The Dead Hour by Thomas Grant Bruso – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Thomas Grant Bruso will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

PI Bradshaw receives a late night call from a client desperate to find her missing daughter. The woman asks to meet him at a storage unit in upstate New York. The woman hangs up before Bradshaw can inquire further. Woken by the jarring news, Bradshaw decides to meet the frantic, mysterious woman pleading for his help.

Working as a private investigator has its drawbacks. Bradshaw often receives prank calls from clients with run-of-the-mill requests and chooses his cases wisely. But there is something unusual and unnerving about this particular call. The hopeless plea in the woman’s voice and the anonymity of her demand ignite a maelstrom of questions.

While Bradshaw decides whether the call is worth pursuing, a young dead girl from the Other Side visits him, demanding attention and seeking help for the request he just received. Who is this spirit? What does she want? And how is she linked to the caller?

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Thunder cleaved the sky, pulling me out of my foggy dream.

In the glass, a flash of white light and a dash of movement scurried past my periphery.

I shuddered at the pale flesh of a disfigured face sneering at me.

I turned.

Nothing — a line of locked unit doors.

Then footsteps, sprinting away, and a gaggle of laughter from around the corner, along the corridor.

“Hello?” I yelled, chasing another phantom. My legs felt like rubber bands as I dashed to the end of the long hall. I stopped at the stairwell door, out of breath.

The sound footsteps seized. But intoxicating laughter followed.

“Who’s there?” I yelled. “This isn’t funny.”

A mockery of demonic laughter filled the air and cooled my skin.

I stepped back, drew a breath.

Behind me, one of the two elevators dinged. The doors opened.

Curiosity consumed me.

I should not have turned around to the sound.

The lights went out when I did, plunging me into complete darkness.

Up ahead, the exit signs flickered.

I reached into my coat pocket and gripped the small bottle of mace I carried with me when working cases. My heart thrashed behind my ribs, like a pack of hungry rats gnawing through the lining of muscles, tendons, and intestines.

A coldness coiled in the space behind me. A round of knuckles tapped against my head, and the sound of teeth clicked close to my ear. I ran toward the elevator doors. They closed before I reached it.

I banged hard on the doors and pressed the down button several times.

In the dim light of the corridor, I noticed shadowy movement from something skittering across the wall, a chittering screech of insectile legs rushing at me in the dark.

I raced a few feet to the left of the elevators to the stairwell door.

Locked.

About the Author Thomas Grant Bruso knew he wanted to be a writer at an early age. He has been a voracious reader of genre fiction since childhood.

His literary inspirations are Ray Bradbury, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Jim Grimsley, Karin Fossum, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Bruso loves animals, reading books, and writing fiction, and prefers Sudoku to crossword puzzles.

In another life, he was a freelance writer and wrote for magazines and newspapers. In college, he won the Hermon H. Doh Sonnet Competition. Now, he writes and publishes fiction and reviews books for his hometown newspaper, The Press-Republican.

He lives in upstate New York.

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The Lie That Could Save Her Daughter or Destroy Everything by Alix Nichols – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Alix Nichols will be awarding a digital box set of her bestselling series The Darcy Brothers to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Lie That Could Save Her Daughter or Destroy Everything

One of the questions that stayed with me long after I finished writing A Duchess with a Secret is this: Does protecting someone you love justify hiding the truth?

It’s a question Eva, the heroine of my novel, has been forced to confront in the most painful way. For years, she has lived with secrets — some forced upon her, others she chose to keep in order to shield the people she loves.
Now she finds herself standing at a crossroads where the “right” choice could hurt the very person she’s trying to protect.

Eva has spent much of her life enduring, first from her parents, then from her husband. She knows better than most how silence can feel like safety… and how it can also become its own kind of prison. But when the truth she carries has the power to change everything for her daughter, the lines between protection and deception become dangerously blurred.

At the same time, Alex is facing truths of his own — about his family, his inheritance, and the man he thought he was.

Their stories collide in a place where love doesn’t simplify moral choices or make the path clearer. It just makes the stakes higher.

Eva must decide what she’s willing to sacrifice. When her darkest, most dangerous secret becomes too heavy to carry alone, she’s forced to make an impossible choice.

If you’ve ever wrestled with a similar dilemma, I think you’ll understand Eva’s struggle. And if you want to find out what she ultimately chooses, and whether her whirlwind romance with Alex can survive that choice, I hope you’ll pick up A Duchess with a Secret!

For sixteen years, they’ve hated each other…
and craved each other.

Widowed and betrayed, Eva Castellane will do anything to protect her daughter’s inheritance.
Standing in her way?
Alex Castellane—her late husband’s steely, magnetic half brother.
The man poised to take it all.
Her worst enemy.
Her forbidden temptation.

Stuck together in the family castle, their legal fight spirals into war…
until a common threat forces a reluctant alliance.
Desire blurs the lines.
Chemistry sizzles.
Rules get broken.

But as the verdict nears, one slip could unravel Eva’s explosive secret…

A Duchess with a Secret stands alone within the Montevor Royals Saga. It is a spicy contemporary enemies-to-lovers romance with forced proximity, family secrets, and a hard-won HEA.

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“He’s here,” Millie whispers.

I don’t look. I don’t need to.

The man she’s warning me about radiates a chill so palpable I can sense which door he entered through. The air in Fort Vauclairt’s reception hall, warmed by hundreds of flickering candles and the breath of mourners grows colder by the second.

Of course, Alex would show up! Nothing like a funeral to size up how much of the estate he can have, just because he happens to share the same father as Geoffroy.

I’m being unfair, I know.

After all, Alex is the old duke’s second son. In neighboring France, the math prodigy would’ve inherited half of the duchy when Rodolphe passed.

Then again, there are no dukes or duchies in the Republic of France, nor are we subject to its laws. We’re old school in Mount Evor. Here, the principles of primogeniture and representation still reign supreme. The firstborn takes it all. The child comes before the sibling. With both Geoffroy and Julian gone, Millie’s birthright ensures that she inherits everything.

The only way Alex Castellane gets a chunk of the estate is if Geoffroy named him in his will. Which I know he didn’t. My late husband and his younger half brother had been estranged long before I met and married Geoffroy Castellane, a dashing widower twice my age.

Alex will get nothing or next to nothing. And Millie will be the next Duchess of Rohinn.

He knows this, of course he does. Yet he carries his tall, infuriatingly well-proportioned form with confidence, which lends an air of legitimacy to his potential claims.

About the Author Alix Nichols is a caffeine addict, a longtime fan of Mr. Darcy. She pens sexy romantic comedies and romantasy. Her books have been described as “pure pleasure” (Kirkus Reviews) that “keep fans of romance hanging off the edge of their seat” (Romantic Times).

At the age of six, she released her first book. It featured highly creative spelling on a dozen pages stitched together and bound in velvet paper.

Decades later, she lives in France and still writes. Her spelling has improved (somewhat), she has become a Kindle Scout winner, Chanticleer First Place winner, USA Today bestseller, Book Riot’s Top 100 Must-Read International Romance author, and Amazon All-Star for being one of the 100 most-read authors in Kindle Unlimited.

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The Engine in the Sky by V.C. Harrison – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. V.G. Harrison will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

When Professor Meridia Vail’s space station is hurled across time and dimensions, she and the rest of the Bridgeway crew wake on an alternate Earth that’s only five years into the future but looks like it’s a century behind her technology. Their goal is to reclaim their crippled station, return to their dimension, and hope that a mysterious interdimensional illness doesn’t kill her and her people first.

Stuck on a backwards version of her own planet, Meridia must deal with governments who want her technology and intelligence agencies who want control. Nobody trusts anyone, and the longer they delay, the closer the Bridgeway gets to a catastrophic reentry.

However, the greatest shock comes when Meridia meets her doppelganger, a brilliant mechanic with a loving family that leaves her heart aching for the life she could have had.

As time is running out for her crew and New Earth, Meridia faces an impossible mission: return to the station, save her crew, and prevent a global disaster. Duty first. Family second. When Meridia is thrust into a situation where the two become synonymous, she must decide how much she’s willing to risk for a world she’s sworn to save and a life she can never have.

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“Hold on.” Riser nearly spit up his fruit juice. “We’ve been thinking about that. Go through the steps. We must turn on all the primary batteries and hope none of them received any significant damage from the explosion that sent us here. That’s first. Without them, we might as well be talking about taking over a model airplane.”

“It would also require an emergency chain of command.” Goodwin crossed his arms. “While Professor Ferrera is the senior-most member of our crew and a military man, he can’t make that kind of a decision. He would need to have his clearance codes reinitiated, and last I recall, there wasn’t any time for Captain Kasongo to do that.”

“Cal can do it,” I interjected. “The problem is that we need someone who’s skilled enough to hack the main computers remotely.”

“De Rieux’s dead.”

De Rieux was one of our computer science whizzes from Canada. Like the others, his body had been flown back to his respective country for a head-of-state-type burial. I hated that none of us could be there for him. If you were a member of the crew, then you definitely crossed paths with him at some point.

“What about the De Rieux of this world?” Riser asked. “I hear you’ve been gallivanting around the US—what’s your counterpart like?”

“She’s brilliant like me.” I half-smiled at the thought of that one spark of happiness since our arrival here. “And even though she’s only designed futuristic cars and the like, she has some serious insight into how things work in our world without having ever seen it.”

“Oh, of course she does.” Cal tried to hide his seriousness, but a chuckle failed him. “She’s brilliant, remember? Not that you’re biased or anything.”

About the Author: Amazon best-selling author, V.G. Harrison enjoys creating smart heroines who are more comfortable dealing with things like Fine-structure constant and quantum entanglement than the fallout from their conflict. She loves to write stories that leave her audience so engaged they can’t sleep at night, thinking about the possibilities.

V.G. holds a Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering and a Masters in Information Technology. When she’s not writing, she’s an IT manager for a healthcare information systems company.

Her ever-growing list of hobbies include astronomy, attending comic cons, keeping an eye on the cryptocurrency and stock markets, hydroponics gardening, hiking, and connecting with her daughter, Collie, on a cool level.

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Move Me by Lynn Crandall – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Lynn Crandall will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

An Aeon by birth, Diane Butler knew when she walked away from her fellow Aeons that she wanted certain things: wealth, power, acceptance. But she’d come to realize she didn’t belong with Dark Sides and joined in the battle to save Auralia from darkness. But when her past comes after her, she understand that she can’t escape it with a simple name change.

A surprise encounter that turns ugly pits lone Emmett Forrest against thugs determined to hurt Cassie. With each threat out cold on the ground, he believes he’s done. But when the men report the incident to the Auralia Police Department, he can’t avoid the drama or the intrigue surrounding her.

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“Anyone else bored as sin? We stopped the Irish mob and Dark Sides from taking over Auralia in December. January and February, we took some time to recover from Dark Sides’ Project Reckoning. I know you all have been tending to your personal lives, your relationships, and your careers, but for me, those two months were the epitome of boredom. Now March is almost over, and still boredom reigns.”

“Diane—” Braden started.

“Cassie,” she interrupted. “Try to remember, Braden. I’ve told you so many times that I’m using my middle name now. I’m not Diane anymore.” She pouted her lips.
Braden nodded. “Yes, sorry. You’re Cassandra Butler now, not Diane Butler.”

“Cassie. I told you, Cassie for short.” She swept her gaze around the living room at Braden and Payson’s house and flung her hands up. “I swear, it’s not that hard to remember my name. I made a change, I’m not Diane. I’m not that woman any more. I’m aligned with light and love. I’m Cassie. Cassie. Cassie Butler. Gauzy, gossamer, and open, not rigid, harsh, or angry Cassie.” The rock lodged in her gut weighed her down. Was she different? Truly? She’d been putting in the work with her counselor, Claire Eve Kelly, to make the change permanent. But with the chaos of the past not far behind, she ached for the excitement of the life she had. The parties, the conniving to get what she wanted. It had all been so mesmerizing.

About the Author After cutting her writing teeth as a feature writer for commercial and trade magazines, a reporter for newspapers and radio, and an executive editor for a communications company, award-winning author Lynn Crandall tuned her voracious appetite for stories to writing contemporary and paranormal romance, women’s fiction, and romantic suspense. In her books, she enjoys taking readers on emotional journeys with relatable characters who refuse to back down, and face challenges and tribulations with heart and soul. She believes every love has a story, and hers is with one handsome husband and a large, beautiful circle of family, including her cat Winter.

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The Super Seeders by Miles Hillmann – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Miles Hillmann will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Super Seeders is based on first-hand accounts from the scientists, breeders, and curators who have built the seven pillars of today’s plant genetics revolution. It begins with the guardians of global gene banks, conserving the rare and diverse crop genes that form agriculture’s safety net. From these collections, plant geneticists are now unlocking hidden traits with fast-moving genome technologies, transforming the possibilities of crop improvement.

International research centres and the groundbreaking Plant Treaty have opened the floodgates for the free exchange of genetic material, enabling a new wave of discovery. Crop breeders are translating these breakthroughs into reality, delivering drought-tolerant, disease-resistant, and higher-yielding varieties for farmers.

The book raises a pressing question: will this revolution reach the 70 percent of Africans who still depend on subsistence farming? The answer will shape not only the future of food in Africa, but the future of food security worldwide.

A story of ingenuity and urgency, The Super Seeders captures the hopes and challenges of the women and men driving a genetic transformation of agriculture—and the farmers whose lives depend on its success.

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Nikolay Vavilov was born in 1887 in Moscow to a merchant family. His father had endured poverty due to repeated crop failures and food rationing, which fuelled Vavilov’s early obsession with eradicating famine.

At the start of the twentieth century, he established the Plant Institute in a former palace on Leningrad’s Herzen Street. In the 1920s, Vavilov and his young team embarked on global expeditions to collect rare seeds, tubers, roots, and bulbs, which they brought back to the seed bank for sorting, cataloguing, and storage.

More than any other person before or since, Vavilov sampled the bounty across five continents. His expeditions went from interior China to the Pamir highlands and the Afghan plains, through the semi-arid steppes of Iran, Iraq, and Georgia to North Africa and Europe, and in the Americas from the Amazon to Central America and northwards to the USA.

One of Vavilov’s major contributions was his theory of plant origin. His global observations led him to hypothesise that the centre of origin of a cultivated plant could be traced to regions where its wild relatives displayed maximum adaptability. In 1920, he expanded this theory, asserting that the region of greatest diversity for a plant species represents its centre of origin. Ultimately, he identified thirteen world centres of plant origin and established one hundred field stations to conserve and evaluate the world’s plant diversity.

About the Author

Miles Hillmann is a lifelong entrepreneur with a career that bridges scientific curiosity and hands-on innovation, from his early work at the Kabanyolo Agricultural Research Station in Uganda during Idi Amin’s fall to experiencing food shortage and famine in the Ethiopian Central Highlands. His work encompassed everything from agricultural development to building flash flood irrigation food-for-work systems.

His first company developed processes for food industry materials. Concurrently he pioneered real-time organic material analysis. He then created one of the UK’s major pollution control companies supplying specialist materials to companies in Europe, Nigeria and the Middle East. This led him to establish companies in e-commerce, accredited pollution control training and flood control.

This book is the story of the scientists, curators, and plant breeders leading this movement, told in their voices, through his lens.

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Daisy’s Creature by M.L. Knight – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. M.L. Knight will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Please click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Ashmore was like any other town.

It held secrets.

Legend says…only the blood of a Sanderson can revive it.

And it’s been sleeping for centuries.

Until Daisy.

When Creature awakens, the residents of Ashmore get more than they bargained for.

And he gets more than he can chew.

With every bite, he’s changing.

Into what?

The only thing he craves to be.

Daisy’s.

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Lucas waved a hand in a distinct direction she didn’t glance at. “Is it true, then? Y’all are the guardians or some shit over a petrified demon, and that’s why your mom needs to oversee the sale?” He tilted his blonde head. “You know, we used to come out here and dare each other to go up and touch it. The thing’s creepy as fuck.”

Sidney let out a nervous giggle, but she avoided looking where Lucas had gestured as well. “Very creepy. I don’t know how y’all sleep in the house knowing it’s in your yard.”

Daisy feigned nonchalance and shrugged, refusing to admit to herself or them that she found the thing fascinating in a macabre way.

It truly looked like a demon from hell—minus the horns and tail. It possessed big, leathery wings that lay flush against its back, blending in with the black tattered clothes draping over its lean body, absent of any fat. Claws adorned its bird-like feet, the heels coming to a point that also had a claw.

Feet meant for grabbing prey off the ground.

She shook the thought off. Under the low moonlight, it would be hard to see the thing with its grey-black skin, arms tied and looped around the back of a twelve-foot-tall stake.

According to Mom, the thing had been there for generations, never moving and never changing. The townspeople knew all about it, and, obviously, the kids made a game out of approaching it.

About the Author: M.L. Knight is a self-published author who enjoys things that go bump in the night. Her favorite horror movie is Evil Dead 2 and her favorite holiday is Halloween. She channels her love for the strange and unusual by writing erotic, horror-inspired stories. When she’s not cooking up something dark and depraved, she’s tackling her never ending TBR, studying for her nursing degree or lifting heavy weights. And she’s got one question to ask you. What’s your favorite scary movie?

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Moccasin Trace by Hawk MacKinney – Exclusive Excerpt and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

…it was about the land.

It is July of 1859, a month of sweltering dog days and feverish emotional bombast. Life is good for widower Rundell Ingram and his hazel-eyed, roan-haired son, Hamilton. Between the two of them, they take care of Moccasin Hollow, their sprawling ancestral plantation home in the rolling farming country outside Queensborough Towne in east Georgia. Adjoining Ingram lands is Wisteria Bend, the vast slave-holding plantation of Andrew and Corinthia Greer, their daughter Sarah, and son Benjamin. Both families share generations of long-accepted traditions, and childhood playmates are no longer children. The rangy, even-tempered Norman-Scottish young Hamilton is smitten with Sarah, who has become an enticing capricious beauty—the young lovers more in love with each passing day, and only pleasant times ahead of them.

…but a blood tide of war is sweeping across the South, a tide that will forever change everyone and everything.

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Wisteria Bends, the Greer Plantation—thousands of acres of cake-icing cotton rolling over the gentle foothills of east Georgia that bordered the somewhat lesser acreage of Moccasin Hollows. The Hollows and its vested lands weren’t extensive by cotton standards. Hard work by Rundell and Hamilton, and jealously guarded with the usual Southroner passion for land. Ingrams and Greers were bred, borne and nurtured on old family crown grant lands. Money was vulgar. All that mattered was the land.

About the Author: With postgraduate degrees and faculty positions in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. His professional writing includes articles on chordate neuroembryology, and aerospace research on muscle metabolic behavior in multi-orbital environments.

In addition, Hawk has authored several works of fiction including a historical romance Moccasin Trace which was nominated for both the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. His Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series and his Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series have received national and international attention. He is currently working on a series of horror/suspense novels.

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What Remains After by Pauline J. Grabia – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Pauline J. Grabia will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

SOME STORIES DO NOT END WHEN THE DANGER PASSES.

Beth Clark has not returned to her hometown in decades, since the childhood she survived there nearly destroyed her.

When her estranged mother dies, Beth comes back to rural Alberta for a funeral that feels carefully rewritten. The eulogies are tidy. The past is sanitized. But inside the abandoned bungalow where she and her brother once lived, Beth finds objects that shatter the illusion—and awaken memories of abuse, neglect, and the systems that failed to protect her.

When Beth’s younger brother is critically injured in a sudden accident, the present collides with the past. Keeping vigil at his hospital bedside, Beth is drawn back into the summer that changed everything: the violence in their home, the silence of those who should have intervened, and the foster family whose quiet faith offered the first real safety either child had known.

Told across dual timelines, What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel about trauma and memory, belief and betrayal, and the long, unfinished work of survival. It asks what it truly means to forgive—and what remains when the truth is finally spoken.

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Frigid cold seeped through Beth’s gloves from the steering wheel of her rental car to her fingers; her arthritis flared. The ache in her joints echoed the pain in her heart. Why, after all this time, with her specialized education and training as well as years of personal trauma therapy, couldn’t she shake the anxiety and hatred that still clung to Virgie’s name, and to that of her Uncle Gary?

Otto was composed. Somehow, he’d managed to recover. But she was still a mess. As a trained therapist, she told herself she should be able to work it out, but she couldn’t.

She drove up and down the quiet streets of the town. Except for a new grocery store that had replaced Gordon’s after it burned down about five years earlier, not much had changed. Like the church, the community seemed frozen in time. Truck models were newer, and teens wore different clothes, but the vibe of Coverville stayed the same: slow, conservative, and decaying. Around here, stories were currency, and nothing else. They didn’t step on others’ toes. Mind your own business. Keep moving.

Beth didn’t understand why she paused in front of the small, condemned bungalow with its rotting fence, missing shingles, and boarded-up windows. It looked like the only creatures that had lived there in years were cockroaches and mice. But they had been there long before the human residents moved out. Virgie was the last to leave when, six years before, Alzheimer’s had left her unable to care for herself any longer, and she ended up in a home.

Rebecka told Beth that Otto had thought about taking Virgie in, but Rebecka stood her ground. She wasn’t going to live under the same roof as his mother. Forgiveness was one thing; sharing a home was another. Otto did what he always did—sacrificed. He found a great nursing home, but it was also expensive. Beth suspected her brother had made up the difference out of his own pocket, since Old Age Security and Canada Pension didn’t cover the entire cost.

About the Author Pauline J. Grabia is a Canadian novelist whose work explores trauma, memory, faith, and the moral consequences of silence. Writing under the Stories of Consequence banner, she is drawn to stories that face difficult truths without spectacle and seek light without sentimentality. What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel rooted in rural Alberta and shaped by questions of survival, forgiveness, and what endures.

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Love Across Time by Beth Ford – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Beth Ford will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour. And click here for our review.

Ashley and Thomas, a medieval knight, are in 1377 England, escaping from present-day immigration authorities intent on capturing Thomas. Having fled to the past to ensure their togetherness, Ashley is faced with adapting to fourteenth-century life, while Thomas, new to his title as Baron after his older brother’s death, is called to Parliament, encountering enemies there and at court as he struggles to build his own alliances.

Ashley’s work at a monastic hospital is deemed “miraculous” but draws unwanted attention as potential witchcraft. Meanwhile, becoming embroiled in a political movement, she realizes too late it’s a plot against the King.

How can Ashley conform to social expectations, counter the plot, and still keep her relationship with Thomas, in all the turmoil?

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Ashley struggled to absorb the bucolic version of Salisbury she glimpsed through the trees. The road that had so recently—to her mind—trundled along the base of the low green hill had transformed into a simple dirt track. A mile or so off, the spire of Salisbury cathedral stuck out in the landscape, surrounded by low buildings. Around her, everything else was silent.

Except for the pounding of her heart and Thomas’s steadying breath beside her.

He tugged her gently back into the woods. “We can’t risk anyone glimpsing you from the road.”

Right. She looked down at her clothes. Denim, polyester—fabrics that didn’t exist here, in the time that Thomas hailed from. The time that she had abruptly landed in with no preparation or planning.

She glanced back to the clearing in the woods that held the flat, mossy rock she and Thomas had just knelt at in 2022 and risen from in 1377—the year it had been for Thomas when the rock had abruptly deposited Thomas in her time earlier that summer. She recalled the sixteenth-century manuscript they found in the university database in Southampton when searching for answers to his situation, the manuscript that had given them the key to getting Thomas home.

There is sayde to be much magik and manye secretes on Salisbury plain. A person can fynde their greatest heart’s desire in that playce. This person shoulde return to the same stane with a clere purpose in his heart and mak the prayer again. But ev’ry time the magik is called on, there may be other consekwences, therfor it should be used only when absolutly necesary.

Calling on the magic had been absolutely necessary. They had been pursued up this very hill by the police who were intent on viewing Thomas only as an illegal refugee with no papers and Ashley as his accomplice. And in the moment while they waited to be caught, while Thomas and Ashley held hands and closed their eyes hoping the magic would deliver Thomas home, the mossy rock had known her own heart better than she had—it had sent her to the past with Thomas, and she knew that decision was right. Ashley prayed there would be no negative consequences such as were hinted in the manuscript.

About the Author: Beth Ford writes historical and time travel stories that transport you in time. She is the author of the novels In the Times of Spirits, Love Between Times, Love Across, Time, and After the Spirits Come: A Continuation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. She also writes the Cassie Woods, Reporter historical mystery romance novella series. Her work has also appeared in a variety of literary journals. She lives in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

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Advice for New Authors by p.m. terrell – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. p.m. terrell will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Read our 5 star review here.

Thank you for hosting me here today!

My first nonfiction book was published in 1984, and my first fiction book in 2002. I’ve seen a lot of changes in the publishing industry over the years, including book chain mergers, the rise of digital media, and the mainstreaming of self-publishing.

However, one factor remains constant: write the best story you can.

Before committing to a story, do some market research. This will prevent you from writing a story that nobody will care about. Take classes and learn from everything you read. I often learn the most from terribly written stories, as it shouts to me what not to do. Make the characters multi-layered and complex, even if they are minor characters. Write the setting so the reader feels as if they are there, standing in the middle of it. Make the events that occur resonate with the reader. Create a story that is unforgettable.

The days of a rough manuscript being discovered in a slush pile and polished to perfection by a team of editors are long gone. The largest publishers have replaced the slush pile and interns with third-party literary agents who will only recommend stories that are near-perfect and about which they are passionate. They have become the gatekeepers for the pinnacle of publishers.

There is an ever-growing number of small- to midsize publishers. Do your homework; some are better options than the largest publishers, while others are individuals in a spare bedroom.

Do not rely on family or friends to tell you how great your story is. Get the best editor you can afford. Every punctuation mark and every sentence structure must be perfect. I am comma-challenged; I was taught throughout my school years to place a comma anyplace where I take a breath. Apparently, I breathe at the wrong times. A good editor will catch each one.

If you plan to self-publish, you should understand that there is a world of difference between being a writer and being a publisher. Simply uploading your book online won’t sell it. Learn as much as you can about the publishing industry, marketing, and advertising online and off.

Often, traditional publishers and moviemakers will pay attention to self-published books that are rising in various bestseller lists. The more you understand about the industry, the better positioned you will be for success.

Padlocked is an epic historical and visionary novel that follows the lives of a group of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary, life-altering circumstances as Nazi Germany invades Poland in 1939.

Two foreign photojournalists, an American and a Spaniard, are trapped between armies at Festungsfront Oder-Warthe-Bogen, along Poland’s western border with Germany. It is Hank’s last overseas assignment, and he’s been counting the days until he can go home to North Carolina to be with his family. Rafe fled Spain after the dictator, Francisco Franco, targeted his family. The experience changed him, and he now sees the rise of fascism in Europe as a battle between good and evil. They will find themselves embedded with the Polish, Nazi, and Soviet forces at varying times, forcing them to face moral and ethical decisions in their struggles to survive.

A young woman is separated from her sister in Warsaw as the Nazis encircle it. Agata made a vow that she would return to take Elsa to safety, but soldiers and barbed wire prevent her from entering the newly established Jewish sector. She is consumed with guilt over their separation, and when she discovers her sister was taken by train to a work camp near Krakow, she navigates her dangerous, war-torn country in search of her. Her quest will force her to confront a Hell on Earth to find her.

A young man joins the Jungdeutsche Partei, or the Young German Party. Once bullied as a child, Max’s new affiliations promote him to a position where he can dictate life or death and settle scores. In order to thrive under Nazi occupation, he makes daily choices that legitimize brutality and erode humanitarian principles and scruples.

While they don’t know one another at the start of their journeys, each will make decisions that have the power to transform them and place them on paths that ultimately converge on January 27, 1945, as the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front opened the gates to Auschwitz-Birkenau for all the world to witness.

This is ultimately a story about the strength of love, courage, faith, and resilience in the face of unimaginable hatred and obsession with power, and how every decision we make places us further along specific paths.

Enjoy an Excerpt

The throngs pushed her this way and that, so she felt like she was attempting to run through thick mud. She made slow progress, and yet, something inside her propelled her forward. She reached the end of the block to find cars racing past, ignoring intersection rules, and she hesitated to get her breath. Someone from behind pushed her to the ground, stomping over her dress as she lay prone, scores of feet scuffling over her while she tried vainly to rise.

A hand reached through the crowd. Amidst the shouting, his words were louder and deeper than the others. “Get back!” he shouted as he grasped her by the waist and hauled her to her feet. “Get back!”

As the mob stepped back and then rushed forward in another direction, the man pulled her away from the others. It was easy to see why the crowd had obliged him and given her space. He was a soldier in the Polish Army, his cropped, sandy hair almost hidden beneath a crisp cap bearing the Polish White Eagle. His trim figure was clothed in an olive uniform, and he wore a wide black belt and knee-length black boots.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Fine, thank you.” Agata wiped her hair off her forehead and was surprised to find pebbles from the ground in her hair.

“Where were you going?” he asked.

“I—” She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“The school—”

“No. I need to leave the Jewish sector. I need to be across town.”

“Is that where you live?”

Agata looked around her in impatience. “I am wasting time here. Thank you for assisting me to my feet, but I must go. The Germans—”

“The Germans are coming,” he finished. “And we are digging in. You will be safe if you remain in Warsaw, Jewish sector or no.”

“Then, thank you, and good-bye.” She turned to run, but he held out his hand and stopped her.

“Do you have an address where you are going? I have a motorbike. I can get you there faster than you can run.”

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere right now? Like, fighting the Germans?”

He laughed so unexpectedly that Agata was shocked. “There will be time enough for that, don’t you worry. My name is Piotr. Come. My motorbike is over there, on the opposite corner.”

As Agata rushed across the busy street with him and settled behind him on the motorbike, she took a long look at the school down the street. It was difficult to know what was happening as people rushed in all directions at once. Her eyes fell on the top step, at two figures holding one another so tightly they appeared as if they might be one. A tear rolled down her cheek as the motorbike zoomed to life, and she held onto Piotr as they took off. Soon, the people blended behind them while the memory of Ira and Elsa on the step seared into her mind. “I will be back tomorrow,” she thought. “I will be back, just as I promised.”

About the Author: My full name is Patricia McClelland Terrell, and I have been writing under the pen name p.m.terrell ever since a publisher presented me with my first fiction book cover. The graphic designer had also entered my 026/05/author-image-3-239×300.jpg” alt=”” width=”239″ height=”300″ class=”alignleft size-medium wp-image-132842name in lower-case letters; my editor hated it, and I loved it. It’s been p.m.terrell ever since.

I began writing when I was nine years old, inspired by a schoolteacher and elementary school principal. Scott-Foresman published my first book, a computer instructional for universities, in 1984. Scott-Foresman, Dow-Jones (Richard D. Irwin branch), Palari Publishing, Paralee Press, and Drake Valley Press have published 27 books to date.

Before embarking on a full-time writing career, I founded McClelland Enterprises, Inc., in the Washington, D.C., area in 1984, specializing in workplace computer instruction. I opened another business, Continental Software Development Corporation, in 1994, which focused on custom application development, programming, website design and development, and cybersecurity.

I was honored to be the first female President of the Chesterfield County/Colonial Heights Crime Solvers. Since moving to North Carolina, I served on the boards of the Robeson County Friends of the Library and the Robeson County Arts Council.

I launched The Book ‘Em Foundation with Waynesboro, Virginia, Police Officer Mark Kearney, and assisted in Virginia, New Hampshire, and South Carolina events before establishing the Annual Book ‘Em North Carolina Writers Conference and Book Fair, chairing it for several years before turning it over to Robeson Community College in Lumberton, NC.

Padlocked is available in all eBook formats, trade paperback, hardcover, and large print editions.

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Buy the book at iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Kobo, in France, in Germany, or in all other ebook formats.