UPDATE: The winner is…Claire Reed Warren!
*~*~*

If you’re anything like me, you have a stash of notebooks sitting in a drawer or on a shelf that you haven’t used and have probably forgotten that you even own. I get notebooks from family members because they know I hoard paper products and office supplies. I’ve never been able to pass by the $1 aisle at Target and not pick up some cute notebook. And yes, I do use some of them. Every purse I own has a notebook stashed inside for times when story ideas hit, but I still have sooooo many sitting around. The kids know this and hit me up for sketchbooks all the time. I love being their favorite “store”—but those requests don’t make a dent in my stash. The picture above is of notebooks I had stuffed into the bottom of my inbox tray!

So, I thought it might be fun to create a list of ways to use up my stash and give those lonely notebooks a purpose!

1. 🎁 Birth dates and gift lists
2. 🤶 Christmas lists
3. 💻 Computer app passwords
4. ✨ Happy thoughts and sayings
5. ⚰️ List to help family sort your stuff when you die, also who gets what!
6. 🖥️ Blog ideas
7. 🛍️ Grocery/shopping lists
8. 🎨 Craft/Art project ideas
9. 📚 Story ideas
10. 🗒️ To Do lists

Wow, that made me think. Now, I’m going to hit up my daughter for labels for my notebooks!

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, share another idea for using up those notebooks!

Open Contests

1. Romance Trope Word Search! (Contest) — This one ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
2. Michal Scott: Hiding in Plain Sight: Belle da Costa Greene (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Favorite Heroes Word Search! (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Saturday Puzzle-Contest! — Win an Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Carol G!
*~*~*

I’m late posting today because a friend messaged my dd to tell us there was a garage sale we could not miss this morning! The woman was selling vintage Pyrex dishes, which my daughter collects. My SIL was game to drive us there and patiently waited while we picked through her junk to find hidden treasures! We came away with so many pieces of Pyrex my daughter doesn’t have room to display them! It’s a great problem for an addict to have. I worked my way down one end of the table, snagging items I knew she’d want, and when we met in the middle we were both thrilled at all our finds.

Then I went through the rest of the tables looking for strange and wonderful treasures, which are what I collect—not that most of my treasures are worth anything, but I’m always looking for the thing that makes me happy.

The item I came away with cost an entire dollar! You have to solve the puzzle to see the tarnished brass (tarnish just means it has been around a while, like me). We looked on eBay to see what similar things go for. The ones we found were promotional type items produced in the 50s. Mine was sold at Knott’s Berry Farm—Ghost Town, California—I have no idea when. The top part flips to change numbers. The screws on the sides change other settings. Now, you have to see what the little treasure is, right? It’s found its forever-home on my desk. 🙂

Puzzle-Contest

Share one garage sale/junk shop find that makes you smile for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Another of those throw-away holidays no one knows about. And it’s a cryin’ damn shame.

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but back in my youth, I was the girl in bellbottoms and embroidered headbands. I was sent home from school to change when I appeared wearing peace signs on my blue jeans. When I was a young woman, the thing I wanted most from my nation was for the passage of the ERA—the Equal Rights Amendment. It’s long, long overdue. Can you imagine if our equality under the law was guaranteed? Sure, we’ve had piecemeal protections put into place, but depending on the flavor of government that exists, those can disappear with the stroke of a pen.

Not to get political, and I don’t think this example is, but can you imagine if we used that amendment to make sure that government dollars going toward research for things like for heart disease had to pay equal attention to a woman’s pathology as they do men’s? Maybe doctors would actually have a better understanding of what happens when WE have heart attacks and better advice for prevention.

Equality—when did it become a bad word? And why does the majority (women) put up with being less than? Okay, I’ll take a deep breath now and push down my former flower child into the deep recesses of my heart and wish you all a very happy, thoughtful Women’s Equality Day! ~DD

UPDATE: The winner is…Beverly!
*~*~*

It’s another Play Date for all you “word nerds”!

Solve the puzzle then tell me your favorite types of romance book heroes for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

I’m absolutely thrilled the Forgotten Brotherhood is back. ANCIENT DESIRE is the latest installment in the paranormal romance series. Those of you who have read my Blood of the Drakon series will be familiar with drakons. If you haven’t, I hope you’ll fall in love with Lucius as much as I have. There’s nothing more possessive and protective than a drakon with his treasure.

Who are the Forgotten Brotherhood? They’re a group of paranormal assassins, the misfits that other paranormal creatures fear. They aren’t the monsters lurking under the bed. They’re the ones that kill them.

They live by a strict code: Kill only those that truly deserve it and let their gods sort them out. Kill them before they kill you. Never, ever betray a fellow assassin.

Ancient Desire
Forgotten Brotherhood Book 5

Nothing was supposed to wake half dragon, half human Lucius from his Deep Sleep. Nothing. And yet something, or rather someone has. The unexpectedly attractive human not only touched him. She kissed him. Now Lucius is awake, and more powerful than he has ever been in his 4,000 years of existence. And once he finds out who led her to his cave, he’ll deal with his 300 years of hunger…

College professor Raine Carson spent her life obsessed with myths and legends. And now she’s woken one up. Only, Lucius is nothing like anything she’s ever seen or read about in her history books. Because this man is part sexy badass and part terrifying…monster. Yet she wants him with a hunger like nothing she’s ever felt before.

Lucius used to be part of the Forgotten Brotherhood—a ruthless group of paranormal assassins. Now he’s unsure if his former Brothers are their allies…or enemies. All he knows is that someone is hunting him, and Raine is just as tangled up in this mess as he is. And he’ll protect her—even if it means unleashing his Dragon and all of its power.

TEASER:

“Who am I kidding? I’m going to die here with a stupid stone dragon who won’t even talk to me.” The glare she sent him was fierce. “This is all your fault.” She sniffed and pointed her finger at him. At him. He didn’t know whether to smite her or applaud her bravery. “If you hadn’t been here, I would never have come. I can’t figure out Mack’s angle. Why lead me all the way out here and trap me with you? The whole ‘an angel told me to do it’ adds another layer of weird. He could have killed me on the hike in, if all he wanted was my death.”

She wasn’t wrong. The whole thing seemed to be some kind of elaborate setup. He waited impatiently, wanting to know more.

“It has to tie in somehow with the grant I got to write my book from—wait for it—the Angel Foundation. That’s not a coincidence. Talk about too good to be true. I should have suspected something was up. My field of study isn’t exactly one that gets a lot of funding.

“I love teaching, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted time to write a book, maybe even two. And the grant was enough for me to take an entire year off work. Yesterday was my first day of my new adventure, and it probably marks the beginning of the end.”

She lifted her sleeve and rubbed it over her face. “I’m sorry to dump all this on you, but let’s face it. You’re the only one here.”

Giving a sigh, she leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling. “It’s my own fault for believing in myths and legends. Did you know there are urban legends about werewolves and vampires in North Carolina?” She took a tiny sip of water. “But you’re real. You’re a freaking stone dragon.

Her insistence on referring to him as a dragon was beginning to annoy him.

“Are you based off some prehistoric flying dinosaur? Maybe they found some fossilized bones and this was their interpretation of what you might have looked like. Yeah, you’re probably nothing more than a flying dinosaur.”

The rumble came from deep inside him. Cracks appeared in his stone covering and traveled down to the ground beneath him.

“Holy crap.” Raine jumped to her feet, her hand pressed to her chest, her eyes wide.

The thick casing that had protected him for centuries crumbled. His limbs were stiff after so long, but there wasn’t enough room for him to stretch, not unless he wanted to bring the ceiling down around them.

He swiveled his head in her direction. “I’m no dinosaur. I am a drakon.”

Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B7G3QHRK/
Entangled Publishing: https://entangledpublishing.com/books/ancient-desire
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ancient-desire-n-j-walters/1141872172
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/ancient-desire
iBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/ancient-desire/id6443213388

Check out the rest of the series: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086BT7QJL/

About the Author

N.J. Walters is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who has always been a voracious reader, and now she spends her days writing novels of her own. Vampires, werewolves, dragons, assassins, time-travelers, seductive handymen, and next-door neighbors with smoldering good looks—all vie for her attention. It’s a tough life, but someone’s got to live it.

Visit N.J. at:
Website: https://www.njwalters.com
Blog: https://www.njwalters.blogspot.com
Newsletter Sign Up: https://eepurl.com/gdblg5
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/N.J.WaltersAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/njwaltersauthor
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/NJWalters
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/njwalters
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/n-j-walters

This post is just a shout-out to my loyal readers so you know what’s in the works. I love all the covers here, especially this one for Guarding Hannah, which will be my next new release! I’ve had a blast working with a special authors group inside my sister Elle James’s Brotherhood Protectors world. I’ve written Defending Evangeline and Victoria’s Six. Next up is Guarding Hannah! It’s part of the special Team Wolf series. Check out all the stories in that short series here: Team Wolf.

Let me know what you think of this lineup!

Guarding Hannah

Guarding Hannah
Book #2 of Brotherhood Protectors, Team Wolf
Coming October 18

Nate “The Edge” Edgerton prefers dogs to humans, like Pierce, the retired war dog who saved his life in Afghanistan, because he prizes loyalty above all else. He trusts his team and his dog but has learned to be cautious trusting women. After Pierce rushes to the rescue of a nature photographer being threatened by wolf poachers, Nate earns his first assignment as a Brotherhood Protector. He’ll keep her safe but keeping his heart secure will prove to be the hardest part of the job.

Hannah Mackey, a nature photographer tracking wolves, photographs poachers in the act of killing a wolf and she’s a second away from being shot herself when a large black dog rushes to her rescue, followed by a very handsome and angry man.

When Nate brings her to the Brotherhood Protectors, she’s dismayed that they’re insistent on providing her protection from retaliation by the well-organized poachers, especially when they assign Nate as her protector. She has a job to do, and she’s not going to let the threat from a criminal gang stop her from doing it. She also doesn’t need the big, brooding man following her around. His dog, she’ll take, but Nate? Hell, no. Been there, burned the wedding dress.

Pre-order your copy now!

More books to add to your pre-order list!

Hard Knox
Book #1 of We are Dead Horse series
Coming October 25

Pre-order here!

Mica
Book #8 of Montana Bounty Hunters: Dead Horse, MT, series
Coming February 28

Pre-order here!

Cold Hard Cash
Book #2 of We are Dead Horse series
Coming April 25

Pre-order here!

Jackson
Book #9 of Montana Bounty Hunters: Dead Horse, MT, series
Coming June 16

Pre-order here!

UPDATE: The winner is…miki!
*~*~*

The last line of “The Star-Spangled Banner” has always struck me as the greatest irony of the entire song. “Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” So many people in this country have that flag waving over them yet they are not free to be their authentic selves because of the -isms running rampant throughout US history. Jews who chose to change their names, gays who chose to remain in the closet, people of color who chose to pass for white. These subterfuges many times were taken not because of shame for their identity but because of lack of opportunity and/or safety. Such is the story of Belle da Costa Greene.

Belle was born Belle Marian Greener in Washington D.C. to an African American family, which numbered among the Black elite of the late 1800s. Her father, Richard T. Greener, was the first African American to graduate from Harvard. Although light enough to pass for white, he never did. Despite the horrific dismantling of Reconstruction and its immediate impact on their family’s situation in South Carolina, Greener lived his life as a vocal advocate for equal rights for his race. His wife however came to a different conclusion: passing for white would enable her family to have the opportunities and safety they deserved. They moved to New York and lived as whites. This choice however led to her parents’ separation.

Belle’s father’s love of illustrated manuscripts instilled a love for the written word in her. She trained as a librarian and was working at Princeton University’s library where she caught the eye of Junius Morgan, J.P. Morgan’s nephew. This led to the opportunity of a lifetime, and in 1905, she became the librarian/curator for J.P. Morgan’s library. She helped him amass a collection that became world famous and envied by museums around the world. Quite an accomplishment in the days before suffrage was achieved and career women were looked at with suspicion.

She retired from the Morgan Library in 1948, one year before her death. By then, she had enabled Morgan’s dream to come true: to make his library available as a resource to the public. I was glad once again to learn of another heroic Black woman, both from The Personal Librarian, a fictionalized account of her life and the biography, An Illuminated Life: Belle Da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege. However, I felt sad society wouldn’t have allowed her to accomplish all she had if she’d claimed her true heritage. I was also moved by the emotional costs Belle paid for choosing to live while hiding in plain sight. Her choice showed a woman could still be brave even if the land in which she lived wouldn’t let her be free.

For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, share the name of someone you admire who may have had to change their name or hide some part of who they were to succeed.

One Breath Away

Sentenced to hang for a crime she didn’t commit, former slave Mary Hamilton was exonerated at literally the last gasp. She returns to Safe Haven, broken and resigned to live alone. She’s never been courted, cuddled or spooned, and now no man could want her, not when sexual satisfaction comes only with the thought of asphyxiation. But then the handsome stranger who saved her shows up, stealing her breath from across the room and promising so much more.

Wealthy, freeborn-Black, Eban Thurman followed Mary to Safe Haven, believing the mysteriously exotic woman was foretold by the stars. He must marry her to reclaim his family farm. But first he must help her heal, and to do that means revealing his own predilection for edgier sex.

Hope ignites along with lust until the past threatens to keep them one breath away from love…

Excerpt from One Breath Away…