Blue 52: First Meeting

Blue 52 is a mainstream romance published by Whiskey Creek Press.  Here's a blurb about the book.

"First Lady Kills President Lovinggood"

December 29, 2018

Thirty years later Hank Lovinggood embarks on a quest to prove his mother's innocence and punish the killers who took his family from him.  Together Hank and lovely physicist Kathryn Sinclair confront an implacable, twisted, merciless enemy who'll do whatever it takes to hide the truth forever. 

In this excerpt, my hero and heroine first meet.

 “Mr. Lovinggood, Dr. Sinclair is here to see you.”

Hank rose to his feet. He didn’t know what he had expected, a person his grandfather’s age maybe, but the woman who appeared in the door behind his secretary looked almost as beautiful as his mother. In fact, as impossible as it seemed, she might be even more beautiful. She was about five six and had dark hair and eyes even bluer than his own. He guessed she might be about his age. Her figure would make a blind man stare, but the expression on her face attracted him as much as her physical appearance. Intelligence, curiosity, and life shone from her eyes. She glowed with an eagerness he didn’t understand.

As she approached his desk, she held out her hand. “Mr. Lovinggood, how are you? I’m Dr. Kathryn Sinclair. Thank you for seeing me.”

She had a firm handshake and looked him right in the eye. “Not at all, Dr. Sinclair. Please, have a seat. May I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, that would be lovely.”

Hank filled a disposable cup with coffee. The cups biodegraded in three months’ time, so nobody hesitated to use them. The trashcans overflowed with cups by the end of the day. “Cream or sugar?”

“Black, thanks.”

He handed the coffee to Dr. Sinclair and got a good look at her legs in the process. Nice. She wore a well-cut, red suit that looked expensive. He liked her short little skirt, but the neckline of the jacket didn’t plunge quite enough.

Hank flushed. He was no hormone-riddled teenager. The woman hadn’t come here for him to ogle her. “My secretary told me that you wanted to talk to me about a crime,” he said as he seated himself behind his desk, unconsciously smoothing his tie and sitting up straight.

“That’s right, I do.” She didn’t wait for him to prompt her to tell her story. “The crime was committed a long time ago, but there’s no statute of limitations on murder, right?”

Hank nodded. “You want to talk to me about a murder?”

“Oh, yes. A man and his wife were brutally murdered, and the murderers framed the wife to take the blame.” Dr. Sinclair paused to take a sip of her coffee. “Their names were Lovinggood.”

Blue 52 is available at http://www.amazon.com/Blue-52-Elaine-Cantrell-ebook/dp/B00H1MHC24/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393776181&sr=8-1&keywords=blue+52+by+elaine+cantrell and at most retail outlets.

Don't forget to enter my contest. I'm giving away an electronic copy of Return Engagement. Blue 52 is the sequel to Return Engagement, but it can stand alone with no problem. To enter, become a follower of my blog and leave a comment on one of my posts here at the party pavilion. I'll choose a name this evening and post the winner. You can find my bog at http://www.elainepcantrell.blogspot.com

Excerpt to the 5-star Romantic Suspense, Black Creek Burning

Click here to visit the R.T. Wolfe website

As she meandered up the path to their house, she felt queasy, like she’d done this before. Nervously, she glanced over her shoulder through her mass of wavy brown hair as she kept moving toward the front door. Two people were walking along the street. She stopped and wondered what reason anyone would have to take a walk at this time of night in such an early bird neighborhood.

It was then she heard the shrill of the smoke detectors. Chest tightening, she bolted for the door.

“Mom! Dad!” she screamed and tumbled inside, spotting them almost immediately as they ran down the long upstairs hallway.

Not again. Please not again, she begged, as she fought her frozen legs to make them move up the stairs. The smoke detectors shrieked in her ears. Or was that the shrieking coming from her lungs?

Her parents yelled her name as they reached for the bedroom door. She couldn’t stop gasping for air long enough to tell them to stop. She wasn’t in there. Didn’t they know? They needed to get out of the house. Couldn’t they smell the smoke?

Just like each time, her viewpoint from the middle of the stairs showed her the yellowish air sucking under the door to her bedroom. Although trying to use the railing to give her momentum, every part of her felt like it was in molasses. She cocked her head to the side, drawing her eyebrows together. Her gaze locked on the eerie breeze.

Almost simultaneously, her mother rotated the knob as her eyes turned and met hers. For that fraction of a second, her mother understood the fear on Brie’s face, but it was too late. It was always too late. As she opened the door, Brie had just enough time to witness her parents engulfed in flames before the explosion blew her back and everything went dark.

* * * *

“Brie, wake up. Wake up, Brie. You’re dreaming.”

Click here to view the R.T. Wolfe Facebook Author Page

2010 EPIC Award Winning Author Review of the Romantic Suspense, Black Creek Burning

Larsen review of RT Wolfe’s Black Creek Burning

I thoroughly enjoyed RT Wolfe’s masterful debut novel, Black Creek Burning.  Written with confident expertise on a variety of topics such as landscaping and home remodeling, I got wrapped up in the engaging storytelling of this wonderful tale of love, danger and suspense.  Along the way I completely fell in love with hero Nathan as he patiently transformed the heroine Brie from an icy self-proclaimed independent into a woman willing to accept the love of a strong man and a family in need of a mother.  The details were delicious, the settings were masterfully painted, the mystery was a stumper and the romance was beautifully satisfying. 

A top-rate romantic suspense from a talented promising new author.  I hear rumors that this is the first book of a series, and I gleefully await the sequel!

Laurie Larsen,
Author of Preacher Man, 2010 EPIC Award Winner

Click here to get to the Black Creek Burning buy links

Black Creek Burning. 5-star Romantic Suspense

Click here to visit the R.T. Wolfe Facebook Author Page

Brianna Chapman has learned to handle just about anything. Witnessing the murder of her parents had that effect. Knowing the unsolved arson had been meant for her is the one thing she can’t handle. Instead of dwelling, she stuffs her guilt soundly into her subconscious through diving into the teaching job she loves by day and the dirt of the landscaping business she owns by night. Her habit of remaining aloof to personal relationships is, well, working.

Will her guilt be as easy to keep buried if the killer comes back to finish the job?

In the midst of juggling a scorched yard, dead animals on her doorstep and her vandalized car, the one thing she didn’t count on was the staggering Nathan Reed. A nationally renowned woodworking artist, Nathan and his two priceless nephews move into the run-down historical house behind her and over Black Creek. They have a canny way of maneuvering around her aloof demeanor and into her heart. Will they still want to be part of her life when they discover she is haunted by past memories and hunted by present dangers?

Click here to visit the R.T. Wolfe website and Black Creek Burning buy links

What Type of Hero Are You Attracted To?

Click here to visit the R.T. Wolfe Facebook Author Page

Do you go for the distant bad guy? The romantic funny man?

The movie Avengers seemed to hit them all. The heroes in the story were all completely different. Thor was the loyal muscle head. The Hulk was the tortured, broody soul. Of course, Captain America played the part of the clean cut guy-next-door. Hawkeye played the quiet hero who didn’t need to be the center of attention, and of course, there was bad guy Ironman.

Nathan Reed is the hero of Black Creek Burning.  He falls into the Hawkeye category. On the outside, he seems like a smooth, casual uncle working to rebuild the run down historic farmhouse he moved into with the two young nephews he’s raising as his own. He has just enough dark, lanky good looks to make his aloof new neighbor look twice.

Brie Chapman was the only witness to the murder of her parents. She spent six long years recovering from the fact that the arson that killed them was actually meant for her. She’s too busy working her teaching job by day and her landscaping business by night to bother with Nathan…or the dead animals that keep popping up on her deck and porch.

Nathan may seem like the careless meandering type, but he has a canny way of maneuvering around Brie’s thick exterior and into her heart. He’s smart, talented and determined to both find who’s been shooting out the windows in Brie’s classroom as well as win the girl.  He has the patience and perseverance to do just that.

Which type of hero do you go for?

-R.T. Wolfe, author of Black Creek Burning (Crimson Romance, September 2012

Click here to get to the Black Creek Burning buy links

Book Trailer. Black Creek Burning. Romantic Suspense

Click HERE to view the book trailer

Black Creek Burning is book one in
the Black Creek romantic suspense
Triology.

It has received ten 5-star reviews on
Amazon since it's release on
September 24th.

Book two releases in February and
book three in July.

Click HERE to visit the R.T. Wolfe website

Goddess Fish Party: Amalie's Story - Delighting In Your Company by Blair McDowell

As writers we have to know far more about our characters than ever appears in the book. There has to be a “backstory” in our minds as we write about them if they are to breathe life. No character springs to life full blown on page one. What happened before the story began? What experiences in his/her past have caused this character to act in this particular way in this particular situation?

Amalie in Delighting In Your Company is a character who intrigued me. I started out thinking she would be a proper young eighteenth century lady, very different from her twenty-first century descendant, also named Amalie, who travels back in time to meet her.

But try as I might, my eighteenth century Amalie would simply not behave herself. I suppose it had something to do with growing up in a motherless home. Her Mother was off In London where her brother was in school. Her father loved her, but he was too busy running a large plantation on the Caribbean Island of St. Clements to notice how his daughter was growing up.

It must be admitted here that Amalie used no small amount of guile to keep her father in ignorance. She appeared at dinner every evening properly dressed and coiffed. Smiling her dimpled smile at him, she always had a ready and thoroughly proper answer to his “How was your day?”

 “I started a new book.” Or “I finished another row in my embroidery.” These were not lies; they were simply a very small part of the truth.

And so Amalie grew up unfettered by the conventions and restrictions of her age. She wandered about the plantation freely. She particularly liked the stables. Not for her were the delicate side-saddled trotting horses. Donning her absent brother’s clothing she rode astride and raced like the wind along the beach on her large mare, Molly.

She regularly swam in the sea, in the nude, leaving the loose pants and shirt she habitually wore for her explorations hanging on a bush.

She knew more about mating and the reproductive process than any young girl of her age in the eighteen hundreds ever did.  She had grown up observing the mating of the many animals on the plantation, and even of her mare, Molly. And knew the consequence of mating, having assisted at the birth of Molly’s foal.

As it happened, she was wearing a dress, albeit without petticoats, the day she first saw Jonathan.  Her skirts were hiked up above her knees as she raced Molly along the sandy beach in the edge of the sea.

She hadn’t expected to see anyone there. There was never anyone there. But this morning there was.

She pulled her mare to an abrupt halt and looked down at the man who was striding along the beach toward her.

He stopped and stared up at her. Their eyes locked.

His eyes passed over her, taking in her unruly wind-blown curls and rosy cheeks, her gently rounded breasts, her bottom firmly planted in the saddle, her exposed legs and bare feet.

And then he laughed, a deep booming laugh. “Good morning, Mistress Ansett.”
Amalie blushed, furious at being caught-out.

“Never fear. Your secret is safe with me.” He laughed again and taking off his planter’s hat, he bowed low to her.

Amalie turned Molly abruptly and raced back in the direction from which she’d come. At the plantation house she turned Molly over to the grooms and rushed inside and up to her room.

Jemma, the slave who had looked after Amalie since she was an infant, was there cleaning her room and making her bed. Amalie threw her arms around the elderly black woman and danced her in a circle.

“What’s come over you, chile? And where you been here before breakfast? You looks disgraceful. Your hair not even combed. Best not let your Pappy see you like dis.”
“Oh, Jemma! I’ve met him! I’ve met the man I’m going to marry!”

When this scene, not in the book, happens, Amalie is just fourteen. Jonathan decides she is the one he wants for his wife, based on this one encounter:

He smiled, remembering. “You were still a child.”
“I was fourteen. Some women are married at fourteen.”
“You were delicious. I’ll never forget my first sight of you. You were racing your mare along the beach. Your skirts were flying and your legs were exposed to above your knees. And your hair was all loose and uncombed and windblown. And my heart stopped. I believe I have loved you from that moment. I told myself it was absurd. There was a six year difference in our ages. You were still a child. But it did no good. I wanted you.”
“You never said anything. We met at dinners and at parties, and on the beach, and you never said anything.”
“I was waiting for you to grow up. It was my firm plan to ask your father for your hand on the day you were eighteen.”
“I moved that along, didn’t I? Two years later, the day after my sixteenth birthday.” Amalie gave a low seductive laugh. “I waited quite deliberately for you that day down on the beach.”
“How could I forget? You were standing there, so close I could smell the scent of your hair, feel the warmth of your skin. It was driving me to distraction. Not touching you was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. Then you said, ‘race you’ and started pulling off your clothes. I just stood there, in shock, immobile.”
“Not for long. I seem to recall you divested yourself of clothing pretty rapidly.”
“We enjoyed our first kiss, out there in the sea. And I fully meant it to stop there.”
Amalie laughed. “I didn’t. I came to the beach that day determined to seduce you, to break though that steely reserve once and for all. I wanted you, Jonathan. I wanted you when I first saw you. I still want you.”

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An Innocent Murdered

I do hope you read AN INNOCENT MURDERED by Tom Mach. It's a different kind of murder mystery involving the murder of a priest, a suspect which makes it look like a slam-dunk case (DNA, fingerprints, witness, etc.) but it's not because there are two other women who very well might have done it. What makes AN INNOCENT MURDERED different, however, is that I get into the heart and soul of the priest before he is murdered so you would feel badly for him when the killing happened. Also, I make the detective, Matt Gunnison, a flesh-and-blood real character with feelings, problems, etc. A real human being. Oh, and did I mention there's a romance that will tear your heart out? Most importantly, you will be shocked at the end of the book as to who really killed the priest. I have a video on this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndsPTht08EA & a summary of the book appears on http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/74459 ENJOY !!