Showing posts with label ebooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ebooks. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Fine Times On That Road to Hell - Make Mine a Heel Excerpt

Banner could tell that Keith was in a rare mood.  The women who knew him the best sat silently.  Banner stared at him, waiting.  He pinned her with his eyes.  They were a maelstrom of chaos, rage, unrest, determination, acceptance, and then  . . .  desire.
“You ready to interview,” he directed at her casually.
Banner inhaled sharply. “You know I’m ready whenever you are,” she combated quickly.
He nodded, sharp and determined. “Then we should get to it.”
He bent and kissed his mother on the cheek whispering something in Spanish in her ear. She turned and put her arms around him, and just held on; saying nothing, yet saying everything. 
He pulled away kissing her on the top of the head, and looked over at Banner. He gestured to another room, and started out.  Banner walked over to where his plate sat, and picked it up along with his iced tea. She then stopped in the doorway, and waited.  He took three more steps before he turned around, and saw Banner holding what he had turned back for.  He stared at her for a moment, and then a slow easy smile spread across his face.  The tension from the moments before was starting to drain away from him.  He looked at the floor, and shook his head, as if he were arguing with himself.  With renewed vigor he took slow casual steps over to Banner. 
Banner just watched him because he was moving in that way that made her lose track of what she was thinking, or doing for that matter.  She just stared at him understanding that he was getting closer, and knowing that she really wanted him to.  Her eyes had fixated on his hips. She finally realized that she was actually staring at the man’s package, and went for his eyes instead, and found that to be even worse.  She was in his focal points.  He had taken notice of her, and she would be hard pressed to get out.  They said that the easiest way into a man’s heart was through his stomach; perhaps just understanding that stomach played a large role in the process.
Honestly, she had never become more aware of herself as a woman than she was in that moment, and it was so very cliché. She stood there holding his meal, and he was coming over to retrieve it.  It should’ve been simple.  But something about the way he moved, the look in his eyes, and the sureness of his step implied so very much.  It said that at that moment in time, he was having trouble deciding what he wanted more; the food or the woman.
Banner felt her spine stiffen.  She was not cut out to resist a full on assault by this man.  It had been a mistake to grab the food and drink.  Too damn casual; too damn comfortable.  She was acting in such an uncustomary fashion for her. The action implied an intimacy that she shouldn’t have.  For her, it had been factual.  He was a big man. There would not be a successful interview if he didn’t eat.  In truth she had been taking care of her job, not him, she quickly rationalized.  But the way he stalked up to her reeked of possession, and not just in regards to her belonging to him; this was much more unsettling because it implied a belonging of him to her.  Banner couldn’t speak for him, but she’d lose her damn mind if something like that belonged to her.
Keith took the plate and glass from her, and said almost beneath his breath, “that’s three.”

Make Mine a Heel  On Kindle

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Character Interview: Tobias Freeman from Charter to Redemption


In your relationship with others, how are you different with family than you are with friends? Why?

Friends and family are given equal loyalty. Once I love, my regard is lifelong. 

How do you fall in love? At first sight? Over a long period?

I don't fall in love easily, bit when I do, it's fast and fiery.

What parts of loving come easy for you? Hard?

The need to protect is easy. Giving up and accepting defeat not to easily done. 

How do you decide if you can trust someone? Experience with others? with this person? First impressions? Intuition? Do you test the person somehow? Or are you just generally disposed to trust or not to trust?

I measure a man by his actions and make a decision on that. 

When you walk into a room, what do you notice first? Second?

I note whether friend or foe. An indentured man learns this, I think. 

When you walk into a room, what do you expect people to notice about you?

Well, my height, for starters. 

Describe yourself to me.

A sharp tongue, a quick wit, and a steady arm. 

Is one sense more highly developed than another? (Are you more visual, or audial, etc, or do you rely on the famous sixth sense?)

Visual. 

Did you turn out the way you expected? The way your parents predicted?

I guess they never expected me to be transported. That's a shock for anyone's Ma. 

What really moves you, or touches you to the soul?

The suffering of the helpless. 

What's the one thing you have always wanted to do but didn't/couldn't/wouldn't? What would happen if you did do it?

I'd like to sail a ship, but I haven't had the opportunity. 


Saturday, January 25, 2014

When Sandra met Charlotte

Excerpt from Sandra's Social:

“I bet you think you’re too good for me too.” Charlotte had one of those sexpot voices that was hoarse to the point that sometimes parts of words would fade out to only slightly be heard.  When she got angry or excited it would even squeak out in some places.  And always depending on her mood, slightly tinged with a Southern accent.
Sandra side-glanced her. “I don’t even know who you are”.
“Well I know who you are.  You’re one of those women that look at me, and see a fat girl.  You see a woman who isn’t worth your space.”  She began to weep. “A woman whose boyfriend you can take. That worthless piece of donkey dung, how dare he?”
“I’m sorry you’re having a rough time, but I’m not a boyfriend stealer. I do something else entirely.”
“What do you mean?” she muttered out between sobs as she patted dry her running face.
“Can I buy you a shot?”  Sandra offered out of the blue.
While they had been having their shots, Sandra in an effort to console Charlotte, had made her privy to her theory on men and love, and what she meant to do about it.  At the tender age of sixteen Sandra had already scientifically dissected the nature of every boy in a one-mile radius.  At 18 she had graduated with the knowledge of the social preoccupations of men within the country she was in.  By 21 she had entire nations of men charted and hypothesized for good measure.  Then her adventures with Athol had settled it for her.  She had to use this knowledge somehow.  They couldn’t be allowed to get away with it.
“You see Charlotte it’s very simple.”  She downed a beer.  “Men are predisposed to be cheaters.  Men are trained at a very early age to follow their instincts. Their instincts tell them to be fruitful and multiply with as many women as it takes to propagate the species.  This started thousands of years ago before technology made it unnecessary to make enough humans that nature wouldn’t just wipe out the species.”  She glanced up at the bartender, “Two more shots of Patron mon ami.  The problem is that the mental instincts and training has been continually taught because women have been placed somewhere behind cattle since the beginning of time and only what, 70, 80 years ago we actually started minding it, and doing something about it.  We are combating thousands of years of preprogramming in a span of time that it takes a life to gestate into fulfillment.  All of us girls were being told we’re equal, and we deserve the best, and not to be treated beneath cattle.  On the other side of the fence the boys are being told, ‘Don’t mind her boy, she’ll eventually realize where she belongs.’  And the training is continued.”
Charlotte gave Sandra a startled look of understanding.  “They don’t have to be jerks they’re still being taught that we’re beneath them by their fathers and grandfathers.” She toasted with Sandra, and they downed their shots of tequila.  “I never looked at it like that before.”
“Very few of us do, that’s why we’re in this situation.  We’re uninformed.  It’s in all walks of our life.  The trick is that since they can’t legally keep us in our place they find other ways to do it.  Look at our icons and superstars.  Men like Danny Devito are stars while women like Roseanne Barr are constantly trashed for not looking up to snuff.  Our American Hollywood rewards female actresses for playing whores, adulteresses, and loose women.  Think about your last 3 years of female Oscar winners. Male doctors blow off our symptoms as being ‘silly’ and label us ‘hypochondriacs’.  And guys leave decent caring women like yourself for the sake of barely literate eye candy like that whatever he left you for. Yet when a woman satisfies herself, and her sexual needs and desires she’s labeled a whore, and unfit for motherhood and marriage. The only things we are good for by the by.” She paused looking at their empty shot glasses. “Bartender, another round.” “Well I’m not gonna take it anymore. I have decided on a course of action, and it’s called W.A.R.M.”
“Warm?” She held up her shot to meet Sandra’s clank, and simultaneously down.
“Women Assisting the Reclamation of Man.  If we leave it up to them it’s never gonna happen. We have to take this one into our own hands just like we did with our equality. Not every good-looking girl is as dumb as a post.  Most of us have good heads on our shoulders, and know how to use them. If things are going to level out then this training will have to be accomplished by women, and it has to be done in a brutal, harsh, life-altering way to insure that they don’t revert as soon as the lesson is done. My idea is to gather a group of us, and we systematically start retraining men.” She glanced up, “Bartender,” pointing to their empty shot glasses, “Yo!”
“A group; like AA or something?”
“Yeah something like that I suppose.”  Sandra frowned. “I didn’t intend for it to be that big.”
“Why not?”  Charlotte’s odd blue-green eyes started to glint as her mind raced with the tequila, and the possibilities.  “How is this supposed to happen if you keep it on a small scale?  First thing we should do is get a website.”
“Charlotte, I don’t know—”
“Then we can have meetings, and when we get a membership too high for local meetings there will be seminars.”
“Charlotte, I don’t think—”
“And there has to be a fan club. You know for women who support us, but don’t have the balls to get out there and do it.”
“No fan clubs—”

“Whose gonna train all of these women?” She stared at Sandra. “It’s your ideal, so it should be you.  How does a woman reclaim a man anyway?  In a brutal and harsh fashion that is?”

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Excerpt From Brenda's Bounty Book 3 of The W.A.R.M. Front series

A little insight into the self-made woman:

Brenda was on her third shot of Patron, and not really understanding why that memory had presented itself so freshly upon her getting home.  All she knew was that she needed to drive it out right now. It had been her first lesson in love. Only she had been too young to understand what it meant.

“Brennie Ann. .”  Brenda started in the heavily accented way her mother used to say it. “I should’ve told you, what trouble men will make ‘or ye. The greatest disservice I ev’r did to ye was ‘ot ‘elling you what a bleedin bastard yor father was for ‘eavin us till I died.”

Her mother hadn’t lived for much longer after that night. She had been near the end when the doctor relegated her to bed rest.  Instantly her gaggle of sisters that hadn’t been able to stand Anthony Margiani had not hesitated to come to their sister’s bedside. Each and every one of them, Aunt Sarabelle, Josephine, Margery and Carolyn had come to Willie’s home and stayed to make their sister as comfortable as possible as they took care of house and the child that Tony Margiani had left behind.

Brenda shivered as she remembered the last days.  Her mother had wept and called out for Anthony.  The pain from what she was experiencing had rendered her nearly mad.  Aunt Carrie had started feeding her shots of liquor to try and ease it.  But even that was eventually not enough.  Those last days she couldn’t be consoled and the whole time she had yelled the one phrase over and over again. “Tony, I ‘ought ye loved me, ‘ow could ye ‘eave me to do this alone. Our Brennie, take care of Brennie.”

Her aunt Margie would hold her in her lap rocking her and whispering in her ear the whole time. “Don’t mind ‘er love. She’s ‘ust upset. It’ll be o’er soon.” Her aunts Margie, Carrie, Sara and Josie took turns staying with her mother or staying with her. She could always feel the wetness from their tears falling into the mop of her hair. 

Brenda quickly poured herself another shot and hit it.  She let the liquid burn making her ice blue eyes water.  At least she told herself that was why her eyes watered.  Brenda hadn’t cried over anything in over 10 years.  Not something she was proud of, just a fact. 
She had spent so many years crying, over her mother, over her jilted at the alter status, over years and years of trying to please a man that only saw his failure in the eyes of his daughter. It had taken her father 2 years after the death of her mother to actually come back to Wales for her.  By then she was the community child of her four aunts, and the 6 children that were her cousins that they were also trying to raise. Her aunts were good women, but also brutal women.  Only Josie and Carrie where even still married. They spoke their mind and didn’t care who heard it or how graphic it got. They hadn’t spared Brenda’s ears over the evils of her father those years after they had bitterly buried their sister as she had jumped from house to house.

She remembered the day like it had just happened.  She had been on the streets hustling tourists.  Wasn’t something she had been proud of, but it was what all the kids were doing.  Little wharf rats they had called them. They would do bait and switch on unsuspecting travelers.  Take them through seedy neighborhoods and get them lost there. It was amazing how many people came to England looking for a waifish orphan child to swindle them. Even in the 80’s when Brenda was coming of age they expected 17th century.  She and her little crew saw opportunity and were there to deliver.

Punk rock had started to take over the airwaves and British teens and pre teens alike became rebellious and cliquish. Walking around with a chip on their shoulder and willing to thumb their noses at authority. She had been 12 years old and all bony limbs in one of her punk girl outfits.  Her favorite in fact was a red plaid school girl skirt, some torn fishnets, Doc Martens, a ripped Sid and Nancy T-Shirt and a moppish haircut like the one Chrissie Hynde wore.  All bought and paid for by her swindling money. Her aunts had gotten to the point where they didn’t ask the child how she came about these funds knowing they wouldn’t like the answer.

“Little girl, what’s your name?” the man called from the other side of the street.

She had barely glanced at him as she yelled. “Piss off,” in her roughest voice.

“Brennie..” he had called. “Brennie Ann.”

Brennie had been fine, it was the Brennie Ann that had set her off. She had turned enraged by being called that. “Sod it off old man, no one in the bleedin ‘ell calls me that any- .” she had thought to finally push her moppish bangs out of her eyes and stopped speaking as she recognized the man. “Pa,” she whispered.

He nodded down at her as he stared at her as if he couldn’t look away. “Christ you look just like her,” he whispered.

And then the rage came flooding back. “You piss’r! You left us! You left ‘er to die!” She threw herself at him trying to hit him. In her rage she only noticed after she began to get tired that he wasn’t fighting back. He was taking it; letting her rage against him.  As she wore herself out she could finally hear what he was saying.

“Mi bella, mi dispiace.” My beauty, I’m sorry.

Her rage gave way to tears as her hits became weaker and less impassioned.  He finally was able to lift her up and just hold her as she wept.

Sacramento California hadn’t been a terrible place for a teenage girl to grow up.  If you didn’t spend the whole time being a self-righteous brat.  Of course Brenda had spent most of her years with her father reminding him of what he had done wrong. Melanie, her dad’s new wife had put an end to that a few years after he had moved her there. Luckily Brenda had found the street punks in Sacramento so she always had someone to go whine too when home life became unbearable.  

But something odd happened to her when her first baby brother was born.  It had happened right there in the hospital when she had seen him for the first time.

“There he is Brennie. Your little brother, Lawrence.” She had moved her moppy bangs out of her face to stare at the bundle from the window.  He had looked so perfect, unspoiled.  She had felt this welling of hope.  It would be different for him.  She would see to it. He would be a good man, and he wouldn’t leave his family just because times got tough.  There was hope still.


It had been the same with the twins, Warren and Walter.  Each little boy represented an opportunity to build a new man.  One that would be the way they were in storybooks, and not the way they were in real life.

Brenda's Bounty Coming November 2016

Catch the 1st two books of the Series, Sandra's Social and Charlotte's Chance on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords

w/ love
Sue

Thursday, July 21, 2011

NEW RELEASE: Sandra's Social


I wanted to give this release a special introduction because this is a special release for me.  Sandra’s Social was the first romance novel I ever finished.  Key word here is FINISHED.  This book was the culmination of a 3 year odyssey to find my literary voice and my writing focus.  A lot of the theories that I apply to my romance novel writing were put into place because of this book.

I tried to write the standard romance novel.  Not the ones that have florid and vivid storytelling and engaging characters, but the other ones that I thought publishers wanted.  Each attempt found me done with the book and the characters before I even got to 10,000 words.

I used to marvel at how when I read an Elizabeth Lowell novel she seamlessly gave the reader knowledge about an artistic endeavor, the subtle charm and humor in a Johanna Lindsey romance, and the emotional historically accurate tour de force that Diana Gabaldon could create.  And I openly wondered what could I bring to the table? 

Looking back at my life experiences and my interests it became obvious almost immediately.  I stopped trying to imitate a style that I never really enjoyed and instead embraced one that I could claim as my own. I realized that what I wanted was to write a different kind of romance.  I wanted to pioneer a style that actually took into consideration aspects of social class and gender concerns.  I wanted a thinking romance novel. Thus my first heroine Dr. Sandra Dalianas was born.

Sandra’s Social is book one of a 5 book series called The W.A.R.M. Front.  What started as a kitschy acronym to give a little flavor to a heroine became an investigation into the obstacles that love faces in our society.  It became a call to arms for me as I realized that there are things that we as a society need to deal with and talk about.  More importantly we need to form new opinions on a number of socialized norms. 

So Sandra’s Social is very social as it deals with multicultural, multiracial, gender, and class issues.  The book arc focuses on 5 women whose lives have been brought together by the solidifying idea that being an unconventional women shouldn’t come with the price tag of being alone. Sandra’s Social is the first step to self-empowerment and reclamation.

So I invite you to get social, get unconventional, and get ready for The W.A.R.M. Front.

Always w/love,
Sue


Sandra’s Social is available as a NookBook with Barnes&Noble.com, as Kindle release with Amazon.com and in other digital formats on Smashwords.com

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Perilous Flight

This is the aftermath of a fine romance. Sometimes I think as novelists we have to indulge in heartbreak to understand how something becomes so very perfect, and wonderful. The ancient Greeks called it tragedy. That aspect of life that ripped out the soul, and replaced it with bitterness, pain, and a reckless desire to hurt others. We are all capable of becoming a victim of such nihilistic thoughts, and machinations. The proof is in what you choose to do about it.

The following is not crafted as a book or novel should be. Instead it is raw, and rushed. It is hurried, and frenzied. This work is littered with bad punctuation, improper phrasing, and words that don't really exist. It then becomes what it should accurately resemble. Life.

This is Perilous Flight

Always w/love,
Sue

Friday, July 23, 2010

The W.A.R.M. Front Series Book One and Two Description

Sandra’s Social
Book One of The W.A.R.M. Front Series

Dr. Sandra Dalianas is a woman that almost has it all. She has a loving family, good friends, and a thriving feminist movement. Which she felt helped her deal with her historically lack luster love life. On a divergence from her normal path, Sandra meets a dark stranger that intrigues her more than any man ever has. Her gorgeous, arrogant, and disarmingly charming mystery man seems to be at the right place, and always at the right time. Almost too right because her feminist shadow life unfortunately puts her in the wrong place at the wrong time. A fact she may live to regret it. That is if she lives.

Charlotte’s Chance
Book Two of The W.A.R.M. Front Series

Charlotte Rhoades had to stand back, and watch her best friend flee for her life with a mystery man that no one even knew she was seeing. Like any good friend she does everything in her power to keep her best friend’s life from falling apart only to realize that the bad guys have mistaken her for Sandra. In the mists of all of this company in her rearview mirror it took her a while to notice the man that had been following her for weeks now. But she knew this man. He was always there in the background never close enough to touch, but just close enough to affect her. And always right beyond her reach. The problem was that she desperately wanted to reach him.