Book blurb:
English actress Jenna Sutton and American artist Guy Sinclair first meet
when they jointly inherit a house on the west coast of Ireland. Curious
about their unknown benefactress and why they are considered 'family',
they discover surprising links to the original owners of the house.
They
soon unravel an intriguing tale of a 19th century love affair. At the
same time, their mutual attraction grows, despite personal reasons for
not wanting romantic involvements at this point in their lives.
A
local property agent appears to have her own agenda concerning the
house while other events pull Jenna and Guy back to separate lives in
London and America. Friction builds over their decision about the house
and its contents.
Will their Irish inheritance eventually drive them apart – or bring them together?
My review:
Two people from different parts of the world (English actress Jenna
Sutton and American artist Guy Sinclair) inherit a house in Ireland. At
first glance, they aren’t related and the decision to sell the house and
split the money is the simplest and most logical application to their
joint Irish inheritance.
But curiosity plays a big part in what unfolds next. The house is
shrouded in mystery, most of it undocumented. Jenna and Guy go through
their families’ history to determine their connection…for these two were
attracted to each other as soon as they met at the airport, knowing
about their ancestors and how they are related was necessary.
Jenna and Guy’s attraction, reactions, dreams, and even unreasonableness
at times were real. This is a story that can happen and because of this
I couldn’t put the book down. I had to understand the link between
them, how they overcome life’s obstacles that separated them, be it
preconceived ideas about one another or real problems.
Plus there’s the added advantage of reading about and falling in love with Ireland.
Totally worth the five stars and even more. Again, Paula Martin delivers and exceeds expectations.
Available from: Amazon B&N Smashwords
Book Summary:
Jessie Workings was no better for the battle upon returning home from
his fourth tour. Having had to deal with the consequences of the Afghan
war, his emotional stability was called into question by his commanding
officer, leading to some much needed rest and relaxation, albeit in the
form of a mandated psychological evaluation. There was , however, a
bright side of being forced to come home and deal with the battlefield
that was his mind. Mavis.
The memory of Mavis VanHorn had warmed him during those bitter nights on
tour and now he would see his high school sweetheart once again.
Jessie’s only concern was his inability to provide her with what she
wanted more than anything — a deeper, and more committed, relationship
with him. For years, he’d skated by with offering only scraps of his
love but this time, he wonders whether it will be enough.
As he deals with confronting his darkest guilt and sorting through his
feelings on returning to the Marine Corps., all that he’s ever really
known, can he explore a more meaningful relationship with Mavis? If he
can’t, will Mavis stand for continued exclusion from his life after all
these years? In answering these questions, Jessie struggles with the
most difficult battle he’s ever faced. The one for his heart.
Buy links:
• Author page: http://smpauthors.wordpress.com/meet-aliza-mann/
• Book page: http://smpauthors.wordpress.com/meet-aliza-mann/disarmed-by-aliza-mann/
Evil Stalks the Night-Revised Author’s Edition (available also from Amazon.com in print) is special to me for many reasons. It was my first published novel in 1984 and as it comes out again on June 1, 2012, rereleased from Damnation Books for the first time in nearly thirty years, it’ll bring my over forty year writing career full circle. With its publication all fourteen, and one novella, of my old books will be out again for the first time in decades. Sure, it’s been a grueling, tedious two-and- a-half year job rewriting and editing these new versions but I’m thrilled it’s over. I have my babies reborn and out in the world again…and all in e books for the first time ever. Now, perfectionist that I am, I can finally move forward and write new stories.
I’ll start at the very beginning because, though Evil Stalks the Night was my first published novel, it wasn’t my first written one.
That first book was The Heart of the Rose. I began writing it after my only child, James, was born in late 1971. I was staying home with him, no longer going to college, not yet working full time, and was bored out of my skin. I read an historical romance one day I believed was horrible and thought I can do better than that!
So I got out my borrowed typewriter with the keys that stuck, my bottles of White-Out, carbon paper for copies, and started clicking away. I’d tentatively called that first book King’s Witch because it was about a 15th century healer who was falsely believed to be a witch but who was loved by Edward the Fourth. At the library, no computers or Internet back then, I did tedious research into that time in English history: the War of the Roses, the poverty, the civil and political strife between the Red (Lancasters) and White Rose (Yorks); the infamous Earl of Warwick and Edward the Fourth. Edward’s brother Richard the Third. A real saga. Well, all that was big back then. I was way out of my league, though. Didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I just wrote page after page, emotions high believing I could create a whole book. So naïve of me. Reading that old version now (a 1985 Leisure Books paperback) I have to laugh. Ironically, like that historical novel I’d thought in 1971 was so bad, it was pretty awful. That archaic language I’d used–all the rage back in the 80’s–sounds so stilted now. Yikes! Yet people, mainly women, had loved it.
And so my writing career began. Over 40 years ago now. Oh my goodness, where has the time gone? Flown away like some wild bird. It took me 12 years to get that first book published as I got sidetracked with a divorce, raising a son, getting a real job and finding the true love of my life and marrying him. Life, as it always seemed to do and still does, got in the way. The manuscript was tossed into a drawer and forgotten for a time.
Then years later I rediscovered it and decided to rewrite it; try again. I bundled up the revised pile of printed copy pages, tucked it into an empty copy paper box and took it to the Post Office. Plastered it with stamps. I sent it everywhere The Writer’s Market of that year said I could. And waited. Months and months and months. In those days it could take up to a year or more to sell a novel, shipping it here and there to publishers, in between revising and rewriting to please any editor that’d make suggestions or comments on how it could be better. Snail mail took forever, too, and was expensive. But eventually, as you shall see, it sold.
Now to Evil Stalks the Night.
In the meantime, as I waited for the mail, I’d written another book. Kind of a fictionalized look back at my childhood in a large (6 brothers and sisters) poor but loving family in the 1950’s and 60’s. I started sending that one out as well. Then one day an editor suggested that since my writing had such a spooky ambiance to it anyway, why didn’t I just turn the story into a horror novel…like Stephen King was doing? Ordinary people under supernatural circumstances. A book like that would sell easily, she said.
Hmmm. Well, it was worth a try, so I added something scary in the woods in the main character’s childhood past that she had to return to and face in her adult life, using some of my childhood and my young adult life–my heartbreaking divorce, raising my young son alone, my new love–as hers. It was more of a romantic horror when I’d finished, than a horror novel. I retitled it Evil Stalks the Night and began sending it out. That editor was right, it sold quickly to a mass market paperback publisher called Towers Publishing.
But right in the middle of editing Towers went bankrupt and was bought out by another publisher! What terrible luck, I remember brooding. The book was lost somewhere in the stacks of unedited slush in a company undergoing massive changes as the new publisher took over. I had a contract, didn’t know what to do and didn’t know how to break it. Heaven knows, I couldn’t afford a lawyer. My life with a new husband, my son and my minimum-wage assistant billing job was one step above poverty at times. In those days, too, I was so clueless how to deal with the publishing industry.
That was 1983, but luckily that take-over publisher was Leisure Books, now also known as Dorchester Publishing. A publisher that quickly became huge. Talk about karma.
As often as has happened to me over my writing career, though, fate stepped in and the Tower’s editor, before she left, who’d bought my book told one of Leisure’s editors about it and asked her to give it a read. She believed in it that much.
Out of the blue, in 1984, when I’d completely given up on Evil Stalks the Night, Leisure Books sent me a letter offering to buy it! Then, miracle of miracles, my new editor asked if I had any other ideas or books she could look at. I sent her The Heart of the Rose and, liking it, too, she also bought it in 1985; asking me to sex it up some, so they could release it as an historical bodice-ripper (remember those…the sexy knockoffs of Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss’s provocative novels?). It wasn’t a lot of money. A thousand dollar advance each and only 4% royalties on the paperbacks. But in those days the publishers had a huge distribution and thousands and thousands of the paperbacks were printed, sent to bookstores and warehoused. So 4% of all those books over the next couple of years did add up.
Thus my career began. I slowly, and like-pulling-teeth, sold ten more novels and various short stories over the next 25 years–as I was working full time, raising a family and living my hard-scramble life. Some did well, my Leisure and Zebra paperbacks, and some didn’t. Most of them, over the years, eventually went out of print.
And twenty-seven years later, when publisher Kim Richards Gilchrist at Damnation Books contracted my 13th and 14th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons, an apocalyptic end-of-days-novel, and The Woman in Crimson, a vampire book, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course–and all in ebooks for the first time ever) my 7 out-of-print paperbacks, including Evil Stalks the Night–I gave her a resounding yes!
Of course, I had to totally rewrite Evil Stalks the Nightfor the resurrected edition, as well as my other early novels, because I discovered my writing when I was twenty-something had been immature and unpolished; and not having a computer and the Internet had made the original writing so much harder. Also in those days, editors told an author what to change and the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. There were so many mistakes in those early books. Typos. Grammar. Lost plot and detail threads. In the rewrite I also decided to keep the time frame (1960-1984) the same. The book’s essence would have lost too much if I’d updated it.
As I finished the final editing I couldn’t help but reminisce about all the life changes I’ve had since I’d first began writing it so many years ago. Though it was actually published in 1984, I’d started writing it many years before; closer to 1978 or 1979. I’m as old as my Grandmother Fehrt, my mother’s mother and who the grandmother in the story was loosely based on, was back then. While I was first writing it so long ago, I was a young married woman with a small child holding down my first real job and trying to do it all. Now…my Grandmother, mother and father have all passed to the other side. Many other family and friends I’ve left behind, too. I miss them all, especially my mom and dad. It’s strange how revising my old books reminded me of certain times of my life. Some of the memories I hid from and some of them made me laugh or cry. This book, though, is the most autobiographical of all my novels as it contains details of my childhood, my devastating divorce, and what my life was like when I first met my second husband, Russell, who’s turned out to be my true love. We’ve been happily married for thirty-four years and counting. Ah, but how quickly the years have clicked by. Too quickly. I want to reach out, at times, and stop time. I want more. I have so much more life to live and many more stories to write.
So Evil Stalks the Night-Revised Author’s Edition republished by Damnation Books/Eternal Press will be out again for the first time in nearly thirty years on June 1, 2012, and I hope it’s a better book than it was in 1984. It should be…I’ve had over thirty more years of life and experiences to help make it so.
***
About Kathryn Meyer Griffith:
A writer for over 40 years I’ve had 14 novels, 1 novella and 7 short stories published with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, the Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press since 1984. And my romantic end-of-the-world horror novel THE LAST VAMPIRE-Revised Author's Edition was a 2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS FINALIST NOMINEE.
My books(all out again from Damnation Books and Eternal Press):Evil Stalks the Night, The Heart of the Rose, Blood Forge, Vampire Blood, The Last Vampire, Witches, The Nameless One short story, The Calling, Scraps of Paper, All Things Slip Away, Egyptian Heart, Winter's Journey, The Ice Bridge, Don't Look Back, Agnes novella, In This House short story, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons, The Woman in Crimson, The Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction) ***
Blurb:
Duty, love and passion take flight on the wings of destiny. Compelled by honor and duty, Night Ravenwood leaves his life on the sea to return home after his brother's death. As the new heir to Ravenwood Manor, he finds himself in an arranged marriage he doesn't want. When tragedy strikes the newlywed couple, Nights realizes he's in love with the beautiful and serene Satine. She vows to make Night understand his destiny is with her, meanwhile someone is willing to commit murder to keep them apart. Will love or murder shape the destiny of this union?
Blurb:
When her younger brother marries on her twenty-ninth birthday, food addict Sara Friedman drunkenly vows to three hundred wedding guests to find and marry her soul mate within the year. After her humiliating toast becomes a YouTube sensation, she permits a national morning show to chronicle her search. With the help of best friend Missy, she plunges head first into the shallow end of the dating pool.
Her journey leads her to question the true meaning of soul mates, as she decides between fulfilling her vow to marry before her thirtieth birthday and following her heart's desire. But before she can make the biggest decision of her life, Sara must begin to take her first steps towards recovery from her addiction to food.
Author Website: http://www.shellybellbooks.com
Blurb:
Kat Stanis always knew she wanted to be a doctor.
Davd Palty always knew he wasn't about to get truly involved with anyone.
The computer that runs the colony has other ideas for both of them.
When Kat is assigned by the head of the Enforcers to hunt down and return a 'shirker'-any colonist who tries to escape the computer's authority-she sets out to complete her assignment.
This shirker, Davd, a handsome and mysterious fellow enforcer, is more than she bargained for, and sparks fly when he turns the tables on her, capturing and kidnapping her away from all she knows.
Author Kathryn Meyer Griffith shares with us the back-story of Egyptian Heart an some other tidbits.
Over to you Kathryn :-D
****
Let me start with this: I have always loved ancient Egyptian stories since I was a child. I remember I wrote one of my first school papers at around eleven years old in pencil on the ancient Egyptians after dragging home an armful of musty smelling books from the library. I don’t recall exactly why I loved this particular time period and the people that lived in it but it might have had something to do with the movies The Ten Commandments (I was raised a Catholic), the horror mummy movies of the 1960’s and the early TV shows on Nefertiti and Cleopatra. I just had this affinity for the period.
It was February 1994 (I noted it on the outside of the manila folder where I keep a running book history on each novel) when I began Egyptian Heart. Originally I called it The Cursed Scarab. Later, I retitled it Egyptian Heart because I wanted it to more reflect the romance tale it had become.
I still had my agent, Lori Perkins, who’d sold four earlier novels for me to Zebra Books (Vampire Blood, 1991; The Last Vampire, 1992; Witches, 1993 and The Calling, 1994…after I’d sold my first three novels on my own to Leisure Books: Evil Stalks the Night, 1984: The Heart of the Rose, 1985; Blood Forge,1989) and she’d told me about a new romantic horror line that Silhouette was starting called the Shadows Line. They wanted to tap into the darker romantic paranormal market. Lori said they wanted the kind of story I wrote but with more romance. It was Silhouette after all. I’d been labeled as a horror writer from the get go, though all my novels blended genres; usually I wrote a romantic horror mixture with dashes of adventure, suspense and sometimes threw in a little history or mystery as well…but in those days the big publishers felt the need (and I think they still do) to squeeze a writer into one narrow slot. So I was a horror writer.
But by 1994 I’d lost my sweet editor at Zebra and a new one took her place...and over the next year he didn’t like anything I wrote for him and later that year Zebra unceremoniously dropped me and my latest book (Predator, a story about a dinosaur in Crater Lake…which never came out but still lingers like some weird ghost book in every computer on the global Internet) only six weeks away from going to the bookstore shelves. I’d begged the new editor not to call it Predator, bad title since there was a popular movie out of that name and it was nothing about a dinosaur, and the cover was awful, an empty boat on a lake…what!!! Having that book – my first ever – dumped like that was a crushing experience, let me tell you. I had a stack of finished, printed covers and had already done my final edits! I got to keep my advance but the book was officially dead. The new editor-that-didn’t-like-my-writing explained: “No one wants to read a book about a dinosaur.” And six months later Jurassic Park came out! The book is still sitting in a drawer somewhere and perhaps one day I’ll resurrect and finish it as well).
At that point, my agent wanted me to branch out so I wrote two manuscripts for the Silhouette Shadows Line or tried to. Egyptian Heart and Shadow Road (a romantic suspense about a woman truck driver driving a dangerous wintry route with a murderer on her tail, and a hitchhiker in her cab that she feels she’s falling in love with…and fears, at times, he’s the killer; which later I retitled and sold as Winter’s Journey). To make a long story short, Silhouette Shadows turned both down. Seems I had too much horror in them; not enough sex. I didn’t follow the formula. Sheesh. I’ve never liked depending too much on sex in any of my books or writing a book too predictable. The originality of the novel and the characters make the story for me.
After that my agent dropped me. Ah, the life of a writer.
So, then life (as it has many times in my 39 year writing career), family and job problems, and my other novels (I was into murder mysteries for years and sold two to Avalon Books), got in the way and Egyptian Heart and Shadow Road went into drawer hibernation until, oh, about 2004, when I rediscovered them, dug them out, rewrote them and began trying to sell them again. Sometimes, I’ve found, a book left alone in a dark cubbyhole ages like good wine. (Or sometimes it just turns to vinegar.)
Fast forward three years to 2007 and a new e-book (e-books still being considered a risky new-fangled craze at that time!) publisher called The Wild Rose Press contracted both and eventually a third called The Ice Bridge, a ghostly romantic murder mystery set on Mackinac Island, and published them. Good publisher. They treated me well. But in 2010 when I contracted my two newest novels, Before the End: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson (both romantic horror) my new publisher, Kim Richards Gilchrist at Damnation Books wanted to bring out all my old out-of-print novels again (going back to those early Leisure Books from the 1980’s) in print – and e-books for the first time ever. Seven old paperbacks. I’d rewrite them all, get new covers and they’d all live again. I was thrilled. And grateful. It would take a lot of work on both our parts but when we were done ALL my old novels would be in print again and in electronic form out in the world. I jumped right in.
Then when my two year contract (I was lucky, e-books still being new, it was only for two years; now most e-book publishers contract for five years or longer) ran out with The Wild Rose Press. I happily switched Egyptian Heart, Winter’s Journey, The Ice Bridge and a novella Don’t Look Back, Agnes to Eternal Press (Damnation Books sister company). Kim Richards, and her husband William, had just brought Realms of Fantasy Magazine into the fold, as well.
So. Egyptian Heart has had a very long history. Simply put, it’s a time travel paranormal romance set in the ancient times of Nefertiti and her heretic Pharaoh Akhenaton. It’s more romance than history, though I did a lot of research in 1994… originally for my 1994 Zebra horror paperback The Calling. I thought: why waste all this hard worked for research on just one novel? So I also used it for Egyptian Heart and an erotic short story, The Nameless One, one that Zebra had placed in their 1994 horror anthology Dark Seductions and now it’s available from Damnation Books.
The new cover for Egyptian Heart by Dawne Dominique is amazingly beautiful and Kim Richards herself was my editor. Thank you both.
So from a child’s love of ancient Egypt to the finished book, it’s been a long journey and goes to show all you writer’s out there that, yes, persistence does sometimes win out. And a good book never dies. It just ages like wine in a dark drawer.
I hope you’ll give Egyptian Heart a look and a read. The best way to describe it is through its blurb and so here it is:
Maggie Owen is a beautiful, spirited Egyptologist, but lonely. Even being in Egypt on a grant from the college she teaches at to search for an undiscovered necropolis she’s certain lies below the sands beyond the pyramids of Gizah doesn’t give her the happiness she’d hoped it would.
There’s always been and is something missing. Love.
Then her workmen uncover Ramose Nakh-Min’s ancient tomb and an amulet from his sarcophagus hurls her back to 1340 B.C – where she falls hopelessly in love with the man she was destined to be with, noble Ramose, who faithfully serves the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaton and his queen Nefertiti.
She’s fallen into perilous times with civil war threatening Egypt. She’s been mistaken for one of Ramose’s runaway slaves and with her light hair, jinn green eyes and fair skin she doesn’t fit in. Some say she’s magical and evil. Ramose’s favorite, Makere, tries to kill her.
The people, angry the Pharaoh has set his Queen aside and forced them to worship one god are rising up against him.
Maggie’s caught dangerously in the middle.
In the end, desperately in love, will she find a way to stay alive and with Ramose in ancient Egypt–and to make a difference in his world and history?
Because Maggie has finally found love. ***
And thank you for having me on your blog! Kathryn Meyer Griffith
A word about Kathryn Meyer Griffith, August 2011...
Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21 and have had fourteen (nine romantic horror, one historical romance and two mysteries) previous novels published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.
I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-three years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have two quirky cats, Sasha and Cleo, and the four of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die.
Novels and short stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith:
Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure, 1984; Damnation Books, July 2012)
The Heart of the Rose (Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition out Nov.7, 2010)
Blood Forge (Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out February 2012)
Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out July 2011)
The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out October 2010)
Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out April 2011)
The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;
Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out February 2011)
The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out October 2011)
Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)
Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in August 2011)
Winter’s Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in September 2011)
The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in November 2011)
Don’t Look Back, Agnes novella and bonus short story: In This House (2008; ghostly romantic short story out again from Eternal Press in January 2012)
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (Out from Damnation Books June 2010)
The Woman in Crimson (Out from Damnation Books September 2010)
J.R. Ward - AKA Jessica Bird - Knows how to draw an alpha male; the protectiveness, aggressiveness, and total departure from reality. This isn't a negative point, we all need someone like John Smith every now and then, if for nothing, then to remind us of our femininity.
But the pendulum switch between reaching for each other and then holding back grated on my nerves. The delay in consummating their relationship became obvious as a tool to lengthen the story.
Grace is everything a blue blooded lady of society is, except for her common sense. If you have a serial killer after you, and you've assigned a tenacious bodyguard to take care of you, one who lives with you in the house, then you don't go running in the park very early morning, ALONE. Grace needed a bodyguard but kept resisting the idea.
John Smith was flawless as the bodyguard. He was all muscles, dark history, sex-appeal,and scarred soul . However, some of his responses sounded childish, like two kids bickering. Did he get my heart beating faster? Oh, yes, and that's more than enough for me to like a hero.
The villain was obviously one of two, but I didn't have a problem there. The fact that I had to consider each then dismiss then consider again confused me enough that when the villain was revealed I wasn't offended.
So overall, the story was good, the characters had issues (then again perfect characters are boring,) and the ending was wrapped up nicely with a glorious promise of good things to come.
If it weren't for those prolonged moments of "will they do it? No they didn't, again" I would have given the story 4 stars.
Today I'm hosting Ann, the main character in Love Delivery by Penny Lockwood Ehrenkranz. However, before we meet Ann, I have a small announcement to make:
To one person who comments and leaves contact information, Penny Lockwood Ehrenkranz will
email a short romantic story, '"A Midsummer's Knight" At the end of the tour, she will choose
one grand prize winner, who will receive a copy of /Love Delivery/ in whichever eBook format
Hi everyone, my name is Ann. I’m the main character in Penny Lockwood Ehrenkranz’s contemporary romance, Love Delivery.
I’m the manager of a small independent donut shop, which is located not too far from my apartment. I enjoy living in the city because I don’t need a car to get around. I like being eco-friendly with the planet I live on.
Besides taking the bus where I need to go, I have a bicycle, which I ride but only sometimes. I have to admit, though, that riding the bike on the busy city streets is kind of scary to me. I would rather put my bike on the bus and go to one of our city parks where there are some really great bike paths. That way, I don’t have to worry about cars pulling out in front of me.
I had a good friend a few years back who was riding his bike in the city. He ended up in the hospital after a driver turned into him at a cross street. I’m guessing the driver didn’t see him, but my friend got a broken leg and arm out of the incident. He couldn’t ride his bike for a while. But, he’s braver than I am because he eventually got back on the bike, and he still rides everywhere.
I don’t eat meat for the same reason. There is so much energy that goes into making red meat, I’d rather eat the grains. I feel good about eating lower down on the food chain, but I have to admit I still eat fish. I can’t help myself. I tried being a strict vegetarian, but when I’d go out to eat with friends, I’d smell these yummy dishes they ordered, and I would want to have something other than my vegetarian meals. I do think, though, that restaurants have gotten better than they were, especially in the big cities.
One of my favorite things to do is look in my fridge and see what I can create from leftovers. I call it leftover soup. It’s amazing how good leftover soup can be. I usually add store-bought organic vegetable broth or a tomato-based vegetable juice to the leftovers. I’ll put in my stir-fried vegetables and rice, or whole-wheat macaroni and cheese, whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce, or anything else I find. I mix everything together with the broth or juice, heat it up, and it’s dinner with a side of greens and vegetable salad. Sometimes, I’ll add some whole-grain crackers and cheese, too.
I want to tell you a secret. I’m really interested in getting to know the man who delivers supplies to the donut shop. His name is Tom. He’s asked me to go out to dinner with him. I’m curious how he feels about my life-style. We’ve joked and talked a lot when he makes his deliveries, but we’ve never talked about personal things…like how he feels about eating meat or wasting energy.
My ex-husband was an alcoholic, so I don’t care much for drinking, either. Some of the comments Tom has made make me think that he drinks wine and beer. I guess as long as he’s responsible about it, that wouldn’t be something to make me not want to see him again. I guess when we go out to dinner, I’ll find out for sure.
You’ll need to read Love Delivery so you can find out when I do, whether Tom and I have anything in common. I hope so. Although he’s quite handsome, I’m what my mom always called “cute.” Never “beautiful,” only “cute.” Sigh…
Do remember to leave your name and email address when you comment. Penny is giving away a short story to one person who comments.
Excerpt
****
Ann pushed open the door, and the bell jingled like an added alarm to wake her up. Sometimes she wondered how she could function this early in the morning, but a job was a job. At least waitressing in a donut shop was honest. Maybe someday she’d go back to finish college and do something rewarding with her life. Then again, maybe the man of her dreams would walk through the door this morning and sweep her off her feet. The closest thing to a dream man in her life was Tom, the delivery guy, looking like God’s gift to women. She sighed. It didn’t seem fair. He would never find her appealing with the figure she inherited from her mother. The only attractive thing she could find when she looked in a mirror was her startling green eyes.
Penny Lockwood Ehrenkranz has published hundreds of articles and short stories in print magazines and on-line. She writes for both adults and children. Her fiction has appeared in numerous genre and children’s publications and non‑fiction work has appeared in a variety of writing, parenting, and young adult print magazines and on line publications. She edits for three small independent publishers. Visit her web site at http://pennylockwoodehrenkranz.yolasite.com Her writing blog is located at http://pennylockwoodehrenkranz.blogspot.com/
Love Delivery , Lady-in-Waiting, and Mirror, Mirror are coming in 2011 from MuseItUp Publishing. Her YA chapbook, Dragon Sight and her anthology A Past and A Future are available at Sam’s Dot Publishing. Funny Dog, Boo’s Bad Day, and Many Colored Coats, all picture books, and Ghost for Lunch, a sequel, are schedule for publication with 4RV. Her MG novel, Ghost for Rent, is currently in transition from previous publisher to a new publisher.
