Lá Shona Fhéile Pádraig! Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Irish & Scots Book Event from Tirgearr Publishing!

 
@ GlenysOConnell

The Celtic Rose Blog -- http://thecelticroseblog.blogspot.com

TIRGEARR PUBLISHING and THE CELTIC ROSE BLOG EVENT

March 17 and 18 March

Join us over at the Celtic Rose Blog -- http://thecelticroseblog.blogspot.com -- on the 17th and 18th and help us celebrate St Patrick's Day in style.

Tirgearr Publishing authors are featured every hour from the top of the hour through the day, starting at 1am PST/8am GMT on 17 March, St
Patrick's Day. Enjoy some awesome Irish stories on Ireland's national
holiday.

Join us again on the 18th from 12am PST/7am GMT for more awesome Celtic
reads set in Scotland and Wales.
Tirgearr books will post every hour on the hour from 1am PST/8am GMT

* Schedule *
Tuesday 17 March - St Patrick's Day (all Irish set books)1amPST/8am GMT - The Gun by Daithi Kavanagh
2amPST/9am GMT - Where the Shamrocks Grow by Cathy Mansell
3amPST/10am GMT - I Will Sing My Songs for You by Harry McGilloway
3amPST/11am GMT - Ireland: Hidden Guide by Christ Christy Nicholas
5amPST/12pm GMT - Winters and Somers by Glenys O'Connell
6amPST/1pm GMT - The Kyklos Trilogy by David Toft
7amPST/2pm GMT - The Matt Costello Mysteries by Brid Wade
8amPST/3pm GMT - A Sure Thing by E. H. Ward Author
9amPST/4pm GMT - Going Against Type by Sharon Black
10amPST/5pm GMT - My Husband's Sin by Mary Bradford
11amPST/6pm GMT - Five Days on Ballyboy Beach by David O'Brien

12amPST/7pm GMT - One Night in Dublin by Kemberlee Shortland
The Celtic Rose Blog -- http://thecelticroseblog.blogspot.com
Wednesday 18 March - (all other Celtic books)
12amPST/7am GMT - The Highland Chiefs Series by Kate Robbins
1amPST/8am GMT - Awakening by Scarlett Valentine
2amPST/9am GMT - What the Future Holds by Joan Fleming
3amPST/10am GMT - Scotland: Hidden Guide by Christy Nicholas
4amPST/11pm GMT - Midwinter Masquerade by Romy Gemmell
5amPST/12pm GMT - Dark September by Brendan Gerad O'Brien
6amPST/1pm GMT - Looking for Charlotte by Jennifer Young (pre-order)
7amPST/2pm GMT - Clan Ross series by Kristi Ahlers

The Celtic Rose Blog -- http://thecelticroseblog.blogspot.com

Lá Shona Fhéile Pádraig!
Happy St Patrick's Day!

Saturday Snippets–First Pages: Saving Maggie

@GlenysOConnell

 

Saving Maggie is the first book I had published through Crimson Romance, part of Adams Media/ F+W Media, and also my first experiment with adding a touch of paranormal to my romantic suspense. I loved it!

This book came from another confluence of What If’s?

What if a woman found her mind linked to that of a psychopath – and what if the lost souls of his victims called to her to find them and bring them home?

What if that psychopath thought this was a sign she was to be his forever?

What if a woman running from her past finds that the only way to save the man she loves is to stand up and face a madman – and risk losing her own life?

BLURB:

Newspaper reporter Maggie Kendall has a psychic gift - or a curse: The missing violently dead call for her to find them. Her ability incites a serial killer to play games with her, sending her an invitation in a pink envelope every time he kills and daring her to find his victims.

But when the killer moves the bodies without leaving a trace, Maggie is denounced as the worse kind of charlatan - a psychic fake who feeds off the pain of other peoples’ tragedies.

Just the sort of person that Detective Joshua Tyler hates the most. He’s been hounded by reporters and fake psychics since his emotionally disturbed wife disappeared two years earlier. He reacts angrily when Maggie offers a message from his wife. But he can’t help being attracted to her even as she infuriates him.

The killer believes that Maggie is that one special person he’s been searching for - someone who can read his mind. Only her death can bind them together forever.

Maggie knows he’s going to kill her, and she knows why. But how can she make Tyler believe her? She needs him to join her in a race against an experienced and determined killer to save her life . . .

Sensuality Level: Sensual

FIRST PAGE:

The woman in the sexy little red convertible looked perky from behind. Her glossy long hair was pulled up in a careless ponytail and swayed from side like a cobra charmed by an Indian flute as she bopped to the music from the car radio.

Even at a car’s length away, the driver behind her thought this was the sort of hair a man could run his fingers through and grasp playfully. He wished now he were piloting his own expensive roadster rather than the sedate brown sedan he’d rented especially for this trip. His own car was the sort that would impress the kind of girl who drove a bright red convertible with the top down on a windy spring day.

He imagined himself overtaking her, seeing her look over at him, her eyes widening in admiration as she took in his expensive ride and wealthy, groomed good looks.

Then she’d remember him and smile…

He gunned the accelerator and with a disdainful purr the rental spurted forward, pulling alongside her. He glanced over, hoping to catch her eye. But she stared straight ahead, singing along to some mindless pop music and oblivious to his look of longing.

He didn’t matter to her. She didn’t remember. She didn’t smile.

Irritated now, he jabbed the accelerator and zoomed past her. He knew soon they’d meet again.

Then he’d refresh her memory.

* * *

Maggie Kendall was just leaving Fried Heaven with two cups of the diner’s delicious coffee balanced in her hands, when a tall, dark-haired stranger pushed open the door so suddenly that it caught her, and hot coffee sloshed wetly down the front of her white silk shirt.

“I am so sorry!” His handsome face flushed with embarrassment as he grabbed a wad of paper napkins from a dispenser on the nearest table and began to mop at the spill. His touch on her upper breasts was electric—it sizzled all the way down to her toes, leaving her breathless. Brushing his hands away, she snapped: “You’re making it worse. My office is just across the road and I can clean up there.”

The man snatched back his hand as he realized the inappropriate intimacy of his touch. Blushing, he tossed the damp napkins onto a table and jammed the offending hands into his suit pants pockets. “I…at least let me pay for your dry cleaning,” he stammered, but Maggie was already halfway out the door.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it,” she muttered, avoiding his gaze. A second later she was gone.

 

***Saving Maggie is available as a stand alone read here or on your Amazon site or at Crimson Romance’s site here. You can also find it in a super bundle of ten books from Crimson Romance called Running to Love. You can see both books on Amazon, too!

Wednesday’s Writing: Hook Your Reader-Cliffhanger Endings

@GlenysOConnell
Hello, Dear Readers – I’ve been lax with my blog for the last week or so, and I am so sorry. Sometimes things happen…but more about that in the next Monday’s Inspiration Blog!

Meanwhile, I talked about hook beginnings to grab your readers, and how they should happen at the start of chapters and scenes as well as the beginning. In that blog I promised to talk about the all important endings that make your reader want to read on from scene to scene, chapter to chapter. So here goes:

Each chapter starts with a hook, flows through the middle, and ends with a 'cliff-hanger'.

The term 'cliff-hanger' dates back to the old black and white movies - does anyone remember The Perils of Pauline? We've probably all seen references to these early adventures, although my guess is most of us are a bit too young to have seen them first run-through!

Pauline was the heroine in a series of movies where she went
through many trials and tribulations. At the end of each movie
Pauline was left in dreadful straits - tied to the tracks in front of a speeding train, hanging over a steep cliff by her fingertips, trapped in a runaway car speeding towards a flooded river……..

Each week faithful fans returned to the movie house to find out how Pauline was rescued from the latest terrible situation. And, of course, she was always rescued - she had to be back in her starring role the following week!

That's what we call a cliff-hanger ending. You can probably already see why one of these at the end of each chapter would seduce your reader to glance at the first page of the next chapter to see how it all worked out - and the hook at the beginning of that chapter will keep her reading towards the next cliff-hanger….the next hook….and on into the wee small hours of the night!

It's a crafty way of keeping the tension up and drawing the reader more deeply into your story. The hook that follows a cliff-hanger does not necessarily have to be the segment of story immediately following the cliff-hanger - or the bit where Pauline is rescued. You can go to another thread of the story, but you must use a hook so the reader continues reading seamlessly as she knows she is being led to the moment when all the threads are pulled together at the end.

One caveat, however. The cliff-hanger ending does not apply to the very end of the book. This is where all the reader's questions are answered, and while your characters may not be guaranteed a happily ever after, they are at least generally out of danger, emotionally on solid ground again, and ready to get on with the next phase of their lives, having changed for the better due to the events and lessons they learned in
the story.

In other words, while the end of a chapter is meant to be exciting and raise questions about what happens next, the final end of the book is calming and answers all those questions.

Once you get into the habit of thinking of your chapters like this, it will come easily to you. Like magic!

Again, this blog is an excerpt from Naked Writing, the No Frills Way to Write Your Book! in the UK, or here for Canada, and here for the US, or in your region’s Amazon store.

Saturday’s Snippets: First Pages: Resort to Murder

@GlenysOConnell

  I’m always intrigued by the way story ideas come to writers. It seems to be different for everyone. Novels are born from dreams, from snatches of overheard conversations, from newspaper articles, magazine articles, real life events – indeed, all sorts of different things.

The writerly mind – a twisted thing at best! – plays games with these topics. The What If? game, and soon a plot starts to appear, characters sneak in and hide among the neurons of the brain and begin to whisper…and voila! A Book is born!

That’s been my experience, anyway. Resort to Murder, published by The Wild Rose Press, came in pieces, dribs and drabs turning into a full flood as I played the What If? game. I was working in England at the time and read in the local evening newspaper, The Lancashire Evening Post, that a woman police officer had just been appointed to a Chief Constable’s position. That’s like being Top Dog in a county police force.

This officer was the first female to get that job, and in the article were several comments about the ‘glass ceiling’ and the difficulties a woman law enforcement officer can face in seeking promotion.
And out of that came Ellie Fitzpatrick, a wrongly disgraced officer who had been on the fast track to high rank after solving the case of The Sunshine Slasher, a vicious serial killer who attacked women in vacation resorts around the English coast.

Ellie had been hot on the trail of a criminal gang when she was accused of taking bribes and placed on suspension pending investigation. The criminals had done their work well, planting money in Ellie’s bank account and doing everything they could to discredit her.

Ellie was in love with another officer, a man who was her junior. But when she needed Liam Reilly the most, he was nowhere to be found. Unknown to her, Liam was on a secret assignment in Ireland and knew nothing of what was happening to Ellie until his return.
One day, walking on the beach near Whitby in Yorkshire, Ellie literally stumbles across a dead body…

BLURB:

Falsely disgraced police detective Ellie Fitzpatrick is prepared to face a vicious killer to redeem herself but is she also brave enough to make peace with the man she loves? When her meteoric career crashed and burned after she was accused of accepting bribes from thugs running a protection racket, Ellie is suspended from the job she loves and believes herself abandoned not only by police colleagues but by her lover, Detective Liam O'Reilly. She is called back to work when a biography of a serial killer she arrested suggests the man may be innocent. Reilly vows to protect Ellie from the gang who tried to frame her and the vicious killer who's stalking her. Can she trust him with her life?

FIRST PAGE:

A cry was stifled in her throat as the dead woman began to move. Her empty eyes opened. Her dead mouth widened in a terrible silent scream as the white fingers began to claw at the hem of Ellie's coat, pulling her down, down, into a cold embrace. She ran from the nightmare figure until she was caught by strong familiar arms…...
Ellie woke from the dream, her heart pounding in fear and yet with desire flooding hotly through her veins. Her dream rescuer had been Liam Reilly. Cursing demons she couldn't vanquish, she climbed out of bed and pulled on a soft silk robe. Her face was pale in the bathroom mirror, dark shadows under her eyes testament to the early hour. But she wouldn't sleep now, not when the faces of all the dead women would drift through her dreams. She wondered if other police officers ever got used to the sight of the murdered dead. She knew she wouldn’t.
She made a cup of rosehip and orange tea laced with honey, and slipped through the double patio doors onto her terrace. Below the cottage, the restless muttering of the sea, gathering its strength for another tidal assault on the shore, echoed her mood. Ellie leaned against the narrow wooden rail that separated her terrace from the cliff edge, and sucked in a deep breath of salt-tanged air, closing her eyes as she basked in the magnificent silence of the pre-dawn world.
And there he was again, as surely as if he'd materialized from her dream. Liam Reilly. His presence haunted her waking days as surely as the nightmares haunted her nights, because they were inextricably linked. They were opposite sides of the coin of her life.

REVIEW:
From TRS: "I thoroughly enjoyed this fantastic romantic suspense. The plot was swift and the complex story line was enhanced by the wonderful characters. Beyond the hero and heroine the supporting cast was fabulous with almost no one being quite what they appeared at first. The pace enhances the two main mysteries of the story. The time frame is not dragged out as Ellie tries to separate the bribery charges from the serial killer case and it makes for an intricate puzzle. Liam and Ellie have a complicated relationship that is due mainly to lack of honesty and communication. Both characters were constantly at odds with one another and down right antagonistic. They were forever revealing their true feelings in their private thoughts and denying them out loud. If it were not so skillfully balanced with the suspense this could have ruined the whole story for me. I found the mystery itself to be top-notch all the way from the first paragraph to the ominous ending. I can't wait to see what else this author has in store." - Theresa Joseph

Resort to Murder is available at The Wild Rose Press, or through your Amazon site

Wednesday’s Writing: Hook Your Reader!

 

@GlenysOConnell

Most people understand that a book has a beginning, middle and end. Good writing has a flow that leads your reader on from chapter to chapter, scene-to-scene, in a seamless way.
"I just couldn't put your book down!" is a reader statement that's always music to our ears, and we get that by keeping the reader's interest as we lead her from page to page..

We use what I call hook beginnings and cliff-hanger endings, which keep the flow going in your story and keep the reader, well, 'hooked' into the story. This creates the 'waves' of action-and-rest that help your reader get excited and then take time to digest the story, all the while knowing that the next wave of activity/tension/action will be crashing ashore any moment now! When you begin your book with an intriguing paragraph, the reader wants to find out what it's all about.

The most intriguing first line hook I ever saw was: "I wasn't there when I died." I can't remember the name of the author or the title of the book, but that one line impressed me enough to remember it several years later - and to take the book home to read! If anyone out there knows the title of this book, please leave me a comment and let me know what it is!

So, we all know that your story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end, but did you know that this applies to each scene and chapter, too? This means your book would have twenty or more of these, depending on the number of scenes and chapters you have!

That's not as daunting as it sounds. You see, beginnings and ends are magical as far as your reader is concerned: they are the promise that keeps her reading from one chapter to the next, maybe even all night until she finishes the book.And isn't that a wonderful thought, that someone would say to you: 'Your book was so good, I just couldn’t put it down…' ?

How do we do this?

We start with hooks.


A hook is usually short, snappy and intriguing - usually no more than the first two paragraphs. It is written in such a way that it arouses the reader's curiosity, prompting her to read on to find out more. 

On a more pragmatic note, think of the 'loss leaders' in your local supermarket's weekly advertising flier. The bargain or 'special' lures you into the store, and before you know it your cart is overflowing with other purchases as well!

In our terms, the hook is like a 'special' - it lures the reader in and persuades her that she wants to read the entire book or chapter. Of course, unlike the supermarket's advertising, the rest of the 'goods' you're offering your reader are all high quality and great value!

The hook beginning grabs attention and leaves your reader asking questions such as who is this? Why is this happening? What comes next?

The opening hook for my romantic suspense, Another Man’s Son, from The Wild Rose Press, goes like this:

The growl of the powerful engine turned heads among the early tourist crowd as Ben Asher rode the Harley hog along the waterfront. It was early evening and the sun was just slipping down below the ocean, tickling the quiet wavelets with pink and purple and painting the sky rich shades of rose and crimson.

Who is Ben  Asher? Where is he? What is he doing? Why are people looking?

Another Chapter has one of the main characters, Ket Morgan Junior, declaring as the hook:

“No, Kathryn, dear – the boy has been kidnapped, but not by me.”

A kidnapped child, a frantic mother, an uncaring father? Don’t you just want to know what’s happening next?

And a later scene starts with this hook:

“Well, son, you’ve sure made a mess of everything as usual.I’m getting tired of having to clean up after you.”

Isn’t there something sinister about this? What was the mess that had to be cleaned up? And isn’t there a threat in the words?

The middle of your chapter or scene, like the middle of the book, will flow from the hook along the outline action that you have drawn up. The keyword is motion - keep the story moving along. As you will have seen from the writer's journey, or Hero's Journey, there is a flow to storytelling similar to sound waves through the air - the story starts off on an upward slope to a high tension event, slows down to let everyone catch their breath, then up we go again….with the lows getting slightly higher with each high until the final dénouement at the end of the book, where we tie up all the loose ends and let everyone relax again.

Each chapter and each scene start with a hook, flow through the middle, towards the end. And next Wednesday’s Writing is going to be about ‘cliffhanger’ endings that will have readers eager to get to the next hook beginning!


Partly excerpted from Naked Writing: The No Frills Way to Write Your Book!

Monday’s Inspiration: Quote from Walter Mosley, Award & Grammy Winning Author.

@GlenysOConnell

“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky. “ Walter Mosley


This quote, which came to me through Goodreads Quotes, really touched me. I confess to being a romantic at heart, and my books all have fair dose of romance in them.

But I also love the idea that we are not static, that we can change, and that we can change the situations around us. If we love ourselves, we can also change the way we live and view the world around us.

But most of all, if we can love another person, or several other persons, or extend compassion to everyone we meet, surely in doing so we can change the world – one kindness at a time?

Walter Mosley is a mystery and thriller writer, and has won numerous awards. Included in his awards are the O. Henry Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Follow the link with the quote to learn more about Walter Mosley.

Saturday’s Snippets: Happy Valentine’s Day: Legends and Book Deals

@GlenysOConnell


I’d love to send everyone a huge bouquet of flowers to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day! Here are a few tidbits about St. Valentine that I wanted to share for fun – you can check out more on hhtp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day

* Roman soldiers were not allowed to marry, but St. Valentine carried out wedding ceremonies for some soldiers with their sweethearts – and got himself imprisoned for it.

* He is said to have cut out parchment hearts to give to the soldiers and others he helped, to remind them of God’s love.

*He was accused of ministering to Christians, when Christianity was forbidden by the Romans and its followers were persecuted.

*When he was in prison, legend says St. Valentine healed the sick daughter of one of his jailers. He was to be executed, and before going to his death he is said to have written to the girl and signed the letter ‘Your Valentine’ .

* The tradition of exchanging candies, cards, and gifts on February 14th started in 18th century England during the Romantic Era, as a way of proclaiming one’s love.

* The busy, business-minded Victorians took the tradition from handwritten notes to commercially manufactured Valentine’s Day cards.

* Sadly, even though we love the hearts, flowers, cupids, and candy, whether the legends are true is a moot point. There were a number of saints in the Christian Church with the name Valentine, and we’ll probably never know whether the saint we celebrate actually existed or is a myth created by the actions of several martyrs.

Even so, here’s wishing everyone a wonderful Valentine’s Day. And remember, you don’t have to have a sweetheart to celebrate – celebrate yourself by doing something nice for the day!

And as a little gift from me, you can get my two romances, The No Sex Clause and Judgement By Fire, for just 99c each for a limited time! And don’t forget, you can get a bundle of ten great stories, including my Saving Maggie, for just 99c, in Running to Love, from Crimson Romance. Enough to bring a smile to any Valentine’s face!