Friday, February 22, 2019

BOOK: Red Sarah by Carol Ann Kauffman


Sarah is a beautiful redhead who works for a special agency that fixes broken timelines and rescues historically significant people who are in trouble. 

She has a special set of skills that allow her to 'tap' someone out of a dangerous situation. Her present assignment is to find and rescue a prince whose son eliminates hunger and disease on his island nation. 

“Save the Prince; save the King; and save the Reds. In doing so, Red Sarah may just save herself, who knows, but what might be the cost? Moving from modern day wisecrackery to a time of romance long ago, Carol Ann Kauffman’s tale is filled with majesty and bravery. This time travel story is a gift for all.” - Amazon Review 



“Sarah has one job and that is to rescue Crown Prince Lucas of Mist from captivity in a dungeon. Yet everything is not as it seems and will Sarah be able to stop an upcoming war? 
This was an interesting book about time travel and trying not to disrupt the time continuum. I liked Sarah and it was interesting on where her and Lucas ended up.” 
-Amazon Review  




Excerpt:


Chapter One

Look What I Found in the Dungeon



Sarah approached the lifeless figure huddled on the floor. The prisoner was shackled to the wall in the small, dark, damp cell. She reached down toward his throat to make sure he was still alive.
“No,” he growled as he pulled away from her.
“Shh,” whispered Sarah. “I come to help you, not to hurt you. But you must be quiet. I cannot be detected in here.”
“They will kill you… or worse,” he whispered, “for trying to help me. I am not some poor unfortunate soul. Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Yes, I do. You are Crown Prince Lucas of the Mist Kingdom in the highland of LaMere. Let me touch your neck.” 
He moved toward her as much as he could. 
She gently touched his bearded neck. “You are very warm, Prince Lucas. I fear you have the fever.”
“I am Prince Lucas, yes, but not the Crown Prince. My eldest brother Marcus is the Crown Prince and heir to the throne of the Mist Kingdom. I wield no power, here or in the highland. If you help me, I can do nothing for you in return. Leave this rotten stink hole at once. You only put yourself in extreme danger. There is nothing you can do for me.”
“Oh, really?” Sarah laughed as she put a small flask to his lips. He sipped, then swallowed and sighed.
“Ahh, good. Thank you,” he whispered. “What is that?”
“Herb and honey infused whiskey. It will induce a deep and heavy sleep. If you are chained to the wall in here, you may as well get some rest.” Sarah gave him more of the strong, sweet liquid. “Sleep now, Prince Lucas. I will return tomorrow night, when the guards are fast asleep. I will bring you bread and cheese. Is there something else you crave?”

“Freedom from these bloody chains. A bath. Warmth. Clothing. Sunshine. Strawberries.”

“Strawberries, I can do. And maybe something for the fever.”
“Why? Why do you chance danger to bring me real food and medicine?” Lucas eyed her warily.
“Because you need to regain your strength if I am to help you escape.”
“Escape?” squealed Lucas with a surprisingly hearty laugh for a man in his depleted condition. “Are you daft?”
“Shh,” whispered Sarah. “Be quiet.”
Lucas nodded.
“You have quite the sense of humor, lovely one,” whispered Lucas. “I am chained to the wall in a filthy dungeon in the miserable, hellish depths of Marlow Castle. There is no escape for me. And where would I go? I am too weak to even make it to the drawbridge, let alone up the rugged terrain of the mountainside. I am alone. My people have abandoned me. And, in case you did not notice, this cell is locked.”
“So then… how did I get in here?” Sarah smiled.
The prince looked around in confusion.
“Now, close your eyes.”
Lucas closed his eyes.
Sarah disappeared.

The next night, Sarah appeared in the locked cell once again. “Is there anyone in here who is hungry for real food?” she whispered to the sleepy prince.
“Ahh, there you are!” He smiled at her. “When I awoke refreshed from my deep and restful sleep, I was not sure if you were real or simply a lovely vision of my imagination.”
“I assure you, I am real. Here,” she handed him a small cloth pouch with berries and pieces of bread and cheese and a flask of water. 
“I am most grateful,” said Lucas, “although I do not know why you do this.” Lucas lifted the cloth pouch to his nose and inhaled. “Smells wonderful.” He picked a strawberry from the pouch and ate it. “This is the best thing I have tasted since...since…”


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RED SARAH!



Wednesday, February 20, 2019

INTERVIEW: Supernatural Horror Crime Thriller Author Suzi Albracht


Suzi Albracht
Bowie, Maryland
USA 


Good morning, Suzi, and welcome back to Vision and Verse, the site that loves art and books and the people who write them. What have you written?
An OBX Haunting Series:
A Love Haunting
The Siren of Diamond Shoals

The Devil’s Due Collection:
Death Most Wicked
The Devil’s Lieutenant
Scorn Kills

Coming Soon:
The Ghost Fixer
The Reluctant Angel of Death



What is your favorite genre to write?
I have two favorites – Supernatural Horror Crime Thrillers and Paranormal Romance/Ghost Novels. The first one allows me to be very, very bad. And the second one, allows me to love like I have never loved before. The funniest part is that in the first one, my characters love to swear and mutter outrageous things. So when I switch to writing the second genre, I have to find other ways to express pain when a character stubs his toe on a doorjamb. 

I have two books in the works, one for each of my genres.


Favorite food.
Since I live in Maryland that has to be steamed crabs with Old Bay Seasoning and served with clarified butter and fat onion rings. Oh my, I am so hungry now and it won’t be crab season for months. But we did find a new place for crabs this year off I-70, do you think they’ll have crabs? Maybe from Louisiana? 

Tea or coffee?
Neither, I am a Pepsi girl, totally. Been one since I was a baby. My mother used to put Pepsi in my bottle. I’m sipping on one right now. With lots and lots of ice. 


Pizza or ice cream?
Neither really get me going but if I have to make a choice, I would say Blue Bunny Ice Cream Sandwiches. They are the creamiest you have ever had. Plus they have these individual Salted Caramel Pretzel Bunny Snacks… Yummy.

Oh, Suzi! I love those little Blue Bunny Salted Caramel Pretzel ice cream squares. I hide this in the freezer under the Brussel sprouts. Wine or beer or soda?
Strictly Pepsi. Not the other one… coke. However, I do like a creamy, super cold Pina Colada topped with a bright red, crisp cherry. Mostly, I’ll have them on vacation. On those same vacations, I’ve been known to have Mimosas for brunch.


Where would you like to visit?
If it is somewhere I have never been, then I choose Hawaii. But if it is a favorite vacation spot, I choose Key West. If you haven’t been, you should definitely go. Beautiful beaches, awesome restaurants, interesting people, a cool art district. There is so much to see and do that you have to come back again, and again. 




Key West is great. And you're right, it's never the same place twice. I actually like Key West and other parts of Florida better than Hawaii. 
Favorite musical artist.  Do you listen to music when you write?  
What?
I don’t listen to music. I normally listen the television while I write. Even then, I only half listen to what is on. When I write, I tend to lose myself in my words. So, if I am writing about my favorite ghost guy in the Outer Banks, I’m down there beside him with my toes in the sand and the sun kissing my face. If he has popped into his living wife’s condo because he desperately needs to see her even if he can’t touch her or hold her… or even let her know that he is there. In that moment, I’m there too, holding my breath, praying that he’ll be able to walk away because he has no choice but to walk away.

What makes you laugh?
Irony makes me laugh. I love things that start out in one direction and then twist around and go in completely different direction. If I giggle, it’s good. If I burst out with an unexpected laugh, it’s great. 





Here is a scene from A Love Haunting that shows you what I mean. Jordan, the newly dead ghost, is at the beach with his friend, Luke, a skateboarding surfer angel.

Luke transported us to a section of beach where the surf was ‘tubular.’ And then while Luke went to find his nirvana, I put his backpack down and set up my umbrella and chair. I settled back to watch him and the rest of the surfers, both dead and living. Yes, there were others like us. No one came to talk to me, butI could tell which ones didn’t have a heartbeat.

Not ten minutes in, I was standing a few feet away from my chair, looking at the waves crashing on shore when I heard someone huffing and puffing. I looked in that direction and saw this rather largewoman waddle right up to my chair and umbrella. She took a quick glance around as if looking for the owner. I noticed right away that the woman’s eyes were like tiny beads of greed and sweat dripped off her brow. It came to me that I had seen that look before. In the third grade, Byron Reilly was the class bully. He always got that look when he was snatching some kid’s lunch money.

Holy crap, she’s going to take my stuff.

I hurried over and touching the backpack with my foot, I put my hands on the umbrella and chair when the woman was looking the other way. I have to say the look on her face when she turned to grab her newly found booty was hilarious. Her eyes were shining like new pennies under eyebrows that looked like McDonald’s arches, andshe was licking her lips. The woman was so eager she tripped over her own feet inches away from my chair and landed on her bum. I cringed because I didn’t know if she would crush my now invisible chair. Anyway, she narrowly missed it. I watched her scramble to get to her feet, dust herself off and head back to wherever she had come from.

Whew! I won’t forget that lesson.

After that near disaster, I decided I better start acting like an octopus with extra tentacles. I pulled my chair closer to the umbrella,so they were abutted against each other, andLuke’s backpack was shoved underneath, touching the chair’s legs. Don’t ask me how but I managed to sit in the chair without losing my death grip on either the umbrella or chair.

Looking out at the water, my eyes caught sight of Luke sitting on his board, laughing his ass off. I gave him a thumbs up. Then I guess the Devil got a hold of me for a second because I grabbed his backpack andheld it out as if I was about to toss it out onto the sand. Luke began to frantically wave at me to stop.

I grinned until I noticed that lady was heading toward my chair again. Shoving the backpack under my chair, I plopped myself down and held onto everything like my life depended on it. I could hear Luke’s chortles the entire time. I began to wonder if I was ever going to be good at this whole dead experience.
 

Favorite work of art or sculpture.
I love Monet. His work makes me feel as if I am floating.


How old were you when you started writing?
I was very young. Probably six. I kept all my little stories to myself and hid them under my bed. I didn’t want to share them with anyone because they were my personal thoughts put into story form. I wish I still had those stories. It would be fun to write about them today. I wonder what little me had to say.

Do you plan out your book with outlines and notecards? Or just write?
I am pretty much a free-spirit index card chick. For me every book begins when the story pops into my head. I could be anywhere when that happens, so I keep index cards with me at all times. Whenever I think of another piece of the story, I jot it down and add it to the stack of cards. Sometimes, that addition is a scene, sometimes, descriptions of characters. I keep adding to my stack of cards until I feel like I need to get something on paper. At that point in the process, I have a form I made that includes beats and plot points. I insert the contents of the cards where they make sense onto the form. Then I add in more scenes until my head is spinning from the desire to write the actual story. After that, I write the scenes I listed and wing it for the rest until I have a completed script.


Describe your perfect evening.
I love the beach. A lovely evening would begin and end with my guy holding my hand. We would start with dinner at a restaurant on the beach, preferably at a table with a view of the ocean. Better still, at a table on the deck. After dinner, we’d enjoy a nice stroll on the beach with shoes in hand. The evening would end with us sitting closely together in beach chairs, listening to the waves roll in and wonder what cool adventures might await us.

Where do you get your inspiration?
I am very sensitive to my surroundings. My imagination is stimulated by people, places, things. I like to people watch and imagine what has happened to those people earlier in the day or year. I love to visit places and imagine people who may have lived there at one time. Sometimes, even a small, seemingly insignificant item such as a worn dress or highly polished old car speaks to me. My OBX Haunting Series came when I heard about T.L. Daniels. He had been shot and killed at The Black Pelican in the Outer Banks. I read about several rumors written on how it all went down and felt he got a raw deal. I wanted to right that wrong if I could. Anyway, from there, I came up with Jordan, my newbie ghost, and Luke, my skateboarding, surfer angel who’s favorite word is ‘Dude’ and the others. T.L. is not the lead character but he plays a major role.

What do you do when you get a writer's block?
I seldom get writer’s block, I get writer’s procrastination at times. But when I do get stuck, I interview my new characters. I ask them things like what they think of the story and how they feel about the other characters. It’s always surprising what they come up with.

Who is your favorite author?
To be honest, that would be me at this time. I am consumed with writing. And to be honest, I love my books and my characters. If you happen to read my books Death Most Wicked and The Devil’s Lieutenant, there is a character who I relate to in many, many ways. If you read my books, look for Mikael Ruskoff. The truth is that I fall in love with almost all of my characters. They don’t always do what I think they should do and some of them are not very nice at times, but I still love them. Even my villains were loved by their mothers. And they had their hearts broken at some time in their lives. Yes, when you meet them, they are at their worst, but they still hold pain inside them that pushes them to make those bad choices.

What would you do for a living if you weren’t a writer? 
That’s hard to say I have written all my life and I was a technical writer in my outside job. But there was one job that would pop into my mind from time to time. A forensic investigator. It’s probably the writer in me, but it would be interesting to try to connect the dots in a murder case and help bring closure to the family.



Who is the one person who has influenced your personal life the most and why?
I had two people. My mother’s father and the mother of one of my stepfathers. Both were kind people who treated me like I was precious. My grandfather would take me on train rides when I was little. We visited all the zoos all over Illinois. It was always just he and I. And my step-grandmother always treated me as if I were her blood grandchild. She always had time for me. Whenever I am nice to someone else, I think it is her, at my elbow nudging me along. Both of them loved me unconditionally in the short time we had together.  

If you could sit down and have a conversation with ONE person, living or dead, real or fictional, who would it be and why?
Now this will sound sad but it’s really not, just wishful thinking. I would like to talk to my father. He and my mother divorced when I was six months old. My mother had a world class talent in holding grudges so I was never allowed to even meet him even though he lived just across the river in Iowa. Thanks to the internet, I now know that he died in 1987, so all chances of meeting him are gone. I think it would be cool to just chill and chat over Pina Coladas.

What advice would you give someone who aspired to be a writer?
Not only do you need to be open to learning new information and new ways of completing tasks, you need two more assets - patience and a thick skin. Patience because everything seems to take too much time. You must learn to be patient or your head will explode. And a thick skin because not everyone will think you are as great as your loved ones do. And there are a lot of mean people in the writing world. Just ignore them and be yourself and you will be fine. 



As always, Suzi, it's been a pleasure. Give us a peek at those new books when they come out. Hugs.

Do you have some links for us to follow you?
             My Amazon author page is author.to/SuziAlbracht
·                  My FB page is https://facebook.com/SuziAlbracht
·                  My handle on Twitter and Instagram is @SuziAlbracht

          Individual book links:
·                     Books2read.com/ALoveHaunting
·                     Books2read.com/TheSirenofDiamondShoals
·                    Books2read.com/DeathMostWicked
·                    Books2read.com/TheDevilsLieutenant
·                    Books2read.com/ScornKills

          Suzi Albracht
               SuziAlbracht@aol.com

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

BOOK: Book Review, One Magick Yule by Teresa Keefer






Amazon Buy Link:



Dear Gentle Readers,

One Magic Yule was a wonderful little holiday gem of a story. Taylor is an author who prefers to live in an isolated Kentucky cabin. She is also a witch who dabbles in herbs and kinetic energy, talks to animals, and understands their response. A mysterious stranger moves into the abandoned farmhouse across the field. What happens next is nothing short of magic. Teresa Keefer has a talent for weaving great characters and great locations together into a lovely holiday tale. I highly recommend. Check it out.

Hugs,
Carol

Monday, February 18, 2019

ART: MCP Jewels of Winter Orchid Show



Dear Gentle Readers,

For those of you who love orchids, the annual Jewels of Winter Orchid Show is presently at Mill Creek Park Fellows Riverside Gardens. Displayed in the beautiful Davis Center, the orchid theme this year in Orchids and Steel. 

Artifacts from the area's once thriving steels mills of the Mahoning Valley are interspersed among the orchid blooms.



 I thought this years displays were particularly well done. Delicate orchid blooms set against rusted steel fencing and galvanized tubs turned into bubbling fountains surrounded by tropical plantings were unexpectedly stunning.





A walk-in orchid repotting clinic was held on February 9th from 10:00 a.m. until noon, and will be held again on February 19th from 5:30 to 7:30 in the evening.
They use a really nice potting mix with fertilizer already in it, so you can feed your orchid with it's regular tap water.




Bring your orchid in for an expert repotting, and maybe get some advice on nudging that little beauty to bloom! The cost included orchid mix, pot, loving care, and free advice. Staring at $3.00 Three plant limit, please.





The Jewels of the Winter Orchid Show runs through Tuesday, March 3rd.
If you're in the area, and could use a little stroll that combines the spirit of the tropics with good, old, hard steel in the comfort of the beautiful Davis Center inside Fellows Riverside Gardens in Mill Creek Park, you will enjoy this display. 



Hours are Tuesday through Sunday,
10:00 a.m. through 5:00 p.m.
Closed Mondays.

Mill Creek MetroParks
P.O. Box 596
Canfield, OH 44406
330-702-3000




Sunday, February 17, 2019

SCHEDULE: February 18 - 22, 2019


Schedule
Mon., Feb. 18 - ART: Jewels of Winter,
Mill Creek Park's Annual Orchid Show
Tues., Feb. 19 - BOOK: Book Review,
One Magick Yule by Teresa Keefer
Wed., Feb. 20 - INTERVIEW:
Supernatural Horror Crime Author
Suzi Albracht
Thurs., Feb. 21 - ART: 
Russian Artist Wassily Kandinsky
Fri. Feb. 22 - BOOK:
Red Sarah by Carol Ann Kauffman