Cal Burton backed his red Porsche Carrera 911 cabriolette near a pine tree in front of the Armstrongs’ to prevent a bump or scratch from a drunk or careless partier. He strolled through the front door without a knock, looking for John. Cal was always impeccably dressed, and today he was dapper in his polo shirt and pressed pants. He arrived just in time to catch the end of Rick’s diatribe.

“Then who would attend these wonderful parties?” Cal said. He smiled as he reached up and placed his hand on his host John Armstrong’s shoulder. John noticed that Cal’s short brown hair now had grey streaks in it. Had that many years passed?

“Rick, meet Cal Burton. Trial lawyer and medical malpractice expert. No one is better.”

Rick gave Cal an embarrassed smile. “I sort of got carried away there. I hope I didn’t offend you.”

Cal smiled back as only a practiced litigation attorney can. Rick could have cursed Cal’s mother and he would have just grinned. The party was a prime source for his referrals and leads, and he was not going to let a half-drunk redneck radiologist screw it up. “No offense taken. I understand your anger. There’s plenty of resentment between malpractice attorneys and doctors. One thing you have to understand is that we are the only watch-dog there is. Doctors have never policed themselves well enough to prevent bad doctors from practicing. Only bad doctors and people with bad judgment ever have legal problems. Wouldn’t you agree, John?”

John smiled. “Don’t look at me to make your case, counselor.” John moved away and made himself another drink. “Can I get you one, Cal? Or are you working?”

Cal waved Armstrong off with his hand. “Anyway, look at our former President; taken down not by a psychotic younger lover, but by his own bad judgment. Taken another way, by his own air of invincibility. When men start to believe they are above the law, they will inevitably make a mistake and are doomed to failure.”

“Clinton was trying to be like Kennedy, but Monica was no Monroe,” Rick said. “As for malpractice, I only half agree with you. I agree we don’t police ourselves well, but part of that is the government’s fault. They allow bad doctors from every third world country to train here, then stay. If we could keep out these bad foreign doctors, we would be okay.

“You think? Most of the work I get is from regular doctors like yourself. Not foreigners.”

John stepped in smoothly. “Cal is working on an interesting case now where I’m an expert witness. Maybe it’s something you could do in the future.”

Cal’s smile eased the tension. “Yeah. John loves it and thinks it’s very interesting because he gets three hundred dollars an hour!”

John glanced at Cal, anger still in his eyes.

“Oops, I guess I was not supposed to tell you that. Pretend you didn’t hear that from me.”

John managed a smile. “Cal, you’re a real classy guy.”

“I don’t think I could do it,” Rick said. “I would feel like a traitor.”

“Rick, you could work for the defense, helping the doctor defend him or herself. You don’t have to be an expert witness for the plaintiff.” Cal said.

There was a long, awkward pause. “Well, enough shop talk. Let’s get some food.” John led them out into the yard.

Excerpted from LOCKED IN by Mike Esposito. Copyright © 2007 by Mike Esposito. All rights reserved. Excerpted by permission of the publisher. www.mikeespositomd.com

Author

Growing up in NYC, Mike Esposito never imagined that he would end up in Florida. After graduating high school on Staten Island, he attended the University of Florida and then went on to medical school at University of South Florida in Tampa.

After his radiology residency in Tampa he finished up his training in fellowship at Duke University. Soon after he took up a job as a radiologist in a Tampa area practice.

“My career in radiology has been rewarding but I needed a new challenge. Writing provided me an outlet but soon became an obsession and a second job. The end was LOCKED IN, my first completed full-length novel. I hope you enjoy it.” - Mike Esposito

For more information, please visit www.mikeespositomd.com

The following is an excerpt from the book A Nail Through the Heart
by Timothy Hallinan
Published by William Morrow; July 2007;$24.95US/$31.50CAN; 978-0-06-125580-9
Copyright © 2007 Timothy Hallinan

The Story: Poke Rafferty is an American expatriate living in Bangkok and the author of a number of “rough travel” books aimed at young, hip travelers who want to go off — way off — the usual tourist paths. He came to Bangkok to write the third book in the series, Looking for Trouble in Thailand, and falls in love with the city and the Thai people, two of them in particular: a former Patpong go-go dancer named Rose, with whom he now lives off and on, and whom he wants to marry; and a wary eight-year-old former street child named Miaow, whom he is trying formally to adopt.

The adoption process for Miaow is complicated and expensive, and to offset the expenses not too long ago, Poke wrote a piece for a magazine in which he demonstrated that virtually all the “missing” Western men in Thailand had gone missing voluntarily and were living very happily somewhere in the Kingdom. The article brought him a young Australian woman whose uncle has disappeared. This quest in turn leads him to a rundown mansion on the banks of the Chao Phraya River and a mysterious older woman — much feared, if others’ reactions to her are to be trusted — named Madame Wing. Poke is now in the house and about to meet Madame Wing for the first time.

***

The silence is pierced by a thin, insistent squealing from somewhere in the house. Rafferty backs away from the fragment of temple wall and seats himself in the armchair. The sound grows louder, and a woman comes around the corner and into view. She is tiny and angular, her sharp joints folded batlike into a wheelchair that is too big for her. The chair stops in the doorway, without entering the room, and the squealing stops with it.

She regards him without expression. For a moment he actually wonders if she is blind, simply directing her eyes where she knows the armchair will be.

“Madame Wing,” he says, just to break the silence.

Her chin comes up a quarter of an inch, and all the planes of her face shift. Her eyes actually register him for the first time. She is thin to the point of being gaunt, the bones of her face as sharp as a Cubist painting, the skull slowly surfacing beneath the flesh. The hands grasping the rubber wheels are all knuckles. The skin stretched over them has turned a peculiar bruised-looking purple.

“You came,” she says with a hint of satisfaction. The voice, low and rough, scrapes Rafferty’s ears. Despite the grandeur of her home, there is nothing refined about the way she sounds. She rolls herself a foot or so into the room. The wheelchair squeals again.

“You should get Jeeves to oil that thing.”

She stops the chair’s motion and regards him coldly. He has been regarded coldly before — he thinks of himself as an expert at being regarded coldly — but this is something entirely new. She looks at him as he might look at a snake coiled on his pillow. “His name is Pak, and you do not tell me what to do.”

“Just a suggestion.”

“Not ever,” she says. Now that he can see her eyes more clearly, he wishes he could not. They are extraordinarily luminous eyes, but the light in them seems all to be reflected. They have the shine of an animal that can see in the dark. He can see the white all the way around the circles of her irises. “You have questions to ask me before I come to my business. Ask them.”

Her business? Rafferty does want any part of this woman’s business, whatever it is. “You had a maid here,” he says. “She may know something about a man I’m trying to find.”

She draws herself up in the chair. It makes her seem both larger and heavier, despite her apparent frailty. “What man?”

“An Australian named–”

“No,” she says, closing the subject. She sits back. “I know nothing of Australians.”

“Actually,” he says, “it’s the maid you can probably help me with.” He holds up the note from Bangkok Domestics. “You wrote a letter about her.”

She extends a skeletal hand, a knot of knuckles and rings. It is absolutely still. Whatever health problems she may have, none of them causes her hands to tremble.

Rafferty begins to unfold the letter, but she gives the hand a peremptory shake and he finds himself getting up to give it to her. “Sit,” she says, the moment she has it. She does not look up to see if he does as he is told.

As she unfolds the letter, he gets a chance to look at her without having to face those unsettling eyes. Her hair, still mostly black, is pulled back into a bun so tight it looks like it hurts. The emaciated face is dark but not heavily lined, and Rafferty revises his estimate of her age. At first sight he thought seventy. Now he thinks she could be anywhere from fifty to sixty.

“This girl,” she says at last, precisely refolding the letter. “She is of no account.”

“She may have information I need.”

She drops the letter into her lap. “Why should I care?”

“Not a reason in the world. You said you’d see me, so I thought–”

“I do not care what you thought. The girl was dismissed because she could not accept discipline. I have no idea where she went.”

“How long did she work here before you fired her?”

The gaze she gives him says the question is an impertinence. “Seven weeks, eight weeks.”

“If you fired her, why did you write her a letter of reference?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It’s a natural question. The letter got her hired by someone else, and now that person is missing, and so is she.”

Something very unpleasant happens to her mouth. “Are you suggesting that this might involve me?”

“It involves you to the extent that it brought me here.”

“I brought you here,” she says imperiously. “Not this stupid girl.”

“And if I came, so will others. Who knows who’ll they’ll be?”

The hands drop to the chair’s wheels as though she intends to leave the room. Instead, she moves it forward several inches, squealing her way closer to Rafferty. When she is close enough to make him wish he could move the chair backward, the squealing stops and the silence of the house once again presses against his ears, like water.

“And who do you think they might be?” she asks.

The intensity of the question unnerves him. “Could be anyone. The police, the Australian embassy.”

She nods a tenth of an inch. Her lids drop slightly, hooding the eyes for a merciful moment, and then she turns to the carved stone on the wall. Her gaze travels left to right, like those of someone reading a newspaper. When she has finished, she says, without looking at him, “That’s hardly anyone.” Then she lifts her hands and claps once. The sound is still ringing in Rafferty’s ears when Jeeves steps into the doorway.
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The following is an excerpt from the book The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse
by Jonathan Selwood
Published by Harper Perennial; August 2007;$13.95US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-06-117387-5
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Selwood

Just as I’m touching up the manic glint in Tom Cruise’s eyes, another aftershock hits. I stumble back from the easel to try and keep from toppling over, but with the hardwood floor shifting violently in all three dimensions at once, it’s like trying to cross a cobblestone street blind drunk in stiletto heels. Fortunately, a waist-high pile of old Celeb magazines breaks my fall.

The tremor ends just seconds after it starts, but a dry fog of lead paint dust continues to sift down from the ceiling. I wait a minute to make sure the ground isn’t going to start moving again, then limp over to turn on the clock radio next to the futon couch. A male DJ’s voice blares out in midstream.

“ . . . is roughly equivalent to dropping a bowling ball off the Eiffel Tower. Please remember that phones should be used only in the case of an emergency, and not to call up the station and request the ‘Earthquake Song’ by the Little Girls. Let me also remind the two or three of you who haven’t heard this before to refrain from firing up that crack pipe until you’re absolutely positively sure you don’t smell gas, to boil any tap water before drinking, and to slip on those Ugg boots before strolling over the broken glass and shards of jagged metal that most likely carpet your floor. . . . In other disaster news, one of our deservedly unpaid interns managed to spill wheat grass juice in all three CD players, so I’ll be dipping into the vinyl vaults as we wait with bated breath for the always riveting Cal Tech report. . . .”

X’s “Los Angeles” starts crackling through the clock radio speaker. I turn up the volume, and take a minute to look around at the disaster that was once my apartment.

Dirty plates and cereal bowls are stacked everywhere, improvised ashtrays spill out over piles of old tabloid magazines, and layers of spattered paint cake the hardwood floor in a riot of clown colors. For the past two weeks I haven’t seen my boyfriend, Javier, haven’t checked the mail, haven’t left the apartment for more than half an hour at a time. For the past week I’ve been too nauseated to eat anything but Trader Joe’s pot stickers. And for the past three days I haven’t changed out of my paint-spattered black T-shirt and jeans. All of this the result of my attempt to (in the words of my sociopathic art dealer Juan Dahlman) “launch my meteoric rise to fame.”

Of course, in addition to the mess are the five new canvases that Dahlman plans to sell for a whopping fifty thousand dollars apiece come my opening Sunday afternoon (he claims Sunday afternoon is the new Thursday). Paintings I originally conceived as a satiric bayonet into the partially hydrogenated heart of contemporary society, but which my two-hundred-dollar-an-hour media training coach has reprogrammed me to call “transcendently kitschy.”

Propped against my desk is Raphael’s Madonna and Child with the original faces replaced by Britney Spears and her son Sean. Hanging over the futon is David’s The Death of Marat featuring a turbaned and bloody Kurt Cobain in the bathtub. And on the easel itself is American Gothic redone with a smiling Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. As usual, the reproductions are technically flawless (with the exception, obviously, of the celebrity substitutions). I suppose if my new career as a sellout artist/media whore implodes, I can always move to Ibiza and become a professional forger.

The aftershock scattered my paintbrushes all over the floor, so I pick them up and carry them into the bathroom to clean. A new earthquake crack has appeared, running diagonally across the mildewed blue shower tile, but the two finished canvases I did with cobalt drier are still miraculously balanced on the towel rack. Placing the brushes in a coffee can on the soap dish ledge, I turn on the faucet. Rust-colored water spurts down into the basin, stops, then starts again with a shuddering of pipes, only to begin immediately pooling up from the paint-clogged drain. I shut the faucet back off, grab a bottle of “eco-friendly” drain cleaner from the ledge of the toilet, and pour the last of it in.

It takes a full minute of staring at the gaunt woman’s face in the mirror above the sink for me to recognize it. My skin has drained from what I’ve always thought of as an SPF 15 pale to a tubercular pallor, my cheeks have sunken in painfully, and the dark circles under my eyes now match my black hair and T-shirt. Jesus, even my eyes themselves seem to be darkening.

The sink finally drains, and I’m about to begin cleaning the brushes, when there’s a knock at the front door.

Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Selwood

Author
Jonathan Selwood — evil incarnate or poseur extraordinaire?

I was born in Hollywood, California. In other words, the first time I played doctor as a kid was on a neighbor’s circular fur-covered waterbed with a mirror on the ceiling. The girl’s parents and two younger siblings were busy out by the pool hosting a nude cocaine party.

My own parents, in contrast, were from back east, and did not partake in nude cocaine parties. I was thus instilled from a young age with a strong New England-style Puritan ethic, while at the same time being raised in what is arguably the most depraved and wantonly hedonistic neighborhood in the world. When I finally graduated high school and left to attend college in Vermont, I was completely ill-prepared for the relative lack of debauchery (i.e., the nude parties had no cocaine, and the cocaine parties had no nudity).

After college, I moved down to Chiapas, Mexico, and tried my best to write on the cheap. It lasted about four months. Then I moved to New York City and tried my best to write on the expensive. It lasted about five years. Eventually I moved to Portland, Oregon, in search of a happy medium.

Portland’s been pretty good to me so far, but I must admit that in the dead of a rainy winter, I’m still inclined to wax nostalgic for those carefree sunny southern California days, and the nude cocaine parties of my youth.

Age: 27 (give or take any number of years)

Height: 4 foot 8 inches (seated)

Weight: Enough to throw around

Politics: Lapsed Anarchist

Religion: Evangelical Absurdist

Sport: Shot put

Hobbies: Talking very loudly when intoxicated, composting kitchen scraps, excessively rolling my R’s when ordering burrrrrritos . . . using ellipses . . .

Favorite Movie: Without bourbon, Lost in Translation. With bourbon, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Favorite Album: El Poder de New York by Oro Solido

Worst Job: HMO medical equipment denial guy (i.e., “I realize your son has no legs, sir, but I’m afraid his insurance plan doesn’t cover wheelchairs. Have you considered duct-taping him to some sort of a skateboard?”)

Best Job: Writer

Strangest Job: Bouncer at a bar in Chiapas, Mexico. Despite growing up in Los Angeles, my knowledge of Mexican slang is limited at best. I often resorted to waving a baseball bat in the air and screaming things like, “I throw feces at your slatternly granddaughter’s chicken tamales, you obese pubic hair!”

Best Drink I Ever Invented: The Eyeball. (Two ounces Everclear, two ounces water, ice, and three dashes Angostura bitters. Why yes, it is strong . . .)

Worst Drink I Ever Invented: The Exxon Valdez. (Two ounces Kahlua, two ounces Jagermeister. Garnish with an anchovy.)

Reviews
“Read this book, because laughing yourself to death is the second best way to go.”
–Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up and Chinese Takeout

Daphne Oz’s The Dorm Room Diet garnered major media attention when it was published in September 2006 for her whole new approach to looking good, feeling great, and staying fit in college—and for life

Based on the successful principles of her original book, THE DORM ROOM DIET PLANNER (Newmarket Press, 160 pages, $12.95 paperback, Pub date: August 20, 2007) is filled with motivational tips and checklists for readers to put Daphne’s advice in practice and keep track of their progress.

This new illustrated companion guidebook helps college students and others living on their own for the first time create and follow their own lifestyle plan. Daphne provides step-by-step instructions to guide her peers through the temptations of college life. The Dorm Room Diet Planner is divided into five sections:

o Get Inspired: How can I begin?
o Get Informed: What do I need to know?
o Get Moving: Exercises and exercise logs
o Get the Numbers: How many vitamins? What’s my BMR?
o Get Going: Tips and journal pages for your first 30 days

Without the restrictions of doomed-to-fail diets, The Dorm Room Diet and The Dorm Room Diet Planner give students the tools to lose weight, think and feel better, and stay healthy. Available at Amazon and other major retailers.

written by Lois Winston

Here’s a dirty little secret: Most editors and agents will toss a manuscript aside after a page or two if the voice/style/story hasn’t hooked them by that point. One agent has even published a book on the importance of the first five pages.

I would like to distill this down further and suggest that an author needs to hook the reader with an opening sentence. As someone who has judged many writing contests and read countless first chapters, I’ve come across hundreds of openings with what I can only describe as BLAH first sentences. The author goes on to compound the problem by then giving the reader several paragraphs, if not pages, of either backstory or boring description. The author may have a fantastic story, but if she put her readers to sleep before they get to that story, she’s got problems. A good opening doesn’t give a reader an excuse to put down a book. It makes the reader want to read more to find out what happens next.

One of the best opening sentences I’ve ever read was from KISS AN ANGEL by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. That book’s first sentence is: Daisy Devreaux had forgotten her bridegroom’s name. Now how can you not go on reading after that? What a killer sentence! It grabs the reader and drags her into the story.

The first sentence should make the reader want to read the second sentence. The hook doesn’t have to be defined in the first sentence, but that first sentence should lead you into the next. And that one to the next. Until you have a paragraph that becomes a hook that grabs you as a reader and won’t let go. That first paragraph should do for the first page what the first sentence did for the first paragraph, and the first page should do for the subsequent pages what the first paragraph did for the first page.

The opening of a book should be filled with interesting action and/or dialogue that intrigues the reader and makes her want to continue reading. One of the worst mistakes an author can make is to fill the opening of her book with paragraph after paragraph of backstory or description. The opening of a book is meant to suck the reader into the world the author has created. Backstory can come later, trickling in to tease the reader to continue reading more, not as information dumps that pull the reader from the story. A good opening will include only the barest minimum of backstory that is essential for that moment.

As for description, it should be woven into the narrative and dialogue. Nothing bores a reader more than long paragraphs describing everything from the length of the heroine’s hair to the color of her toenail polish. It pulls the reader from the story. And pulling the reader from the story is a BAD thing. It adversely affects the pacing of the book, and good pacing is something that is important to a well-written manuscript.

Sometimes the plot and conflict might not be evident in the opening of the book, but there should be enough of a tease within that opening to give the reader an indication of events to come. Dialogue or narrative action are usually the best ways for a writer to accomplish this. A good book will often begin by throwing the reader right into the middle of a conversation or event.

Be aware, though, that gimmickry has no place in good fiction. If you open your book with a situation that’s cliché or right out of a TV sit-com, it will stand out like a neon sign and not act as a hook to draw the reader into the story. The best hooks will draw the reader into the book without the reader even being aware that there is a hook. If a hook is too obvious, all the reader will see is the hook and not be drawn into the story.

However, when opening your book, don’t think in terms of ‘this could never happen.’ Remember that truth is often stranger than fiction, and just because an author creates a situation that’s unfamiliar to the reader, it doesn’t mean that the situation doesn’t or can’t exist. Think about it — the secret baby and marriage of convenience are two of the most popular plots in romance fiction. Yet how many of us have ever met someone who had a secret baby or was thrust into a marriage of convenience? What you need to think about is whether you have created a situation that enables the reader to suspend disbelief and enter the world you’ve created. And by ‘world’ I don’t necessarily mean a paranormal plot. The ‘world’ is the story the author is writing and the characters she’s created to populate that world.

So begin your books by sucking the reader into your world.

© 2007 Lois Winston

***
Award-winning author Lois Winston writes humorous, cross-genre, contemporary novels. She often draws upon her extensive experience as a crafts designer for much of her source material. Her first book, TALK GERTIE TO ME, a combination chick lit/hen lit/romantic comedy with a touch of the paranormal, was an April 2006 release and has to date won a Readers and Bookbuyers Best award and racked up nominations for a Reviewers Choice Award, a Golden Leaf Award, and a Beacon Award. LOVE, LIES & A DOUBLE SHOT OF DECEPTION, a mom-lit romantic suspense, was a June 2007 release.

Lois also contributed to DREAMS & DESIRES, a charity anthology of 19 romances by 19 authors which was released in February 2007. All proceeds from this anthology go to a shelter for battered women. In addition, Lois is a contributor to HOUSE UNAUTHORIZED, a November 2007 release. When not writing or designing, you can find Lois trudging through stacks of manuscripts as she hunts for diamonds in the slush piles for the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Visit Lois at www.loiswinston.com.

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The following is an excerpt from the book An Ocean of Air
by Gabrielle Walker
Published by Harcourt, Inc.; August 2007;$25.00US; 978-0-15-101124-7
Copyright © 2007 Gabrielle Walker

Chapter 1
The Ocean Above Us

Nearly four hundred years ago, in a patchwork of individual fiefdoms that we now call Italy, a revolution of ideas was struggling to take place. The traditional way to understand the workings of the world — through a combination of divine revelation and abstract reasoning — had begun to come under attack from a new breed. These people called themselves “natural philosophers,” because the word “scientist” had not yet been invented. To find out the way the world worked, they didn’t sit around and talk about it. They went out and looked. This was not an approach that was likely to find favor with the Church, home of received wisdom, or with its instruments — the whispering Inquisitors, with their hotline back to Rome. Now, a certain natural philosopher had fallen very foul of those Inquisitors and been forced to stop his investigations into the structure of the heavens. His name was Galileo Galilei, and our story begins with him.

Convent of Minerva, Rome
June 22, 1633

I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, arraigned personally before this tribunal, and kneeling before you, most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, Inquisitors general against heretical depravity throughout the whole Christian Republic . . . have been pronounced by the Holy Office to be vehemently suspected of heresy, that is to say, of having held and believed that the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth is not the center and moves:

Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Christians, this strong suspicion, reasonably conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies . . . and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me.

As the great Galileo rose from his knees at the end of this infamous, and forced, recantation, he is said to have muttered “Eppur si muove!” (“And yet it moves!”). He knew in his heart that Earth moves around the sun, in spite of what the Inquisitors had made him say. Still, devoutly religious as he was, he had no taste for defying his own church. Nor had he any desire to share the fate of the unfortunate monk Giordano Bruno, who a few decades earlier had been publicly burned for holding similar views. Galileo may have been the most famous philosopher in all Italy, but he knew that in itself wouldn’t save him from the fire.
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South Beach Chicas Catch Their Man, the latest book by award-winning Romance novelist Caridad Pineiro, is due for release in September. Visit her website at http://www.caridad.com to learn more about her books.

by Chrissy Dionne
Romance Junkies

An ancient relic granted by Divine Decree to a Noble Knight who had been mortally wounded is buried beneath the foundation of a home - this home had once been named Pierce House but now is known as THE HOUSE ON THE BLUFF. Only a direct descendant of the Noble Knight may take possession of the house - and even he or she will be tested by the house to deem if he or she is worthy.

Abigail and her consort, Ethan, have fulfilled the prophecy surrounding their current dwelling which they’ve converted into an Inn. It’s a beautiful house steeped in mystery and ghostly wonders - who cling to the old ways. There’s no electricity, no running water, no central heating system, no phone and no television. Abigail’s a bit apprehensive about their first guests. There’s a possibility they’ll get spooked and want to leave especially once the ghosts make themselves known. There’s no way of telling how the ghosts will react to guests at the Inn and Jacob, the apparitions’ “Ambassador,” knows it will just depend. Many of the ghosts have been living there for centuries and may not like having visitors in their house.

As soon as the first guests arrives a shapeless apparition appears over the Inn. Abigail, Ethan, and Tony (town sheriff and sometime permanent resident of the Inn when he’s not working) quickly realize that this apparition is not one of the ‘Others’ and they question who it is and what it wants. The ghostly appearance doesn’t scare off the guests though and is just the beginning of the bizarre appearances which will be taking place over the next couple of days. What will happen when the guests unexplainably begin to start disappearing - one or two at a time? Is the house holding them hostage?

I don’t normally read ghost stories but I have to tell you I was fascinated by this one! Elena Dorothy Bowmen’s GATEKEEPER’S REALM takes an ancient prophecy and brings it into a modern day setting with results that will steal your breath. I was enthralled by the ghost scenes and the guests reactions to each of them and couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next or to whom it would happen. The storyline moved along at a quick pace but it never lacked enough descriptive information that I was easily able to imagine each of the scenes.

I would highly recommend reading HOUSE ON THE BLUFF first simply because I believe it goes into more of the details of what Abigail had to endure in order to claim the house. Of course, I’m also going to recommend the third book, ADAM’S POINT, because there are questions that are left unanswered in this story and I’m dying to find out the answers. HOUSE ON THE BLUFF, GATEKEEPER’S REALM and ADAM’S POINT are all available now.

SNIPPET:
The HOUSE ON THE BLUFF has been converted into an Inn and the ghostly spirits who inhabit the house seem to have taken offense at the guests presence amongst them. Are any of them safe from the ghostly wrath? What will happen when the guests start mysteriously disappearing?

Odds are you know some people who’ve got a comedy script or performance project. Maybe they just don’t know where to submit it, or maybe they’re stuck and need help developing it.

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Two of our most recent winners got their scripts into the heads of HEAD EXECS at COMEDY CENTRAL and got notes from SHOWRUNNERS who’ve expressed interest in being attached to the projects! Original script winners are now also in the hands of literary agents at Metropolitan and William Morris.

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We don’t promise you riches and fame. But no matter what happens, you’ll get advice you can use to strengthen your work and have a better shot in the future.

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Submitted material must be post-marked no later than Dec. 1, 2007.

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The following is an excerpt from the book Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception by Lois Winston

Winter wonderland, my ass.

The stinging wind whipped at Emma’s exposed cheeks and brought tears to her eyes. Lowering her head, she trudged around the enormous mounds of black snow piled along the curb, searching for a semi-safe path onto the sidewalk. Finding none, she grabbed a parking meter and hauled herself over the smallest of the soot-encrusted icebergs. Some people would go to any lengths for their morning cup of java, and she was one of them.

As she yanked open the door to Chapters and Verse, the “Spring Movement” of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons greeted her. Someone had a really warped sense of humor. Or hoped the power of positive thinking could affect weather patterns. Still, the music held a reminder that the harsh realities of early February in Philadelphia would eventually give way to sunshine and flowers come late March. Maybe. Last year they’d suffered through one of their worst blizzards ever the first week in April.

Emma shivered, thoughts of daffodils and crocuses quickly replaced by the chill rippling through her damp body. Shaking the moisture from her hair, she deposited her coat on a chair in the café, then headed for the coffee bar.

“Morning,” said the barista. “The usual?”

“Please.”

With her morning shot of caffeine and sugar in hand, Emma trolled the stacks of books, occasionally pulling a volume from the shelves and sliding it under her arm. She needed the predictability of this daily routine. It helped her get through the rest of the day. Every day.

Why the hell do I stay?

If she had any courage, she’d leave. Sell the house. Move away. Start over. But she couldn’t leave, and her reasons had little to do with a lack of courage. Life in Emmaville was just too damn complex. One part guilt, one part masochism. But how could she leave the only tangible reminder she had of life before everything had turned to shit?

So she stayed, losing herself in work that at least gave her the satisfaction of knowing her efforts helped others. She pushed herself each day until exhaustion overcame her and she fell into nightmare-riddled sleep. Tomorrow morning the cycle would repeat itself. I’m a twenty-first century Sisyphus, eternally damned to live out an unending punishment for my sins. Not that she had a clue as to whatever sin first condemned her years before, but she’d certainly committed a whopper since then. Whether a sin of omission or commission, it hardly mattered. The result was the same.

Still, what would be the harm in a short escape? She deserved that much, didn’t she? Emma closed her eyes and conjured up a distant memory of a sun-kissed Adriatic coastline. Hell, why not? She opened her eyes and headed for the travel section.

* * *

Logan Crawford’s mind kept drifting back to the events of last night, an evening definitely not worth remembering. Even her name escaped him. Although normally not a problem, this time he was saddled with Candi-Randi-Bambi-whatever-the-hell-her-name-was for the length of his stay in Philadelphia. As head of the city’s redevelopment office, she was his official escort-slash-liaison, the person assigned to make certain he chose the City of Brotherly Love as the East coast site for his corporate headquarters. And last night Candi-Randi-Bambi, a woman who wore her ambition emblazoned across her surgically augmented chest, made it abundantly clear just how far she’d go to get him to sign on the dotted line. And it was far from brotherly. Or sisterly.

Logan doubted he was the first billionaire businessman she’d bedded in her quest up the corporate ladder, but he’d wager a good portion of his sizeable fortune that he was the biggest — the wunderkind west coast urban developer who was giving The Donald a run for his money. Only Logan had better hair — as the media was quick to point out.

With a snap of his fingers, he could provide Candi-Randi-Bambi with an express elevator straight through the glass ceiling, and she knew it.

No fucking way in hell.

Last night when he stared down into Candi-Randi-Bambi’s come-hither eyes, he saw the reflection of a disillusioned, unhappy man. And damn, up to that moment he hadn’t even realized he’d been disillusioned or unhappy. He had wealth; he had power. So what was up with the sudden emptiness and dissatisfaction?

Beryl would say it was because he led a shallow life devoid of emotional commitment. As much as he protested to the contrary, he knew she was right. Maybe it was time to leave the bimbos to Trump.

Struck by the epiphany, he’d bolted from Candi-Randi-Bambi’s bed. They’d used each other. She spread her legs hoping to advance her career; he’d taken advantage of the offer. Sex without emotional entanglements, the pattern of his adult life. He got the release he needed, and the woman got a notch on her bedpost. Only this time it hadn’t worked. After thirty-eight years Logan Crawford realized it was time to grow up. Only damn it, he didn’t have a clue how.

Still reeling from the self-revelation, he’d canceled his morning appointments and headed his rental car north, needing some time alone to think. After driving for half an hour he found himself in a quiet, upscale section of Philadelphia. A bookstore on top of a hill beckoned like a siren.

For the rest of his stay in Philadelphia he vowed to spend his nights curled up with a good thriller rather than a cheap thrill. Now all he had to do was find one. At the moment he couldn’t even find the damn fiction section in the boundless maze of shelves that wound around the first level of the two story megastore. Lost in the travel section, he spun on his heels and –

THUD!

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About the Author

Lois Winston is the author of several romance novels. Her book, Talk Gertie to Me, won the 2007 Readers and Bookbuyers Best Laurie Award. Find out more about Lois by visiting her website at http://www.loiswinston.com.