#ISWG - Insecure Writers' Support Group - March 2016

Rules (from the ISWG site):

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time.

~~~oOo~~~

I start out projects like gangbusters, but fizzle out before the end.  It's like I go through all the training for the Olympics and then stop just before the finish line.  Not all the time, of course, but often enough to be a cause of concern.

Someone in my area who knows my struggles, asked me to write a one-page 'story' and give it to her the next week.  I thought about it every day, but only forced myself to sit down two days before we were to meet again.  I wrote it in cursive, and my daughter complained that she could not read my handwriting.  (She should have seen my mother's...who wrote like a doctor.)  So I typed it to her in an email.

On the upside, a quote from my review of a recent read was featured in several other stops on the tour, so I gave myself a small 'woohoo' for that one.

Motivation has been harder than normal this week because between last Wednesday and Thursday we had to bury two family pets.

Chilihead was a kitten.  She used to stick her head into chili cans to get a little taste and because of her fur, had trouble getting the can off again, so she would twist and turn, and the effect was quite comical.  My daughter (12 yoa) found her.

Mac was born to another dog of ours, and was about four years old.  He was sick two days before (Tuesday), was ok on Wednesday, and woke me up at about 4am on Thursday.  Within about 10 minutes he was gone.  We are all stunned right now.

I've done some writing on the blog this last week and had better motivation.... for writing and just about everything else.  So that's another plus.

Take care, y'all, and happy writing! :O)

Tuesday Bookish Post - March 1, 2016

Thanks to Jenn for hosting Teaser Tuesday at her blog, Books and a Beat.

Thanks to Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea for hosting FCFP.

SYNOPSIS

Three years ago, Julia Jackson was a well to do young woman from Boston whose fiancé, Jonathon, was killed right before her eyes. Obsessed with finding the killer, a man whose face she saw only in a flash as he walked up and shot Jonathon, she leaves her family and her life behind. She starts a new life as ‘Jacks’ Jackson—a cigar smoking, dead eye, female Pinkerton agent…pretending to be a man. 

Now Allan Pinkerton needs Jacks to find the man who kidnapped the wife and son of a railroad official, David Boyd. Their only clues are the severed finger from the man’s wife, complete with wedding ring, and a map of the Qualla boundary, the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina.&nbsp

Jacks doesn’t like the way the whole thing sounds from the beginning. David Boyd isn’t important enough to target for a kidnapping. And why travel so far with two hostages?

But Pinkerton tells her that he believes the man responsible for the kidnapping worked with Jonathon’s murderer in a train robbery five years ago. Jacks agrees to go after the kidnapper with hopes of catching him before he can reach his home grounds.

Pinkerton insists that Jacks bring three men with her—Boyd, her new partner, and a Cherokee guide named Running Wolf, who’s always watching her, like he’s trying to figure it out.

Can Jacks catch the kidnapper with her secret—and her life—intact?

~~~oOo~~~

FIRST CHAPTER, FIRST PARAGRAPH

"Are you sure they're gonna come through here, Jacks?" Davey Hume asked for the tenth time.

"Positive."

Davey shook his head.  "I hope so, or Pinkerton's gonna have our asses!  If we let that gang stroll out of the Mercantile after they robbed it, after he told us they were gonna do it, we're gonna be close enough to dead to reach out and touch his whiskers!"

~~~oOo~~~

TEASER TUESDAY

 (this is from 45% on the Kindle, in Chapter 24)

"I believe in my gun and my brain.  After that comes my horse, dynamite, and a lucky guess, not necessarily in that order."

Running Wolf didn't laugh.  "Your spirit is hollow without a faith in things you cannot see or control.  How have you survived?"

My March 2016 Take Control of Your TBR Pile Challenge

Click the button above to go visit Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer, who is hosting the challenge.  The link goes to the sign-up page, where all the rules and ways to enter the drawing (for participants) are listed.

By the time I saw the sign-up post (in early January) I had already several tours set up for March.  I've been trying to read and get those out of the way, so I can concentrate on TBR books for the month.  I'm not sure if this 'disqualifies' me, but in either case, clearing out a little of my TBR shelf/list is a great idea!

Like Angela of Angel's Guilty Pleasures, I'm going to shoot for 10 books.  It seems like enough to be challenging without snowing me under.

Here (will be) my list:

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2.  

3.  

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9.  

10.  

Friday Bookish Post - February 26, 2016

    

Thanks to Freda from "Freda's Voice" and Gilion at "Rose City Reader" for hosting these bookish link-up!  Click one of the buttons to go to the link-up page.

Synopsis

Olivia Denis is a contented young wife with a carefree life in late 1930's London. Then her world is shattered with the violent death of her husband, Reggie. The police want to call it a suicide and close the case, but Olivia knows Reggie couldn't possibly have fired the fatal shot.

Further mysteries surface surrounding her husband's death. Did the trustworthy Foreign Office employee betray government secrets? Was his murder linked to the death of a German embassy clerk the same night? And who searched their flat?

Her desire for answers and her need to support herself cause her to break away from the pampered life she's known and take a job. But with the much-needed paycheck as a society reporter for a newspaper comes a secret secondary assignment - one that involves her in the increasingly dangerous world of European politics as the continent slides toward war.

~~~oOo~~~

Book Beginnings

What I saw was all wrong. 

I gasped as I looked down at Reggie's face and reached for him.  My hand jerked to a stop as reality hit me. 

Reggie wasn't sleeping on that cold metal table.

~~~oOo~~~

The Friday 56

(which is actually from page 55 this week)

"Why did he approach me?  And why was he hanging around my building when he watched this person that he wouldn't name break into my flat?" 

"I'd suspect the burglar was German." 

"I don't know any Germans." 

John shrugged and looked away.  "Reggie was in the Foreign Office...."

~~~oOo~~~

   

Thanks to Billy B at the "Coffee Addicted Blogger" and Ramona at "Create With Joy" for hosting these link-ups!  Click on the buttons above to go to their blogs.

Book Blogger Hop

Do your children, siblings, or other family members enjoy reading as much as you do?

I don't think any of the family read quite as much as I do, but I know they enjoy reading.  Hubs especially likes science fiction, non-fiction and maybe westerns.  The boys (well, young men now, really) like gaming as well as history (especially military history).  My daughter will read a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. having to do with dinosaurs or clocks.

Taming the Twisted by Jodie Toohey - #review

Taming the Twisted is a story of destruction, romance, mystery, and deceit set against a back drop of an actual historical event.

In early June, 1860, Abigail enjoyed a peaceful home life with her parents, younger sister, and twin toddler brothers. Their home in Camanche, Iowa, where they’d emigrated from Pennsylvania, was almost complete and her beau, Joseph Sund, had recently proposed marriage.

That changes the evening of June 3rd when a tornado rips through town, killing her parents. At the mass funeral for the over two dozen people who perished in the storm, she learns Marty Cranson, with whom Abigail witnessed Joseph having a heated argument, died, but at the hands of a person rather than the tornado.

In addition to being faced with raising her young siblings, Joseph has disappeared without a trace and a stranger, Marshall Stevenson, appears, offering to help Abigail repair the families’ home and cultivate the newly planted farm crops.

Abigail, while developing romantic feelings for Marshall, tolerating the scorn of town woman Pamela Mackenrow, and working as a seamstress and storekeeper to support her siblings, becomes obsessed with finding out who killed Marty, hoping that and not that he no longer loved her, was the reason Joseph left without saying goodbye.

Letters From a Patchwork Quilt by Clare Flynn - #review

In 1875 England, a young man, Jack Brennan, from a large and impoverished Catholic family refuses to be pushed into the priesthood and runs away to fulfil his dream of becoming a teacher.

Jack falls in love with Eliza Hewlett, but his dreams and plans are thwarted when his landlord’s daughter, Mary Ellen MacBride, falsely accuses him of fathering the child she is expecting.

Rather than be forced to marry his accuser, Jack decides to run away to America with Eliza. Just as they are about to sail, Jack is arrested and dragged from the ship, leaving Eliza alone en route to New York with just a few shillings in her pocket.

The Shadow Ally by Dianne Ascroft - #review

America is not yet at war, but the country is preparing for it. And it is essential that this remain secret.

June 1941: Ruth Corey is puzzled by the attractive, enigmatic Italian-American civilian contractor, Frank Long, who is staying at her family’s hotel in Irvinestown, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Serious and reserved, he is nothing like the friendly, outgoing British and Canadian servicemen she knows. Nor, she discovers, does he even use his real surname.

War is a time of alliances and secrets. The biggest secret in the county is the construction of an American flying boat base outside Irvinestown. Since their country is not at war, the American contractors must conceal the building project. America’s neutrality will be destroyed if Germany discovers its existence.

Ambitious local reporter, and Ruth’s almost fiancé, Harry Coalter is consumed with curiosity about the new American airbase. But why? When Ruth finds a letter Harry has written about the flying boat base she fears he is pursuing a path that will land him in serious trouble. She enlists Frank’s help to stop Harry from making a terrible mistake.

Can Ruth safeguard a military secret that will have a profound impact on the course of the war and protect her beau?

A tale for fans of Annie Murray, Ellie Dean and Margaret Dickinson.

The Yankee Years series: During the Second World War Northern Ireland hosted American, British and Canadian troops. County Fermanagh welcomed Air Force squadrons hunting U-boats and defending shipping convoys in the Atlantic Ocean and Army battalions training and preparing for deployment to Europe’s Western Front. After the Allied troops arrived, life would never be the same again. The Yankee Years novels and Short Reads weave thrilling and romantic tales of the people and the era.