My new book, The Man She Married, is out October 30.
Here is a short and sweet summary: Natalie Shelton is in a coma. That’s not her only problem.
Less than ten bucks:
My new book, The Man She Married, is out October 30.
Here is a short and sweet summary: Natalie Shelton is in a coma. That’s not her only problem.
Stevie Barrett has lost 170 pounds. She’s a new person who secretly builds fantastical chairs with wings, gardens to get the pain out, and has dreams that won’t quit. She also has nightmares about a bridge in her past and Sunshine. (No, Sunshine is not a grammar error….you’ll see.)
When I was writing about Stevie, she was so clear to me it was as if we’d grown up together. If you need a summer book, I’d suggest this one with lemonade for some scenes, and wine for others.
Happy day to all.
This is where I’m trying to edit my latest book.
It’s pretty. There are some purple flowers. A couple of whirly things in the background. I can watch my cat do his odd cat – things.
One would think my garden would be a good place to create and cut and read and figure out what the heck is going on with this manuscript.
It’s not. It’s not a good place. It’s a terrible place. It’s obviously a cursed place.
Honestly, I think it would be easier to turn myself into a German Shepherd with a pink bow than edit this book.
I need chocolate. For nutrition.
I needed a little Montana in my life.
Wishing you a trip this summer where you can de-stress your sizzling brain and breathe and read cool books and eat good cake.
Happy Fourth of July everyone!
May your day be filled with laughter and fireworks, cold ice cream and cool friends, and healthy food like hot dogs and hamburgers and apple pie.
EXCERPT
My name is Charlotte Mackintosh.
I am thirty-five. I love science. I have degrees in physics and biology. One would think I would work in a lab or teach at a university. I don’t. I write time travel romance novels. My ninth book was released four months ago.
My pen name is Georgia Chandler. My mother was from Georgia, a southern belle, and Chandler was her maiden name.
For me to be a romance writer is a perplexing joke. What romance? I don’t have any in my life, haven’t for years, since The Unfortunate Marriage. I have named my vibrator Dan The Vibrator. That should tell you about the sexual action I get. Which is, so we’re all clear, none.
My late father, Quinn, was Scottish, hence my last name, and his mother had the Scottish Second Sight. She saw the future, all mottled up, but she saw it. Sometimes she didn’t understand it herself. I remember her predictions, one in particular when I was seven and we were making an apple butterscotch pie with a dash of cinnamon.
“You will travel through many time periods, Charlotte,” my grandma said, rolling out the pie dough with a heavy rolling pin, her gray curls escaping her bun like springs. “All over the world.”
“What do you mean?” I rolled out my dough, too. We were bringing the pies to the Scottish games up in the highlands the next day, where my father was competing in the athletic contests and playing his bagpipes.
“I don’t know, luv. Damn this seeing into the future business. Cockamamie. It will drive me to an early grave.”
“I want to travel to other planets and inspect them for aliens.”
She placed her pie crust into the buttered glass baking dish. “You will live different lives, child. You will love deeply. And yet…” She paused, her brow furrowed. “It’s not you.”
“I don’t think so, Grandma. I love science. Specifically our cells. Mutations. Sick cells, healthy cells. Toran and I pricked our fingers yesterday so we could study our blood under my microscope.”
She eyed me through her glasses. “You are an odd child.”
“Yes,” I told her, gravely, “I am.”
My grandma was right about time travel. She simply dove into the fictional realm of my life without realizing it. McKenzie Rae Dean, my heroine, travels through time, lives different lives, and loves deeply. But McKenzie Rae is not me. See how my grandma got things jumbled up and yet dead right, too?
Many of her other second sight predictions have come true, too. A few haven’t yet. I’m a little worried about the few that haven’t. Several in particular, as they’re decidedly alarming.
I live on a quiet island, called Whale Island, off the coast of Washington. I have a long white house on five acres. I rarely ever have to leave my view of the ocean and various whales, my books, garden, and cats. I have had enough of the world and of people. Some people call me a recluse. I call them annoying.
My publisher wants me to travel to promote my books. I went on book tours with the first book, hated it, and have refused to go again. They whine. I ignore them. What do they know? I stay home.
I walk my four cats in a specially designed pink cat stroller twice every day. They each have their own compartment with their name on a label in front.
I read gardening books for entertainment, but they are only second to my love of all things physics and biology. I have a pile of exciting books and articles in my house on both subjects, including astrophysics, string theory, the human genome project, and cellular and molecular biology. Seeing them waiting for me, like friends filled with enthralling knowledge, flutters my heart.
I might drink a tad too much alcohol. Wine is my vice. I drink only the finest wine, but that is a poor excuse for the nights the wine makes me skinny-dip in a calm bay by my house and belt out the Scottish drinking songs my father taught me while cart wheeling
I am going to Scotland because I must. My mother asked me to go and check on my father’s house, fix it up, and sell it. “I can finally close the door to the past,” she told me. “Without cracking down the middle, but I need you to go and do this, because if I go, I’ll crack.”
I told her, “That doesn’t make sense, Ms. Feminist.”
She waved a hand, “I know. Go anyhow. My burning bra and I can’t do it.”
I have not been back to Scotland in twenty years, partly because I am petrified of flying and partly because it’s too painful, which is why my mother, usually a ball breaker, refuses to go.
I’m nervous to leave my cats, Teddy J, Daffodil, Dr. Jekyll, and Princess Marie. Teddy J, in particular, suffers from anxiety, and Dr. Jekyll has a mood disorder, I’m sure of it. Princess Marie is snippy.
But it must be done.
My best friend, Bridget Ramsay, is still living there. Or, she was living there. We write letters all the time to each other; we have for twenty years.
Until last year, that is. I haven’t heard from her in months.
I don’t know what’s going on.
I have an idea, but I don’t like the idea.
It scares me to death.
Truth often does that to us.
My new book, The Man She Married, is out on October 30.
I’m tempted to call it a Halloween book. There are no monsters or dragons or witches in it, though, unfortunately.
There are no tricks. There are some treats.
Here’s a short and sweet summary:
Natalie Shelton is in a coma.
That’s not her only problem.
Less than ten buckaroos on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Man-She-Married-Cathy-Lamb-ebook/dp/B079KTVHGD
Since most of us are book addicts here, it seems natural that I should ask you this very important question: Who is your favorite ROCK STAR?
No. Really. Think about it.
Who do you just LOVE?
Who did you rock out with when you were younger? Van Halen? Journey? Styx? The Rolling Stones?
Who did you want to be? The singer? The bass guitarist? Did you want to bang on the drums? Was being in a rock band a dream you tossed around for years?
When I was younger, I listened to KISS, when I could sneak them in.
Now, of course KISS was discouraged in my household.
I had loving, smart, dear parents, but KISS? Well, that pushed it. THEY pushed it. The outrageous costumes. Gene Simmons’ tongue hanging out. The blood. The hard rock. The pounding music.
My father had, at one time, wanted to become a priest but a wife and kids won out. My mother was the product of Texas, her mother an orphaned southern belle. She was an English teacher.
We went to mass every Sunday and CCD on Wednesday nights. We were hardly allowed to watch TV, only The Waltons and Saturday morning cartoons and Bewitched. We were handed books and told to play outside.
We kept it clean in the Straight family home, and KISS, with all that leather and those lyrics, did not fit into our family realm.
And all that just made them more appealing! I was shocked when I saw their costumes, in a fun way.
I recently read Paul Stanley’s autobiography. I gotta tell ya, it’s fascinating. It’s about his childhood, which was very rough and lonely, with parents that did not fill their role well. It’s about his sister and her tragic problems and how he was alone a lot growing up, but had ambition. He had drive. He was absolutely determined to make it as a rock star and he believed in himself.
It’s about the band and their history, their friendships and how it all fell apart. It’s about women and drugs and alcohol and the money aspects of being in the band. It’s about all the people who were around the band – the groupies, the managers, and the money men.
And it’s about Paul Stanley’s journey. How he changed and grew, found what he loved, found himself, matured and found his place with his own people with all the mess that life brings – especially when one is in a rock band.
Definitely a different read for me, and I loved it.
Rock on, read on.
Published with Tall Poppy Writers:
https://tallpoppies.org/prefridayreads-face-the-music-a-lif…
#PreFridayReads: Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley
I was living in Russia in my head.
My brain was filled with facts and it felt like I was swimming upstream in the frozen Moskva River in Moscow with no life jacket.
When I wrote The Language of Sisters, which is about a brave family who escaped Russia in the 1980’s and moved to Oregon, I had to do a TON of research.
Then I had to do more.
And more.
And more until my eyes practically crossed and I could almost hear my brain sizzling, smoke coming out of my ears.
The Language of Sisters is told in current time, in Portland, through the eyes of Toni Kozlovsky, but I had to tell the family’s back story. I had to explain why they left Russia, especially when they escaped with a fourth child in the middle of the night, who was not their own. I had to figure out what happened to them, as a family, as individuals, and the secrets they kept from one another.
So in order to accurately portray the Kozlovskys’ lives in cold, frightening, poor Communist Moscow, I started studying Russian history.
A few of those topics, among others?
I will not bore you with a longer list or your eyes may cross, too. And who wants smoke to come out of their ears? Not me.
I loved researching Russia history because I didn’t know enough about it and found it harshly, sadly fascinating and, once again, was glad I was born here, and not there.
I hated researching/writing about Russia because it triggered my Type A personality. Which means, I researched, checked, re-checked, and checked again MANY times, to make sure that everything I wrote about the history of this family, while living in Russia, was correct.
I didn’t want to make a mistake. So, about 10% of what I learned about Russia went in the book. 90% was for me so I would know, at least somewhat, what I was talking about.
Here’s the first chapter of the book to give you an idea of what life was like in Russia for my character Toni Kozlovsky.
Chapter 1
I was talented at pickpocketing.
I knew how to slip my fingers in, soft and smooth, like moving silk. I was lightning quick, a sleight of hand, a twist of the wrist. I was adept at disappearing, at hiding, at waiting, until it was safe to run, to escape.
I was a whisper, drifting smoke, a breeze.
I was a little girl, in the frigid cold of Moscow, under the looming shadow of the Soviet Union, my coat too small, my shoes too tight, my stomach an empty shell.
I was desperate. We were desperate.
Survival stealing, my sisters and I called it.
Had we not stolen, we might not have survived.
But we did. We survived. My father barely, my mother only through endless grit and determination, but now we are here, in Oregon, a noisy family, who does not talk about what happened back in Russia, twenty-five years ago. It is best to forget, my parents have told us, many times.
“Forget it happened. It another life, no?” my father says. “This here, this our true life. We Americans now. Americans!”
We tried to forget, but in the inky-black silence of night, when Mother Russia intrudes our dreams, like a swishing scythe, a crooked claw emerging from the ruins of tragedy, when we remember family members buried under the frozen wasteland of the Soviet Union’s far reaches, we are all haunted, some more than others.
You would never guess by looking at my family what some of us have done and what has been done to us. You would never sense our collective memory, what we share, what we hide.
We are the Kozlovskys.
We like to think we are good people.
And, most of the time, we are. Quite good.
And yet, when cornered, when one of us is threatened, we come up swinging.
But, pfft.
All that. In the past. Best to forget what happened.
As my mother says, in her broken English, wagging her finger, “No use going to Moscow in your head. We are family. We are the Kozlovskys. That all we need to know. The rest, those secrets, let them lie down.”
Yes, do.
Let all the secrets lie.
For as long as they’ll stay down.
They were coming up fast. I could feel it.
Cathy Lamb All rights reserved © 2011-2024 |
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