The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.” ~ Voltaire
At least, that is what this shut-in/hermit writer believes. And then I laugh. I may live in the country, but the only time I have solitude is in the early, early morning before everyone else is awake.
When hot actor Brem Lockwood enters her life, Madelyn has a choice—stay safe with an online fling or risk her heart for a chance at real love.
Divorcee Madelyn Stacilli has baggage deeper than the Grand Canyon, and her move to New Haven to start a new life is the perfect change she needs. When vicious gossip stunts her plans to open her own business, she can’t confide in anyone around her. But online, beneath the blanket of anonymity, she can let loose and find comfort with the mysterious Easton216. Their natural, open relationship is a breath of fresh air.
When British A-list actor Bremond Lockwood rents the house beside her to escape an intense media spotlight and malicious past, he charges headlong into her life. Madelyn grows torn between her steady, emotional online connection and a fiery affair with a Hollywood star. Brem’s intense passion ignites the embers of her sexuality from a long slumber, making her burn hotter than the sun.
Should she stay safe with her online love or risk her heart with the man in front of her? The road to recovery just got a whole lot more complicated.
Reader advisory: This book contains a scene of public sex and a scene of kidnapping. There is mention of gaslighting, alcoholism, emotional abuse, animal cruelty, and attempted murder.
Roxanne D. Howard is a U.S. Army veteran who has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and English. She loves to read poetry, classical literature, and Stephen King. Also, she is an avid Star Wars fan, musical theater nut, and marine biology geek. Roxanne resides in the western U.S., and when she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband and children. Roxanne loves to hear from her readers, and encourages you to contact her via her website and social media.
Here’s the latest entry in our series of FREE short stories aimed at telling the story about how love can still happen in these days of isolation!
The latest offering is from Ava Cuvay entitled “Noob at Love“! And yes, the hero is a nerdy gamer, but the language and energy, and sheer relief he experiences when he finds the girl who’s perfect for him in every way is a joy. So, download this short story now!
Noob at Love
Here’s what it’s all about…
Quarantine should be life as usual for Kyle, an online gamer homebody. But the constant presence and noise of his apartment neighbors is hell for the introvert. He turns to his favorite gamer pal, SassyKat, for consolation in the form of zombie kill-counts and good-natured teasing. Then, a fire alarm changes their relationship for good.
The 1960s were turbulent and passionate and colorful. Since the first time I put pen to paper, about thirteen years ago, I’ve wanted to write a story set in those vibrant days. But until recently, every time I tried, my efforts seemed weak and whimsical at best. And then I visited a town I’d all but forgotten about.
In the Black Hills of central Arizona (yes, I said Arizona), Jerome hangs on the side of a mountain as it has since the mining days of the 1800s. Once known as the wickedest town in the west, Jerome all but died out in the 1950s. The population dipped to under 100 people. Then the hippies discovered the abandoned homes and buildings and settled in to create a ghost town full of art and wine. No new buildings are allowed within the city limits unless they are constructed on existing foundations and must resemble the surrounding buildings. Jerome looks much like it did in the 1920s.
Me in a haunted hotel in Jerome
I love this place. Jerome became my fictional Joshua. The inspiration came alive for me, and The MacKenzie Chronicles resulted.
In the pages of the first book, Secrets of the Ravine, I was able to tell a 1960s story of those early hippie settlers that has an impact on the mystery that unfolds in today’s world. Each of the three books will tell the story of one of the MacKenzie siblings whose parents met in the 60s hippie heyday, stayed in Joshua, and raised Magpie Muse MacKenzie, Harlan Muse MacKenzie, and Elidor Muse MacKenzie. Dad Frank Harlan MacKenzie is an artist of metal and wood. Mom Susie Muse is a mystic, empath, aura reader, with all of the wonderful mind-expanding fascinations of the 60s. Their children have inherited both artistic abilities and mystical talents in varying degrees. Those gifts will help them solve murder and mystery in each book.
Do you believe in intuition? Empathic vibrations? How about clairsentience (“clear feeling,” describes someone who receives intuitive or psychic information through their tactile sense and emotions)? I do and have had some real-life experiences. Care to share yours with us? Please do. We’d love to hear.
Give me a one or two-sentence review right here, and I’ll enter you in a drawing to receive an eBook. No matter what you think, you have a chance to win. Let’s leave it open for a week, and I’ll draw a winner on October 5th out of those who comment about the first chapter.
Secrets of the Ravine
When a ringer for her long-dead love walks into her life the same day skeletal remains are found at the edge of town, Magpie MacKenzie can’t ignore what the universe is telling her…solve the mystery, or become the next victim.
Lawyer Zack Peartree’s life is orderly and entanglement-free until he visits purportedly haunted Joshua, Arizona, and meets free-wheeling shopkeeper Magpie. Despite experiencing troubling visions and odd moments of déjà vu, Zack’s instantly drawn to Magpie and to the unsolved murder which troubles her so.
Using clues from her father’s past and Zack’s déjà vu moments, Magpie and Zack race to solve the mystery, avoid a murderous fate, and to discover their future…together.
Brenda Whiteside is the author of suspenseful, action-adventure stories with a touch of romance. Mostly. After living in six states and two countries—so far—she and her husband have decided they are gypsies at heart, splitting their time between Central Arizona and the RV life. They share their home with a rescue dog named Amigo. While FDW is fishing, Brenda writes.
Blathering’s a great word, don’t you think? I remember reading it often when I read Regencies.
So… I’m still typing one-handed. Probably will for the next month. I’m back to editing. I’ll try some speaking into my phone and sending myself messages to get some of my own pages written. My back’s much better. I’m standing straight again, instead of bent over. Lovely progress.
The weather has cooled too much to swim, so I’m not quite as resentful of my predicament as I could be. Silver linings!
I really need a haircut. I think I’ll ask the 16-year-old to watch some YouTubes… I’ve been letting the gray grow out. Well, I have silvery streaks, which I like. I wish the rest would turn quickly. I’ll be fashionable then.
The fam is pretty tight and adjusted to life in lockdown. Online schooling is challenging with four kids who need help and monitoring. The local high school football team is quarantined for positive tests, so our kids are ahead of the game. I can’t imagine having schools open and close and open and close without administrators deciding it just makes better sense to transition everyone. Less liability and constant jiggering for them.
We do takeout a couple of times a week, pick up groceries in front of the local grocery store, and do all our other shopping online. We have special “events”. Tonight, the older kids are having a friend over for a “star party” outside, and then they’ll light a fire in the fire pit and relax. The fire pit was an early lockdown project!
So, that’s what’s happening with the Devlin fam. What have you all been up to? Comment for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!
The phrase “return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear” was made famous by announcer Fred Foy, introducing the adventures of the old Lone Ranger and Tonto on radio and television. But for me, it’s a clarion call to lose myself in that wonderful time machine called history.
Twenty-seven years ago, I pastored a small church in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Nazarene United Church of Christ sits on the corners of Patchen Avenue and MacDonough Street. Often as I walked to do pastoral visits on the other side of Atlantic Avenue, I passed several wooden houses and wondered what they were, who had lived there. I learned they were the remnants of Weeksville, a community founded by free-Blacks in the 1830s. In the three years I served Nazarene, I never once got to visit them.
On my last trip back to New York, I visited the Brooklyn Historical Society and discovered Judith Wellman’s wonderful book, Brooklyn’s Promised Land: The Free Black Community of Weeksville, New York. She transported me back to the thrilling days of yesteryear on streets inhabited by the residents of a thriving Black community of ministers, doctors, landowners and entrepreneurs, streets I’d walked and intersections I’d crossed. The community’s residents strove to develop pride in self and place. It served not just as enclave for themselves but a refuge for many from the Southern violence of slavery in the South or Northern violence like the Manhattan draft riots of 1863. In 1968, a workshop sponsored by Pratt Institute led to the rediscovery of this historical safe haven.
How odd that I, who grew up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, chose to write historical romance about Blacks in the far West when Blacks west of East New York were much closer at hand. From my research done at the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Schomburg, and through Wellman’s book I wrote the novella Light The Fire Again for the Fireworks: A Passionate Ink Romance Anthology. Fred Foy’s call to return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear in the West, draws me west to Weeksville and to the thrilling stories Weeksville inspires me to write. A reimagined Gilded Age Weeksville is now the setting of my women’s fiction series of novels that I’m adapting from Wagner’s Ring cycle operas.
I didn’t get to visit the Weeksville Heritage Center last October. There’s always next year, I thought. I’ll be glad when I can tour Weeksville in the flesh, not just on the Heritage Center’s website: https://www.weeksvillesociety.org/.
I hope you will tour the original Weeksville houses and listen to one man reminisce about his childhood home there on the videos listed below:
Thanks for letting me share. Now, how about you share in the comments what you’ve learned about the history of your people or your neighborhood or your family. Everyone who does will be entered into a drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card.
Light the Fire Again
One night in 1896 between delicious rounds of oral sex, Adelaide Hanson and Hero Williams shared their hopes and dreams. She to be an artist like Edmonia Lewis. He to amass great wealth. Hero went off to start a fireworks business. Adelaide remained in Weeksville hampered by a ruined reputation until a doctor’s examination proved her still a virgin.
Two years later, Hero, now a self-made millionaire, returns to share his wealth with the community that sheltered his family from the violence of the Post-Reconstruction South. He has also returned hoping to ask Adelaide for her hand. She, however, is anticipating a marriage proposal from the son of one of the Black community’s most prominent families, despite his mother’s disapproval. Hero begs for a chance to change Adelaide’s mind. Although still in love with him, she is unwilling to risk her heart and societal opprobrium again. Then Hero makes an offer he hopes she won’t refuse: a chance to revive what they shared two years ago by viewing a private fireworks display designed especially to light the fire between them again.
Light the Fire Again is one of seven steamy fireworks-featuring romances in the Fireworks anthology, proceeds from which will go to ProLiteracy, an adult literacy organization. So enjoy some great sex while supporting a great cause.
Red and white checkered tablecloths fluttered gently in the warm July breeze. Summer sunlight glinted off glass pitchers brimming with iced tea, lemonade and water. The event attendees had filtered out of the hall and were lining up at the collation tables. Everyone grinned and smacked their lips as the delicious scents of collards, cornbread and fresh-baked biscuits, sweet potatoes, and chicken, both baked and fried, filled the air.
Adelaide’s stomach growled. She pressed a fist against her gut to quiet it. She hadn’t had breakfast and regretted offering to help serve.
“Hurry up Adelaide,” Emmaline Thompson barked. “Set those platters beside the others, go back for the last tray then be ready to serve.”
Adelaide bristled, tempted to deliver a tongue lashing of her own but kept silent and complied.
Reverend Johnson, Hero and several clergy and civic leaders headed for a white linen-covered table decked with red, white and blue ribbons set aside for the guest of honor.
Hero glanced her way, catching her eye. He smiled. Not a broad enjoy-your-day smile, but a narrow I-remember-you grin.
She remembered him too.
Her stomach growled again, this time from a different hunger.
She speared chicken on to plate after plate, forcing a smile with every “You’re welcome” she said to each guest served. The letter in her pocket gave her no reason to smile.
Reverend Johnson had given her the envelope in his office. She recognized Hero’s handwriting immediately. If Reverend Johnson hadn’t been present she’d have ripped it up. She’d shoved it in her pocket, planning to do just that when the minister asked her to please open it then and there.
The envelope contained two pieces of paper: one an article from the Brooklyn Eagle announcing the reason for Hero’s return to Weeksville. His family, known for their generosity to causes dedicated to uplifting the Negro race, had several monetary gifts for their former neighborhood. The reporter recounted the family’s harrowing escape from the South then chronicled their rise to wealth. Their most recent success was attributed to the series of fireworks Hero had designed over the last two years. The article ended by quoting Hero.
“Yes, God has blessed us with success, but I’ll be forever grateful to a muse who inspired me late one August night.”
Adelaide re-read the quote several times. Just seeing the words “August night” set her sex pulsing. She laid the article aside and read the second piece of paper. A hot fist of awakening curled low in her belly as she mouthed its simple words.
