Bell Bridge Books

BONKERS IN BOCA

by Miriam Auerbach

Boca Raton, Florida, has been hailed as the Beverly Hills of the East Coast.  Now, to me, that’s a claim that cries out for corroboration.  So let’s see – what are the commonalities between Beverly Hills and Boca?  Opulent mansions and beautiful shopping areas?  Check.  Young blonde women precariously balancing a size sixteen stack atop a size two tuchus?  Check.  But frankly, I think they’ve got it backwards – it should be Beverly Hills that aspires to be the Boca of the West Coast.  After all, we’ve got some home-grown beauts that they can’t shake a stick at.  Namely, we’ve got Boca Babes.  What is a Boca Babe?  Here are some clues:

• If you live in a house the size of a jumbo jet hangar, then you are likely a Boca Babe.
• If Neiman Marcus is #1 on your cell phone speed dial, you might be a Boca Babe.
• If you’ve had diamond studs soldered into your earlobes, you could be a Boca Babe.
• If your dog owns more clothing and toys that some people’s children, you just might be a Boca Babe.
• If the only thing you know how to make for dinner is reservations, you are probably a Boca Babe.
• And if you are all these things but you’ve hit the big 4-0, then you’re no longer a Boca Babe – you’re now a Botox Babe.

My series protagonist, Harriet Horowitz, is an ex-Boca Babe.  Why an ex?  Here’s the thing: a rich husband, no matter how revolting, is the price of admission to the Boca Babe Club.  Harriet’s husband was indeed revolting.  He abused her for ten years.  Finally she’d had enough.  One day when her husband raised his fists at her one last time, she told him, in the words of movie anti-hero Dirty Harry, “Go ahead – make my day.” He obliged, and she shot him through the heart – with his (now hers) .44 Magnum.

Harriet’s act was ruled justifiable homicide, and she embarked on a new identity – Dirty Harriet – and new life.  She sold everything, bought a Harley, and moved to a desolate cabin in the Everglades.  She swapped swank for swamp, indulgence for independence.

Harriet embarked on a new career as well: she opened up her own private eye agency, ScamBusters.  And business is booming.  Boca’s got a slew of scams.  Investment scams, insurance scams, immigration scams – you name it, we’ve got it.

So Harriet is doing just fine as a ScamBuster.  But occasionally, murder intrudes.  In my third Dirty Harriet mystery, DEAD IN BOCA, a prominent Boca developer hires Harriet to find the con artist who stole his elderly mother’s heart and identity.  It’s just another routine case for ScamBusters – that is, until Harriet’s client is murdered when he’s buried by a bulldozer at one of his construction sites.  The dead man’s new bride asks Harriet to continue the search for the con man, who just may – or may not – be the killer.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to my work in progress.  But first, I’ve got to head to the salon to get twelve subtle shades of highlights put in my hair.  After all, this is Boca – we’ve all got to keep up appearances.

 Make sure you grab Miriam’s newest release, DEAD IN BOCA, the third in the Dirty Harriet Mystery Series OUT NOW!!!

And don’t forget to grab the first two in this awesome series!!

   A LITTLE TRUE LOVE AT CHRISTMASTIME

by: Heidi Sprouse

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and I have one of the best presents coming up right now…the release of my first novel, All the Little Things.  I’ve been plugging away for ten years now, dreaming big, and can’t wait to share this with friends, family, and readers that I hope will fall in love with my characters the way I do every time we meet again. More is on the way, but right now it’s time to get to know Sam, Meg, and all of the little things that matter most when it comes to love!

Have you ever wished you could find your true soul mate, someone who knows you better than you know yourself? A man who doesn’t want anything else but to be at your side? Sam O’Malley is that man and he fell in love with Megan Taylor the moment he laid eyes on her. Maybe he was only 10-years-old, but the 8-year-old girl literally swept him off his feet and sent him for a freefall out of a tree the day she moved into the neighborhood.

Twenty years later, this small town boy has become a successful architect, knows what direction he’s headed, and doesn’t want anything more than what he’s found in Meg. There’s only one problem. The girl has begun to question her life and it will be up to Sam to pull out all of the stops, digging up memories, and leaving no stone unturned in their past to try and change her mind.

I’m a small town girl myself and many of the things that are precious to Sam and Megan come from my own childhood and life, moments that will be locked in my heart forever. As for a man like Sam, he’s of the solid, reliable sort any woman would love and has many of the qualities of the greats I’ve known over the years. I hope you’ll like him as much as I do, cheer him on, and stick it out to see what happens. If you love Sam, just wait until you get tangled with his best friend, Michael, and a hot-blooded Italian, Sophia, in Lightning Can Strike Twice (coming soon!).

Grab Heidi’s novel – ALL THE LITTLE THINGS – out TODAY! 

I KNOW ENOUGH TO BE DANGEROUS

By Donnell Ann Bell

Whenever I sit down with my husband to watch Jeopardy, and a writer is one of the three contestants, my Dear Husband automatically says, the writer will win, he/she’s smart.  I sit back and think, maybe.  He might be a descendant of Einstein’s, a Harvard graduate, incredibly well read, or he might be like me –he gets this crazy idea that won’t let go, and has to finish it so his head won’t explode.

Being thought of as the owner of a high IQ is much more glamorous so I smile and remain quiet.  Still, just between you, me and the blogosphere, writers answer to their muse, and, sadly, that muse often takes them in a direction writers don’t want to go.

My muse couldn’t care less about the amount of work I have to do or the fear involved when I write a character.  What do you mean you think my protagonist needs to be a nuclear physicist?  I know nothing about nuclear physicists.  Do you know how much researching and interviewing that occupation will entail?

I’ll subtly insert, say, a janitor when my muse isn’t looking.  I can write a janitor.  To which she’ll cross her arms, lift an eyebrow (my muse has eyebrows) and say, I distinctly ordered a MIT-caliber character—write one.

In BETRAYED, my November release from Bell Bridge Books, my characters consist of a trap shooting champion, a world class soccer player, a cop with a masters in psychology,  an Ob-GYN, artists dealing with glass, iron and paint disciplines, and several others who would do so much better on Jeopardy than me.  You would think my muse would be satisfied with the amount of research I had to put into this book. Not even close.  She’s already moved on to my next work in progress.

Maybe writers are like me and try out for Jeopardy to hide from their muses.  Anyone have Alex Trebeck’s contact information?  The next time you see one on a game show, don’t fall for that ‘they must be smart’ routine.  The truth is if writers are doing something besides writing, they’re avoiding their muses.  Writers – most know enough to be dangerous.

Click on the covers to check out Donnell Ann Bell’s “dangerous” novels – DEADLY RECALL and THE PAST CAME HUNTING!

And don’t miss out on BETRAYED.  Out TODAY!

    ASHEVILLE – THE SETTING OF THE CROSSROADS CAFE NOVELLAS

by: Deborah Smith

My Inspiration . . .

He was a little guy, thin inside baggy thrift-store clothes, grubby-looking, with ear-flaps flapping on his cap as he walk-loped up theAshevillesidewalk toward my husband and me. It was nine a.m. on an autumn Saturday, bright and sunny and blue-skied, and we were headed up and down the hilly city streets toward eggs and soy sausage at Tupelo Honey’s.

We could see his lips moving as he came closer, but we couldn’t hear what he was saying and, even if we could read lips, we couldn’t see his. He held a ratty Teddy Bear in front of his face. A big one. We weren’t sure how he saw around it.

He never paused, never glanced our way, never stopped whispering to his bear. He and his secret friend passed by us and continued up the hill, two pals communing inside the mysteries of their minds.

Just another moment in theNorth Carolinacity where the favorite t-shirt slogans include “Why be normal?” and “It’s not weird, it’sAsheville.”

Of course every city has its share of citizens who live in alternate realities. But here, in this artsy-bohemian  informal capital of westernNorth Carolina(the mountain side of the state) “alternate”   is  square one  on the yellow brick road to everywhere.

“There’s the nun,”  someone says, as a guy in a habit flies by on a tall bicycle, hairy knees pumping as he dodges pedestrians and halloooos at the street performers. The flying bicycle nun can only mean one thing: the purple LaZoom comedy tour bus is coming.  It rolls by, a comedy routine in motion, the passengers wearing bizarre hats.

Hardly anyone gives it an astonished look.

Over inPritchardParkpeople are smoking roll-your-owns and playing chess at the granite chess tables; on Friday evenings dozens of drummers show up with djembes and rattles, bongos and small drums. The drumming is loud and primitive and exciting.  A lot of very bad stomp-dancing commences, mostly by white people, though the crowd is always diverse.   Kids run in circles, laughing.  Young women in peasant skirts roll their waist-bands down and  belly dance.

Hank enjoys that part. Go figure.

On my latest birthday I decided I wanted my ears pierced. Hank and I can’t agree that I should  get a tattoo – I keep working on that plan, but the ear piercings are the first baby steps toward my Wild Cronehood Transition, so far.

I come from the kind of southern family where one hole in each ear was the maximum; and that was only acceptable after about 1975 (among the Methodists;) not until the late 1980’s among the Southern Baptists.  I was raised among a wild branch of semi-Methodists, so Daddy pierced my ears early,in the late 1960’s, using a large sewing needle and a tray of ice cubes to numb the lobes.

It was great family entertainment. Sister, mother, and grandma gathered to watch. No one fainted, and a good time was had by all.

So I came from a streak of rebellion. I got a second set of piercings in my lobes some years ago. Wild stuff. Made family reunions a little tense. Look at her. Four holes!

And now. Well. I was going to hell. I was taking my piercings outside the realm    of all decent folk.

I was going above the lobes.

So Hank and I walked into anAshevilletattoo  parlor (the optimum place to get a professional piercing done, according to the multi-pierced college students at our hometown pub.)

The staff and clientele looked at us as if we might have wandered in by mistake, intending to enter the Oldies But Goodies Vinyl Records Collectibles Shop next door. I explained that I wanted a piercing in each ear.

The young man behind the counter decided to humor me and asked where? I pointed vaguely to my ears. Somewhere in there. And on the edge over there.

This is when he gets out the chart. The ear anatomy chart.

We go over more terms than a high school human physiology class.

Helix, triangular fossa, crus helix, tragus.

Tragus. I ask if that isn’t the time travel thingie in Dr. Who?

Hank sits down in a corner and hides behind his cell phone.

No, the tragus is that thick ridge that guards the entrance to your ear canal.

Okay, that would be a prominent display spot for a glittery semi-precious stud. Very cool.

“I’ve got a pierced tragus. Want to see my tragus?”

I like the sound of that.

On to the other ear. Helix. The outer fold. Soft and fleshy. “That looks like a good spot. Not much cartilage. Won’t hurt, right?”

“Not much,” the child-man behind the counter says.

He said something similar about the tragus.

Actually he said, “Not too bad.”

Next to me, a young child of twenty or so, dotted with a lot of metal already, says, “Hey, you  oughta try this. She points to her ear. Inside, upper half. A stud gleams on a  shallow mound that looks as if it would be very hard to maneuver a needle through. My stomach felt funny. I looked  at the ear chart.

The antihelix.

That sounded . . . anti. Not for me.

I paid, I signed papers, I swore I wasn’t underage, high or drunk, and I showed my driver’s license. I was disappointed when I found out all the pretty studs on display in the jewelry cases were forbidden for a piercing process. I had to go full-titanium pre-sterilized. This was some serious stabby work.

“Come on back here,” said a reincarnation of John Belushi, covered in tattoos and a beard, and wearing inch-wide ear-plugs in his lobes.

This is how men think they’re proving they could give birth if they had to.

John took me into a very doctorly room with sterilizers and cabinets and an exam table with sanitary paper on it. He had nearly twenty years of experience piercing everything that can be pierced on the human body, and when he realized I was happy to hear the gory details, (writers ask questions, and former  newspaper reporters ask a LOT of them) he merrily told me.

I began making a mental list of the anecdotes I would not be sharing with Hank.  A lot of men don’t like hearing stories about needles going through that down there.    

“Ready?” John said, his Latexed fingers holding a needle the size of a toothpick  next to my unsuspecting targus.

“Sure!”

When  your daddy stabbed your earlobes with Mama’s  largest sewing needle while your kid sister went “MAKE IT BLEED,” you’re  confident you can handle a steel toothpick through your targus.

Zap.

I said bad words. My eyes watered. It was over in three seconds. Maybe two. But still. Damn.

“You all right?” John asked.

“Sure!”

I was looking around for something sharp to cut him with if he picked up a second needle. Fortunately, he recognized the reaction. “The other side will be a piece of cake. You’re doing great. Didn’t you say you have a calico cat? Look, here’s a picture of my calico. She sleeps between me and my wife every night.”

He distracted me with photos of his kitty on his cell phone. The dull throbbing in my targus settled down. Okay, it was still attached. I took a deep breath. “Ready.”

“Good girl.”

He moved fast. Ready, set, aim. Ka-zap. My helix lost its virginity. Not so bad. John gave me instructions on saline cleansing. We shook hands. We’d bonded.

I swaggered out like a female pirate. A stud in my targus. A stud in my helix.

“Do I look hot, or what?” I asked Hank.
“Pale, really pale,” he said.
“I need wine. A lot of it.”

He took me by the arm and we wandered out into the sunshine.

Ashevillesurrounded me. I was one with the weirdness. Proudly alternative.

But a little wobbly.

I wanted a Teddy Bear to talk to.

CHECK OUT ALL OF DEBORAH SMITH’S BOOKS ON AMAZON NOW!! 

AND DON’T MISS THE PICKLE QUEEN OUT TODAY!!!!

JUST CLICK THE PICTURES!!

THAT GUY IN THE NEW BOOK IS ME
Kathleen Eagle

My standard answer—it’s usually to one of my brothers-in-law—is if you say so.  And very often they do say so, which means I’ve succeeded.  I’ve created a character readers not only can but willingly do identify with, a character that is both universal in his humanity and as individual as any of my brothers-in-law.  And, believe me, my dear brothers are individuals.  I’m so glad we have a huge Eagle family because they are some of my most loyal readers.  And, yes, I do put them in my books.  Not the whole person, of course, but bits and pieces.  A quip here, a trait there.  The more books I write, the more likely it becomes that anyone I’ve ever known can find a bit of himself somewhere on those pages.

That’s where good characters come from.  They don’t come third-hand from Hollywood.  They don’t come floating through the office ready to be plucked out of thin air and plugged into a plot.  They come from a writer’s life, from people we’ve known.  We chop them up and make fiction salad.  Maybe not by design—probably more by instinct—but that’s how it works.  When a character is fully fleshed out, when the book is finished and I’m working on some stage of edits, that’s when I’ll fully realize where details of character might have come from.

YOU NEVER CAN TELL is about an American Indian activist and a journalist who wants to tell his story.  Having lived on the reservation and worked as a teacher during the heyday of the American Indian Movement, I’ve known lots of AIM members.  Hero Kole Kills Crow’s back story was inspired by a couple of people—one idealistic, another reckless—while his personality grew from the seeds planted by his fictitious but reality-based back story and fertilized by those bits and pieces I was talking about, bits that come from time well spent with interesting people.  The idea for the situation Kole finds himself in—he’s hiding out while his former rebel sidekick has made himself a career in Hollywood—has roots in reality, “ripped from the headlines,” as they say.  That’s a lot of juicy stuff to be mixed into the story pot, and that’s only one character.

Now I add the heroine, the successful journalist who’s a fish out of water when she barges into Kole’s territory.  She’s the idealist who’s just as reckless as Kole used to be.  She’s an outsider and a true believer and she serves as a catalyst.  I know her pretty well.  I like her, and I can identify with her.  Details of her character come from a variety of women I’ve known along with one I’ve seen in the mirror.  Not that any of them ever found herself in Heather’s situation, but a part of each of them could have and might still.  And really, it wouldn’t matter whether was a lady’s maid or a mermaid, Heather Reardon is a woman with whom readers willingly travel.  She’s a lot like us and then some.  We’re apt to say, “That woman could be me.”  And she’ll take us on an exhilarating journey.

Could our characters be related to real people?  You never can tell.