{BOOK TRAILER} HONEYMOON ROULETTE by Irene Woodbury

 


BOOK DETAILS


Title: HONEYMOON ROULETTE
Author: Irene Woodbury
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 180
Genre: Women’s Fiction / Dark Humor


BLURB:

To marry or not to marry Connor J. Barrington? That is the question Roxy Drake faces one hour before her wedding, when she discovers her handsome fiance may have murdered his first two wives. Did Connor kill Annie and Charlotte, or simply let them die? Does Roxy become wife number three, or the runaway bride from hell? Find out in the darkly funny Honeymoon Roulette.


Watch Book Trailer!

Honeymoon Roulette is available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Baby-Second-Chance-Stillwater/dp/1335456252/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 

About Irene Woodbury


Luckily for all you fans of romantic fiction, Irene Woodbury knows that what happens in Las Vegas doesn’t have to stay there. The Denver-based author has captured the heart and soul of Sin City in four colorful, suspenseful novels.

In the gritty, engrossing Romeo Stalker (2021), a Vegas showgirl’s life is plunged into stalker-hell when her ex returns from prison and learns she has a new boyfriend. Love and Payback (2021) is a dark, dramatic look at a married woman’s mysterious death in Sin City, where she has gone to meet an Internet love.

In the darkly humorous Honeymoon Roulette (2021), a bride goes rogue after learning her handsome fiance may have killed his first two wives. And A Slot Machine Ate My Midlife Crisis (2021) is the vibrant, funny story of a mixed-up newlywed who goes to Vegas for a girls’ weekend that never ends.

Irene, a successful travel writer whose favorite destinations are London and Las Vegas, is currently working on another novel.

You can visit her website at www.irenewoodbury.com or connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

A Chat with Rosemary and Larry Mild, Author of 'Death Rules the Night'



ROSEMARY AND LARRY MILD, cheerful partners in crime, coauthor mystery, suspense, and fantasy fiction.  Rosemary and Larry have published award-winning novels, short stories, and essays. They co-authored the popular Paco and Molly Mystery Series; Hawaii adventure/thrillers Cry Ohana and Honolulu Heat; and three volumes of short stories, many of which appear in anthologies. After forty-plus years in Maryland, the Milds currently make their home in Honolulu, where they cherish time with their daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren. 

THE MILDS are active members of Sisters in Crime where Larry is a Mister in Crime; Mystery Writers of America; and Hawaii Fiction Writers. In 2013 they waved goodbye to Severna Park, Maryland and moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they cherish quality time with their daughters and grandchildren. When Honolulu hosted Left Coast Crime in 2017, Rosemary and Larry were the program co-chairs for “Honolulu Havoc.”

Over a dozen worldwide trips to Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Great Britain, France, Italy, Israel, Egypt, and more have wormed their way into their amazing stories. In their limited spare time, they are active members of the Honolulu Jewish Film Festival committee, where Larry is the statistician and recordkeeper for their film ratings. Visit their website to find out more.

INTERVIEW

    1. How many books, in total, have you written together?

Thirteen: ten novels and three books of short stories, with more to come.

   We have also published three memoirs: 

By Rosemary: Miriam’s World—and Mine, about our beloved daughter, Miriam Luby Wolfe, whom we lost in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988. And Love! Laugh! Panic! Life with My Mother.

By Larry: No Place To Be But Here, My Life and Times. It is not only my own story, but that of my family: how my two wives, three children, and five grandchildren have shaped my life as much as I have molded theirs. Tragedy is certainly no stranger as I dealt with death, cancer, murder, and global terrorism, not only on this written page, but in my own life.  

    2. How did you get started writing together?

Rosemary: Larry and I met on a blind date in October, 1986, at my house in Severna Park, Maryland. We came from rather different worlds. He had lost his wife to cancer. I’d been divorced for eight years, happily accustomed to having my own space, thank you. In the car, on our way home from dinner, he said, “When I retire I’m going to write a novel and I want you to help me.” Now neither of us had ever written fiction. I was an editor; he was an electrical engineer, and I’d only known this man for four hours. So I chirped, “Okay!” Instinct told me he was Mr. Right—and I‘d better not let him get away. True to his word, when we retired, he sat down and wrote Cry Ohana, Adventure and Suspense in Hawaii.

    3. What is your process of writing together?

Rosemary: Larry inherited a creative gene from his grandfather Charles Gluck, who was an excellent artist. We have his paintings in our living room. Larry’s mind works in imaginative ways, so he makes up all our plots and writes the first drafts. Then he hands the manuscript over to me. I flesh out the characters and streamline passages to pick up the pace. I call it “judicious pruning,” an expression I learned as an assistant editor at Harper’s Magazine. Originally, Larry would reply, “I worked hours on those two paragraphs!” Then, with sleeves rolled up, we would negotiate. In our early days, I would not have received a doctorate in diplomacy. Today things go a lot smoother.  

Larry: Our manuscripts are always better after Rosemary works her magic. She has this wonderful feel for people and human nature. She breathes life into my minimalist characters: physical appearance, sharpening the dialogue. Sometimes she adds a scene for more conflict. She’ll take an anecdote I told second-hand and turn it into real-time drama, like an ugly shouting match between two women in a crowded restaurant.

    4. How do you get the ideas for your novels?

Larry: From life! From keen observation of people, from newspaper articles and books (I’m a voracious reader), from eavesdropping (Yes!) and from our own personal experience. We wrote Cry Ohana (ohana means family) when we were winter “snowbirds” in Honolulu, weaving in all the local places we knew, which gave the book authenticity and color. For instance, we have a chase scene in Chinatown during Chinese New Year, which we always attended, wading ankle-deep in firecracker paper. But we also leap into other times and places with our sci-fi novella Unto the Third Generation.

    5. How do you get the ideas for the characters in your novels?

Rosemary: We draw many of our characters from real life. Most are composites of people we’ve known. When Larry and I started writing together, we hadn’t even considered writing mysteries—until we visited my psychoanalyst father, Dr. Saul K. Pollack, in Milwaukee. That visit set us on a happy new course. My father, a widower in his seventies, had a housekeeper/gourmet cook named Dorothy. She was sixty-three, with a beachball figure, waddle walk, honey curls, and good-natured, nosy-body personality. Dorothy had exquisite culinary skills and a unique way of expressing herself. “I have to take my calcium so I don’t get osteoferocious.” During our visit, my father pulled out a piece of paper from his desk drawer and handed it to us: his secret list of Dorothy’s 177 sayings. He thought we could submit it to Reader’s Digest. Back home in Severna Park, we decided Dorothy was too good a character to ignore. Forget Reader’s Digest. She belonged to us. We named her Molly, and her witty sayings Mollyprops. But we also needed a policeman, so Larry invented a semi-retired detective and named him Inspector Paco LeSoto. Larry actually met the real-life Paco when he was a field engineer for RCA. So Locks and Cream Cheese, our first mystery, was born. The lovable psychoanalyst Dr. Avi Kepple is patterned after my father.

    6. Tell us a little about the process of writing your latest novel, Death Rules the Night. How did you come up with the plot?  How long did the writing process take?

Larry: Death Rules the Night is our fourth Dan & Rivka Sherman Mystery. Dan and Rivka think they’re buying into a pleasant, predictable life. Instead, they become unwilling, frightened sleuths in the wake of a mugging, robbery, kidnapping—and murder. I chose to set the crime inside the bookstore. A tell-all hair-raising book about the prominent Atkins family has disappeared. The real focus of the book is the Atkins family’s eighteenth-century house in Annapolis. The ancestors of three unhappy sisters and a reprobate brother date back to the American Revolution. I delved into research—as long as it didn’t overshadow the plot—touching on the Revolutionary War, the Underground Railroad, and Prohibition. How long did the writing process take? About a year. We always send our final draft to our eagle-eyed proofreader friend. That takes her a month or so. 

    7. Your popular Dan and Rivka Sherman Mystery series is filled with charm. Are there any autobiographical components in these wonderful characters—and if so, what?

Larry: We made Dan and Rivka a lot like us, but much younger: a Jewish couple in their early fifties. They abandon thriving careers to buy the fictional Olde Victorian Bookstore in Annapolis, Maryland. 

Rosemary: Physically, Dan is his own man. Tall and gangly, he sprawls when he sits. He has bushy black hair and eyebrows. The only thing that’s thin about Larry is his gray hair. However, Dan’s personality is very much like Larry’s: analytical and practical, a born problem-solver. Rivka is a lot like me. Affectionate, addicted to chocolate, and feisty—I came out of the womb arguing. In Death Rules the Night Dan secures a manuscript copy of the tell-all missing book. One night an intruder breaks into the bookstore. Dan thinks that’s what he or she was trying to steal. Rivka despairs. “Oh, Dan, do you think the intruder is violent? Are we in some kind of danger? Forget trying to discover the Atkins family secrets. You are being so pigheaded!”   

8. What’s the best part of writing with your spouse? 

Larry: We’re never working in a vacuum. We always have each other to bounce off our ideas. When Rosemary read my first draft of Death Rules the Night, she said the plot seemed a little thin. I was able to immediately come up with a juicy, seductive subplot and we talked out the details.

Rosemary: Larry’s my soul mate. I’m convinced we knew each other in a previous life. Writing together gives us daily structure and the joy of seeing our books in print. Larry also formats all our books for Kindle, and we even have a talking book. Death Goes Postal, our first Dan & Rivka Mystery, is available as an Amazon Audible Audiobook.

9. What’s the most challenging part? 

Larry: She could work a little faster. We’re getting “behinder” by the day. And when she edits out some of my favorite paragraphs, I call it slash and burn. She replies with a quote by Stephen King: “To write is human, to edit is divine.” 

Rosemary: I know it’s aggravating for Larry to have to wait for me. You see, I have another creative life of my own: writing personal essays. In addition to my memoirs, I just published my essay collection In My Next Life I’ll Get It Right, my quirky takes on everyday life from the hilarious to the serious. 

10. What’s next for authors Rosemary and Larry Mild?  Any new books in the works? 

Rosemary: Yes, two. Charlie and the Magic Jug is a collection of mystery and suspense stories—plus some delightful fractured fairy tales and our own Hawaiian menehune legends. Larry is also working on a new novel called On the Rails, A Boxcar Bertie Adventure.


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🏰 Author Interview Featuring Ronda Beaman, Author MY FEATS IN THESE SHOES #interview


I have a very talented lady here today to tell us all about her new memoir, My Feats in These Shoes: A Solely Original Memoir. Her name is Dr. Ronda Beaman. 

Enjoy the interview!

First, find out more about Ronda and her hot new book...


Dr. Ronda Beaman has been Chief Creative Officer for the global research and solution firm PEAK Learning, Inc., since 1990. As a national award-winning educator, Dr. Beaman is Clinical Professor of Leadership at The Orfalea School of Business, California Polytechnic University. She is Founder and Executive Director of Dream Makers SLO, a non-profit foundation granting final wishes to financially- challenged, terminally-ill adults, and serves on the Board of Directors for the National Pay It Forward Foundation. She was recently named a Stanford Fellow at the Distinguished Career Institute.

Her national award-winning book, You’re Only Young Twice, has been printed in five languages. Her memoir, Little Miss Merit Badge, was an Amazon bestseller and was featured at The Golden Globe Awards. Her children’s book, Seal With a Kiss, is designed to improve skills for beginning readers and is offered at Lindamood-Bell Learning Centers internationally. My Feats in These Shoes will be released in Spring 2021.

Dr. Beaman is an internationally recognized expert on leadership, resilience, fitness, education, and life coaching. She has conducted research in a host of areas, written many academic articles and books, and won numerous awards. She was selected by the Singapore Ministry of the Family as their honored Speaker of the Year and named the first recipient of the National Education Association’s “Excellence in the Academy: Art of Teaching” award. She has been selected as a faculty resource for the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) university in Argentina, Kyoto and India, where she received the highest speaker ratings among 36 elite faculty. She has been featured on major media including CBS and Fox Television, USA Today, and is a national thought leader for American Health Network.

Dr. Beaman earned her doctorate in Leadership at Arizona State University. She is also a certified executive coach and personal trainer with multiple credentials from the Aerobic Research Center. Her family was named “America’s Most Creative Family” by USA Today and she won the SCW National Fitness Idol competition.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM


As a book bloggin’ and book luvin’ Princess, I have to admit your book is intriguing! Can you give our readers a little excerpt?


My dad’s favorite books, Mein Kampf, Think and Grow Rich, and How to Win Friends and Influence People are book-ended by my bronzed baby shoes.

The shoes have deep copper colored wrinkles and folds, they cave in slightly at the arch, and one is missing a shoelace. My report cards aren’t bronzed, neither are my pacifiers, baby blankets, rattles, or bottles. My graduation shoes or wedding shoes are not plastered for posterity, only my baby shoes.

No other personal artifact, it seems, is significant enough to be preserved for all time as what I had on my feet when taking my first steps into the world. I chose to believe my bronzed baby shoes are a tiny monument to potential and promise. Over- come by this notion, I once made the mistake of asking my dad who it was that had my shoes bronzed and he said, “Why would I know? What a waste of money...and copper.”

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would that be? 

You won’t win a girl scout badge for this, but it’s better than carving your initials


on a tree or leaving a pithy motto on a bathroom wall! So, write on!

What would you say is one of your interesting writing quirks? 

 absolutely cannot get a word down edgewise unless I vacuum the house first.

Do you hear from your readers?  What do they say? 

I do, they love that I have spunk, take a positive approach and leave them laughing at the tough stuff that we all face.

What is the toughest criticism given to you as an author?  

I am a too sweet David Sedaris.

What has been your best accomplishment? 

Since my latest book is “My Feats in These Shoes”, you know I am an accomplishment addict! But the biggest one is being the Mother of USA Today’s America’s Most Creative Family.


Do you Google yourself? 

Not generally, I have pretty thin skin, but I believe what I have to share may help people so I put it out there despite the potential for pain.

How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? 

None, I am totally into the completion thing. I have lots of ideas though!

Fun question – if you were princess or prince, what’s one


thing you would do to make your kingdom a better place? 

I would insist that everyone gets their version of a glass slipper or loafer so that their dreams come true.

Do you have anything specific that you would like to say to your readers? 

I wrote this book to let readers know that no life is void of slips, missteps, trips and stumbles, that FEATS come in all shapes and sizes and if the life you chose doesn’t fit, you can always look for a different style.


{BOOK TRAILER} BANDITS OF BASSWOOD by E.P. Bellows & Giveaway!

 


BOOK DETAILS

Title: BANDITS OF BASSWOOD
Author: E.P. Bellows
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 195
Genre: Children’s Fantasy


BLURB:

John William Drake was born an explorer; just like many, many Drakes before him. His adventure really began with the discovery of a book hidden in the ceiling, followed by the mysterious disappearance of his father. He lived every day in misery until his twelfth birthday. A new friend gave him an invitation he could not turn down… follow me and change your destiny.

He never imagined being captured by bandits and taken to a ship riddled with river rats was part of his fate. Not just any bandits – the Bandits of Basswood; known to be a ruthless and wild crew of thieves. Trying to escape would be a ridiculous idea. No one has ever escaped and lived to tell about it. Uncovering traces of his missing father gave him hope and upped the stakes. John William was determined to get off the ship alive and search for the missing pieces of the puzzle. The chase out of Basswood was on. He took a chance to change his destiny and ended up on a wild ride to solve the most important mystery of his life.


Watch Book Trailer!

Bandits of Basswood is available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Baby-Second-Chance-Stillwater/dp/1335456252/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 

About E.P. Bellows


A few random things about me…

Um, let’s see… when I was eight, I had a pet turkey. I used to take it with me on my very short lived paper route. Needless to say, I was terrible at delivering the paper. No one wanted a “Dollar Saver” with turkey poop splattered across the front page. Apparently that’s where the best coupons are.

Books… well, “Treasure Island” is a fantastic pirate tale. I love just about anything by Roald Dahl. I would also like to thank C.S Lewis for sending me on an unrelenting childhood quest for portals to amazing worlds (even in the most unpleasant locations, e.g… the older brother’s closet, etc…)

I write fantasy stories for children. Yep – I am a HUGE fantasy geek. I can’t help myself! It’s too darn awesome to escape to another realm with sorcerers and wizards. The underlying theme in my stories is empowerment, self love, and living purposefully.

When football is on I turn into a different person. I may even use a curse word or two… or three. I enjoy running; which is a good thing because I need to do it in order to fit into my jeans.

I love to cook and really, really love to eat. I have a theory that avocados actually contain super powers and have the amazing ability to make any snack epic. I also love garlic… which, according to my loved ones, also has an unfortunate super power … the pungent breath-inator… or something of that nature.

Few things make me smile more than chocolate, cheese… AND, if the Chargers would make it to the Super Bowl again – just once:)

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK |INSTAGRAM


GIVEAWAY

E.P. Bellows is giving away a summer goodie bag containing Azra’s Pith swag! Goodie bag includes a coffee mug, tumbler, beach towel, paperback and kindle copy of Bandits of Basswood!

Terms & Conditions:

  • By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
  • One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter
  • This giveaway ends midnight September 30.
  • Winner will be contacted via email on October 1.
  • Winner has 48 hours to reply.

Good luck everyone!

ENTER TO WIN!