Bell Bridge Books

From a Teenage Girl to a Teenage Boy

by Marilee Brothers

I spent five years of my writing life inside the head of Allie Emerson, the teenage girl featured in the Unbidden Magic series. It was surprisingly easy for me to channel Allie, even though it’s been—well—let’s just say I haven’t been a teenager for a good long time. Apparently teenage angst lives on forever. After I finished Midnight Moon, the last book in the series, I decided to write a YA book with a male protagonist. Enter Gabriel Delgado, hunky eighteen-year-old senior at Maple Grove high school.

The creative part of my brain got a major wake-up call. I was no longer a seventeen-year-old girl. I had to begin channeling a teenage boy. OMG, guess what boys think about? You know the answer, of course. Sex. One statistic says every fifteen seconds. Another says, they never stop thinking about it. From its title, Baby Gone Bye, you can probably figure out that Gabe acted on his thoughts. Therefore, he should not have been surprised when the doorbell rings and he finds a little “surprise” waiting for him on the front porch. So, what’s a household comprised of four males supposed to do with a little baby girl? Guess you’ll have to read the book to find out. Baby Gone Bye is now on sale for $.99 here: https://amzn.com/B00H4DZ844

Excerpt from Chapter One  – it’s Friday night and Gabe has a date. He believes, incorrectly, that his evening will go on as planned. At this point, the family thinks the child is a boy.

The hall clock bonged seven times. Startled, Gabe leaped from the couch and placed the kid in his car seat. “Man, is it seven already? I’ve got a date. Can we put this on hold until tomorrow?” Without waiting for an answer, Gabe headed for the stairs.

     “Gabriel.” The steel in Papi’s voice stopped Gabe in his track. “Look at me.”

     Slowly, Gabe turned to face his father. He heard Simon whisper, “Dumb shit.” Henry giggled nervously.

     “Gabriel,” Papi repeated. “Do you remember when Rosie was a puppy?”

     Gabe shifted his weight from one foot to the other, wondering if he was about to step into something stinky. “Yeah,” he said carefully.

     Papi’s dark eyes snapped with intensity. “And how did you take care of her?”

     Gabe rolled his eyes heavenward, trying to remember Papi’s three cardinal rules for puppy care. “After she eats, put her outside to poop. Play with her. Put her back in her crate.”

     Papi clapped. “Excellent.”

     Gabe grinned. This was going well. He’d soon be on his way.

     “Now, Gabriel, tell me this, how do you take care of a baby?”

     Uh, oh. Gabe felt beads of perspiration pop out on his forehead. “Well, um, I guess you’re saying it’s the same concept. Right?”

     Papi strolled up nice and close and gave Gabe his shark’s grin. “So, after you feed him, you will take him outside to poop, play with him, and then put him back in his car seat?”

     Right then, Gabe knew he was screwed. He glanced at his brothers. No help there. He’d already stepped in it. Might as well go all the way. He looked his father square in the eyes. “Naturally, I won’t take him outside to poop, but I’ll feed him and play with him.”

    “And you will start this … when?”

     “First thing tomorrow morning.”

     Papi said, “And tonight?”

     Gabe squirmed. “Remember what you said earlier? We’re Delgados. We stick together when there’s a problem.”

     “Ah, now I understand.” Papi stroked his chin. “You assumed one of your brothers or your father would take care of your child while you went on a date. Is that correct?”

     Gabe flushed. “I would appreciate it.”

     “Gabriel,” Papi said again. He pointed at the baby. “That is not a puppy. It is a tiny human being who needs round the clock care. Care that will be given to him by you, his father. Do you understand?”

     Before Gabe could formulate an answer, he heard the amazingly loud rumble of baby flatulence. All eyes turned to the child, whose face was bright red as he clenched his fists and strained.

     Simon snickered. Looks like you forgot to take him outside to poop.”

     Papi handed Gabe a container of baby wipes and a diaper. “Better get used to it. He’ll be doing that a lot.”

     That’s when the Delgado family found out he was a she.

Everything Old is New Again!

by Nancy Gideon

I’m a big fan of Reuse/Recycle/Repurpose for saving time, money and resources. I was beyond thrilled when BelleBooks applied this principal to my “Touched by Midnight” vampire romance series.  The original three titles came out in the early ’90s. Fans convinced me to continue with six more installments when ImaJinn started up. When I got the rights back to the first three long out-of-print books, ImaJinn (now part of BelleBooks) bought them with the plan of repackaging all nine under a new header (“Touched by Midnight”) with gorgeous new covers,  the chance to sneak in and tweak, and to reach a whole new audience! R/R/R at its finest!

Book 6, MIDNIGHT SHADOWS (my favorite!) comes out this month with a dynamite cover (I’ve been sworn to secrecy!). To celebrate, the first two books of the series are on SALE.  MIDNIGHT KISS is $0.99 and MIDNIGHT TEMPTATION  $1.99 through May 15 – an awesome intro that begins in the Regency era and moves, with characters weaving throughout, into modern times (MIDNIGHT SHADOWS takes place in the modern day jungles of Peru).

Here’s a teaser from MIDNIGHT SHADOWS to whet the need to sink your teeth in for more . . .

“If I’m going to go out there to put it on the line for, as you so succinctly put it, the paycheck, I need to know if you can keep it together. If you have any doubts, you stay behind.”

“I’ll be fine, Cobb.”

“Will you? Are you? Then tell me what you saw earlier tonight in your room. Can you do that?”

“A mask on the wall.”

“Bull.”

“I didn’t see anything.” His steady stare wouldn’t let her leave it at that. “I didn’t see anything real, okay. Is that what you wanted to hear? That I’m nuts, bonkers and all the rest? That I see things that aren’t there? That I have a hole in my memories large enough to drive a Mack truck through? That I can’t trust myself to know what’s real?”

“Trust me.”

His sudden intensity dragged her back from the edge of hysteria.

“Why, Cobb? Why should I trust you?”

“Because I can protect you if you let me. Because I know you’re not crazy.”

“How do you know?” she whispered, fearing to believe it because she didn’t believe it herself.

“Because I know what’s out there, and it’s real.”

The Evil that is Apple, Massachusetts

by Howard Odentz

I’ve come up in the shadow of the orchards, the gnarled roots of fruit trees twisting and turning into the ground.

I’ve seen brick buildings grow where there were once fields, and I’ve gazed with a lizard brain as factories bloom by the reservoir, only to wither and die in great heaps of red-clay rubble.

I’ve witnessed Apple’s children, innocent and pure, turn from adolescence to adulthood, go off to war, and come home with missing parts—or never come home at all.

I’ve watched the very seeds of this town bear corrupted fruit along a backdrop that has morphed from soda fountains and penny candy stores to tattoo parlors and bars.

And amidst all the never ending change, as the darkness slowly engulfs everyone and everything in its cold embrace, I now stare with a psychotic detachment as the very flesh of Apple is drawn and quartered—literally.

Murder happens here, in lonely tobacco barns along the edge of town, or in the dense forests where the screams of the mutilated are muffled by a thick blanket of autumn rot.

Murder happens here every year.

I am not to blame.

Does one blame God for allowing a husband to strike his wife? Does one blame The Lord for allowing alcohol and drugs and the poor choices of pitiful minds to ruin lives?

Does one blame Him for murder?

I can assure you He took his leave of Apple, Massachusetts long before the first tree was ever planted and long before the first suspicious death ever occurred.

He doesn’t tarry here anymore.

All that remains is me and I’m just fine.

Right as rain.

Ducky, in fact.

For I am the Evil that is Apple, Massachusetts, and boy oh boy…

It is good.

Curious about the evil that’s taken root in Apple? Pick up BLOODY BLOODY APPLE for just $1.99 and find out who’s behind the body count…

INSPIRATION AND LEMONADE:

The story behind Beyond the Misty Shore

by Vicki Hinze

Into every life, lemon juice does pour.  If you’re lucky, you learn to love lemonade. I’m lucky. And it’s a good thing because…

I was having a pitcher-full and a truth about life and lemonade settled in:  Loving lemonade is a choice.  I mean, we can’t avoid lemon juice any more than we can avoid challenges. We can fight it, but we are going to lose. Lemon juice will be poured; it’s inevitable. But that doesn’t mean it has to be bitter. We can make a different choice. Sprinkle in a little sugar or Splenda, so to speak, a little water, and we’ve got lemonade, which tastes quite good and, on a hot day, it’s amazingly refreshing.

So I got juiced. I was at this crossroad in my life, debating which way to go, and this lemonade truth kept stealing my attention. I refilled my glass with half-a-pitcher to go, and another thought came to mind.  We have a choice. When life throws us lemons, we can choose to make lemonade, or not. Another thought chased that one:

What if we couldn’t?

What if we didn’t have a choice. Or the choice wasn’t ours to make. We’d be stuck. Literally swimming in lemon juice without lemonade or a solution or resolution in sight!

I didn’t care for the feeling, and it shot holes in my theory that I had at least a little control in my life. Don’t you hate it when that happens?  When your illusions are shattered and as leaky as a sieve?

I more than didn’t like it, I hated it…but I was intrigued. So I thought about it.  Okay, so you have not a pitcher full of lemon juice but a barrel full. You’re already banged up.  (Can anyone get to adulthood in life without getting banged up?  Unlikely.  Rare, even.) So you’re chugging lemon juice from the barrel, eager to drain it and get the nastiness behind you.  You’ve deciphered your problems and have progressed to looking for solutions, and you’re feeling good about that because, while the bad stuff isn’t behind you yet, you’ve made progress.  You’re on your way to getting rid of it.

Only you’re not. You’ve wracked your brain and there just are no solutions. Not even one. Worse, not only have you been robbed of a solution, your choice in what to do has been stolen, too.  Now what?  What do you do?

That was the situation I found myself in that led me to write the Seascape novels, and Beyond the Misty Shore specifically.

Being stuck doesn’t exactly inspire you to be in the most receptive frame of mind. Sunshine is arrogant when you’re grieving, right? But isn’t it true that the worst possible time is always when important things happen? When life-changing things happen?

That’s been true in my life, and so I made it true in TJ MacGregor’s life, too.  He is the hero stuck at Seascape Inn in Beyond the Misty Shore.  Add more lemon juice in the form of Maggie Wright, a woman who loves to hate him, and Miss Hattie, the wise Seascape innkeeper (who seems to know everything about everything but won’t just tell anyone anything because “some things are best learned firsthand”), a colorful cast of local characters, Maine cliffs, and a little otherworldly intervention, and, well, T.J. has his work cut out for him, doesn’t he?

He did, and so did I. But don’t feel too bad for him.  We’ve all tasted the tart of the juice and, you know, sometimes when we’re broken, we have to really hurt to ever get beyond the pain. We have to figure out that we can heal before we do heal.

Eventually, we get it. And when we do, magic happens. We no longer just survive. We truly live.

Like you and me, he’ll figure it out… eventually. So will Maggie.  And what fun to watch without personally sucking lemons!

I’m getting a little misty here. I think I’ll pack a bag and go visit Seascape Inn again . . . just as soon as I finish this glass of lemonade.  Care to join me?

Vicki Hinze’s Seascape Trilogy is on sale through March 1^st! Pick up these paranormal romances today!

Beyond the Misty Shore – Free!

Whimsy. Serenity. And a Touch of Magic. The Seascape Inn.

Marketing executive Maggie Wright and artist T.J. MacGregor are linked by a mysterious car accident that killed Maggie’s cousin, Carolyn, T.J.’s fiancée. When Maggie arrives on the Maine coast determined to get answers from T.J., she discovers a tortured man who is bound to the Seascape Inn by supernatural forces.

Despite the tragedy that stands between them, Maggie and T.J. begin to fall in love, seeking answers and a healing spirit they may never achieve.

Upon a Mystic Tide – Only $1.99! 

With their painful divorce looming on the horizon, radio psychologist Bess Cameron and her soon-to-be-ex-husband, John Mystic, meet at Maine’s Seascape Inn to finalize the terms of a property settlement. Bess believes John is in love with someone else, and she’s determined to move on without him. Their marriage appears doomed until the Inn’s matchmaking ghost, Tony, and its irrepressible owner, Miss Hattie, take matters in hand.

 Sometimes you have to leap upon a mystic tide and have faith the sand will shift and an island will appear . . . The second book of bestselling author Vicki Hinze’s Seascape Trilogy brings readers back to the gentle magic of a place where love is always stronger than the fragile boundaries of life.

Beside a Dreamswept Sea – Just $5.99!

Welcome to the third book of The Seascape Trilogy, three mystical romance-mystery novels by bestselling author Vicki Hinze.

New love isn’t on the agenda for widower Bryce Richards, who comes to the peaceful Seascape Inn with his three children, hoping the ethereal setting will help them recover from the death of their mother. Likewise, fellow inn guest Callie isn’t looking for romance either; she’s recovering from an emotionally abusive marriage.

It will take all the matchmaking skills of innkeeper Hattie Stillman and her ghostly assistant to bring Bryce and Cally together.

About the Author:

Raised in New Orleans, Vicki Hinze began writing before Kindergarten but her journey to writing books included a lot of corporate pitstops. Eventually, she settled in and her first novel landed an array of awards and on the bestseller list. With nearly 40 books published, she’s been back many times with awards in multiple genres and appearances on multiple bestseller lists, including USA TODAY. Vicki is recognized by Who’s Who in the World as an author and an educator and is best known for chilling suspense, trailblazing, and creating series that genre-blend. Her works include suspense, mystery and romance. Since 1994, this former VP of International Thriller Writers has written heavily about military and military families and in nearly all genres except horror. Hinze is a Floridian married to a former Hurricane Hunter/Special Operations Officer. She constantly pushes the boundaries on existing genres, opening the door for new novel blends.

Grist for the Mill

by Laurie Carroll (also writing as Laurie C. Kuna)

A standard question people often ask authors is: “Where do you get your ideas?” My usual reply: “From anything and everything,” But when I started Fate’s Fortune, at least one key scene literally came to me in a dream.

. . . A swordfight on a ship’s deck between a dashing sea captain and the pirate he had come to capture. A beautiful female pirate. . .The duel’s outcome would determine the pirate’s fate. . .

She won. . .

I woke up, grabbed the pen and notepad on the bed stand, and wrote the entire scene, probably seven or eight hundred words. Obviously, that single scene comprised a tiny part of a final manuscript of well over 100,000 words, but it was the start. And as much as the final product differed from the first draft, that scene never substantially changed.

However, the path that brought hero and heroine together did change, in part because when I sold the story to ImaJinn Books the company published only paranormal romance. Fate’s Fortune already had a ghost who, much the same as Hamlet’s father did him, spurred the heroine to revenge over the man who’d ruined their lives. For the hero, I added both a revenge element (although misguided and subsequently redirected) and a paranormal element. His comes in the form of a magically connected dagger and amulet―one his, the other hers―that enhances the attraction between them.

But back to that initial scene…Who doesn’t love a good pirate story? And why not make that pirate a highly skilled, highly motivated woman? I know I had the late Maureen O’Hara in mind when I started developing the character of my heroine, Meghan Windgate. In At Sword’s Point, the first movie I saw O’Hara in, she played the daughter of one of the Three Musketeers. She also had her father’s skill with a sword. In that movie, and in so many other swashbucklers, Ms O’Hara kicked butt, took names, and never apologized for doing so. And the men who played the heroes to her heroines loved her for it.

So, why not give my heroine that same kind of prowess? Why not give her the admirable qualities quite often reserved for our heroes? No need for the damsel in distress to sit around waiting for Prince Charming to rescue her. Our heroines rescue themselves, and only men who are comfortable in their own skins need apply for the honor of being with them.

Authors get their inspiration and ideas from innumerable sources, and I never discount any one of them. In the case of Fate’s Fortune, I guess I could say I dreamed this one up.

Read this dream today! FATE’S FORTUNE is only $1.99 through the 31st! 

Second Chances

by Sandra Hill

How many times in your life have you wished for a do-over?  How many times have you said, “If only…” with regard to some past event, or person?  Does your heart ever ache at the thought of a second chance to do something differently?  If only we could turn back the clock!

Sometimes it involves carelessly spoken words that wounded. Or words not spoken that should have been.   Or a poor choice of career…or even a spouse.  Wasted time, lost years.  Desertion.  Betrayal.  Or lost love.

The heart aches at the finality of some of our actions.  If only…, if only…, if only…

It’s a favorite theme in many books and movies, sometimes with satisfying conclusions, other times the sorrow of lost chances.  The movies “An Affair to Remember,” “The Way We Were,” “The Notebook,” or “Casablanca.”  Or how about Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND?  Wouldn’t she have liked to turn back the clock?  One of my favorite examples is Diane Gabaldon’s OUTLANDER.  When Claire returns to the future, she thinks Jamie is dead.  What a fabulous plot angle when Claire discovers twenty-some years later that Jamie never died in the Battle of Culloden, and she goes back to find him.  <sigh>

Second Chances!  That’s what happens in HEART CRAVING.  Poor Nick DiCello, a Trenton cop, has only one week until his divorce from his wife Paula become final.  He loves Paula desperately, but he’s made so many mistakes.  He has to do something, though.  Clueless about where to start, Nick goes to a wacky fortune teller for advice.  She tells him to find his wife’s “heart craving,” but Nick hears only the word “craving” and thinks she refers to sexual fantasies.  What ensues is Nick’s hilarious, but poignant, and dare I say erotic, setup of a series of sexual events to woo Paula back.

I love novels about couples who have a broken relationship and somehow find their way back to each other.  They know how to push each other’s buttons, in all ways.  The hurts are deep; for that reason, the reunions are that much more emotional when they get another chance to change.

In my own personal life, there are so many things I wish I could do over.  How about you?  Well, in books, we get that chance.

Sandra Hill is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 40 romantic humor novels.  Whether they be contemporary, historical, or paranormal, the underlying theme in all of them is humor…and sizzle.  For more information about her books, check out her website at www.sandrahill.net or her Facebook page at Sandra Hill Author.

HEART CRAVING by Sandra Hill is only $1.99 through January 15th! Grab it today!

What Began as as Whim…

by J.A. Ferguson

Dream Singer, the first of the Dream Chronicles, began as a whim. I’d been writing historical romances for years, and I wanted to write something different. For the fun of it, taking the advice of C.S. Lewis to write the book I wanted to read. I took the characters of Durgan Ketassian and Nerienne and dropped them into the setting and let the story unfold.

The only requirement was that anything was possible.

I wanted the book to have music and color in it. I’ve always admired musicians who create wondrous melodies out of nothing as well as visual artists like my sister and my daughter. They see things in unique ways. I gave music to Durgan, making him a dreamsinger, someone who can see into dreams through music. Nerienne got the gift of being able to discern people’s true feelings by seeing the colors surrounding them.

Right from the beginning, the idea that they were enemies who would have to fight a common foe drove the story. Okay, it’s a beloved romance trope – the bad boy and the good girl. But in this case, the girl is well-familiar with evil because her mother, the leader of their world, is not the nice and cuddly soccer mom type.

I wrote the first chapters, but something was missing. The heroine needed a reflection character, someone she could talk to so the reader (me!) saw the emotions she kept hidden from the hero. I tossed away the ideas of a servant or sibling as mundane. That led me to a pet…a talking pet only she could hear. But better yet, a truly annoying talking pet. Bidge was born.

I’ve been asked a lot about the origin of Bidge’s name. At first, I saw her as the character who not only listened to Nerienne, but nudged her to do the right thing. Her fuzzy-faced conscience in a shell. Nudge became Budge which evolved into Bidge. But Bidge evolved as well, and her name was even more accurate because instead of nudging, she nags. Think of a synonym for nag and say Bidge’s name aloud, and you should be able to pick up on the accuracy of her name!

With my characters in place, I wrote the book I wanted to read. Once it was finished, I went back to work on my contracted books. I never thought I’d do anything with it…until a good friend mentioned a friend of hers was starting a publishing company and looking for odd paranormal books. I sent off an email to Linda Kichline, the founder of ImaJinn Books, asking if she wanted to see my manuscript which definitely fit the definition of odd paranormal. Since then, the first book has grown into five, and my original three characters, especially Bidge, have played a part in each one to the delight of readers.

Pick up DREAM SINGER for just $1.99! On sale til the 15th!

Oh, What Fun: Diving into an 18^th Century Christmas

by Katherine Scott Crawford

Christmastime in the eighteenth century: This was something I had to research in order to write the Christmas scenes in my historical novel, Keowee Valley, which opens in the year 1768.

I say “had to,” but really—it was a blast! I’m a research hound and a history nut, and to top it off, Christmas happens to be my favorite time of year. Diving into the details of a Christmas nearly 250 years past was a job for which I’ll happily volunteer any day of the week.

But it wasn’t easy. For one, Keowee Valley is set in the American colonies during a time of great upheaval—the American Revolution is brewing—and not only that, the particular Christmas I was writing about takes place on the Southern frontier, in the then-wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The woman hosting the Christmas festivities—my protagonist, 25 year-old Quinn MacFadden—is a bit of a conundrum: she’s a quick-tempered bluestocking who rides a horse like a man, speaks a couple of long-dead languages, takes off into the back-country in search of her kidnapped cousin, barters for land from the Cherokee Indians and builds a settlement which functions as an egalitarian community, and is (at this point in the story) falling in rather complicated love with a mysterious half-Cherokee, half-Irish tracker with conundrums of his own.

While we know a bit of the Christmas traditions of the American colonists during this time, most of that comes from the diaries of people living in towns and cities like Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington, Philadelphia and New York. During a time of war, everything is thrown off kilter, even the holidays. And in the wild Carolina back-country, where Quinn lives with a handful of settlers, her faithful horse, and her Cherokee neighbors, we don’t really know what went on this time of year. We can assume folks of European descent celebrated much like they did wherever they were originally from. Perhaps they sang songs, made a special meal, lit precious candles, and spent time with family. After all, throughout history people have always attempted to hold on to tradition, no matter where they are when Christmastime rolls around.

For Quinn, this means the giving of simple, carefully-chosen gifts for the settlers with whom she shares her wild new home: people who were once strangers, and whom she has come to love.

There’s the leather gloves for a freed slave, a corncob pipe for a disgraced English lord, a tea kettle for a hard-working couple and a wood flute for their young sons. But it’s the two gifts Quinn receives in the middle of the deep, cold, holy night—one, the gift of a saved life, and two, a rather perfect surprise from a man who’s swiftly becoming much more than a stranger—that make it a very merry Christmas indeed.

Pick up KEOWEE VALLEY by Katherine Scott Crawford for just $1.99 through December 31st!

3,500 Posts

by Melissa Ford

This summer will mark 10 years of writing my blog, Stirrup Queens. I publish a post at least 5 times per week, though I write more posts than I publish. What this means is that for the last 10 years, I’ve sat down in front of my computer almost every single day and written down a record of a thought or event, polished it, and hit publish.

I write on my birthday and holidays and weekends. I write when I’m sick and when I’m in a terrible mood and when I only have 15 minutes before school pickup. Blog posts are the warm up for my regular 6 hour book writing day.

They’re not always good. I don’t always enjoy it.

But I like having 3,500 posts. They are 3,500 pieces of evidence that I showed up, even when I didn’t feel like it, even when I didn’t know what I was going to say when I turned on the computer.

They’re proof that showing up matters. That showing up is how work gets done. That showing up moves things forward. If I didn’t show up, I wouldn’t have 3,500 posts. I might only have 2,000 posts. Or 1,000 posts. Or be writing about how I’m hitting my 500th post, and isn’t that a terrific milestone?

And yes, it would be. But 3,500 is better, no? 3,500 over almost 10 years means that I have written every day. Slow and steady, bit by bit. Always showing up, and then continuing on to write six books, too.

That is the number one piece of advice I can give to new writers. Show up. Even when there are holidays, even when you’re sick, even when you’re in a terrible mood. Sit down with your book or your blog and put words on the screen. It’s okay if it isn’t what you feel like doing in the moment. Do it anyway.

Because maybe all of that work will mean that something good happens, like having your book chosen by Amazon to be one of their December deals.

Pick up APART AT THE SEAMS for just $1.99 through December!