Bell Bridge Books

Tikis and Tinsel in the Tropics

by Jill Marie Landis

Celebrating the holidays on a tropic isle is far from the images you see on traditional greeting cards or conjured up by the song White Christmas. I live in a very small town on the North Shore of Kauai, the inspiration for my Tiki Goddess Mystery series from Bell Bridge Books. Hanalei Town definitely has its own unique truly-tacky- tiki style when it comes to dressing up for the occasion.

In mid-November, one of the first signs that the holidays are on way is when poinsettia leaves begin to turn from green to red — one leaf at a time – until they are in their full glory. Gardens pop with showy reds, pinks, and variegated varieties of poinsettias against a backdrop of palms and ferns. Christmas trees are imported and begin to dry out the minute they’re unpacked from the shipping containers. A better bet is a potted palm or star pine, though hanging ornaments on palm fronds can be tricky.

Hotels, shops, and restaurants decorate with island style for tourists who arrive with families in tow to celebrate on the sand. Christmas trees wear hula skirts. Tikis wear tinsel. Blow-up Santas are strapped down so they don’t fly away on the trade winds. There is something so not right about a huge plastic snowman standing under a coconut palm in eighty degree heat.

Festivals of light are celebrated with boat parades where decorated floating craft range from yachts to kayaks. There’s nothing like the sight of bright colorful Christmas lights reflected on shimmering water. Santa is usually the parade’s grand finale as he floats by in his sleigh pulled by eight leaping dolphins or paddles onto the beach in an outrigger canoe full of presents.

Local and tourists alike get together at beach pot-lucks, luaus, fancy hotel buffets, or smaller gatherings at home after a quick surf session, if the waves are good, or a walk on the beach if the sun is shining. Of course, if it rains while you’re out walking, there’s usually a stunning rainbow when the sun breaks through the clouds.

Like everywhere else in the world, Christmas and the Holidays are a time for giving. Tis’ the season, so this month, Three to Get Lei’d, the third book in my Tiki Goddess Mystery series, will be featured as an Amazon Monthly Deal. A quick trip to the tropics might be just the pick-me-up you need whenever you can sneak a quiet moment for yourself or you might gift a copy to a friend as a little treat to savor.

No matter where you are or how you celebrate the season, I wish you and yours Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

As we say here in the islands, Mele Kalikimaka and Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!

Jill Marie Landis is a best-selling, award winning novelist of at least thirty novels (she’s lost count) who lives on an outer island in Hawaii with her hubby and a very spoiled cat. When she’s not writing she’s probably at the beach soaking up the sun or off somewhere dancing the hula. Read about her Tiki Goddess Mystery Series at www.thetikigoddess.com or join Jill Marie on Facebook and Twitter.

Three to Get Lei’d by Jill Marie Landis is on sale the entire month of December for just $1.99! Click the cover below to purchase!

Val Shapiro’s 10 tips for living as a part succubus (lust demon)

 by Parker Blue

1. Never tell full humans about the demon part of you—unless you want to be treated like a monster.

2. Find the closest Demon Underground to meet other demons. They’ll understand what you’re going through and help keep you sane.

3. Don’t use your powers too much or they’ll become addictive. Unless you want to go around hoovering up lustful energy from every guy you meet. And don’t let men get too close—they can’t control their urges around you.

4. On the other hand, don’t suppress your demon side too much or it could burst free at the worst possible time, like when you’re with a guy you really, really want to impress.

5. Find a healthy, safe way to express your lust . . . like slaying vampires.

6. Remember, not all vampires are evil. Some are even rather sexy. Slay the bad ones. Leave the members of the New Blood Movement alone.

7. Don’t date full humans. They don’t understand your need for sucking up lustful energy and it’s too easy to drain them by accident. It’s not a good idea to leave mindless husks in your wake.

8. Never forget that while you can force men to do whatever you want, women are immune to your powers. Well, your lustful ones anyway. You can still use your strength and speed against them. Unless they’re female vampires. Then use male vampires against them.

9. Don’t cash your V-card too early—unless you want to lose your powers.

10. Find a hellhound to partner with. They can be a pain, but they’re great at watching your back and providing a furry shoulder to cuddle with when you need it.

BITE ME is free to buy til January! Pick it up quick!

And don’t forget to finish off the rest of the Demon Underground Series! Just click the links below! 

MEMORY LOSS: THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY

by Don Donaldson

I once saw a guy on TV who could tell you what the weather had been every day of his life since he was six years old. He was what they call a Savant.  He wasn’t normal.  The normal brain is supposed to forget experiences like that, thereby keeping itself uncluttered enough that it can remember more important things. For example, while driving your car, it’s always good to remember which pedal works the gas and which one stops the vehicle. When crossing the street on foot, does the upraised hand on the signal across from you mean stop or go? Okay, I think you get the idea.  So forgetting what you had for breakfast on Sept. 15, five years ago, is nothing to worry about.  And nobody does.  (Except for detectives who are always asking people where they were or what they were doing so long ago nobody could give them a satisfactory answer.)

It takes a lot of memory to function normally.  What does my car look like?  Where do I live?  What’s my name? People generally don’t have trouble with questions like that because those memories are extremely important and they get reinforced practically every day.  But for many of us, anniversaries and birthdays sometimes get lost in the myriad of activities a typical day requires. If asked, we could recite the date of those special events, but we just forget to remember them at the appropriate time.  For men, those memory slips can be classified as bad or very bad depending on the temperament of their spouse.

In contrast to what I’ve described above, suppose you look at the clock one day and discover that you’ve lost four hours and have no idea what you did or where you were during that time. That’s not only an example of an ugly kind of memory loss, it’s one that would terrify you.  Now imagine that it happened for the first time shortly after you started your new job at a mental hospital where some of your patients were criminally insane. Did you leave any of the insanity wards unlocked?  Were you alone with any of the dangerous inmates?  What the h… is happening to you?

That’s the situation facing the lead character in my book, THE MEMORY THIEF. Marti Segerson has accepted a job as staff psychiatrist at an old mental hospital in a rural area of Tennessee.  She’s there to seek revenge on one of the inmates for something that happened to her when she was a child. She has a good plan, but couldn’t have anticipated the horrific events that soon overtake her.

In all my medical thrillers I try to push the existing frontiers of knowledge just a bit farther into the future.  It’s interesting to me that some readers will not accept such a thing.  They judge an event or situation in a novel to be believable only if it has already really happened somewhere.  But where’s the fun in that? To me that’s like preferring to get a nap in the hotel while the rest of the group is climbing on a bus for a sightseeing trip to some exotic location. When it comes to writing, I’d rather get out of the hotel.  In THE MEMORY THIEF, The nature of memory, how it’s captured, how it’s recalled, where in the brain it’s stored; all provided fertile ground for the kind of story I like to tell. I hope it’s one you won’t soon forget.

So who wants to go sightseeing with me?

Don Donaldson’s THE MEMORY THIEF is on sale for just $1.99 til the 15th! Pick it up today! 

Click the cover to view:

“The Infamous ‘Eyebrow'”

by Howard Odentz

I don’t have the infamous ‘eyebrow’.

You see, every time I look at a blog or a site devoted to horror writers, each one of them is pictured very close to the camera with their fingers tented in front of them and one eyebrow arching to the sky.

Just one.

I can’t do that. I also can’t taste that weird litmus paper from high school biology. I can, however, curl my tongue, but I doubt that little talent is going to help me look like the author of the creepy things I write about.

I suppose it all comes down to genetics—my genotype forces me to write scary things. My phenotype is somewhere between a New England preppy and a cartoon. Nope—nothing disturbing about that, unless you have an irrational fear of all things L.L. Bean or Looney Tunes.

How my brain got so twisted inside, who’s to say? All I know is that when my hands fall on the keyboard, murderous psychopaths and gory visions flow out of them, and sometimes children who like to kill.

So how is it that my favorite holiday is Halloween? What mental glitch makes me turn to ‘The Walking Dead’ instead of ‘Downton Abbey’? Why do I scour YouTube in search of scary videos that will add spice to my nightmares while I sleep because I think regular dreams are so boring?

Who knows?

My parents were no more terrifying than me. My sisters devoured Harlequin romances like they were the best thing ever. Sure, I was terrified of the family poodle, but she had little needle teeth and growled at me every time she had a bone and I walked into the same room. Who wouldn’t run screaming the other way—or dress her in doll clothes when she had the rare mellow moment?

For whatever the reason, I’m told that people burst out laughing in the middle of some of my horror stories. I guess there’s a little bit of funny swimming beneath the troubled current of everything I write. That humorous shark-fin that can give you the giggles sometimes surfaces. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but even when I don’t want it to be there, it sometimes knifes through my words, attached to a gigantic killer lurking just beneath each page.

In the end, I guess I can’t fight the scary or the dark humor. I suppose my eyes will always naturally stray to the creepy, twisted edges of things. It’s a weird way of looking at the world, but it’s my way, and I long ago learned not to fight it.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  For now, I have to run. My llamas are staring at me with those huge, dead eyes, hoping that I’ll grain them soon, and I have an appointment to get my dog, Einstein, fitted for a wheelchair.

What? That’s normal, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Pick up BLOODY BLOODY APPLE for only $1.99 today only from Amazon!

Howard Odentz is a Western Massachusetts author of playwright. His first novel, ‘Dead (a Lot)’, described as a humorous and thrilling zombie-ride, was published by Bell Bridge books in 2013. In 2014 it hit #1 on Amazon in several categories including young adult horror and humor-horror. In 2015 it became an Ariana Award Winner and an Epic Award Finalist.

His latest novel ‘Bloody Bloody Apple’ was released on October 17, 2014 to all major on-line platforms including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple and Google Play. It is also available for order through bookstores or through the publisher, Bell Bridge, at www.bellebooks.com.

Read more about Howard Odentz at www.howardodentz.com.

The Pawleys

A brief episode in the British family history of Lady Toria Cash, the feline fatale of Downton Tabby

 by Sparkle Abbey

“Can you believe that alley cat?” Lady Meow Grandcatham lifted her whiskers in distain. “Thinking I’d simply fall under the spell of his gorgeous green eyes.”

I shook my head. “He does seem rather cheeky.” I’m Annakatrina, Lady’s Meow’s lady’s maid, and the alley cat she was referring to was Alexander Kittingham who’d apparently made a play for Lady Meow in a big way.

I carefully folded the lace frill she’d worn to dinner and reached for the brush I used every night on her silky black fur. Though I would never bring it up to Lady Meow, talk below stairs was that Alexander Kittingham was not actually a purebred British shorthair. He was often referred to as “Alley” in a disparaging tone, by Thomas Cat, Lord Grandcatham’s valet. Alexander was quite a handsome fellow and a favorite of the ladies around the dinner bowl.

He was nice looking with dark brown fur and deep green eyes, but I was not impressed. You see I’m madly in love with Mr. Bait. Poor Mr. Bait is currently locked up in the pound, but I had no doubt he would be freed.

“Beyond cheeky, I’d say.” Lady Meow lifted her paw to her neck. “Would you help me get out of this collar?”

I pulled on the diamond collar with my teeth and it snapped off easily. Carefully placing it in the ornate trinket box, I picked up the brush again.

Suddenly, there was a scratch at the door and I moved quickly to open it.  Lady Vi, Meow’s grandmother, stepped into the room. She was a formidable feline and referred to as the Dogwagger Countess because even the dogs at the neighboring estates were afraid of her. I don’t believe she’d ever actually bitten anyone canine or otherwise, but all it took was a hiss and the very slight unsheathing of her claws and it was clear she meant business.

“Grandmother.” Lady Meow purred. “What a surprise.”

“Not an unpleasant one, I hope.” The older feline stepped closer so Lady Meow could bump noses with her.

“I’ll leave you.” I moved quietly on soft paws toward the door.

“No, please stay.” The Dogwagger waved her tail in my direction. “I know Meow trusts you.”

“What is it, Grandmama?” Lady Meow dropped on her haunches. “Is something wrong?”

“What is wrong is my sources tell me someone is publishing a catty tell all tome about the Britain’s aristocats. I am told there’s a whole chapter devoted to the Grandcatham Family.” She leaned on the edge of Lady’s Meow’s bed and smoothed her fur.

Lady Meow began to pace. “Have you told Pappa’?

The Dogwagger shook her head. “No, nor your mother. It will be up to us to sort this out.” She gave a deep sigh and tipped her head to look at me. “We must find out who this low-life is and stop him or her before our good name is dragged through the litter box.” Sharp blue eyes pinned me in place.

“What can I do to help, M ‘lady?”

“My dear, you must be our eyes and ears.” The Dogwagger put her paws together as if it were all settled. “You can go places we must not and you will never be noticed.”

I had the thought that not being noticed was hardly complimentary, but knew she was right.

“You will help us, won’t you, Anna?” Lady Meow crossed the room in a single smooth leap to stand in front of me. Her golden eyes searched my face.

“Of course, I will.” I bowed my head.

And thus began my new career as Annakatrina, Cat Sleuth.

What would Mr. Bait think?

*

Downton Tabby, book seven in The Pampered Pets Mysteries by Sparkle Abbey, is now available for pre-order at Amazon. Visit Sparkle Abbey at sparkleabbey.com.

And don’t forget to grab your other favorite Sparkle Abbey titles, on sale til the 10th! 

SUMMER MERMAIDS

By Danielle Childers

There’s a day every spring when the sun shines so bright you can smell swimming season around the corner. You know it’s too early for a dip to be anything more than ice cold, but oh, what you would give to lay next to the water and pretend it’s really, really summer.

In my family, this day meant we were about to have cousin camp, a really intense week with my very large, very loud Texan family. We’d wake up with Jesus before dawn and drive to the family lake house at Possum Kingdom. My very roughened Texan grandfather would carefully paint sunscreen on our faces to look like Indian war paint. If a mom didn’t catch you to rub it in, you could spend the summer looking like a wild child from the hill country with stripes over your brows and dots high on your cheekbones .

We’d spend our days bathing in the lake, scaring each other with tales of alligator gars beneath the surface, and jumping off the cliffs. We’d eat watermelon from an uncle’s pocket knife and keep an eye out for scorpions in the grass my Papa cut so thick you could walk on it without ever feeling the ground. At night, my grandmother would walk down the extensive row of grandchildren and drop rubbing alcohol into our ears. At her command, we’d turn en masse so she could get the other side. Then we’d watch The Karate Kid. Every single summer.

When I really need to feel the day that starts the summer and the swimming, I read ALICE AT HEART. It’s magical realism at its best. Right between Sarah Addison Allen’s GARDEN SPELLS and Susanna Kearsley’s THE WINTER SEA, before Alice Hoffman’s THE RED GARDEN.

ALICE AT HEART is one of my favorite books, and I’m pretty sure it’s true. After all, we’ve all been summer mermaids.

I’ve been championing this book forever, and today Amazon Kindle is too! Get it for $1.99!!!

BOOK TITLES: WHAT MAKES THEM GREAT

By Don Donaldson

It’s a constant surprise to me that I’m able to write books that are liked by people who aren’t my mother.   But I often can’t figure out what the title of a book should be.  Oh, I know when a title is great and so do you… It’s like the dealer at a flea market who once said to me when I picked up an expensive item to look at more closely… “You have good taste.”  Then, while I was secretly preening at his compliment, he added,  “Of course, it’s not that hard to spot quality.”   It’s the same with book titles.  Here’s a test:  What do you think of this title?  THEY DON’T BUILD STATUES TO BUSINESSMEN.

To me, it’s awful.  I’d think so even if I’d been the one to come up with it.  Actually, it was the famous writer, Jacqueline Susann, who crafted that one for a book that eventually became a mega best seller as VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.  Does anyone out there like the first title better?  Okay…. So there’s always someone who enjoys being a contrarian.  But all the rest of you I’m sure gave the right answer.

Let’s try another.  How about ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL?  That’s actually not horrible.  But it doesn’t sound like the sweeping saga the author wrote.  I certainly think the title it was eventually given, WAR AND PEACE, is soooo much better.

I once had an agent who told me that they had a consultant who was a “genius” at titling books.  I guess he was too busy to take a look at the book the agency titled for me.  (I’ll never tell which one it was, but will say that when BelleBooks reissues it later this year, it will have a new title.)

So, it’s easy to know a great title when you see it, but boy is it hard to come up with one.  I usually sit for hours playing with words and rearranging them in what I hope are creative ways.  No matter what title I eventually settle on for a book, I have this nagging suspicion that even if I really like the one I pick, there was a much much better one I could have used.  I just couldn’t find it.  My WAR AND PIECE was out there, just beyond reach.

Okay, a final test, and maybe you already know this one.  Which of these titles is better?  TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY, or the one that has become an icon: GONE WITH THE WIND.  See, even our contrarian from above picked the right answer.

Well, I’ve used up my allotted space here so all I can do now is be GWTW.

-Don

This month get Don Donaldson’s THE MEMORY THIEF for only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!

A SUSAN STORY

by Judith Arnold

The April Tree’s dedication reads: “For Susan.”

Although Susan and I grew up just a few blocks apart, our town’s school districting assigned us to different schools until fifth grade, when a new school opened and we were both transferred there. That first day of fifth grade, we found each other and bonded like epoxy. We were inseparable.

Susan was a gentle soul. Her voice was soft and lilting, her giggle infectious. She was smart and talented. We both loved to write, and we spent hours upon hours penning short stories about adolescent girls, which we planned to publish in an anthology called Trouble, Trouble, Trouble. Susan was as athletically inept as I was. She loved the Beatles as much as I did. She was amazingly kind.

She was also dying.

In those days, a diagnosis of leukemia was a death sentence. Susan’s parents decided not to tell Susan she had a disease that would kill her; they wanted her to enjoy as normal a life as possible for as long as she could. They asked my parents not to tell me, because if I knew, I would tell Susan. She and I had no secrets. We shared everything.

So Susan and I were told only that she had a blood infection which required regular doctor visits. At the time, I was receiving allergy shots, and I saw

Our sixth grade class photo. Susan and I are both in the second row. Susan is the second from the left, in the red sweater and blue skirt. I’m the second from the right, in the plaid jumper and white blouse.

my doctor about as often as she saw hers. Sometimes she wore a back brace for support, but my father also wore a back brace due to a spinal injury, so I thought nothing of Susan’s brace.

Susan died the summer after sixth grade. A complete shock, her death hurled me into an emotional abyss. Today, I would have been sent to a therapist and dosed with antidepressants, but again, those were different times. I was left to cope with my sorrow on my own.

Because I was a writer, I coped by writing. I wrote wrenching, anguished prose-poems. Bitter, raging diatribes. Bleak, existential parables. Cynical stories bristling with distrust and hostility.

Eventually, I started writing romance novels. I loved creating stories in which I could control the endings in a way I couldn’t control real life. Every now and then, I’d attempt another kind of story—a Susan story—but none of those attempts was worth preserving.

A few years ago, I decided to try again, and I wound up writing The April Tree. I created three heroines who lose their best friend, April. Each of those heroines reflects a part of me. Becky is rational, determined to make sense of an incomprehensible universe yet taking comfort in quirky rituals. Like Becky, I think logically while clinging to my own superstitious rituals. Elyse draws portraits which always contain a bit of April in them, just as all my books contain a bit of Susan. Florie wants simple answers to complex questions. Unlike her, I usually can’t accept those simple answers, but I yearn for them as strongly as she does.

Having written nearly ninety romance novels, I knew The April Tree needed something more, something real life often fails to provide: a hopeful ending. So I created a fourth character, Mark, who plunges into despair after April’s death, just as I did after Susan’s death. Mark needs saving, and April’s friends set out to save him. They believe they can overcome the pain of April’s death by redeeming someone else’s life.

Click to preview!

At the end of The April Tree, new grass sprouts in a place where Becky hadn’t expected anything to grow. One thing I learned from Susan is that while loss and grief may scar us, we can still celebrate life, finding joy in the soft, sweet green of new grass. Another thing I learned from Susan is that no one is ever really gone as long as her memory lives on in those who love her. Susan still lives in my heart and in my books—especially in The April Tree.

This month only, THE APRIL TREE by USA Today bestselling author Judith Arnold is only $1.99! 

This month only! These bestselling titles are ONLY $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!  Click the covers to preview!