Check out Lori's Amazon page on 11th August to get your copy of Hit 'n' Run Lorna Tymchuk fights to overcome a past filled with neglect and abuse. Determined to build a better life, Lorna has climbed the ladder to a success publish relations career on slippery rung at a time. But while on her way to an important meeting, a former lover crashes back into her life—literally—and she becomes embroiled in a police investigation that threatens everything she’s achieved. Mitch Morgan doesn’t believe in coincides. Mitch has spent five years trying to forget Lorna, only to run into her on his way to an undercover sting operation. Old feelings quickly resurface and passion reignites, but as his investigation unfolds, evidence suggests the woman he’s falling for might have ties to the very criminals he’s after. When Mitch tugs any thread of his investigation, it seems to lead back to Lorna. Caught between his desire for the strong, curious beauty and the growing suspicions of his superiors, he must choose between trusting his instincts and following regulations. Lorna finds herself entangled in a web of betrayal. Whens he learns the nature of the investigation—and her role as a suspected spy—Lorna goes to dangerous lengths to clear her name and prove to everyone, including herself, she’s worth of the handsome, tenacious Mitch. With danger around every corner, Lorna is on the run for her life, but refuses to run from the past any longer. She can find the evidence she needs, but at what cost? Mitch now knows her secrets and must find her first and convince her she—and their love—are worth fighting for, before it’s too late. Excerpt: “And the driver of the hearse just drove off?” The question of why bother to complete a report if the officer was just going to recap every point, by point, blinked like a neon sign behind her lids. “No, as I wrote, right here.” She pointed to another neatly printed line on the statement. “The man got out to see if I was okay. . .” The policeman rested an elbow on the counter and smirked. “Nice of him.” “I guess,” she agreed, forcing a lift to her lips, putting on her best salesman face. “Listen, the man left me his driver’s license. Said an emergency called him away.” “Emergencies can happen in the funeral business, I imagine.” He lifted his gaze to meet hers, brow furrowed. ‘so, a polite runner then?” Inhaling deeply, Lorna forged on. “I want to talk to you about that, actually.” The constable stared, barely blinking, so she blurted. “It’s a fake.” “What’s a fake?” “The driver’s license,” she confirmed through tight lips. “How would you know?” “I didn’t recognize him at first with the beard and everything.” Oh, God, she was rambling. Get a grip. Lorna took a shaky breath. “I know–once knew–the driver I hit. His name is Mitchell Morgan, not Michael Ward as is written here. The picture on this license,” she said moving her own hand to cover the license on the counter, “is him, but that’s not his name. This,” she paused to tap the document with her fingernail, “is a fake.” “How can you be sure?” His murky brown eyes met hers, clearly skeptical. She glanced at the picture again, the tips of her fingers still touching the edge of the laminated surface. How could she explain the fact she would never be able to forget Mitchell Morgan’s midnight-blue eyes? Those same expression-filled eyes with just a hint of mischief couldn’t be disguised. “I’m sure.” About Lori: Turning passion into words in print is a dream come true for Lori Power. From Radio host (best job ever!), DJ, news reporter to newspaper journalist, like many author’s, Lori has been writing most of her life. In writing, Lori has discovered a truism: everyone has a great story to tell. All you need to do is listen. Over the years, with all the people Lori has meet previously and daily, both professionally and personally, with an ear to the ground, readers can often find these ‘character’s’ fictionalized in Lori’s stories. Lori’s first novel “Storms of Passion” was published by Wild Rose Press under their Champagne line, in 2014 and received a 5-star Author’s Favourite seal of approval in 2015. Collaboration is important to improving one’s craft and as such, Lori is an active member of the Romance Writers of America, TransCanada Romance Writers, The Alberta Romance Writers Association and belongs to both a Critiquing group and a Beta Reading weekly group. Lori looks forward to continuing to find the good story; hashing out a scene, having fun with a character and writing the story she would love to read. Social Media Contact Links: www.marinerwrites.com https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=718000068 https://twitter.com/mpbenefitsinc https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=30067445&trk=hp-identity-photo https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31466340 https://plus.google.com/u/0/112290861058090803392/posts https://www.pinterest.com/lori1545/ https://www.thunderclap.it/my http://www.marinerwrites.com/novel.html http://www.limitlesspublishing.net/?s=lori+power In my story, A Woman of Love, Annabel is the abused wife of Lord Elliott Peters, but before her marriage she was a widow who successfully ran her late husband’s narrow boat business. (A narrow boat is a narrow barge used in the 19th century to transport goods on English canals and rivers.) Is this realistic? Could a widow in this era legally run a business? Yes, this is seen in the extraordinary life of reporter Nellie Bly. Nellie was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania on 5th May 1864. Her father, the founder of Cochran’s Mills, was a landowner, judge and businessman. Unfortunately, he died without a will, when Elizabeth was six years old, leaving the family destitute. At the age of fifteen Elizabeth attended the Indiana Normal School. Her plan was to become a teacher and help support her mother, but she was forced to quit the school after a year due to lack of funds. She moved with her mother to Pittsburgh where the pair ran a boarding house. Her lucky break came when she read an article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch written by Erasmus Wilson. The column stated that women belonged in the home employed in domestic tasks, such as sewing, cooking and raising children. Elizabeth, who was never one to back down from a fight, wrote an angry letter to the newspaper. She understood that many women had to work to support themselves, and their families. Her rebuttal so impressed the paper's managing editor, George Madden, that he offered her a job, giving her the pen name – Nellie Bly Nellie championed women’s issues. She posed as a sweatshop worker to expose poor working conditions. Then she wrote an article calling for a reform of the state’s divorce laws, but the newspaper editors did not appreciate her investigative, cutting-edge journalism and moved her to the newspaper’s women’s page where she was expected to write about fashion and flower shows. Nellie left the Pittsburg Dispatch and headed to New York in search of a meaningful position. After a futile six months, she finally managed to get an interview with John Cockerill, editor of the New York World newspaper. He asked her to write a piece about the mentally ill housed at Blackwell’s Island, a large institution in New York City. (Now Roosevelt Island) She accepted the challenge, going undercover as a woman with amnesia. She lived in the facility for ten days until lawyers for the New York World had her released. Her newspaper articles about her experiences included stories of cruel beatings, ice cold baths and forced meals of rancid food. Her story caused a sensation with the public and politicians alike. A grand jury was called to look into the conditions on Blackwell’s island, which quickly led to reforms. In the years that followed she went on to expose corruption and injustice, revealing shady lobbyists, the way in which women prisoners were treated by police, and the inadequate medical care given to the poor. Given her upbringing it seemed natural for her to identify with the poor and the disenfranchised. In 1889 she took a whirlwind trip around the world in an attempt to prove and beat Jules Verne’s 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days. Travelling by ship, train and burro she finished the journey in 72 days and was hailed as a celebrity. At the age of 30 she married industrialist Robert Seaman, he was 70 years old at the time. She gave up journalism and devoted her life to him and his business, the Ironclad Manufacturing Company, until he died ten years later. After his death she took over running his business, and held several US patents; one for a milk can, and another for a stacking garbage can. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a great businesswoman; the company went bankrupt due to financial mismanagement and embezzlement. Impoverished, she began writing for the New York Evening Journal. She travelled to Vienna in 1914 where she watched as World War I unfolded. She visited battlefields, and the trenches and sent back articles to the Evening Journal. In 1919 she returned to New York and was forced to sue her mother and brother for the return of her house. She started writing for the New York Evening Journal again. This time she wrote an advice column. She was now in her fifties and perhaps she was happy to let someone else do the undercover work. She died of heart disease and pneumonia in 1922, and was heralded as the best reporter in America. Although Nelly wasn’t much of a businesswoman she was determined, and didn’t shirk the responsibility of running a business. She also tried to improve the lives of her workers, altering their pay from piecemeal to salary and providing them with recreation centers. It is in her work as a journalist that she comes into her own. It is through the efforts of women like Nellie Bly that we enjoy the freedoms they have today.
I am grateful to have the very talented Jeanne Mackin here today to share her impressive research.
I hope you enjoy her post as much as I did.
Historical research
When I was researching my first historical novel I found a volume of memoirs written by Marie Antoinette’s seamstress…and it had never been translated into English! I read French well enough to be able to read these memoirs, but it was so exciting to me, to hold a book published more than a hundred and fifty years before and realize I was one of the very Americans who may have read it. That’s what historical research means to me: exploration and discovery. I don’t think of it as a dry and dusty duty but almost as a form of vacation, a way to travel to different times and places, and sometimes those places I travel to are well-off the beaten path. When I began researching my most recent novel, A Lady of Good Family, I began by reading more memoirs and biographies of my characters – Edith Wharton, her sister-in-law Mary Cadwalader Jones, and Edith’s niece, Beatrix. Thankfully, all three women were writers of various types and there is plenty of material. But once that reading was finished, I began to explore garden history, since Beatrix Farrand became of the most famous professional gardeners of our country. Gardens fascinate me, as they fascinated Beatrix, and historically they offer much to the investigator willing to explore those library shelves: colonial gardens, English country house gardens, public gardens, secret gardens…they all have their own purpose, they own style and methods. In a way, gardens maintained over several generations, as some are, become their own type of library, full of experiences, discoveries, history. Who planted that tree, and why? How did those daffodils end up planted so far from the main garden? I turn over some earth and find a child’s marble buried there from decades before I wonder if that child, now grown old, ever wonders where that marble disappeared to! Gardening and historical research, you see, have much in common. They both raise questions and ask us to look for answers, or even just more questions.
Raised among wealth and privilege during America's fabled Gilded Age, a niece of famous novelist Edith Wharton and a friend to literary great Henry James, Beatrix Farrand is expected to marry, and to marry well. But as a young woman traveling through Europe, she already knows that gardens are her true passion. How she becomes a woman for whom work and love, the earthly and the mysterious, are held in delicate balance is the story of her unique determination to create beauty while remaining true to herself.
Excerpt: 1920 Lenox, Massachusetts My grandparents had a farm outside of Schenectady, and every Sunday my father, who worked in town, would hitch the swayback mare to the buggy and take us out there. I would be left in play in the field as my father and grandfather sat on the porch and drank tea and Grandma cooked. My mother, always dressed a little too extravagantly, shelled the peas. A yellow barn stood tall and broad against a cornflower blue sky. A row of red hollyhocks in front of the barn stretched to the sky, each flower on the stem as silky and round as the skirt on Thumbelina’s ball gown. In the field next to the barn, daisies danced in the breeze. My namesake flower. I saw it still, the yellows and red and blues glowing against my closed eyelids. The field was my first garden and I was absolutely happy in it. We usually are, in the gardens of our childhood. When I opened my eyes I was on a porch in Lenox, a little tired from weeks of travel, a little restless. My companions were restless, too, weary of trying to make polite conversation as strangers do. It was a late-summer evening, too warm, with a disquieting breeze stirring the treetops as if a giant ghostly hand ruffled them. Through the open window a piano player was tinkling his way through Irving Berlin as young people danced and flirted. In the road that silvered past the inn, young men, those who had made it home from the war, drove up and down in their shiny black Model T’s. It was a night for thinking of love and loss, first gardens, first kisses. Mrs. Avery suggested we try the Ouija board. Since the war it had become a national obsession. “Let’s,” I agreed eagerly.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Jeanne Mackin ‘s latest novel, A Lady of Good Family, explores the secret life of gilded age Beatrix Jones Farrand, niece of Edith Wharton and the first woman professional landscape design in America. Her previous novel, The Beautiful American, based on the life of model turned war correspondent and photographer, Lee Miller won the CNY 2015 prize for fiction. She has published in American Letters and Commentary and SNReview and other publications and is the author of the Cornell Book of Herbs and Edible Flowers. She was the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society and her journalism has won awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. She lives with her husband, Steve Poleskie, in Ithaca. A Lady of Good Family is available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, and other bookstores. www.jeannemackin.com jeannemackin1@twitter LINKS: https://twitter.com/jeannemackin1 https://www.facebook.com/JeanneMackinAuthor https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/36613.Jeanne_MacKin http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Good-Family-Novel-ebook/dp/B00OQRL57U http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-lady-of-good-family-jeanne-mackin/1120624847
Jeanne will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2015/05/vbt-lady-of-good-family-by-jeanne-mackin.html Hi, thank you Marlow for inviting me to join you today. I’m looking forward to responding to any comments by your readers. For those of you who may have read my first book “Worlds Apart” you’ve already met Justin Titirangi, the hero of my new release “Worlds Collide”. He was the heroine’s Kiwi friend who helped Raven straighten out her feelings about Greg. “Worlds Collide” is Justin’s story. It’s a story I long anticipated writing but it took me some years to figure out where Justin wanted to be and what he wanted to say. His first priority was to dispel the possibility of him being gay, an assumption made by many of my readers. I guess this happened because there was a random query in “Worlds Apart” of him ‘discovering his feminine side’ while he was helping Raven decide her fate. There had never been any thought of Justin being gay, as I knew one day I would find his story to tell. Justin is an ordinary, hard working bloke. He runs maintenance at the New Zealand Embassy in Washington DC and enjoys hanging out at a local youth centre mentoring teens. He’s yet to encounter social snobbery. But a visit to Connecticut soon shows him how the other ‘half’ live. Shocked to discover his unassuming housemate comes from a mega wealthy background, Justin bemoans spending Thanksgiving with the family who do little to welcome his presence. But the presence of the daughter of the house makes the weekend bearable. Soon it becomes obvious these two are from different worlds. Not only are they from different countries with different cultures, they are also millions apart financially. But as Justin and Nicole get to know each other better, gradually they realize these differences need not keep them apart. Perhaps there is a chance for them to become a couple. But a taniwha will change that. Nicole cannot understand or accept the hold this spiritual entity has over Justin. She cannot believe an unknown cultural phenomenon has the power to destroy everything she has dreamed of. Their different cultures, different worlds, suddenly collide. I have been remiss in not acknowledging in the dedication page of this book, the assistance of my friend Aroha, a lovely Maori Kuia (venerable older lady) who helped me understand the impact the presence of a taniwha could hold. Without her guidance as I scribed the black moment for “Worlds Collide” I doubt I could have successfully shared its cause. While many countries share what they consider a common language – although slang idioms can highlight some differences – there are often other cultural distinctions which might slip by unnoticed. This is what happens to Nicole. She refuses to believe money is of any consequence to their chance of a lasting relationship and sees little other difference between herself and Justin. The arrival of the taniwha shows her just how wrong she can be. Although a secret dread lays buried deep inside New Zealand tradesman Justin Titirangi he appears content. He enjoys his life in Washington DC. He never dreamed a casual invitation to attend Thanksgiving with a friend's family would impact his life so disastrously. Previously untouched by social snobbery, he's blasted with both barrels. Nicole Campbell is ashamed of how she'd treated her brother's friend, but is smarting from the demise of a long term relationship. She never expects to see Justin again anyway. A need to escape her smothering parents but without ready funds, Nicole temporarily moves into her brother's house in DC, unaware Justin also lives there. Sparks fly when Justin and Nicole come face to face but will they manage to control the blaze before it engulfs them both? Excerpt: “Justin?” The whispered voice coming from behind the door, as it crept open, wouldn’t have woken him had he been asleep. It would normally have filled him with anticipation, but now... “Are you all right? I heard—Justin?” The last thing he needed right now was Nicole rushing to his side, bending over him, showing him the enticing curve of her breasts as she reached for him. “Justin, what happened?” Her hands ran over his naked chest, her gaze darting all over his body. A shiver ran through him. Only a wimpy shiver. It appeared he wasn’t capable of any other reaction despite her closeness, her ministrations, and her loving touch. “Are you hurt?” For a moment he relished her touch, before reality struck him. With a disgusted groan, he pushed her away and stumbled to his feet only to sink onto the side of his bed, fearing his legs wouldn’t hold him upright. “I’m fine,” he croaked through dry lips. “I’m sorry I woke you.” Justin stiffened as she sank down beside him. “What’s happened?” “Nothing.” His fingers wouldn’t stop twitching. He clenched them tight, rather than let her guess his weakness. “Justin? Something’s wrong.” Her fingers scalded a path across his icy forearm. He shuddered, wishing he could slip his arms around her. Wishing he could fall onto the bed with her, and forget. Wishing they could be together, now and forever. A groan escaped his lips as his body refused to respond to the picture springing into his mind for all of a second. But that dream wasn’t possible. Not anymore. He mustn’t even consider the depth of his feelings for this woman. Now he had only one choice. He had to push her out of his life. About Anne: Anne Ashby grew up in a very small coastal town in Southland, New Zealand. An eagerness to travel, fostered by her mother, led her to join the Royal NZ Navy where she enjoyed a very satisfying career. She has travelled extensively and lived in Singapore and Maryland USA. Anne likes to bring something of her beautiful country to romance readers everywhere by using New Zealand as the setting for most of her clean/sweet contemporary stories. If not set in NZ, Anne has kiwi characters filling her books. Anne has a keen interest in genealogy, an obsession for rugby and a definite dislike of housework. When not reading or writing, Anne finds plenty to occupy her time with her family commitments and her role as the National President of the Royal NZ Navalwomen's Association. She currently lives in Auckland with her husband and one of their four children. She's blessed to have her four grandchildren living close by. Social Media Sites: www.anneashby.com www.facebook.com/AuthorAnneAshby www.twitter.com/AuthorAnneAshby Hello Marlow, thank you for having me on today. I’m excited to be here. Before I introduce my debut novel, Love’s Battle, I wanted to touch a bit on the research that went to writing this romantic fantasy. When I was first seriously considering trying to make writing my career, I came across a piece of advice that I strive to achieve every time I pick up my pen. ‘If you can take the fantasy out of your story and it still works, it’s not fantasy, but reality.’ While writing Love’s Battle and now as I’m working on her sister’s stories, this is the standard I strive to achieve. A seamless blending of fantasy within reality. To do that I spent a lot of time choosing and identifying a few well-known historical figures and events throughout the course of the Howard girls’ eleven lives. Their story begins when I had them fathered by Cinaed mac Alpin, Scotland’s first credited king. They then graced the presence of Mary, Queen of Scots, were ladies in waiting to King John’s wife, Isabella. Were muses for and painted by Raphael, hung as witches in Massachusetts during the hysteria of 1692, and like the phoenix, they rose again a lifetime later to play pivotal roles within Roosevelt’s White House. Only time will tell how many important events they will have influenced during this life time. Love’s Battle- Angela Hayes |
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