Book signing / Meet the Author event!

Tomorrow I will have my first self-instigated book signing and selling event. I've done all the advertising that I can without seeming creepy or desperate. The game and coffee shop, Pearl Street G & C House, has never had an author event.

So it's a first for everyone!

I have pulled together all my materials and even some extras. A great idea was presented to me with selling my older, self-published books, as "pre-releases."

This might be a great opportunity to:
1. Sell my old stock that I thought to be unsellable
2. Offer to new readers a chance at reading a book BEFORE final touches are made (editing, cover design, story lines, etc.)
3. Offer new readers a big discount due to the status of the book
4. Build my email list in order to let people know when my next book is available

All that is left is hope that the rain system on the forecast treats us well and we'll be on our way!

I'll keep you updated!
Penny

Deadpool 2 review - My new favorite movie of the year!!



(THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!! SO DON'T READ IF YOU ARE UNFORTUNATE ENOUGHT TO NOT SEE YET!!!)


Courtesy of hdwallpapers.in

I couldn't stop laughing as I watched Deadpool 2 yesterday. I am not a snorting sort of laugher, but I couldn't count the number of times my body did this weird, not normal, sound. I laugh-cried, too. It was too much and not enough!

Foreshadowing at the beginning set my fears in motion that something was going to happen to Vanessa, and, darn!!!, something bad did happen. My love for her from Firefly carried over to Deadpool and I didn't want her to die, but I see why they did it. I still didn't like it.

Courtesy of cinemablends.com

Luckily, the action moved quickly and you were able to think about something other the sadness of love - cut short. Honestly, in the world of super heroes, everyone should know NOT to reproduce!!! Show me a happy super hero couple. Maybe Penny and Tony Stark. Debatable, though.

The number of times people died unfortunate deaths were numerous. Don't even get me started on the scene when X-Force landed with their parachutes! The entire theater was rolling in the aisles. I really liked Domino and her luck, and the rapport between Deadpool and her was great.

The fights with Cable and DP entertained greatly, and managed to make the most squeamish of us squeal in horror when he landed on/off the table in the prison. Excruciating!

The ending was perfect, and the extra footage during the credits set things to right. Yea, Nessa! This was such a great movie, I'm planning on seeing it again. Sad I can't use my MoviePass for round two, but c'est la vie!

Movie rating: A+

Bring back Lucifer!!! This is my complaining post!

I want my sexy devilish man back!!! Why do all the good shows get cancelled?

So, this is where I get to list my favorite TV shows gone too soon:

1. Reaper -


Courtesy of fanart.tv

I really liked this show! Apparently I have a thing for devil-themes! Not saying selling your kid's soul to the devil is a good idea. It's not. It's a terrible idea! But I did enjoy watching Sam Oliver return escaped souls back to where they belong. His friends were hilarious, too!




2. My So-Called Life -


Courtesy of ingenueperspective.blogspot.com

 Ahh, teen angst with Claire Daines and Jared Leto. Need I say more?







3. GCB (Good Christian Bitches) -



Courtesy of dvdbash.com

Nonsensical, I know, but there was something fun and irreverent that made this show fun. Obviously, not very popular, but I wish they had been more episodes. I was just starting to like the characters. I really like Kristin Chenowith and enjoyed her in this.









4. Firefly -

Courtesy of fanpop.com

 I can't tell you how much I miss this show!!! (I would decorate this entire page in exclamation points, but I'm pretty sure that would be annoying.) Firefly had everything! Space Cowboys, Joss Whedon, science fiction, danger, romance, good guys, bad guys, awesome women. It had everything. So thirteen or so years later, people like me are still pining for our Mal and his space crew. Yea, they threw us a bone with the movie a few years back, and there are comics. But really! I don't know of another show that has such a following after getting cancelled after just one season.

And now... Lucifer


 

Courtesy of hdqwalls.com
 

Come on, TV execs! This was a great show and we want more. There's hope that maybe someone else will pick it up, so if we all get a tweeting, we might be able to make a difference!


A little history of Fenrir - Loki's son

Fenrir - courtesy of wikipedia

Meet Fenrir, the giant wolf-like creature, and Loki's son. And he is one of the fantastic supporting characters in A Girl's Guide to Time Travel.

In my story, Fenrir doesn't attack any horses. Thank you, thank you. Don't worry though, I have other creatures doing the attacking. Fenrir provides more of a calming influence in the story, as he's near Holland when she's experiencing frustration or anger. It's usually all Loki's fault.

Fenrir is a stable force, always willing to step forward, when necessary, or provide silent encouragement, when needed.

Thinking Out of the Box for Author Events

With my new book out, I've been trying to come up with places I can have a book signing or some sort of book event. Bookstores are always an option, but I wanted someplace... different. I drive past a few small businesses on my way home from work. Both houses have been newly remodeled, one is a coffee/ game shop and one is a tap house.

I reached out to both businesses with my idea of an author event, something like a book signing, but a little more lowkey. The coffee house was the first to contact me and I have a scheduled event at the end of May. The tap house is on hold until we see how much traffic and interest we had at the game house.

I am learning if you want to get your book out there, I am the one who has to do the footwork. My book obviously isn't going to sell itself, not when it's up against hundreds of thousands of other books. I have no fan base at the moment, but I'm hoping these smaller events will get me on some radars.

I'm also not going it alone. Some people in my writer's group are published and we're working as a team to get to events this spring. So with help from my publisher for some events and my friends from the writers group, I'm adding more activities onto my calendar.

Sample Chapter - Unreleased sequal - Paranormal Romance

Hello all! I thought it might be fun to send out my first chapter of a manuscript I'm currently working on. It's only about half complete, but moving pretty quickly. This is a story of a girl, Zoe, who stumbles across a murder. But this isn't an ordinary murder, and soon Zoe's life will be turned upside down.

Enjoy!

Chapter 1

“We are going to have to split up.”

The statement shocked Zoe. “What? No!” She knew she looked like a gaping fish. They were in the middle of nowhere.

Her friend Susie nodded as she folded a map while juggling a flashlight under her chin. “Yes, Zoe. Only twenty-five minutes left until the deadline, and we only need three more items. We are so close. Imagine,” she cajoled, “how nice it would be to spend some of your vacation time in Las Vegas. It would be such a nice break from work.”

Zoe moaned at her friend’s tone and tried not to shiver at the image of Susie lit up like a blond-haired Halloween freak show under the beam of the flashlight. “It’s so dark out here. What if I get lost?” Twirling a lock of short hair, she glanced around, but only saw darkness. It had felt like a bad idea to get on a chartered bus and go on a Halloween night scavenger hunt, but here she was, doing exactly that.

Tiffany, the third wheel of the adventure, sidled next to Susie. “You’ve lived here longer than I have. Come on, Zoe, don’t be a downer. I am going on my own, too. We are so close to winning this scavenger hunt.”

“I didn’t know we would be splitting up in the middle of the woods,” Zoe snapped. She realized she sounded like she was whining, but didn’t care. She was whining. “It can’t be safe.”

Susie held out an extra map to Zoe while she shone her flashlight on the surface. She pointed a painted fingertip toward the middle. “Here is the Boston Cemetery, and it is only five minutes away down that walking path. You just need to go there and make a tombstone rubbing from the year 1864. I will go up to Johnson’s barn to find a pitchfork. Tiffany, you can go to the gas station near the bus. It says to get coffin nails, which by my estimation means cigarettes.” 

“This is the worst list,” Zoe complained. “Who asks people to walk around at midnight to find pitchforks, coffin nails, and tombstones?”

“Where is your sense of adventure?”

“At home in bed.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Susie huffed. “We’re going to win, but not without your help. We did so well on the other items. If we all hurry, we’ll meet back at the bus in less than ten minutes. We’ll be done before everyone else gets to the tour bus. We’ll win!”

“Fine, but I’ll have you know, I don’t appreciate being the one to go to an abandoned cemetery.” Zoe gazed at the two women with narrowed eyes.

“You’ll be fine. Now, go! Remember Las Vegas and how awesome it’s gonna to be. Come on, Tiffany, let’s get moving.” With that, the two other women started jogging away from Zoe. Their flashlights jumping with each stride.

“Remember Las Vegas,” Zoe mimicked sarcastically as she pulled her lightweight jacket tighter around her. She’d run up the trail and find the damn grave. Then she’d give Susie and Tiffany a piece of her mind, and she would claim ownership of the biggest bedroom in their Vegas hotel. Shining her flashlight in front of her, she set out toward the cemetery.

The Ohio cemetery wasn’t overly large, due to the fact that Boston Township was nonexistent now. The government had bought out the entire village more than forty years ago and declared it a natural park. Rumor was the buyout was due to some sort of chemical spill, but no one could provide positive proof of such an occurrence. Eventually all the houses were demolished, and the last lingering soul moved from the city years ago. So, out went the townsfolk and in came the ghost hunters and paranormal weirdos.

Now you’re one of the weirdos, her brain teased.

Zoe shook her head and continued to shine her flashlight on the tractor path leading to the graveyard. Two minutes later, she illuminated the trail in front of her with her slim flashlight and stared at the paths that veered away from each other. She’d been here a time or two before, but didn’t remember the path splintering off. Taking the path on the right, she walked a few feet, but grew confused when she came to another fork.

In front of her, a broken fence rose eerily in the moonlight, and she startled when she thought she saw a shape move in the darkness. Zoe picked up her pace, but soon realized she didn’t see the cemetery that should have been right in front of her. Quickly bringing out her cell phone, she turned on the GPS, and typed in the cemetery in the search box. Her phone stated she was three minutes away from her destination.

Shining the flashlight in front of her, she stared at the screen and followed its directions. Finally spotting the raised area that protected the old cemetery plots, she picked up her pace. She put her cell phone in her jacket pocket as she took in the occupants of the deserted town’s cemetery. A twig snapping somewhere beside her caused her to squeak in fright. She stopped and listened, but only the rustling leaves overhead sang to her.

She told herself it was just her imagination. She knew she had plenty of it. It also didn’t help that the cemetery was known to be home to an odd satanic cult or two. Her heart beat faster. “1864,” she repeated to herself. “Find the grave and get out of here.” She quickly shined her light on the waist high gravestones. All the years were wrong, so she kept walking in search of the elusive 1864.

Another sound, a gasp, floated through the cemetery. She whirled to frantically scan her surroundings for some sign of person or animal, but she could see nothing in the utter blackness outside her feeble light. She took a deep breath to calm her jumpy nerves. Circling to shine her flashlight around her, she searched the gravestones for the needed year. Off to her right side, she spotted a potential. Quickly walking to the grave, elation filled her as she spied the date.

She hit the jackpot! She reached into her purse, grabbed a piece of folded paper, and scratched a pencil across the paper and gravestone. It wasn’t a professional gravestone rubbing, but she wasn’t about to whip out a water bottle, take time out to tape up her paper, get rubbing wax, and create art. She just needed a date to verify she was in a cemetery in the middle of the night, by herself.

She was a fool.

As she berated herself, another sound drifted from behind her. What was that? A strange gurgle emanated somewhere outside her field of vision. The darkness spoke, terrifying Zoe. Her flashlight beam jumped from gravestone to gravestone.

A deep voice, a chant, rose from the graveyard, stopping her in her tracks. Zoe pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. She realized this probably wasn’t her brightest idea, but she was curious enough to investigate. It was possible teenagers were in the midst of a Halloween prank, and she was about to go viral on some punk’s webpage. But if she caught them on camera first, she might be able to turn the tables.

The chanting grew louder and more feverish, and Zoe moved forward in search of the culprit. The smell of something vile and rotten permeated her senses. Suddenly Zoe found herself standing in front of a man crouching over a body lying prone on the ground. Leaves rustled around the pair, shifting and whispering. Without thought, she picked up her phone and pressed her finger on the picture button. The area lit up with the camera’s flash just as the man raised a long knife above the body on the ground.

Zoe screamed as the man slashed the knife forcefully downward. The man’s hands jerked at the sound of Zoe’s voice, but the knife buried to the hilt in the victim’s chest. The body writhed and gasped. Horror gripped Zoe, holding her immobile.

The man incredulously stared at her as she came upon the scene. His eyes glittered dangerously, signaling retribution of the interruption. Long, dark hair fell over his brow and plastered across his gaunt face. Dark clothes hid his shape.

Zoe pulled her gaze from the man to gawk at the body. The light from the moon illuminated a young man with bright blond hair who stared sightlessly into space. He was dead. Her brain barely registered the thought before her body’s flight or fight response kicked in. She instantly spun around to run and slammed headfirst into the outstretched arm of a praying angel. She stumbled backward and cried out as pain sliced across her cheekbone. Lights sparkled across her vision.

Grasping her cell phone, she ordered her limbs to aid in the escape and sprinted as fast as she could out of the cemetery. She pumped her arms and legs and flew over the tractor path. She’d dropped her flashlight in the cemetery, but the nearly full moon illuminated the path. She ran past the spot where Tiffany and Susie argued with her, she ran past the field where they pulled a corn husk from, and she ran past the beaten down sign declaring the road closed to Boston Township.

As Zoe ran, fear nearly choked her with every stride. Oh my God, I just saw a murder! Disbelief clouded her brain. Blood dripped down the side of her face from her run-in with the cemetery statue, but she continued her escape to safety. She didn’t want to die, and she had no idea if the man followed her. She didn’t look back for fear of stumbling on the rocky terrain, so she concentrated on the ground in front of her. Her ears strained to listen for chasing footsteps, but pounding of her heart made it impossible.

She tripped over a rock, her phone flew out of her hands, but she wasn’t about to stop and search for it. She continued to run. Every step she took seemed to escalate the fear that attempted to claw its way out. She pictured the murdered running behind her, sinking his knife in her back, and she pushed the thought away. She steered her mind away from the horrible images and forced herself to concentrate on the path ahead, not the possibility of the monster behind her.

The lights of the awaiting tour bus came into view. Zoe used one last burst of speed to get to safety. The man wouldn’t be idiotic enough to chase her into a crowded bus, would he? Her side ached, and she knew she was nearing the end of her endurance. “Help me!” she screamed as she ran closer. “Please! Call the police!”

Meet the Horse in A Girl's Guide to Time Travel!

I wanted to give you a little in-depth look at the horse that is in my book, A Girl’s Guide to Time Travel. Because my character traveled SO FAR back in time, I was able to introduce a lovely palomino mare named Ece (pronounced EH-geh).  Her name means “queen.”

She was a gift from a neighboring town called Nisa. The horse, the Nisean horse, was something special. They did not possess the dainty frames of the Arabian horse. This breed may have been a descendant of the “Forest Horse” proto-type. They were tall and swift and robust like a warhorse. The Nisean horse had bony knobs on their forehead that were often referred to as “horns.” Common colors were dark bay, chestnut, but rarer colors were found: black, roan, palomino and pinto patterns.


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In ancient times, this horse was considered the most valuable horse in the world. Pure white Nisean horses were the horses of kings and gods. One legend is Cyrus the Great (the founder of the Persian empire under the Achaemenid dynasty) was so distraught when one of his stallions drowned as he crossed a river, the ruler ordered the river drained, for he did not believe that anything that killed something so beautiful should be allowed to live.

 

Great historical leaders sought to own the horse dubbed

the “Heavenly Horse”:

·         *  Xerxes raced his Nisean mares against the legendary Thessalian mares and won

·         *  General Mardonius’s Nisean warhorse was so feared, the Athenians devised a plan to kill the horse

·         *  Alexander the Great conquered Persia and demanded tribute of thousands of Nisean horses

·         *  Roman writer Strabo said the horse was the most elegant riding horse alive

  

This horse became extinct when Constantinople fell in 1204.

 

I really enjoyed writing about this great horse that no longer walks among us.

 

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!

Penny