20 September 2017

Hair Brained (The Bad Hair Day Mysteries) by Nancy J. Cohen Book Tour and Giveaway!

Hair Brained (The Bad Hair Day Mysteries) by Nancy J. Cohen


Cozy Mystery 14th in Series 
Orange Grove Press (September 12, 2017) 
Print Length: 342 pages 
E-Book ASIN: B072XVHPPH

Was the car crash an accident or a deliberate attempt to run Marla's friends off the road?
When hairstylist Marla Vail's best friend is hurt in a suspicious car accident, Marla assumes guardianship of her infant son. No sooner does Marla say, "Baby want a bottle?" than she's embroiled in another murder investigation. Her husband, Detective Dalton Vail, determines the crash may not have been an accident after all. But then, who would want Tally--or Ken in the car with her--out of the way? As Marla digs deeper into her friends' lives, she realizes she didn't know them as well as she'd thought. Nonetheless, it's her duty as their son's guardian to ensure his safety, even if it means putting her own life at risk. Can she protect the baby and find the culprit before someone else ends up as roadkill?

 

About The Author

Nancy J. Cohen writes the Bad Hair Day Mysteries featuring South Florida hairstylist Marla Vail. Titles in this series have made the IMBA bestseller list and been selected by Suspense Magazine as best cozy mystery. Nancy has also written the instructional guide, Writing the Cozy Mystery. Her imaginative romances, including the Drift Lords series, have proven popular with fans as well. A featured speaker at libraries, conferences, and community events, Nancy is listed in Contemporary Authors, Poets & Writers, and Who's Who in U.S. Writers, Editors, & Poets. When not busy writing, she enjoys fine dining, cruising, visiting Disney World, and shopping.

Author Links
Website: http://nancyjcohen.com 
Blog: http://nancyjcohen.wordpress.com 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NancyJCohenAuthor 
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nancyjcohen 
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/91508.Nancy_J_Cohen 
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/njcohen/ 
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nancyjcohen 
Booklover’s Bench: http://bookloversbench.com 
Newsletter Sign-Up: http://nancyjcohen.com/newsletter/   
Purchase Links: 
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TOUR PARTICIPANTS
September 12 – Laura’s Interests – REVIEW
September 12 – The Pulp and Mystery Shelf – INTERVIEW
September 13 – Socrates’ Book Reviews – REVIEW
September 13 – Readeropolis – SPOTLIGHT
September 14 – Community Bookstop – REVIEW
September 14 – Island Confidential – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
September 15 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – REVIEW
September 15 – Back Porchervations – REVIEW
September 16 – Brooke Blogs – CHARACTER GUEST POST
September 17 – A Holland Reads –  GUEST POST
September 18 – Deal Sharing Aunt –  INTERVIEW
September 18 – Readeropolis – SPOTLIGHT
September 19 – Cozy Up With Kathy – GUEST POST
September 19 – Bibliophile Reviews – REVIEW
September 20 – StoreyBook Reviews – GUEST POST
September 20 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

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The Keeping of Secrets by Alice Grayship Book Spotlight and Character Review!




The Keeping of Secrets
The keeper of family secrets, Patricia Roberts grows up isolated and lonely. Trust no one and you won't be disappointed is her motto. Three men fall in love with her and she learns to trust, only to find that their agendas are not her own. With secrets concealed from her by the ultimate love of her life, and with her own secret to keep, duplicity and deceit threaten their relationship. In a coming of age story set against the sweeping backdrop of the Second World War - evacuation, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, buzz bombs and secret war work - Patricia ultimately has to decide whether to reveal her deepest held secret for the sake of her future happiness.



About the author: Born and raised in the Home Counties, Alice Graysharp has enjoyed a varied working life from hospitality to office work and retail. She currently lives in Surrey. This is her first novel, and the first title in a two book series, she is also already working on a seventeenth century trilogy. Published in the anniversary month of the outbreak of the Second World War and the Battle of Britain

Bill Character Spotlight


Q. Who is Bill?

A. Bill (William) Whitshere is Pat’s best and only friend at the start of the story. He is six months older than Pat; we meet him shortly before Christmas 1939 by which time he is 16.


Q. How does Bill know Pat?

A. Bill’s and Pat’s fathers played cricket together for the Clapham Cricket Club when Bill and Pat were young. Traditionally the husbands played the cricket and the wives prepared tea, which is how Pat’s mother and Bill’s mother met. The families have kept in touch since and have regular get-togethers.


Q. What was the inspiration behind the character of Bill?

A. Pat had traumatic times in her childhood and is expected to keep family secrets. I wondered what effect these inhibitors might have had on her ability to develop close friendships with girls who can be more demanding in friendships than boys. I thought she might find the kind of intense relationships between girls, especially teenage girls, difficult to handle, especially with the level of secrecy imposed on her. Boys tend to develop socially at a slower pace and approach friendships on a different level. I therefore thought it likely that if Pat did have a friend she is more likely to have a friend who is a boy because it would be a safer kind of friendship: ‘He didn’t demand emotional commitment or a swapping of secrets and confidences.’ So Bill was created as a brother figure with whom she could share some good times.

Q. What does Bill look like?

A. Bill has inherited his father’s shorter, stockier frame, and has dark brown hair, grey-green eyes and a generous, wide mouth. When we meet him at Christmas time 1939 he has spent a term of weekends cycling home from Reading and ‘I suddenly realised that the hand that held mine was attached to a firm, muscular arm and that he was leaner than the stocky boy I remembered.’


Q. What is Bill’s personality like?

A. Bill is a bouncy, humorous, larger than life character who enjoys a sense of the dramatic. He and Pat have developed a kind of “ta-da” greeting. He is capable of empathy; a friendly arm around her if as a child she fell and scraped her knee. However, he used to play practical jokes on Pat, but now is capable of insight and realises that she has unhappy feelings around them and apologises for his childhood behaviour. He is also developing has a deeper, more serious side which takes Pat by surprise.


Q. What are Bill’s likes and dislikes?

A. Bill likes jokes, especially corny ones, and puzzles and games. When they were younger Pat and Bill would play with his train set or pour over his collection of Champion and Hotspur, reading aloud or enacting their scenes of derring-do and adventure. He likes cricket but is not so keen on rugby or football.


Q. What does Bill want to do when he grows up?

A. Bill wants to go into the diplomatic service. He struggles at school, especially with maths which is a disappointment to his father who wants him to become an accountant. His favourite subjects are languages and he want to travel and use his languages. Whether he succeeds in achieving his chosen career…. this may be something we find out in book 2.


Q. How does Bill find evacuation?

A. Bill misses his home enough to cycle from Reading to Brixton at weekends, and he is encouraged in this by cycling with his new friend, Jon, who is billeted with him on evacuation.


Q. What can you tell us about his feelings for Pat?

A. When we meet him he appears to be the hearty, brotherly friend she has always known, but underneath he has been harbouring romantic feelings for her.  It is not clear for how long, though perhaps for some time as his Christmas present to her reveals his feelings and he later lets slip that he has always regarded her as his girl.


Q. How does Bill develop as the story progresses?

A. Well, I don’t want to give away too many spoilers but he develops a certain stoicism and acceptance and proves capable of biding his time, remaining loyal despite feelings of jealousy. Conversely this could be seen as exhibiting a certain amount of possessiveness. As to where his relationship with Pat goes eventually, you’ll have to read the book!  


19 September 2017

The Trust by Ronald H. Balson Book Spotlight!


Book Description:
When his uncle dies, Liam Taggart reluctantly returns to his childhood home in Northern Ireland for the funeral―a home he left years ago after a bitter confrontation with his family, never to look back. But when he arrives, Liam learns that not only was his uncle shot to death, but that he’d anticipated his own murder: In an astonishing last will and testament, Uncle Fergus has left his entire estate to a secret trust, directing that no distributions be made to any person until the killer is found. Did Fergus know, but refuse to name, his killer? Was this a crime of revenge, a vendetta leftover from Northern Ireland’s bloody sectarian war? After all, the Taggarts were deeply involved in the IRA. Or is it possible that the killer is a family member seeking Fergus’s estate? Otherwise, why postpone distributions to the heirs? Most menacingly, does the killer now have his sights on other family members?
As his investigation draws Liam farther and farther into the past he has abandoned, he realizes he is forced to reopen doors long ago shut and locked. Now, accepting the appointment as sole trustee of the Fergus Taggart Trust, Liam realizes he has stepped into the center of a firestorm.

PRAISE FOR RONALD H. BALSON
"A heart-wrenching...triumphant story." —The Chicago Tribune on Karolina’s Twins

“Secrets, friendships, survival, and the Holocaust are woven together in Ronald H. Balson’s haunting Karolina's Twins.”—Family Circle on Karolina’s Twins

“A new look at an old story…will stay with you long after you have finished it.” —The Huffington Post on Once We Were Brothers

“Uplifting and moving, intelligently written…an unusual insight into human character.” —Library Journal, starred review on Once We Were Brothers

“A page-turning read filled with despair and anger but with hope, love, and humanity at its core.” —Jewish Book Council on Saving Sophie


About the Author:
RONALD H. BALSON is a Chicago trial attorney, an educator, and writer. His practice has taken him to several international venues. He is also the author of Karolina's Twins, Saving Sophie, and the international bestseller Once We Were Brothers.



The Quieting West By Gordon Gravley Book Spotlight and Interview!



The Quieting West
By Gordon Gravley
Genre: Literary / Western / Historical

Book Description

This is the story of two cowboys, Billy Colter and Thomas Andrew Benton, in the rapidly changing world of the early 1900’s. Despite the forty-year difference in their ages, they become close friends in a brief time. After losing their jobs as ranch hands in Utah, they head to Denver, once old man Thomas’ stomping ground. There, Thomas spends time with Ellen Marie, a “soiled dove” he’s known all her life, while young Billy experiences the newest form of entertainment: nickelodeons.

Thomas soon receives a job offer from an old friend, and the two head to Arizona, expecting more ranch work. What they discover is a renegade group of silent film makers. Billy and Thomas are hired to protect the crew and their equipment from Patents Agents hunting down the illegal use of movie cameras. Before long, the cowboys-now-hired-guns are involved in the movie-making process. When they are lured to a world of great enchantment and seduction—Hollywood!—they find their lives forever changed. And not necessarily for the better.

It is a story of truth, fiction, and the disillusionment between the two. A story woven of humor, romance, and tragedy.



About the Author

Gordon Gravley has been making up stories all his life. The dystopian Gospel for the Damned was his first novel. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Gordon moved around – California; Colorado; Alaska; Northern Arizona – before eventually settling in Seattle, Washington. Calling the Northwest his home since 1998, he doesn’t expect to be moving elsewhere anytime soon. There, he’ll continue to make up stories, and live with his wife and son. 


Author’s Giveaway: Sign up for the author’s monthly newsletter (via his website) and you will be entered into a drawing to win one of three signed print copies of his book.
The giveaway will run from September 6th-19th!

An excerpt:

He looked at me, turned away, and then looked back. “You look familiar. What pictures have you been in?” he said to me.
I was stumped. I never knew the titles of any of the movies I’d been in. “I can’t rightly recall,” I told him. “I was Morgan Earp in one about that gunfight in Tombstone. Mostly, I rode and fell a lot.”
That was all the résumé I needed. The skinny man led me into the building, down a long corridor, and finally, onto an open lot.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Billy Colter.”
“That’s a good name,” he replied, nodding his approval. Then he told me to wait while he went to talk to a gentleman who I took to be the director.
A moment later the skinny man returned. “Okay, Billy. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to get on that horse there, and you’re going to ride out to the end of the street there. Then you’ll ride back this way, as fast as you can, and then stop the horse so suddenly that you fall off into that big water trough there. We made it over-sized so that you’ll be able to hit it better. You got all that?”
I had it. It was nothing different than I had done for Grady. I got on that horse with confidence. It was a skittish one, what with all the people and activities going on, but it took my commands just fine, and we went down to the end of the street just like we were told.
I waited a moment, set my sights on that over-sized trough, and then kicked my horse into a full run. All the time I was thinking about what Anna Beth had taught me: Do it the way Charles would do it. And I did. I must’ve soared fifteen feet from the saddle to the water-filled trough, my arms and legs flailing. I turned my body at the last moment and hit the water on my back. I sent a tidal wave of a splash up and outward, soaking anything and anyone within ten feet.
“What the hell are you doing?” the skinny man shouted at me.
I stood, as drenched as a drowned calf. “What you told me to do,” I answered.
“Yes, but not when!  The director didn’t say action! We weren’t ready!”
Alan Grady’s yelling had nothing on this fellow’s. He may have been skinny but his lungs were mighty.
“Mendoza!” he shouted. Seemingly out of nowhere appeared a young Mexican boy.
“Yes, sir?” he said, like a soldier awaiting orders.
“Take Billy, dry him off and get him a new set of clothes.”
As I was hurried away I could hear—hell, everyone in Edendale probably heard—the skinny man shouting, “Get more water in this trough and clear away this mud!”
I was taken to an area behind the sets where there were racks and racks of clothes. The boy had me wait while he went through them. “How long have you been in movies?” he asked. His voice was high and feminine without any hint of “Mexican” to it.
“About a year, I suppose,” I replied, “in Prescott.”
“Prescott?”
“Arizona.”
His lack of response showed him unimpressed. He laid a shirt and pants on a rickety table beside me. “Try these.”
I quickly removed my clothes, at which the boy averted his eyes with a short, bashful gasp, and I realized he was she, a girl of not more than twelve or thirteen. It was then I could see in her brownish complexion and bright eyes of get-up-and-go and bullishness that she might be quite a pretty young lady if it weren’t for her boyish haircut and attire. I apologized and dressed as quickly as I had undressed.
“You did a great fall, Billy,” she told me.
“Thanks.”
“But you have to follow direction. If it weren’t for how good your fall was they would’ve fired you on the spot.”
“I suppose I got a little excited.”
She shoved me to hurry back to the set, which was good as everyone was impatiently awaiting my return. “What’s your name, again?” I asked her.
“Annie Mendoza.”
Her smile instilled me with the confidence that I could do that fall even better than before, which I did, and that I had made my first friend in California.

An Interview with the author
Tell us about your genre.  How did you come to choose it?  Why does it appeal to you?
I don’t intend to ever write any one particular genre. My first book was Speculative-dystopian. My current project is an 18th century romantic tragedy with a little steampunk thrown in. You could say genres choose me. I’m just looking to create stories that I would enjoy writing, and others would enjoy reading.  
What do you find most challenging about the writing process, and how do you deal with it?
The details. Writing is a bit like building a puzzle, and it can be mind-numbing to make sure all the pieces fit into a cohesive end. This is one reason I write so slow. I take my time to be sure I don’t miss any of those details.  
When and where do you do your writing?
I don’t make a living from my writing. (It doesn’t even pay for itself.) So, I work a real job, which takes up a good portion of my day. Another chunk of my day is then taken by my son. I get up at 4:30 every morning so that I can get in a least an hour of writing done before he gets up and I get him off to school. After work, it’s dinner and time with him and my wife. Once he’s to bed, I’ve a bit more quiet office-time before crashing myself.
What have you learned about promoting your books?
Social media is the least effective method of garnering sales. It can be a tool as part of a bigger plan, but for the most part it’s just white-noise. What I’m trying with this latest book is based on upon Tim Grahl’s marketing guide Your First 1,000 Copies. It primarily involves building a strong platform (my web/blog site www.gordongravley.com), and connecting with readers by offering enjoyable content (my monthly newsletter, which can be subscribed to when visiting my site.) There’s more to it than that, of course; check out Tim’s site - https://booklaunch.com/ - for more on the subject.
What are you most proud of as a writer?
What I’ve accomplished so far. “I wrote a novel? Who’d a thunk it?” I’m happy with what I’ve written, and I’m excited about the stories I have yet to tell.
If you could have dinner with any writer, living or dead, who would it be and what would you talk about?
John Irving. I think it would be cool to talk with him about anything and everything but writing! You know how it is when you hang out with co-workers: it’s much more interesting and engaging if you don’t discuss work.



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