Bell Bridge Books

Hair There and Everywhere

by Leigh Brill

There’s a dog hair in my wine glass, and I couldn’t be happier.

You might suspect that my joy is inspired by my choice of libation. That’s a reasonable assumption, but in my dog-centric life, it is in fact the floating bit of fur that delights me. I pluck it from my glass and nonchalantly swipe it on my jeans. There, the tiny hair joins countless other reminders of my newest family member.

Piper is my fourth service dog. He follows in the remarkable paw prints of Slugger, Kenda, and Pato. The handsome black Labrador helps me deal with the challenges of congenital cerebral palsy, and he does so with style – a style I call ‘Pi-perfect’. Although our partnership is just beginning, ‘Pi-perfect’ is my favorite word these days. For good reason.

Whether he is retrieving the telephone, steadying my steps, or alerting my husband when I need help, Piper’s enthusiasm is boundless.  As a professionally trained service dog, he knows more than fifty different commands. Everything from hold, to get it, to tug, to bump.  Piper even knows the word refrigerator!  Yes, my smart Lab will go to the fridge, open it, grab my lunch bag, close the fridge, and bring me my food.

I keep my lunch bag securely closed of course, but to be honest, I do find the occasional dog hair on my lunch plate … and I couldn’t be happier.

Pick up A DOG NAMED SLUGGER by Leigh Brill – an Amazon Monthly Deal for just $1.99 throughout December! 

Give cats a little Christmas cheer!

By Corwyn Alvarez

Dear readers, I would like to begin by thanking everyone who has purchased my book, The Dog Walker.  I sincerely appreciate your patronage.  I would also like to thank Bell Bridge for the opportunity to contribute to their blog.  In keeping with my themes which tend to revolve around the needs of homeless animals, I would like to mention that we are fast approaching winter and with this season some homeless animals struggle merely to survive.  I am drawing particular attention here to the needs of feral cats.  Interestingly, I was not a cat lover until several years ago when my friend told me the story of a feral cat in her neighborhood whom she had named Papi kitty or Pop for short.  It seems that her feral cat – that is now around twelve years old – at one time had a wife and two kids.  Over the years his entire family died, either they froze to death or were run over or got sick.  The only one who survived was Pop.

When I heard his story I immediately went into action and began feeding him in the sewer where he lives (when he is done eating I retrieve the empties so it doesn’t clog the sewer).  I have been doing this now for about three years.  When it snows I make sure that I shovel out the sewer opening facing the road so it is clear for him to go in and out.  Needless to say, Pop has won my heart and we have established an understanding with each other and he knows I’m his friend.  I love all cats now as never before, in large part because of Pop.  So if this winter you see any feral cats in your neighborhood I would ask that you please show them some kindness and help them out if you are able.  They are beautiful animals and it breaks my heart to see them roaming the streets, especially when it is cold and the weather is harsh.  Anything that you can do for them, whether as elaborate as having them spayed and neutered, or providing them a warm shelter, or providing them with some dry or wet food would be a great blessing for them.  They depend on our kind actions to survive, no matter how great or how small.  I have attached a photograph of Pop for those of you who might be interested.  A photo of Pop is also posted on my Amazon page.  I wish each and every one of you and everyone at Bell Bridge a safe and joyful holiday season.

The Dog Walker by Corwyn Alvarez is on sale the entire month of December for just $1.99! Click the cover above 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! 

Exclusive excerpt from Book 10 of The Vampires in America Series! Read it below and click the cover to preview! 

It’s too dangerous for you to stay here…”

Natalie’s unease at what he was saying overrode her irritation at his tendency to give orders. “Dangerous? Do you really think—?”

“That Anthony would hurt you?” Christian studied her for a moment, as if trying to decide if he should tell her the truth, as if wondering whether she could handle it.

“Tell me the truth,” she demanded.

His lips tightened briefly, and he said, “Yes.”

“But he’s never done anything like that before.”

“And he’d probably regret it. But in the final analysis, only one person matters to Anthony, and that’s Anthony. I don’t believe for a minute that he plans to retire quietly to New Orleans. He has a game in play that will maximize his own power and wealth after the succession. We just don’t know what it is yet. But whatever it is, I’ve spoiled it for him, and he’ll do what it takes to get rid of me. He wants you for

himself—”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he continued.

“—I can see it in the way he looks at you. He covets you, as if you’re already his. He may even have convinced himself he loves you, or that you love him. But if he gets angry enough, he’ll hurt you. Either to claim you for himself, or to get to me.” He stepped closer in the confined space, cupping her cheek in his big hand. “You matter to me. Anthony knows that.”

Natalie looked up at him, unable to stop herself from leaning in until her breasts nearly touched him. Her chest felt constricted, her heart too big for the space, pounding in her ears until it was all she could hear. Christian tightened the fingers of his other hand around her hip, pulling her in until there was no space between them, and the tips of her breasts scraped the thick muscles of his chest. His gaze traveled over her face, lingering on her lips, and she knew he was going to kiss her.

When his mouth met hers, her lips were already open in welcome. She expected to be ravished, but was enticed instead, his lips caressing hers with delicate, sliding kisses, his tongue quick and teasing, until she went up on her toes, and pressed her mouth to his to demand more. She felt his smile against her lips, felt him shift the angle of her head as he sank deeper into her, as his tongue swept forcefully into her mouth, stroking, tasting. Natalie wrapped her arms around his neck with a pleasured sigh. She couldn’t remember wanting anyone the way she did Christian. She was hungry for him. Every inch of her longed for him, from the ache between her thighs to the swell of her breasts, and everything above and below.

But he was being so careful with her. As if she were something fragile, as if he had to hold himself back. She wasn’t terribly experienced. Hell, she’d never experienced a man like Christian. But she wasn’t going to break, either. And she didn’t want him to hold back.

She boldly closed her teeth over his lower lip, stopping just short of drawing blood, shivering as his growled response rolled down her throat, trembling deep between her thighs, and knotting her nipples into hard peaks. His arm tightened around her back as he jerked her even closer.

“Careful, ma chére, or you’ll get what you ask for.”

“Good,” she whispered fiercely.

About the author: 

D.B. Reynolds is the RT Award-winning author of the Vampires in America series of paranormal romance, and an Emmy-nominated television sound editor. She lives with her husband of many years in a flammable canyon near Los Angeles, and when she’s not writing her own books, she can usually be found reading someone else’s. Visit her blog at www.dbreynolds.com for details on all of her books, for free stories and more.

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:

“I Got a Happy Meal and Mommy Got a Baby”

By Deb Stover

Following the birth of our daughter, Barbi, in 1981, my obstetrician said another pregnancy was “paramount to a death wish.” So we spoiled her for four years, then started looking into adoption.

After completing a workshop on special needs adoption and our Home Study, we went on a waiting list as not only potential, but eager, adoptive parents. A mere 3 months later, the phone rang to inform us that a newborn girl with Down Syndrome needed us.

We lived near Tulsa at the time, and Bonnie was born in Oklahoma City. We stayed in constant contact with the agency. Not only was she born with Down Syndrome, but she also had a heart defect. The only test that had been done was a simple EKG. Our medical insurance would cover Bonnie immediately, so I made appointments with a pediatric cardiologist and our pediatrician before we even brought her home.

Finally, the day arrived. The social worker suggested we meet somewhere between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Dave took the day off and the three of us drove to the appointed rendezvous point.

McDonald’s!

Bonnie only weighed four pounds, fourteen ounces. She was all blanket and  hair and beauty. People stared at us as we exchanged baby and paperwork. I have to admit now, it must have appeared rather clandestine, but nothing could have been more right or more good.

The next morning, when I took 4 1/2-year-old Barbi to Noah’s Ark Preschool, she marched in the door and proudly announced to the room, “We went to McDonald’s. I got a Happy Meal and Mommy got a baby.”

The teachers and other parents stared with mouths agape as I stepped in holding our tiny Bonnie. All I could do was laugh, because Barbi had simply told the truth. After a few happy explanations, we made our trip to the cardiologist, where we learned that Bonnie’s condition wasn’t as serious as originally feared. While she did require surgery at eighteen months, she now has a normal–and very loving–heart.

Since that day in 1986, we went through another so-called “special needs” adoption of our son, Ben. As far as we’re concerned, the only special needs were ours, and our children have fulfilled them and then some.

Bonnie’s special all right, but not because of that extra number twenty-one chromosome. She’s special because she’s Bonnie. Her dad often said she was born missing the mean gene. He was right….

My husband is no longer with us, but every Mother’s Day I am surrounded by the love of our children, and blessed with the knowledge that each of them has his love and goodness to carry them through life.

———————————————————————

Maid Marian and the Lawman (Bell Bridge Books) tells the tale of a band of misfits who—much like Deb’s own family—discovers the joy of unconditional love and acceptance.

After declaring her candidacy for President at age four, Deb Stover veered off course to play Lois Lane for a number of years. After she refused to blow Clark Kent’s cover, she turned her attention to her own Real American Hero and married him. Considering her experience with Heroes, redirecting her passion for writing toward Romance Novels seemed a natural progression. For more information, please visit www.debstover.com

My mother’s smile.

by Skye Taylor

My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when she was seventy-seven, but even then we all wondered if she’d had it for a lot longer than we or the doctor knew. She’d been completely deaf since her late thirties and while she lip-read very well, she also got to be an expert at pretending she knew what strangers or casual acquaintances were saying even when she didn’t have a clue. In retrospect, we began to realize that she’d been faking it with us as her memory began to fail.

She never seemed frustrated by her loss of memory. In fact, it was the rest of us who were frustrated and she always responded with a big smile that defused our exasperation.

Even before she went into assisted living care, she began to be foggy about who I was. One night when she asked, and I told her, she didn’t believe me. So I hauled out my driver’s license thinking to prove I was who I claimed to be and her shocked reaction was to ask why I was in possession of my sister’s driver’s license. Even she laughed about it two nights later when she did remember who I was. Conversing with a deaf person who can’t recall how the sentence began has moments of humor, but it’s mostly frustrating and increasingly sad. A few things she never forgot – like the fact that it was me who took her car away. Until nearly the end of her life, she held that indignity against me. And she never forgot that her Johnny was the love of her life.

One thing I remember most about her last few years was that in spite of not being sure who I was, she still loved me and it showed. Until she went into care, she lived next door and I always stopped by on my way home from work. She always lit up with welcome and opened her arms for a hug when I walked into her living room. I  “talked” to her mostly through written notes on her multitude of notebooks which had the advantage of being able to flip back a page or two when she continued to repeat the same questions. But the visits were always good ones because I knew she enjoyed our moments together even if she remembered nothing of them as soon as I disappeared from sight.

When the call that I’d been dreading for some time came, I rushed to her side at the hospital where her labored breathing was the only sound in the room. Her heart had failed and although the EMTs had gotten it started again, she never did regain consciousness. When her last breath came, my sister was with us and we were talking on the phone with my brother who lived several states away. So we were all together, hanging on to each other and our memories of a mother who had always loved us with her whole heart. I will always remember the stillness and love that filled that room at that moment. But even more, I will always remember the thousand-watt smile that greeted me every time I went to visit her, even long after she’d completely forgotten either my name or my place in her life. Sometimes a mother’s love is felt more than spoken, and ultimately it transcends even death. I see her smile in billowing white clouds against a brilliant blue sky and a dozen other things she loved, and I feel her touch in the soft darkness as I fall asleep each night.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. You were and are the best.

Pick up Skye Taylor’s Bell Bridge titles today:

Persephone Tells All—Fear, Power, and Life With Hades

by Kaitlin Bevis

If you want to know a culture’s fears, study their stories. Fears resonate. They keep us talking, keep us telling the story, because as long as it’s a story, it’s happening to someone else. There’s a reason the Persephone myth is one of the five major myths taught to school children everywhere. There’s a reason echoes of this myth keep popping up in modern culture, sometimes as overtly as my retellings, and other times as subtle as Beauty and the Beast. We tell the same story over and over and over again because it scares us. Something about that myth leaves people feeling unsettled. There’s a wrongness to it that demands to be fixed. So throughout time, we’ve told it again and again, hoping that maybe this time, we’d get it right.

What is it about the Persephone myth that resonates so much with us? On its surface, the answer is simple. Persephone is, at its heart, the story of a mother searching for her daughter. As a mother, I can literally not even imagine the depths of the fear of not knowing where my daughter is, or worse, knowing exactly what horrible place she’s been taken to, but not being able to save her. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her save, and goddess help anyone who gets in my way.

But there’s more than that. There has to be, because as a mom, I get the universal fear behind the myth, but I was fascinated with it long before I became a mother. The most common audience for the Persephone myth aren’t parents, but children. Specifically children on the cusp of adulthood. Teenagers. And I know why.

The myth is incomplete. In the original telling, we know all about Demeter’s fears and motives. We trace her steps through history as she scours the globe looking for her daughter. We glimpse the politics of Olympus enough to understand Zeus’ motives for allowing Hades to take Persephone and the drastic events that had to take place before he relented and returned the missing girl. We’re there for Hades catching a glimpse of Persephone for the first time, and we get his rationale and his motives for why he took her. We even get motives from nymphs and primordial deities with such minor roles that they get written out of most versions of the myth. Literally the only voice missing from the Persephone myth is Persephone’s.

Persephone was silenced, but the impact of her abduction is apparent. Her mythology begins with her as an innocent, carefree, happy girl picking flowers and ends with her role as the Iron Queen, a major force to be reckoned with mythologically speaking. Her name even changes. She has the ultimate coming of age story and she doesn’t even get to tell it.

We’re not just afraid of losing our children, we’re afraid of losing ourselves and our voices. And that fear repeats itself over and over and over again in Greek mythology. Ovid wrote an entire book about transformation in Greek mythology. Cassandra gained an awesome power, only to lose her voice and go insane. We pay the ferryman two coins to take us across the river because the potential of being thrown in Tartarus is less frightening than the thought of being stuck on the wrong side of the river, alone and ignored. Orpheus was featured just as prominently in Greek mythology as Hercules and literally the only superpower he had was the ability to make people listen.

I wanted to tell Persephone’s story. I wanted to get into her head and understand her transformation into the Iron Queen. I changed details here and there and I modernized the story, but I did my best to stay true to the spirit of the myth. One of the ways I did that was through the book titles. In the myth, Persephone was defined by her titles.

Book one, Persephone, is about her transformation from an ordinary girl named Kora, to Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld. It’s the story of her abduction. Her time in the Underworld changes her, but her story doesn’t end there.

I called the second one Daughter of the Earth and Sky because in the myth, Persephone’s value was placed in her role to other people. She was Demeter’s daughter, Zeus’ daughter and pawn, and Hades’ wife. The second book in the trilogy is all about Persephone trying, and failing, to balance all of her roles and the expectations that come with them without losing herself in the process. She starts the book clinging to the remnants of her old life and trying to make them fit into what she thinks her new life should be. She’s so afraid of who she might be becoming that she loses sight of who she is.

In the myths, it wasn’t until she came into her own as The Iron Queen that Persephone was referred to as a person in her own right instead of an object. Book three Persephone is a force to be reckoned with. Writing that, reaching that point with her character, was an incredible awarding experience that settled the sense of wrongness hearing the myth had left me with. I can only hope reading it does the same thing.

Pick up the first two books of The Daughters of Zeus series today!

And make sure you grab THE IRON QUEEN

available for pre order!

Mama was a Diva

by Marilee Brothers

If you’re looking for a warm, fuzzy, my-mama-was-the best-mother-ever story, you might want to stop reading now. My mother was a diva long before the word became part of the current vernacular. The only daughter of doting parents, she was clad in frilly dresses, wore a giant bow in her hair, learned to read at four and became a concert pianist in her teens. She was a beauty with an independent streak. In the roaring twenties, she bobbed her hair, visited speakeasies and sneaked cigarettes. At age 23, she married my father, an outstanding athlete whose pitching record for the University of Washington still stands.

My sister Beth came along first. Five years later, I was born. I’m not sure what troubled my mother, but some of my earliest memories are of long, sulky silences where we knew we’d done something wrong, but weren’t sure what it was. She was unable to express anger and disapproval and eventually, turned it inward. For years she was stricken with migraines and depression. One of my jobs was to tiptoe into the darkened bedroom and rub her aching forehead.

As my sister and I blossomed into our teen years, things became more difficult for our mother as her beauty began to fade. It was almost as if she resented the daughters she’d given birth to. At age twelve, I was a tall, gawky, shy kid. I remember crying when she refused to help me fix my hair. Fortunately, I had a big sister.

Years passed. My sister and I married into warm, loving families and had children of our own. Both of us stayed connected to our birth family, especially me since we lived in the same town. Mother was in her late eighties when the miracle happened. She had a slight stroke. Yes, I know. That sounds heartless. But truly, my mother, the former hypochondriac, was transformed into a different person. She was physically unaffected by the stroke, but her mental attitude underwent a cataclysmic change. She became the sweetest little old lady on the face of the planet. In her former life, a hangnail was a good reason to take to her bed. When she was 89, she fell and broke some ribs. I said, “Oh, that must hurt!” Her response? “Nope, not at all.”

On her last birthday, the 94^th, it fell on Mothers’ Day. Her May 13^th birthday often did. I have a picture in my office of the two of us posing with her birthday cake. The day she died, my husband received the call first and got to her bedside before I did. Later, he told me she was restless and uncomfortable until I arrived to hold her hand. She then relaxed, looked at me and smiled. I was with her as her breaths became farther and farther apart and finally stopped altogether. I am so thankful that, in my mother’s later years, I was able to make the mother-daughter connection I’d been longing for. It’s never too late.

Pick up Marilee Brothers’s Bell Bridge titles today: