Email Connect

Hero Lost, Mysteries of Death and Life, Part 1

July 3, 2017 By C. Lee McKenzie

This July I’ll be featuring the twelve authors (three each Monday) who contributed stories to the

Hero Lost Mysteries of Death and Life

An Insecure Writer’s Support Group Anthology

Website - Lost Hero Anthology

Print ISBN 9781939844361 $14.95
eBook ISBN 9781939844378 $4.99

Goodreads

Print:

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books A Million

EBook:

Nook, iTunes, Kobo, Amazon, Amazon UK, and Amazon CA

Each author has submitted their favorite inspirational quote, so this month I won’t be adding my usual quote.

Thank you, authors!

Jen Chandler, The Mysteries of Death and Life

“Keep working. Follow the shape of your mind’s particulars (its rhythms, its oddities) like a bloodhound, and take the ‘narrative’ as far as you possibly can, so that the words are utterly yours, so that you’re writing in that singular way that singular thing NO ONE but you can write. Each time.” ―Ari Banias, poet, From an interview in the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine

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Blog | Instagram

L. Nahay, Breath Between Seconds

“A writer is a world trapped within a person.” ―Victor Hugo

Web | Blog | Twitter | Instagram

Roland Yeomans, Sometimes They Come Back

“Just because I am on a different path than you does not mean I am lost.” ―Samuel McCord

Blog | Twitter | Facebook

Don’t miss the July 30 deadline for the next IWSG Anthology.

Enter Now.

For all My Email Connect Peeps I’m offering a free mobi or mp3 of a short story from the anthology, Beware the Little White Rabbit.

Have you read an anthology lately?

Sweep Up The Kitchen Time!

March 27, 2017 By C. Lee McKenzie

Yep! It’s time to tidy up this here blog and get set up for April. So here’s my Spring Cleaning Post.

The big news is Elephant’s Child is the winner of one of Bish’s eBooks! Congratulations.

Amazon

This month’s Featured Follower has been Bish Denham. And what a wonderful follower Bish is. We’ve been playing tag with each other since I started this blog in 2007. Holy Molly, folks! That’s ten years.

Well, after that shock here’s a bit about Email Connect, which The Write Game’s small contribution to helping authors.

Read and review your book (Amazon and Goodreads) and mark it as “Am Reading/Read” on Goodreads.

Feature you on The Write Game two times.

Post your cover on Pinterest under Covers That Catch My Eye.

Feature you/your book on Email Connect that goes out on the 1st and 15th of each month.

Post on fb and link to your review.

Each Wednesday post tweets about your book three times throughout the day.

I’ll be skipping a Featured Follower in April, but stay tuned for who the next author will be in May.

IWSG News:

The #IWSGPit is on and becoming very exciting with all of the agents and publishers signing on to participate. Put July 27 on your calendar!

If you haven’t jumped into the Goodreads Book Club yet, for heaven sakes what are you waiting for? A book club for writers to read/learn about the writing craft. No promo. No review requests. Join us today.

The #AtoZ 2017

I was all set to do the #AtoZChallenge this year, when whammo, my already damaged shoulder started giving me fits. Now, it’s affecting my right arm and hand, so hi ho, hi ho it’s off to therapy I go. AGAIN. Since I have to keep my typing to a minimum, I’ll be cheerleading this year, but the good news is I have 2018 all ready to go.

Young Adult Scavenger Hunt

#YASH/ @YAScavengerHunt is on again and I’ll be posting how to enter soon. And since it’s only on from Tuesday, April 4th at 12 pm Pacific Time to Sunday, April 9th at noon Pacific time, my doctor says I can do it. Hope you’ll support the Blue Team and try to win some books. Take a look at the books we’re giving away.

Here’s to a wonderful and exciting April. I’ll pop in and during the #AtoZ alphabet marathon with my pom poms and some encouragement. Have you joined #IWSG Goodreads Book Club? Will you take part in the #IWSGPit? Are you #AtoZing?

Fresh Start and Featured Follower for January

January 2, 2017 By C. Lee McKenzie

Last year I said I wanted to change up my blog to keep me interested in blogging and hopefully to keep my readers interested as well. So here we are in 2017, and while my look is the same, some of my content is different.

Featured Followers in Review

In April 2016, I started this feature on my Email Connect, and nine authors played with me. Here they are again:

Beverly Stowe McClure

Chris Ledbetter

Yvonne Ventresca

If you’re interested in joining my Email Connect, just sign up. The form’s in the right margin of this blog.

January’s Featured Follower

Welcome Sandra Cox, author of the three book series Mutants. I’m featuring her and book #1, Love Lattes and Mutants, but be sure to check out her other work.

Like most seventeen-year-olds, Piper Dunn wants to blend in with the crowd. Having a blowhole is a definite handicap. A product of a lab-engineered mother with dolphin DNA, Piper spends her school days hiding her brilliant ocean-colored eyes and sea siren voice behind baggy clothing and ugly glasses. When Tyler, the new boy in school, zeroes in on her, ignoring every other girl vying for his attention, no one, including Piper, understands why.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

I read this book in an afternoon. It’s fun. It’s light with adventure and some clean teen romance. Who can resist a story about a beautiful girl with a dolphin blowhole?

Connect with Sandra.

Facebook Twitter Blog Google+ Amazon

Let Me Tell You A Story

Over the years I’ve heard or read stories about other people’s lives. I’ve also had a few experiences that have entered into my “Let me tell you about the time” category. Some of these stories have crept into my books. Others are waiting in the wings. Here’s one I remember from a trip to visit relatives in Switzerland.

My Swiss cousin was a great hiker, so we hit it off right away, and I couldn’t wait to follow her up into the mountains that are the backdrop for Bellinzona (my fraternal grandparents’ home).

We started early while the sun was out and only the hint of snow clouds in the distance. But because we’re hiking nuts, we went farther than than we should, and before we stopped and looked overhead, the snow was already floating down on our heads and shoulders. We’d never make it down before the storm hit. I had visions of freezing right there above my ancestral home, but we had water and some food, so we found a small wooden shelter along the ridge and ducked in for the night. She told me that as a kid she and friends often camped in shelters like these. “The trick to a really comfy, deep sleep,” she told me, “is the ferns.” They’d cut them and put them on the floor. She said none of them stayed awake very long, and they slept late into the mornings on their fern beds.

We tested her fern beds that night, and they worked! Although it was cold and the ground hard, I don’t remember a better night’s sleep-even after a good hike. It seems ferns give off a dose of hypnotic flavonoids that induce sound sleep.

When I did some research, ferns are the plants recommended you have in your bedroom. Here’s a quick list other sleep-enabling plants I found online.

The shelters themselves have an interesting history having to do with WWII, and I’ll tell you about that next week.

Did You Know. . .Plants can suffer from sudden blasts of light and that it can affect their growth? Scientists are working to mitigate those negative effects and boost efficiency of photosynthesis. So what does this mean? People like Professor Niyogi, UC Berkeley, are working toward increased crop production to meet the food needs of future generations. Sci-fi writers, how can you use this little bit of science news in your next book? I’m imagining The Plant That Ate New York.

Quote of the Week: “Only spread a fern-frond over a man’s head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.” John Muir

Thanksgiving and Then What?

November 28, 2016 By C. Lee McKenzie

What comes after Thanksgiving? A hike, of course. If I’m thankful for anything is the chance to be out in a forest on a trail. And today was a perfect day for it.

This is early with some overcast. No one on the trail this morning, except me.

I’m always on the lookout for poison oak and I never fail to find it. This little guy looks so sweet, but does it ever cause me suffering and itches galore if I touch it.

My shadowy selfie.

Rattlesnake grass. On a windy day, it gives you plenty of warning.

A bit sunnier as I head toward the coast.

A new pine sunning itself.

Dandelion looking up.

“The unquiet spirit of a flower
That hath too brief an hour.” Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortizzoz

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Along the trail there are always metaphors. Here’s life’s grand circle. Out of the dead stump a beautiful green bush thrives.

This is my last post about Gadget Girl and my November Featured Follower. It has been wonderful to share this author and her work with you. I hope you enjoyed meeting Suzanne and I hope you’ll read and enjoy her books. Check out her AUTHOR’S PAGE

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Congratulate the winner of Gadget Girl! Nicola at Burggraf’s Blog is the lucky Email Connect follower.

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Check back to find out who will be my December Featured Follower! Wow. The last author of the year already.

Quote of the Week: “Trails are like that: you’re floating along in a Shakespearean Arden paradise and expect to see nymphs and flute boys, then suddenly you’re struggling in a hot broiling sun of hell in dust and nettles and poison oak…just like life.”

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― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Email Connect Commercial & Double Negative

November 14, 2016 By C. Lee McKenzie

Commercial Announcement-This will not disappear in ten seconds, so don’t fight it.

Email Connect (EC) is not a Newsletter. I have no news.

“So what do you have?”

“Thanks for asking.”

*A Featured Author each month.

*Gifts and Giveaways.

*Short, but hopefully helpful tips for writers and readers and other humans.

Sign up today for your chance to win a digital copy of Gadget Girl by Suzanne Kamata, my Featured Follower in November. I’m reading it now and it’s good!

I’ve been so neglectful of my Young Adult books lately, that I thought I’d give one a bit of press. So here’s . . . the Story Behind Double Negative

READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY. IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTANDING THE REST OF THE POST.

BUT NO PRESSURE.

#anT t# re#d #nd #nj#y # g##d st#ry? Wh#T #f y## c##ldn#t do th#t? W##ld y## b# fr#str#t#d? #ngry? S#cr#t#v#?

You could probably figure out the message, but was it easy? Did it take a while to decipher the words, and when you did, did you forget all about meaning because you were picking through it so slowly you forgot where you were going? And what about the NO PRESSURE part? Did you ignore that?

Here’s what it said: Want to read and enjoy a good story? What if you couldn’t do that? Would you be frustrated? Angry? Secretive? Maybe act out with anger?

In 2010 I stumbled on an article that said in L.A. County 33% of the residents were illiterate or low-literate. That brought me up short. Wasn’t the inability to read an emerging nation issue? An issue in back-country regions of the U.S.? I guess not!

Bryant Doughtery is definitely Hutch.

Hot and naughty. Lots of potential.

That article was the beginning of Double Negative. Hutch, then Fat Nyla and Maggie slowly evolved into the characters, then came Father Kerry, Moss and Meeker. All destined to play a part in a story about a kid who can’t read well enough to get through high school, but has the heart of a winner. All he needs is a pair of glasses and someone to believe in him.

Evernight Teen

“My life was going, going, gone, and I hadn’t been laid yet. I couldn’t go into the slammer before that happened.” —Hutch McQueen.

Quote of the Week: “Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.” Anonymous

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November Featured Follower & Our Heritage, #InkRipples

November 7, 2016 By C. Lee McKenzie

Meet Suzanne Kamata

The Write Game’s Amazin Featured Follower for November

Buy on Amazon

Add to your TBR list on Goodreads

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Aiko Cassidy is fourteen and lives with her sculptor mother in a small Midwestern town. For most of her young life Aiko, who has cerebral palsy, has been her mother’s muse. But now, she no longer wants to pose for the sculptures that have made her mother famous and have put food on the table. Aiko works hard on her own dream of becoming a great manga artist with a secret identity.

When Aiko’s mother invites her to Paris for a major exhibition of her work, Aiko at first resists. She’d much rather go to Japan, Manga Capital of the World, where she might be able to finally meet her father,the indigo farmer. When she gets to France, however, a hot waiter with a passion for manga and an interest in Aiko makes her wonder if being invisible is such a great thing after all. And a side trip to Lourdes, ridiculous as it seems to her, might just change her life.

And here’s Suzanne

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She is most recently from Lexington, South Carolina, and now lives in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan with her husband and two children.

Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications including Real Simple, Brain, Child, Cicada, and The Japan Times. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award

This is how Gadget Girl begins.

My father has blue hands. Or at least that’s what Mom tells me–one of the few facts I’ve been able to wring out of her. See, he’s the eldest sone of one of the last indigo producers in his village on the Japanese island of Shikoku His family has been growing indigo for generations–cuter, even–since back in the time of the shoguns.

“You were named after that plant,” Mom told me. “Ai means indigo. Ko means child.”

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Indigo is my destiny.

Her next book arrives in 2017. The Mermaids of Lake Michigan.

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pre-order from powells.

pre-order from barnes and noble.

pre-order from amazon.

Heritage is the #InkRipples topic for November

#InkRipples:a monthly meme created by Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and Katie L. Carroll.

Post on the first Monday of every month with a new topic.

Thanks for the great gift, Mom and Dad.
And thanks for the heritage you passed on to me: the love of good food.

This is a cookbook filled with history and heritage of foods from the early immigrants to the U.S. Every time I make a dish, using this book, I learn more about the people who have helped shape our nation.

Here’s why pumpkins are so much a part of our Thanksgiving feasts. “For the early colonists pumpkin was often the difference between survival and starvation. It was fit for only the peasants, said Europe. But the Colonists soon overcame this prejudice, and pumpkin became an almost daily staple in the New World.”

Quote of the Week: “So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.” Franz Kafka

Halloween Memories and October’s Featured Follower

October 24, 2016 By C. Lee McKenzie

I went back into my archives to see what I’d posted on this holiday in the past. The first Halloween post was this one!

Halloween 2007

It just ain’t the same. I mean tonight it will still be light when the tiny ghosts trek to my door. How can a ghost be spooky in daylight? And my witchy costume is so shabby from years of use that I rely on nightfall to conceal all of the patched pieces and cider stains. Sigh.

Well, no matter what, we are having Halloween. It is my absolutely favorite holiday. I don’t have to plan a family gathering, I don’t have to be sure to seat Uncle Pete away from Cousin Sadie, I don’t have to make a vegetarian side dish for Leah Ann who is sixteen and turning Zen on me. All I have to do is buy a few trinkets and candy and have fun. My kind of holiday.

2008 and 2009 Westside Books had me out and about launching my first book, Sliding on the Edge, and I didn’t have time to post about Halloween. But then 2010 produced this.

Halloween 2010

Happy Ghostly Halloween

It’s the time of year to pull those pumpkin vines, bundle the corn stalks and put away the outdoor furniture. Fall is for coming to the hearth with a good book and a hot cup of cocoa-a time to look inward and reminisce about spring and summer days that warmed the garden and brought forth the crops for harvest.

The sudden shift of light, the clouds with hints of a storm bundled inside, the night that comes more quickly . . . all of these are October, and there’s a slight charge in the air as the old myths stir within our memory.

Persephone once again returns to Hades as she was bound to do. Demeter bemoans the loss of her daughter and the earth goes silent and infertile for the months they are separated.

Now is the time for ghosts to walk among us, while our minds grow quiet in the long chilled nights.

I haven’t written a ghost story in a few years, but I had a couple published a while ago in Crow Toes Quarterly, so I thought to celebrate the season, I’d share this one. It’s written for middle grade readers, so I hope you’ll print it and read it or give it to a young reader who would like to be a tad scared by the THE GHOSTLY DOUBLE.

This has been fun going back to see what I thinking and writing. Now let’s come up to date.

Some of you know I’ve started Email Connect as one way to organize my support for authors and give 12 of them extra promo during the year. I can’t believe I’m almost ready to announce my Featured Follower for November! But before I do, here’s one more bit about October’s Yvonne Ventresca and her new book, Black Flowers, White Lies.

FUN FACT: Near the end of the Black Flowers, White Lies, Ella meets a friend at Sybil’s Cave. As mentioned earlier in the novel, the real-life murder of Mary Rogers near that spot in 1841 inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s 1842 story, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”

To buy Black Flowers, White Lies: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | AmazonUK | BAM

Bio: Yvonne Ventresca’s latest young adult novel, Black Flowers, White Lies was recently published by Sky Pony Press (October, 2016). BuzzFeed included it at the top of their new “must read” books: 23 YA Books That, Without a Doubt, You’ll Want to Read This Fall. Her debut YA novel, Pandemic, won a 2015 Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for the Atlantic region.

My Quote of the Week: “Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories-and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.” Alice Munro, short story writer and Nobel Prize winner.

Last Call for Free Signed Hardcopy of The Namesake & Motley Education Cover Reveal

September 26, 2016 By C. Lee McKenzie

Barnes and Noble. Amazon. Indiebound

I need a BIG favor. If you haven’t already added Double Negative on your TBR Goodreads list, I’d really appreciate it if you would now. I’m #47 on the LISTOPIA. THANK YOU 3X!

This is the last week to opt in for a chance to win a signed hardcopy of The Namesake by my September Featured Follower, Steve Parlato. If you like good writing, interesting characters and a story that probes the human heart, you’ll love owning this book. Sign up on my Email Connect and ask for your copy. Once the winner is pulled out of that lovely hat, Steve will see that your signed copy is on the way. Good luck.

The next Email Connect will come out at the end of this month (fingers crossed), announcing my October Featured Follower, How I Mine Goodreads for Reviews, and some interesting links I’ve discovered this past month.

And now here’s a new book by my friend, S.A. Larsen. This is your chance to congratulate her on her new book! And enter her giveaway.

Title: Motley
Education (Book One: The URD Saga)

Author: S.A.
Larsen

Release Date: October
10, 2016

Forget having a lively after school social life, Ebony Charmed is fighting
to keep the entire Afterlife alive.

Ebony’s less-than-average spirit tracking abilities are ruining more
than sixth grade at Motley
Junior High: School for the Psychically & Celestially gifted. Her parents
argue so much her dad moved out. And, even though he’s scared of his own shadow
and insists on bringing his slimy, legless lizard everywhere they go, Ebony
wouldn’t survive without her best friend, Fleishman.

When Ebony’s Deadly Creatures & Relics’ project goes missing, she
learns her missing project is one of the keys to saving the spirit world. Now
Ebony and Fleishman must battle beasts from Norse Mythology to retrieve her
project before spirits are lost, the Well of Urd dries up, and Ebony loses all
hope of reuniting her family. But someone lies in wait, and he has other
plans…including creating a new world of spirits without them in it.

ADD TO
GOODREADS

Motley
Education has been aligned with Core Standards for grades 4-7. A guide will be
available on the author’s website
to download for FREE after the book’s release date.

About S.A. Larsen

S.A. LARSEN is the author of Motley Education, the first book in a middle grade fantasy-adventure series.
Her work has appeared in numerous local publications and young adult
anthologies Gears
of Brass and
Under A Brass
Moon by
Curiosity Quills Press.
Look for her
debut young adult novel, Marked
Beauty, set
for release in 2017. Find her in the land of lobsters, snowy winters, and the
occasional Eh’ya with her husband of over twenty years, four children, a
playful pooch, and two kittens.

You can visit her online at www.salarsenbooks.com.

Follow her on Facebook
| Twitter | Instagram and connect with her
on her Website & Blog.

Rafflecopter Giveaway Code

Five lucky winners will each
receive a signed bookmark and assorted swag! Contest runs from 09/15/16 to
09/23/16. Winners will be chosen my random.com.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Direct link to giveaway

Quote of the Week: “Talent is a pursued interest. Anything that you’re willing to practice, you can do.” Bob Ross, Painter and TV Host

Prop Me Up and Other Miscellany

July 25, 2016 By C. Lee McKenzie

Three plucky sleuths. A crumbling skeleton. A buried treasure.

AMAZON

Free On Kindle Unlimited

Most of you know I’m about to turn a book loose in the world, so if you’re a writer, you understand my state of body and mind. I’m booked pretty solid through August and probably September, but believe me, I’m eyeing November or December for some down time.

To add to the confusion, Blogger ate my Blog List last week and then did some nasty things to my posts, so I had my head into html again-not fun in the summer, well anytime really. Apologies for not getting around to everyone’s blog as usual. I’ll be catching up soon.

My Email Connect ( EC) is growing. And in August I’ll be featuring my sixth author. Who I pull from the hat is always a surprise for my EC followers, and I’m really enjoying reading, reviewing and featuring writers like this. If you’re interested in what’s going on behind the scenes, sign up and join us for my launch month. It’s going to be special with more gifts-dragon related, of course. And more about my copywriting course. I’d love to have you as part of the group.

The Beginning of New Paths and Native Landscaping

I’ve turned to landscaping as one way to hoist myself off the writing chair and change a garden to native plants. We have a vacation home that my in-laws built back in the seventies, and it needs mega work. Great! Another project. But I’m enjoying the creative part (moving rocks and digging holes for new plants-creative?) while my husband shakes his head over the construction issues.

I took a quick break and went to San Francisco for a SCBWI mixer at Books Inc. (the oldest bookstore in the city, btw) And I’m really glad I did. I met a lot of booksellers as well as authors and illustrators. I’ve been trying to do more volunteering for the organization, so I hope to be at more mixers like this one.

Well, I’m off to check on my book blog tour. Today I’m visiting these amazing bloggers.
Alex Cavanaugh
Yolanda Renee
The Silver Dagger Scriptorium (sounds ominous, doesn’t it?)

My Quote for the Week: “Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.” Thomas Jefferson (This one seemed appropriate on many levels.)

Meet Chrys Fey, July’s Featured Follower

June 27, 2016 By C. Lee McKenzie

My July Featured Follower

Chrys Fey

with her latest book in her Disaster Crimes series

Seismic Crimes

My Review

Loma Prieta

Chry Fey’s story takes place very close to where I live and rings quite true from my experience. October 17, 1989 the Loma Prieta 6.9 quake hit our mountain area hard because we live on that bad boy called the San Andreas Fault.

One day I need to write about that, but in the meantime, Chrys has written a story that captures the power, the shock and the reality of a California earthquake-one that takes place in a city of tall buildings and steep hills. A city called San Francisco.

10 Facts about Earthquakes:

1. A large earthquake has the power of not just one atomic
bomb, but 100,000 of them!

2. No place on earth is completely free of earthquakes.

3. In the 1906 quake, the San Andreas Fault slipped about
20 feet.

4. The largest, strongest shockwave typically lasts about
40-45 seconds.

5. There is no way to predict when a major quake will
strike.

6. About a million earthquakes rock the planet, but most
are barely felt.

7. Since 1800, only four quakes have been categorized as
major (7.0 or higher).

8. Before 2032, an earthquake of 6.7 or greater is
predicted to strike the Bay Area.

9. Atlantis is thought to have been swallowed by
earthquakes.

10. Due to two large blocks of crust slipping in opposite
direction, Los Angeles is moving toward San Francisco at the rate of 2 inches a
year.

Title: Seismic Crimes

Author: Chrys Fey

Series: Disaster Crimes Series (Book Two)

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press

Format: Digital and Print

Page Count: 282

DIGITAL LINKS:

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Amazon CA

NOOK / KOBO / All Romance eBooks

PRINT LINKS:

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Amazon CA

The Wild Rose Press

BLURB:

An Internal Affairs Investigator was murdered and his brother, Donovan Goldwyn, was framed. Now Donovan is desperate to prove his innocence. And the one person who can do that is the woman who saved him from a deadly hurricane—Beth Kennedy. From the moment their fates intertwined, passion consumed him. He wants her in his arms. More, he wants her by his side in his darkest moments.

Beth Kennedy may not know everything about Donovan, but she can’t deny what she feels for him. It’s her love for him that pushes her to do whatever she has to do to help him get justice, including putting herself in a criminal’s crosshairs.

When a tip reveals the killer’s location, they travel to California, but then an earthquake of catastrophic proportions separates them. As aftershocks roll the land, Beth and Donovan have to endure dangerous conditions while trying to find their way back to one another. Will they reunite and find the killer, or will they lose everything?

I read Book 1 and enjoyed it. Here’s my Review

DIGITAL LINKS:

Amazon US / Amazon UK

Amazon CA / NOOK / KOBO

All Romance eBooks

The Wild Rose Press

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