Category: Guest Post

Today I'm happy to welcome Linda J. White to tell us a little about what inspired her to write Seeds of Evidence. The Real-life Roots of Seeds of Evidence She was an attractive woman, middle-aged, with brown eyes and brown skin and a quick smile. A visitor from India, she spoke no English, and so I heard her story through a translator. Asha was originally from an impoverished family in Nepal. In her teens she met a woman who told her she could get Asha work as a domestic in Mumbai. It would be a way out of hopeless poverty. She would make enough money to send some back to Nepal to help her family. And so Asha decided to follow this stranger south. In Mumbai, Asha discovered a future far different from the one she expected. She was taken to the red light district. She had been brought there to be a prostitute. Of course she protested. She struggled and fought. But five women...

Today, I'm happy to welcome Michael Johnston to my notebook. Michael is the author of Rembrandt Sings, a mystery novel with a bit of art thrown in that I'm hoping to get around to reading soon. Today, he talks about his experience with "The Museum of Drawers." The Museum of Drawers by Michael Johnston In 1979, I was responsible for bringing Herbert Distel’s Museum of Drawers to London, Edinburgh and Dublin and a story about it appearing on the BBC’s Arena programme produced by Alan Yentob.  I was reminded of this by coming across an MA dissertation by Julia Green at the University of Wales, published in 2008.  How it all comes back to me! Earlier that year, I had visited an old friend in New York.  On his coffee table was the latest issue of a glossy French magazine, Connaissance des Arts.  Leafing through it, I came on an illustrated article about a fascinating artefact and art project put together by the Swiss...

Today I'm happy to welcome Pamela Samuels Young to my notebook. She is the author of several legal thrillers, including Attorney-Client Privilege which I will be reviewing tomorrow. I love what she has to say about pursuing your passion. Pursue Your Passion! By Pamela Samuels Young People often ask me how I went from attorney to author. Although I majored in journalism in college and spent several years working as a television news writer, I never gave any thought to writing fiction. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and when I finished law school in my early thirties, I developed a passion for reading legal thrillers. Unfortunately, I never saw women or people of color depicted as attorneys in any of the books I read. I would close the novels feeling satisfied with the story, but disappointed about the lack of diversity of the characters. So one day, I decided that I would write a legal thriller with the kind of characters I...

I'm happy to welcome James Hall, author of Angie of the Garden, to my notebook. He's talking about explorers today, including Ohio's own Neil Armstrong. "Remembering the Explorers" by James Hall Neil Armstrong was truly a unique individual. The fact that he was the first human being to step onto another world would be enough to qualify him as such. His skill as a pilot, and I’m sure he would say providence providing a level place to land when there was only 15 seconds of fuel left,  was the difference between a successful landing and a disastrous ending to man’s first attempt to go beyond earth. There is also another reason that this man stands out. He never tried to exploit his accomplishment for personal gain. In an era when even minor achievements are often peddled for monetary rewards and self aggrandizement Neil Armstrong avoided the spotlight, realizing that his feat was made possible by the efforts of a countless number of...

Today, I'm happy to welcome Alicia Singleton, author of Dark Side of Valor, to my notebook. I have to say the title of her guest post certaingly caught my attention. Read through to the end of the post and you'll also find a chance to win a $100 Visa gift card. Alligator’s Crack-houses and Rats…Oh My! - The Boring Life of an Author? How does an author spend their day?  Up at dawn, start the coffee brewing, then sit down to type page after page of the characters’ lives that are buzzing in their mind.  They break to pop a frozen diet meal in the microwave, wolf it down, then back to the typing grind. Boring, right? Not so.  An author’s life can be solitary, but, it can also be filled with adventure, intrigue and unseen dangers.  Not the, ‘Darn it, I just broke my nail on the keyboard.’ danger.  I’m talking about the kind of danger that can get you shot, scared spitless...

Today, I'm happy to welcome Victoria Pendragon, author of Sleep Magic, to my notebook. Today's she's sharing about the tarot, a topic I'm not very familiar with, although I've always had a small hankering to have my cards read. The Tarot The tarot decks we know today come from a long line of tarot decks stretching back to some time before the fifteenth century, some say even before the fourteenth century. The earliest known decks are a far cry from the elaborate works of art that we see today when we visit a bookstore or metaphysical shop. The proliferation of tarot decks began only recently, most of it has occurred since the 1960’s when the underground hippie culture began exploring the realm of magic and mysticism. Prior to that, the Rider-Waite deck pretty much defined what tarot was for most people and for most people that meant fortune telling. The tarot in popular culture has long been associated with Gypsies and crystal balls,...