Aloha to Nancy Lee Badger and HEAVEN-SENT WARRIOR - With Giveaway!

Asleep inside a bronze statue, a naked Frenchman wakes a century later to save a half-Fae art museum curator from a demon bent on ruling our present-day world.

That’s just a small part of who Henrí Chevalier is. My reluctant hero in Heaven-sent Warrior had a crude upbringing in Paris, France during the 19th century. Well before he appeared naked one night on the grounds of a present-day art museum, and before becoming a model for the sculptor Auguste Rodin, he fought in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 at age 16.

As a farmhand on his uncle’s farm, he was caught behind barricades while delivering goods to a Paris marketplace. He took up arms during a brutal siege now referred to as the War of 1870, which lasted 10 days. Henrí had no idea that on July 16 1870 the French parliament would vote to declare war on the German Kingdom of Prussia. He had carried a Chassepot rifle, a bolt-action military breech-loading rifle. He said he had little choice but to take up arms and fight. He told Kenzie “We lost, but my appearance saved me.” She asked why, and he shared that they took him for a young lad and sent him back to his uncle’s farm. He added “At sixteen, I was pathetically small for my age.” In my story, Henrí has to force memories of death, blood, and needless carnage back inside the dark place in his mind. 

Henrí Chevalier's last memory, before stumbling naked into a museum’s moonlit garden, was Auguste Rodin and his dusty Paris studio in 1886. To escape his broken heart, Henrí volunteered to sleep inside a statue until needed. Expecting to die, he discovers he must learn to use the unexpected powers Heaven has given him. Without them he will fail his mission against otherworldly creatures, such as demons and faeries.

Kenzie Mackintosh, a dedicated art museum's curator, spies a naked man hiding among the bronze statues. A quick glance ignites desire within her, but she is too tied-up in work to act on it. Unaware of her fae heritage, their relationship heats up as he disrupts her job. While Henrí tries to process modern buildings, cars, and a broken elevator, a demon attacks and forces Henrí and Kenzie to enlist the aid of her powerful fae relatives. When the demon possesses the body of her ex-lover and threatens to kill him, then use her to take over the world, Henrí and Kenzie must learn to trust each other, even if Kenzie’s death might be the only answer to the world’s salvation.

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Nancy Lee Badger grew up in Huntington on New York’s Long Island. After attending Plymouth State in New Hampshire, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education and met and married her college sweetheart. They raised two handsome sons and when the children had left the nest, and shoveling show became a chore, she retired from her satisfying job as a 9-1-1 Emergency Medical Dispatcher and moved with her husband to North Carolina, where she writes full-time.

Nancy is a member of Romance Writers of America, Heart of Carolina Romance Writers, Fantasy-Futuristic & Paranormal Romance Writers, and the Triangle Association of Freelancers. She loves to travel and attend Scottish Highland Games and is never far from her laptop. She finds story ideas in the most unusual places.

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From Nancy ...

I am the daughter of a 93 year old Navy veteran (Hi, Dad!) and the mother of a veteran Army drill sergeant. Leave a comment telling us which branch of the military you admire for a chance to win an ebook of HEAVEN-SENT WARRIOR.

Thank you, Nancy, for your support of the military!

Mahalo,

Kim in Baltimore
Aloha Spirit in Charm City

Nancy offers an except from HEAVEN-SENT WARRIOR ...

A server arrived and poured coffee into two mugs. Kenzie ordered for them both. Henrí stared at the cups. His brows arched in wonder. How strange. “Don’t the French drink coffee?”

He nodded, sipped, and then cried out.

“Merde! It is hotter than the fires of Hell. And bitter.”

“I should have warned you. Blow on it, and try adding sugar.” Kenzie tossed a couple of sugar packets to him. He glared at her and then at the packets. Shaking her head, she ripped one open and dumped the contents into his cup, and passed him a spoon. “Spoon. Stir. Drink.”

Henrí followed her command like a soldier in the field. She recalled how earlier, when first awakening, he seemed to search for his weapon.

“You were in the military?” she asked, watching him sip his sweetened coffee.

“Oui. I grew bored of working my uncle’s farm from dawn to dusk.” Henrí sipped his coffee. His eyes grew unfocused. “I assumed to fight for my country would prove the ultimate test of a man’s courage.”

“What about your family? They must have worried.”

He waved one hand through the air as if the subject meant nothing.

“How could they not care?”

“I had no family besides my uncle. He missed my free labor, but I wanted a different life. A life other than farm chores and stinking beasts. Funny.”

“What’s funny?”

He sipped his coffee before answering. “When the battle started, when I was surrounded by the dead and dying, with shells exploding around me, I missed that stinking little farm.” He laughed, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Kim's favorite military service ... who were also heaven-sent! 

On this day in History ... Aloha to Johanna Lindsey!

Johanna's first book .... 

I wasn't sure what I would write today ... so I scrolled through "March 10" on Wikipedia ... and a birthday caught my eye! On this day in 1952, Johanna Helen Howard was born in Germany during her father's service in the Army.  

Thank you, Johanna, for your father's service!  

After her father's death, Johanna and her mother moved to Hawaii, where she met her husband, Ralph Bruce Lindsey.  

Oh, Hawaii.

I discovered Johanna Lindsey while living in the Netherlands - I devoured the romances I found in the American Thrift Shop in Schinnen and the Army Library Annex in Brunssum.  One of Johanna's books still remains on my keeper shelf - UNTIL FOREVER, published in 1995 by Avon Romance:

From the shadows of the past.

Prim and beautiful professor Roseleen White clutches her new prized possession - a thousand-year-old Scandinavian sword. And suddenly, a dream stands before her: a magnificent Viking warrior sworn to satisfy Roseleen's every desire.

Until forever.

Accursed for untold centuries, mighty Thorn is now enslaved to a woman. Yet it is Roseleen who is the true prisoner, held willing captive by a handsome barbarian who sweeps her back to the ancient past on a journey of sensual discovery. But only by banishing him from her life forever can Roseleen free Thorn from immortality's chains - forcing her to make a devastating choice that will either imperil their future or preserve a love more powerful than time.

Do you have a favorite Johanna Lindsey book?  Or a favorite time travel novel?  Or a favorite Viking romance?  One randomly selected commenter wins a book choice from my convention stash. Comments are open through Sunday, March 12, 10 pm in Baltimore.  I'll post the winner on Monday, March 13.  

Mahalo,

Kim in Baltimore

Aloha Spirit in Charm City

Below is Johanna's former home in Kaneohe, Oahu.  Check out the article about the house at this link.

Aloha to Gwyn Cready and FIRST TIME WITH A HIGHLANDER

Gwyn Cready combines two of my favorite elements in historical romance - time travel and Scotland - in FIRST TIME WITH A HIGHLANDER, Book 2 in Sirens of the Scottish series.  Gwyn joins us for a cozy chat about the inspiration behind her time-travel romances ....

People often ask me why I like to write time travel romance, and it’s a two-part answer, because there are really two questions in there—why do I like to write romance, and why do I like to write time travel.

I began to write with the intention of getting published in June, 1997 to honor my younger sister, who was a poet and photographer and who had died suddenly the month before. The sort of book I wanted to write was a book like the one a friend had given me a few months earlier—Outlander. At that time, I’d never read a romance before, and I COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN. Jamie is the best sort of hero—devoted, funny, brave, smart, and supportive of the heroine. I was so hopped up on the first three Outlander novels, it was pretty much all I could talk about in the spring of 1997—and it was one of the things I talked to my sister about since her college boyfriend had been named Jamie and like the heroine in Outlander, my sister’s name was Claire. It was the last conversations I ever had with her.

So there I am, in 1997, wanting to honor my sister with a book, and certain the book I want to write is a romance like Outlander. Time travel fit in nicely for me. Outlander is a time travel novel, of course, but I’d been a time travel fan before that. The Back to the Future movies are my holy grail of time travel. I loved Somewhere in Time, of course, as well as the Terminator movies, Time After Time, and Groundhog Day. Time travel lets you quickly throw your character into adversity and see if he/she sinks or swims. The question you want readers asking in romance novels is “How, with all these challenges, will the hero and heroine still end up together?” Time travel adds another layer to that tension, specifically, “How will they end up together when each is destined to be in his/her own time?” In my mind, one of the most heroic things a character can do is give up his own time in order to be with the person he/she loves, and that’s always a tender and gripping moment to write in my books.

Which brings us to First Time with a Highlander. Serafina and Gerard were such fun characters to chase through a novel. As with Just in Time for a Highlander, the first book in the Sirens of the Scottish Borderlands series, I wanted to shake things up a bit by having the hero be the person who travels to the past. Gerard is an ad man—and since I spent twenty years working in brand management at a big pharma company, I know what ad men are like. The women in this series hold positions of unusual power for women in the eighteenth century, and Serafina is no exception. She inherited a shipping concern from her father, but her blackguard of an ex-fiancé has run the business into the ground. He’s ruined her socially and financially, but Serafina is not one to take things lying down. She uses herbs she’s, ahem, “borrowed” from a famed spell-caster to summon a man to help her claim the cargo from the ship’s final voyage before her fiancé can get his hands on it. She only needs a man for one night and…well, you can imagine what that leads to in the hands of an inexperienced spell user. But Serafina is willing to pay the price—in fact, she’s quite willing once the smart, dashing Gerard appears.

Vintage Scotch whisky bottle
Public Domain (link)

She needs a man—but only for a night

What do you get when you imbibe centuries-old whiskey—besides a hangover the size of the Highlands? If you’re twenty-first century ad exec Gerard Innes, you get swept back to 18th-century Edinburgh and into the bed of a gorgeous, fiery redhead. Gerard has only a foggy idea what he and the lady have been up to…but what he does remember draws him into the most dangerous and exhilarating campaign of his life.

Be careful what you wish for…

Serafina Seonag Fallon’s scoundrel of a fiancé has left her with nothing, and she’s determined to turn the tables. If she can come up with a ringer, she can claim the cargo he stole from her. But the dashing man she summons from the future demands more than a night, and Serafina finds it easier to command the seas under her feet than the crashing waves he unleashes in her heart.

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Gwyn Cready is a writer of contemporary, Scottish, and time travel romance. She’s been called “the master of time travel romance” and is the winner of the RITA Award, the most prestigious award given in romance writing. She has been profiled in Real Simple and USA Today, among others. Before becoming a novelist, she spent 25 years in brand management. She has two grown children and lives with her husband on a hill overlooking the magical kingdom of Pittsburgh.

Learn more about Gwyn and his books at cready.com. Sourcebooks is hosting a special giveaway at this link.

Mahalo,

Kim in Baltimore

Aloha Spirit in Charm City

Aloha to Elizabeth Langston and WHISPERS FROM THE PAST

It is my distinct pleasure to welcome Elizabeth Langston - YA author, AF veteran, and my roomie during the RWA Convention!   She joins us for a cozy chat about her Whisper Falls series ...

Kim:  From your website, you were born in TN, raised in MS, and now live in NC. What is your favorite sight, sound, and smell of the Deep South?

Elizabeth:  For me, living in the Deep South is all about mealtimes—tables groaning with dishes like ham, potato salad, biscuits, and sweet tea in a glass with condensation rolling down the side. When I was a young girl, summers were all about eating outside in the lazy heat with people laughing and talking and fanning themselves. Dessert would usually be an ice-cold watermelon. We would get a slice and stand on the grass dripping juice as we gnawed it down to a green smile.

Kim:  What did you learn in the AF that you could apply to your writing career?

Elizabeth:  My boss must’ve recognized early that I could write, because he often assigned me to draft reports that would float up through the ranks. Higher-ups were more likely to pay attention if the information was both engaging and lean. That was my first lesson. Make every word count.

The second lesson was about patience. Things happen slowly in the government. I could propose an idea and be fairly confident that I wouldn’t hear back for months or years. That didn’t mean it was a bad idea; it just meant that progress moved at its own pace—not mine. I have used that lesson more times than you can imagine with writing and publishing.

Kim:  Who or wha helped you along the path to publishing? What attracted you to write YA?

Elizabeth:  I give my family the most credit for smoothing my journey to publication. They had to put up with a distracted mom/wife, rushed meals, and weekend trips to historical sites for research. They listened to me brainstorm. They heard me squeal over a “good rejection.” They saw me cry. Whenever I felt like giving up, I remembered that my two daughters were watching me. And I squared my shoulders and got back to work.

My daughters are also why I write YA, especially daughter #2. She has Asperger’s, which is on the Autism Spectrum. When she was a tween, her middle school offered her the typical reading list in Language Arts class—and some of the books were too obscure or abstract to make much sense to her. I told her that I would write her a book and discovered that I loved writing for young adults.

Kim:  That is a wonderful reason to write YA!  Tell us about the Whisper Falls series - what inspired it?

Elizabeth:  The concept burrowed into my subconscious during a Twilight Zone festival. I watched an episode called “A Message From Charity”, which had a time-travel feel with glimpses into the Salem witch trials. I loved everything about that episode except the ending, which made me crazy. The story haunted me with What-if’s.

In a separate (but intersecting) plane, I researched the colonial and federal periods of America with a plan to write a “pure” YA historical. Then I uncovered some material on indentured servants. My brain flooded with possibilities. My heroine Susanna took over for Charity. North Carolina in 1796 took over as the setting. I put my hands on the keyboard, and the first book just leapt from my fingers.

Kim:  What's next for Elizabeth Langston?

Elizabeth:  I have a new YA magical realism series starting this fall. I’m currently in revisions on the second book. (Book 1, I WISH, releases in November. It’s the story of a teen girl who is struggling to finish high school while she takes care of her mentally-ill mother. A “genie” appears at the perfect moment to offer help.)

I’ve also started plotting and drafting a YA historical/paranormal that is set in 1776. One of the main characters is Nathan Hale, the first American to be executed for spying during the War for Independence. I am co-writing this book with another author, and we’re enjoying the process! 

Kapena Falls near the Pali Highway on Oahu

Mahalo, Elizabeth, for your enthusiasm!  I thank you for donating your first two books to deployed personnel in Africa.   Elizabeth is celebrating the release of Book Three, WHISPERS FROM THE PAST:

..that's not freedom at all.

With the dangers of the past behind them, Mark and Susanna are reaching for what the future holds. As Mark's final year of high school draws to a close, his focus shifts to choosing a college and moving on. For Susanna, it's time to set down roots and realize dreams of her own.

Yet the whispers from the past continue. A glimmer in the waterfall reveals messages from a dear, old friend. As she fights to resist their call, Susanna must finally confront the consequences that her choices have made across two centuries.

I am giving away WHISPERS FROM THE PAST, winner's choice of format, to one randomly selected commenter.  To enter the giveaway,

1.  Leave a comment about your favorite mealtime.  Mine is breakfast, especially Sunday breakfast when we have time to bake cinnamon rolls.

2.  Comments are open through Saturday, October 11, 10 pm in Baltimore.  

3.  I'll post the winner on Sunday, October 12.

Mahalo,

Kim in Baltimore

Aloha Spirit in Charm City

Learn more about Elizabeth and her books at elizabethlangston.net.

Plus Elizabeth is hosting a special giveaway for her book release at this link. 

Aloha to Eryn LaPlant and THE BLUE LUTE

We have a few boxes left from recent move ... they are my husband's books.  It may surprise you to learn that he has more than me!   Still, we both have set an example for our children that books are treasures.  Eryn LaPlant is my guest today to celebrate THE BLUE LUTE ... she also learned from her mother that books are treasures.

 When I was growing up my mother always had books lying about our house. She was an avid reader and I’m so grateful for that, but what I wasn’t excited about were the titles and subjects of her reading pleasure. For some odd reason, my sweet, docile and loving mother of five daughters liked to read books about real-life crime, especially stories about mothers killing their children, like Diane Downs in Small Sacrifices by Ann Rule. Don’t ask me why she likes these things, but she does. I think the psychology of what makes a person do these things interested her.

Now, why bring this subject up today? Well, my mother’s fascination with real-life crime caused a spark of interest in my reading as well, but I was more intrigued by historic crime. I was captivated by stories of criminals from what historians call America’s 18-month crime spree. From 1933 to late 1934 people like John Dillinger, Baby-face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde roamed the Midwest wreaking havoc on banks and little towns in America’s heartland. Some of those criminals were bloodthirsty, others were just out for vengeance, and others still were bored and needed a little thrill and adventure in their lives.

My favorite (and by favorite I mean in interest only, I don’t condone his criminal activity at all) from this short list was John Dillinger. He was handsome and charismatic but ruthless when he needed to be. When I created the villain for The Blue Lute, Nick Abruzzio, I drew on Dillinger.

Luckily, The Blue Lute just made its debut this week and you can read all about Nick Abruzzio and the mayhem he caused in 1928. Is there anyone in your life (we don’t need names) who’s just been a thorn in your side? Tell us about it in the comments below and enter to win your very own copy of The Blue Lute for your Kindle.   

The Blue Lute by Eryn LaPlant

Available from Amazon at this link.

A doctoral candidate in history, Lilly Charles lives in a modern-day treasure trove of 1920s architecture—Manhattan’s St. Jean Apartments. The former hotel was once in the center of New York City’s jazz scene, and holds secrets Lilly is only beginning to discover.

A musical star in his own time, Brandon Crowley lived in an age of prohibition and gangsters, surrounded by the glamour of old Hollywood and the comfort of true friendships. As co-owner of the notorious speakeasy, The Blue Lute, he poured his life and love into his business—as a storm fueled by passion, liquor, murder and money was unleashed. And in the midst of it all, Brandon simply … disappeared.

When Lilly sees Brandon in a nearly 80-year-old photograph from the basement of the St. Jean, her reality comes undone. Could he be the same man she just saw arrested for breaking into the building? As Lilly is drawn deeper into the mysteries of Brandon’s life, a new storm of desire and danger begins to brew. Beneath the silvery moon and glitter of Times Square, an epic love story across the decades is about to unfold.

Kim's picture from Times Square

Mahalo, Eryn, for joining us today.  To enter Eryn's giveaway,

1.  Leave a comment about anyone who's a thorn in your side (no names, please).

2.  This giveaway is open to all readers.

3.  Comments are open through Saturday, September 21, 10 pm in Baltimore.  I'll post the winner on Sunday, September 22.

Mahalo,

Kim in Baltimore
Aloha Spirit in Charm City

To learn more about Eryn and her books, check out her website at novelisterynlaplant.wordpress.com.