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Veronica Jorge: October Featured Author

October 7, 2021 by Veronica Jorge in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Featured Author of the Month tagged as Featured author, Reviewed by Veronica Jorge, Veronica Jorge, Write from the heart

Manager, Educator, and former High School Social Studies teacher, Veronica credits her love of history to the potpourri of cultures that make up her own life and to her upbringing in diverse Brooklyn, New York.

Her Work in Progress is a Young Adult Novel based on a search into her ethnic roots that explores identity, belonging, and self-discovery. Her genres of choice are historical fiction, where she always makes new discoveries, literary works because she loves beautiful writing, and children’s picture books because there are so many wonderful worlds yet to be imagined and visited.

She currently resides in Macungie, PA., but she’s still a Brooklyn girl at heart. How sweet it is!

Veronica’s story “Fiona Malone’s Fesh,” is featured in the Fall 2021 Issue of Bethlehem Writers Roundtable.

In addition to her fiction, she has a monthly column, Write from the Heart, here on A Slice of Orange where she writes about writing, life and does book reviews.

Connect with her on Facebook @VeronicaJorgeauthor

Books Reviewed by Veronica

#PLEASE SAY YES (#HermosafortheHolidays Book 1)

A DRAKENFALL CHRISTMAS

FOREIGN RELATIONS

FORGIVING MARIELA CAMACHO

FORGIVING MAXIMO ROTHMAN

FORGIVING STEPHEN REDMOND

MIGUEL’S BRAVE KNIGHT

MY FRIEND JACKSON

ONE TASTE TOO MANY

THE LAST GOODNIGHT

SECRET RELATIONS

SERIOUSLY, MOM, YOU DIDN’T KNOW?

SEVERED RELATIONS

THREE TREATS TOO MANY

THE RELUCTANT GROOM AND OTHER HISTORICAL STORIES

THE ALLIANCE

THE SCRIBE OF SIENA

TWO BITES TOO MANY

THE DAY BAILEY DEVLIN’S HOROSCOPE CAME TRUE

THE DAY BAILEY DEVLIN PICKED UP A PENNY

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Glamor Girl Blitz

October 6, 2021 by marianne h donley in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Rabt Book Tours tagged as @RABTBookTours, Glamor Girl, historical fiction, The Fourniers, Vera Jane Cook

Historical Fiction

Date Published: 10-06-2021

Publisher: Indies United

Escaping from her childhood, Sheela, flees her aunt’s motel where she is forced to work as a cleaning maid and provide ‘favors’ for wealthy guests and winds up in Miami in Kit Malone’s fancy brothel. Beautiful and stately, Sheela becomes a high-class prostitute, a millionaire’s mistress and a Billy Rose showgirl. When she meets the love of her life in Manhattan, the charming but naïve Julius Clark, life blossoms into something both frightening and titillating. But when Sheela gives birth to her daughter, Fanny, it is this shadowy and stormy relationship that alters the course of both of their destinies and defines their future.

About the Author

Vera Jane Cook was born in New York City and has been a city girl ever since. As an only child, she turned to reading novels at an early age and was deeply influenced by an eclectic group of authors. Before Jane became a writer, she worked in the professional theatre and appeared on television, in regional theatre, film and off Broadway.

At the age of fifty Jane began to write novels. Some of her titles include Dancing Backward in Paradise, winner of an Eric Hoffer Award for publishing excellence and an Indie Excellence Award for notable new fiction, 2007. The Story of Sassy Sweetwater and Dancing Backward in Paradise received 5 Star ForeWord Clarion Reviews and The Story of Sassy Sweetwater was named a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Awards. She has published in ESL Magazine, Christopher Street Magazine and has written early childhood curriculum for Weekly Reader and McGraw Hill.

Jane still lives on the upper west side of Manhattan right near Riverside Park, where she takes her delightful dogs, Peanut and Carly, for a jog,. She comes home to her spouse of thirty years and her two cats, Sassy and Sweetie Pie.

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Veronica Jorge: October Featured Author

October 1, 2021 by Veronica Jorge in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Featured Author of the Month tagged as Featured author, Reviewed by Veronica Jorge, Veronica Jorge, Write from the heart

She currently resides in Macungie, PA., but she’s still a Brooklyn girl at heart. How sweet it is!

Veronica’s story “Fiona Malone’s Fesh,” is featured in the Fall 2021 Issue of Bethlehem Writers Roundtable.

In addition to her fiction, she has a monthly column, Write from the Heart, here on A Slice of Orange where she writes about writing, life and does book reviews.

Connect with her on Facebook @VeronicaJorgeauthor

Books Reviewed by Veronica

#PLEASE SAY YES (#HermosafortheHolidays Book 1)

A DRAKENFALL CHRISTMAS

FOREIGN RELATIONS

FORGIVING MARIELA CAMACHO

FORGIVING MAXIMO ROTHMAN

FORGIVING STEPHEN REDMOND

MIGUEL’S BRAVE KNIGHT

MY FRIEND JACKSON

ONE TASTE TOO MANY

THE LAST GOODNIGHT

SECRET RELATIONS

SERIOUSLY, MOM, YOU DIDN’T KNOW?

SEVERED RELATIONS

THREE TREATS TOO MANY

THE RELUCTANT GROOM AND OTHER HISTORICAL STORIES

THE ALLIANCE

THE SCRIBE OF SIENA

TWO BITES TOO MANY

THE DAY BAILEY DEVLIN’S HOROSCOPE CAME TRUE

THE DAY BAILEY DEVLIN PICKED UP A PENNY

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Zither! Book Tour

September 23, 2021 by marianne h donley in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Rabt Book Tours tagged as #RABTBookTours, Jeffrey Hanlon, mystery, Zither!

Metafiction/Humor/Mystery

Date Published: April 20th, 2021

Publisher: Zither Studios

A nutty religious cult abducts a herd of prime gazebos (huh?) and it’s up to bumbling P.I. Mars Candiotti to rescue them. Mars, aspiring author, chronicles his quest in Jeffrey Hanlon’s comic mystery Zither.

Guided by his magically prescient IHOP waitress, Mars strives to mitigate the shocking global consequences of the gazebo heist, even though he has no idea what the word mitigate means. Mars has five Important clues with which to solve his confounding mystery: Butterscotch, John Travolta, Trombones Venetian Blinds, and Wind Chimes.

As Zither swallows its own tale, Mars finds it increasingly tricky to distinguish between real people and his rambunctious fictional characters. Zither becomes the romper room where his reality meets fantasy – and get frisky with each other.

Using his (odd) clues, Mars’ international odyssey leads to an explosive conclusion in Panama. TVs around the world tune in to watch live coverage of “Carnage in the Canal”.

Amid the lunatic havoc that is Zither there is (of course!) an epic love story as Mars meets Marian, the brainy librarian he had dreamed of. Marian says his books are “slapstick existentialism with subjective reality couched in parable”. (This is news to Mars). But is Marian real?

Is any of it real?

“Hanlon’s humor shines bright and will leave fans of such madness wanting more.” Publishers Weekly

“This zany, rollicking mystery adventure is as compelling as it is hilarious.” Independent Book Review

Nominated for the prestigious Audie Award, Best Fiction 2021

About the Author

I was born in a Southern California beach town.

My family moved to Northwest Oregon when I was 7. Or maybe when I was 8.

Had we stayed in the Beach Boys town, and knowing myself as I do now, I suspect I would have grown long hair, started a rock band, and been heavily into drugs. The rock band would probably have been pretty good. The rest of it, not so much. I’d likely have joined the ranks of those like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin.

We moved to a mountaintop. The last five miles to get there were gravel. The final two miles were steep and to the end of the road.

That’s where we lived: the end of the road, 22 miles to the nearest town.

Our closest neighbor, about a mile down the road, was a hermit who lived in a shack. He had a goat. About once a month the goat would visit us. Then the hermit would show up to retrieve his goat. I think the goat liked us better than the hermit, which is why the goat kept showing up. Goats are funny animals. I think they aspire to be house pets.

And speaking of animals, we had cats. Lots and lots of cats. Because we were remote and at the end of the road, unkind people – and ‘unkind’ is the kindest description I can use here – would dump their unwanted cats on or near our property. The cats would find our house. We gave them Fancy Feast and our love, and in turn they loved us.

My childhood friends didn’t visit too often. That was at least partly because when they did show up my father would say something like this: “Great! We have a job that could use an extra hand. Won’t take more than five minutes.” Well, that five minutes usually turned into an hour or two – volunteer labor! – and that friend would seldom visit again.

So my favorite childhood playmate was a 2000 pound Hereford bull, a big boy with horns spanning three feet. I’d go out in the pasture and the bull would strike a pose not unlike what you’ve seen in the movies where the bull was ready to charge, head down, eyeing me. But he wasn’t going to charge me. He just wanted his forehead scratched. And so I would scratch his forehead. He liked that, shaking his head every so often to show his approval. Then we’d elevate to a game that the bull might have called ‘Let’s see how far we can toss this little kid!’ and I’d place my right hip against his massive head and he’d toss me into the air like a sack of flour. Over and over, farther and farther, higher and higher. I could have done that for hours – I can fly! – but after a few tosses the bull would grow bored with the game and wander off. Probably to chase some cute heifers.

The nearest library was 30 miles away, and we ventured there often. It was a majestic old building, and the Grand Room had books on all four walls with reading chairs in the center. But that was not where I wanted to be. I figured all those books were popular books or books I was supposed to read. I wanted something different, so I would enter the room with a small sign that said ‘Stacks’. It was row after narrow row after row of books, floor to ceiling, dimly lit, dusty. It was like entering a cave. Filled with treasures!

It was in those Stacks that I discovered the likes of Kerouac and Heller and Huxley and Fowles and Steinbeck and Ellison and Bradbury and Hemingway and many many others.

As Stephen King said, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

And those, each in their own way, was the inspiration for the first book I wrote at the age of eight or nine: ‘Pond Scum’.

It was illustrated.

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Zither!

Jeffrey Hanlon

Excerpt

As nightfall approached, we prepared.

Pete disguised himself as management, putting on a nice Men’s Wearhouse suit with a bleeding turnip lapel pin.

I disguised myself as Britney Spears.

At the stroke of midnight, Pete and I left his house and headed for the St. Francis Yacht Club.

As contrived luck would have it, Benny Tisdale had left the cabin on his dumb boat unlocked.

In stealthy fashion, Pete and I went below.

“I’ll shine the flashlight and listen for footprints. You find the varnish,” Pete said.

It took no time at all to find Benny’s Man O’ War. Actually, it took a bit of time, but you know what I mean.

As Pete held the light, I donned my surgical gloves and placed Benny’s Man O’ War in my black op bag.

“Easy as taking candy from a drowning man,” Pete whispered.

I nodded.

Pete said, “It’s dark in here, Mars. If you’re going to nod, warn me so I can shine the flashlight on your head.”

“Okay, Pete. We’ll make that a new rule.”

As we prepared to exit in stealthy fashion, Pete shined his flashlight around the cabin, then said, “Mars, look at this big wooden crate.”

I looked at the wooden crate. It was big enough to hold a Barcalounger.

“I’ll bet it’s filled with ill-gotten booties,” Pete said. “Or a Barcalounger.”

He handed me the flashlight and pried open the crate’s lid with a crowbar.

It was not until some time after dark that we took courage to get up and throw the body overboard. It was then loathsome beyond expression, and so far decayed that, as Peters attempted to lift it, an entire leg came off in his grasp . . .

“Peters?” Pete said. “Do you mean Pete? Me? What body? What leg?”

“Sorry. That’s Edgar Allen Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.“

“What’s Poe doing in this chapter?”

I shined the flashlight on my shoulder and shrugged.

He snatched the light back, looked in the crate, and said, aghast, “We’ve gotta get outta here quick, Mars! This boat could blow any minute!”

I looked inside the big wooden crate.

Here is what was in there: hundreds, probably thousands, of Steven Seagal movies.

We’d be lucky to get out of there alive. Seagal movies have a tendency to bomb.

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Featured Author: H. O. Charles

September 21, 2021 by H. O. Charles in category Art, Cover, Design by H. O. Charles, Featured Author of the Month tagged as Best Selling author, fantasy, Featured author, HO Charles, The Fireblade Array

H. O. Charles Featured Author for September

H.O. Charles is an Amazon Top 100 Sci-Fi and Fantasy author of The Fireblade Array – a #2 best-selling series across Kindle, iBooks and B&N Nook in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy categories (#1 would just be showing off, right?) Okay, it did hit #1 in Epic Fantasy in all those places . . . BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE because no one likes a bragger.

Though born in Northern England, Charles now resides in a white house in Sussex and sounds like a southerner. Charles has spent many years at various academic institutions, and cut short writing a PhD in favour of writing about swords and sorcery instead. Hobbies include being in the sea, being by the sea and eating things that come out of the sea. Walks with a very naughty rough collie puppy also take up much of Charles’ time.

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