#TuesdayTreasures Guest Post by Marie Treanor

Good Morning and Welcome!

Today's guest is no stranger to our blog. Marie has shared thoughts with us and had our spotlight on her. She returns to share something she treasures....

Like most people, I consider my real treasures in life to be my family and friends. However, for many reasons – not least of which is that one’s own children are never half so interesting to anyone else - I’ve decided to concentrate on inanimate treasure, although it is connected to family.

This is a part of the treasure I want to share with you: a tea set bought in Japan in 1917 by my great uncle for his mother, and passed on, eventually, to me via his sister, my grandmother, and then my father,

All the time I knew her, my grandmother lived in a one-bedroom tenement flat, a positive treasure trove of dusty antiques and old books. The front room, which was never used, was stuffed full of large, Edwardian furniture – a piano, velvet upholstered dining chairs, an oak table and a tall, wide bookcase with glass doors. I’ve often regretted that when my parents were clearing the house, I didn’t have a place of my own to house this stuff. However, on my appeal, they did keep some of the books. 

And other treasure discovered in the walk-in cupboard, which included my great grandmother’s jewelry and, of course, the Japanese tea set, which my Dad remembered from his childhood.

My parents had it valued once, and apparently because there are a lot of these tea sets around still, it isn’t worth much in monetary terms. But I hope you can see from the photograph one of the reasons I treasure this is its sheer beauty. Egg-shell china in gorgeous colours, elegantly painted. As well as the cups and saucers, there are tea plates, a tea pot, a water pot and a sugar bowl. I love just looking at it. But I also love the family connection. It was bought by a young man I never knew, a merchant seaman who survived World War I, only to die at the age of 25 in the flu epidemic of 1919.

I have a photograph of “Uncle Johnny” and one of my great grandmother who was, by all accounts, a strong yet fun woman who helped bring up my Dad. So, while the tea set wouldn’t be quite such a great treasure to me without the family connection, it strengthens and enhances that connection, seems to bring me closer to my Dad’s beloved granny and to the son she lost so tragically.

Thanks, Pamela, for letting me share my treasure!

********

 Marie Treanor lives in Scotland, in a chaotic house by the sea, together with her eccentric husband, three much too smart children and a small dog who rules them all. Most days, she avoids both housekeeping and evil day jobs by writing stories of paranormal romance and fantasy. 

Marie is the award winning author of over forty paranormal romances - Indie, New York and E-published.

You can find out more about Marie and her books on her website: www.MarieTreanor.com.

Subscribe to her New Release Mailing List: http://www.marietreanor.com/marie-treanor-newsletter.  

Catch more latest news on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marie-Treanor-Paranormal-Romance/105866982782360.

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarieTreanor 

And on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/marietreanor/

Find Marie's latest book, Ghost in the Rain at the following locations:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1Su8Z8L  

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/26t6c5R

B&N: http://bit.ly/1qT8WZn

Kobo: http://bit.ly/1TvPiwg

i-Books: http://apple.co/1YTP2sg 

Hope you enjoyed today's post and that you'll join us each week for Tuesday Treasures, Thursday Thoughts and Saturday Spotlight.

Until next time, take care and God bless.

PamT

#ThursdayThoughts Guest post by Marie Treanor!

Good Morning Friends and Welcome to the first Thursday Thoughts of September, 2016!

As I mentioned in Tuesday Treasures, I am on the road again, so there won't be a lot of chit chat today. Instead I'd like to welcome Marie Treanor back to our blog to share some thoughts with us.....

I love the Scottish summer – it’s my favourite day in the year

When Pamela invited me to blog about my Thursday thoughts, I didn’t have to rack my brains for very long before I came up with what most British people spend a large part of every day discussing, worrying about, complaining about or even making jokes about. The weather.

To those of you used to more extreme and even hazardous weather, our obsession must be rather puzzling. We don’t get ridiculously hot or cold weather. We don’t get hurricanes (although occasionally we do get gales with a few hurricane force gusts!) or tornadoes. And though certain areas do seem to be increasingly liable to flooding, in Scotland at least, we certainly don’t get droughts! We are, in fact, lucky in our climate, although few of us acknowledge it.

Several years ago, I used to meet a Canadian at the bus stop each morning. He was working in Scotland for a couple of years, and clearly he’d already caught our weather obsession. But what fascinated him most was that we could get all four seasons in a day. Or even in a morning. Which is why, of course, we obsess about it. Just because it’s sunny at 8 o’clock in the morning doesn’t mean we can leave the umbrella at home. And if it’s bucketing when we set out to the shops, it’s just as likely to be blinding sunshine by the time we bring the shopping back. You need a keen instinct to risk hanging out the washing if you’re not going to be at home all day, and deciding what to wear to suit the weather is definitely a lottery.

On the other hand, it’s never dull! And the grass is always green. :-)

So, I suppose that’s the background to GHOST IN THE RAIN, my Gothic mystery romance novella. If you’re going to haunt in the west of Scotland, you need to be prepared to do so in all weathers!

Marie Treanor lives in Scotland, in a chaotic house by the sea, together with her eccentric husband, three much too smart children and a small dog who rules them all. Most days, she avoids both housekeeping and evil day jobs by writing stories of paranormal romance and fantasy. 

Marie is the award winning author of over forty paranormal romances - Indie, New York and E-published.

You can find out more about Marie and her books on her website: www.MarieTreanor.com.

Subscribe to her New Release Mailing List: http://www.marietreanor.com/marie-treanor-newsletter.  

Catch more latest news on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marie-Treanor-Paranormal-Romance/105866982782360.

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarieTreanor 

And on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/marietreanor/

Find Marie's latest book, Ghost in the Rain at the following locations:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1Su8Z8L  

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/26t6c5R

B&N: http://bit.ly/1qT8WZn

Kobo: http://bit.ly/1TvPiwg

i-Books: http://apple.co/1YTP2sg 

Well Friends, I hope you enjoyed today Thursday Thoughts and that you'll return each week for Tuesday Treasures, Thursday Thoughts and Saturday Spotlight.

Until next time, take care and God Bless.

PamT

#SaturdaySpotlight is on Marie Treanor and Ghost in the Rain

Good Morning Friends and Happy Saturday!

I'm so honored you could join us as I bring to your attention another new-to-me/my blog-author.

Marie Treanor lives in Scotland, in a chaotic house by the sea, together with her eccentric husband, three much too smart children and a small dog who rules them all. Most days, she avoids both housekeeping and evil day jobs by writing stories of paranormal romance and fantasy.

Marie is the award winning author of over forty paranormal romances - Indie, New York and E-published.

You can find out more about Marie and her books on her website: www.MarieTreanor.com.

Subscribe to her New Release Mailing List: http://www.marietreanor.com/marie-treanor-newsletter.  

Catch more latest news on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marie-Treanor-Paranormal-Romance/105866982782360.

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarieTreanor 

And on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/marietreanor/

Now let's find out about Marie's book, Ghost in the Rain; A World of Gothic: Scotland  

A haunted Highland house, battered by storms and murder...

Notorious rocker Dan Stewart isn’t anything like Dr. Kate Yorke imagined. Arriving at his remote home in the Scottish Highlands to research some valuable letters - only to discover he’s forgotten their appointment - Kate soaks up the Gothic atmosphere of Invershiel House. But it’s the owner who truly fascinates her.

Reclusive and abrupt, Dan is haunted by the deaths of his fellow band members, especially his one time lover Islay Lamont, whose shade seems to flit around the grounds in the rain. But the ghost is not the only mystery Kate encounters. Light bulbs disappear around her – and only Dan knows she’s scared of the dark. Then she trips over a dead body which inexplicably vanishes.

It becomes a race against time to find the identity of the body and the killer. And to discover if she and Danny have any kind of future together. Or even at all...

A World of Gothic is a Gothic Mystery Romance Series by authors all over the world. For information on other titles, check out A World of Gothic Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1105411939511452&fref=ts

Excerpt: 

I had to acknowledge that my peace was churned up by his unexpected presence here. It wasn’t even an unpleasant feeling; in fact it felt rather…exciting. But it was disturbing.

I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. I suspected Dan Stewart carried such disturbance wherever he went. If I thought about it, the whole house felt different now. As if its peace had gone too; as if it had sprung to life, eager, waiting.

Mocking my own silly fantasy, I stood abruptly and paced around the room, trying to recover my lost concentration. I suspected I was just tired and would work much faster and much better after a good night’s sleep.

I paused by the window to watch the storm. Although the thunder had stopped, the wind and rain were still blasting the trees and rattling the window. Close-up, I could feel the draught through my thick sweater. On impulse, I retrieved my phone from my bag and tried to capture the raging storm on its camera. But it looked too tame on the screen, not deep or dark enough, no real movement in those black clouds still scudding and swirling across the sky. I wished I could paint. For a moment, I even wished I could be part of it, to go outside in it again. There was nothing to stop me, except common sense.

I smiled to myself and lowered the phone, just as a movement in the garden below caught my eye. Someone was out in this. Someone not remotely dressed for it either. Through the darkness and the almost opaque mist of rain, I could make out only that it seemed to be a woman wearing only some kind of floating, white, wispy garment, more like the loungewear of wealthy women of past centuries than anything anyone would wear today for any purpose. The odd garment shimmered as the figure glided across the lawn, impossibly graceful.

On impulse, I raised my phone again and snapped.

Perhaps she moved too quickly. Nothing of her showed on the screen except an indistinct blur of light against blackness. Frowning, I looked again out of the window, but the woman had gone. Vanished.

****

Ooooh, been a long time since I read a good Gothic and this one sounds like a must read and such a beautiful cover! You can purchase Ghost in the Rain at the following locations.... 

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1Su8Z8L

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/26t6c5R

B&N: http://bit.ly/1qT8WZn

Kobo: http://bit.ly/1TvPiwg

i-Books: http://apple.co/1YTP2sg 

Well I'm off to my Bayou Writers Group meeting. If you're in the Lake Charles vicinity, join us! I sure hope you enjoyed today's spotlight and that you'll visit each week and check out our Tuesday Treasures, Thursday Thoughts and Saturday Spotlight.

Oh, and if you have a moment, please check out the poll here (right sidebar just below Bookbub icon) and help me decide how to get my FREE short story to newsletter subscribers~THANKS!

Until next time, take care and God Bless.

PamT