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2 * 0 * 4 Lifestyle Planner

~ for those of us who want to celebrate our achievements

Feasting and fasting, musing and and moving, building relationships, and avoiding stagnation.

Picking a Cover's the Difficulty:

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Gift from the Sea

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea was formative for me.  It's a book that I've long promoted to friends and students, whenever they asked for recommendations.

You can find it here, in the 50th anniversary edition.

The main Facebook page for Writers' Ink, my publisher, is celebrating encounters with AML's book all through August and September on Snippet Saturday:  You may be able to find the first AML post here.

Whenever I'm beachy keen--and that's not for crowded beaches in the heat of summer, but afterwards, when it's me and the sand and the waves and the sun casting south--that's the time that I reach for Gift from the Sea.

Old Geeky Greeks: Write Stories with Ancient Techniques

Blood tragedies.  Atonement.  Harry Potter.

I, Robot.  Ironman.  Hubris.

The 13^th Warrior.  The scariest woman in all literature.  The Hobbit.

Dudley Dooright.  5 Stages of the Hero . . . and the Monster.  Jurassic Park, in all its iterations.

What does this oddly-matched list have in common?

All have origins with the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The first writers developed techniques to influence their audiences.  Through an early look at what worked and what didn’t, they laid the foundation for writers today.  Many techniques of these old geeky Greeks are still in use, re-packaged as glittery infographics and Wham-Pow webinars, three-point seminars and exclusive insights to Buy Now!

Old Geeky Greeks: Write Stories with Ancient Techniques presents techniques such as the Blood Tragedy and dulce et utile in a clear, organized method for writers who want to write rather than invest hours getting three snippets of information.

Chapters in OGG cover understanding characters to the five stages that established the modern protagonist from the ancient hero.

Aristotle’s requirements for plot precede a survey of the oldest plot formula, the Blood (or Revenge) Tragedy.

Concepts such as in medias res and dulce et utile can help writers solve sticky problems and develop new ideas.

Old Geeky Greeks (and Romans) tried to understand the writing sense that emerged from the chaos.  They looked at successful plays and other story-telling methods to determine what influenced the audience.

Which characters were still talked about weeks and months after a performance?  Which play structures failed—and which were consistently winners?  Which ideas helped writers develop their celebrated writings?

Writers today are still searching for the answers to these questions.

The bright minds of Classical Antiquity first explored these questions, and their answers are applicable in the age of the internet, open-source software, special effects, and infographics.

Aristotle, Seneca, Plato, Horace, and many other ancient geeks have their ideas matched to Harry Potter, Avatar, Last of the Mohicans, and Shakespeare.

Whether we’re writing novels or plays, blogs or non-fiction, poems and songs, Old Geeky Greeks is a seminar in 28,000 words.

Available here

Christmas with Death, mystery with Isabella and Madoc

Christmas is for miracles, merriment, and murder.

An English country Christmas in 1919 should be a joyful celebration.  Isabella Newcombe, however, discovers only petty sniping and bitterness when she and her friends (Cecilia Arkwright and the brothers Madoc and Gawen Tarrant) are invited to Emberley.

Sir Reginald and the Malvaise family filled the grand house with friends, acquaintances, and business

associates.  With money tight, Isabella and her friends enjoy the rich meals, hot fires, and comfortable rooms.

Yet rumors of affaires and drug addiction as well as accusations of blackmail sour the holiday atmosphere.  And the invitation to the four friends was driven by an avid relish to hear about Cecilia’s upcoming divorce from her gaoled husband and the two deaths at Gawen Tarrant’s archaeological dig in October.

They plan to leave before New Year’s Eve, then Isabella and her fiancé Madoc discover the body of a fellow visitor, shot dead and left lying in an ice-skimmed pond.

With multiple motives and suspects, will Scotland Yard solve the crime before Isabella is the murderer’s next target?  Will an imperfect murder be impossible to solve?

A cozy mystery of 53,000 words, Christmas with Death is the second novel in the Into Death series.  

While it follows Digging into Death, it is not a sequel.  Each novel of the Into Death series is complete and not a cliff-hanger.  Readers, however, will have a richer experience should they read the first two novels in the series, as the primary characters repeat.

Available here

Digging into Death ~ a mystery set in 1919, on the isle of Crete

Damsel in Distress?

Stranded on Crete, Isabella Newcombe finesses a refuge with English archaeologists resuming their dig after WWI.

Her sketches fortuitously land her a job illustrating the dig for Prof. Gawen Tarrant.  His magnetic brother Madoc charms her with his interest.

The dig seethes with undercurrents, revealed when a worker is murdered.  The archaeologists dismiss his death as a village vendetta.

Then the dig sites are vandalized.  Artifacts go missing.  And Isabella’s former employer may be involved in buying stolen artifacts.

With evidence amassing, they must admit the worker was killed when he spied something incriminating—but what?  And who murdered him?

Suspicions escalate.  All three professors have motives beyond simple profit.  Are the Tarrant brothers stealing to fund more digs?  Is Nigel Arkwright undermining the dig as revenge for Gawen’s flirtation with Nigel’s wife?  Is Monty Standings damaging Gawen’s reputation?  Even the archaeological students could be involved, for their own profit or to assist a professor.

Falling in love with Madoc, Isabella doesn’t know who to trust.  Then one of the students is murdered while his photographic archive is destroyed.

With her illustrations as the only record of the artifacts, Isabella belatedly recognizes the dangers of Digging into Death.

View the Trailer

The Key to Secrets

Debutantes should snare fiancés, not murder them.

.......................................................................................................

The Detective

When Constable Hector Evans returns to Chalmsley Court, he doesn’t expect the violent crime to be the murder of one of Lord Chalmsley’s guests.  His lordship wants a quick resolution, before gossip about the crime’s salacious nature and trap-like killing becomes widespread.

With no murder weapon, no identifiable clues, and no eyewitnesses, Hector has little to build a case.  He has plenty of suspects, even when he realizes the murderer must be a woman.

Even though other guests could have killed the man, Hector finds himself focusing on the Chalmsley family.

Was it compulsive Cordelia?  Obsessive Portia?  Mad Aunt Beth, who gives him riddling clues as snippets of ballads.  Hector would blame George, who grew up tormenting his sisters and torturing small animals, but George left two years ago for a rest-cure in Vienna.  He can’t have returned, can he?

The Girl who Broke his Heart

Bee Seddars is a distraction he doesn’t need, especially as she and her cousins are among those celebrating recent engagements.

Bee is as lovely as he once thought her and seemingly the most rational member of the Chalmsley family, but he wonders if a few brief months so many summers ago could possibly give him an understanding of who she is.  Hector can’t get her to open up about the Chalmsley family secrets.  Unlocking those, he believes, is key to solving the murder.  Yet Bee seems to mistrust him—while he thought she was the one who broke the trust between them, since she refused to write him after he was sent away to join the Bow Street Runners.

In his first twelve hours on the case, the murder scene is torched and the victim’s journal is burned.  

In his second twelve hours, a second fiancé is murdered with the missing weapon.  And Hector’s suspect lists remains an ell long and a grief wide.

With madness looking like the strongest motive and only circumstantial evidence to build his case, will Hector find the murderess before she strikes again?  Or will he discover his lost love is causing bloody death?

He needs The Key to Secrets at Chalmsley Court.

The Guys of 2018

A cozy mystery of 66,000 words, The Key to Secrets is the seventh entry in the Hearts to Hazard series of Regency mysteries.  Each book is a standalone novel, complete unto itself, with loose interconnections of characters.

Constable Hector Evans was first introduced in The Danger to Hearts, the sixth Hearts in Hazards.

Available here

The Key for Spies

Coming soon!

The Key with Hearts

Coming soon!

The Dangers of Secrets

Secrets of family.  Secrets of hearts.  

Secrets of blood and pain.

Secrets can kill.

Maddy Whittaker, on the shelf for years, never expects the man of her dreams will be the one she once called a stick in the mud.

Banished from a country party so she won’t ruin her sisters’ chances in snaring husbands, Maddy is

sent to visit a cousin named Simon Jespers, who is hosting his own Valentine’s party.  She expects three weeks of boredom.

Gordon, Lord Musgrove, expects he will propose to a biddable lady and live unhappily ever after.

He escapes his mother’s country party (where the dowager Musgrove expects her only son to snare a wife) for one last bid at freedom.  He decides to retreat to his friend Simon Jespers.  Gordon never expects that his friend will be hosting a Valentine’s party.  He does expect days and days of boredom.

On arrival at Jespers’ country manor, Maddy and Gordon meet for the first time.  A quick flirtation finds them well matched in mind and soul, and the flirtation changes into romance.

Yet a secret from Maddy’s past threatens their future.

And a serial murderer threatens Maddy’s life.

Can Gordon overcome past secrets and present dangers to marry his perfect match?

The Dangers of Secrets is a romantic Regency mystery.

The character of Gordon, Lord Musgrove, was first introduced in A Game of Spies, published in the fall of 2015.

Warning: While the romance is sweet, the murders have been described as sordid.  Unwanted memories of abuse may be triggered.  Please be cautious.

Available here

View the Trailer

The Dangers for Spies

Past actions cause present dangers.

The French Double Agent

Eugenie DesChamps thinks she is safe, hidden in the English village of Little Houghton.  She paints landscapes to supplement her income.  She embarks on a flirtation with Charles Audley.  To her the

world seems radiant, so very different from eight years ago.

No one knows that she once was a toast of Paris, a pretense she used to acquire information to pass on to English spies.  Eugenie hated the corrupt French government that had caused the deaths of her family.  Then a French agent discovered her double game.  She barely escaped with her life.

The English Operative

Eight years ago, Tobias Kennit worked with Eugenie, stealing information about Napoleon’s troop movements.  Then their operation crashed.  He fled, believing that Eugenie was executed as a traitor to her home country.  Toby abandoned his undercover spying and became a gamester and a rake.

Yet now the English spycatcher Roger Nazenby has approached Toby once more.  He wants him to protect a cryptographer living in the village of Little Houghton.  French spies have infiltrated England to capture Charles Audley and return with him to France.  Toby agrees to the assignment only because the woman he wants to marry (Melly Ratcliffe) lives in that village.

The Master Cryptographer

Charles Audley returned to his home village for peace and quiet after stressful years in London developing a series of ciphers for English agents.  His latest ciphers led to English victories in the Peninsular War.

In Little Houghton, he is charmed by Eugenie DesChamps, a mysterious French artist.  Their flirtation distracts him from his cryptography, but he feels no guilt whenever he is in her company.

Lives Re-Connect

When Toby sees Eugenie, he is shocked.  Eugenie is not dead, and he wants answers from a woman he thought was a double agent.  Is she in Little Houghton to help kidnap the cryptographer?  She convinces him that she is not—but who is the threat to Charles Audley?  And can they protect Audley when they do not know when or where the attack will strike?

And Danger Returns

French agent Didier Poulaine has spent eight years weaving together the snippets of threads to help him locate the only two spies who ever escaped him:  Eugenie de la Croix and an Englishman masquerading as a French military officer.  He tracks them to Little Houghton, the location of the cryptographer he came to England to kidnap—or kill.

Poulaine’s threads have woven together.  Three lives intersect again and involve a fourth.  Blood must be shed before the past is purged.  Whose blood?

Investigate It Now by clicking here

The Dangers for Spies is a romantic historical suspense set in Regency England, part of the Hearts in Hazard series.  While this novel and The Game of Spies have interconnected characters, D4Spies is a complete work on its own.  However, readers will have a richer experience if they have also read The Game of Spies.

The Dangers to Hearts

Do broken hearts destroy all dreams?

Years ago, Agatha Helmes’ lover abandoned her.  When her baby died at birth, she thought all her hopes for the future had ended.  She poured herself into her family’s farm, but in the last year, mismanagement by three different stewards has the farm losing more money than she can pour into it.

Jess Carter occasionally crewed for a known smuggler to bring a little extra into his home.  He fell for a maid working at the Hawthorn Inn.  Then the smuggling ring was arrested.  The woman he thought he loved married another man.  With a bruised heart for company, he packed up all his possessions and left his home.

Not knowing where to go, Jess consulted the smugglers’ fence Richard Helmes who directed him to Helmes Farm to assist the current steward.  His cousin Agatha Helmes, he says, will hire anyone he sends to her.

When Jess arrives, the current steward is assaulting Agatha.  He routs the old steward and finds himself in a job he doesn’t understand, taking advice and orders from a woman.

Agatha knows only one thing about her new steward:  he doesn’t lie.  Jess admits what he knows and doesn’t know about farming.  He admits that he is avoiding arrest for smuggling.  That is more than she can say about her former stewards and her former fiancé.

Trust between Agatha and Jess grows from a seed to a mighty oak.  Attraction entwines them with compatibility and grows the first tendrils of love.

Then the steward’s cottage is set on fire, and Jess barely escapes.

The burned house reveals an old murder as the bones of Agatha’s former lover are discovered—with a bullet hole in the skull.

And the deed to Helmes Farm and other documents go missing.

With Agatha’s cousin trying to steal her farm, can Jess reveal her cousin hired him to watch out for his interests?

Will the constable investigating the new arson and the old murder think Agatha guilty of murdering her lover when he wouldn’t marry her?

And will their new love survive the questions and confusion?

The Dangers to Hearts is a sweet romantic suspense of approximately 50,000 words.  While the novel is the sixth in the Hazards to Hearts series, it is complete and contains no cliffhangers.  The character of Jess Carter was introduced in the first Hearts in Hazard book, A Game of Secrets.  Reading that novel will enrich your experience, but it is not necessary.

Available here.

A Game of Spies

A Game of Spies

When Josette Sourantine visits her widowed sister-in-law in London, she finds Celeste hosting twice-weekly salons for dancing, flirtations, and gambling on cards.  With a talent for whist, she is commanded by Celeste to have charge of the card room.

Very quickly she attracts attention from the cynical rake Tobias Kennit as well as the handsome
society prize Lord Gordon Musgrove.  Yet it is the mysterious Giles Hargreaves who intrigues her.

Col. Giles Hargreaves, son of the Marquess of Grasmere, has found the émigré spying for Napoleon, but he cannot arrest her until he locates the source feeding her vital government secrets.

He attends the Sourantine salons hoping to locate the man stealing the information for Celeste which she then smuggles to France.  He decides to dally with Celeste only to be distracted by the lovely Josette.

As their mutual attraction turns into flirtation then deepens into something neither wants to name, Giles worries he is blinding himself.  Josette is the spy’s sister;  how could she not be embroiled in the betrayal of England?

Josette fears she is giving her heart to a man who is more of a rake than Tobias Kennit.  How can he love her when they have known each other so briefly?

When the net begins to close around the spy and her compatriots, Josette is caught up as well.  Will Giles lose her just when he’s given is heart to her?

A sweet Regency historical.

To the Reader:  A Game of Spies follows A Game of Secrets, which is a complete novel with no cliff-hangers.  While readers may find that reading the first novel creates a fuller experience, it is not necessary to read it in order to enjoy this book.  And while the trilogy concludes with A Game of Hearts, another novel that stands on its own, A Game of Spies does not end with a cliff-hanger.

Available here exclusively.

View the Trailer

A Game of Hearts

A Game of Hearts with Four Couples
In Regency England, red-blooded commoners have difficulty opening the doors of the blue-blooded haut ton.

A Game of Hearts with Rafe & Maggie

Self-made man Rafe Lockhart needs a titled wife to give his daughter Connie the society debut she has dreamed of. A quick marriage to Lady Margaret Symonds, widow of an earl, is the answer to his problem.  Her beauty and wit sweeten his plan.

Maggie Symonds suffered through twelve years of an emotionally abusive marriage after a rake ruined her during her debut.  She hesitates to enter another marriage, especially to a man whose wealth is the sole reason that society accepts him.  Yet financial difficulties and her own budding attraction to Rafe drive her to accept his proposal.

Neither expects passion to fire up their marriage.  Neither expects that surprising passion to last.

Maggie’s confrontation with Rafe’s mistress is the first blow.  The second comes with Rafe’s suspicions that the rake has lured Maggie back into his bed with protestations of a resumed love.

A Game of Hearts with Roger & Connie

Falling in love with his employer’s daughter Connie was not Roger Denby’s biggest mistake.  No, that mistake was giving her a taste of passion.  When he rejected Connie, he then had to watch her pursue a gentleman who might be charming her into a snare.

Did he drive her into that relationship by awakening her desires?  All Roger knows is that he still yearns for Connie.  How can he prevent her from ruining herself?

Connie Lockhart knew the walls between her and Roger Denby:  She was not yet eighteen.  As the boss’s daughter, she was as far out of his reach as marriage into nobility was out of hers.  She thought those walls tumbled down when he kissed her.  Yet he rebuilt them even higher than before and returned to being only her watchdo
g.

Believing their relationship hopeless, Connie pursues a titled gentleman who is no longer out of her reach since her father’s marriage to an earl’s widow.  And revenge on the snobbish society darlings seems especially sweet.

A Game with Four Hearts 

Richard Malbury flatters Connie.  He seems charmed by her.  Marriage to him is preferable to a fruitless love of Roger.

And then Rafe is suspected of murdering a valuable employee, and this Game of Hearts turns more dangerous than Rafe & Maggie and Roger & Connie could have anticipated.

A Game of Hearts is a sweet Regency romance.  View the Trailer

Available here.

The Enclave series by Remi Black

Friend Time!

Remi Black writes fantasy (with a touch of romance) in an alternate Renaissance world of wizards and sorcerers, wyre and elemental wielders, and Fae--with dragons ahead.

Here are some posts to give more insight and help you find her works:

The Enclave World

https://remiblack.blogspot.com/2018/07/welcome-to-enclave-world.html

https://remiblack.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-wizard-enclave.html

https://remiblack.blogspot.com/2018/08/faeron-septs.html

A free first chapter for Weave a Wizardry Web:

http://writersinkbooks.com/weave-a-wizardry-web-free-glimpse/

And you can find the book for a very reasonable $2.99 on Amazon.

W.Ink Free Fiction

W.Ink Wednesday

A free glimpse of the rough draft for M.A. Lee's newest book, coming soon: *The Key for Spies*.

Find it here:

http://writersinkbooks.com/key-for-spies-free-glimpse/

free glimpse: Weave a Wizardry Web

Remi Black is offering the first chapter of her first book in the Enclave series, Weave a Wizardry Web.


You can read it here.

available now, exclusively on Amazon