In this fifth installment of the short story mystery series, Cat works to find a missing Chinese girl who came to the United States on a work/study program and disappeared into thin air.
An informant takes a big risk. Nola is put in danger. The child of a prominent country club women has her parentage questioned. Someone from Gus Black’s past shows up at the hotel.
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For those of you who haven't started reading this series, this book,
June Green Leaves of Deceit, is a good place to jump in. There's
enough back story so you won't feel lost.
Of course, it's best to start with January Black Ice. The characters
reappear. Problems grow. Relationships blossom.
around 20,000 words.
They're clean mysteries
set in a small town in Ohio
most of the time.
January through September books are out now. I'm working on
October now. I hope to have that one out to you by the end of the year.
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I love the Florida Keys, so Lost Key by Chris Niles grabbed my attention by its location only. It’s the far-fetched story of a sad woman hiding from life on a boat in the Keys. She gets involved with helping to save the marina from a hungry land developer with no morals. Sunken treasure, people falling overboard, double crossing, and Al Capone all come into play. I really liked the dog, Whiskey.
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Vision and Verse does not store any personal information like email addresses, home addresses, etc. We do not give any information to third parties. And cookies? We eat cookies.
VISION AND VERSE DISCLAIMER
Note:
Vision and Verse does not store any personal information like email addresses, home addresses, etc. We do not give any information to third parties. And cookies? We eat cookies.
Dr. Laura Martin, Chief Extraterrestrial Life Scientist at The Touchstone Institute of Oceanographic Research, noticed troubling but subtle changes in the Atlantic Ocean. Before she could make sense of it all, her longtime assistant abruptly walked out. Laura hired young, handsome Scott Conner to be her personal assistant. Mayhem ensued, mainly because of Zara, the mermaid/siren/monster in the basement of the Touchstone Institute, who eyed on Scott as her possible mate in a plot for total domination of planet Earth.
“The Touchstone Institute of Oceanographic Research is the most fantastic, exhilarating place on the planet to work. It is high energy, exciting, sometimes maddening, often frightening, heart pounding work. It’s not a job. It’s a lifetime commitment. It gets in your blood. It grabs you by the throat and possesses you, body and soul. And it is work. If you’re not prepared to work your ass off day in and day out, weekends, holidays, your birthday, and your mamma’s birthday, leave now.”
From an Amazon review:
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Amazon Buy Link:
Sea Witch https://tinyurl.com/y7dkbt5q
The planet’s leading authority on alien lifeforms teams up with a brilliant young scientist in this tale of what happens when the mermaid locked in the basement escapes. 2.99 or Free on KU. #scifi #fantasy #mermaids
Get this book. Find a comfy seat. And strap yourself in for an exciting ride. A man is walking along the beach in Maine. He sees a lump on the beach ahead. As he gets closer, he realizes the lump is the body of a sea creature and it’s still alive. But barely. He calls an ambulance.
A taut, exciting tale of rescue and humanity, this well-written book will have you believing in, and liking, the merfolk who live underneath.
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Sounds like a spicy Regency romance,
doesn’t it? Nothing so exciting.
But I am very happy
to have reached the end
of my novella series,
all 6 adventures of
Giovanni In Med School
Writing a series is nothing new. Authors regularly cranked out books in on-going installments,but with the growing popularity of self-publishing, the pressure is on to release books more frequently. When I was between jobs as an adjunct professor, I could manage a book a year. But I went to full-time work, that year stretched to two.
Well, 5 years later, I finished 6 novellas. Poor Giovanni has had to deal with zombies, witches, voodoo curses, werewolves, vampires, and hospital bureaucracy! It was a fun series to write. Novellas lend themselves to action packed stories because the pace is condensed. Comedy works well because dialogue can be short with one-line quips. In Giovanni’s case, a lot of screaming as he ran through the hospital pursued by zombies, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and co-workers!
Not only did I get to have fun torturing my hero, I got to explore ideas in many new creative ways. This series became as much the creation of the co-workers who inspired it as I worked to include them in the stories and as they suggested new challenges for poor Gio. A friend of a friend contributed illustrations, another friend created the covers, and my brother recorded the audio version. The series ended up being a chance for a lot of people to try something new, something different!
But the novellas did not end up being easier to write and certainly not faster! I have gotten much better at writing in layers. Get the first ideas down and add layers. The draft doesn’t even have to be a formal outline, but I do find a chapter list essential to keep track of plot lines and manage the pacing needed to build up to the key scenes. You don't want everyone’s action to hit during the scene and you don’t want to forget any additional character’s plot line, leaving them hanging!
Novellas are a lot like old movie serials. Even if they are a stand-alone story, they should entice the reader into the next installment. However, I find the cliff-hanger annoying, so I tried for a clear beginning, middle, and end in each novella. After a while though, I had to leave story threads hanging until the next episode because the overall story arc took more than a hundred pages to explain, then wrap up. Even a pantser is probably gonna need extensive notes to remember who did what and when.
One area that requires as much work as a full-length book includes research. Any story with any complexity means hitting up the internet or library to verify all the details. Beside looking up decomposition, I had to learn about assorted diseases and routine medical practices. And because I was writing about zombies, I especially had to learn about voodoo. It’s important when dealing with a culture outside your own to know enough not only to sound credible, but to write with respect.
There’s not much room for more than action and dialogue in a shorter format, so description is both easier and harder. Setting and character may be confined to a single sentence, so the challenge of developing characters with depth and avoiding inconsistent behavior becomes even harder. The whole thing can start to feel more like an outline than a fully fleshed story. You may not have room to explain motivation, but you still don’t want simplistic stereotype characters either. This is one area I definitely needed the whole series to address!
In the end, my average was still about a hundred pages a year, same as in my full-length works. Life has a way of interrupting the best laid plans. In the past 5 years, I’ve changed jobs twice, moved three times, and then of course, there was the pandemic. You might think you can run the vacuum and write a chapter, but it’s hard to come up with the words when you’re trying to remember if you filed a report and or turned off the stove. So for my next book, I’m planning a true stand-alone in 2 years. And now I have a body of work to stay current - several bodies in fact! 😂
About Giovanni In Med School -
Giovanni dreams of becoming a doctor. But he’s finding medical school has some unexpected challenges! You think anatomy is tough? Try zombies, ghosts, werewolves, and roving voodoo curses!
That’s just the beginning of Giovanni ln Med School as he grapples with classes, labs, AND the hidden secrets where the twisted worlds of the supernatural and medical science collide. Get all 6 of Giovanni’s adventures in this spell-binding, side-splitting collection you won’t be able to put down!
Available in ebook at https://books2read.com/b/bwaory
About the Author -
Kathy Bryson is the award-winning author of tongue-in-cheek fantasy that ranges from leprechauns to zombies. She’d like to say she’s climbed tall mountains, rappelled off cliffs, and saved small children, but actually she tends to curl up and read, is a life-long advocate of Ben & Jerry’s, and caters to spoiled cats. She works regularly with student writing, so she can claim to have saved a few term papers.
Belterra https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0072F88NM
The bottom green cover was the original Belterra cover. The yellow one, the current Belterra cover, speaks to the romantic fantasy story of lovers from different parts of their world who fall in love despite warnings and admonition from everyone. Is their journey together easy?
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In this fourth installment in the Cat Collier Short Story Mystery Series, a dear, old friend comes up missing and Cat Collier must scramble to find her before it's too late.
A powerful enemy resurfaces and claims responsibility for a personal attack on Cat's family.
Nola relives Trent's murder.
Carter proposes...again.
Mary Catherine Collier, also known at Cat, started at the bottom of the ladder in the newspaper business. Literally the bottom. She wrote obituaries in the basement of the Heaton Valley Herald in a small town in northeastern Ohio.
But what she really wanted to do with her life was open her own investigation service business.
The Cat Collier mysteries have been called a cross between Nancy Drew and Mike Hammer. As the author of the now nine-book series, I've always thought her more as a cross between Jessica Fletcher and Jessica Jones.
The Cat Collier Mysteries are written as a serial series. It is best if you beginning with January Black Ice. Characters from the first book pop up in others. Problems... grow.
These books are short, easy reads. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I've enjoyed writing them. I am working on October Masquerade now and hope to have it out to you by the end of 2021, leaving November Chill and December Wish for 2022.
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 |
VISION AND VERSE DISCLAIMER
Note:
Vision and Verse does not store any personal information like email addresses, home addresses, etc. We do not give any information to third parties. And cookies? We eat cookies.
VISION AND VERSE DISCLAIMER
Note:
Vision and Verse does not store any personal information like email addresses, home addresses, etc. We do not give any information to third parties. And cookies? We eat cookies.
Fate rubs its hands together with glee after playing a cruel joke on them this time by placing them on different continents, twenty years apart.
Nicole was born in Ohio. She doesn't remember her past life. She had a career, got married, and was later widowed. Richard entered life twenty years later in Britain and became an actor.
But fate cannot keep them apart. What they have is more than love. They're eternal soulmates.
When they finally meet in Albuquerque, they remember their love and feel overwhelming joy, but the twenty-year age difference plants the painful thorns of doubt, worry, and fear. Their unlikely but undeniable love pulls them closer and closer, while careers, family, and other relationships pushes them farther and farther apart.
The ten-year period they spend together in this lifetime takes them on many exciting adventures from beautiful New Mexico, across the Atlantic to England, Ireland, Italy, and Aruba. Nicole and Richard have an incredibly strong connection, but they must face not only happiness and joy but the dark side of life and love as well.
Come. Start the adventure with Richard and Nicole, where everything changes, but love remains the same.
Are you ready?
Amazon Buy Link: https://tinyurl.com/yag286vn
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