THE PUPPY ADVENTURES OF PORTER & MIDGE: Review

THE PUPPY ADVENTURES OF PORTER & MIDGE:
OUT AND ABOUT
by
Jennie Chen and Giselle Nevada
Children’s Book / Pet Books / Pet Care
Publisher: Raise the Woof Press
Page Count: 38 pages
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
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Introducing The Puppy Adventures of Porter and Midge: Out and About – a quick introduction to early socialization and training for puppies that will make them outstanding canine citizens and wonderful family pets.
     Kids will love following along with the two puppies’ story set in Austin, Texas, as they learn about how to take care of their own puppy. This is the first book in a series of story books, journals, and activity books. 
 
 
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
“Gift this book to any new puppy owner you know!”Lynn M. Hayner, Author at dogster “Chen and Nevada write in an easy and enjoyable style…If you are a dog lover, this storybook is for you. Help your children become the best dog companion they can be.” -Philip Van Heusen, Reader’s Favorite

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The Puppy Adventures of Porter & Midge begins with two children excited at the prospect of bringing their two puppies to a parade. As such, they begin a journey to help train and prepare their puppies for the exciting event.

I liked the level of detail that went into what training involves and that it’s always accompanied by showing comfort and safety to the dog. As you’ll see below in the Author descriptions, the experience of dog owning and training definitely shows.

As the two children take their puppies to different events and places, they keep calm and learn to have fun training their dogs. It has a great message about this process since sometimes training dogs can be a bit stressful.

The artwork for this book was great in it’s level of detail. Everywhere you looked on each page had some form of interest without seeming cluttered. I especially liked how the animals on each page had slightly more detail to make them stand out more. The colors were especially vibrant and each page exuded a fun and exciting tone.

For the overall story, I think that this is a great start for children to read if they want a dog. Training in some form is always necessary for puppies and this picture book kindly but firmly teaches that point.

Jennie Chen is a homesick Austinite who founded Keep Austin Dog Friendly. Over the last 20 years, Jennie has owned Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs and Lowchen. She has earned numerous titles in conformation, competitive obedience, rally, herding, animal assisted therapy, and more. She is passionate about the relationship people build with their beloved canines, and she has been an advocate for people living with disabilities who need a service dog to live independently. She is active in various dog clubs and can be seen on AKC.TV from time to time.
 
Giselle Nevada has owned several mastiffs, acquired both from reputable breeders and via rescue. Fostering rescued mastiffs and helping them work through their issues led to a keen interest in socialization as a means of preventing future issues. She loves working with her dogs and has dabbled in carting, conformation, agility, rally, trick dog, nose work, and many other canine sports. Her puppy Porter is a testament to early socialization – he has achieved many performance dog titles and has done commercial work. He also has a role in a movie called Match Me If You Can directed by Marian Yeager.
 
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A River of Crows: Guest Post

A RIVER OF CROWS
by
SHANESSA GLUHM
Fiction / Suspense / Thriller / Revenge
Publisher: TouchPoint Press
Date of Publication: April 18, 2023
Number of Pages: 427 pages
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In 1988, Sloan Hadfield’s brother Ridge went fishing with their father and never came home. Their father, a good-natured Vietnam veteran prone to violent outbursts, was arrested and charged with murder. Ridge’s body was never recovered, and Sloan’s mother— a brilliant ornithologist— slowly descended into madness, insisting her son was still alive. Now twenty years later, Sloan’s life is unraveling. In the middle of a bitter divorce, she’s forced to return to her rural Texas hometown when her mother is discharged from a mental health facility. Overwhelmed by memories and unanswered questions, Sloan returns to the last place her brother was seen all those years ago: Crow’s Nest Creek. There, she is shocked to hear a crow murmuring the same syllable over and over: Ridge, Ridge, Ridge. When the body of another boy is found, Sloan begins to question what really happened to her brother all those years ago. What she discovers will shock her small community and turn her family upside down.

“INSPIRATION: WHERE BOOK IDEAS COME FROM?”

GUEST POST FROM SHANESSA GLUHM

 
Like most authors, I’m often asked, “Where do your book ideas come from?”

As a reader, I’ve been curious where other authors got their famous ideas, so I did some research.

Many of the ideas for Stephen King’s books came to him in dreams, including one of my favorites, Misery. On a flight, King dozed off and had a dream about a popular writer who was kidnapped by a psychotic fan. He woke up, made notes on his cocktail napkin, and started writing Misery that night in his hotel.

Author Suzanne Collins got her idea for The Hunger Games channel surfing one night. On one channel she saw young people competing in a reality TV show, and on another channel footage of the Iraq war. Those two things fused together in her mind, and Katniss Everdeen was born.

J.K. Rowling was stuck on a train when an image of a boy starting wizarding school began to form in her mind. She didn’t have a pen, so she spent the rest of the four hours on the train developing the story of Harry Potter in her mind.  

Children’s author Roald Dahl kept idea books from childhood on. I also have a similar book where I keep my ideas, and those ideas come from a variety of places.

The idea of the twist in Enemies of Doves came from my best friend. But the rest of it? Well, I knew I needed to build up to that twist, and I realized the story had to be set in the past or that twist couldn’t work. I knew what I wanted the title to be, so I realized I had to work doves into the plot somehow. And I knew as a theme I wanted to examine the relationship between brothers.

For A River of Crows, the idea struck as I was listening to the radio while driving in Texas with my youngest son. I passed a creek named Crow’s Nest Creek. At that moment, an old Keith Whitley song came on the radio: “I’m Over You”. In my brain, a connection formed between this song and this creek. I imagined a family torn apart by something that happened at Crow’s Nest Creek. Something that left a father and daughter estranged. I knew this father and daughter were huge Keith Whitley fans, and that the father went to prison the day Keith Whitley died. (I had no idea why yet). And even though this song is seemingly about the loss of a romantic relationship, this daughter associated it with the loss of the relationship with her father.

I also remembered a video I’d seen recently about the intelligence of crows and how they can be trained to speak and mimic human voices.

This creek, song, and YouTube video came together to form a story. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I had a basic plot of A River of Crows outlined in my mind.

It should be noted that I also passed a creek called Cannibal Draw on that drive, and thought that too would be a great name for a book. Thankful a story idea didn’t form then because it would be a much different and darker story, wouldn’t it?

Ideas really do come from everywhere— a favorite movie, a nightmare, a newspaper article, our best friend, a childhood memory, an overheard conversation between strangers, people we’ve loved, people we’ve hated, a small creek we pass by, a song on the radio that stirs something inside of us. Ideas present themselves to us every day and all are bubbling with possibility. Pay attention to where your imagination wanders.

But the fact remains, the ideas are the easiest part. Neil Gaiman puts it like this, “The ideas aren’t the hard bit. They’re a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you’re trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.”

But that’s a blog for another time.

Shanessa Gluhm works as a librarian at an elementary school in New Mexico where she lives with her husband and children. It was during her own elementary days when a teacher encouraged Shanessa to share a story she wrote with the class. She hasn’t stopped writing since. Her debut novel, Enemies of Doves was an IAN Book of the Year Finalist in the category of first novel, an NIEA Finalist for cross-genre fiction, and first place winner in the Chanticleer Clue Awards for mystery, suspense, and thriller fiction. When Shanessa is not writing she enjoys birdwatching, reading, and watching true crime documentaries.
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“SO SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS”: Video Interview and Giveaway

“SO SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS”
by Dina Gachman
Grief & Bereavement / Love & Loss / Parenting & Relationships Publisher: Union Square & Co. Page Count: 240 pages Publication Date: April 11, 2023
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A heartfelt exploration about what it means to process grief, by a bestselling author and journalist whose experience with two devastating losses inspired her to bring comfort and understanding to others.
Since losing her mother to cancer in 2018 and her sister to alcoholism less than three years later, author and journalist Dina Gachman has dedicated herself to understanding what it means to grieve, healing after loss, and the ways we stay connected to those we miss. Through a mix of personal storytelling, reporting, and insight from experts and even moments of humor, Gachman gives readers a fresh take on grief and bereavement—whether the loss is a family member, beloved pet, or a romantic relationship. No one wants to join the grief club, since membership comes with zero perks, but So Sorry for Your Loss will make that initiation just a little less painful.
In the spirit of Elizabeth Kubler Ross books like On Grief and Grieving, or C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, So Sorry for Your Loss is the perfect gift for someone who is grieving. With her blend of personal experiences, expert advice, and just a little bit of humor, Gachman has provided a compassionate and compelling resource for anyone looking for grief books.
PRAISE FOR SO SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS: “Gachman perceptively puts words to the uncomfortable realities of loss…and deconstructs its social myths, helping readers feel less alone. Those facing loss will find solace here.” Publishers Weekly So Sorry for Your Loss is a monument to the work of remembering and a testament to the immutable love of family and the grief that forever changes us.” —Lauren Hough, New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Isn’t the Hardest ThingSo Sorry for Your Loss is a meditation on loss that reminds us how to go on living.” —Deirdre Fagan, author of Find a Place for Me and The Grief Eaters
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“Dina Gachman Mastering Grief Through Writing”

On Open to Hope podcast, hosted by Drs Gloria and Heidi Horsley

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Dina Gachman is a Pulitzer Center Grantee and a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Vox, Texas Monthly, and more. She’s a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter and the author of Brokenomics: 50 Ways to Live the Dream on a Dime. She lives near Austin, Texas, with her husband and son. Photo credit Jessica Comiskey.
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So Sorry for Your Loss
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Confessions of a Knight Errant: Excerpt and Giveaway

CONFESSIONS OF
A KNIGHT ERRANT
by Gretchen McCullough
Humorous Fiction
Publisher: Cune Press
Page Count: 240 pages
Publication Date: October 18, 2022
Scroll down for a giveaway!
Confessions of a Knight Errant is a comedic, picaresque novel in the tradition of Don Quixote with a flamboyant cast of characters. Dr. Gary Watson is the picaro, a radical environmentalist and wannabe novelist who has been accused of masterminding a computer hack that wiped out the files of a major publishing company. His Sancho Panza is Kharalombos, a fat, gluttonous Greek dancing teacher, who is wanted by the secret police for cavorting with the daughter of the Big Man of Egypt. Self-preservation necessitates a hurried journey to the refuge of a girls’ camp in rural Texas. Then a body turns up nearby that is connected to Middle East antiquities, and they are on the run once more.
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Excerpt from Confessions of a Knight Errant

By Gretchen McCullough


We had fled Cairo to Malta from the people who must remain unnamed, two years before: Kharalombos and me, his wife, my face covered with a black veil, a complete niqab. Of course, if Yasser Arafat could escape the Israelis across the Jordan River in 1967 fully veiled, disguised as a mother carrying a baby, why not me? Hiding out in Malta, I made wax knights at the Knights Templar Museum and enjoyed giving tours with factual tidbits to curious British tourists—a refreshing change from duties on tenure committees. Meanwhile, Kharalombos coached Spanish dancers, who preened and lunged in Who’s Got Talent tango Contests. I was a rogue professor wanted by Interpol; Kharalombos was wanted by the Egyptians for a problem too sensitive to be named. Even though we had rooms in a pension, with balconies overlooking a shimmery Mediterranean, and feasted on fried squid and red mullet almost every day, I still worried a SWAT team armed with assault weapons could burst through the doors at any time. 

But now, we had sneaked back into Cairo to find Kharalombos’s son. My novel had been erased by the publishing conglomerate, Zadorf. In a hurry to get out of town, I had dropped my flash drive down an elevator shaft. The very last hard copy of my novel nestled underneath my bed in my old flat in Garden City—I had to find it, or else risk certain obscurity. This time around, I was disguised as a tourist in a loud Hawaiian shirt, wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses and a Howard Cosell-type toupee. Clad in a white suit, with a panama hat perched on his head, Kharalombos resembled a British colonial. I expected the police to appear with handcuffs the moment we got off the plane—straight into the box. My new identity: a vacuum-cleaner salesman from Ames, Iowa, who was going on a once-in-a-lifetime Nile cruise, a bonus for selling beyond quota; Kharalombos was a Greek olive farmer. 

We sailed through the airport all the way to customs. Flashing on the arrival sign: Budapest, Cancelled. London, Cancelled. Munich, Cancelled. Moscow, Cancelled. 

Only one officer manned the series of booths, immaculate in his black wool winter uniform. He was buttoned up to the collar. When he saw us gaping at the arrival monitor, he gestured to us, “Come in. Come in. You are jumping into the fire!” 

Kharalombos asked, “Is it really that atrocious?” I could see he was tempted to lapse into Arabic. 

Yawning, the officer cleaned his ear with a pen. Why didn’t he answer? Then he mimicked the American saying, “Have a nice day!” He stamped the passports, without the usual bureaucratic sense of conviction. 

A rail-thin Pakistani, who looked like a student from Al-Azhar, stood next to us at the baggage claim, but avoided eye contact. He clutched a huge Quran, the cover decorated with gold. Did he think we were suspicious? 

 Our bags came in five minutes—unheard-of in the history of Cairo airport. 

Grabbing my tiny suitcase, full of costume props, off the belt, I said, “Kharalombos, are you sure Happy City Tours will pick us up?”

“There have been demonstrations,” Kharalombos said, heaving his monstrous suitcase. “Didn’t you see the monitor at the Valletta airport?” 

True, we had watched the Al-Jazeera video at the Valletta airport. But there were frequent demonstrations in Cairo over the years, all of which had fizzled out, or been squashed. Egyptian citizens raised banners, festooned in Arabic handwriting: “Justice Now!” They chanted: “Bread. Dignity. Freedom. Social Justice!” The image of yet another young man who had been tortured to death in a police station flashed on the screen: his face was disfigured beyond recognition. 

We had dragged our bags through the Cairo airport, and exited the hall. The parking lot was completely deserted, except for a few cars. Only one streetlight gleamed; otherwise, it was a forbidding black—four o’clock in the morning. Usually the place was mobbed with relatives, hasslers, and enterprising entrepreneurs. Tour guides who intoned strange-sounding names as they raised their makeshift signs high. But this evening there were no drivers with signs. No Happy City Tours, either. And even the fleet of battered, black-and-white taxis that usually lined up to harass the weary traveler had disappeared. Where were they all? 

Kharalombos pulled out his mobile phone. “I’ll call my uncle.” His uncle was a psychiatrist at the mental hospital, where I had been sent two years before. Kharalombos was my sane, colorful roommate—he was simply hiding in the hospital from the people who must remain unnamed. We had become fast friends and had teamed up to escape the authorities. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked. 

“No line,” he said. 

“Maybe there’s something wrong with your phone?” I asked. “You need another SIM card.”

“No,” Kharalombos said. “That’s not the problem.”

He sauntered over to the exit doors, where a policeman stood puffing on a cigarette. 

“You’ll blow your disguise!” I hissed. 

But Kharalombos was unconcerned and ignored me. 

He lumbered back to where I was standing. “The government cut the networks. There’s a curfew.”

 I should have stayed in Valletta. Why had I let Kharalombos talk me into returning to Cairo? For the sake of a little adventure, I was going to be arrested for a crime I hadn’t committed! I was no Julian Assange. One could understand, though, why Kharalombos would take such a risk to see his new son, Nunu. But was my novel worth ninety-nine years in jail, or even dying? Did I fancy myself the next John Kennedy O’Toole? Or maybe I was more like a dunce. I brushed this disturbing thought out of my mind, like a horsefly, before it had time to bite. 

“The policeman said the demonstration against the BIG MAN and HIS MEN has become violent,” Kharalombos said. “Anyone who disobeys the curfew will be shot.”



Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey, and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997-1999.
Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Story South, Guernica, The Common, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today, and Washington Square Review with Mohamed Metwalli. Her bilingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories From Cairo, translated with Mohamed Metwalli, was published in July 2011 by AFAQ Publishing House, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was also published by AFAQ in 2013.
Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo.
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In Confessions of a Knight Errant, readers get a taste of the Hill Country. One winner will, too, with a one-pound bag of pecans from Berdoll Pecan Candy & Gift Company!
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Winning Maura’s Heart: Excerpt and Giveaway

WINNING MAURA’S HEART
The Hangman’s Daughters Series, Book # 1
by
LINDA BRODAY
Western Romance / Clean & Wholesome / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Severn House
Date of Publication: March 7, 2023
Number of Pages: 256 pages
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The Calhoun brothers are identical twins but on opposite sides of the law. Cutter is a deputy Marshal, Jonas an outlaw. When Cutter attempts to break his brother out of a notorious gang, they are shot, and Maura finds one of them wounded, close to the mission – but which brother is it?
Maura Taggart is an outcast, the daughter of a hangman and tainted by association – no reputable man wants her as his wife. And now she is homeless, along with her sister and the group of children in their care. Armed with pure grit, she finds a nearby mission where the nuns agree to take them in and set up an orphanage. But trouble is just around the corner . . .
As the stranger regains his strength under Maura’s care an attraction between them grows, yet how far can she trust him? And why has he brought trouble to their door? With the orphanage under threat can Maura trust this handsome stranger both with their safety and with her heart?
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Excerpt from Winning Maura’s Heart

By Linda Broday


Maura lifted her chin. “Does the name Lucius Taggart mean anything?”

Calhoun reeled from the shock. “The hangman is your father?”

This answered everything—why they started the orphanage so far from town, Emma’s shorn hair, the reason neither girl had ever married. 

“Good Lord!” He ran a hand across his eyes.

“So you see why things are the way they are. Keep your pretty words and compliments and save them for someone with a use for them.”

Calhoun threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “Look here, Maura Taggart. I’m not in the habit of paying lip service. Not with you or anyone. I mean what I say, and I meant every word, every compliment. There’s only one thing keeping me from courting you and it’s not your father.” He gave a snort. “I don’t give two hoots about Lucius Taggart.”

“Others have said the same thing but they all left.” Maura lifted her head, her voice quiet. “Forgive me, but I don’t believe you. I’m too old to play games, Calhoun. I’m smart enough to know that life has passed me by.”

“Only if you let it. You’ll never get anywhere by sitting down and giving up.”

“Give up?” she asked sharply. “Is that what you think? We’ve fought hard for everything we’ve gotten. Fought for the right to survive, to take up room on this earth. Wiped spit off our faces and walked away with heads held high. That’s not giving up. But there comes a time when a woman has to face reality.”

She had a point, but he couldn’t accept it.

He got to his feet and hobbled to her in his stocking feet. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “How’s this for reality? I like you and I like spending time with you and no, it has nothing to do with you patching me up. I’m not confusing gratitude with the closeness I feel with you. The only thing that is keeping me from courting you is the fact I have some dangerous business to take care of. The kind that might get me killed. Not only me, but everyone standing close and I won’t do that to you. Understand?”

“I’m trying. In the meantime, I can’t let false hopes take root.” Her voice dropped to an anguished whisper, “That would finish me. Better to have no hope at all.”

“Lady, when I get this settled and I still draw breath, I’m coming back.”

“I can see you mean that.” She put a hand to her throat. “You have to get well before you can ride out and that might be a while.”

“You’re telling me. It’s all I can do to get to the door right now.”

A teasing glint sparkled in her blue eyes. At least the sadness was gone. “See? And you’re talking about walking over to the mission.”

“That’s going to be more than talk. I am going to do that, with or without your help. So there. I’ll go stark raving mad if I have to spend another meal in this room by myself. I want to meet these kids, get acquainted with the nuns. I want to see Baby Juliette and the new puppy and all sorts of things you’ve told me about.” He lowered his voice and lifted a tendril of her hair that escaped from the loose knot on top of her head. “But most of all, I want to sit with you at the table and eat a meal. That’s going to be icing on the cake.”

“Then I should get moving.” She glanced at his boots on the floor. “I guess I’m going to have to help you get those on or you’ll be tearing your stitches out again.”

“That’s the God’s honest truth.”

“Okay then. Sit in the chair, Mr. Stubborn.”

“At least I did get my socks on by myself.” He sat down. “I’m not real sure how we’re going to do this. I can pull on one side with my good right arm and maybe you can pull on the other.”

“We can try it.” 

Calhoun wondered if she realized how close she’d have to get. As hard as they were to get on, there wasn’t any other way. 

And what would that do to his sanity? 

With the fragrance of Lily of the Valley drifting around him, Maura positioned herself and leaned over grabbing the top of his boot. Mere inches away, her nearness had him struggling for breath. 

Both of them tugged but only got his foot in about halfway. Trying again, she leaned down further until she was almost in his lap, pulling and yanking as hard as she could.

His yearning body tried to betray him. He closed his eyes. Not now.

“I’m going to get this on one way or the other.” She blew back a strand of fallen hair.

Before he knew it, she threw her leg across his lap and sat with her back to him. Reaching down, she put her fingers in the loops and gave a big yank. That did it.

“Thank God for a woman who doesn’t give up on boots,” he murmured. The temptation to touch her, to put his hands around her waist, rose up with a strong need that surprised even him.

However, before he could blink, she removed herself from his lap. Her cheeks were bright red. “I’m sorry, but that’s the only way to get them on.”

“Do you hear me complaining?” Darn his grin that tried its best to form. “Only one more to go.”



I’m a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of western romance novels and short stories. Watching TV westerns during my youth fed my love of cowboys and the old West and they still do. On a still day, I can often hear the voices of American Indians, Comancheros, and early cowboys whispering in the breeze here on the high West Texas plains. We refer to this land as “cowboy” country and men here still ride the range just as cowboys of old. My stories focus on family life and almost all have children.
 
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2nd Prize: eBook copy Winning Maura’s Heart;
3rd Prize: $15 Amazon gift card
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Confessions of a Knight Errant: Spotlight & Giveaway!

CONFESSIONS OF
A KNIGHT ERRANT
by Gretchen McCullough
Humorous Fiction
Publisher: Cune Press
Page Count: 240 pages
Publication Date: October 18, 2022
Scroll down for a giveaway!
Confessions of a Knight Errant is a comedic, picaresque novel in the tradition of Don Quixote with a flamboyant cast of characters. Dr. Gary Watson is the picaro, a radical environmentalist and wannabe novelist who has been accused of masterminding a computer hack that wiped out the files of a major publishing company. His Sancho Panza is Kharalombos, a fat, gluttonous Greek dancing teacher, who is wanted by the secret police for cavorting with the daughter of the Big Man of Egypt. Self-preservation necessitates a hurried journey to the refuge of a girls’ camp in rural Texas. Then a body turns up nearby that is connected to Middle East antiquities, and they are on the run once more.
CLICK TO PURCHASE
Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey, and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997-1999.
Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Story South, Guernica, The Common, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today, and Washington Square Review with Mohamed Metwalli. Her bilingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories From Cairo, translated with Mohamed Metwalli, was published in July 2011 by AFAQ Publishing House, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was also published by AFAQ in 2013.
Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo.
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ONE WINNER!

In Confessions of a Knight Errant, readers get a taste of the Hill Country. One winner will, too, with a one-pound bag of pecans from Berdoll Pecan Candy & Gift Company!
(US only; ends midnight, CST 4/28/23)

Pop-Up Blog-Hop SWEET COMFORT: Series Spotlight and Giveaway


SWEET COMFORT
Comfort and Joy Trilogy, #1
by
KIMBERLY FISH

Women’s Fiction / Later-In-Life Romance
Second-Chance Romance / Cozy Mystery
Publisher: Fish Tales
Page Count: 359 pages
Publication Date: January 21, 2023

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Welcome to the hometown everyone wants to call their own.

Gloria Bachman, a retired bank executive, has eight weeks to flip a location on Comfort’s High Street into a boutique chocolate shop. Defying expectations for “women of a certain age,” Gloria rediscovers talents and a sharpening of skills. If only she could read people as well as she does a spreadsheet. Even with the renovation in good hands, the subsequent struggle to name the shop brings Gloria and her business partner into conflict with a shady citizen. While Gloria is capable of remaining in her retirement rut while opening a business, two competing social groups try to lure her into their networks, causing Gloria to wonder if she ever knew Comfort at all. A murder rocks the community and revives investigative instincts honed by years in the banking industry.

Mason Lassiter, a disgraced CEO, has his own dramas to escape and the offbeat town seems the perfect place to recover his self-esteem. What was to be a quick reversal of fortunes becomes a quest to right a deeply felt injustice. Fascinated by the women driving the energy of Comfort, he extends his stay to find out why the small town is the backdrop to their best tales. Tangling with his neighbor Gloria becomes his favorite pastime and the key to unlocking the mystery of his past—if he can convince her to trust him.

Chocolate and joy become the glue bringing an unlikely cast together, which just might change Gloria’s and Mason’s course for the better. With characters familiar from previous Comfort novels and introducing fresh names, Sweet Comfort will entertain those who like their stories seasoned with coziness and sweet, second chances.



Welcome to the Comfort Stories

The Comfort Stories are contemporary stories of smart women, their best friends, sweet second chances, and the Texas Hill Country. Set in Comfort, Texas, the stories reveal modern, female entrepreneurs discovering their grit to reinvent themselves, find their purpose in life, and discover that a second chance at romance can sometimes be the choice that changes everything. 

The stories are filled with unconventional families, a village of characters and familiar landmarks, friends who become lovers, grumpy heroes, athletes, musicians, awesome women doing awesome things, and even a rekindling of a marriage at Christmas. With a PG-13 rating, this series will transport readers to a wholesome, clean town where good things eventually happen.

Sweet Comfort is the newest novel set in Comfort, Texas, and it’s the first book in the new Comfort and Joy cozy mystery series. 



THE COMFORT STORIES SERIES:

Comfort Plans, 2017, 320 pages

Emeralds Mark the Spot, 2018, 54 pages

Comfort Songs, 2019, 348 pages

Comfort Foods, 2020, 385 pages

Comfort Zone, 2021, 287 pages

Comfort Christmas, 2022, 128 pages


THE COMFORT AND JOY SERIES:

Sweet Comfort, 2023, 311 pages




Kimberly Fish has been a professional writer in marketing and media for over thirty years, with regular contributions to area newspapers and magazines. As an accidental historian, she wrote two novels, The Big Inch and Harmon General, both based on factual events in Longview, Texas that changed world history. Kimberly also offers a set of contemporary women’s fiction novels and novellas, based in the Texas Hill Country, that reveal her fascination with characters discovering their grit and sweet, second chances; all four of the novels have won distinguished awards. Sweet Comfort is her latest novel, the first book in the Comfort and Joy Trilogy.


Brutal Season: Cover Reveal and Book Blitz

BRUTAL SEASON
The Seasons Mysteries Series #4
BY MARYANN MILLER
Police Procedural / Mystery
Publisher: MCM Enterprises
Coming April 10, 2023
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Eighteen-year-old Jamel Frederickson is shot and killed by a white, rookie Dallas police officer. His crime? Being black and mentally ill.
Following that unwarranted death, anger, and violence erupts on the streets, leading to the murders of two protestors who were marching around the downtown federal building.
Detectives Sarah Kingsly and Angel Johnson are thrust into the investigation of those murders, while desperately clinging to the threads of their partnership.
The shootings also raise questions about whether the alt-right white supremacists that invaded the city with their guns and inflammatory rhetoric are responsible.
Will more people get killed?
Is there more than one person out there with an agenda?
When a member of the team, Ryan O’Donnell, is shot while attempting to prevent looting, the tension in the city, and the department, ratchets up even higher. And it deeply affects Angel who’s been pretending she really isn’t falling for this white man.
Angel joins the protests to take a stand against racism in the city and within the department; an action that puts her job, her relationship with Ryan, and her fragile partnership with Sarah at risk.
For her part, Sarah comes to realize that she is not as enlightened as she thought she was, and both women just hope they can come through the personal and professional challenges and end up with something that resembles a true partnership.
While catching the killers in the process.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR BRUTAL SEASON “In the compelling fourth installment of the Seasons Mystery series, Miller once again tackles difficult subjects in this absorbing, page-turning crime thriller.”
Carrie Rubin, author of Fatal Rounds, a Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize Finalist

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Maryann Miller, an award-winning author, has been in love with storytelling since she was a child and used to scare her sister with stories of the monsters in the cellar.
When she grew up, she started her professional career as a journalist, writing newspaper columns, feature stories, and short fiction for regional and national publications. Her novels are primarily mysteries, with an occasional mainstream novel thrown into the mix.
Miller is the recipient of the Page Edwards Short Story Award for her story Maybe Someday and the New York Library Best Books for Teens Award for her nonfiction book, Coping with Weapons And Violence In School and On Your Streets. Her mystery, Doubletake, was honored as the Best Mystery by the Texas Association of Authors. She took first place in the short story and screenwriting competition at the Houston Writer’s Conference and was a semi-finalist at Sundance for her script “A Question of Honor.” She was also a semi-finalist in the Chesterfield Screenwriting Competition with the adaptation of Open Season, the first book in the Seasons Mystery Series.
When not writing, Miller loves to play on stage and play in her garden. She lives in Texas with her dog and three cats. The cats rule.
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FIRST: $50 Amazon gift card
+ signed copies of the first three books in the series.
SECOND: Signed copies of the first three books in the series.
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Murder’s Legacy: Cover Reveal & Pre-Order Book Blitz

Murder’s Legacy

A Tori Winters Mystery, Book 2

By Anita Dickason

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!

Mystery / Women Sleuths

Publisher: Mystic Circle Books

Coming February 16, 2023

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Secrets that defy time!

An inconceivable disaster brings Tori Winters’s plans for the historic house she inherited to a traumatic standstill. A section of the escape tunnel built by her great-grandfather, a notorious Dallas gangster, has collapsed. Within the rubble, there is a gruesome discovery. A skeleton with a bullet hole in the skull.

The shocking cave-in triggers an ominous scheme to condemn her property as accusations arise that the tunnel is dangerous. Embattled, Tori soon discovers that more than the destruction of the house is on the line. It seems she can’t escape the past. It keeps clawing its way into her life with deadly consequences.

Who hides in the shadows with a motive for murder? And … is Tori the target?

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Award-winning Author Anita Dickason is a twenty-two-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department. She served as a patrol officer, undercover narcotics detective, advanced accident investigator, tactical officer, and first female sniper on the Dallas SWAT team.

Anita writes about what she knows, cops and crime. Her police background provides an unending source of inspiration for her plots and characters. Many incidents and characters portrayed in her books are based on personal experience. For her, the characters are the fun part of writing as she never knows where they will take her. There is always something out of the ordinary in her stories.

In Anita’s debut novel, Sentinels of the Night, she created an elite FBI Unit, the Trackers. Since then, she has added three more Tracker crime thrillers, Going Gone!, A u 7 9, and Operation Navajo, which are not a series and can be read in any order, and Deadly Business, a crime thriller.

As a Texas author, many of Anita’s books are based in Texas, or there is a link to Texas. When she stepped outside of the Tracker novels and wrote Not Dead and the Tori Winters Mysteries series, she set them in the small Texas communities of Meridian and Granbury, respectively.

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Tori Winters Series tote bag + personalized coffee mug (US only; ends midnight, CST, 2/9/2023)

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Find the Moon: Blitz and Giveaway

 

FIND THE MOON By Beth Fehlbaum

Young Adult / Social Issues / Family Issues
Publisher: Progressive Rising Phoenix Press
Pages: 298 pages
Expected Publication Date: January 10, 2023
For as long as she can remember, Kylie Briscoe’s been searching for the moon even though she has no idea why it soothes her. Placed in an impossible situation by her mother, Kylie cries for help. It brings rescuers and a new life, but it feels more like a death sentence when she is separated from her three-year-old sister Aliza, the only person Kylie’s ever really loved.
Now she’s in tiny Patience, Texas, with her eccentric potty-mouthed grandmother, ever-patient stargazing grandfather, an uncle who reminds her a lot of a cop who terrified her during a drug bust, a herd of Norwegian Dwarf goats, their “guard donkeys,” and three canine roommates occupying Kylie’s former nursery.
When the authorities make a mistake that could cost her everything, Kylie must decide whether to tell the truth-all of it-in order to save herself and her sister.
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Pre-order a copy of Find the Moon and enter the author’s giveaway! Three lucky winners will win a $50 Amazon Gift Card, signed set of THE PATIENCE TRILOGY, and signed copy of BIG FAT DISASTER. Ends 12/30/2022. Visit Beth’s website for more information and to enter!
Beth Fehlbaum is the author of the young adult novels Find the Moon, Big Fat Disaster (on the Spirit of Texas-High School Reading List, 2014-2015), Courage in Patience, Hope in Patience (A YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers), and Truth in Patience. With Dr. Matt E. Jaremko, Beth co-wrote the creative nonfiction book, Trauma Recovery: Sessions with Dr. Matt. She is a high school English teacher. 
Authenticity, calling out hypocrisy, and finding one’s voice are frequent themes in Beth’s work, and they are absolutely essential themes in her life, as well. Beth has a B.A. in English, minor in secondary education, and an M.Ed. in reading. Beth is in-demand as an author-panelist, having presented/appeared at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference, the American Library Association’s annual conference, YALSA, N.C.T.E./ALAN, and numerous YA book festivals. She’s a member of The Author’s Guild, SCBWI, Romance Writers of America, and the Texas Federation of Teachers.  She loves doing school visits and meeting teens, teachers, and librarians! 
Beth lives in the woods of East Texas in a house on a slice of family acreage. The home was built by her family over one very hot humid summer, a task she wishes never to repeat again. This sanctuary-of-sorts is lined by pine trees, and the woods are inhabited by raccoons, possums, and feral cats. All of these creatures appear to consider Beth their cat-food-providing goddess. There is no place she would rather be.
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