Bell Bridge Books

Small Southern Towns: They Ain’t Always Quaint

By C. Hope Clark

     Born in Mississippi and raised in South Carolina, my roots run crazy deep into the Delta soil of one state and the Lowcountry pluff mud of the other. My grandfather ran a cotton farm, and my grandmother taught me to eat homemade biscuits with maple syrup warmed on the gas stove. When I told them as a child that picking cotton didn’t look so hard, back before a lot of farmers could afford cotton picker machines, my grandmother sewed a miniature (and floral) cotton sack and ushered me to the fields. I never questioned the ease of manual labor again, especially on a farm.

So no surprise that I wound up with an agriculture degree from Clemson and fell in love with everything rural. After a career in that realm, I turned to writing my mysteries. And guess what showed up in the stories? Crime in the country.

Newberry Sin is the fourth in the Carolina Slade Mystery Series, with the setting in a small rural community actually named Newberry.

All rural Southern communities come off as quaint upon first blush. White antebellum homes, some kept up royally while others are allowed to age, a few not so gracefully. Rockers on the porches and flags on the columns. The American flag, of course, accompanied by the state flag and/or one for the appropriate football-playing university. Azaleas, of course, plus forsythia, dogwood, camellia, and spirea dotting the yards in pastels and white. Southerners love their flowers.

And behind all that charm are stories to curl your toes. The older and more quaint the town, the more stories are whispered behind hands at luncheons and skeletons hid in closets behind the winter coats.

I won’t spill her name, but in my research on small towns, trying to find yet another to use in a novel, this homegrown native greeted me for lunch with a pound cake, apparently a tradition, and she wouldn’t allow me to pay for my own lunch, because I was a guest in HER town. Newberry . . . the center of the universe, she said. “You ought to make us a setting in one of your books.”

She elaborated the details of Revolutionary War skirmishes and the passed-down stories of ghosts, affairs, and what could only be miracles that kept some of their ancestors alive during battles.

Railroads, bars, and (cough) painted ladies helped originate the town. A room still existed in a still-standing community center that harbored any gentleman farmer’s wife for the duration of the time he did business in town, so the wife didn’t come in contact with the street walkers.

Many a husband and son fought in the War Between the States, the cemetery sprawling for acres. Graves still maintained with insignias, with current ancestors maintaining the sites with stiff, admiring pride. Several families retained bragging rights that five ancestors signed the Order of Secession, causing South Carolina to lead the way for 10 other states to follow.

Of course, ghosts abounded, from any and all of the wars, not to mention the occasional lover’s loss, leaving them roaming in search for their paramour. One jumped from the bell tower of the local college. The Bride of West End still awaits her groom for their wedding. Molly’s Rock serves as a magnet for spirits who took their own lives.

Beneath the old Ritz theater, one could supposedly still hear screams where ages ago the homeless were murdered. At the Newberry Opera House, the ghost of Penelope made a fairly frequent appearance, moving seats and closing doors.

And someone way back got in legal trouble, relocated to Australia and became a cannibal.

I couldn’t write it all down.

Newberry has it idiosyncrasies and colored past, but so does every other sweet little Southern town and crossroad. It just takes you inviting someone local to lunch and asking, “I’m looking for a setting for my book.” Honey, you’ll fill a notebook with stuff that isn’t in any history book.

C. Hope Clark’s newest release is Newberry Sin, set in an idyllic small Southern town where blackmail and sex are hush-hush until they become murder. The fourth in the Carolina Slade Mysteries. Hope speaks to conferences, libraries, and book clubs across the country, is a regular podcaster for Writer’s Digest, and adores connecting with others. She is also founder of FundsforWriters.com, an award-winning site and newsletter service for writers. She lives on the banks of Lake Murray in central South Carolina with her federal agent husband where they spin mysteries just for fun. www.chopeclark.com

Newberry Sin

Book 4 of The Carolina Slade Mystery Series

EPIC Award Winning Series

“Author C. Hope Clark brings to life . . . endearing and strong-minded characters that linger in your mind long after the last page is turned.” —New York Times bestselling author Karen White

Beneath an idyllic veneer of Southern country charm, the town of Newberry hides secrets that may have led to murder.

When a local landowner’s body, with pants down, is found near Tarleton’s Tea Table Rock—a notorious rendezvous spot, federal investigator Carolina Slade senses a chance to get back into the field again. Just as she discovers what might be a nasty pattern of fraud and blackmail, her petty boss reassigns her fledgling case to her close friend and least qualified person in their office.

Forced to coach an investigation from the sidelines, Slade struggles with the twin demons of professional jealousy and unplanned pregnancy. Something is rotten in Newberry. Her personal life is spiraling out of control. She can’t protect her co-worker. And Wayne Largo complicates everything when the feds step in after it becomes clear that Slade is right.

One wrong move and Slade may lose everything. Yet it’s practically out of her hands . . . unless she finds a way to take this case back without getting killed.

Writing a series about vampires can be a challenge, especially since the goal of any writer is to be fresh and come up with a new twist on a subject that’s been written about for centuries.  That’s exactly what I was thinking when I came up with the idea that my heroine, Jess Vandermire, would be a vampire cop in New York City and she’d hunt her own kind.  Jess’s baby brother, in his seventies, would be a Catholic priest and he’d partially save her soul, giving her the tiniest advantage over the darker vampires who had no control over their blood thirst.  How’s that for angst? Added to that, Jess can no longer practice her faith. That’s how the Jess Vandermire series started and has evolved over seven books, three of which I wrote last year. (Coming soon to ImaJinn Books!).

I’m pleased to tell Jess’s fans that there is a revelation and twist in each of the next three books that might surprise . . . AND WILL DEFINITELY SHOCK . . .  followers of the series. 🙂 Of course, the love of Jess’s “life”, John Brittain, plays an integral part of what happens in the new books, as well.

All this to say, there will be surprises coming in the series.  Big surprises!  Hope to hear from you.

Grave New Day is on sale now through March 15th for just $0.99! Don’t miss this great deal!

Lina Gardiner

www.linagardiner.com

About the Author:

Lina Gardiner, award-winning author of the Jess Vandermire Vampire Hunter Series, has writing in her blood.

Lina’s first book was published in 2007.  At every point along the way—before 2007 and since—she enjoys the daily routines of being an author: from conceiving an idea to writing and revising, from networking with other authors to attending workshops and learning sessions and, of course, holding that bright and shiny, newly published book in her hands—always the best experience ever.

Being a writer is a dream come true for Lina, but the friendships she’s forged with fellow authors and readers are the main perks.  Those friendships make that solitary job a richer and more rewarding experience.

Lina belongs to several writers’ groups and has served as a board member and in several chapter positions.

On the home front, Lina Lives in New Brunswick, Canada, a hot spot for legendary ghosts, tall tales and odd happenings, which probably add to her love of a good mystery. The spooky stories her grandfather told his grandchildren in the “parlor” when their grandmother wasn’t paying attention also sparked the wonders of imagination and a love of storytelling.

I write fast.

My career is built on being able to crank out a novel a month. Yes, you read that correctly, a novel a month.

Is this a good thing? Well, it sure helps pay the bills.

Are the novels any good? My fans and readers seem to like them and the reviews tend to back that enthusiasm up.

Can they be better? Ah. There’s the rub. Can they be better…

The quick answer: yes.

The long answer: of course, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the timeframe in which I write those novels.

You see, even if I was given a year to complete a novel, I’d probably still write it in four weeks. That’s my style, that’s my groove.

That’s where the editor comes in.

When I finished Stone Cold Bastards and turned it in, I thought I was done. The other publisher I work with would have put the manuscript through some rigorous proofreading for typos and grammar and all that jazz, but they would have trusted that the story itself was solid and off it would go to the printer and to the ebook formatting elves. Nothing wrong with that. I write tight, so I’m comfortable with a quick turnaround.

Except every manuscript can be improved upon and SCB was certainly one of those manuscripts. I know, I know, how can you improve on a novel about a ragtag team of misfit gargoyles tasked with protecting the last of humanity from the demon-possessed hordes that have taken over the world? I know, right? That’s perfection in a nutshell.

But SCB needed tweaks. The characters needed better motivation. They needed to care. They needed to want to survive and/or help others survive. They had distinct personalities, yes, but so what? That’s where the editor steps in and helps turn a good novel into a great novel.

I fixed those characters. I made them care about others and about themselves. And in doing so, I made the reader care about them too. I wouldn’t have seen that flaw if it wasn’t for that extra editing. I would have moved on to the next novel and forgotten all about SCB. But the skill and experience of Bell Bridge Books, forced me to take another look at the manuscript. And another. And another. Until it was just right. Until it was the novel it was supposed to be, not just the novel I turned in.

In these days of self-publishing and the race to get novels to market, I think many writers forget the value of a good editor. For me, I never knew the value until I experienced it. Now I’m spoiled.

Yes, I’ll still write fast. I won’t deviate from my novel a month pace because that’s the writer I am. But it makes things easier, it takes a little bit of the load off my shoulders, knowing that the novel I produce at the end of that month can still be made better and I don’t have to go about that task alone.

All thanks to the editor.

About the Author:

Jake Bible, Bram Stoker Award nominated-novelist and author of the bestselling Z-Burbia series, short story writer, independent screenwriter, podcaster, and inventor of the Drabble Novel, has entertained thousands with his horror and sci/fi tales. He reaches audiences of all ages with his uncanny ability to write a wide range of characters and genres. Other series by Jake Bible: the bestselling Salvage Merc One, the Apex Trilogy, the Mega series, and the Reign of Four series. Jake lives in the wonderfully weird Asheville, North Carolina.  Connect with Jake on Facebook, Twitter, and his website: jakebible.com

When Inspiration Finds You, Pounce on it!

Alright, I’ll admit it: I didn’t start out liking steampunk. When The Difference Engine came out, I just didn’t get it. I mean, Charles Babbage’s Difference Engines actually working, much less changing Victorian society? I didn’t buy it. Looking back, I think I just didn’t like alternate history, as I found other, similar novels off-putting.

But as I grew, I watched the steampunk movement grow too, hand in hand with the burgeoning maker community. At the same time I started attending the Maker Faire and admiring all the amazing contraptions our modern independent inventors were coming up with, I started noticing more and more steampunk costumes expressing the same kind of gutsy do-it-yourself, throw-it-all-together flair.

It all came together for me at Dragon Con 2009, where from the very first day I encountered a cavalcade of steampunks in amazing costumes – men with coffee blasters, women with clockwork wings, a young female soldier with a gearwork gatling gun incongruously grabbing a burrito at Willy’s in the food court.

And every costume was covered with brass, gears, and goggles! Now, I started out writing Larry Niven-style hard science fiction, so I asked myself the question: what would make the technology used by steampunks so different from our own? And as soon as I asked that question, I was hooked.

The brass? Clearly they’d invented some lightweight supermaterial with a brass finish. The gears? Clearly they used clockwork computation (damn it, you win, William Gibson!) And the goggles? Why, of course, to protect their eyes from the ultraviolet rays—nay, the period-appropriate actinic rays—of their rayguns!

And the female soldier? Well, that was a harder nut to crack, given the attitudes of the Victorians, but soon I found the answer. Women’s liberation actually started in the early eighteen hundreds, promoted by Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Shelley—but when Wollstonecraft died in childbirth, her movement died with her.

But what if antibiotics had been discovered in the seventeen hundreds?

Then it all fell into place. In my steampunk world, Mary Wollstonecraft survived. Women’s liberation flourished in the early eighteen hundreds, and women flooded the sciences. Many other scientists who died young in our world also survived because of antibiotics. With more than twice as many brains working on hard problems, their world became more advanced in 1908 than our world is today.

And that’s the world Jeremiah Willstone was born into … and the world of the Clockwork Time Machine.

I hope you have fun there!

Pick up Anthony Francis’s newest title – JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE today! Available at these retailers:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2lhOxeD

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2ld3m1T

Barnes and Noble: http://bit.ly/2lLRS9m

Google: http://bit.ly/2mhT3uK

About the Author:

By day Anthony Francis studies human and other minds to design intelligent machines and emotional robots; by night he writes fiction and draws comic books at the collision point of hard science and pure fantasy. He was inspired to study artificial intelligence by Douglas Hofstadter, to become a writer by Isaac Asimov, and to write urban fantasy by Laurell K. Hamilton and Richard P. Feynman. He got his Ph.D in AI and his brown belt in Taido from Georgia Tech; he currently supports his out-of-control reading and writing habits by working at the Search Engine That Starts With a G. Anthony lives in San Jose with his wife and cats but his heart will always belong in Atlanta.

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.”

Inspiration

by Sparkle Abbey

Inspiration is everywhere. As writers, we are always looking for ways to be stirred to greatness. Inspiration drives action…or in some cases, words on the blank page.

When we’re on deadline, we don’t get to wait for inspiration to hit, we have to sit down and do the work. But that doesn’t mean we stop looking for ways to add joy or meaning to our lives and our stories.

We’re moved by great books and entertaining movies. An oceanside photo and a road trip with our closest girl friends. A great conversation and other people’s success stories. The way we live our lives often provides our greatest inspiration: a positive attitude and a large dose of laughter.

The setting for our latest release, Raiders of the Lost Bark, was inspired by an Orange County camping trip that Anita and her family took a number of years ago. For three hot summer days, at the beginning of what was to become a five year drought for California, Anita’s family pitched their well-used six-person tent at the desolate Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park campground. Bees, rattlesnakes, and mountain lions. What were they thinking? After two restless nights of sleeping on the hard, dusty ground, and watching over their shoulders for mountain lions, they broke camp and headed east—to the even hotter Las Vegas desert, a cold hotel room and running water.

Years later, we tossed around the idea of a story set outside of Laguna Beach. What if our pampered characters were stuck between the sandstone canyons and parched wilderness campsites? How would they cope? What luxuries would they take with them? Would they still be able to catch a killer under the stars?

As you can see, sometimes inspiration is so close we just have to take a moment and stop; be mindful in that instant by listening to the silence, and taking a few deep cleansing breaths. We’re not all inspired by the same things or in the same ways. So what inspires you?

We hope ya’ll enjoy our latest Pampered Pets Mystery adventure, Raiders of the Lost Bark, out March 25^th!

Melinda Langston, amateur sleuth and Bow Wow Boutique owner, finds herself “Glamping Under the Stars” with a blackmailer, Orange County’s hottest new gourmet pet chef, Addison Rae. But before Mel can put an end to Addison’s strong-arming, the chef is found dead. Mel is just one of many suspects who had motive to snuff out the demanding chef.

Was it Redmond, the angry sous chef who detested working for Addison? What about rival chef, Pepper Maddox? The glamping chef gig was hers until Addison blackmailed her way into the job. And then there’s Asher, a charming fellow camper whose past relationship with Addison isn’t the only secret he’s guarding. Mel’s not one to tuck tail and run, even when it looks like she may be the next victim.

Sparkle Abbey is the pseudonym of two mystery authors (Mary Lee Woods and Anita Carter). They are friends and neighbors as well as co-writers of the Pampered Pets Mystery Series. The pen name was created by combining the names of their rescue pets–Sparkle (Mary Lee’s cat) and Abbey (Anita’s dog). They reside in central Iowa, but if they could write anywhere, you would find them on the beach with their laptops and, depending on the time of day, with either an iced tea or a margarita. If you’re missing any of their  backlist this is a great time to grab them. Details here. And if you want to make sure you’re up on all the Sparkle Abbey news, stop by their website and sign up for updates at sparkleabbey.com.

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.

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!