#Guest @pmterrell and her new release The Pendulum Files

p.m.terrell is the pen name for Patricia McClelland Terrell, the award-winning, internationally acclaimed author of more than 20 books in five genres. A full-time author since 2002, Black Swamp Mysteries is her first series, inspired by the success of Exit 22 in 2008. The books include Exit 22, Vicki's Key, Secrets of a Dangerous Woman, Dylan's Song and The Pendulum Files. Vicki's Key placed as one of four finalists in the 2012 International Book Awards. Her historical book, River Passage, won the 2010 Best Drama Award, and her romantic suspense, The Tempest Murders, placed as one of four finalists in the 2013 USA Best Book Awards.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, she founded and operated two computer companies in the Washington, DC area. Her specialties were computer crime and computer intelligence and her clients included the CIA, Secret Service and Department of Defense. Computer technology often weaves its way through her contemporary suspense/thrillers.

She is also the co-founder of The Book 'Em Foundation and the founder of The Book 'Em North Carolina Writers Conference and Book Fair, an annual event to raise money for literacy campaigns. She also serves on the boards of the Friends of the Robeson County Public Library and the Robeson County Arts Council, and served as the first female president for the Chesterfield County/ Colonial Heights Crime Solvers.

Where to find her:

website

blog

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When I wrote Vicki’s Key, the second book in the Black Swamp Mysteries series, I needed to introduce a man that Vicki would fall for fast and hard. Being a research fanatic, I searched for studies that had been conducted on exactly what most women find attractive in a man—and what keeps them coming back for more.

The result was the introduction of Irishman Dylan Maguire. My research must have been on target because he was supposed to be in just one book. But when my editors and readers read the book they told me in no uncertain terms: Dylan will be a main character throughout the entire series. Period.

It all started with accents. It turned out that the accent that women love the most worldwide is Scottish followed by Irish and then Australian.

One characteristic women love is a great sense of humor. So when I was contemplating making the character Scottish or Irish, I gravitated toward the Irish because of their love of a good time, their reputation for being easy-going, their gift of gab and their love of humor.

Women still gravitate toward the tall, dark and handsome. So of course Dylan is taller than most with black hair and a body a woman can’t stop looking at (nor would she want to).

He has hazel eyes. We don’t hear much about hazel eyes anymore because green and hazel eyes are not as common as they once were. About the only place where those eye colors are common are in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

It turns out that women love a romantic man—someone who enjoys showering her with love, roses, attention and a good time. But they also want a man who can protect them. Dylan has been shown throughout the series to have a soft streak when it comes to the woman he loves; he is a true romantic. But he is also quite capable of defending her, even if it means murder.

I love writing the Black Swamp Mysteries series because the characters are so multi-faceted. With each book, we learn more about Dylan Maguire, particularly in Book Four, Dylan’s Song, in which he returns to his native Ireland to search for a missing CIA operative. From his accent to his muscle to his personality, he’s definitely a character I will be writing about for a long time to come.

And who would I want to play Dylan if the series was turned into film? My pick would be Kevin Ryan, an Irish actor who hails from Dublin.

p.m. will be awarding a beautiful Celtic cross necklace to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. Comment on every stop to enter!

Blurb:

CIA operative Dylan Maguire joins forces with psychic spy Vicki Boyd to find out who is bombing merchant vessels bound for the United States from China. Their mission will lead them to Black Sites, the high seas and into covert operations. And when an assassin escapes from prison determined to finish the job he started, they find their personal lives and their missions are about to collide in ways they never could have imagined.

  

Excerpt:

Brenda was leaning her head against the window as if asleep and now she began to move her fingers ever so slightly toward the door handle. She kept her eyes on his reflection; he was focused on driving, his eyes locked on the road just as it had been before. Only his right hand was holding the steering wheel now; it had slipped to a three o’clock position.

A slight movement caught her attention; it was so subtle, she almost thought she’d imagined it. Then she spotted the glint of metal across his body, though the road still held his attention. Her fingers locked onto the door handle as the metal rose slightly up and away from his body. He turned his head as his left hand snapped forward.

She jerked the door open as the shot rang out. She felt something sharp and hot against her shin as she kicked herself away from the car. She tumbled onto the pavement before hitting the shoulder, the gravel feeling like a million razors slicing through her flesh. She heard her own voice as if it was disembodied, screaming as she forced herself to roll across the sharp gravel before plummeting down the incline, compelling herself to continue rolling even as she realized she’d been shot in the leg.

She heard the car’s brakes slamming, the tires squealing as the man struggled to bring the car to a stop. At seventy miles an hour, it should have taken the car further from her even as she rushed to escape. But when she came to her feet and looked back at the road, she estimated he was about three hundred feet further down the road—not far enough.

She ran toward the tree line, which now appeared too far away. As a second shot rang out, she knew his sights were set on her back, and she struggled to run straight, fighting the impulse to run opposite of him. It kept her profile smaller but when he shot a third and then fourth time, she could almost feel the bullets whizzing past her.

The third and fourth shots sounded increasingly louder and she knew he was running after her. Her breath was loud and labored, her blood pounding in her temples. Even as she drew closer to the shadows of the trees, she could feel herself slowing down. The adrenaline that propelled her down the slope and to her feet was fighting against the pain in her leg.

She could feel the blood oozing down her shin and pooling in her shoe, causing her to slip and slide along grass already slick with dew. Another shot rang out, whizzing so close to her hair that she thought it had passed through it.

She threw herself into the shadows, pushing herself beyond her leg’s endurance to keep going, to get into the pine forest, weaving and bobbing forward and eastward, away from the car, away from the interstate. Hopefully, away from him.

She wanted to stop; she wanted to pull some article of clothing off herself and wrap it around her shin to keep the blood in, to keep the flesh together, but she didn’t dare hesitate. She heard the branches cracking behind her; he was there and he was closing on her. Even as she propelled herself forward, she knew all he had to do was follow the movement of the branches ahead of him to know exactly where she was.

Where to Buy: Kindle

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#BookBlast The Coach's Wife by Barbara Casey

Originally from Carrollton, Illinois, author/agent Barbara Casey attended the University of North Carolina, N.C. State University, and N.C. Wesleyan College where she received a BA degree, summa cum laude, with a double major in English and history.  In 1978 she left her position as Director of Public Relations and Vice President of Development at North Carolina Wesleyan College to write full time and develop her own manuscript evaluation and editorial service.  In 1995 she established the Barbara Casey Agency and since that time has represented authors from the United States, Great Britain, and Japan.

Ms. Casey is a former director of BookFest of the Palm Beaches, Florida, where she served as guest author and panelist.  She has served as judge for the Pathfinder Literary Awards in Palm Beach and Martin Counties, Florida, and was the Florida Regional Advisor for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators from 1991 through 2003.  She is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and writers’ conferences around the country including the SCBWI Regional Conference, the Harriett Austin Writers Conference in Athens, SIBA (Southeastern Independent Book Sellers Association), Florida Writers Association, and the University of Auburn, Montgomery.  She makes her home on the top of a mountain near Trion, Georgia, with her husband and Benton, a hound-mix who adopted her. Agency Website, Arche Books.

 

Ms. Casey will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. Here's a list of all the tour stops, so be sure to comment!

Blurb:

Another deafening roar exploded from the coliseum, and when it did Marla threw down her partially smoked cigarette and ground it into the polished tile floor with the toe of her shoe. Quickly she reached for another cigarette from the opened pack in her small red handbag. She lit it, sucked the smoke into her mouth, held her breath, coughed, and then slowly released it. Marla didn't smoke, but when she paced up and down the hallways of basketball coliseums, puffing on cigarettes seemed appropriate. It gave her something to do with her hands, and it helped keep her sane.

Marla Connors, recently married to head basketball coach Neal Connors, travels with her husband to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the Piedmont State University Coyote team is playing in the NCAA Finals. Marla has not been accepted by the Coyotes, that loyal bunch of fans who follows the university team, partly because she is almost twenty years younger than Coach Connors and a divorcée, but also because the fans are afraid she will distract her husband from his duties as head coach. They see her as someone who married Coach Connors just for his money. Only Gale, the older wife of assistant coach Stu Simmons, goes out of her way to be a friend to Marla.

The Coyote team is plagued with problems from the very beginning of the season, and when they finally manage to reach the NCAA Finals, it's even worse. Their center is caught using drugs, Athletics Director Charlie Morgan, who is also in Albuquerque for the games, makes a pass at Marla in her hotel room, and Coach Connors comes down with the flu. No one believes that State can win the big game.

With so much happening, Marla can't shake the feeling that something evil is taking over her life. She tries to convince herself that it is emotional anxiety left over from the abuse she experienced during her first marriage to Dr. Martin Andrews and that the stress from the tournament has brought it once again to the surface. She soon learns, however, that the evil is real and it threatens not only everything she loves, but her very life.

Illegal drugs, illicit affairs, murder, and scandal that shakes the entire university system are woven inextricably into Marla’s life until eventually she comes face to face with her real tormentor. It is only then that she realizes the full depth of her love for her husband--and his love for her.

 

Excerpt:

Charlie Morgan threw the egg and the dish that it was in against the dining room wall, shattering both and staining the blue-flowered wallpaper.  He had just cracked open what was supposed to be a two-minute-thirty-second boiled egg, which his wife had deliberately cooked for four minutes.  "You'll get salmonella poisoning eating raw eggs," she reminded him.  He didn't want raw eggs.  He did want them runny, however.  And a four-minute boiled egg was definitely not runny.  As always, it had put him in a bad temper when he bashed the end of the eggshell with the back of his spoon expecting it to ooze yellow yolk and instead finding it solidified.  However, his temper went completely out of control when he opened the paper and read the headlines.

The lead story on the front page described in great detail the killing that had taken place in the Connors' home the day before.  There were also the black and white photographs showing in rather graphic detail a cloth-draped body and several dark areas on the Connors' kitchen floor, presumably blood.

The story explained how Gale Simmons, wife of assistant coach Stuart Simmons, had been visiting the wife of Piedmont State head basketball coach Neal Connors, when an intruder entered the home and attacked Mrs. Simmons.  "The intruder was dead when the police arrived, apparently stabbed to death by Mrs. Simmons with a nine-inch bread knife.  Coach Connors was out of town on a recruiting trip when the incident occurred, but arrived home a short time later.  The person killed was identified as Dr. Martin Andrews, the former husband of Marla Connors," the story said.

"Dr. Martin Andrews was a prominent physician from Red Oak, North Carolina, a small rural town located fifty miles west of Raleigh.  He had practiced medicine in Red Oak up until two years ago.  He gave up his practice at that time, but continued living in the area."  Then there were the usual quotes from people who had known him.  Colleagues, former patients, neighbors.  All of them expressed shock and disbelief.

Morgan tried to keep his hands from shaking.  His body was hot and clammy and he felt short of breath.  He had difficulty focusing his eyes as he read the story for a second time.  He doubted very seriously if Gale Simmons killed Martin.  After all, wasn't she supposed to be sick with cancer?  No, it must have been Marla.  She had the fire, as he had found out in Albuquerque.  But even if she hadn't done it, he sure as hell could spread enough doubt around where it would make people believe she had.

Buy Links: Amazon

#BookBlast Careful by Randy Anderson @onmakingoff

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Randy will be awarding an eCopy of Careful and a $25 Starbucks GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

For two decades Tyler Gibbons has been keeping a secret from his family. At the tender age of sixteen, Tyler embarks on a student exchange program. Sent to the Andean city of Ambato, Ecuador, he finds daily adventure as he tries to fit in at school, connect with his host family, and navigate through a world of beaches, volcanoes, and jungles. But tucked deep inside this year are events so profound, so unexpected, they forever shape the man he will become.

Now, 25 years later, his mother pulls these soaring tales from her son, exposing, for the first time, the source of a deep unhappiness. While these memories contain the wounds of an unresolved past, they also possess the power to heal his painful present.

Thoughtfully crafted and boldly told, Tyler’s journey takes the reader on a wild South American adventure, while illuminating a mother’s unyielding power to heal her child.

Enjoy an excerpt:

Cuidado was the first word I learned on my own. I didn’t ask anyone for a translation. I learned it the same way a child learns words in their native tongue. Patricia said it so often to Enrique when we were playing in the water that I came to know its meaning without explanation. Of course, the danger in learning words on your own is that you may not always be correct.

“¡Oye mijo, cuidado!” Patricia would shout to Enrique from under the safety of her giant hat and umbrella. Enrique and I shared a love for playing in the waves. While the swells weren’t big enough for me to bodysurf, they were deliciously dangerous to Enrique. He’d run into the water, lifting his feet as high as he could until a wave tripped him and he’d fall face-first into the sea. He’d stand up laughing, hoping someone had seen him—I always had.

I’d applaud and he’d race back to dry land to do it all again. Sometimes he’d go out too far. He’d chase the receding waves and be surprised when the water level suddenly climbed over his head. Overcome by the ocean, he’d throw his arms up and quickly open and close his hands in rapid succession—fist to flat palm. I called them “grabby hands.” This was his sign to me that he needed help. I was under strict instructions. If the “grabby hands” didn’t appear, I was not to assist him.

“¡Cuidado!” I’d shout, when I saw the “grabby hands.” I’d scoop him up, carry him closer to shore, and toss him squirming and giggling back into the shallows.

About the Author:

Randy Anderson is a novelist and playwright. His first book was published in 2011. On Making Off recounted his adventures running The Beggars Group, a downtown theater company that produced over two dozen productions at the turn of the millennium. He is also the author of several plays including; Kill the President, The Dwelling, and Yippie! Randy currently lives in Brooklyn where he writes, reasons, and reacts. You can contact him at www.onmakingoff.com, or on twitter @onmakingoff.