Barbara Bettis Author of The Lady of the Forest
Give a warm welcome to Barbara Bettis, author of The Lady of the Forest!
Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cooler, or I have fresh made lemonade on the counter. There are Chocolate Chip or Peanut Butter cookie on the plate, and let’s find out a little about Barbara and Lord Henry of Chauvere!
Lord Henry of Chauvere, tells us about the real you—
Well, Lady Tena, my life’s an open book, no pun intended.
What event in your past has left the most indelible impression on you?
Difficult to pick just one, but I believe one of the most vivid recollections I have is being knocked from my horse, then waking to find myself face to face with my captor—the beautiful lady who became my wife, Lady Katherine. She took my breath away, dressed as she was as a lad. That was nothing to what I experienced the first time I saw her dressed in a gown. She set me free of my bindings that first day, but my heart will always be in her keeping.
What do you most value?
That’s an easy one. Honesty, loyalty, love, honor. The measure of a man or a woman, no matter the station in life, is the devotion to those qualities.
What is the type of woman you want to spend the rest of your life with?
Such a woman should have every one of the qualities I mentioned above. In addition, she must be independent, intelligent, with a mind of her own. I want a true mate, not a weak, shallow shadow. She must be able to manage the castle and direct the people if I am away. And she will, of course, be a loving and dedicated mother. I though such a female didn’t exist until I met my Kate.
What do you consider most important in life?
My loving wife, our children, and our friends.
What is your biggest secret?
I’ll share this with you, Lady Tena, but I ask that it goes no further. I wept the night before I wed Kate, and when each of my children were born. I wept because I never thought to have such joy in my life. God has blessed me.
Wow, you are a very lucky man. You know I’ve been called a lot of things, but Lady was never one of them, so thank you Lord Henry of Chauvere. <giggle>
Barbara, your turn. Tell us a little about writing this story. Was it fun or difficult? Do your characters always act as you expect? Are you a plotter, or fly (write) by the seat of your pants?
This story of Henry and his Lady Kate was fated from my first book (which hasn’t been published, but which I’m revising now and hope to see out soon). When it finally materialized, the tale bore little resemblance to its first vision. But I am so pleased with the results. It’s one of my favorite stories.
It was fun to write, but a challenge to bring the two together in the format I wanted, which was a 40,000 words novella.
My characters don’t always act as I expect. Although I have a basic synopsis of the entire story and certain major touch points before I begin, from there on I’m a pantser, so I’m flexible when my characters come up with ideas of their own. Even when other characters unexpectedly pop in from other books. That’s what happened with Sir Bernard. I had such fun with him in a previous book, he just barreled right in!
Oh boy do I know that feeling!
Share a bit about the book?
He must pursue his enemy; she must protect her people. Can their love survive the duties that drive them apart?
When her elderly husband dies, Lady Katherine fakes her own death and disappears into the forest with others escaping the brutish new lord. Determined to protect her people, she knocks the wrong man senseless. But Lord Henry isn’t an enemy, he’s the brother of her childhood friend. Although his tender confidence tempts her, she’s bound by duty.
Henry of Chauvere has found the one lady he wants for his own, never mind she’s tied him hand and foot. When he learns the king has ordered her to wed Stonehill’s ruthless new master, he insists Kate seek haven with his sister. But she won’t desert her friends. Henry vows to solve her problem, provided he catches a traitor before the threat from Kate’s past catches her.
When a daring rescue compels Henry and Kate to join forces, their attraction grows into love. If only duty didn’t drive them apart.
How about a peek between the pages of The Lady of the Forest?
Kate drew the dagger sheathed at her waist and set to the knots at his wrist. “Two days ago, soldiers began searching for strangers. Friends at the castle told us a traitor roamed the forest, and Sir Mortimer gave orders to apprehend or kill him.”
“Then it appears Sir Paxton has reached your lord and recruited help. He has a talent for
spinning tales.”
The ropes gave way and Kate stepped back.
Henry massaged his wrists. “Your men tie a good knot. Have a lot of practice, do they?”
Kate jerked her gaze to his face. He jested at a time like this? Yes, blast the man, a smile lurked at the corners of his lips.
Her glance slid from his mouth to his eyes, and she gasped. “Your poor face. Here,” she handed him the dagger and waved at the binding around his ankles, “you cut while I pour more water. If that wound isn’t cleaned, it may turn bad.”
She’d retrieved the bowl from the floor where she’d dropped it earlier, and turned to fill it with cool water when a pair of strong hands gripped her shoulders. A deep, rough whisper brushed her ears.
“Never give a weapon to the enemy.”
Check out The Lady of the Forest at: AMAZON and The Wild Rose Press
Award winning author Barbara Bettis has always loved history and English. As a college freshman, she briefly considered becoming an archeologist until she realized there likely would be bugs and snakes involved. And math. She now lives in Missouri, where she recently retired as an English and journalism professor and plans to spend more time creating heroes to live for.
You can find more about Barbara at www.barbarabettis.blogspot.com or follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
It was wonderful having you with us today. Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with The Lady of the Forest.
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged Barbara Bettis, Historical Romance, The Lady of the Forest by Tena Stetler with 18 comments.
Spinning Time, A Time Travel Romance by D.F. Jones
Give a warm welcome D.F. Jones, author of Spinning Time, A time Travel Romance just released on May 9, 2017!
Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cooler, a Chocolate Chip or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate, and let’s find out a little about D.F., and A love story that transcends time.
Tell us about Spinning Time. It starts out in 1949, right? Yes.
Southern debutante, Julia Boatwright has everything a twenty-one-year-old desires, a wealthy family, close friends, and Phillip, her handsome fiancé.
Until one day, Julia plunges into the deep pools of Burkett Falls trapped in a natural time portal that propels her seventy years into the future.
Julia and Phillip live decades apart, but their love for each other keep them fighting to find a way to reunite.
ATTRA (Alien Time Travel Research Agency) Commander Adams runs a secret agency controlling time events, and she wants Julia.
Julia holds the key that may break the time space barrier into the distant past shaping the future outcome for the inhabitants of Earth.
With the help of time tracker, Ruben Callaway, and his team, a window of time approaches which may allow Julia to spin through a loop of time between the parallel universes back home.
Will Julia find her way home before time runs out?
“If you love time travel romance, drama, and thriller suspense novels, this book is a must read!”
A little about D.F. Jones.
After graduating Middle Tennessee State University, D.F. Jones landed a job as a broadcast consultant at the ABC Affiliate in Nashville, which led her opening an advertising agency. Over the years, she’s created many campaigns for clients and still enjoys developing marketing materials.
However, in December of 2010, D. F. Jones became a caregiver for her parents. There’s nothing quite like facing mortality to shake up one’s life. She began my writing her first novel in the late Fall of 2014.
Writing is a source of creative expression, but it also releases stress for D. F. Jones. Writing takes her to a place where anything is possible, and fiction takes D.F. Jones to a place made of dreams.
D.F. Jones is happily married to the love of her life and best friend, KJ. They have two gorgeous grown sons she loves and adores more than life itself. D.F. Jones loves to laugh, and her husband keeps her in stitches!
D.F. Jones is a fan of the Tennessee Titans, MTSU Blue Raiders and she enjoys working in her flower gardens.
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Spinning Time, a time travel romance: http://a.co/gFeHOvG
Ditch Lane Diaries: One-Volume Collection http://a.co/hJpquqQ
Ruby’s Choice (Ditch Lane Diaries 1) http://a.co/7vMe51Q
Anna’s Way (Ditch Lane Diaries 2) http://a.co/budztaQ
Sandy’s Story (Ditch Lane Diaries 3) http://a.co/6tC8NE4
Antique Mirror, a Halloween Short Story: http://a.co/hUgWQbo
Jonathan’s Curse, prequel to Antique Mirror, estimated to release this Fall.
It was wonderful having you with us today. Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with your Time Travel Romance, Spinning Time.
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged 1949, D.F. Jones, SpinningTime, timetravelromance by Tena Stetler with 4 comments.
Lisa Mondell Author of Under A Texas Star!
Give a warm welcome to Lisa Mondello, author of Under A Texas Star, released on March 21, 2017! Book nine of Texas Hearts.
Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cooler, a Chocolate Chip or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate, and let’s find out a little about Lisa and her Texas Hearts. Oh, don’t forget to enter for a chance to win a Kindle FIre, Raflecopter at the end of the post.
Lisa, tell us a little about writing this story. Was it fun or difficult? Do your characters always act as you expect? Are you a plotter, or fly (write) by the seat of your pants?
I am neither plotter or pantser. I’m a puzzle writer. Stories come to me in pieces, like a scene from a film. They’re very clear. But it’s only one scene and it can be any part of the story. So I write all those first and then piece things together.
Under a Texas Star was fun and difficult. It was fun because I used real stories from my husband’s time in the marines. Yes, he really stepped on an alligators head while wading in water to make a rope bridge. I also loved writing Brian’s character. I love writing about kids because they say what’s on their mind and do the unexpected. Even though he has a serious illness, he made for some heartwarming moments that made me smile. The subject matter was difficult all around. Grief is a very difficult thing. Everyone handles it different. But it’s important to know that however you handle it, it’s okay. As long as it doesn’t stay bottled up inside. There are parts of this story where I literally cried through them because when I write about my characters, I feel their pain deeply. I can’t express their emotions correctly if I’m not feeling it myself. So it can sometimes wear me out when I’m writing.
Interesting, I know how you feel. I see you brough Tom and Jenna with you today, lets see what makes them tick.
Hello Tom (Tag) Garrison, mind if I ask a few questions?
Go ahead.
Tells us about the real you— What event in your past has left the most indelible impression on you?
Being capture and imprisoned overseas while in the military. But the most profound thing was coming home to learn that I’d lost my wife and my child.
What do you most value?
My privacy, although that is getting harder to get these days since moving to Texas. Home and family are becoming important to me again.
What is the type of woman you want to spend the rest of your life with?
Someone who loves family, who is strong and who can quiet the demons in my head.
What do you consider most important in life?
Family.
What is your biggest secret?
Well, that would be something I did with my cousin Wolf. The family knows we were gone for a few days when we were in our early teens, but they don’t know that we’d jumped a train and headed north to Washington DC and then jumped another train to head home. I’m not sure Oma would have liked that at all. I think Opa would have wanted to come with us though.
Thank you for being here today and answering my questions.
Now lets turn our attention to Jenna Atkins. Would you answer a few questions for me?
Sure.
Who are you really?
I am a mother, rancher and small business owner who is trying my best to keep my nose above the water line every day while caring for my sick child.
Who were the biggest role models in your life?
My parents. They had a love that people envy. Unfortunately I didn’t have that in my first marriage. But I have hope.
What kind of man do you want to spend the rest of your life with?
Someone who is committed. Not just in words but in deed. Someone who I can lean on and who will be there for me and my son when I fall apart and when I forget that there is more to life than being a mother.
What kind of man would you never choose?
Someone selfish. It takes two to make a life work.
What is most important to you in life?
My son.
What is your biggest fear?
That I will lose my son before he has a kidney transplant.
Ok now I’m going to put you on the spot. Is Tom what you are looking for? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.
Oh, I think I’ll let you read the book and find out!
Lisa, tell us a little about your book Under A Texas Star:
Military hero Tom Garrison is an expert in high intensity emergency situations. But after years of military service, all he wants to do is hide from the world. When single mom Jenna Atkins bangs on his door in the middle of the night begging for his help for her sick young son, Tom can’t ignore it. He flies Jenna and her son to an emergency center that can help the sick child, but can he just walk away?
Despite his efforts, Jenna and Brian capture his heart—just as he captures theirs.
Both Jenna and Tom have battled life’s surprises and been touched by tragedy. Can they overcome the past to open their hearts to love again?
Excerpt:
Reaching back and securing his hands at the nape of his neck, he watched as the millions of stars that had dotted the blue-black sky just a half hour ago blinked out one by one in the morning light.
He didn’t want to be alone for this moment, but it was more than that.
He wanted to be with Jenna. Climbing into his truck, he headed over to the Jenna’s. There was a light on downstairs in the den, which Tag hoped meant someone was awake at the Atkins farm. Jenna had said that she had a lot of sewing to catch up on. Maybe she’d gotten up early to get started before Brian woke up. With any luck, she’d be awake.
Anticipation rolled through him. Within seconds Jenna came bursting out of the front door onto the porch. Despite the porch’s shadows, he could see from the light filtering out from the den window that it was her. A smile immediately hit his face, but then he saw the panic in her eyes when she came down the porch steps.
His stomach clenched as the quiet peace he’d been feeling during the drive over shifted into concern. Had something happened? Was that really why she was up so early?
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New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author, Lisa Mondello, has held many jobs in her life but being a published author is the last job she’ll ever have. She’s not retiring! She blames the creation of the personal computer for her leap into writing novels. Otherwise, she’d still be penning stories with paper and pen. Her book The Knight and Maggie’s Baby is a New York Times Bestseller. Her popular series includes TEXAS HEARTS, DAKOTA HEARTS, Fate with a Helping Hand and the new SUMMER HOUSE series. Writing as LA Mondello, her romantic suspense, MATERIAL WITNESS, book 1 of her Heroes of Providence series made the USA TODAY Bestsellers List and was named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2012.
You can find more information about Lisa Mondello at lisamondello.blogspot.com and sign up for her newsletter to receive new release information at http://eepurl.com/xhxO5
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It was wonderful having you with us today. Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with Under a Texas Star!
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged Contemporary Romance, Lisa Mondello, Sweet Romance, Texas Hearts, Western by Tena Stetler with 2 comments.
Viola Carr, Author of The Dastardly Miss Lizzie
Give a warm welcome to Viola Carr, author of The Dastardly Miss Lizzie released on April 18, 2017!
Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cooler, a Chocolate Chip or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate, and let’s find out a little about Viola Carr and The Dastardly Miss Lizzie part of her Electric Empire books.
In the third book in Viola Carr’s fantastically fun and wonderfully edgy Electric Empire novel, set in the gritty world of alternate Victorian London, Dr. Eliza Jekyll must team up with her secret other half, Miss Lizzie Hyde, as her world comes crashing to a halt when a madman begins targeting the city’s most important scientists, and sorcerers threaten all she holds dear.
Crime scene physician Eliza Jekyll is trying to share a life with her rebellious second self, Lizzie Hyde. But being two people in one body isn’t easy, not when Eliza has a professional reputation to protect and Lizzie is veering headfirst into a life of debauchery and crime with an increasingly demented Mr. Hyde. Not to mention the difficulty of making a respectable marriage with Remy Lafayette–Royal Society investigator and occasional lycanthrope–while Lizzie enjoys her own dubious romantic entanglements. And with England on the brink of war, Remy’s secretive mission in sorcery-riddled Paris grows ever more sinister. Has he been an enemy agent all along? Or is Eliza finally going mad?
Now, she’s confronted by her most baffling case yet: an evil genius with a penchant for theatrics is murdering eminent scientists in the most inexplicable ways. Her investigation uncovers a murky world of forbidden books, secret laboratories and bleeding-edge science punishable by death–and a shocking connection to her father’s infamous experiments. Desperate to learn the truth about her past, she must infiltrate a cabal of fanatical inventors bent on a discovery that will change the world–or destroy it.
With London under attack by sorcery-wielding terrorists, and the Royal Society’s enforcers determined to bury her evidence for good, Eliza needs all the friends she can get if she’s to thwart the killer and keep her head. But when Lizzie’s criminal shenanigans get Eliza fired from the Metropolitan Police, and Remy is implicated in an act of bloody vengeance he didn’t commit (or did he?), she’s on her own.
Except for wily, resourceful, mercurial Lizzie. But Lizzie’s got her own life now. And she’ll do anything to keep it. Even if it means attempting the unspeakable and finding her own body. Even if it means throwing Eliza to the wolves, and letting the world burn…
Viola Carr was born in Australia, but wandered into darkest London one foggy October evening and never found her way out. She now devours countless history books and dictates fantastical novels by gaslight, accompanied by classical music and the snoring of her slumbering cat. She likes steampunk, and thought it would be cool to investigate wacky crimes with crazy gadgets…just so long as her heroine was the creator of said wacky gadgets: a tinkerer, edgy, with a dash of mad scientist.
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged Fantastically fun, Mystery, steampunk, Victorian London, Viola Carr by Tena Stetler with 3 comments.
