane way.

Take the other day for example. Our plan was to meet up at Tia's house and not leave until we had completed the next phase of editing our work in progress. Which, by the way, it is going to be an awesome blend of the present and past, with elements of paranormal, regression, and plenty of romance. But when Dani pulled into Tia's driveway she was met with a frantic Tia waving her arms. She needed help with an unexpected emergency.

The emergency was a baby bird that had fallen from its palm tree nest near the front of Tia's house. Tia was certain it was an owl and we needed to find a rescue place quick. Someone needed to come get the bird before it died. She had already called two places who both told her they don't take in raptor species. Raptors?!? Aren't they supposed to be those honking, huge birds during the dinosaur age?

We made several more calls to animal shelters and finally were directed to a place that would take in raptors. Only problem, they didn't pick up. We had to deliver.

Twenty minutes later we had packed the back seat of Dani's car with the make shift cage, which was really a crate with a lid over the top to hold the tiny ball of white feathers. Off we went with the directions programed into the GPS system. It took us almost 45 minutes on the freeway to the exit we needed to take us north to Cave Creek and the bird hospital.

At this point, we should let you know Dani is not really fond of birds. Not that she doesn't like them, it's just she's sorta afraid of them.

When she called her husband to let him know where she was headed he said, "You are what?"

"Rescuing a bird."

"That's what I thought you said. You have a bird in your car?"

"Yes. We are saving his life."

"Ooookay. Good luck"

Meanwhile Tia is yelping and leaning over the seat, trying to keep the tiny owl from squeezing through the holes in the grate and jumping out of the box. Miniature fuzzy feathers are flying everywhere. With all the commotion we missed the turn off and had to do a U-turn and go back to where the GPS was insisting we should go in the first place. It was a winding dirt road with large pot holes. We bounced along making the odd turns, when told by the voice that seemed quite sure of where we were going. Us not so much.

In the distance we saw a sign and perched on top was a metal hawk with the large wings spread wide. WILD AT HEART. Yep, we had reached our destination. 

Relieved we pulled in and parked. Not only had we arrived safe and sound, our little owl was still alive. Tia retrieved her precious cargo from the back seat. Dani stayed a safe distance away.

Off we went to find a doctor.

We were greeted immediately and our little guy was taken to be examined.

After a thorough examination we were assured he would be fine. He was wrapped in a warm blanket and placed into an incubator where he would be watched for several days. Then they broke the news to Tia that her baby was not an owl but actually a falcon.

"What!" Tia exclaimed. "It must be an owl. He's so small and his feathers are white. And just look at his cute little face. He must be an owl?"

The examining veterinarian assured Tia her bird was definitely a falcon.

While we were in the critical-care room, a landscaper from the near-by golf course brought in a severely injured hawk.
We were allowed to stay and watch as they examined him, feed him an antibiotic stuffed into a dead baby mouse. (Here's where Tia nearly lost it…Abandoned baby bird fine. Poor dead baby mouse…ugh.)

Who knew?

Once our sweet raptor was snuggled in and sleeping, we were invited to look around at all the wild raptor birds they had in their outside sanctuary. We could stay as long as we wanted. Tia immediately took advantage of their generous offer and pulled along the reluctant Dani outside to see the many different kind of birds.

It was a wonderful day of adventure. Needless to say we didn't get any writing done that day, but we did help save a life.

Which is okay because there's always tomorrow.

And who knows, our little adventure might just end up in a book someday.

Wild At Heart is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to the conservation and preservation of Arizona's native birds of prey. http://wildatheartraptors.org/

To find out more about the writing team Tia Dani and our books visit us at: 

http://bookswelove.com/authors/tia-dani/
https://tiadaniauthor.wordpress.com/

Time's Enduring Love, our historical time-travel is a Books We Love Best Seller.
To purchase click this link.
http://amzn.com/B00EVXABV0

The Happy Place - Gail Roughton

           “I need to visit my happy place.” How often we hear that! But what, exactly, is a happy place? And where is it? “Oh, it’s all in our heads!” you say. Well, that’s right. And then again—it’s not. We all carry our permanent happy place with us. See, it’s not limited in location or the space-time continuum. It can be with you any place, any time. All we have to do is remember. Remember the place where magic lived, where memories were made, the memories of things past that shaped us, changed us, molded us, into the person we are. Where was my place? A little beat-up, sun-seared wooden fishing dock on the banks of Stone Creek.

I was born in the Deep South in the 50’s and grew up in the early and mid-60’s. It was a pivotal time in history when the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the space program began to drag even the sleepiest little Southern town kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. Rowan & Martin regularly socked it to the country as Laugh-In looked at the news, and Simon & Garfunkel sang of their brother who had died so his brothers could be free. None of that made much never-mind to me, though. I was busy following my Daddy around like a shadow whenever he was home from work. He was a construction foreman and a master carpenter. On weekends, he’d take me to his building sites, where I walked on the long light poles of Macon’s Henderson Stadium when they still lay on the ground and wrote on the chalkboards of schools-to-be long before students entered their doors. Daddy’s gone, but most of the structures he helped build still stand, strong and functional, still in use. That’s rather a form of immortality, don’t you think?

We lived a few miles outside the mid-sized Middle Georgia city of Macon in a small country neighborhood of only four or five houses, perched on the banks of Stone Creek Swamp. Readers might recognize the name from The Color of Seven. Stone Creek itself ran about half a mile behind the house. I guess I was nine or so when our neighbor “up the hill”, Mr. Emory Scoven, built the dock over the spot where Stone Creek expanded into a small pond.

Mr. Emory was a retired railroad man who lived with his brother, sister, and sister-in-law in the house on the hill next door to us. I ran in and out of that house without knocking, with total impunity. Nobody in our neighborhood knocked back then. I loved the other residents of that house, Mr. Will, Miss Lucille, and Miss Ethel, but Mr. Emory? Mr. Emory was a modern day Pied Piper. Children loved him like lint loves wool. Once upon a time the neighborhood had brimmed with kids who’d dogged his every step, but in my time, the child population was down to one. Me. And on summer days when school was out and Daddy was still at work, I trailed the man unmercifully while he tended the yards and fruit trees he so loved. If he ever grew impatient or tired of my company, he never showed it. His railroad tales were better than the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.

Late spring and summer evenings were the best times of all. Daddy came home from work, showered and ate. That’s when we headed out the back door to join Mr. Emory at the dock and cast our lines into the leaf-brown waters of the creek. The three of us sat for hours in perfect contentment, talking or not talking, it really didn’t matter either way, while the corks from our fishing lines bobbed on the water. It didn’t matter if we caught anything, either, and in fact, we preferred not to, especially since we always released any fish caught that evening back into the creek when incipient darkness forced us back up the trail toward the house. We caught some of those fish pretty much every day. I learned to recognize them over the course of a summer because all fish don’t look alike, not even fish of the same species. They have individual shadowings of color and irregularities in their gills and fins.

That’s childhood. That’s my happy place. The creek, the dock, Daddy and Mr. Emory. Sitting cross-legged on bare planking, slapping at mosquitoes as they discovered my bare arms and legs. Cane poles only, of course, because rods and reels were useless in the close confines of the creek and its small pool and would only catch uselessly in the brush and undergrowth of the banks.

I remember the sound of the frogs as dusk fell, and birds flying low across the pond’s clearing. Sometimes you could see the head of a water moccasin swimming across the creek further downstream, crossing a safe distance from the intrusion of the dock upon their territory.

Nothing else on God’s green earth feels like late evening in the spring in the Deep South. The air feels like velvet, light trembles off the water, birds fly overhead. The sounds of the frogs and insects make their own symphony. I have no pictures of that creek and dock to post. Digital cameras were far into the future. Children don’t think of such things as recording special moments on film. No matter. There’s no way any camera could have properly recorded those moments, those men, that place, that time. The photographs are in my heart. They always will be. I take them out and look at them frequently, especially when I’m writing. 

I know somewhere out there, they’re still fishing together on the banks of Stone Creek. I love you, Daddy. I love you, Mr. Emory.

Country Justice

* * *

Find all Gail Roughton titles at http://bookswelove.net/authors/roughton-gail/

And at Amazon at http://amzn.to/1DZ6Mte

You can also visit at http://gailroughton.blogspot.com

And

https://www.facebook.com/GailRoughton

Words of Wisdom to Andrew Lincoln, George Clooney, and Russell Crowe from me...by Jamie Hill

There's been much hullabaloo this week over my favorite 'The Walking Dead' character Rick Grimes, actor Andrew Lincoln, shaving his beard in a recent episode of the hit cable series. The beard furor got me thinking, have I ever written a character with a beard? I write contemporary romance, and while I'm sure many heroes in historical romance had beards, I can't think of many in contemporary settings.

Most all of my heroes have what I like to call a 'three-day beard growth'.  This works great in fiction, but in real life it's impossible to maintain for longer than a couple of days (depending on the rate of beard growth of course.) Some mens' beards grow quickly and they end up looking like Gandalf or Santa Claus.

 

 

This was the fate of Andrew Lincoln's beard in The Walking Dead, I'm afraid. A touch too long there at the end. A clean-shaven Rick was a shock, though that shower scene was pretty hot for regular TV.

 

Which do you prefer of the many stages of Rick?

 

 

I have to admit, I still prefer the three-day growth look. But I like beards! I think George Clooney and Russell Crowe can also rock the beard and to me, they look better as they age.

I might consider giving my hero a beard in an upcoming novel. It'll have to be a fairly closely cropped, neat looking thing. No Duck Dynasty crumb catchers, just enough hair there to tickle.

What's your opinion? Barely there or totally bare? Do you dig beards? I have to admit I do. And if I could offer some words of advice to the actors above I'd say totally keep the beards. These guys know how to rock them.

Jamie Hill ~ Romantic Thrills ~ Suspenseful Chills

Find my beard-free titles at Books We Love: http://bookswelove.net/authors/hill-jamie/

or on my clean-shaven website: http://www.jamiehill.biz/

 

Follow my 'possibility of a beard in a book' writing progress on Facebook: 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jamie-Hill/135137799867321

Henry Hudson, an Englishman, by Katherine Pym

In the first decade of 17th century, Henry Hudson worked for several merchantmen companies, both in England and in Holland. His goal was to find the northern route to the Spice Islands in the South Pacific. 

He worked for the Moscuvy Company, England's East India Company, and the Dutch East India Company. These individual companies pooled their resources, made their captains sign extensive contracts, gave them long lists of rules and regulations, then sent them on their way to find the easiest, fastest passage to East Indie ports of call.

The route south through the Cape of Good Hope was fraught with danger, i.e., weeks of calm, scurvy, the bloody flux, pirates. Once into the Cape, there were added dangers of rogue waves that came from nowhere, swamping and sinking a ship to the depths of the sea. 

If it weren't for the ice that filled the northern regions, that route would be far easier to navigate. When men sailed north toward Greenland or west to Newfoundland, these intrepid explorers found a vast ocean so crowded with fish, they leaped into their boats rather than be netted. They brought home stories of ling cod, and whale meat/lard. Fishermen sent their ships to these waters, and the English dinner table began to find new foods that delighted the palate. 

Whaling

When Hudson worked for the Moscuvy Company, he did not find a Northwest Passage, but alerted his employers of a place where one could catch many whales. Hudson made a splash amongst these merchant companies. After the Dutch East India Company (VOC) had so many failures, when they heard of Hudson, they enlisted his services. 

Hudson promised better things. He was certain the passage could be found. All VOC's previous captains could not find the passage, and the directors wanted to know how he would go about it. 

Henry replied that he followed Petrus Plancius' theory. Plancius was one of the founders and cartographer of the VOC, so the directors nodded their approval. When Hudson offered this theory, Plancius was still alive. He could be consulted for authenticity. 

The theory was of a temperate, open sea in the North Pole not covered with ice. What Hudson professed was a mild climate above '74 degrees latitude - the point at which the Dutch ships had always found their path blocked by ice'. Hudson not only affirmed to have seen this, he raised the stakes higher by adding the depth of the sea was so great at this point, the swells could never freeze. In this temperate area, Hudson declared to have seen a new land with many animals, sweet grasses wherein the animals grazed. It was a veritable paradise. 

Hudson's Route & Final Destination

Hudson further added if he could go above '83 degrees latitude', he would sail west to the Pacific then south into the warmer seas of the East Indies. VOC demanded more proof, so Hudson sent for Petrus Plancius. The gentleman, an astronomer and clergyman, nodded his concurrence on Hudson's every point. He added the sun's long days and white nights during the summer kept the waters warm enough so that ice would not form. As a result, Henry was given the opportunity to seek a northern route to the South Seas.

Once aboard ship, Hudson disregarded all instructions by the VOC. He used his own maps and went northwest through bad weather. Finding the way too difficult, Hudson tootled south. He expected to find a waterway along the American coast he could travel to the Pacific. He did not find it, but did find a land rich in fisheries and game, trees so big they would make excellent ships. 

Hudson Arriving at Manhattan Island

Hudson had found Manhattan Island. The VOC was not impressed but other merchants were, which started the colonization of that area. 

In 1610, this time financed by the English merchants, Hudson tried again. He found his way into what is now the Hudson Bay. The seas were filled with ice. His crew turned surly, and one night mutinied. They grabbed hold of Henry Hudson and a few faithful crewmen, put them in a small boat without food, water, or warm clothing, and sent them adrift. 


Henry Hudson disappeared into the night, never to be seen again.

Hudson, Set Adrift

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Many thanks to the following bibliography:

Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton, and Wikipedia (Hudson, Petrus Plancius)

Map of Hudson Bay is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The Barbers, a story of science & medicine in the 17th century. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I6KOKL6