Before we get to the puzzle, I’d like to say a word about something that’s starting on Monday and will continue through the release of Secret Identities: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology on July 30th! There are 14 authors who have contributed stories to the book, and I can’t wait for you to meet them all! To introduce them, we’ll be starting a “Getting to Know [insert author name]” campaign, where you’ll learn fun things about these authors and compete for prizes! So, if you don’t want to miss any of the fun, be sure to head to the website and subscribe to get the posts sent to your email inbox. Here’s where you can go to sign up: Delilah’s Collections. We’ll see you there next week!
Saturday Puzzle-Contest
Orange you glad you stopped by? Sorry for the cringey pun! I couldn’t help myself. When I think of summer, I remember my summers spent in Florida, the roadside orange stands that weren’t far from my house, and driving past the fragrant orange groves. The scent of oranges is my favorite of all things. (Maybe I shouldn’t post these things before breakfast!)
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, and then tell me what your favorite fruit-scent is + tell me whether you’re planning to join us next week on the Collections site!
Another year, another milestone! I figure another turn around the sun is a victory! The kids have been lovely, dragging out my birthday all month long, it seems. Last night, we had another little birthday party with another round of gifts. Tonight, we’ll go to dinner. Do they think too much excitement on the day will do me in? 🙂
Because I love prezzies and giving prezzies, I’m the one bearing a gift!
Born in 1815, Harriet Ann Jacobs started life as a slave in Edenton, North Carolina but died an author, school founder, “contraband” advocate, and women’s rights champion in Washington D.C. Her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, chronicles the brutality she endured as an enslaved woman, but also demonstrates her resiliency, thanks to her family connections.
Harriet belonged to a tavern owner’s daughter who disregarded societal rules and taught six-year-old Harriet to read and write. Unfortunately, when the woman died, Harriet’s ownership transferred to John/James Norcom’s family, where Norcom sexually abused her. She began a relationship with a white lawyer named Samuel Sawyer who fathered her son Joseph and her daughter Louisa Matilda. Despite this relationship, Norcom kept sexually harassing Harriet. She ran away in 1835 and hid in her grandmother’s crawl space until she could escape to Philadelphia in 1842.
From there, she moved to New York and worked as a nanny for writer Nathaniel Parker Willis’ family. To thwart Norcom’s attempts to recapture her, the Willises sent Harriet to Massachusetts multiple times where her brother John lived and was an abolitionist.
After traveling to England with Willis and his child, Harriet lived in Rochester NY with abolitionist activist Amy Post, thanks to her brother’s connections with Frederick Douglass. She visited the Willis family back in New York City and agreed to work for them again. Since she was still a fugitive, they purchased her freedom in 1852.
Her brother and Post encouraged her to write down her life story, but Harriet refused. However, a defense of slavery written by the wife of President John Tyler, finally broke down Harriet’s resistance. She responded to Julia Tyler’s lies that slaves were happy and well-treated with “Letter From A Fugitive Slave.” She sent the testimonial to the New York Daily Tribune, which published it on June 21, 1853. You can read the text here: https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/support16.html.
This letter served as the springboard for Harriet writing her autobiography.
She tried three times to find a publisher for her work here in the US and in England. After the third attempt failed, she was able to buy the plates and had the book printed herself under the pen name Linda Brent in 1861.
During the Civil War in occupied Alexandria, Harriet did relief work with contrabands—slaves who had escaped and found shelter with Union troops. She traveled north and to England several times to promote and raise financial support for this work. In January 1864, Harriet opened the Jacobs School with her daughter to teach the formerly enslaved to read and write. After Sherman’s marches, they took the Jacobs School to Georgia as well. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln and post-reconstruction violence by the Ku Klux Klan forced them to relocate North. They opened boarding houses, first in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then in Washington D.C.
She died on March 7, 1897, and is buried in Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery.
In 2004, Jean Fagan Yellin published a biography entitled Harriet Jacobs: A Life. Yellin also started the Harriet Jacobs Papers Project. which collected nearly one thousand documents written by, to and about Harriet, her brother John, and her daughter Louisa. Through her research which began in the 1980s, Yellin has used documents from various historical societies and archives to successfully defend Harriet’s work as an autobiography, not a work of fiction as some academics had claimed.
Today in the US people are still trying to whitewash the history of slavery, but slave narratives written by men and women like Harriet keep setting the record straight.
For a chance at a $10 Amazon Gift card share in the comments any thoughts this post may have raised for you.
One Breath Away
by Michal Scott
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.
Excerpt:
Tonight, all she cared about was the pleasure she hoped to enjoy again.
Spectral fingers of steam wafted from the water, inviting her own fingers to play between her thighs. The hope of completed self-pleasure shivered agreeably along every nerve.
She closed her eyes and massaged her nether lips, tentatively then confidently. The slow coil of arousal spread from her gut to her core. Her body swooned as desire ebbed and flowed in each vaginal contraction. First her chest tightened, then her belly and finally her groin. She gasped, caught in the grip of longing.
Now. I’ll do it now.
She thumbed her clitoris. Already throbbing with eagerness, the nubbin responded immediately.
Her back arched. Her throat tensed as bliss hardened into a clawing climax. She reached for the release beckoning to her from the edges of consciousness…then fell suddenly, frighteningly onto a piercing stake of pain straight out of hell.
Summer is here, which means people are heading out on holiday, having barbeques, going to concerts, and generally having fun. At some point, you’ll need a break. Pull up a lawn chair, get something cool to drink, and cozy up with the smokin’ hot wolves of the Lone Wolf Legacy series.
Who are the lone wolves?
Since the rise of the werewolf, there has always existed a single lone wolf—with pure white, gray, or black fur and eyes that match—who answers to no alpha, belongs to no pack. Merciless and deadly, he wanders the world, both judge and executioner of rogue wolves who senselessly kill, endangering all their kind.
When one dies, another takes its place, awakening to his purpose the first time he shifts to his wolf form. Known by the sign of the lone wolf—a sickle over the heart—the short-handled, circular blade remains as a tattoo on the man and as a mark on the wolf. A lethal combination of intelligence, brutal strength, and keen instinct, he walks a lonely path, shunned by pack, always alone.
For the first time, there are three in the world—white, gray, and black—who all bear the mark on their chests. No one knows why, least of all them…
Taming the White Wolf
Lone Wolf Legacy, Book 1
There’s only supposed to be one lone wolf. When other shifters see me coming, see my white fur and pale eyes, they know things are about to get real. Because my job—my fate—is to take out the wolves who go rogue.
Only now something has changed.
For the first time ever, there are three of us: one white, one gray, one black. And if that’s not ominous enough, my senses have pulled me to New York City…for a human.
There’s something almost supernatural about the connection between me and Zoe Galvani. It’s not just the crackle of heat, the blood pounding through my veins—or even that her eyes are the strange, pale hue of my own.
It’s that she makes my wolf come alive. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Almost like magic.
Which is when I learn that someone’s out to hunt me. That I’m their prey.
I’m used to other wolves coming for me. They want their chance to try and take out the infamous Gray Wolf. And every single one of them fails—because lone wolves aren’t like the others…we’re stronger. Harder. Meaner. Immortal.
But it also means I’m alone. No pack. No alpha. Just the three of us—white, gray, and black. Two too many, if you ask me.
But with power-hungry mages gunning for us, I don’t have the luxury of reflection. They’re in New York City, and I Will. Hunt. Them. Down.
Which is when I see her, and every cell in my body is on alert, filled with the kind of primal longing I never knew I was capable of. Luna West may be human, but there’s some kind of thread connecting us. Call it destiny, fate…or voracious animal hunger.
I know she’s bait. She’s meant to tempt me, to make me weak. But even if I could resist her, I’m not sure I want to.
Because I’ve never denied my wolf anything…especially the chance to raise some serious hell.
And I’m not about to start now.
(Author Note: This book is told in third person point of view, even though the blurb is in first person.)
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.
I have guests here all week on this blog, so I’m happy to have one day free to pop in to to say hello! I’m trudging along, editing, writing, trying to get my pool stomped into shape because it’s freaking hot here in Arkansas! I had more of my annual doctor appointments (why are there so many tests!?). I have my marching orders—lose weight, walk more. I’m ticking off movies I’ve had on my TBW list. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare was gory and fun, but not great. Under Paris was everything a shark movie should be—scary and ridiculous. Not much else to catch you up on! I hope you’re keeping well, reading some great books, and that you’re enjoying life!
As a way to solve my book-hoarding problem and make room in my bookshelves, I’m continuing my Clear My Bookshelf Giveaway! I have a ton of my books, collected over my 20 years of publishing. So, rather than consign them to the burn barrel I thought maybe a bunch of giveaways would be fun. As the first giveaways seemed to garner a lot of interest, I’m happy to offer more opportunities for readers to win a signed copy of one of my old books! Check to see who the last winner was! It may have been you!
So, for a chance to win a randomly chosen by me (I might say, do you want a western, an erotic novel, or a paranormal?) book, which I will of course sign and fill with a bookmark and a postcard, painted by me, tell me how June is treating you so far!
Posted in Contests!|26 People Said|Link
Last 5 people who had something to say: Elaine Howell - Kristin Patterson - Jennifer Beyer - Katherine Anderson - Michelle Willms -
Readers often ask me why I write paranormal romance. I like to say I write paranormal because I’m a little paranormal myself. The truth is, for as long as I can remember, I have had mysterious events happen to me. One of my earliest happened when I was five years old. I was playing outside with my siblings in the backyard of my house, an old, red-brick Victorian, and for some reason I yelled out, “I wanna see a ghost.” A round disk flew from the top of the house (the attic area) and blew by my face.
“Did you see that? Did you see that? It’s a UFO.” I called to my brother. He was running ahead and didn’t see it.
For years, I referred to this as “the time I saw a UFO.” In college, someone showed me a picture of a ghost orb, and I realized what I saw was not a UFO at all but a ghost. Duh! At five, I had no concept of ghosts, but I had seen UFOs on television.
In grade school, I began seeing fuzzy lights around my teachers in class. I thought I needed glasses, but after I got them, I still saw the lights, and they got bigger and brighter the older I got. In high school, I learned I had a knack for reading palms and telling fortunes. And in college, I accidentally hypnotized someone and realized I had a knack for hypnotism.
I was in demand at parties with people paying me to look at their palms or read their cards. At some point, I needed to make a choice: Did I want to pursue this talent full time as a career for money? Or did I want to pursue a different career?
I decided I didn’t want to be a paid psychic, but I couldn’t switch the talent off like a light. I call it my “hidden talent,” because I don’t make money from it, but my paranormal experiences make great material for writing romance novels.
Readers describe my books as realistic because they are set in contemporary times with the characters having hidden paranormal talent rather than being fantasy characters. If you’d like to try one of my books, CROSS WAVES, is on sale this week (June 24-July 1). For the first time since it was released in 2020, you can read this award-winning book for just $.99 cents!
Writing CROSS WAVES was a labor of love. From start to finish, it took me four years to perfect the storyline. Reviewers use phrases like, “a non-stop reading experience,” “fast-paced,” “heart-pounding,” and (my personal favorite), “I couldn’t put the book down.” The characters are fun, unexpected, and likable. The heroine possesses a dangerous talent. The hero guards a dark secret. The hero’s grandmother plays a pivotal role. And one character, Caleb Stone, who readers meet towards the end of the book, surprised even me, seeming to appear on his own without conscious thought on my part and setting the series up nicely for the yet unwritten book three, “Dream Waves.”
One recent reviewer said it best, “Cross Waves is about the power of love and the strength that comes from knowing someone believes in you and will always be in your corner.”
Award-winning author Amanda Uhl has always had a fascination with the mystical. Having drawn her first breath in a century home rumored to be haunted, you might say she was “born” into it. After a brief stint in college as a paid psychic, Amanda graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in theatre and a master’s degree in marketing. Over the past twenty years, she has worked as an admissions representative and graphic designer, owned her own freelance writing company, and managed communications for several Fortune 500 companies, most recently specializing in cyber security and data. Amanda is an avid reader and writes fast-paced, paranormal romantic suspense and humorous contemporary romance from her home in Cleveland, Ohio. When she’s not reading or writing, you can find Amanda with her husband and three children, gathering beach glass on the Lake Erie shoreline or biking in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Visit her online at www.amandauhl.com.
I worked on two editing jobs for other authors and finished one. The one that is left is kicking my butt! It’s long and dense (very good story!). I will get to The End!
I am working on editing the Secret Identities short stories for the anthology.
We’ve repaired the filter on the pump and are now waiting for everything to be in balance. I’m hoping that in a couple of days the water will be crystal clear and ready for summer now that it’s half-way over!
I had two imaging appointments (lung and aortic something-or-other) this week in the city. Both came out clear! No worries! Yay!
I finished #The100DayProject challenge!
This next week…
I will work on two editing projects for other authors, finishing one!
