Holiday Sales from Three Great Authors!

Catch these hot titles at fantastic sale prices! Click on covers for more information or to purchase. All titles are also on sale at Amazon Kindle and ARe/Omnilit.

Kathy Fischer-Brown: Save $1 on Winter Fire. Smashwords coupon code: GC55C 

Ginger Simpson: Save $2 on First Degree Innocence. Smashwords coupon code: WJ55C

 

Jude Pittman: Save $2 each on Deadly Secrets and Deadly Betrayal. 

Smashwords coupon codes:   

Deadly Secrets - TJ57M

Deadly Betrayal - GR29A

Lee Killough: Save $2 on each of her four available titles.

Smashwords coupon codes: 

Wilding Nights - YM23W

Blood Games - SP85C

Killer Karma -  FY96R

The Leopard's Daughter - GY87X

 

50% Off Sale at ARe/OmniLit - Cyber Monday Only!

In the season of giving, ARe is giving back and offering a 50% rebate as a gift to readers. Authors will receive full royalties on this generous offer! Find all the BWLPP titles at ARe/Omnilit here:

Have fun shopping!

Now Available: By Candlelight: Dark Imaginings by Rie Sheridan Rose

By Candlelight

Ebook Price: $2.99 USD. 10730 words. Fiction by Rie Sheridan Rose and published by Books We Love Publishing Partners  on November 24, 2010

A collection of darker poetry and short fiction from the pen of Rie Sheridan Rose. The ghosts that roam, the monsters under the bed, the vampires on the corner…this is where they have come to roost. Here there is darkness. Read By Candlelight. 

~ Read an excerpt or purchase here 

**** SALE **** 

For the month of December, save $1 on each of The Bardabee Poet's titles at Smashwords. Use the following coupon codes and shop to your heart's content!

Take Out from the Writer’s Café - UX38B

Straying from the Path - GF59K

By Candlelight - HF26J

Dancing on the Edge - LD33R 

If My Sandcastle Drowns... Can I Live With You? - JU22L 

~ Find Rie at Smashwords

Hot Excerpt: Killer Karma by Lee Killough

Ebook Price: $4.99 USD. 86660 words. Fiction by Lee Killough and published by Books We Love Publishing Partners  on September 11, 2010 

Inspector Cole Dunavan finds himself in the middle of a parking garage with no memory except of his murder. After remembering who he is and accepting that he is now a ghost, he has more problems. He is a ghost with no idea how being a ghost works. No one sees or hears him. He cannot move objects and initially cannot move through closed doors. He learns to his horror that his body has not been found, and everyone thinks he has run off with a woman who is actually an informant. A woman whose life he may have put in danger. He must save her, find his killer, and show his wife he has remained faithful.

"Killough keeps the action driving forward, but does not neglect character development. We get to know our protagonist's loved ones, and to care about them. We begin to understand why the antagonists do what they do. Will there be any justice? Will anyone find out what happened to him, or will they believe the false report circulating? And if they do find out, what then? Killough does not give us easy answers. The climax of Killer Karma is a marvelous crescendo, both complex and poignant." ~ Sherwood Smith

"Killough has created more than a paranormal police procedural here. This is a novel about love and redemption, about friendship and possibility. Any reader who enjoys a good mystery with strong psychological elements, compelling characters, and a fascinating storyline will relish this one. I highly recommend it." ~  Pari Noskin Taichert, Fresh Fiction web site

Excerpt:

1.

He found himself standing in a parking garage with no memory except of his murder. Those final sensations felt seared into his brain: the hard pressure of a gun muzzle behind his right ear; his body stiffened by surprise, horror, and anger; a cry of No, wait! rising in his throat...but all vanishing the next second in an explosion of pain that hurled him into darkness.

As he recoiled from the memory, however, reason overrode terror. Those could hardly be final sensations if he were able to remember them.

“Way to go, numbnuts,” he said.

The sound of his voice reassured him of his reality, too. So did feeling the back of his head. His exploring fingers found just short hair...no stickiness indicative of fresh blood, no matting indicative of dried blood. 

Certainly no bullet hole.

“You just had a bad dream.”

But if that were the case, how did he explain the amnesia?

He fought the panic threatening him again. Maybe he had been mugged and received a concussion. Tan lines on his wrist and ring finger attested to a missing watch and ring. Except how could he be on his feet if he had been hit hard enough to lose all memory, and even awareness of what city he was in? A quick examination of his clothes — grey suit, pin-striped shirt, tie striped in yellow, maroon, and grey — found no blood or other signs of attack. Nor did running his hands over his body — a lanky one better than six feet tall — locate any injuries. His chin felt smooth, free of abrasions. Except for his tie being loosened and shirt unbuttoned at the collar, he seemed ready to walk into a business meeting.

Meeting! The thought sent him reeling backward, staggered by a rush of anger, guilt, leaden foreboding, a pounding sense of urgency, and — insanely — images of...butterflies? He shook his head to clear it. Butterflies. That was crazy. The rest, though, seemed to indicate he was scheduled for an unpleasant but critically important meeting. Life or death important. But where was it? How could he find out?

The answer hit him a moment later. Duh. “Use your phone, stupid.” People at the numbers in it would know him.

He reached into his coat but to his dismay, found no phone. Not only no phone. Checking the rest of his pockets one by one found them all were empty. No billfold, no business cards, no keys, no loose change. 

Not even a handkerchief.

He ran for the exit arrow at end of the row. The garage entrance would have an attendant who could help him. But running, panic rose in him. His feet seemed to make no sound. Nor could he smell the exhaust of an SUV that passed him trailing blue smoke. His brain had been royally screwed up.

He was fighting hysteria by the time he reached the exit and charged up to the booth. “Help me!” he yelled at to the middle-aged woman inside. “Call 911! I need a doctor!”

The attendant never looked from her book.

He waved his arms frantically. “Hey!” But when she still did not respond, fear turned to fury. “Damn it...are you frigging deaf!” He slammed the glass with both fists.

Anger vanished in a blast of icy fear. Like his feet, his fists made no sound. Despite the force he put into the blow, he felt as if he hit a layer of foam rubber. Whatever happened had turned him into a total wack job. Unless he was not crazy but...

He cut off the thought. No! That was even crazier. He stumbled back from the booth. Fine. Forget the attendant. At least some of the buildings around the garage must have a security force. One of those officers could help him.

He turned and charged up the ramp. Where he came face to face with a Lexus on its way in. He leaped sideways, but not fast enough. The left front headlight and fender caught him head-on...and passed through him.

He stared down at himself, clutching his chest and abdomen, chaos roaring in him. But what he did not feel engulfed him in terror. His heart should be thundering. But he felt nothing beneath the hand on his chest. No heartbeat, no frightened gasp for breath. He felt only the remembered pressure of the gun muzzle against his skull.

“No!”

(C) Copyright 2010 Lee Killough

~ Read a longer excerpt or purchase here

Hot Excerpt: The Leopard's Daughter by Lee Killough

Ebook Price $4.99 USD. Fiction by Lee Killough and published By Books We Love Publishing Partners  on November 07, 2010  

In an ancient African of verdant Sahara plains, warrior princess Jeneba Karamoke has grown up scorned by her people because her father was a leopard man.  When she rescues a party of fellow warriors from cannibalistic half-men, she hopes it will finally win her acceptance. 

But no...in order to prove she isn't lying about the vanished hero Tomo Silla's part in their capture by the half-men she must make Tomo face the tribe.  Can she find him, and then survive more monsters, foreign tribes, war, and a curse on a fabled city to bring him back alive?

Excerpt:

Chapter One

The wind reeked of carrion. Jeneba Karamoke’s nose wrinkled in distaste. This wooded lakeshore might provide more water, firewood, and protection against the dangers of the night than the open grass of the Sahara plains, but how could an experienced warrior and camp scout like Tomo Silla think anyone would be able to eat or sleep in such a stench? Why did he expect Mseluku Karamoke, his commander and king, to do so?

Or did he even notice the smell, she wondered belatedly, uncomfortably. None of her other brother and sister warriors appeared to. Moving through fading light that emphasized the rich red-brown of their skins and the colors of their lion and leopard-skin war tsaras, they joked and sang while hobbling horses and building fires.

Across the clearing Mseluku stared through the trees toward the lake as he chatted with Tomo, pointing at rounded shapes in the water. “Hippos. You haven’t scouted out a camp on one of their trails, I hope, Tomo.”

Uneasiness flashed across the handsome warrior’s face...turning to a sheepish grin as Mseluku laughed and Tomo realized that the king had been joking.

And still not a word about carrion.

So Jeneba said nothing, either, just hobbled her horse and leaned her spears and long oval shield against a tree. It would be foolish to remind people of her keener-than-human senses. No one knew what perversity had made the beautiful Sia Nyiba Karamoke disdain all human suitors to take a leopard-man for a lover, but Jeneba had fought for seventeen years to overcome the curse of her mother’s mating. She struggled to appear like everyone else---she ran a finger along the raised ridge of the tribal scar stretching from her left nostril halfway across the cheek toward her ear---to make her people forget that though the uba, blood, of the king’s sister’s daughter was noble and pure Dasa, her father had given her the tetena, spirit, of an animal.

Fighting yesterday beside fellow Dasa of Imbu against the Keoru, she had felt closer to success than ever before. With the earth warm beneath her bare feet and the sun heating arms and shoulders bared by the drape of her lion-skin war tsara, she and her fellow Dasa had moved with practiced precision...hurling their spears at the Keoru line, raising shields to deflect spears aimed at them. Each maneuver accompanied by the clicking of the beads strung on the ropes of their hair. How magnificent everyone had looked...tall and lean and dark above the yellow-brown Keoru. And in the evening, dancing in celebration with the spears Joueta Tatauba’s warriors threw down on retreat, warriors of both Imbu and Kiba embraced each other, embraced Jeneba, calling her “sister”.

For the first time in her life they seemed to accept her as truly one of them, not just tolerate her because she was the king’s niece but without a brother to inherit the king’s Stool and make her the Queen Mother. No, she would not negate that.

 (C) Copyright 2010 Lee Killough

~ Read a longer excerpt or purchase here

Interview with author Lee Killough

Lee Killough has been storytelling since the age of four or five, when she started making up her own bedtime stories, then later, her own episodes of her favorite radio and TV shows. Because she loves both SF and mysteries, her work combines the two genres. Although published as SF, most of her novels are actually mysteries with SF or fantasy elements...with a preference--thanks to a childhood hooked on TV cop shows--for cop protagonists.

 

BWLPP: How long have you been writing and in what genres? 

LK:  I’ve been story-telling since Kindergarten, starting with making up my own bedtime stories, then making up stories to amuse myself during the day.  The story subject varied with my age: horses and cowboys at first, followed by creating my personal episodes of radio and TV shows (Sergeant Preston, Wild Bill Hickock, Straight Arrow, Dragnet).  This was all well pre-Star Trek, so when I was older and Star Trek came along, of course a girlfriend and I made up our own episodes of those, too.  Meanwhile, still pre ST, I discovered science fiction and mysteries and all my stories became SF and mysteries.  About age eleven I started writing them down.  But I never dreamed of submitting them anywhere until I was in my twenties and married and my husband Pat pointed out that as I liked writing, some people actually made money writing...and he twisted my arm and twisted it until I finally started sending stories out.  Those stories were all science fiction, and the first story that sold, in 1970, was science fiction.  I considered myself a short story writer.  Then we began attending science fiction conventions and I met other authors.  They convinced me that no one made money with short stories and I should write a novel.  Again it took some browbeating, but I finally worked up my courage to try.  A Voice Out of Ramah, which happened to sell to the second publisher, came out in 1979 and I’ve been largely a novel writer ever since.

I began publishing in SF but since I’ve never lost my love of mysteries, I began combining SF and mysteries.  The three Brill/Maxwell novels, SF mysteries, resulted. Deadly Silents is another such mixture.  In one of those “what if” moments, after reading some of Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula novels like Old Friend of the Family, I wondered, if vampires really existed, what would they really be like.  So I wrote Blood Hunt, which is a vampire story...and a mystery because a mystery is a great skeleton to hang a story on.  I enjoyed that so much that I’ve been writing supernatural detective novels since...or urban fantasy, depending on what you want to call it.  Three vampire mysteries, a werewolf mystery (Wilding Nights), and a ghost mystery (Killer Karma) where the ghost is the detective.

BWLPP: Where you do get your inspiration?

LK: I have gotten inspiration from everywhere.  An article on circuses had a line “a circus is a moment frozen in time” which inspired a short story “Achronos” about a place frozen in time itself but where denizens of all times could meet and mix.  Sometimes the story idea isn’t so much inspiration as recombinant DNA, lots of little pieces from all sources stewing around in my head until enough bump into each other to reach critical mass and surface.  I’ve been inspired by a title a fellow author discarded for a story of his own: “Death Glass.” I mentioned that reading Fred Saberhagen’s books set me speculating about the lives of vampires.  After the vampire books came out, Stephen Pagel at Meisha Merlin publishing said he would like to see someone play with werewolves as I did with vampires.  So I obliged him by coming up with Wilding Nights.  I’ve been inspired by seeing notices of up-coming anthologies.  Marion Zimmer Bradley wanted stories for her Swords and Sorceresses series.  I had been reading about Africa at the time and realized that 1.  Africa had cultures with female warriors, and 2.  Africa is an untapped story source.  So I wrote the short story “The Leopard’s Daughter.” MZB didn’t buy it but Isaac Azimov’s magazine did.

BWLPP: Tell us about your book(s).

LK: I kind of rattled on about them above.  At least the mixed genre ones.  I do have some straight SF novels (The Monitor the Miners and the Shree and Liberty’s World) and a straight fantasy, The Leopard’s Daughter.  My only fantasy but a novel I’m particularly fond of.  It began as a short story , but I realized that the story made a good opening for a novel, so the short story became chapter one.  The form is familiar: a quest fantasy with a protagonist of royal birth who becomes part of a rat-tag party on the quest.  Interestingly, in my research on Africa, I found that the quest with a royal protagonist was a story form used in old African cultures...because the stories were conceived (in the oral tradition) by royal bards for the entertainment of the court.  So I was able to take a genuine African story form also familiar to Western readers and give them a story with African characters, monsters, culture.

What I love about writing novels is the world-building.  My late husband Pat teased me about writing novels just to world-build.  Which is somewhat true.  For SF, of course, world-building was crucial, but I’ve carried that into all my novels.  Behind each of my books is a background tome — thin or thick depending on how close to the Here and Now the novel is set.  The background books have data on the setting, maps, character studies, calendars, timelines, short essays on every aspect of the society if necessary.  Because I am a compulsive list-maker, from my first novel I began developing a checklist to help me organize the background.  Reading anthropological studies helped me refine the list to about 50 categories by showing me how the professionals define a culture.  When I realized that the list worked for any genre I began handing it to writing classes...who used it for westerns, spy stories, historical romances...everything.  The checklist with some charts, suggesting reading, and explanatory notes and examples has been published by Yard Dog Press as a chapbook Checking On Culture.

BWLPP: What about your next book?  Will it be part of a series or a stand alone?  Can you give us a taste to whet our appetites?

LK: New work is on hold at the moment while I edit my older, out of print books for e-publication.  The truly vintage ones are being revised as well as edited.  The three SF detective novels, The Doppelganger Gambit, Spider Play, and Dragon’s Teeth are in for a major overhaul.  They were written before everyone had computers and cell phones, so technology that seemed futuristic back in the seventies and early eighties is so stone age now.  Fortunately the stories and characters still read well.

I do have a new work waiting for all this revision to finish.  It, too, as an urban fantasy/supernatural mystery.  Start with the question: if a ghost is a psychic manifestation resulting from trauma to a person, what happens when the entire population of a city undergoes major trauma.  For that trauma I chose San Francisco and its 1906 Quake, since I already have considerable research on it for Blood Hunt, Bloodlinks, and Killer Karma.  My answer is that the trauma results in a ghost city existing alongside the living city, where it is always the beautiful April evening before the Great Quake.  My protagonist has grown up able to see ghosts and can move from the living world into the ghost city.  In the story, he must find a killer from the living world who can also move into the ghost and has committed murder of another living person in the ghost city.  My detective’s problem: like most ghosts the city is a memory loop, and any change that occurs within that loop vanish when the loop restarts. Physical evidence vanishes; (most) ghost witnesses forget what they’ve witnessed.  Oh, there are also some dangerous entities living in the ghost, personifications of anger and other negative thoughts which became part of the ghost’s creation.  And there is a section of the ghost shaped by the living world’s conception of San Francisco influenced by movies such as The Maltese Falcon.  I’m looking forward to returning to work on the book.  Series start or standalone?  I don’t know.  Some books suggest sequels.  Others like The Leopard’s Daughter are complete for me.

BWLPP: Why did you choose to publish electronically?

LK: Electronic publishing is a coming thing.  It has those great advantages: acquiring a book almost instantly by downloading, being able to carry a multitude of books in one device (solving the storage problem that overwhelms those of us who keep filling shelves with print books).  And e-publication can give a second life to OP books.  That’s what drew me.  I have books are believe are good books but have gone out of print, and some of the more recent ones had such poor distribution that almost no one had the opportunity to see or buy them.  E-pub puts the books in a “bookstore” accessible to everyone everywhere. We have a new generation growing up with electronic devices and by publishing electronically I have the chance to connect to new readers who won’t have encountered my books before. 

BWLPP: What are your hobbies and interests?

LK: This is always a short answer question since I don’t have hobbies.  Once upon a time it was writing.  Now writing is a business.  But it remains my main interest.  My other main interest is reading.  I’m one of those who read anything, like the soup can as I’m cooking or the cereal box at the breakfast table.  I usually say that my main reading interest is the same as I like to write, mysteries and urban fantasies, and the new steam punk books.  I do devour those...but I also read anything that catches my eye.  Books related to police work such as arson investigation or chasing serial killers. A romance that catches my eye, a military novel that intrigues me.  Lots of non-fiction, usually on the quirky side: a history of taxidermy, the story of a Victorian woman’s solo journey across America, the history of competitive rose growing, biographies, a book on evolutionary orphans...that is, plants we have, like the pawpaw, osage orange, and locust tree, who are stranded in time by the extinction of the animals that once ate them and ensured their dispersal over the landscape, a book called Working IX to V about the jobs people held in ancient Rome and Greece.

  

Okay, not such a short answer.

BWLPP: What does the future hold for you?

LK: Many more books that want to be written, I hope.

BWLPP: Where can readers find you?

LK: My books, if that’s what you’re asking, are on Kindle and Smashwords, and I believe available at other sites as well.  Myself, I have a page on the Books We Love site.  I’m one of the Coffeeshop Writers and I can be found there. I have an author page on Amazon. I have a Facebook page but I’m not very good about visiting it. I’d rather write than blog or twitter.

http://www.bookswelove.net/killough.php 

BWLPP: Thanks Lee!

Sweet Holiday Specials

Now for a limited time, get two hot titles from author Elizabeth Delisi for only $1.99 each.

Penumbra

Travel deep into unknown territory, where life and death are not as they seem; where machines dominate your days; where you have to be careful what you ask for, because you might get it; where magic is the norm, and stars really do grant wishes. These stories will take you beyond the realm of the solid and real, into the deepest, darkest corner of your imagination. Don't forget to bring your flashlight...

"It’s no small wonder that Ms. Delisi is such a good writer; she was born into authorship...What a nice trip into the Twilight Zone with such diverse stories. It’s a perfect book to take along with oneself to the doctor’s office, hairdresser, or any place where the wait for the appointment time can be long or short. The stories are the right length to afford one time to be able to finish a story in a short time. A very well written winner. Try it, you’ll like it." ~ Shirley Truax, All About Murder Reviews, 4 daggers

"Travel to faraway lands, and some not so faraway, where things are not always what they seem. Where true love can overcome even death or create a means to journey to the gods. Where time is only what you make of it. Learn how the many forms of perfection can include a "magically perfect" suburban family or simply someone who knows how to read and follow instructions. See how wishes can make you appreciate who and what you are, or destroy your life if you become obsessed with them. And know that, sometimes, help comes in the most unlikely places. 

This collection of short stories is a remarkable work. Each character and situation is unique and will leave a lasting impression. If you enjoy Stephen King's short stories and the myriad of stories collected in "Tales from the Crypt" and "The Twilight Zone," this is definitely something you'll want to check out." ~ Amy L. Turpin, Timeless Tales Reviews, Rating: 5

Mirror Images

When Cassie buys an antique compact, little does she know it can foretell the future--her future. Marjorie, a Florida girl unwillingly transplanted to Vermont, learns there's more to fear from the alien snowfall than just the cold. Neil Dallas's jagged descent from rock and roll singer to drug-addicted has-been is unstoppable...or is it? 

Let these eerie tales take you to a place where nothing is as it seems--where the only thing you can rely on is unexpected.  

Mirror Images

Featuring: 

Mirror, Mirror
Snow Spirits
Music Man
Curiosity Killed the FPS Man
Jury of One

“A collection of short stories by author Elizabeth Delisi. The very first story is titled the same as the entire anthology, Mirror Images. I cannot honestly say which I liked the most! All through the first, I thought This is excellent. They must have placed this one first to hook the readers. Then I read the second story. Woops! There went THAT theory!

It is much like watching "Tales From The Crypt" or "The Twilight Zone". Each are awesome and pull you in quickly, but a bizarre twists will shock your system! A KEEPER! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!” ~ Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Find these great titles on sale at Smashwords and All Romance eBooks. At Smashwords, please use coupon codes: 
Coupon Code for Mirror Images: JW47P
Coupon Code for Penumbra: ZD26F

~ Enjoy!

 

A Great Holiday Deal on First Degree Innocence!

Just in time for the holidays -- a special sale on First Degree Innocence by Ginger Simpson.

Carrie Lang’s sheltered life ends with a prison sentence for involvement in a bank robbery. Her arrest comes on the day she’s called in sick and stayed inside, so she can’t explain how an eye-witness describes her in great detail, down to the make and model of her car.
 

A terrible mistake has been made, and her insistence of innocence falls on deaf ears.  Even her fellow inmates don’t believe her as it’s a claim they all make.  Alone in the world, she has no one to turn to for help, and not a single soul to campaign for her freedom…at least until she makes a valuable friend.  

In the meantime, a plan for retribution is brewing, and naïve Carrie finds herself smack dab in the middle of an evil scheme concocted by the prison bully.  A ten year sentence seems mild when she’s threatened with death for refusing to participate. Can Carrie find a way out of this horrible nightmare, or is she destined to spend her days locked in terror, isolation, and the cold gray interior of prison walls? 

"Ginger Simpson pulls the reader in on page one and doesn't let go until the end of the story. What a brilliant, emotional story - one I will never forget. Bravo, Ms. Simpson for writing a masterpiece!" ~Marie Higgins

"Have you ever wondered how it might feel to be wrongly accused? Ginger Simpson masterfully takes you on such a journey. Readers are emotionally drawn to the trials and tribulations of the main character, Carrie. For a suspenseful look at life behind bars and a story that promises justice in the end, I highly recommend First Degree Innocence." ~ Ciara Gold

"First Degree Innocence is a captivating, thrilling story that gripped me from start to finish. The heroine, Carrie Lang, is relatable and charming, despite her horrible situation, and the hero is a charismatic Prince Charming with handcuffs. Ginger Simpson has truly outdone herself with this riveting piece of work." ~ Miranda Miller, Editingrealm.com

Find First Degree Innocence at All Romance eBooks, Amazon Kindle and Smashwords for the amazing sale price of just $2.99. At Smashwords, please enter coupon code WJ55C.

~ Enjoy!