Hi, my name D. V. Stone and I want to thank Delilah for having me here today. Like many of you, I wear different hats. Wife, mother, grandmother, author, and full-time medical receptionist. It’s a busy life for all of us and trying to keep up with chores and work can sometimes suck the life out of a person. No, I don’t have the cure. Sorry. But there are things that I do to help keep the sanity and balance.

I love to cook. I love to camp. Not on the ground mind you, we have an RV. Bonus! It has an outdoor kitchen. Why do I bring this up? I’m learning to cook over the open fire.

Recipe

These are called Hobo Bags.

I sprayed the foil with non-stick spray and then added seasoned chicken topped with potatoes and corn. A pat of butter, twist them shut and cook for about 45 min. No muss. No fuss. No dishes to clean up. You can do it on a grill or in the oven, too.

Camping reminds me of the old ways. Maybe you remember when you were a kid, unexpected dinner guests. Whoever was at our house got fed. “Mom, can fill in the blank stay for supper?” Could be heard from a lot of houses, including ours. Especially popular with my husband was finding out what his mom was making and then getting himself invited to a friend who wasn’t having a veggie-centric meal.

Since I live in the suburbs, daily shopping is a waste of time and gas. Also trying to eat healthier is hard in a grab and go situation. So, what are some of the things a busy person can do to

I keep a pretty well-stocked freezer and pantry of basics. I’m a big believer in semi-homemade. That means things like a rotisserie chicken is a staple in my house. Dinner, then sandwiches, and finally leftover pieces tossed with some frozen vegetables and seasoning gives me a great lunch for work. Onions, garlic, and peppers are always in the fridge.

In my local market, I found this huge bag of stir-fry and tossed out the sauce because of how much salt is in it. If you have some chicken or frozen shrimp and a few spices add some liquid and you’ve got a tasty meal. I’ve used wine, chicken broth, and I discovered a jalapeno peanut butter which cooked down adds a kick.

Later this year I have a book coming out titled Rock House Grill. The story is about a restaurant and characters with hopes and dreams. I get to combine several things. Classic Rock, cooking, and medical. I used to be an Emergency Medical Technician, and Shay, my female lead character, dreams of being a chef.

What about you? What can you pull out of your magic hat at a moment’s notice? Even better, what do you do to keep sanity and balance?

About the Author

D. V. Stone is a multi-genre author of two independently published books. Felice, Shield-Mates of Dar is a fantasy romance. Agent Sam Carter and the Mystery at Branch Lake is a mid-grade paranormal. Recently, Rock House Grill, a contemporary romance has been signed with Wild Rose Press. She also hosts Welcome to the Campfire where each week she interviews authors about not only books but their life. You may pick up a recipe or two there.

Born in Brooklyn, D.V. Stone has moved around a bit and even lived for a time on a dairy farm in Minnesota before moving back east. Despite her wandering, she always considered herself a Jersey Girl. She met the love of her life and moved, this time to Sussex County. Her husband, Pete, is a lifelong Sussex County man. They share their home with Hali a mixed breed from a local shelter and Baby a small gray cat who bosses everyone around.

Website  Facebook  Twitter  Instagram
Pinterest  Bookbub  Goodreads  Newsletter

UPDATE: The winner is…Tamara Kasyan!
*~*~*

Growing up, my parents would often tout hardship and struggle as “building character” opportunities. At the time, their philosophy seemed self-serving and entirely unfair because 1) I was a teen and already knew everything so didn’t need character, 2) it was surely just an excuse to get me to do housework, and 3) they never said at what point I had accrued enough character… My life was just a series of opportunities.

Flash forward a few *cough*cough* years and, as a romance author, I’m still building character… but this time, it’s on the page, and without all the unfounded teen angst and attitude. However, the concept remains consistent in both writing and real life: greater suffering equals more character. I’m not talking the kind of character I built while cleaning the cat box the night I won a local scholarship pageant, even though the image of being up to my white satin elbow gloves in litter-crusted poop still sticks with me and is good for a chuckle. Nor am I talking about the character I automatically build by simply having tweenagers, even though that character is most often called gray hair.

I’m talking the kind of suffering we put our characters through before they get their happily ever after. Authors talk about making characters earn their HEA. When in doubt, make them suffer more. When the going gets tough, make it worse. If it’s clear sailing until the end, throw another road block at them. Kill off your [non-main-character] darlings. Not unlike those movie chase scenes where the pursued knocks over shelves and lamps and grandfather clocks… whatever they can get their hands on to stall or slow their pursuer. We authors try to slow the progression of our characters toward their happy ending. Because if their journey is too easy, they won’t appreciate the destination.

I’m sure my parents spouted something about better appreciating what was earned versus what was given, just as I’m sure I’ve said the same to my own tweenagers.

As an author, it’s crucial that my characters earn the end-prize, which in romance is… well… the romance. The emotionally satisfying and hopeful ending where the two (or more) characters are assured that for at least their immediate future they are safe and in the company of someone who loves them unconditionally. This is what we want: for our characters to have overcome the most overwhelming, insurmountable obstacles, so that when they finally fall into the arms of their loved one(s), they fully appreciate it because they’ve experienced first-hand how sh*tty their life could otherwise be.

Really, it’s also what we want for ourselves, but without all the overwhelming, insurmountable obstacles. Yet while it’s far more satisfying to read about fictional characters being wrung through the wringer for their HEA, doesn’t life imitate art? Don’t we as individuals better appreciate what or who we have when we personally experience how much our life would suck otherwise? Don’t we suffer and come out on the other side with more character?

So, in spite of my teenage eye-rolling at the concept, building character is a good thing, in both fiction and real life. Now, if only I could convince my tweenagers 😉

Contest

Comment for a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift card.

Blood King: Revamping the Monarchy

Below is an excerpt from my third book, Blood King: Revamping the Monarchy. My hero, Rune, is an alien vampire king who begins the story dead. My heroine is a hair stylist on a getaway vacation. And it all goes downhill from there. 😉

In a blink, she was on her back, prone on the couch with Rune’s powerful body above hers, his hips wedged between her legs, pressing against her instantly throbbing core. She clutched his taut biceps, breathless from the swift change in position and the overwhelming heat of summer lightning which started where his erection pulsed against her clit and zapped along her nerves. He lowered his head to her neck, his hot breath like some snarling predator about to slake its hunger on its prey.

He was going to bite her. The moist warmth of his tongue trailed along the column of her neck. The slight scrape of fangs against the tender skin tickled and alarmed. Her skin prickled and her nipples tightened. She held her breath, her heart racing with an explosive combination of fear and arousal.

“You are so demanding, Kazandra.” His soft murmur vibrated straight to her core and he rocked his hips along the sensitive nub. A needy whimper escaped her lips.

“Should I drink from here?” He nibbled the space below her earlobe.

Kaz held her breath.

“Maybe I shall drink from here.” His fangs gently raked the chord where her neck met her shoulder.

She hissed in a breath, her heart galloping as if it could run away.

“No, from here would be best.” His mouth widened around the jugular, his fangs pressed against the thin bit of skin and muscle protecting the artery.
His body tensed for the attack.

Her body flinched.

Bloody hell, this was it.

Rune straightened to a stand in one fluid motion. His expression transformed from simply Rune to Vahsiil Lahdunae, powerful monarch of an entire species. A frown tugged at his lips and the earlier warmth in his eyes frosted over. His voice was similarly icy. “Please understand if I do not abide by your command, Kazandra. You are not ready to be a benefactor and I will not drink from you.”

Available in both ebook and print versions:
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HDVRCKC
NOOK: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/ava+cuvay?
KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/blood-king-1

About Me

Ava Cuvay writes out of this world romance featuring sassy heroines, often-alien-but-always-sexy heroes, and an alcoholic beverage or two… Set in a galaxy far, far away. She resides in central Indiana with her own scruffy-looking nerfherder, kiddos who are growing up without her permission, and two kitties that make her laugh. She believes life is too short to bother with negative people, everything is better with Champagne, and Han Solo shot first. When not writing, Ava is thinking about writing. Or wine. And she’s always thinking about bacon.

website: https://www.avacuvay.com/
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Ava-Cuvay/e/B01E5OIZ0I/
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15051407.Ava_Cuvay
Facebook: https://facebook.com/AvaCuvayAuthor/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/ava-cuvay

We recently returned from a two-week road trip through some of our western states: South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Nebraska. Being a Midwest (Michigan) born and bred girl, those rugged places have always held a special appeal for me. I was also always a big fan of cowboys (well, the TV kind anyway) and so traveling through towns with names like Medicine Bow, Cody, and Buffalo, takes me back to the many TV westerns I used to watch as a kid. While driving through the mountains and canyons, I can just imagine those characters, as well as the ones I like to read and write about, riding their horses along those trails. While the modern West is certainly different from those long-ago days, much of it remains the same. The people with their fierce independence, the land with its rushing rivers, and the mountains with their amazing peaks reaching to the vast sky.

I have also always loved animals, and most especially horses. I’ve never been without some sort of animal companion, and for ten years owned (or was owned by!) a beautiful little Arabian named Cato. For the past 17 years, I have written a monthly column where I advocate for homeless pets and pet rescue. When I started to write my recent release, it seemed only natural to include animals in the story. It wasn’t hard to come up with their characters, because most of them are based on animals I have known and loved. But I thought long and hard about how I could include my love of the West in the book when it was set in my home state. Then I realized, my hero, Shane McBride, was returning from years of living out West, to the small town in Michigan where he’d first fallen in love, and where Allison Delaney still lives. He is surprised at what he finds.

In spite of a broken heart, Allison Delaney carved out a life for herself and her young daughter on her grandparents’ farm. Her child and the horses she rescues are all that matter. Then a sudden threat to their safety puts her back in touch with Shane McBride, the man she never thought to see again.

Returning to the small town of Silver Creek brings back a lot of memories for Shane, ones he treasures haunted by the ones that made him leave, but this time he is determined to stay and make things right.

Trusting Shane may be her only choice, but now Allison fears not only the threat against her farm but the risk of losing her heart again.

I had such a fun time writing this story, where I could include animals and places I have known. But mostly, I loved writing about a man and a woman who were once deeply in love, but who must now deal with not only their past but with the problems the present brings to them. They soon discover that healing their broken hearts may not be the most difficult thing they face.

Here is an excerpt from Will o’ the Wisp:

“The man who stepped from inside the truck was definitely not Doc. Tall, with shoulders stretching the faded fabric of his denim shirt and shiny black hair that glistened in the sunlight, he would have towered over Doc’s stocky figure. As he started toward the barn, she couldn’t see his face, but the easy swagger to his walk, the way he rolled his booted feet from heel to toe, spoke to her of things she thought she had forgotten. Had worked very hard to forget. Feelings she’d buried ten years ago. Uncomfortable, she dropped her gaze to her daughter who had come to stand next to Gypsy.

“Is he Doc’s helper, you think?” Lizzie scrunched her nose. “I don’t think I know him.”

Sudden awareness clutched Allison’s heart, giving it an extra beat, as if to prove the man walking toward her was still easy on the eyes but hard on the heart. He’d certainly been hard on hers.

*~*~*

Will o’ the Wisp, published by The Wild Rose Press.
Buy links:
Amazon https://tinyurl.com/y687pwdu
Barnes and Noble https://tinyurl.com/y4d8khde
Kobo https://tinyurl.com/yy5et299\

Is there any place special you like to travel to?
A setting you love to read about?

About the Author

I’ve been making up stories for as long as I can remember, starting with animal stories and graduating to an historical romance I wrote while in junior high school. In college, I took several creative writing classes, and when my children were small, I wrote and sold a number of short stories to Woman’s World magazine. Those stories are now included in the five anthologies on my Book Page.

I’ve been a member of Romance Writers of America and Mid-Michigan Romance Writers for over thirty years and have written articles for chapter newsletters. I’m also concerned with animal welfare issues, and I write a monthly column called “The Pet Corner”, where I advocate for homeless pets and local shelters and rescue groups. Some of those columns appear on my Zeke Chronicles blog.

My husband and I live in southwest Michigan, near the sunset coast of Lake Michigan, with our dogs; Ace, a silly Terrier mix, and Foo Foo, a crazy Pomeranian, and two kitties, Zombie and Sandwich.

We have two grown children and a number of granddogs. We love to travel, especially out West, where I’m always on the lookout for a new setting for my books.

My website: https://lucynaylorkubash.com
Author Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LucyNaylorKubash/

FIRST RESPONSE: A BOYS BEHAVING BADLY ANTHOLOGY
Editor: Delilah Devlin
Deadline: November 15, 2019

FIRST RESPONSE is open to all authors.

Editor/Author Delilah Devlin is looking for stories for a romantic erotica anthology tentatively entitled FIRST RESPONSE: A BOYS BEHAVING BADLY ANTHOLOGY.

Why write a short story for this collection? Well, it’s certainly not about making a lot of money, so why do it at all? I’ve said this before, but here are my thoughts…

Writing a short story for a call for submissions is a chance to flex your writing muscle! It can be a chance to experiment with a genre you’ve never written. If you’ve never written a story in first person but don’t want to begin by writing an entire novel using it, start short! For myself, I’ve written stories in new genres or with fresh themes that ended up being so much fun to write they’ve spawned entire series.

You have a deadline! I don’t know about you, but I have trouble keeping my butt in the chair without one!

It’s a promotional opportunity! If selected, you’ll be joined by 12-15 other authors for the launch, sharing your audiences and, hopefully, picking up new readers along the way. Having your story in the collection is another chance to be “seen.”

And remember, you retain the rights to your story, so you can republish it for individual sale or give it away to attract subscribers to your newsletter. You might even decide there’s more story to tell and expand it into a novel!

Here’s what I’m looking for…

FIRST RESPONSE: A BOYS BEHAVING BADLY ANTHOLOGY will include stories that satisfy the reader who craves stories about those brave people who sweep into therescue, regardless of the dangers. Here are a few ideas…

When an alarm goes off in a high-rise apartment building, our heroine is trapped in an elevator while fire spreads in the floors above her. Who will provide her comfort until she can be rescued? An ex who’s a fireman with local FD? Perhaps the heroine is the pilot of a spaceship on the edge of the galaxy when her ship is attacked, and she’s forced to land on uninhabited planet. Who will come to her rescue? Will he be human? The vessel of a woman attempting a solo voyage around the world is sinking in the middle of the ocean. Will a pirate be her only hope?

Don’t limit your imagination to these ideas! Just remember, our “boys” have to behave badly—to give the rescuee just what they always secretly craved… Have fun with the concept.

I’m open to any subgenre of erotic romance you want to write. I’ll accept contemporary, historical, science fiction, or paranormal stories, and I won’t be picky about whether the stories are hetero, LGBT, ménage… Basically, you, the author, can go anywhere your imagination takes you so long as 1) a character is in jeopardy, and 2) the story is a romance, and 3) you have a bad boy somewhere in the pages!

The anthology will be sold at a low price—my intent is exposure for you and your writing. The more readers reached, the better! You will retain the rights to your story so that, at a later date, you can republish your stories individually.

I’m seeking hot and inventive stories from authors with unique voices, and above all, I’m looking to be seduced by tales filled with vivid imagery and passion.

Published authors with an established world may use that setting for their original short story.

This is erotic romance, so don’t hold back on the heat. Stories can be vanilla or filled with kink, but don’t miss describing the romantic connection between strong-willed individuals learning to trust and love one another. A deep sensuality should linger in every word. Keep in mind there must be a romantic element with a happy-for-now or happy-ever-after ending. Strong plots, engaging characters, and unique twists are the ultimate goal. Please no reprints. I want original stories.

How to submit: Prepare your 2,500 to 5,500 words story in a double-spaced, Arial, 12 point, black font, Word document (.doc or .docx) OR rich text format (.rtf), with pages numbered. Indent the first line of each paragraph half an inch, and double space (regular double spacing; do not add extra lines between paragraphs or do any other irregular spacing). U.S. grammar (double quotation marks around dialogue, etc.) is required.

In your document at the top left of the first page, include your legal name (and pseudonym, if applicable), mailing address, email address, and a 50-words or less bio, written in the third person, and send to boysbehavingbadlyfirstresponse@gmail.com. If you are using a pseudonym, please provide your real name and pseudonym and make it clear which one you’d like to be credited as. Authors may submit up to 2 stories. I will respond no later than January 30, 2020 with decisions.

Payment will be $25.00 USD, ninety days after publication at the end of that month.

Who am I?

Delilah Devlin is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of erotica and erotic romance. She has published nearly two hundred stories in multiple genres and lengths, and is published by Atria/Strebor, Avon, Berkley, Black Lace, Cleis Press, Ellora’s Cave, Entangled, Grand Central, Harlequin Spice, HarperCollins: Mischief, Kensington, Kindle, Montlake, Penthouse, Running Press, and Samhain Publishing.

Her short stories have appeared in multiple Cleis Press collections, including Lesbian Cowboys, Girl Crush, Fairy Tale Lust, Lesbian Lust, Passion, Lesbian Cops, Dream Lover, Carnal Machines, Best Erotic Romance (2012), Suite Encounters, Girl Fever, Girls Who Score, Duty and Desire, Best Lesbian Romance of 2013, and On Fire. For Cleis Press, she edited Girls Who Bite, She Shifters, Cowboy Lust, Smokin’ Hot Firemen, High Octane Heroes, Cowboy Heat, Hot Highlanders and Wild Warriors and Sex Objects. She also edited Conquests: An Anthology of Smoldering Viking Romance, Rogues: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology, Blue Collar: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology, Pirates: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology, and Stranded: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology.

Direct any questions you have regarding your story or the submission process to me at boysbehavingbadlyfirstresponse@gmail.com.

Our summer vacation destination this year was Europe. We started our trip in London then relied on trains to travel to the cities of Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples. To be able to fit all these cities within two weeks, our stay in each city was brief. We would not have been able to visit all these locations with the time available if not for the convenience of high-speed trains.

As a Regency romance writer, this trip brought to mind the Grand Tour of the eighteenth century. The Grand Tour was typically taken by young men to round out their education. The young man, considered to be an inexperienced cub, traveled with a bear-leader or tutor. The tour would start by boarding a boat at Dover and crossing the channel to Calais, then travelling over land to Paris. Other cities visited included Dijon, Geneva, Avignon, Rome, Florence, Venice and Naples. Although France and Italy were the highlight of many tours, itineraries and the length of travel were flexible depending on the wealth of the individual and personal preferences. The condition of the roads played a role in a location’s popularity.

Paris was considered an important city and it was included in many itineraries. Part of its popularity was that the city could be reached in three days, food was of high quality and accommodations were plentiful. Men in Paris would participate in French society and visit sites such as the Louvre. While in Italy, they would study art in Florence. They also visited architectural sites such as the Colosseum in Rome and Pompeii.

Despite traveling with a bear-leader, supervision could be lacking. There were some who engaged in sexual liaisons and return home with venereal diseases that would eventually lead to their death. There was pressure to gamble and some men lost a considerable amount while abroad.

Although, the Grand Tour was generally undertaken by men, some women did participate. Mary Wollstonecraft, known for her work A Vindication of the Rights of Women, embarked on a tour after her book’s success. During this time, women were expected to be companions and raise children. Women with a desire for independence and intellectual pursuits, such as Mary, were often ridiculed and became outcasts. Divorced women also faced censure from English society. As a result, they would travel or move to places such as Paris where they would be more accepted.

The French Revolution and Napoleonic wars put a halt to the Grand Tour in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Once the wars ended, families began traveling to Europe. The era of the young man embarking on a Grand Tour with a tutor was largely over.

I love researching and traveling to historical locations. While books and photographs are great resources, experiencing a place in person provides details that are hard to glean otherwise.

What is on your list of places to visit?

Resources
Black, Jeremy, The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (Gloucestershire, The History Press, 2009)
Dolan, Brian, Ladies of the Grand Tour (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2001)
Laudermilk, Sharon and Hamlin, Teresa L., The Regency Companion (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1989)

About the Author

Cynthia Capley is working on her first novel set during the Regency era. She enjoys writing stories with strong characters that triumph over challenges to achieve their happily ever after. Cynthia lives in the Pacific Northwest where the rain and numerous coffee houses make the perfect writing companions. She lives with her husband and a menagerie of pets and likes to spend time playing fetch with Natasha, a tortoiseshell colored cat with an attitude.

Website: https://cynthiacapley.com

One Sunday in May, many years ago when I was in college, I got a call from my sister. Since it was Mother’s Day, I was expecting that she had called merely to remind me to call our mother, but it wasn’t that. She was calling to warn me that Mom was a mess because our father had just that morning left her. I found out later that after 28 years of marriage, Dad had learned that a woman he had known more than 10 years before, the wife a fellow naval officer, was now a widow. He had been to see her and had received enough encouragement that he had found an apartment and was leaving Mom.

A pretty crappy thing to do, no? And on Mother’s Day, too! Our family was in shock for years. Mom was especially hard hit because she had been a Navy wife for 20 years of her marriage. We had moved every two or three years. She had a college degree, but had never worked outside the home or had a chance for a career of her own. Even after he got out of the Navy, we moved twice for Dad’s job.

I spent a lot of time pondering whether my mother was better off knowing the truth about how Dad felt about her, or worse off because she had been so dependent on him for so long and was now alone. I could never decide. Neither alternative sounded good.

It was many years later, after I had started writing science fiction, that my parents’ divorce planted a seed in my brain. What would life be like if there was no such thing as divorce? What if finding a mate was a matter of biology and not feelings? And furthermore, what if a mated-for-life pair experienced total empathy with each other? They couldn’t then hide their true feelings. This was obviously not possible with humans, so I came up with a whole new species. I named their planet Wakanreo and the people Wakanreans.

Once I got going on the story, I had two main tasks. First, I had to decide how this quirk of biology would affect Wakanrean history and cultures. Second, I had to decide how it would affect individuals, more specifically my protagonists.

For the first task, I decided that one effect of uncontrolled life-long pairing off would be that Wakanrean society is less stratified than ours. Even if there was an aristocracy, arranging marriages only with other aristocrats wouldn’t be possible. Ergo, people could not be kept in their “place.” In modern time, a corporate CEO could step away from his or her desk and suddenly be mated to the office cleaner. Also, being good looking counts for a lot less. No one tries to alter their looks to attract a mate because that doesn’t work. Since biology does the deciding when it comes to mating, there would not be cultures with different family structures—no polygamy, as such, although I did allow for the rare instance when one person pairs off with two others simultaneously. And all cultures have to accept the results of biological mating. If you bond to someone of the same gender, or to two people instead of one, everyone knows it’s not a choice. Sex is in no way related to morality.

As for how this circumstance affects individuals— are Wakanreans better off than humans or worse— I decided that would vary. Luck is very much the decider; if you are a kind person and you bond to another kind person, then the chances are you will both be happy with each other and thus happy in life (Although you could make that case for human marriage, too, I think). But on Wakanreo, if you are a kind person and you bond to a selfish, cold-hearted person, you are truly out of luck. If they dislike you or hate you, you will feel it. And since you can’t divorce a biological process, you are stuck for life. In the end, I decided that Wakanreans are luckier than humans in that they can’t be deceived in a mate, but less lucky in that they have fewer options.

Of course, Wakanreans exist only in my head, and in my books. This is one of the few instances where I knew where a story idea came from. Usually a situation or a scene just pops into my head, but for Alien Bonds, I knew exactly what had planted the idea.

NOTE: the views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and not the SFR Brigade.

Alien Bonds

A story of two very different people from two very different cultures, a sort of AVATAR combined with PRIDE & PREJUDICE. In ALIEN BONDS, two lives are changed in an instant. Industrial chemist Dina Bellaire travels all the way to the planet Wakanreo to advance her career. Her carefully planned life goes up in flames the second she meets Kuaron Du, a Wakanrean who makes his living singing ancient songs in a dead language. Both of them know they can’t go back to the way they were before they met. They just have to convince the rest of the universe that what happened to them is real.

Get your copy here!

About the Author

A voracious reader since childhood, Carmen Webster Buxton spent her youth reading every book published by Ursula LeGuin, Robert Heinlein, and Georgette Heyer. As a result, her own books mix far-future worlds, alien cultures, and courting customs.

Carmen was born in Hawaii but had a peripatetic childhood, as her father was in the US Navy. Having raised two wonderful children, she now lives in Maryland with her husband and a beagle named Cosmo.

Carmen’s blog https://carmenspage.blogspot.com/
Carmen’s Amazon Page https://www.amazon.com/Carmen-Webster-Buxton/e/B004V8MM8U/
Carmen on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/carmenwebster.buxton
Carmen on Twitter https://twitter.com/CarmenWBuxton

What do you think the future will look like? We’ve had a lot of television shows and movies depicting different possible futures. The most well know would be the STAR TREK series. The series portrays humans in the future as explorers who have gone into space to see who and what is out there. The film BLADE RUNNER gives a dystopian view of the future. There are cartoon shows like FUTURAMA and THE JETSONS which give a different twist and serious programs like THE EXPANSE and ENDER’S GAME. The future is limited only to the imagination of the writer.

There are difficulties in imagining what things will be like in thirty or fifty years. In the 1985 movie, BACK TO THE FUTURE, the DeLorean travels thirty years forward in time where Doc Brown gives it a flying upgrade because all the cars thirty years in the future could fly. Well, 2015 has come and gone and we still don’t have flying cars. In 1987 my father passed away from a heart problem of a leaky valve. Last year my husband had robotic heart surgery to repair a leaky valve. We have made amazing advances in medicine in the last thirty years. What will the next thirty look like? In 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon using computers with less computing power than most people carry around in their pockets today, smart phones. What will the machines and computers of the future look like? Today we can buy devices for our homes that turn on and off lights, music, television and appliances. What new innovations will we have in the year 2050?

In my latest novel in the Love through Time series, A WAY BACK, my character, Jack Sinclair, is accidently sent eighty years into the future and has to deal with all the strange things he finds there while figuring out a way to get home.

I’ve had to think a lot about what the world will be like in eighty years. What changes and advancements do you think we’ll have by then?

A Way Back

Time travel only seemed like a good idea.

Like many before her, Sarah Anderson is determined to make her fortune in the Wild West. She loads up her skirts with twenty-first-century necessities, gives her fiancé a kiss, and takes the leap. Only to land in the wrong decade. She’s lucky. She finds a job. But until she can save enough pennies for the return trip, she must contend every day with the fear of discovery, slop buckets, and roving hands.

Jack Sinclair returns from yet another business trip only to learn that his fiancée has left him for another time. They are now many miles and two centuries apart. Jack is stunned. But only for a moment. He sets out to find Sarah and bring her back home. Or die trying. Jack’s only fear is that he might be too late to save the love of his life.

Buy Links
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Back-Love-Through-Time-Book-ebook/dp/B07QGQ5S4K/ref=sr_1_8?crid=1LAQO6U9NSFRZ&keywords=augustina+van+hoven&qid=1558639326&s=gateway&sprefix=Augustina
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-way-back-augustina-van-hoven/1131176479?ean=2940156513673
ITunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/id1459110731
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-way-back-5