#Guestauthor. N. A. Granger(@rhebrewster) and her books. A heroine who knows where she is and what she’s talking about.

Hi all:

As you know on Fridays it’s guest author day. Recently I’ve been trying to catch up with some authors whose blogs I’ve been following for a while, but for some reason I haven’t featured yet. Today, it’s the turn of Noelle Granger (or N.A. Granger in her books).We not only have background interests (medical ) in common, but Noelle also spotted we had both studied at Mount Holyoke College (in my case only one year as an exchange student, but hey, it goes to prove the world is very small).

First, as I’ve mentioned her blog, and to make sure I don’t forget it, here is SaylingAway. Go and check it and you’ll see that Noelle loves her traveling, but she also features fellow authors, shares her writing, and muses about life.

And a little about her:

 

Author N.A. Granger

Noelle A. Granger grew up in Plymouth, MA, in a rambling, 125 year old house with a view of the sea. Summers were spent sailing and swimming and she was one of the first tour guides at Plymouth Plantation.
She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a bachelor’s degree in Zoology and from Case Western Reserve University with a Ph.D. in anatomy. Following a career of research in developmental biology and teaching human anatomy to medical students and residents, the last 28 years of which were spent in the medical school of the University of North Carolina, she decided to try her hand at writing fiction.
Death in a Red Canvas Sail is her first book and features an emergency room nurse as her protagonist. The book is set in a coastal town in Maine, similar to Plymouth, and she has used her knowledge of such a small town, her experiences sailing along the Maine coast, and her medical background to enrich the story.
She has also had short stories, both fiction and non-fiction, published in Deep South Magazine, Sea Level Magazine, the Bella Online Literary Review, and Coastal Style Magazine. Her second novel in the Rhe Brewster mystery series, Death in a White Dacron Sail, is her most recent novel.
N.A. Granger lives in Chapel Hill, NC, with her husband Gene, a physician, and is the mother of two children.

Check her Amazon page for more updates:

http://www.amazon.com/N.A.-Granger/e/B00DN6I8GQ/

Her books:

Death in a Red Canvas Chair by N.A. Granger

Death in a Red Canvas Chair: A Rhe Brewster Mystery (Rhe Brewster Mysteries Book 1)

On a warm fall afternoon, the sweet odor of decay distracts Rhe Brewster from the noise and fury of her son’s soccer game. She’s a tall, attractive emergency room nurse with a type A personality, a nose for investigation and a yen for adrenalin. This time her nose leads her to the wet, decaying body of a young woman, sitting in a red canvas chair at the far end of the soccer field. Her first call is to her brother-in-law, Sam Brewster, who is Sheriff of Pequod, the coastal Maine town where she lives. Sam and Rhe’s best friend Paulette, Pequod’s answer to Betty Crocker, are her biggest sources of encouragement when Rhe decides to help the police find the killer.
Her discovery that the victim is a student at the local college is initially thwarted by an old frenemy, Bitsy Wellington, the Dean of Students. Will, Rhe’s husband and a professor at the same college, resents her involvement in anything other than being a wife and mother and must be manipulated by Rhe so that she can follow her instincts.
Rhe’s interviews of college students leads her to a young woman who had been recruited the previous year to be an escort on a Caribbean cruise ship, and Rhe trails her to a high class brothel at a local seaside estate. The man behind the cruise ship escort service and the brothel is the owner of a chain of mortuaries and is related to the dead student.
When Rhe happens on the murder of a young hospital employee who also works for the mortuary chain, she becomes too much of a threat to the owner’s multiple enterprises. She is kidnapped by two of his thugs and is left to die in a mortuary freezer. In the freezer she finds frozen body parts, which are linked to a transplantation program at her hospital.
Despite all the twists and turns in her investigation, Rhe ultimately understands why the student was killed and who did it. And she solves the riddle of why the body was placed in the red canvas chair on the soccer field.

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Red-Canvas-Chair-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00DMCL2VE/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Red-Canvas-Chair-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00DMCL2VE/

Here a review I loved for the enthusiasm (and surely, I must read this book as soon as I can!):

Rhe Brewster is my new favorite sleuth

By Elizabeth Hein – author of How To Climb The Eiffel Tower on June 26, 2013

Format: Kindle Edition

N.A. Granger has given me a new favorite sleuth. I immediately fell in love with Rhe Brewster. She is a nurse, a mom, and wicked smart. Rhe, an insightful tenacious snoop, finds a body beside the Pequod soccer field. She then uses her connections with the sheriff and medical examiner to insert herself into the investigation. I felt like I was right there with Rhe as she chased down clues between making dinner for her son, shifts in the ER, and eating muffins with her best friend. By the end of the book, I felt I knew Rhe.
Death In A Canvas Chair is a fun read. The quaint little town of Pequod, Maine is a hotbed of iniquity – they’ve got co-eds behaving badly, gangsters lurking in the shadows, and dead bodies turning up on soccer fields. I could not put the book down until I knew who killed the co-ed.

Death in a Dacron Sail by N.A. Granger

Death in a Dacron Sail (Rhe Brewster Mysteries Book 2)

On an icy February morning, Rhe Brewster, an emergency room nurse with a nose for investigation, is called to a dock in the harbor of the small coastal town of Pequod, Maine. A consultant to the Pequod Police Department, Rhe is responding to a discovery by one of the local lobstermen: a finger caught in one of his traps. The subsequent finding of the body of a young girl, wrapped in a sail and without a finger, sends the investigation into high gear and reveals the existence of three other missing girls, as well as a childhood friend of Rhe’s. Battered by vitriolic objections from her husband about her work, the pregnant Rhe continues her search, dealing with unexpected obstacles and ultimately facing the challenge of crossing an enormous frozen bog to save herself. Will she survive? Is the kidnapper someone she knows? In Death in a Dacron Sail, the second book in the Rhe Brewster mystery series, Rhe’s nerves and endurance are put to the test as the kidnapper’s action hits close to home.

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Dacron-Sail-Brewster-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00U8EXHLW/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Dacron-Sail-Brewster-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00U8EXHLW/

And another five star review as an example:

5Cozy yet exciting crime mystery

ByLuccia Gray “‘It always seems impossible until it’s done.’ (Mandela)”on March 17, 2015

Format: Kindle Edition

Death in a Dacron sail is the type of book I love to read. It’s a cozy yet exciting crime mystery.
The plot is tightly woven with plenty of forensic information given by Rhe Brewster, nurse and amateur sleuth narrator. Rhe is helping the police, as consultant, with an unpleasant crime involving a missing child. There is plenty of fast-paced action and suspense, in spite of the idyllic small town location, and there are many surprises and twists, making it a gripping page turner.
It’s also very well written. The prose flows so smoothly that it is a pleasure to read.
However, the very best part of this novel is the characterization. Readers won’t be interested in a good plot and wonderful writing if they can’t engage with the characters. Detective, crime thrillers, and mysteries often run the risk of being plot driven in detriment of character development, but that’s not the case here. On the contrary, the reader will love Rhe, because she is clever, and generous, and caring, but she’s also naïve, sometimes insecure, and others too patient with people who just don’t deserve it! I’ve wanted to tell her to be careful with someone who’s close to her since book one (no name so no spoilers!), and to stand up to her bullying boss!
The other characters, both good and bad, are also so real they almost jump out of the page to watch you reading!
By the way, just in case you were wondering, it can be read as a stand-alone novel, because the cases are independent, and although the main characters are the same, there is enough background information for readers to feel comfortable reading book two alone or first.
I’m impatiently waiting for book three because although Rhe Brewster will be solving another riveting case, I’m just as interested in finding out the direction her personal life will take in book three.

Thanks so much to Noelle for being our guest, thanks to all of you for reading, and you know what to do, like, share, comment and of course, CLICK!

Book Launch. ‘Dog Bone Soup’ by Bette A. Stevens

As you know, on Fridays I bring you guest authors and new books. Today, I have the chance of doing both. Through another friend, blogger and writer, Jo Robinson (yes, she’s visited us before) I became aware of the book launch of writer Bette Stevens, and on reading about her book and realising she hadn’t visited us yet, I could not resist, so this is Dog Bone Soup (of course, the title also helped my decision).

DOG BONE SOUP

is not only the title of Bette A. Stevens’s debut novel; it ranks high among the paltry meals that the book’s protagonist, Shawn Daniels, wants to forget. Plodding through mounting snow and battling howling winds, Shawn is ready to leave it all behind—living in poverty, Dad’s drinking, life in foster care, the divorce, the bullies….

Travel with Shawn Daniels through the guts and the glories of life. You’ll find them all in DOG BONE SOUP, a Boomer’s coming-of-age saga. Available now at “YOUR AMAZON”

From the Reviewers

“Dog Bone Soup is the poignant tale of a dysfunctional family struggling to survive in America in the 50s and 60s, when most others were on the crest of a wave. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry. But most of all it will make you glad you read it.” ~ Charlie Bray, founder of the Indietribe

“In Dog Bone Soup, Bette Stevens captures the feeling and images of growing up in hardscrabble times perfectly.” ~ John Clark, librarian and author

DOG BONE SOUP

READ the opening Excerpt from Chapter One right here…

The postcard arrived four days before my eighteenth birthday. All I had to do now was sign the final papers and light out for basic training. I could hardly wait to leave this place behind.

There were six of us ready to become soldiers. The other five guys were headed to Fort Dix. Soon as we were inducted, the sergeant who swore us in started calling us a bunch of lily-assed bastards and worse. When the jerk marched the other five guys off, I was happy as hell I wasn’t one of them.

Lieutenant Richards called me into his office. “You’ll be heading out tomorrow, Private Daniels. Here are your tickets.”

We sat in his office and talked about my future with the U.S. Army. Then he handed me a schedule for the next day’s journey and we went over every detail.

“Now let’s get you home so you can get a good night’s sleep before you fly off to serve Uncle Sam, soldier.”

“Good luck Private,” the lieutenant said when he dropped me off at the house. We saluted and I stood there watching until his car disappeared over the hill.

I’d always liked army people. They called me Mr. Daniels and even sir sometimes. Now I was officially a private in the U.S. Army and I was ready to start a new life. I pictured myself in an officer’s uniform one day—a lieutenant, a captain, maybe even a general.

Mum and I didn’t get much more than a few winks of sleep that night. I don’t know how many pots of coffee she perked while we sat at the kitchen table and talked the night away. Of course, it was Mum did most of the talking. Once she opened her picture books, I felt like I was drinking in the life I wanted to leave.

Mum took all of those pictures with her Brownie—that camera was her pride and joy. None of us kids was allowed to touch it unless she supervised a picture taking every now and then. If Dad wasn’t around, it was me peeking through the lens. Mum was fussy about taking pictures just so.

Five books were piled on the table and we went through them one page at a time. Mum had a story for every snap shot. Some made me laugh so hard that I doubled over.

It was two minutes shy of three when she closed the last album.

“Thanks for staying up. I’ve got the alarm set for six and I know that won’t give us much sleep.” Mum pulled out her hanky, sniffled and hugged me before we turned in. My leaving would to be hard on her.

Willie was snoring away, likely dreaming about cars. I slipped in next to him and pulled away some puffs and huddled under them.

The minute I closed my eyes I started dreaming about my new life. No more freezing to death up north. I was headed for southern sunshine and I saw myself soaking it all in.

Bzzzzzzz. I jumped out of bed, threw on my clothes, grabbed the suitcase and headed for the kitchen. Mum already had breakfast on the stove, so I ran outside to do my business and came back in to grab a hot biscuit and down it with a cup of steaming coffee.

I was half frozen and snow was whipping around me in circles when I headed out on the three-mile walk into town to catch that bus.

I shook flakes big as quarters from my jacket when I climbed the steps of the Greyhound. Two hours and I’d be boarding a plane headed to Fort Jackson. South Carolina was sure the place to be, especially in February.

### end of excerpt

• Read all of Chapter One
• OR Grab your own copy of DOG BONE SOUP here at “YOUR AMAZON” and dive right in!

About the author

Inspired by nature and human nature, author Bette A. Stevens is a retired elementary and middle school teacher, a wife, mother of two and grandmother of five. Stevens lives in Central Maine with her husband on their 37-acre farmstead where she enjoys writing, gardening, walking and reveling in the beauty of nature. She advocates for children and families, for childhood literacy and for the conservation of monarch butterflies (milkweed is the only plant that monarch caterpillars will eat).

Bette A. Stevens is the author of award-winning picture book AMAZING MATILDA; home/school resource, The Tangram Zoo and Word Puzzles Too!; and PURE TRASH, the short story prequel to DOG BONE SOUP.

Find out more about the author and her books right here on “YOUR AMAZON”

• Bette’s WEBSITE/BLOG
• Find Bette on FACEBOOK
• Follow Bette on TWITTER
• Author Bette A. Stevens at “YOUR AMAZON”

Thanks to Bette Stevens for visiting our blog and bringing us her new book, thanks to you all for writing and you know what to do, like, comment, share, and CLICK!

Preview of new novel! Blood Family by Mark Knight

My friend and fellow writer, Jodie Pierce (she’s also been a guest in my blog) told me about Mark Knight’s new novel (available since 7th of April) and asked me if I would host him as part of his blog tour. As you know I love to meet and introduce writers so, how could I resist? Also, I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to say no to the Queen of Vampires.

Mark Knight tells us a bit about his influences in writing, the type of characters he loves to write about and leaves us an extract of his new novel.

Mark Knight grew up in Massachusetts, USA. Settling in the UK, Mark continued to write novels of differing genres, including horror and television scripts. Mark has worked on scripts for Hollywood’s Little Slices of Death production company and one for Illusion Studios, for which he has recently signed an Option Acquisition Agreement. He also won several short story competitions, and has had his work featured in published anthologies. Mark concentrates now on Young Adult urban fantasy novels.

Mark Knight:

I fell in love with books and movies very early on. Roald Dahl, Planet of the Apes, Tolkien, Star Wars…they were all part of my journey. From age sixteen I was compelled to write my own.  I have always been fascinated by amazingly ‘out there’ type stories – be it fantasy, horror, or science fiction – that have an element of reality in them. You know, where you can say ‘Oh yeah, I can relate to that’ or ‘I know someone who has that problem’. To me, the more real your characters, their emotions, problems, etc, then the more thrilling it becomes when the fantastic comes knocking at their door.

For instance, Daniel Dark, the seventeen-year-old protagonist of Blood Family, has family problems that have led him to smoke weed and chug beer with his equally indolent friend. But then he discovers that he is a half-vampire with incredible powers. Finally, his dull going-nowhere life is supercharged.

Fifteen-year-old Solomon, hero of Solomon Grimm and the Well of Souls, comes from a broken home and suffers from hypoglycaemic attacks his diabetes. It screws up his life—until a gypsy curse renders him undead. Diabetes is the least of his problems now.

Dealing with the death of a parent was bad enough for Gunner Robinson. He has a sixth-sense, the ability to know when evil is near. Other powers are manifesting themselves as well, and they are getting him into trouble, at home and at school. Which is why he wound up in therapy. Telling the doc that he is a warrior angel reborn would definitely make things worse…

Blood Family: Quest for the Vampire Key

By Mark Knight

 

Publisher: Amazon

Illustrator: David M. Rabbitte

 

Release Date: 4/7/13

 

Genre: Dark Paranormal

Life as part of a debt-free, middle-class family in the New England suburbs should have been heaven.

But when your father is a Man of God and you’re a vampire, it sure can be hell.

Until the age of seventeen, Daniel Dark had no idea of his true origins. Something was ulcerating deep inside him, striving to claw its way free. Pastor Nathan Dark and his wife, Annie, had adopted him and brought him up as their own. But Daniel always felt that there was a secret they feared tell him…

Everything changes the day a mysterious package arrives at his home. It contains blood – human blood. It is a message from his true father – a vampire named Dominus. Daniel’s vampire half awakens and takes its first step out of the shadows. Vampires, Daniel learns, are not like in the movies. They’re worse, much worse, and cannot be killed by sunlight or stakes.

The once lazy, goalless youth transforms into sharp-sensed killer. Now, there is no turning back. On his trail is Pastor Nathan Dark, obsessed with destroying the boy he’d adopted as his own…

Armed with ever-evolving powers, Daniel sets off to find and free his birth mother, imprisoned by Dominus since the day of his birth.

It is a journey that takes Daniel to Mexico and the mysterious Mayan shaman woman, Xochil, guardian of Vampire secrets. From there the trail leads to misty moors of southern England, where he joins forces with Logan DuPris, a vampire hunter as attractive as she is deadly. Together they piece together the weird clues that lead to…

The Vampire Key

And now an excerpt of the book:

                                                                CHAPTER 13

As evening painted the sky a deep purple, Daniel stepped through his front door and looked around. As his life had changed, so too had all that surrounded him. He was sensing something. Daniel had never been one for deep thinking, but now his perceptions stretched themselves out over the landscape, over time, feeling out new possibilities and new horizons. He exhaled a big, purging breath, scratching the back of his head. Was he really going to do it? Leave home?

The ‘incident’ with Daelin had left him confused. Part of him had wanted to take advantage of her in the most gruesome and bloodiest of ways. Part of him wanted to protect her forever. Would it be best for her—and for him—to stay, or to leave? This wasn’t exactly something he could talk over with the town’s youth counselor. For the first time in his life, he had no one to fall back on. Future decisions would be down to him and him alone.

No more of this soul-searching crap. I want my bed.

Entering, he kicked off his sneakers and thudded up the stairs. As he grabbed the door handle to his room he halted. Mom stood there, down the hall, looking…defenseless.

“Daniel…”

“Just a minute, Mom.” He wanted to change his shirt a.s.a.p.—his unbidden hallucination had made him very sweaty, not to mention the sex play with Daelin.

He entered his room.

That was his first mistake.

Dad was waiting for him—he and six other pastors. Not one appeared to be in a forgiving mood.

It was a shock to Daniel—he hadn’t even seen any cars parked out front, not even Dad’s.

He then made his second mistake. He didn’t move quickly enough.

Another pastor, who had been waiting next to the door, kicked it shut. Then, the tallest of the ministers facing him shot him with what looked to be a crossbow. The arrow tore into the boy’s left shoulder, pinning him to his bedroom door. He roared in pain. Before the roar was over, an arrow pierced his other shoulder.

“I know you hate me for this, Daniel,” said Nathan Dark. “But I’m doing this to help you.”

“Help me?” spat Daniel. “You want to kill me!”

“It’s taken me years to put together this Deliverance Team, Daniel,” Pastor Dark told him. “And unlike even my own church denomination, our newly founded division knows about the existence of creatures like you.”

“Creatures like me?”

“Yes,” said Nathan coldly. “Demons—like you.”

The pastors rushed at Daniel as he grasped the arrow shafts, trying to pull himself free. The seven men began shouting out religious passages at him, fear knocking their phrases out of unison. Five of them restrained Daniel while two others (including his father) performed the laying on of hands, placing palms on his head and chest. Enraged, Daniel bellowed back at them, irises turning blood red as his would-be deliverers watched in increasing terror.

And something else was happening: the arrows that impaled Daniel were dissolving, actually turning to ash and smoke before their eyes. Through the tears in his son’s shirt Nathan Dark could see the arrow wounds healing before his eyes—flesh growing and knitting, liberated blood retreating back inside the boy’s body before the holes closed.

Revivified, Daniel flung his arms outward in a mighty push, hurling the men to the floor. The deliverers howled in pain.

Nathan Dark regained his senses. His son was nowhere in sight. Then, hearing a sound like the panting of a wounded wolf, he looked up. Daniel clung there, defying gravity, hugging the ceiling like a bat.  Nathan barked through gritted teeth to the crossbow-wielder, who hastily reloaded his weapon of choice. He was good—very good—and had no trouble in unleashing another duo of deadly carbon shafts into the boy’s body—one in the leg, and the other in his shoulder. The idea was to get so many of them stuck in the youth that he would weaken long enough for the team to overpower him.  In this case, ‘overpower’ would mean one of two things—either to free him of his curse, or to free him of his life.

Detaching from the ceiling, Daniel landed in the center of the pastors, now on their feet in a rough circle. He spun, elongated nails gashing each face in rapid succession. Blood sprayed in all directions. The deliverers reeled back in pain. But Nathan avoided injury, stepping back just long enough to retrieve from his jacket the object that he had secreted there as a last resort.

There had been accounts of wooden stakes actually working against demonics and undead entities, but Nathan had never verified any of these accounts. Sure, maybe it was just movie nonsense. But this, right here, right now, was real. He was going to put right this terrible wrong—this boy’s abominable existence—in God’s name. He would succeed no matter what, even if –

Daniel had locked his gaze on to his father. The stake dropped from his hand. Pastor Nathan Dark grabbed his head as though trying to keep it from falling off. The look of sheer terror in his face was proof enough that the hypnotic assault was working.  The other members of the deliverance team watched, transfixed.

“No!” Nathan was screaming. “Don’t leave me in this place! Get me out! Take me out of here!” He was no longer in this world, not consciously. Daniel had succeeded in making this devout Christian man believe that he was in Hell.

It had not been difficult for Daniel to target his father’s greatest fear. But he didn’t know how long he could keep up the illusion. This ability was new to him, powered by raw instinct.

Sensing the approach of the other ministers, Daniel whirled to confront them.

“Keep back!” he warned. “Unless you want me to invade your little minds as well!” His own words frightened him. Never before had he spoken words like that, nor with such rage. What had he become?

Pastor Nathan Dark screamed even louder. Even Daniel had no idea as to what his Dad was seeing within his mind’s eye.

“Daniel! Stop it, now!”

Mom!

Daniel was shocked to see that she’d entered. He released his father.

Jerking his head toward the window across the room, he barked at it as though giving an order. The windowpane shot up with a bang.

Daniel’s exit was a blur—a dark streak that could have been the boy taking flight. No one in the room would ever know.

He was gone.

Thanks to Jodie and Mark for bringing us this exciting new book and I leave you with links to Mark and his work. Thanks for reading and DON’T FORGET TO CLICK!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C456EJU

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Family-Quest-Vampire-ebook/dp/B00C456EJU/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364730430&sr=1-11

www.markknightbooks.com

www.bloodfamily.co.uk

@markknightbooks (Twitter)

www.amazon.com/author/markknight