Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Best Selling Author Kit Morgan is in the "Hot Seat"!

I am so very excited to have the talented, best selling author, Kit Morgan in the hot seat today.  She answers some questions about herself, her life, and her new book - Mail-Order Bride Ink - Dear Mr. Turner. 





  1. Tell us all about yourself and what makes you tick and what do you like doing when you aren’t writing!  What makes me tick, eh? Well, a peaceful country setting like the one I live in! I live in a little log cabin in the woods on a creek and often write on a bench creek sides! Music also fuels the muse and when I’m writing under Geralyn Beauchamp, I write my time travel/science fiction books entirely to music. I’ve done quite a few of Kit Morgan’s westerns this way too, but mostly the other. In my spare time (when I actually have any) I do love to travel to historic places and of course READ!

2.  Tell us about your family – married?   Kids?   Where you live!  I’m single (been divorced   for 17 years) have three grown children, no grandchildren yet in case you were wondering, and live in the great Pacific Northwest!

  1.  If you could travel anywhere in or out of this world, where would it be? Can I say my own fictional towns and worlds? No? All right, if not those places then I’d love to tour Europe one day! 

  1. If you could do anything in this world to make a living, other than writing, what would it be – money being no object? Playing in a symphony. I was an opera major with a flute minor so the musical heart still beats strongly!

  1. What’s you favorite weekly TV show?  Why?  I don’t watch TV  

  1. Have you ever met anybody famous?  Yep! Several famous folks. 


  1. Now, Tell us about your book? Mail-Order Bride Ink is a brand new series. Dear Mr. Weaver was the first book in the series and Dear Mr. Turner the second. Both books visit familiar faces and places for current Kit Morgan readers, and introduce new readers to my world. Dear Mr. Turner takes place in Clear Creek, Oregon. A town full of quirky characters who welcome a Southern Belle into their midst to marry one of their own, Eli Turner. He’s the younger brother of Tom Turner, a character who readers have watched grow into a man and marry. What his poor younger brother Eli doesn’t know, is his Southern Belle mail-order bride is on the run from her family. Her father wants to force her to marry someone she detests to save their plantation. After a few days in Clear Creek, she’s wondering if she should’ve stayed and married the cad. The little western town is as far from her life in Savannah as one can get, so the book is a fish out of water story, but also teaches the heroine values she paid no attention to while living in the gentle south. Throw in a few outlaws, a little action, and some unexpected surprises, and you have a fun read!

  1. Where did you come up with the idea for your story? Oh gads, I have no shortage of ideas! I used to do relationship coaching, so the goal is to tackle one typical relationship issue in each book. What I do then is build a story around that issue.

  1. What is your biggest pet peeve about writing? Getting interrupted while doing it!

  1. Where can people find you? (give all your links) Just go to my website, all my other social links are there. www.authorkitmorgan.com

  1. Most important – where can we buy your story? Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KUJ96SM#nav-subnav


Blurb:  
Mail-Order Bride Ink! Mischief, Marriage and Mayhem, these brides have something to write about! Mrs. Pettigrew, of the Pettigrew Mail-Order Bride Agency sees to that! She likes to hear from all her brides and loves a happy ending. But to ensure her brides get one, she does things to help love along. Sometimes, however, those things don’t always go as planned…

Dear Mrs. Pettigrew,

I made it to Clear Creek without incident. Unfortunately, my intended was unable to meet me at the stage as he was otherwise engaged in being shot at by bloodthirsty outlaws! He, of course, was shooting in return, but that’s not the sort of excuse a bride wants to be told!
I hope I made the right decision in coming here. My life as a Southern Belle of Savannah is quickly fading, my hope with it. I don’t know if I’m the right sort of bride for this Eli Turner. He’s everything a southern gentleman is not. I’m everything a woman of Clear Creek is not! Are you sure this is going to work? Speaking of work, the women here expect me to do a lot of it. I knew there would be some involved, but I had no idea life on the prairie could be so hard. I did, however, manage to bake my first pie without burning it, or the house down, with it. A small achievement and I hope the first of many. I’ll need many more to survive this place! IF I survive …
Write me as soon as you can!

Sincerely,
Pleasant Comfort

Eli Turner's older brother Tom had been happily married for the last six years and had a couple of children to boot. Now it was Eli's turn, but was he ready? He was just a simple deputy after all with an even simpler house to call home. What did he have to offer a bride? Especially the one he got! His mail-order bride wasn't anything like he expected and probably wouldn't survive life out west. What's a man to do with a swooning female?

Pleasant Comfort hadn't planned on getting married, least of all to a man she had no say about. So when her father tries to marry her off to the despicable Rupert Jerney just to save himself from financial ruin, she does what any self-respecting Southern Belle of Savannah would do. She hightails it out of Georgia! But doing so as a mail-order bride might not have been her first choice.She wasn't made for roughing it without servants, a cook, and six older brothers to look out for her. What's a Southern Belle to do when the women of Clear Creek get a hold of her and have other ideas?

Sunday, August 28, 2016

It's Everybody Reads YA Sunday - Billy Cooper's Awesome Nightmare





Billy Cooper’s Awesome Nightmare

Billy Cooper’s seventh grade class has been given a last minute, weekend assignment.  They must all draw a piece of paper out of a box and do an oral book report on the person or event that was drawn.  Billy draws the name, William Tell, whoever that is.

            He has a full weekend planned, but figures he will do a quick computer search and will be able to skate through on the assignment, still having plenty of time for his busy weekend.

            His outlook changes when he finds himself in the fourteenth century, standing in front of William Tell’s house.  Billy’s twentieth century style and lingo has William Tell thinking the lad a little unbalanced, but asks him if he would like to go along with him and his son to the town of Altdorf.  It is here; Billy learns just who William Tell is and why he is a legend.

Small teaser……
Billy turned to William, “Dude, it’s a hat….a stupid hat. Really? Go to jail? You don’t even have to bow all the way,” he whispered, “just bend a little and call the guy a jerk under your breath.”
“I am a free man. I will not bow to a hat!” William stated loudly.
A booming voice rang out behind them. “Your disrespect for me will not be tolerated and you will be punished!”
William turned to see the Governor and several guardsmen behind them. “We do not live in Altdorf. I knew nothing of your proclamation. Still, you expect people to bow down to an empty hat?”
“Oh crap,” Billy muttered.
“What is your name?” Gessler asked.
“William Tell.”
“I have heard of you, Tell,” Gessler said, looking down from his horse. “Your skill as an archer is known far and wide.”
Tell did not respond, but Walter was quick to pipe up. “That is true. My father is the very best archer in all the lands!”
“Bro, ix-nay on the alk-tay,” Billy whispered.
“I am not an unreasonable man,” Gessler sneered. “I will make you a proposition, Tell. At fifty paces, your son will have an apple placed on his head. If you shoot if off successfully, you may go. If you miss, or you refuse, you both die!”


http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/our-authors/55-our-authors/authors-e/146-author-19
 
Billy Cooper’s Awesome Nightmare is Book One of the Wickware Sagas.  There are four more stories of students in Miss Wickware’s history class that find themselves transported back in time to meet the object of their school reports.
Ride of a Lifetime
Flash to the Past
Bumped Back In Time
From Riches to Rags
Check them all out at…


The Wickware Sagas also comes in a printed version with all five stories!
 

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

SPOTLIGHT - Natalie Silk and her new story, Snowfall's Secret




Thanks in advance for reading about me:

My current work is Snowfall’s Secret.  It’s a about a girl from another world who must live like any other tween on Earth (and she suffers from amnesia).  Of course, she learns to enjoy shopping at the mall with her very own debit card and has a few secrets. At its core is the message that everyone has value and has something special to share. 

 

The story was inspired by a dream I had when I was twelve.  I saw five monks standing in a semi-circle.  They were all wearing a triangle-shaped pendant with a red stone in the center.  One of the monks looked at me and said, “You’re not ready,” and I woke.  I had subsequent dreams of a girl with a pendant to the one the monks wore and I wrote them all down. 

My favorite character to write about (funny how that turned out) was a secondary one to the story:  Mrs. Margot Greenfield. I based her on a favorite childhood teacher.

By the way, my favorite genre to write is science fiction.  Surprise!  Just kidding. 

My focus right now is science fiction for girls; but I’m still playing around with a short story that’s alternative history to give myself a mental stretch.  I have this irrational fear that the last thing I finish writing will be my last.  I wonder if I’m not alone.

I’m pretty ‘old school’ when it comes to my writing habits.  The first thing I do is buy a brand new hand-sized spiral notebook and use it to write the basic story that’s mostly action punctuated here and there by dialogue.   The little notebook helps me believe that I’m accomplishing so much.  I then use my trusty laptop to write the second draft that looks as if I threw words down to see what sticks.  The technical term I like to use is word hurl.  Each subsequent draft looks a little more refined than the previous one.  I then use the little spiral notebook to make notes and jot down ideas for the story.
I began writing when I was ten and back then we didn’t have home computers.

I’ve been asked advice by aspiring writers.  I’m very, very flattered.  But let me tell you, I’m still an aspiring writer. My advice is simple:  don’t ever, ever (and I mean ever) give up.

Buy Link



Please reach out to me on:
Facebook  Natalie Silk, Author
Twitter @natalieasilk

My website
Amazon