LASR Anniversary Scavenger Hunt: Murder with Strings Attached by Mark Reutlinger

Thanks for joining us on our 14th anniversary scavenger hunt! There are two ways to enter to win and it’s easy to play– first read the blurb below, then answer the question on the first Rafflecopter. You might win a $100 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC (along with other prizes). Follow and visit authors’ social media pages on the second Rafflecopter and you’re entered to win another $100 Amazon/BN GC (along with other prizes)!

Sometimes even the most carefully conceived burglary can take an unexpected turn. Florence Palmer has her eye on concert violinist Aaron Levy’s priceless violin. Unfortunately, she finds it’s already been stolen. Her surprise doubles when the virtuoso she’d planned to burgle offers to hire her to help him steal it back. But they’re not the only ones looking for the missing violin. When Flo inadvertently becomes the prime suspect in a case of murder, she and Aaron need to clear her name. Will they find the real killer and get the violin back to its rightful owner without anyone else, especially themselves, being killed?

 

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LASR Anniversary Scavenger Hunt: The Rebound Effect by Linda Griffin

Thanks for joining us on our 14th anniversary scavenger hunt! There are two ways to enter to win and it’s easy to play– first read the blurb below, then answer the question on the first Rafflecopter. You might win a $100 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC (along with other prizes). Follow and visit authors’ social media pages on the second Rafflecopter and you’re entered to win another $100 Amazon/BN GC (along with other prizes)!

In the small town of Cougar, struggling single mother and veterinary assistant Teresa Lansing is still bruised from a failed relationship when Frank McAllister sweeps her off her feet.

Frank is a big-city SWAT officer who moved to Cougar only four months ago. He’s handsome, charming, forceful, very sexy, and a bit mysterious. He had his eye on Teresa even before they met and is pushing for a serious relationship right away.

Teresa finds his intense courtship flattering, and the sex is fabulous, but she doesn’t want her deaf six-year-old son to be hurt again. Her former fiancé cheated on her when he got drunk after being unjustly fired, but he loves her and her son, and the whirlwind romance is complicated by his efforts to win Teresa back.

And then there’s the matter of the bodies buried at Big Devil Creek…

 

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LASR Anniversary Scavenger Hunt: Guilty Knowledge by Linda Griffin

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Detective Jesse Aaron has no leads in the murder of Rosa Logan when pretty blonde Sariah Brennan claims to have seen the killer-in a vision. Unfortunately the man she identifies is dead-or is he? Sariah is an unsophisticated small town girl, but her background and her motives are mysterious, and she seems to be hiding something. Jesse is increasingly convinced she has guilty knowledge of the crime, even as he finds himself more and more attracted to her. How can he unravel the web of secrets, without putting Sariah at risk, before the killer strikes again?

 

 

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LASR Anniversary Scavenger Hunt: Flotsam & Jetsam – the Amelia Island Affair by M. S. Spencer

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Who’s littering the park with corpses?

State Park Rangers Simon Ribault and Ellie Ironstone are used to dealing with messy campers and ravaging raccoons, but when three bodies wash up on the beach, they mobilize all their powers of deduction. Who are they and how did they get to the shore of Amelia Island? Are they connected to the secretive League of the Green Cross? Or linked to a mysterious Jamaican drug ring?

Ellie, new to Amelia Island, must penetrate a close-knit community if she wants to find answers to the mystery, all while deciding between two rivals for her affection: Thad, the handsome local idol, and Simon, the clever, quirky bookworm.

Simon, for his part, will have to call on both his well-honed research skills to solve the case and his not-so well-honed skills as a Don Juan to lure Ellie away from Thad.

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LASR Anniversary Scavenger Hunt: Blood on the Chesapeake by Randy Overbeck

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Wilshire, Maryland seems like the perfect shore town on the Chesapeake Bay—quiet, scenic, charming—and promises Darrell Henshaw a new start in life and a second chance at love. That is, until he learns the town hides an ugly secret.

A thirty-year-old murder in the high school. And a frightening ghost stalking his new office. Burned by an earlier encounter with the spirit world—with the OCD scars to prove it—he does NOT want to get involved.

But when the desperate ghost hounds him, Darrell concedes. Assisted by his new love, he follows a trail that leads to the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and even the Klu Klux Klan. Then, when two locals who try to help are murdered, Darrell is forced to decide if he’s willing to risk his life—and the life of the woman he loves—to expose the killers of a young man he never knew.

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LASR Anniversary Scavenger Hunt: Related By Murder by Jo A. Hiestand

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From the moment ex-police detective Michael McLaren arrives at his friend’s house, he’s plunged into a nightmare of a case. Two men, hanged a year apart, each killed on a Good Friday. A barrister. A solicitor. Related careers. Related by murder. Related motives?
Pottery shards, a torn newspaper article, and biscuits are found in each man’s pocket. What do they signify? And the blackmail letters Melanie receives… Are they related to the murders, or are they separate, terrifying in their own way?
Professions, calendar date, McLaren’s attack. Could it all be entwined? Or is the motive for murder something else, something so secret that keeping it is worth attempting a third one?

 

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Two Spies in Caracas by Moises Naim, translated by Daniel Hahn – Spotlight

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Moises Naim who is celebrating the recent release of his debut fiction novel Two Spies in Caracas, set in Venezuela in 1992.

Venezuela, 1992. Unknown colonel Hugo Chávez stages an ill-fated coup against a government, igniting the passions of Venezuela’s poor and catapulting the oil-rich country to international attention. For two rival spies
hurriedly dispatched to Caracas—one from Washington, DC, and the other from Fidel Castro’s Cuba—this is a
career-defining mission.

Smooth-talking Iván Rincón of Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate needs a rebel ally to secure the future of his
own country. His job: support Chávez and the revolution by rallying the militants and neutralizing any opposing
agents.

Meanwhile, the CIA’s Cristina Garza will do everything in her power to cut Chávez’s influence short. Her
priority: control the greatest oil reserves on the planet by ferreting out and eliminating Cuba’s principal
operative.

As Chávez surges to power, Iván and Cristina are caught in the fallout of a toxic political time bomb: an
intrepid female reporter and unwitting informant, a drug lord and key architect in Chávez’s rise, and personal
entanglements between the spies themselves. With everything at stake, the adversaries find themselves at
the center of a game of espionage, seduction, murder, and shifting alliances playing out against the
precarious backdrop of a nation in free fall.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR:
In the early 1990s, Naím served as Venezuela’s Minister of Trade and Industry, as director of Venezuela’s Central Bank, and as executive director of the World Bank. He was previously professor of business and economics and dean of IESA, Venezuela’s leading business school. Dr. Naím holds MSc and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lives in Washington, DC.

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25/03/2015: Writer Daniel Hahn photographed at the Story Museum in Oxford.
Picture: COPYRIGHT John Lawrence 07850 429934

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator with nearly seventy books to his name. He chaired the Translators Association for two years and served four years as a
director of the British Centre for Literary Translation and four years as editor of the journal In Other Words. Recent translations include Juan Pablo Villalobos’s I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me, Julián Fuks’s Resistance, and Carola Saavedra’s Blue Flowers.

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Jane Eyre for the Modern Age by Lindsay Marcott – Guest Blog and Giveaway

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Lindsay Marcott who is celebrating the recent release of Mrs. Rochester’s Ghost. Enter the Rafflecopter for a chance to ain $20 Amazon Gift Card & a copy of the book.

Jane Eyre for the Modern Age

What is it about Jane Eyre that has made it a blockbuster for over a hundred and seventy years? The breathtaking writing, yes. The gripping plot: part Gothic romance, part coming-of-age story. The swooning romance between a rich man and a poor orphan, and the shock of the mad wife secreted in an attic.

But I think most of all it’s the voice of Jane herself: a young woman with an extraordinary sense of her own worth and independence. A voice that was revolutionary in 1847 when Charlotte Brontë published it. At the time, women had little say outside family and home. Their career opportunities outside of marriage were limited to underpaid servants and schoolteachers. Female characters in early Victorian novels were usually portrayed as either sugary too-good-to-be-true angels or fallen women seeking repentance.

Jane is neither. She’s constricted by the society she lives in–she needs to keep a stifling job as a governess or else starve to death—but she makes it clear she’d rather starve than sacrifice her will or stifle her intelligence. As a child, she has a temper and a will, even though she’s punished harshly for it. Later, when her employer, Mr. Rochester, grills her, she responds with strong opinions and engages in spirited debates. And when he tempts her to go live in sin with him in Europe, she escapes through the only means available to her—by running off to the surrounding moors, though it probably means she will die in those wilds. And she will not return to him until she learns he has fundamentally changed, and she can now love him passionately and physically without compromising her true self.

I believe it’s this will and independence of Jane’s that keep modern readers coming back for more (not to mention that throbbing romance!), and these are the same elements that inspire continual adaptations of the story. I had long dreamed of creating modern versions of these characters, because they so thrilled and delighted me and taught me life lessons over many years of my rereading the book. A nervy dream, yes. But also one that presented huge challenges: there are so many elements of the book that just won’t fly in an updated story.

For example: a current-day Jane would not be able to keep her curiosity under wraps about all the strange and spooky things going on in Mr. Rochester’s house. She wouldn’t just accept vague explanations or agree to his request to simply not ask about them. She would be itching to find out more.

Also a sexual relationship outside of marriage is no longer a taboo for most women of today. Jane wouldn’t have to flee that temptation. And of course a modern Mr. Rochester would be able to divorce a mad wife, though no doubt having to pay a heavy alimony for her future care. So that’s no longer even an obstacle.

But lies are always a problem in a relationship. Especially big lies.

A secret bigamist is a pretty big lie.

Being a secret murderer would be an even bigger one.

It was thinking about this that gave me the idea of adapting the book as a modern thriller. One in which Rochester does not have a stashed-away wife—instead he’s suspected of murdering a famous wife who has now disappeared. Jane would have to surreptitiously seek out the truth about him–guilty or not?–before she could give in to falling in love. And when spooky things happened, she would need to confront those as well. She would be risking an enormous amount. Losing the love of her life. And maybe also losing her life.

And so I set about writing a thriller, adding startling new twists, putting in jumps and shivers. The result is Mrs. Rochester’s Ghost. It was a joy to write, and I certainly hope it’s an equal joy to read.

Jane has lost everything: job, mother, relationship, even her home. A friend calls to offer an unusual deal—a cottage above the crashing surf of Big Sur on the estate of his employer, Evan Rochester. In return, Jane will tutor his teenage daughter. She accepts.

But nothing is quite as it seems at the Rochester estate. Though he’s been accused of murdering his glamorous and troubled wife, Evan Rochester insists she drowned herself. Jane is skeptical, but she still finds herself falling for the brilliant and secretive entrepreneur and growing close to his daughter.

And yet her deepening feelings for Evan can’t disguise dark suspicions aroused when a ghostly presence repeatedly appears in the night’s mist and fog. Jane embarks on an intense search for answers and uncovers evidence that soon puts Evan’s innocence into question. She’s determined to discover what really happened that fateful night, but what will the truth cost her?

Enjoy an Excerpt

The fog streamed in white scarves and pennants, with a bright half moon playing hide-and-seek among them. I walked briskly down the asphalt drive, Pilot racing figure eights around me. We cut across switchbacks toward the highway. I kept to the gravel shoulder as the grade descended.

A pair of headlights glowered in the mist, then swept swiftly by.

The highway continued to dip. Pilot romped ahead and disappeared from my sight around a curve.

“Pilot!” I heard him barking but couldn’t see him. I quickened my steps.

I found myself in the middle of a dense cloud. Fog gathered in the depression in the road.

“Pilot?” I yelled again. “Where are you?”

Excited yapping. But he was a ghost dog.

The roar of a motorcycle echoed from around the far side of the bend. Through the blanketing cloud, I caught a glimpse of the poodle trotting onto the road.

“Pilot, get back here!” I screamed.

The motorcycle’s headlamp glowed dimly as it appeared on the near side of the bend. Pilot barked with sudden frenzy. The headlamp veered crazily. Pilot darted off the road into the underbrush. A sickening sound of tires skidding out of control on gravel. A shout.

With horror, I watched motorcycle and rider slam down onto the gravel shoulder.

I ran toward the rider. He was sprawled crookedly next to the bike, but his limbs, encased in black leather and jeans, were moving stiffly. Alive, at least. With a groan, he hoisted himself up onto his elbows.

“Are you okay?” I shined my flashlight on him. He whipped his head. “What the hell are you?”

“Just a person,” I said quickly.

He yanked his goggles down. “For Chrissake. I meant who are you? What are you doing here?”

“Taking a walk.”

“What kind of lunatic goes out for a walk in this kind of fog?”

“Maybe the same kind of lunatic who drives way too fast in it.”

“You call that fast? Christ.” He gingerly gathered himself into a sitting position, then flexed his feet in the heavy boots experimentally. He took off his helmet and shook out a head of rough black curls. A week’s tangle of rough salt-and-pepper beard nearly obscured a wide mouth. The prominent nose might be called stately on a more good-natured face. “What the hell was that creature in the middle of the road?”

“A dog.”

“A dog?”

“A standard poodle. Unclipped.”

He put the helmet back on, then pulled a cell phone from his jacket and squinted at the screen. “Nothing,” he muttered.

“The reception’s kind of iffy around here.”

He flung out an arm. “Help me up, okay?”

I approached him tentatively. He was over six feet and powerfully built. About twice my weight, I guessed. “I’m not sure I can pull you.”

“Yeah, you probably can’t. Stoop down a little.”

God, he’s rude. I did, and he draped his arm around my shoulder, transferring his weight. My knees buckled a little but didn’t give. He began to stand, crumpled slightly, then got his balance and pulled himself up straight.

I suddenly became aware of his intense physicality. The power of his arm and shoulder against my body, the taut spring of the muscles in his chest. As if he sensed what I was feeling, he shook off my support and stood on his own feet.

“At least you can put weight on your feet,” I said. “That’s a good sign.”

“Are you a medical professional?”

“No.”

“Then your opinion doesn’t count for much at the moment.”

Go to hell, was on the tip of my tongue. But the fog’s chill was making me sniffle. It seemed absurd to attempt a stinging retort with a dripping nose. I swiped it surreptitiously with the sleeve of my jacket.

He walked, limping slightly, to the Harley. “This thing’s supposed to take a corner. That’s the main reason I bought it!” He gave the seat a savage kick. Then he hopped on his nonkicking boot and shook a fist as if in defiance of some bully of a god who particularly had it in for him.

I laughed.

He whirled on me. My laughter froze. The look of fury on his face sent a thrill of alarm through me. I edged backward; I felt at that moment he could murder me without compunction and leave my corpse to be devoured by coyotes and bobcats.

But then, to my astonishment, he grinned. “You’re right. I look like an ass.”

Pilot suddenly came crashing out of the underbrush.

“Is that your mutt?”

“Yes. Though, actually, not mine. He’s a recent addition at the place I’m staying.”

He stared at me, a thought dawning. I forced myself to stare back: deep-set eyes, dark as ink. I was about to introduce myself, but he yanked the goggles back over his eyes and stooped to the handlebar of the bike. “Help me get this up. Grab the other bar. You pull and I’ll push.”

“It’s too heavy.”

“I’ll do the heavy lifting. Just do what you can.”

Obstinately, I didn’t move.

“Please,” he added. He made the word sound like an obscenity.

I took a grudging step forward and grabbed hold of the handlebar with both hands. I tugged it toward me as he lifted his side with a grunt. The bike slowly rose upright.

“Hold it steady,” he said.

It felt like it weighed several tons—it took every ounce of my strength to keep my side up as he straddled the seat. He grasped both bars. Engaged the clutch, cursing in pain as he stomped on the pedal. He glanced at me briefly.

And then, sending up a heavy spray of gravel, the Harley roared off into the enveloping fog.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Rochester!” I shouted into the deepening gloom.

About the Author: Lindsay Marcott is the author of The Producer’s Daughter and six previous novels written as Lindsay Maracotta. Her books have been translated into eleven languages and adapted for cable. She also wrote for the Emmy-nominated HBO series The Hitchhiker and co-produced a number of films. She lives on the coast of California. You can contact the author on her website.

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The Characters in the F.I.G. Mysteries by Barbara Casey – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

THE CHARACTERS IN THE F.I.G. MYSTERIES

Once in a while when you are writing a story, you will create a character that, from that moment on, just won’t leave you alone. I can honestly say that the three F.I.G.s—Dara, Mackenzie, and Jennifer—in my series, The F.I.G. Mysteries, are like that. Getting to know them has been a journey in itself. Each girl is so unusual, being a genius, an orphan, and with special talents. That in itself is interesting, but it goes much deeper. Each of these girls, in spite of her abilities, feels flawed. Together, they give each other the support and permission they need to be different. That frequently gets them into trouble as they constantly look for ways in which to express themselves creatively and to over-compensate for being different. When a new, bright, young teacher gets hired by the headmaster at Wood Rose Orphanage to “look after” them and “keep them on a short leash,” they immediately sense that she is one of them and there is nothing that is impossible for them to achieve.

Like her three charges, teacher/mentor Carolina Lovel is also an orphan, although she didn’t find out until her 18th birthday. Also like Dara, Mackenzie, and Jennifer, she holds a secret deep within her soul. This secret allows her to be able to cope with not knowing who her biological parents are and why they gave her away. When she decides to share her secret with the F.I.G.s, it builds the trust and love they already have for one another to a level that can never be destroyed. It takes them on a journey that includes gypsies, the most mysterious manuscript in the world—the Voynich Manuscript, to a secret sub-culture beneath Grand Central Terminal in New York City, an ancient pig dragon in China, and into a horrible war from the past. The things Carolina and the three F.I.G.s discover helps them to understand who they are and why. It helps them to cope in a less-than-understanding world.

I will continue this series because I’m not sure the characters are finished with me. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking, wondering, what would the F.I.G.s do if…

THE F.I.G. MYSTERIES

Dara Roux, abandoned when she was 7 years old by her mother. Exceptionally gifted in foreign languages. Orphan.

Mackenzie Yarborough, no record of her parents or where she was born. Exceptionally gifted in math and problem-solving. Orphan.

Jennifer Torres, both parents killed in an automobile accident when she was 16. Exceptionally gifted in music and art. Orphan.

THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES: Book 1

Known as the F.I.G.s (Females of Intellectual Genius), three high-spirited 17 year olds with intelligent quotients in the genius range, accompany their teacher and mentor, Carolina Lovel, to Frascati, Italy, a few weeks before they are to graduate from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women. Carolina’s purpose in planning the trip is to remove her unusually gifted, creative students from the Wood Rose campus located in Raleigh, North Carolina, so they can’t cause any more problems (“expressions of creativity”) for the headmaster, faculty, and other students – which they do with regularity. Carolina also wants to visit the Villa Mondragone where the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious document in the world, was first discovered and attempt to find out how it is related to a paper written in the same script she received on her 18th birthday when she was told that she was adopted.

THE WISH RIDER: Book 2

When Carolina and the F.I.G.s return to Wood Rose, Dara decides that she wants to try to locate her birth mother when she learns that she might be living in New York City. Carolina, Mackenzie, and Jennifer accompany her and their search leads them to a secret dangerous shadow world hidden deep beneath Grand Central, constructed in what Mackinzie identifies as chevroned magic squares—N X N matrixes in which every row, column, and diagonal add up to the same number—and cloaked in the discordant B flat minor key music that only Jennifer can hear.

THE CLOCK FLOWER: Book 3

The three FIGs—Females of Intellectual Genius—graduate from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women after returning from New York City where Dara learned why her mother abandoned her all those years ago, and they are now attending universities where they can further their special talents. This means they will be separated from each other and from Carolina, their much-loved mentor and teacher who is “one of them,” for the first time in their young lives. They vow to try living apart for one semester, in the so-called real world that doesn’t include the orphanage; but if things don’t work out, they will come up with another plan—a plan where they can be together once again. Dara is invited through Yale University to take part in an exciting archeological project in China. Jennifer, once again visualizing black and white images and the unusual sounds of another cadence that seem to be connected to Mackenzie, is engrossed in creating her next symphony at Juilliard. Mackenzie, because of her genius at problem-solving, is personally chosen by a US Senator to get involved in a mysterious, secret research project involving immortality that is being conducted in a small village in China—not too far from where Dara is involved with the archeological site. Once there, however, she finds herself facing a terrifying death from the blood-dripping teeth of an ancient evil dragon. Her best friends, the FIGs and Carolina, rely on their own unique genius and special talents to save her as she discovers the truth of her birth parents.

THE NIGHTJAR’S PROMISE: Book 4

Jennifer Torres, one of the three FIGs (Females of Intellectual Genius) who is a genius in both music and art, is the last to leave the closed rehearsal for her upcoming performance over Thanksgiving break at Carnegie Hall when she hears something in the darkened Hall. Recognizing the tilt of the woman’s head and the slight limp of the man as they hurry out an exit door, she realizes it is her parents who were supposedly killed in a terrible car accident when she was 15 years old. Devastated and feeling betrayed, she sends a text to Carolina and the other two FIGs—THURGOOD. It is the code word they all agreed to use if ever one of them got into trouble or something happened that was too difficult to handle. They would all meet back at Carolina’s bungalow at Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women to figure it out. As soon as they receive the text, because of their genius, Dara starts thinking of words in ancient Hebrew, German, and Yiddish, while Mackenzie’s visions of unique math formulae keep bringing up the date October 11, 1943. And as Carolina waits for the FIGs to return to Wood Rose, she hears warnings from Lyuba, her gypsy mother, to watch for the nightjar, the ancient name for the whip-poor-will.

In their search for “The Nightjar’s Promise” and the truth surrounding it, Carolina and the FIGs come face to face with evil that threatens to destroy not only their genius, but their very lives.

Enjoy an Excerpt from The Cadence of Gypsies

“Ouch! You’re standing on my fingers!” This from the petite girl with a long, blond ponytail, wearing a nightgown, most of which was pulled up between her legs and tied into a knot at her waist to keep it from getting tangled on the limb where she was perched. Somewhere above her the sound of a saw and splintering wood filled the darkness followed by a stream of profanity repeated in several foreign languages for emphasis.

“It doesn’t look right. It’s supposed to have a rim and a dent.” Clinging to a 12-foot ladder as she pointed the flashlight first this way and then that, the heavy-set girl wearing a nightshirt buttoned at the neck offered this with a slight lisp.

The girl with the blond ponytail giggled.

“What do you mean—dent?! Let me see that picture.” The tall black girl completely hidden aimed her flashlight toward the magazine that was being thrust upwards through the thick branches in her direction.

“And the top is supposed to be rounded—like a button mushroom,” the girl in the nightshirt added, the word “mushroom” sounding more like “muthroom.”

“That’s because it’s circumcised,” supplied the girl with the ponytail, from which she removed a small twig and a handful of leaves.

“Shekoo, baboo!” More profanity. “Okay. I know what to do.” The tall black girl disappeared back into the upper-most branches of the tall plant that was more tree than bush. After several additional minutes, the sawing, crunching, and clipping sounds finally gave way to the more gentle sounds of tiny snips. And then, silence.

“That’s it; everybody down.”

The petite girl, with the magazine that had been overlooked in the last confiscation and now wedged firmly under her armpit, started the perilous descent first since she was nearest to the ground, followed by the tall girl. The girl in the nightshirt eased her way down the ladder juggling pruning shears, a hand saw, and scissors. Once on the ground, the three girls stood back to admire their work.

“That is one honkin’ Peni erecti,” said the tall girl causing a fresh explosion of giggles. “Let’s get out of here.” After quickly rolling down the legs of her pajama bottoms, the tall girl grabbed one end of the ladder and, along with her two friends, lugged it and the other tools back to the shed that housed lawn maintenance equipment. Task accomplished, they returned to their rooms, and to their individual beds, careful not to disturb the other dorm residents, the floor monitors, their suitemates and, most importantly, their slumbering dorm mother, Ms. Larkins. Within minutes, they fell into a deep, peaceful sleep—the sleep of innocent angels.

It would soon be light; and Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women would start another day.

About the Author Originally from Carrollton, Illinois, author/agent/publisher 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, Canada, and Japan. In 2014, she became a partner with Strategic Media Books, an independent nonfiction publisher of true crime, where she oversees acquisitions, day-to-day operations, and book production.

Ms. Casey has written over a dozen award-winning books of fiction and nonfiction for both young adults and adults. The awards include the National Association of University Women Literary Award, the Sir Walter Raleigh Literary Award, the Independent Publisher Book Award, the Dana Award for Outstanding Novel, the IP Best Book for Regional Fiction, among others. Two of her nonfiction books have been optioned for major films, one of which is under contract.

Her award-winning articles, short stories, and poetry for adults have appeared in both national and international publications including the North Carolina Christian Advocate Magazine, The New East Magazine, the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer, the Rocky Mount (N.C.) Sunday Telegram, Dog Fancy, ByLine, The Christian Record, Skirt! Magazine, and True Story. A thirty-minute television special which Ms. Casey wrote and coordinated was broadcast on WRAL, Channel 5, in Raleigh, North Carolina. She also received special recognition for her editorial work on the English translations of Albanian children’s stories. Her award-winning science fiction short stories for adults are featured in The Cosmic Unicorn and CrossTime science fiction anthologies. Ms. Casey’s essays and other works appear in The Chrysalis Reader, the international literary journal of the Swedenborg Foundation, 221 One-Minute Monologues from Literature (Smith and Kraus Publishers), and A Cup of Comfort (Adams Media Corporation).

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. In 2018 Ms. Casey received the prestigious Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award and Top Professional Award for her extensive experience and notable accomplishments in the field of publishing and other areas. She makes her home on the top of a mountain in northwest Georgia with three cats who adopted her, Homer, Reese and Earl Gray – Reese’s best friend.

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The Foundation of Median Gray by Bill Mesce, Jr. – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Bill Mesce, Jr. will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Foundation of Median Gray

A number of elements came together to make Median Gray happen, but the basic foundation came from my own experiences as a twenty-something suburban Jersey kid working in New York City for the first time in an era when the city was more than a little crazy, quite a bit scary, and for all that, exciting…but maybe exciting like a walk through a spookhouse is exciting.

I started working in New York in 1980 and the city had yet to begin its turnaround. This was still the New York I remembered from movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Taking of Pelham 123, The French Connection. In my early years in the city, the 42nd Street and Times Square area seemed like the porn capital of the world. There’s an incident in Median Gray involving a cab on fire in Times Square that’s exactly as how I saw it. In fact, many of the incidents that don’t involve the main plot I took from things I or friends of mine witnessed.

In that period, I was hit by a taxi, saw a series of manhole covers a block from where I worked explode because of a gas leak, caught someone in the act of trying to pick my pocket, missed a bank robbery on the same block as the Empire State Building by ten minutes or so… The list goes on, but it gives you some idea of what the city was like back then.

When I first started dabbling with the novel in the late 1980s, it was sort of a response to what I was seeing. Over the years as I worked through rewrites, it became something else; kind of a nostalgia piece, a way of capturing and reliving those head-spinningly bizarre days. It’s a cliché to say this, but I wanted that New York to be an active character in the story, not just background.

I’ve always been a fan of police stories: dramas, procedurals, mysteries, the whole gamut. Maybe that’s why I’ve also been long fascinated by the police and police work, particularly on the mindset and the psychological wear and tear of being a cop. I’ve read a lot of books about being a cop, I’ve known – and even been related to – a number of police officers. I wanted to try to get that worldview right, even though this is a much more dynamic story than most real-life cops ever experience.

In doing that, I also wanted to puncture that myth of the rogue cop, the Dirty Harry-like rule breaker who cuts through the b.s. to take down bad guys everybody knows are bad guys but who manage to hide behind legal technicalities. That always grated on me a bit as it occurred to me: what if Dirty Harry or the Lethal Weapon cops or any of the popular mavericks weren’t the dead shots they’re always portrayed to be (most cops are not exceptional marksman; Chicago cop Dennis Farina, who went from being a consultant on crime movies like Thief to acting in movies and on TV used to joke he was such a bad shot his colleagues called him “The Great Wounder”). Pop culture maverick cops are unerring in their suspicions, and never miss their targets when they pull the trigger; there’s never any collateral damage to innocent bystanders.

In a busy metropolitan area like New York, well, to be blunt, it just ain’t gonna happen that way, and I wanted to capture just how dangerously messy that kind of citizen wish fulfillment could be.

The last major component was, believe it or not, the 1970s sitcom Barney Miller which was set in a fictional lower Manhattan police precinct. I had remembered a trivia question back during those days that there had been a survey of police officers about which cop show then on TV they felt most accurately reflected the day-to-day sense of what it was like to be a police officer. Their Number One choice was Barney Miller (picked over, if I remember correctly, Police Story and either Baretta or Kojak). Miller, officers felt, captured the camaraderie, the humor (sometimes dark), and the craziness that was routine. That cued me to what the tone of the novel needed to be.

I’ve never written a book that was sparked by one thing. Usually, elements percolate in my head, collide, and when they adhere to each other, at a certain point there’s a conceptual critical mass and then it’s time to sit at the keyboard. That’s what happened with Median Gray.

New York City, Summer 1963

Rookie beat cop Jack Meara is bleeding out on the dirty floor of a tenement hallway – next to the body of another cop. The eyes of the shooter burned into his memory. Meara watches and waits to see the shooter brought to justice, but, instead, “Tony Boy” Maiella climbs up the Mob ranks, slipping off indictments as easily as his designer overcoat. But on the eve of his retirement, Meara decides on one last kamikaze-like try to even the scales of justice.

New York City, 1983

Rookie detective Ronnie Valerio finds himself unknowingly pulled into the wake of Meara’s quest. A go-go palace bartender is being stalked, a body turns up in a neighborhood dumpster, machine guns blaze in the night, a New York bookie turns up dead in the Jersey Pinelands and the only thing they all have in common is, in one way or another, they all tie back to Jack Meara.

How far does a cop go to even a score? How far does a brother cop go to shield him? Is justice worth any price when the line between right and wrong blurs?

Enjoy an Excerpt

He hears a shout upstairs, something panicky about cops out front, feet stumbling down the stairs. He gets up, turns as a figure hurtles around the second-floor landing and down the upper stairs of the first flight. He barely gets his gun up, hasn’t even said anything when they collide, entangle, and there’s one, brief, brilliant second of mental clarity – when he’s swamped by just what an unbelievably fucking bad idea it was to come down that hall – and then that clarity collapses into panic as he and the figure grapple and try to untangle themselves, and then he feels himself losing his balance, falling backward, he reaches a foot back but there’s nothing there and now he’s on his back, his breath punched out of him as he skids down the stairs to the hallway floor.

He’s still got his pistol in his hand but he’s dazed, he can’t get enough breath to move, and he looks up, sees the guy he just wrangled with standing on the landing over McInerney, silhouetted against the soot-streaked window, sees the guy’s right arm coming up and he knows what that means, he fucking knows, and he feels everything from the pit of his stomach down to his groin turn to cold mush, he’s trying to draw in some air, enough to get his own piece up –

There’s a flash. Quick, bright, like lightning. In that flash, dark eyes look down on him, cold fucking hard eyes.

And with the flash…

There’s a POP – a small noise, like a single clap of hands, but in the confines of the hall it sets his ears ringing…

About the Author:Bill Mesce, Jr. Is an award-winning author and playwright as well as a screenwriter. He is an adjunct instructor at several colleges in his native New Jersey.

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