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Eva, please email bookswelove@telus.net 

to claim your prize. 

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Astral Travel by Eleanor Stem

We are born remembering where we came from, what we can do. While in-utero we are partially with the growing fetus and also within the ether. We divide our time between the two and swear to the heavens we will not forget. 

By the time we reach the age of two or three our spirits are totally enclosed in the fleshly casing we call our bodies and we forget. We start to feel lonely, bereft. The light does not penetrate easily into our souls through dense skin, sinew and bone. 

We forget we can astral travel. 

Now, please bear with me; I promise this will be interesting. You just have to read a little before getting to it: 

I knew this lady who had to move to another town for work, leaving her husband behind. For about 6 months, they visited each other every other month. The only friends she made during this time were two coworkers, a man and a woman. 

She heard about a music festival that was popular in the area. Musicians competed with each other. They sold crafts and funnel cakes but to get there she had to travel narrow roads that wound through long stretches of farmland. As with her life of late, it was located in an isolated area. 

She did not want to go alone but it was supposed to be fun. She also wanted to get some Christmas gifts for her family. Her female coworker was out of town so she asked the guy to accompany her. She did not want to tell her husband. He would be upset. 

Toward the weekend, she became nervous. On Saturday, when she was supposed to meet the guy, she texted her husband to let him know her plans and to trust her. She stuck her mobile into her purse and almost ran out of the apartment. 

The road to the small town and music festival was pretty, but again isolated. She didn’t like her male coworker very much. The more she learned of him, the more his dark moods concerned her. One day he stood near the door of her office as he ground out some ill and she literally saw his aura, brownish, like a dark, disintegrating shield. She backed away. 

They got to the festival and separated, he to a conference call and she to the crafts. After a while, they met where the food was being served. He asked if she liked funnel cake. She responded she’d never eaten one. He said, “Well we can’t have that, can we?” 

As they sat across from each other at a picnic table, people with their children meandered through. Music could be heard in the background, cheers from the stadium where groups performed. 

She cut into her piece of funnel cake, a rich delight of whipped cream, pastry and apples. The guy confided something to her, but she watched over his shoulder, not hearing what he said. His mouth worked as if she were deaf. She found living apart from her husband lonely. Friendly coworkers didn’t help. 

Suddenly she heard a loud pop. Something altered in the ether. She turned in that direction where, close at hand, energy shifted. As she watched, fractured space folded back to normal. 

But she never made the connection to astral travel. A woman had just sent her food remnants into a rubbish barrel. She must have thrown something heavy in there. 

That night, she spoke with her husband. He said he’d been at the festival with her, saw her eat the funnel cake. She wore a white shirt. From what he saw, he knew she was not being disloyal. He felt good, reassured. The pop she had heard was when someone knocked on the door, hurtling him back to their house and onto the couch where he sat. 

Amazed, she explained what she had felt, what she had heard, that the ether had popped. She had worn a white shirt. 

Everyone acted normally. The guy across from her kept talking about his ills and needs. No one had looked up to see if something had made that loud pop. 

She alone had heard the shift in the ether, seen the air move while her husband had been with her.

 ~~~~~~

Many thanks to Terri for her story.

 Buy Here

Homage to the Firefly

 by Kathy Fischer-Brown

Well here it is, July 30^th…again. Here in Connecticut we’re smack dab in the midst of an extended heat wave (yesterday the heat index reached 103 F). I’ll be out with one of the dogs on our “walkies” around the block when a neighbor invariably asks with a big sweaty grin as he pauses from his mowing, “Hot enough for ya?” My answer, usually, is that I don’t mind the heat and find it preferable to freezing my butt off during our overly long, cold New England winters. No, I never complain about the heat. Not that I enjoy peeling myself from the chair I’m sitting in, or having my glasses fog up when I move from the outdoors to the air-conditioned inside (or vice versa), it’s just that summer happens to be my favorite season.

What, really, is there not to like about summer? The trees are in full leaf, flowers are in bloom, and our garden is producing zucchinis, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs faster than we can eat them. The backyard pool has been open since before Memorial Day and Tim, my husband, and Evie, our mutant springer spaniel, take advantage of a refreshing dip throughout the day. It’s a lazy time of year, a time for taking things a little slower, especially when outside playing ball with the mutant. It’s a time of glowing skies long after sunset, of sitting on the back deck with a good read on my Kindle, a baseball game on the radio…and, my favorite spectator sport: firefly watching.

I can’t remember when I first fell in love with those sparkly little critters, but I have memories

from when I was six-or-so running across the lawn in bare feet as I tried to catch them in my hands. And then there was an Independence Day night some 25 years ago when the sounds of fireworks from the park across town seemed in sync with the flickering of hundreds—if not thousands—of those incandescent insects in our yard. Twelve years ago, after a grueling eight months of surgeries, treatment and recovery from breast cancer, I found myself enjoying a warm late spring evening on the deck with no other thought in my mind except to breathe in the night air and give thanks to whatever powers that be for being alive. As if in answer, and totally unexpected, fireflies—like so many stars—lit up the trees and shrubs and flickered over the grass, a simple reminder that life is good and beautiful. I actually cried from happiness.

The sad thing is that “firefly season” is short-lived. By this time, end of July, the most spectacular displays are over. A few stragglers—those late for the party—appear well past dark, sometimes no more than two or three at a time to signal their desire for a mate. And then, within an hour or so, the yard is dark and still, with only the sounds of crickets filling the night.

Over the years I’ve done some reading up on the Lampyridae family of insects, the winged beetle order Coleoptera. No, they’re not flies, and up close they’re probably among the ugliest creatures I’ve seen. There are over 2,000 species of fireflies in the world, but only a few have the ability to emit the yellow, green or pale blue glow we have here in the eastern U.S. According to scientists, the reaction in their bodies that produces their light (bioluminescence) is among the most efficient in that it is nearly all glow and almost no heat. The light comes from luciferin, a chemical in their abdomens that, when combined with oxygen, produces their characteristic glow.

Among the fireflies in my yard, I count four different varieties. There are the synchronistic pulsers, males which signal the females of the species that they’re ready to mate. The females generally lie low in the grass with their answering flicker. Streakers seem to be in a great hurry, maybe to a party in someone else’s yard. And then there are the seducers, cannibal fireflies that mimic the flash of the female to lure an unsuspecting male to his death.

Unfortunately, due to a host of factors such as pesticide use and light pollution, firefly populations are in decline over most of the planet. But not in my yard. We have the perfect combination of damp creek bed in a forested tract just beyond a stand of willows, where the females like to lay their eggs. The larva and even their eggs are known to produce a glow, protection from other critters that would otherwise find them distasteful, even poisonous. In some species, the larvae burrow underground, sometimes for years, before emerging in late spring.

As writers, we’re told to write about what we know, which is good advice, but only to a certain point. In my fantasy novel, The Return of Tachlanad, I found a place for my beloved fireflies (which you can see on the lovely cover by Michelle Lee). At first glance they appear to be the same flickering, flying creatures that light up my summer nights, but these guys have a whole other personality and a bit of magic.

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, Lord Esterleigh's Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan's Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, her latest release, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her The Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from Amazon.

A Schuyler Sketch--French & Indian War to Revolution

When Albany was on the edge of the frontier...

http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion   ISBN: 1771456744

Catherine van Rensselaer and Philip Schuyler courted during the bloody early days of the French & Indian war. Not for the last time would the peaceful settlements of New York's frontier burn! It was, however, the last time American frontiersmen, colonial gentry, and Mohawks fought together beside the British to defeat a common foe down from Canada--French troops and their Indian allies.  

Captain Philip Schuyler played an active role in the militia and at what would come to be known as The Battle of Lake George. Here, after the near-disaster of an early morning ambush upon Americans, British, and their Mohawk allies, the tide--in northern New York --turned. In the course of a day’s hard fighting, their combined forces eventually gained a victory.

Abenaki and Caughnawaga warriors, allied to the French, had come to fight against their Mohawk cousins and against the British. Baron Dieskau, the French commander, remarked after being informed of how many men had come to oppose him, that “there were only so many more to kill.” Later, he would have to say of his foes:

“They fought in the morning like good boys, at noon like men, and in the afternoon like devils.”

Young Captain Philip Schuyler, who spoke French, would be the man entrusted to provide safe escort for the wounded French commanders to Albany, away from the vengeance of the Mohawks, whose great war chief, Hendrick Theyanoguin, had been killed during the initial part of the engagement. As William Johnson explained to the injured Dieskau: “They want to kill and eat you, and put you in their pipes and smoke you.”

Benjamin West's painting of William Johnson saving the wounded Baron from the tomahawk

Nine days later, in the midst of Albanian rejoicing for their victory and grieving for their dead, Philip was married, on September 17, 1755, to “Sweet Kitty V. R.,” also called, for her beauty, “the Morning Star.” Their first child, Angelica, was born on February 22, 1756—a mere six months later.  Their second child, Elizabeth, who would marry Alexander Hamilton, was born on August 9^th 1757 ^{– or the 7th, sources differ,}  also in the small Albany house shared with the Schuyler grandparents. 

 A “Dutch gabled house made of brick from Holland,” it stood a half mile from the Albany stockade, now the intersection of State and Pearl Streets. In those days the place was a common grazing ground, referred to as “the pastures.”   A third daughter, Peggy, arrived in September 24, 1758, and the family of five now lived in a few small rooms.  Three babies in three years must have kept Catherine busy.

Our French & Indian War--The Seven Year's War to the Europeans--involved every nation  on the continent, except the Ottoman Turks. In North America, that conflict had begun to wind down. Philip Schuyler, wanting to settle his accounts with the British army--he'd been a quartermaster, among his other duties--sailed to England to present his case. It was at this time that the building of the Schuyler's grand new home would begin, overseen by the energetic Catherine, for a brief time on a childbearing vacation.

At last it was deemed sufficiently safe to build outside of Albany's city limits, so work on what is today called the  "Schuyler Mansion" got underway, as well as the construction of a large farmhouse on family property north and east of Saratoga. As the sea lanes cleared of warships, furniture and window treatments, bed curtains and rugs of both linoleum and fine wool made their way from Europe, traveling up the Hudson.

Catherine & Philip's bedroom

Without a doubt, the three little girls' had memories of building sites and workmen--as well as their mother doing paperwork and consulting with overseers as she tended to Philip's northern plantation. Skill at balancing the books would come in handy for Elizabeth during her own adult life when her husband Hamilton was too busy with nation-building and politicking to pay close attention to his own affairs.

While in England, Philip Schuyler became fascinated by the many busy canals he observed. When he returned home, he often entertained the local farmers by demonstrating how "water could be made to run uphill." He was an early proponent of the first great engineering--and wealth-creation--project of the next century--the Erie Canal.  It was at this time too that he paid passage for skilled laborers to come settle on his lands.  One of the first flax mills in the America would be built under Schuyler's fore-sighted direction.

His wife returned to woman's business, first producing a set of short-lived (no doubt premature) twins. Ten other deliveries, including a set of triplets, would follow. The three older girls, now moved into their new home, would grow up with some small sibling continually toddling after them.

Catherine's last child, (also "Catherine,") would be born in 1781,  shortly after her eldest, party-girl Angelica--with, of course, the help of her husband, John Barker Church--had already twice made her a grandmother. George and Martha Washington came on a winter visit at the tail end of the Revolution to stand as Catherine's godparents. Daughter #2, Elizabeth, herself not far behind in the generational baby race, gave birth to her and Hamilton's first child, their beloved, ill-fated son Philip, at the Albany house early in January of 1782.

Schuyler Mansion today

I'm skipping back and forth, I know, but I'd like to end with this story. When, in 1777, during the American Revolution, General Burgoyne attacked Albany, coming down the ancient warpath, Catherine, with a few servants, made a dangerous journey in the face of an invading army to burn the wheat at their Saratoga Farm to keep it from the hungry invaders. This tale is said to be only "a tradition," but, knowing the capable, no-nonsense Mrs. Schuyler, I think I'll chose to believe it.

An 1852 re-imagining of Catherine's brave deed by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze

~~Juliet Waldron

See all my Revolutionary War novels at Amazon

A Master Passion

Angel's Flight

Genesee

http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi   

What Makes a Novel Memorable?

What makes a novel memorable?

The best stories connect with readers on a visceral level. They transport us to another time and place and put us in a different “skin,” where we face challenges we may never know in life. And yet, the commonality of the story problem draws us onward and, in solving it vicariously through the protagonist, changes us.

Another feature of a memorable story is characters that live off the page. One of the highest compliments I’ve never received for my novel “Lynx”, Rodeo Romance came when one reader told me she thought about my story constantly. She said that Lynx and Rachel’s story seemed so real, so heart wrenching, and their love so very enduring.  She said that she was going through a difficult time in her life and my story gave her hope.  Hope.  Hope for someone during a desperate time—I felt blessed that she shared her story.  I was also humbled.  It is moment such as this that I know just how powerful worlds and stories are to our readers.

While I never sit down at the keyboard and say, “I think I will write a powerful, life-changing story today.”  What I do, by nature, is select a social issue for the core of my stories.  Since my stories are character driven and often told in the first person, the emotion has a natural flow.

How do you create this type of engagement with your story?

Go beyond the five senses.  Your reader must feel your character’s emotions.  Your reader must forget there is a world outside of your story.

Embrace idiosyncrasies.  As teenagers everyone wanted to fit in, be one of the crowd.  Your character isn’t like anyone else.  Give him an unexpected, but believable trait.  In “Here Today, Zombie Tomorrow”, 99-cents for the next two weeks on Amazon.com, my heroine, a Zombie has a pet. Not a zombie pet. Not a dog, or a cat.  She has a teddy bear hamster named Gertie.

FREE 6/22 - 6/29

Make them laugh. It doesn’t need to be slap-stick.  Just a little comic relief when the reader least expects it to happen.  In "Brede" Rodeo Romance, Book 2.  The ranch hands, especially orney old Caldwell, have resulted in many a fan letter/email to me!  

Make them cry.  Remember the scene in the movie classic, Romancing the Stone, where Joan Wilder is crying when she writes the final scene in her novel?  I find this is the key.  If you are crying, your reader will be crying too.

If you are writing a romance, make them fall in love.  Make the magic last.  The first meeting, first kiss, the moment of falling in love.  These are the memories our readers savor, wait for in our stories.  Don’t disappoint them.

As Emily Dickinson, said so well: 
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Happy Reading!

Connie Vines

BUILDING A MEDIEVAL CASTLE - by Vijaya Schartz

DAMSEL OF THE HAWK
standalone in the Curse of the Lost Isle medieval fantasy series
99cts for a few more days in kindle
https://amzn.com/B01CH93SNM 

As I am writing the last book in the Curse of the Lost Isle medieval series, ANGEL OF LUSIGNAN (Book 8) set in Aquitaine, I am thoroughly enjoying the research, as much as the story and the characters.

* * * * *

  In the Twelfth Century, castles sprouted all over Europe. In England the first castles were mainly built in a hurry, out of wood, by the Norman invader to secure conquered territory. They were motte and bailey castles, with a keep, earth works, wooden fences and sharp stakes. Later, the keep and walls were rebuilt in stone.

Meanwhile, on the continent, like in Aquitaine, castles were already made of stone. The Romans had built stone roads and forts centuries earlier, leaving solid foundations in prime locations. Just out of the dark ages after the barbarian invasions, the central power fractured into smaller estates, the local lords rebuilt and expanded these stone forts for protection. Not only they fortified their castles, but also their entire cities.

Medieval building technique. Notice the crane.

The new cities and castles were generally built on a promontory, a plateau or a hill, surrounded by water, at an estuary, a confluent, or on a cliff overlooking a river. A body of water protected the castle from attacks by land, but rivers could also be highways for enemies invading by boats. Occasional Viking and Norman raids were still common.

Fortified city and castle of Carcassonne - Southern Aquitaine

The lack of a strong central power also encouraged greedy land owners and bands of rogue knights to appropriate territory by force. Stone walls offered the best protection.

 
Building a castle was expensive and required a great amount of gold to pay the many skilled workers needed for the monumental task. A lord would hire a taskmaster, overseers, a master mason, architects, an army of masons and stone cutters, carpenters, blacksmiths, lead beaters, barrel makers, potters, candle makers, and other craftsmen. He also needed diggers and general workmen, as well as water carriers.

Castle of Lusignan - Aquitaine - Original design

First, the trees around the site would be felled and peeled, then sliced lengthwise to provide lumber for the scaffolding, and the giant beams to support the wooden ceiling of the upper floors. Meanwhile, the stone had to be extracted from the surrounding rock, then cut and chiseled to size. Often the stone was extracted from the excavation for the moat. Secret passages and underground storage rooms and cellars would often be dug from the rock before erecting the walls, with arched ceilings and thick columns to support the edifice above.

Arrow slit in a castle wall

And do not think castles were uncomfortable. Although the external defense walls only had arrow slits, the buildings inside the enclosure had windows to bring in the light. They also had amenities, like giant fireplaces to provide heat during the winter, large kitchens with bread ovens, to cook for hundreds of soldiers, and skilled chefs to prepare meals and special feasts for the nobles. There was wine and cheese aplenty in the cellars.

medieval toilet - or garderobe

 The castle even had toilets called garderobe, simple sitting holes at the outer side of the wall, allowing automatic disposal of human waste straight down into the moat or the river below, which conveniently eliminated odors.

Castle of Tiffauge - Aquitaine - France

Also important to the castle was a permanent source of fresh water, so if there was no natural spring on the premises, digging a well would constitute a first priority. In case of a siege, the castle must be self-sufficient.

Mock up - castle of Lusignan - Aquitaine - France

 A great castle would include several courtyards, including one for weapon practice. Also inside the walls would be stables for the horses, a barn for the hay, barracks for the guards and soldiers, sheds and work places for the artisans, blacksmiths, etc. The kitchens would have their own buildings and storage rooms.

Castle of Lusignan - Aquitaine - France

 Very few of these early stone castles have survived a thousand years of warfare, and those that did survive were updated and modified over the centuries, but we have lithographs and drawings, as well as mock ups to show us what the original construction looked like.

 

Click here to get it in kindle

Start reading the series with the boxed set of the first four novels. Seven are already published, and the last one will be out for the holidays.

From history shrouded in myths, emerges a family of immortal Celtic Ladies, who roam the medieval world in search of salvation from a curse. For centuries, imbued with hereditary gifts, they hide their deadly secret, stirring passions in their wake as they fight the Viking hordes, build mighty castles, send the first knights to the Holy Land, give birth to kings and emperors... but if the Church ever suspects what they really are, they will be hunted, tortured, and burned at the stake. 5 stars on Amazon "Edgy Medieval. Yay!"

Vijaya Schartz
Swords, blasters, romance with a kick
http://www.vijayaschartz.com
Amazon - Barnes & Noble