Monday, September 30, 2013

ONE MORE DAY!

Dum Da Dum Dum 
(This was a drum roll)



Thursday, October 3, is the beginning of
Christmas In October!

Mark your calendars to visit my blog, every Monday and Thursday during the entire month of October!  Check out the fabulous authors and see their book covers and leave a comment.  That's it!

You could be the winner of over 50 giveaways!
The more you comment, the better your chance of having an early Christmas!

Monday, September 23, 2013

Heather Van Fleet reveals her new book cover on Penny's Tales




Seizing Fate (Predetermined #2)
Young adult Paranormal romance

Seizing Fate blurb:
And you thought Emmy’s life was a hot mess before…
Jack’s gone off to Arizona with his brother, but for how long? Emmy doesn’t have a clue. In his place, though, is Zachary. The whiny, miserable, alpha wolf–boy who is more than ready to take on the duty of her mate/boyfriend — if she’d let him, that is. But the last thing Emmy wants is to deal with a boy who believes that the world should fall solely at his feet whenever he demands it.
But hey, at least her step–douche is gone, and her life is back to an almost normal sense, right?

Wrong again, Emmy’s life will never again be normal…
With her Uncle Prick in town and her best friend acting as secretive as ever, Emmy finds new challenges to overcome — challenges that no seventeen–year–old girl should ever have to deal with. For one thing, what is up with her dream–liaison status anyway? What does it mean, really? And why does her little brother have to go through it too? And then there’s her mom. The lady is acting a tad bit odd, to put it nicely. After all these years, she finally wants to step up and be a parental figure? Heck no! Emmy’s definitely not copacetic with that idea. 

But with the bad, there’s got to be some good out there for her somewhere, right?
Add in the wolves, witches, drama, and lots of kisses and you get Emmy the Extraordinaire, the girl with strawberry–colored hair, and a chip on her shoulder. She’s finally on her way to finding out what her life and her future both have in store for her, even if the road to getting there is nowhere near as easy as she hoped it would be. But Emmy is tough, and more than ready to take on life with her bare hands. 

It’s just too bad she’s madly, desperately, insanely in love with a boy who insists on making her life both a miserable hell and utter perfection at the same time.


Excerpt:
Pressure, fire, wetness, tongues — single words were all I could think as our mouths battled. God, I’d never been kissed like this before. Ever, and if we stopped, I’d die a happy woman from his lips touching mine alone. He tugged his hand into the back of my hair, pulling my chin upwards, yanking me towards him. I clawed at his shirt, ready to rip it from his massive body. I pulled at his jacket first, lowering it over his shoulders until it fell to the floor. The buttons jingled against the tile, scattering over our feet. Damn, if he didn’t care about his signature black coat falling apart, then I had to wonder what else I could get away with.


Amazon buy link for Resisting Fate: http://www.amazon.com/Resisting-Fate-Predetermined-ebook/dp/B00DNTHLA2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379642159&sr=8-1&keywords=heather+van+fleet

Goodreads link for Seizing Fate: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18365237-seizing-fate
Goodreads link for Resisting Fate: (Book one) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17185667-resisting-fate





Who is Heather Van Fleet
Young Adult paranormal and contemporary author Heather Van Fleet is an Illinois born native, raised in a town that borders both Iowa and Illinois. She’s a wife to her hubby (and high school sweet heart) Chris, as well as a mom to her three little girls, Kelsey, Emma and Bella. When she’s not obsessing over her fictional book characters, cooking dinner, or running around chasing her crazy kiddos, you can usually find her with her head stuck in her Kindle, drinking White Chocolate Mochas like they were water.



Sunday, September 22, 2013

Josie Montano visits Penny's Tales


'MY FAMILY SIZED PIZZA'


 Why I wrote the book

The original version of My Family Sized Pizza was titled Wogaluccis and published 2002 in Australia only. This version has been rewritten to today's audience and has been made more international. My parents migrated from Italy in the early 60's therefore I grew up with not only coal dust and drizzly days but with a strong Italian community who had settled together in Australia.

Although famous for my salami, melenzane and stinky cheese sandwiches at primary school, they didn't particularly make me a social hit! This upbringing brought fodder to the story of Angela and her family.

My Family Sized Pizza is semi-autobiographical - a lot of the school, wedding and restaurant scenes actually happened. The characters are a mix of my mother, sister, neice, myself as a teen and sprinkled with elements of my Italian ex mother-in-law! The angst and dramas suffered by main character, Angela were real and there was many a day when writing the book that Angela and I commiserated together!

I like to tell a story but with humour, thus the true, gritty, racial, and emotional moments told through comedic moments.






Angela lives with her grandparents who run a restaurant, Fioruccis, rechristened Hoochies by the mega cool Rachael Blake and her wannabe groupies. How can Angela discover herself when she feels as if she's smothered in spaghetti sauce and drowning in olive oil? Add two scheming Italians with a grand matchmaking plan, Simon who wants to be more than friends, a controlling Nonna who won't let her wear jeans and Angela's sheer Italianicity- all getting in the way of her search for independence.



Excerpt
I got home from school one afternoon and there were heaps of cars parked outside Nonno and Nonna’s place. Something was wrong. Nonno hadn’t been feeling so good that morning.
I could hear moaning. Did I really want to go inside? I walked down the side to the backyard and found Nonno asleep on the garden chair. He was under his olive tree with a big bottle of vino on his lap. Phew! He was OK.
The moaning from inside sounded like chanting. Had Nonna joined a cult or something? I went in and found the house full of Italian women. They were on their knees praying …to a huge statue of Mary! Mumbling and fiddling with their rosary beads, but at the same time checking me out. Multi-talented women!
Oh no! It was Nonna’s monthly rosary meeting. But this time it was at our place. If I’d known I’d have gone to the library with Sarina.
“Angelina! Mamma Mia how you have grown!” Signora Romanelli was looking straight at my boobs.
“Oh, you look just like Elena, you mudder,” Signora Vesta did the sign of the cross and looked at me sadly. It’s not me that’s dead, you idiot.
 “Madonna, is dis little Angelina? She’s a big gal!” Signora Della Something was looking at my bum. I needed a quick escape, but the statue blocked the way to my bedroom. There it was – halfway up the stairs.
“Angelina, vieni qua,” Nonna called. “Come on”. She had her arm around one of her friends.
“Dis is Signora Bertolini.” This lady I’d never met before grabs me by the cheeks with her fingers and thumbs.
Quanda si bella!” She was shaking my face but half of my face was still in her hands. Yes. I’m beautiful, but I’m going to need plastic surgery if you don’t cut it out!
“You know who dis is?” Nonna asked. “Signora Bertolini. The Nonna of dat boy I tell you about.” She winked.
Ohhhh! Dat boy! The one you want me to marry.
Nonna and Mrs. Bertolini knelt at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at the statue. I looked at the statue of Mary, I looked down at Nonna and Signora Bertolini – two interfering grandmothers. What if the statue lost balance? The very heavy statue would topple down and … that would be the end of the matchmaking!

eBook can be purchased at Solstice or Amazon
print copies will be available later this year



Who is Josie Montano?
Josie is an award-winning author of over 40 books. She has been internationally published and writes fiction under the name of MONTANO and non-fiction resources on Asperger Syndrome under the pseudonym of SANTOMAURO.

From age nine Josie annoyed her librarian by shelving her self-published books for borrowing and being the most diligent library monitor there was! She then went on to receive her first rejection letter from Golden Books at age thirteen. But that didn't stop her, decades later - finally she has 'real' published books on those shelves!

Josie draws on her varied life experiences to help her with her writing, interesting experiences such as being involved in a bank robbery, working within the primary school environment, surviving cancer, growing up within an Italian community, winning the major prize on ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and as a volunteer member of the State Emergency Services.

She loves coffee, chocolate, amateur theatre, going to the movies, and being silly, witty and humorous.


social media links:-

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The talented KC Sprayberry visits Penny's Tales





 
Good Morning! My name is KC Sprayberry. Penny Estelle Brown of Penny's Tales has let me hijack her blog today. The purpose is to tease all of her very dedicated readers with information about my soon-to-be-released YA coming of age novel, Take Chances.


 

Today, we're interviewing KC Sprayberry, and she will tell us a few things about herself, even if they're embarassing!

Please tell us about your latest book:
My latest book is Take Chances. It's the story of a teenage girl, Julie Bond, about how her past affects how she reacts to her present. She also has a mom that makes just about every other mom look like a saint, and a deep desire to keep her friends close, no matter what their future plans are.
Take Chances is also about school violence, and the way it can happen to a person more than once. The characters in this book were with me long before I settled on their place. They sat patiently in the back of my head, occasionally hollering to ask when I'd find them a story. Once I did, not only did they settle well into place, but they grew and grew, arguing when the early renditions of this story didn't work out as planned.

What can we expect from you in the future:
I have several projects going on right now. (laughs) Anyone who knows me will be scratching their head and asking, "Only several? Girl, you're getting slow." However, these projects are huge – two trilogies and a series, so I'm scaling back to devote a lot of attention to them.
The first is Just Walk Away. This trilogy is like Softly Say Goodbye, Who Am I?, and Take Chances. The only difference will be the setting, from 1969 to 1970. Why jump away from contemporary teen fiction, to a time in our history that was extremely unsettled? I've seen a lot of elements that are very much the same between then and now. There are three big reasons I feel this trilogy will appeal.
a.     1969-1970 saw the Vietnam War escalating, just prior to our pull out. The same is going on with the actions we're involved with in the Middle East.
b.    Racial division was very evident then and is reaching the same proportions now.
c.     Teens are finishing high school and are wondering where they'll go next. 1969-1970 brought about a lot of change in the perception of what women could do, of what those not Anglo could do. Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, we're seeing many traditional careers disappearing, leaving teens uncertain what direction to go for their future, what course of study in college will give them the best career.
The second is another trilogy, Paradox Lost. This is fantasy with a time travel element. It begins with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and a prediction that one person will rise at the time of mankind's greatest need. For two centuries, this savior hasn't appeared no matter what occurs. Then triplets are born, when twins were expected. Still, the chosen one doesn't appear, until they're ready to finish at Beaufort School for Visionary Studies, and then these three teens find themselves competing to be the best, to be noticed, to be accepted as individuals. This trilogy will appeal for a couple of reasons.
a.     It's fantasy, written for the teen that loves reading, loves exploring new worlds. The element of saving the world, of traveling through time, of getting one up on a teacher no one likes, will definitely keep them turning the page.
b.    Triplets are rare in fiction. Teen triplets even rarer. DJ, Matt, and Elisa are typical brothers and a sister, but they also have all these cool Talents, especially Elisa's newly discovered one to vanish from sight and become whatever is closest to her, or as she learns after a few practice sessions, anyone she knows well.
Finally, the third, a series, Canoples Investigations. This is ongoing, a series that saw the first book released in July, and the second due out in October. This is my fun project, the story of a group of teens living on a space station near Jupiter in the twenty-fourth century. Some might say a space station might be limiting, but with BD and his crew, there are no limitations as to what they'll do or where they'll go!

How much of your personality and life experiences are in your writing?
A lot. I like to believe I leave a piece of myself in each of my characters. These fictional teens are much like my own children, with their anxieties and joyous happiness. 
I have to say life experiences that mold us into the people we are make up a greater part of my writing. They have to. A life experience is about things that change, mold us. To ignore those moments is to deny a part of yourself.

When did you first think about writing and what prompted you to submit your first manuscript?
As far back as I can remember, writing has been my escape, with reading a close second. I don't know when I decided that this would be the one career choice I wanted to make, but I do know it wasn't with stars in my eyes for a huge advance, with massive royalties flowing in afterward. I believe my interest in youth detectives such as Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belden piqued my interest, and I concentrated on improving my writing skills while in high school. I can remember always writing down stories, the early ones embarrassingly simple, while the ones I wrote from high school on developing more complexity.
The first manuscript I submitted was for a short story, and to my amazement, I had a contract in the mail not long after that. That was a fluke, but I did have some success with short stories. The natural progression from there to a book took a bit longer than I first planned, but I learned a lot along the way, and now am enjoying success with both short stories and books.

Generally, how long does it take you to write a book?
It all depends on the theme and characters. I've written a book, done the revisions and editing, in less than six months. While I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I could get a 50,000 word minimum book done in less than 30 days, once getting two done in that time. (wipes sweat from forehead) Phew! Looking back, I wonder how I ever thought that was great, but it was. Both Softly Say Goodbye and Take Chances were NaNoWriMo projects! It's not so much the writing process that takes time, but the editing, revising, and rewriting where I spend the most time. To me, that's non-creative. I'm not thinking up new scenes, developing good dialogue, or searching for the best setting – I'm taking what I've already put on paper and making it better.


Blurb:
  
Julie Bond grew up in Europe as a military brat. She found her very first permanent home in Landry, GA as a teen going into high school. Almost four years later, she's having pre-graduation jitters and flashing back to an incident of school violence she experienced in Europe. She attempts to convince herself that it can never happen again, but continually finds herself flashing back to that day no matter how hard she tries.
 

The people around her present any number of problems for Julie, and she's hard put to keep from drowning under all the issues. Then Michael--a cool guy she's had a crush on for the last three years—returns from traveling the US as a photographer, and Julie now has one more thing to distract her as she prepares to leave high school. One thing she firmly believes in: no one will ever invade her classroom with violence again.
Once again, the impossible happens. Once again, she's in a classroom with a madman holding a gun. Once again, she must survive. 

Teaser Excerpt:
My hands curl into fists, until my chewed fingernails cut into my palms. This woman belongs in the present, but the sight of her dredges up my past – a past I thought was firmly hidden.
The event, as I refer to that time, happened almost thirteen years ago at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Terrorists determined to free one of their compatriots chose my kindergarten classroom for their hostages. They left scars I try very hard to bury, but they slip out at unguarded moments.
"Juliette?" Madame Bodine asks.
"Oui!" I snap out, sounding as if I want to strangle her – and I do.
 



Bio:

KC Sprayberry started writing young, with a diary followed by an interest in English. Her first experience with publication came when she placed third in a Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge contest while in the Air Force, but her dedication to writing came after she had her youngest child, now a in his senior year of high school. 
Her family lives in Northwest Georgia where she spends her days creating stories about life in the south, and far beyond. More than a dozen of her short stories have appeared in several magazines. Five anthologies feature other short stories, and her young adult novel Softly Say Goodbye, released in 2012. During 2013, more young adult stories have been released: The Ghost Catcher, Who Am I?, Family Curse … Times Two, and Amazon Best Seller, Canoples Investigations Tackles Space Pirates.


You can find her on the web here:


Stick around for the full tour. Why? On September 26 through September 29, 2013, you can pick up my other YA coming of age books, Softly Say Goodbye and Who Am I? free on Amazon:










 
Thank you Penny Estelle Brown of Penny's Tales for hosting me today. Tomorrow you will find the next Teaser Tour on S.D. Grimm's Naturally Grimm.



Saturday, September 14, 2013

Love Gone To The Dogs presented on Penny's Tales

Love Gone to the Dogs
(Second Chances Series)
By
Margaret Daley

 
Heartwarming to heart pounding…an electrifying read


Single mom, Leah Taylor, has her hands full with a grandfather, an inventor, who lives a bit risky when it comes to his job and two sons, one a rambunctious genius. But it is her free spirited beagle who gets her into trouble with her new neighbor, Dr. Shane O'Grady, when her dog makes a move on his champion bichon that he wants to breed.
Leah and Shane clash over their dogs that clearly like each other. Leah is determined to ignore her neighbor, but when her youngest son who tries to defy gravity and fly ends up hurt, it is her neighbor, the doctor, who takes care of her son. Can Leah and Shane find love or has love gone to the dogs?
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Buy Links: Amazon

Author Margaret Daley
Margaret Daley, an award-winning author of eighty-four books, has been married for over forty years and is a firm believer in romance and love. When she isn’t traveling, she’s writing love stories, often with a suspense thread and corralling her three cats that think they rule her household. To find out more about Margaret visit her website at 
 

Excerpt:

When Leah Taylor heard the pounding on her front door at seven o'clock in the morning, she jumped, nearly sloshing her coffee all over her hand. Did burglars now announce themselves before stealing a person blind? No one else in his right mind would be out visiting at this time. Carefully, so as not to spill the hot brew, she placed the mug on the kitchen counter and made her way toward the insistent pounding that she was sure was waking up the whole neighborhood.
She peered out a narrow slit in her mini blind and saw an enraged, huge man standing on her front porch with a shredded newspaper in one hand. The other was clenched at his side. He wore practically nothing except a pair of jean shorts. He stepped back and glanced around, clearly not happy that no one had answered his summons.
Backing away from the window next to her door, Leah nervously chewed the end of one of her acrylic nails. The man looked familiar. She was sure she had seen him in the yard across the street. He had to be a neighbor. But why was he welcoming her to the neighborhood at such an early hour, and with an angry expression on his face? She had been here only a few days, and her family hadn't done anything yet to upset the delicate balance of this small town. Or had they?  She thought back over the past few days of almost nonstop unpacking. She had been too tired to even venture from the house much, and the same went for the rest of her family—she hoped.
When the pounding started again, she was so surprised by the sound that she bit through the end of her new acrylic nail. Well, now he was making her mad. Without thinking, she yanked open the front door and prepared to confront the man who had the nerve to pay her a call at seven o'clock in the morning.
"Look what you made me do!" Leah held up her hand. "I've tried everything to grow my own nails long, and nothing's worked. I finally decide to get fake ones—that I might, by the way, tell you cost me forty dollars—and look what your pounding has done. They haven't even lasted one week." She blew out a deep breath, then brushed her bangs away from her face in frustration.
His dark eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. He started to say something, but decided instead to allow his gaze to trek downward slowly—way too slowly for Leah's peace of mind. A blush leaped into her cheeks as she remembered her skimpy attire. She controlled the strong urge to try to stretch her large, white T-shirt until it covered more than the tops of her thighs. When his survey stopped at her bare feet, her toes wiggled as if they had a will of their own.
She felt practically naked under his intense look. While he was staring at her, she began at his bare feet, which were braced apart in a stance that conveyed his anger, not one toe wiggling. Her gaze traveled upward over long legs that probably belonged to a runner, to narrow hips that the jean material hugged nicely. She paused ever so slightly at the washboard ripples in his flat stomach and came to the decision that the man worked out religiously, something she religiously tried to avoid. Her impression of his being an exercise freak was confirmed when her gaze skimmed over a broad chest, wide shoulders, and arms with taut muscles bulging as he held them rigid at his sides. Bod of steel, she thought, realizing her impulsive inspection had done nothing to cool the heat in her cheeks.
That realization was utmost in her mind until her gaze came to rest on his face—not poster boy handsome, but rugged and very masculine. Then she noticed his eyes, dark as chocolate, growing rounder as he took in her features. Oh, no! All traces of the heat from her blush left her cheeks. Why hadn't she remembered that she had forgotten to remove yesterday's makeup, when she had fallen exhausted into bed, and that her short hair lay at odd angles all over her head as it did every morning? Realizing she looked like Rocky the Raccoon having a bad hair day, Leah stepped behind the front door, gripped its edge, and peered around it to carry on the rest of the conversation, trying to hide as much as possible from view. Too bad she didn't have a sack to put over her head.
Her actions snapped the stunned expression from the man's face. He held up the newspaper, which appeared to have gone through a shredder. "This is what your dog did to my paper—for the third morning in a row, I might add. Makes it a little hard to read."
His tightly clipped words blasted her. Who still read an actual newspaper? Her grasp on the door strengthened. "That's not possible. He's in the backyard—which is fenced, I might add."
The man's scowl deepened. "Your dog's a beagle, right? I saw him this morning. Medium size, brown, black, and white."
"Must have been someone else's beagle. Arnold is as secure as a baby in a playpen." Then, without really thinking again, Leah swung her shield wide open, leaving her visible to his full view once more, and motioned her less-than-friendly neighbor inside. "I'll show you you're wrong about Arnold."
"Lady, I'm not wrong," he said, as he stomped into her house, his large presence in her small entryway dwarfing everything, including her.
"Leah Taylor." She held out her hand for him to shake. After all, they were going to be neighbors, and he would realize his mistake when he saw Arnold in the backyard. She believed in making a good first impression—which in this case had been blown. At least she could shoot for a good second impression.
"Shane O'Grady." He nodded his head slightly, but didn't take her hand in his. He still clenched the newspaper with torn bits hanging like black and white streamers.
Her blush came back to haunt her cheeks. Leah gritted her teeth and proceeded to the kitchen, intending to show the man her dog and then, with a relish, the door. Forget that second impression. "One of the reasons I rented this house was the chain-link fence. It's four feet, and Arnold isn't even two feet tall. I don't think he's learned to pole vault yet, even though he did enjoy watching it on the Olympics telecast."
Shane O'Grady shot her a skeptical look. "I know I saw him. He was running back toward your yard."
Leah waved her hand toward the window that afforded them a view of the yard behind her house. There lay Arnold by his doghouse, sprawled on his back with his legs stuck in the air as if he were dead. She pointed to the closed gate. "Did you see him open the gate and run back into the yard?" It was hard to keep the smug tone out of her voice. In fact, she didn't succeed.
"It was him, lady."
"Are you the type of man who doesn't like to admit he's wrong, Mr. O'Grady?"
The flint in his eyes could have set her on fire. "Ms. Taylor, if you don't take care of the problem, I will."
"What do you mean?" Her voice rose with panic.
"We have leash laws in Shady Oaks."
The threat hung suspended between them. The only sounds in the kitchen were the clock ticking over the stove and Leah's increased breathing.
"I'm not without some pull, since I am, the mayor." He stalked toward the door, turned back to rake her with a sharp look, and added, "Keep that hound in your yard. We've had problems with wild dogs biting people."
"You must be a dog hater," she shouted at his retreating back as she followed him to her front door.
Shane halted on the bottom step. "Far from it. I have two dogs of my own, but you won't see them running wild in the neighborhood. I keep them where they belong."
She came out onto her porch. "Yeah, well, Arnold is innocent. In America even a dog is innocent until proven guilty. Where's your proof, Mr. Mayor?"
He said nothing to that last remark, probably because he was jogging across the street and up the flight of steps in front of his house. But several people had heard her words—the woman next door, who was coming out to get her newspaper, and two men power walking. They all stopped what they were doing and stared at Leah as if she were an alien who had just landed in the middle of their peaceful town.
Leah did the only thing she could think of. Smiling, she waved to each one. "Just exercising my voice. It's such a beautiful day to exercise, don't you think?"
One man shook his head as though he couldn't quite believe his eyes, and the other laughed. They resumed their power walk while the woman grabbed her paper and rushed back inside, probably heading straight for the telephone to tell everyone that the newcomer was obviously crazy.
"Welcome to Shady Oaks," Leah muttered to herself as she made her way back inside her house.
When she caught sight of herself in the mirror in the entrance hallway, she groaned. She looked worse than she had thought She had dark mascara circles under her blue eyes and her orange lipstick was smeared across her right cheek. And her hair was just awful—a brash, coppery shade of red that shone in the sunlight. Well, she couldn't help it if her home tinting had gone awry. Red was normal—usually.
Shrugging away her less than desirable reflection, Leah headed straight for the back door. "Arnold. Breakfast," she called out, and watched her beagle roll his head into a position to see her. He stared at her for a good minute before getting up and slowly walking toward her as if he hadn't had twenty hours of sleep, and barely had enough energy to make it to the door.
"For being falsely accused you get an extra portion this morning," she murmured, and bent to pat Arnold. Her hand stopped on the fur by his neck. She spied a strip of newspaper tangled in his collar, and closed her eyes.
When she opened them a second later, Arnold was butting her hand to get her to scratch him behind the ears. Instead, she took the scrap of newspaper off the collar and saw the evidence against her dog mount—the piece of paper had the day's date written across it in bold, black letters.
"Oh, no, Arnold, you couldn't do this to us. We've just moved here. This was supposed to be a fresh start. Now look what's happened. I've antagonized the town mayor." Leah balled the shredded piece up in her hand and marched to the trashcan. No one was going to know about this.
Looking out the window at the securely shut gate, she wondered how Arnold had gotten out. He couldn't open it, then close it, could he? Well, however he had gotten out, she would make sure that Arnold didn't escape again, even if she had to chain him outside the next morning.
She had wanted to make a good first impression. She plopped down on a stool at the kitchen counter and buried her face in her hands. She knew how important that was in a small town, where everyone knew everyone. She wanted her family to belong, to finally have a place they could call home. She had researched Shady Oaks, and the town had everything she wanted, especially an excellent school system.
The sound of feet running upstairs drew her attention. Her exchange with Shane O'Grady awakened the neighbors, and her family as well. She turned her accusatory glare on her dog that sat at her feet wagging his tail while he patiently waited for his breakfast. "I should give you half rations, you Benedict Arnold."