Author: JHarte

Romance, College Life, Sports… Find it in On The Rebound

I’m pleased to announce that my fellow Penner Author, Jim Cangany’s new release comes out today. If you like sweet romance, sports, college life or just an HEA, you’ll want to check out On the Rebound

ON THE REBOUND IS NOW AVAILABLE!

Author: Jim Cangany
Release Day: January 26, 2016
Genre: Sports Romance
Publisher: Penner Publishing

SYNOPSIS

On The Rebound is a sweet, sports romance set on the campus of fictional Irving University. It’s a story about second chances and features a women’s college basketball team. Here’s a teaser for you.

After he’s caught in a grade fixing scandal, men’s college basketball coach Greg Miller is thrown a lifeline when an old friend offers him a job with the small-school Irving University women’s team.

Academic Advisor Ciara Monaghan knows first-hand the heartbreak and havoc a cheating man can wreak. She wants nothing more than to protect the University’s reputation by seeing to it that Greg’s stay at Irving is short.

The last thing either of them wants is the attraction they can’t deny. Can a struggling member of the basketball team bring them together to see how wonderful a second chance at life, and love, can be?

ABOUT JIM CANGANY

Jim Cangany was forty pages into his first manuscript when he realized it was a romance. He went with it and has great joy writing sweet, contemporary love stories. A lover of things that go fast, when Jim’s not writing, you can probably find him checking into the latest from IndyCar or pro bike racing. He lives in Indianapolis with his saint of a wife Nancy, his sons Seamus and Aidan, and the princess of the house, kitty cat Maria.

Visit him: Website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads or Tumbler

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The Edge of Nowhere: Available today!

IN BOOKSTORES AND ONLINE TODAY!

Fellow author (and new friend) at Penner Publishing, C.H. Armstrong’s book The Edge of Nowhere comes out today. I wrote a review of it in December, and encourage you to check it out. Based on true-life stories about Oklahoma in the 1920s and 1930s, it follows Victoria through ups and downs of surviving loss in all forms. Check out the synopsis and book trailer below and then grab your copy (print or ebook).

SYNOPSIS

The year is 1992 and Victoria Hastings Harrison Greene—reviled matriarch of a sprawling family—is dying.

After surviving the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Victoria refuses to leave this earth before revealing the secrets she’s carried for decades.

Once the child of a loving family during peaceful times, a shocking death shattered her life. Victoria came face to face with the harshness of the world. As the warm days of childhood receded to distant memory, Victoria learns to survive.

No matter what it takes.

To keep her family alive in an Oklahoma blighted by dust storms and poverty, Victoria makes choices—harsh ones, desperate ones. Ones that eventually made her into the woman her grandchildren fear and whisper about. Ones that kept them all alive. Hers is a tale of tragedy, love, murder, and above all, the conviction to never stop fighting.

OFFICIAL VIDEO TRAILER FOR THE EDGE OF NOWHERE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C.H. Armstrong is an Oklahoma native transplanted in Minnesota. A 1992 graduate of the University of Oklahoma, “Cathie”is a life-long lover of books, and staunchly outspoken on subject of banned and challenged books. The Edge of Nowhere is her first novel and was inspired by her own family’s experiences during the 1930s Oklahoma Dust Bowl and The Great Depression.

PURCHASE A COPY OF THE EDGE OF NOWHERE ONLINE NOW
Noisy Characters and Other Writing Challenges

A few years ago, a member of my writers group made a comment about how another writer in the group talked about his characters as if they were real people. He said it like it was a strange thing. To my thinking, the characters in books are real. Maybe not flesh and blood, but they still live.

I suspect many readers feel the same way about characters they read about. I mean…surely Darcy and Elizabeth are real! However, what might be strange for a non-writer to learn is that more often than not, characters write their own stories. Sure, I start off as the leader, creating and putting them in some sort of conflict. But once placed, the characters often take over, telling their stories without too much help from me.

I just finished and submitted book two, Southern Persuasion, of the Southern Heat Series for Penner Publishing. I have a third book, Southern Conflict, due by July 1, which is plenty of time. So much time, that my goal was to finish a cozy mystery first. There is a problem, though. The characters in Southern Conflict won’t be quiet. They’re chattering away when I sleep, drive, run…etc.

This is actually a good thing, because it’s so much easier to write when characters are essentially dictating what they want to say and do. But it definitely makes it hard to write the cozy I had planned (why aren’t those characters making noise?).

You’ll be glad to hear the Valentine’s are making themselves known as well, although not on the next book I have planned for them. Instead, Jack is in Washington, D.C. and unable to get a hold of Tess by phone or text. Something has happened at her boutique. I don’t know what, but poor Jack is beside himself.

So what’s a writer to do? Because writers block is a real thing, the safe action is to write down the story that is running in my mind, which means Southern Conflict has made it to the top of the writing list. I hope to have a draft down by the end of the month or mid-Feb so I can work on my cozy. However, I have been reading my cozy at writer’s group, so I hope to get a few thousands words written on each week. The Valentines have to wait…but not for too long. They’ll be up in April or May, assuming the characters of Southern Conflict keep talking and I’m able to get their story down, revised and edited by then.
Review: The Edge of Nowhere

The Edge of Nowhere by C.H. Armstrong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have a fairly limited reading interest. If it doesn’t have a good HEA ending, I’m hesitant to read. It’s the reason I tend to avoid “literature,” which often ends badly. So I was a little worried I wouldn’t like C.H. Armstrong’s The Edge of Nowhere, a historical fiction set during the Depression, smack dab in the middle of dust bowl of Oklahoma.

I won’t deny the difficulties the protagonist, Victoria Hastings Harrison Greene are heart- wrenching and extremely difficult to read at times, yet Victoria’s grit keeps you sticking with her, wanting to see how she pulls through the next challenge.

At the beginning of the story, Victoria suffers great losses that make an impression on the eight-year old about the pain suffered when one allows love in their life. She is fortunate that she is taken in by a good family and at 18 marries a good man, forcing her to slack off on her “no love” vow. But then, the hardship comes from all directions. The depression, death, destruction… you name it, Victoria is forced to endure it. With an iron will and a willingness to do anything (and I mean anything) to ensure the survival of her children (12 total), Victoria makes it through. Unfortunately, she loses a little bit of her humanity during the process. As a result, her grandchildren experience a miserly, mean, old woman. In response, Victoria pens her story, so her grandchildren can understand that survival of the family came with a price.

I can imagine this book being read in schools to showcase the difficulties experienced during the depression. But the insights go beyond the fall of the economy and the dust bowl to cover other issues of the times, such as the poor attitudes towards and limited resources for women, lack of health care for easily treatable diseases, poverty, and more importantly asking the reader the question…do you have the stamina to survive and what are you willing to do to insure your survival.

The book is based on real-life stories, which increases the depth of what you learn about that time and place in American history. For example, I knew of the dust bowl, but I hadn’t known that the dust itself lead to many deaths or that people would wake up in the morning with their homes filled with dust.

It’s a fascinating story about a significant period in American life. While I wouldn’t say it has the traditional HEA ending, Victoria does endure.

View all my reviews
Death Under the Mistletoe: A Valentine Christmas Mystery… FREE

You know that saying, “when it rains, it pours?” That seems to be my life lately. Just when I think I’ve got myself organized to get everything done, something new is added. Between that, and a struggle to pace my work, I’ve running around like a mad woman.

I just turned in a draft of Southern Persuasion, book two of the Southern Heat series for review by my agent. It’s a bad draft. I’m hoping my agent will be gentle. I’m expecting the copy edits on the first book, Southern Comfort, sometime this week. The three-book romance series will be released in 2016 by Penner Publishing.

Despite all the chaos and busyness, I fulfilled my promise to release a Valentine story by Christmas. As a thank you to everyone who has been a fan of the Valentines, Death Under the Mistletoe: A Valentine Christmas Mystery (novella) is free. It’s available in .mobi (Kindle) and .pdf over in the SweetHarte group at Facebook. If you’re not yet a member, join and you’ll find the book under the “Files” tab. There’s no cost to join the group. You’ll get some freebies, heads up on new releases, behind the scenes info about the Valentines and other books, plus I frequently ask for help and feedback.

The novella will be available shortly at Amazon.

Description of Death Under the Mistletoe

Tess is excited to spend her first Christmas with her sexy husband, Jack Valentine, that is until the mall Santa staggers in her shop and drops dead underneath the mistletoe on Christmas Eve. There’s no shortage of suspects who wanted Santa dead. Was it his jealous elves? His estranged wife? The in-laws who never thought Santa was good enough for their daughter? Or the neighbor who secretly coveted Santa’s wife? Although Tess and Jack are happy to let Detective Daniel Showalter deal with the case, somehow the newlyweds end up a target of Santa’s killer who plans to make sure Jack and Tess never celebrate Christmas.