Spotlight on The Last Dinner Party by Carly M. Duncan

Book Excerpt: She opened her eyes only once she heard the apartment’s front door close. She couldn’t even bring herself to turn over in the bed despite her discomfort, for she didn’t want a single mattress coil’s shift to alert him to the fact that she was awake. She waited a moment, lying in her bed, pausing in case he had forgotten anything, but the sound of footsteps faded into the distance. Meryl Brunetti had been awake for twenty minutes, but she wasn’t prepared to begin the day. Not until he was gone. She didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to talk, and she certainly wasn’t prepared to deal with anything they’d discussed the night before. She needed more time, and she needed to figure out how she felt. Instead of waking up at seven o’clock to make him breakfast as usual, to start his day on a pleasant note, and see him out the door, she slept. Or, rather, she...
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3 Keys to Turn the Dream of Writing Into Reality: Guest post by Michael Allan Scott, author of Grey Daze

3 Keys to Turn the Dream of Writing Into Reality by Michael Allan Scott Dreams To Reality – I saw a statistic in a blog, recently – “85% of readers dream of publishing their own book.” This may or may not be accurate, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The trick on this planet is turning a dream into reality. Most of us are here to do just that—turn dreams into reality. And when you look this over, in one form or another, that’s ALL we do, whether they be nightmares or pleasant dreams. The striving toward such goals is the stuff from which we are made. A Half Truth Is Still a Lie – Not to put too fine a point on it, that blog I browsed was pitching a course on writing, hence the message was slanted—in short, marketing. The blogger wanted the prospective customer to know “publishing your own book isn’t anywhere near as difficult as it used to be.” This, of course,...
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Excerpt from A Twist of Fortune by Mike Martin

Excerpt: The schooners made the Banks Fishery possible and created one of the most remarkable and profitable fisheries ever seen in the world. For nearly a hundred years crews would venture out for three or four trips from May to October. Then they’d bring their fish back to Grand Bank for onshore salting and drying. People thought both the cod and the Banks Fishery would last forever but technological changes and greed would alter that projection. By the mid 1900’s, there had been a shift from the sailing schooners to more mechanized vessels and more effective methods for catching codfish. The vessels used enormous nets that hauled in large numbers of fish but devastated the cod population. Then the fish companies developed trawlers that swept up everything in their path and dragged the bottom of the ocean. By the 1980’s they were dredging the waters, scooping up everything. Soon they were joined by floating factory ships that caught and processed the fish...
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Merr-E Holiday Treat

Plan Ahead for SLACK FRIDAY: NOVEMBER 28, 2014 Avoid crazed shopping crowds! Keep calm and carry on at home with this great Merr-E Holiday Treat from Pocket Star eBooks!   EXCERPT: Ali Reynolds leaned her head back against the pillow in the soaking tub and closed her eyes. With the help of the pummeling water jets, she let the rush of the past few days recede into the background. She and B. had made it. They were finally in Las Vegas. The rest of the wedding party was there, too. Back in November, when she and B. Simpson had first settled on a Christmas Eve wedding at the Four Seasons, it seemed entirely doable—a piece of cake. After all, how hard could it be? Because Ali and B. had chosen to be married in a hotel, much of the planning was done by simply cruising through the wedding planning pages on the Four Seasons website. Arranging the time, date, flowers, type of ceremony—including their preferred...
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Book Blitz: A Dead End in Vegas by Irene Woodbury

Excerpt: Dave interrupted Pam. “Excuse me,” he said sharply.  “Your husband claimed the suggestive e-mails were written by a hacker?  Who on earth could that be?” “How should I know?” she snapped.  “Maybe some disgruntled student who didn’t like the grade they got on a term paper, or a tech major trying to make a name for himself.  This is a college campus.  There are always precocious students who are bored with regular class-work and amuse themselves by hacking into professors’ e-mail accounts to make trouble.  They have some laughs over a few beers and move on to the next victim.  It’s everyday life on a college campus.” Dave sighed. “So you’re telling me that my wife was an Internet stalker, and the e-mails and photos came from some student hacker?” “Yes, that’s right,” she confirmed with a nod.  “My husband was the victim, not the perpetrator.” “Excuse me, Mrs. Daggett, but I can’t sit here and listen to this garbage one more minute.  Your husband...
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Merr-E Holiday Treat

Plan Ahead for SLACK FRIDAY: NOVEMBER 28, 2014 Avoid crazed shopping crowds!  Keep calm and carry on at home with this great Merr-E Holiday Treat from Pocket Star eBooks! EXCERPT: Sometimes things aren’t what they seem, but it seemed to Cordy that indeed, there was a man in a tuxedo riding down the chairlift in Aspen. And he was probably drunk, which meant she wanted nothing to do with him. It was exactly six-thirty-two a.m. on May 16, four hours before the lifts opened. She stood there, panting and staring. He was floating toward her, one arm slung along the back of the chair and a foot, also in formal wear, perched on the seat. The bands of his unfurled bow tie fluttered in the breeze. My first morning in Aspen and already there’s a guy in a tuxedo. Talk about a town living up to the hype. The app on her phone beeped, telling her she’d logged five miles and could begin her cool-down....
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