#SaturdaySpotlight is on Stanley P Brown & Veiled Memory!

Good Morning and Welcome!

I pray that everyone in the path of TS Barry stay safe. We're just entering Hurricane season and hopefully this will be the worst we get. You never know, though so let's stay aware, be alert and pray for our friends and family who live in those most vulnerable areas.

THANKS!

Now let's get on to our spotlight.

Today's guest has visited us in May and June with two other novels, so let's turn the spotlight on him and another great book....

Thirty-eight year old Dr. Madeline Alleyn is a successful professor of Celtic History in upstate New York, but she is haunted by her past and the decision she made years ago to abandon her husband after learning of his strange heritage. When she discovers that she’s pregnant with triplets, she makes the decision to run to protect her children and, inexplicably, her husband also. Now, after nearly eighteen years of vigilance, the destiny from which Madeline has tried to escape catches up with her. As her daughters begin to develop psychokinetic powers, an attempt to murder them is made to negate an ancient prophecy. Escaping the murder attempt in the night, the triplets suspect their fate is tied to some ancient stones and their mysterious grandmother. But as they seek answers, they have to run for their lives. People are after them, some to finish the failed murderous act and others to protect them. Along the way, they seek to solve the riddle of the Stones of Sumer, a mystery with startling implications for humanity.


Excerpt

The technician made it to the observatory on Mount Fowlkes as the last vestiges of sunlight slipped past the western horizon. In the clear skies of southwest Texas, the usual starlit blackness could be so deep that earthbound objects seemed to fade into silhouettes, unchained, like wraiths.

Those were the times he liked best, but tonight was different. An unnatural haze suffused the region, blurring the usually bright stars. Confused, Ben gazed into the sky, scratching his head as though the answer to some cosmic mystery could be coaxed from his tangled mass of hair. “If that’s not the darnedest thing,” he whispered, still perplexed by a nagging feeling that something was off.

Twin white domes of neighboring Mount Locke sat like mute sentinels propped against a black sky that should have been full of star-speckled brilliance. Otherwise, nothing seemed out of place. A slight wind rustled the boughs of Emory and Western Gray Oak sprouting from the stony soil.

Still focused on the stars, Ben jumped when the giant telescope he stood next to creaked and groaned as it began rotating.

“You say something, son?”

Turning, he found his boss standing behind him. “Just wondering who’s manning the instruments?”

“A visiting professor. He could use some help calibrating.”

“Can’t. There’s a call up from New York. A student needs lunar ranging data. Routine stuff.”

The boss nodded and walked back inside. Ben craned his neck again. Pollution couldn’t have caused this haze, not in this unspoiled environment, but the puzzle would have to wait. He walked across the parking lot of the McDonald Observatory complex to a square metal building standing next to the laser station and called Joe Prather, an astrophysics graduate student at Columbia University

Nothing fascinates me like writing, creating stories, or sub-creating as JRR Tolkien referred to it. And, of course, to write and write well, one must read widely. It started early in my life and continues to this day. But, long before I began writing stories, I was working long hours as a college professor, squeezing in time whenever I could find the time to work my hobby—which I began in earnest almost 20 years ago.

Readers can find me at the following locations....

Twitter @StanleyPBrown, Website, Amazon Black Opal Books and
FaceBook

Veiled Memory can be found at B&N, Kobo and Smashwords and watch for The Ruby Ring, sequel to Veiled Memory coming this fall from Black Opal Books!

Hope you enjoyed today's spotlight and that you'll check back weekly for Wednesday Words with Friends and always, Saturday Spotlight!

Until next time take care and God bless.
PamT

#SaturdaySpotlight is on Stanley (S.P) Brown and The Legacy!

Good Morning!

Last month I introduced you to Stanley Brown when he gave us a peek into his novel Fallen Wizard. Today Stanley shares a peek into his novel, The Legacy so please give him a great, big o'le SWLA welcome!

Harry Black has a curse he doesn’t understand, or could it be a gift he can’t escape? He’s the last heir of a dying clan, but there’s a problem. To inherit, he must fulfill the only stipulation in the will—accept the Black family Legacy. After seven weeks of the same nightmare, Harry is desperate to see a psychologist to be “cured.” But instead of help at the hands of Dr. Virginia Rankin, Harry falls headlong into the legacy’s grip when he experiences an ecstatic utterance and inexplicably reveals information to her that he couldn’t possibly know.

Shocked that this stranger has knowledge of her family’s dark secret, Ginny makes a frantic call to her brother. The call makes the Minority Whip of the US Senate late for a meeting at a world economic summit in DC, delaying him long enough to avoid a terrorist bombing that kills two other senators and dozens more innocent people. By saving the life of Dr. Rankin’s famous brother, Harry has also sealed his own fate. Wanted or not, the Legacy has finally come to him.

The Legacy Excerpt

The air shimmered where the surf reached the zenith of its climb up the beach, as though a sudden blast of heat had radiated from the bowels of the earth. Arie Peeters materialized and checked the GPS in his watch to confirm his location. A stiff wind blowing in from the Gulf of Oman peppered his white shirt with spray. He didn’t care. He wouldn’t be stuck in this shithole very long.

The cry of gulls filled the air as Peeters got his bearings. He turned east and let his senses drift out. In a moment, his own working wafted to him as a combination of smell and touch. He threw his cigarette to the sand and lifted his head higher, arms spread and extended from his body. He couldn’t see them, but his contacts were there in the dark, waiting about a hundred meters off. The cigarette’s dying embers vanished as a flood of lights from several motor vehicles backlit the silhouettes of three men. More Jihadist bastards were near, just over the dunes to his right, but he didn’t need his special ability to know this. He expected nothing less of his three contacts. They would make sure he’d come alone. He chuckled, imagining the confusion of the watchers as they puzzled over how he had gotten ashore.

Peeters dropped the bag containing the cash just out of reach of the surf. The message was clear. He would go no farther. His three contacts gave each other sideways glances and started toward him at once. The money was a powerful draw, an inducement to get them here. It would give them something to inspect. The promise of ten million more would keep him safe from any treachery these three might hatch.

It had taken too long to piece this part of the operation together, almost a year of bribing and plying them with sex on the yacht, waiting for him far enough off shore to remain unseen. He’d convinced these three principals they would be needed, not their underlings. It had also taken a fair amount of aeromancy to pull it off, but he had managed it with his own power.

Sounds like another hit, Stanley! We certainly wish you the best of luck and God's blessings!

Nothing fascinates me like writing, creating stories, or sub-creating as JRR Tolkien referred to it. And, of course, to write and write well, one must read widely. It started early in my life and continues to this day. But, long before I began writing stories, I was working long hours as a college professor, squeezing in time whenever I could find the time to work my hobby—which I began in earnest almost 20 years ago.

Readers can find me at the following locations....

Twitter @StanleyPBrown, Website, Amazon Black Opal Books and
FaceBook

The Legacy can be found at B&N, Kobo and Smashwords

Hope you enjoyed today's spotlight and that you'll check back weekly for Wednesday Words with Friends and Saturday Spotlight!

Until next time, take care and God bless.
PamT

#SaturdaySpotlight is on Stanley Brown and Fallen Wizard!

Good Morning!

It is always my pleasure to bring to you a brand new to me author so please welcome Stanley Brown with his YA Fantasy novel, Fallen Wizard....

Twelve-year-old Peter Michaels is accustomed to weird things happening with a regularity that seems to be a part of his life. But when an old man dressed in strange clothes falls from the sky and lands in Peter’s front yard, the weird quotient, as his dad would put it, gets ratcheted way up. Peter does the only thing he can. He helps the man into his house. That mistake leads to a second, the one that puts an end to Peter’s dream of making the all-star baseball team. As Peter soon discovers, comforting a dying wizard puts your mark on an unbreakable pact—one that will ensnare him and his two best friends, Raven Dakota and Stumpy Simpkins, in a fight for their lives.

 Excerpt: The day started like most days in Peter’s life. Before scrambling from under the covers, he peeked through his bedside window with a guarded eye. Caution was a habit Peter had no choice but to adopt. His father insisted on it because of his son’s peculiar predilection for the unusual, for strange things happening around him with a regularity too frequent to be mere chance. “Curious occurrences” is what his father called the things that seemed to follow Peter like ants to a picnic. Most of the time they were silly little things. Sometimes, though, they could be dangerous. A gift, Mr. Michaels would say, trying to downplay them as a way of safeguarding his son’s mental state. Calling his problem a gift softened it, bringing a sense of normalcy to Peter’s life.

Peter made it a point to look for signs, small indications of impending doom. He’d developed his little routines to keep trouble at bay, or so he hoped. The gift had a nasty habit of inserting itself at precisely the wrong times.

This time, though, everything looked cool so Peter jumped up and threw on his baseball uniform. It was Saturday, which meant practice after his math tutoring session. All set, he took a tentative step into the hallway, Lena’s crappy music blaring from her room two doors down. No danger here. He turned for the stairs just in time for a skateboard to zip under his feet.

Peter had two thoughts as the board sent him hurdling along the wooden floor. His father would have a fit because skateboarding in the house was one of the five cardinal sins. More importantly, his coach would be pissed, and this really scared him. He couldn’t afford to break a body part in the middle of baseball season.

Fortunately, Peter played third base, which meant he had good hands and quick feet. It took both to save him this time.

Wow, Stanley! Sounds like a great YA book! Good luck and God's blessings with it. Now please tell us a little about yourself.

Nothing fascinates me like writing, creating stories, or sub-creating as JRR Tolkien referred to it. And, of course, to write and write well, one must read widely. It started early in my life and continues to this day. But, long before I began writing stories, I was working long hours as a college professor, squeezing in time whenever I could find the time to work my hobby—which I began in earnest almost 20 years ago.

Readers can find me at the following locations....

Twitter @StanleyPBrown, Website, Amazon Black Opal Books and
FaceBook

Fallen Wizard can be found at B&N, Kobo and Smashwords

Thanks Stanley for sharing our spotlight today.

Until next time, friends, take care and God bless.
PamT

#SaturdaySpotlight is on Howard Levine & Last Gasp

Good Morning!

I'm headed out to Bandera, TX (my home away from home) this morning but before I go, I have the pleasure of introducing you to brand-new-to-me author, Howard Levine with his book, Last Gasp.

I discovered Howard on my friend Jacqueline Seewald's blog and am so glad he could be in our spotlight today so please give him a huge WELCOME!

Howard Levine is the author of one previously published novel, Leaving This Life Behind.  He is a retired teacher of special education and English as a second language. Before his first public school teaching position—at a high school in the Bronx, NY—he taught Transcendental Meditation, which he still practices regularly.  Howard now lives in suburban Washington DC, where he hikes, bikes, and writes.  He and his wife volunteer at a soup kitchen and a senior citizens center. Find out more by connecting with him on Facebook.

Frank Tedeschi’s niece is dead, one of thousands of victims of a terrorist attack, which has been laid at the feet of “Islamic radicals” by a right-wing US government.  Frank, based on a chance encounter, is one of the very few people who question the government’s explanation.  He is a Vietnam veteran who wants nothing more than to live without further controversy or conflict.  Can he and his grieving brother Rob, a detective with the NYPD, obtain the necessary evidence to uncover the truth, in the face of scorn and incredulity?  Can they overcome their long-term estrangement to work together, given that they are putting their lives in danger? 

 In LAST GASP—a novel that resonates with today’s politics—the answers to these questions unfold in a way that mingles personal and societal issues and intertwines the past and present while moving relentlessly forward.

Excerpt:  “She would’ve come for the calamari, if nothing else.” Rob, eyes shut, sipped from a wine glass, his thick fingers wedged between its flat round base and the reddish-purple curvature of the bowl, which he squeezed as if holding the thing together. “She loved the stuff,” he added, looking up from the goblet, his voice hoarse. “For that, she would’ve come.”

Julie reached across the table and laid her hand on his arm. “She’d have come anyway.  She could’ve compared notes with her cousin over here. Compared studs and tattoos,” Julie said, ignoring the look her younger son shot her as he leaned forward on the other side of Frank. “Plus, even if Laureen acted like it was uncool, she loved her family. Starting with her parents.”

Rob gritted his teeth and looked away, thinking that he either needed to lay off the wine or get soused, that he was now inhabiting a dangerous middle ground. Tears in your beer, only substitute wine in a glass that seemed to magically refill itself, to siphon bittersweet vin rose from the carafe. Either the bus boy was very unobtrusive, or Rob was transfusing the stuff himself without really being aware of it.  

He couldn’t have sworn that Laureen loved her parents, separately or together. Ditto for her extended family. Still, it was Laureen, ironically, who’d brought all of them together. For the second time in a month, no less. They could have left out a glass of wine for her, left the outside door ajar, like the Jews did on Passover. Except that there was even less chance of Laureen showing up than there was of the Prophet Elijah draining the Manischewitz. Besides, it was cold out and they were in a restaurant. The place was crowded, noisy, probably bug-proof, assuming that the so-far anonymous federal spooks even knew that the Tedeschi clan was dining there. And it was a setting much preferable to that of the previous family get-together, Cascardi’s Funeral Home.

Last Gasp can be found at Amazon (Kindle) & Barnes and Noble (Nook).

Howard has a book signing this afternoon, but please leave a comment and he will check in ASAHP - THANKS!

Hope you enjoyed today's spotlight and that you'll check back weekly for Tuesday Treasures, Thursday Thoughts and Saturday Spotlight!

Until next time, take care and God Bless.

PamT