Mike Hartner on Books He Loves to Read & Writing @MHartnerAuthor #AmReading #Romance #HistFic

Who is your favorite author?
It’s a close battle between Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo

What book genre of books do you adore?
Historical Fiction, and YA Romance

What book should everybody read at least once?
The Count of Monte Cristo. By far the best revenge novel in history.

Are there any books you really don’t enjoy?
Many books are mood items. I don’t deliberately look for Satanic, or Halloween books, but vampires and others are an occasional read.

What do you hope your obituary will say about you?
I hope my obituary will show me surrounded by people who love me, and will say that I made a difference.

Location and life experiences can really influence writing, tell us where you grew up and where you now live?
I was born in Miami, grew up in Montana and Saskatchewan, and now live in Vancouver, BC.

How did you develop your writing?
First, by writing poetry, and then by listening to others tell stories.

Where do you get your inspiration from?
My muse. She brings in the lead characters from my books, and gives me the opportunity to listen, transcribe and elaborate.

What is hardest – getting published, writing or marketing?
More and more in today’s world, I have to say marketing. Publishing is going through a Renaissance, where nearly everyone can be published. But very few books get exposed because not everyone is a good marketer. And what works for one author or book may not work for another.

James Crofter was ripped from his family at age 11. 
Within a year the prince was a pauper in a foreign land. 
Is nature stronger than nurture? And even if it is, can James find the happiness he so richly desires? 

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Genre - Historical Fiction, Romance

Rating – PG

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ANNA'S SECRET by @MargaretWestlie #Excerpt #Historical #Fiction

Ian surveyed the expanse of red fields linked one to the other by the rail fences and the wild blueberry bushes, remembering that day, and Anna’s sturdy figure hurrying away over the crest of the hill, her auburn hair in its neat bun, shining in the sunlight, her back straight in its grey drugget dress.

He strode on. The night air against his skin was as warm as milk. He thought again of the tiny daughter lying beside Anna in the churchyard. We should have had another, and another after that.

He had said as much to her after she had recovered from their daughter’s birth, but she had only smiled at him and nodded. She never conceived again, he thought. …

Old Annie had attended Belle’s delivery, but there was not much she could do except give her wormwood against the pain. The baby was turned, she said. She had tried to turn it but Belle had only screamed in pain and had begged her to stop. Belle had laboured for a day and half and finally died from exhaustion. “The baby was likely dead long before that for the same reason,” said Old Annie.

Old Annie knew things. She had the second sight. She also knew about plants and seeds and weeds. She attended Donald’s birth too, Ian remembered, and the birth of the nameless little one. Anna seemed to take great comfort in Old Annie’s presence after that. She spent many hours visiting her. At least that’s where I thought she was, he thought. They say Old Annie knew how to help a woman get with child. I wonder if she knew how to prevent it too? He shivered at the idea. Would Anna have done such a thing? Old Annie’s senile now so I guess I’ll never know.

His thoughts took him past Murdoch’s ruined house, doorless now in the bright moonlight. Old Annie was right about this, too. Murdoch’s door was smeared with blood, the blood of the just. My Anna’s blood. Though I don’t know anymore how just she was. Oh, Anna.

He followed the path that took him across the field to where Anna had lain so few weeks ago. The little pillow of straw, still dark with her blood, lay a few feet into the field, Ian stopped and stared at it. This is all that’s left of her, he thought. Rage filled him. Why, Anna? He kicked the straw pillow to bits and began to run, a great lumbering run. It felt good to run again. The soft wind blew past his face and whistled across his ears.

Suddenly he was in James’ dooryard. The house was dark and silent now, the windows jagged where Donald had broken them. The rage, which had abated somewhat in his run, returned to a hot boiling fury. “I will burn this house of sin!” he shouted, and ran to the barn to gather some straw. He returned in a few moments with a great armful and stuffed it through the gaping windows, then went back for another. Armload after armload of straw he carried and stuffed through the windows, far more than he needed to start a fire.

“My father helped build this house,” he raged, “and I will destroy it!” He stood and surveyed the dark silent house before lighting the match that would burn it to ashes. His father’s face seemed to hang in the air before his own, its expression sorrowful. He remembered that expression from his childhood, and hesitated before striking the match. The rage drained away. “Oh, Poppa, what am I to do?” He fell to his knees and wailed like a tiny child, the tears finally coming, awkward, hot and wrenching. He buried his face in his hands and wept, the tears dripping between his work-roughened hands onto his grey homespun shirt. At last, his sorrow and his anger spent, he rose and stumbled away across the moonlit fields to his own place, the match still clutched in his fingers.

Anna Gillis, the midwife and neighbour in Mattie’s Story, has been found killed. The close-knit community is deeply shaken by this eruption of violence, and neighbours come together to help one another and to discover the perpetrator. But the answer lies Anna’s secret, long guarded by Old Annie, the last of the original Selkirk Settlers, and the protagonist of An Irregular Marriage. Join the community! Read Anna’s Secret and other novels by Margaret A. Westlie.

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Genre – Fiction, mystery, historical

Rating – G

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Website http://www.margaretwestlie.com

Lock Ready #Excerpt by @JimRada #HistFic #AmReading #CivilWar

This excerpt shows how conditions were in the many Civil War hospitals and Elizabeth Fitzgerald’s compassion for those soldiers in her care.

Elizabeth sat next to a young soldier who wouldn’t meet her gaze. He looked young enough to be George’s age, though she suspected he was older.

“How are you?” Elizabeth asked.

The young man didn’t reply. He glanced at her and then looked away. Elizabeth wasn’t offended. She was used to seeing shell-shocked soldiers. The problem would be if he remained that way.

She set down a clean uniform on the edge of the bed and gently pulled back the blanket. The soldier didn’t resist.

“We need to get you out of those filthy clothes and dress you in some clean ones. You’ll feel a lot better once we get all of that dirt off of you.” The nurses had all learned to carry on a one-sided conversation with the soldiers. Hearing a woman’s voice had proven to be soothing to the wounded soldiers. It reminded them of home and their wives and mothers. It encouraged pleasant memories and helped keep their minds off the horror they had endured.

As Elizabeth began undressing the young soldier, he grabbed her hand. She looked at him but didn’t say anything. His eyes were wide with fear. She gently pried his hand off of hers. He didn’t resist her.

“It’s all right. It’s going to be a little embarrassing for both of us, but probably you more than me. I’ve been trained to do this. You need to be clean. It will help you get better,” she said softly.

Elizabeth had probably been more scared than this soldier when she undressed her first wounded man. She wasn’t sure how she would react. Would she gag at the man’s wounds or stare at his private parts? Her hands had shaken throughout that first washing and she had done her best to allow the man his dignity by focusing her attention on his face. Luckily for her, the man had been unconscious. Those were the only men Mrs. Carlyle had let her clean at first. That had been four months and a couple hundred soldiers ago.

Elizabeth slowly pulled the soldier’s uniform off. It was still caked with blood and dirt. It had quickly become obvious that the soldiers who were kept clean after an operation tended to survive better. Elizabeth would rather be embarrassed than see a soldier die so she let her face turn red but washed until the soldiers’ skins were clean of dirt and blood. She paid particular attention to cleaning any festering sores and burns.

She was particularly careful not to cause the young soldier any additional physical pain by irritating an unseen wound. It was best to try and salvage the uniform so it could be washed and given to another soldier, but sometimes that was impossible. Shrapnel and simple wear and tear turned a uniform into threads. Elizabeth tossed the man’s shirt and jacket into a pile on the floor. They could both be reused once they had been washed a few times. They just might not be reused by the original owner. When soldiers left the hospital, they were given a uniform that fit, not necessarily the uniform that they had come into the hospital wearing.

Next, she started wiping off the man’s legs. He had taken shrapnel in both of his legs, which had also ripped up his pants. The cloth was so dirty that he could barely tell that it had been blue. The legs had been bandaged. Maybe he would be able to keep his legs since the doctors hadn’t amputated them. If there was any doubt, the doctors usually amputated the limb. She would have to watch him closely for any signs of gangrene.

While his legs might have been saved, his pants were a loss. Elizabeth cut them off of him with a pair of scissors so she wouldn’t have to move him around.

She used a cloth dipped in warm water to wash the soldier as he stared at the ceiling. She could feel his muscles twitching nervously as she slid the cloth from his chest to his stomach. Elizabeth kept the man’s private parts under the sheet and did her work as quickly as she could. She talked to him about things happening in Washington and her family as she worked. It helped keep both their minds off of what she was doing.

When she finished, she dressed the man in a clean uniform and changed the sheets on his bed so they would be dry and clean.

“There that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Elizabeth said as she stood up to go.

The soldier grabbed her arm again. He didn’t squeeze it. He simply clamped onto her wrist.

Elizabeth smiled at him and patted his hand. “I wish I could stay longer, but I’ve got to help with all of the other wounded. I’ll be around, though. I promise I’ll come back and visit. After all, I want to see you walk out of here on your own.”

The soldier let his arm drop down to the bed. Elizabeth turned and walked away.

The Civil War split the United States and now it has split the Fitzgerald Family. Although George Fitzgerald has returned from the war, his sister Elizabeth Fitzgerald has chosen to remain in Washington to volunteer as a nurse. 

The ex-Confederate spy, David Windover, has given up on his dream of being with Alice Fitzgerald and is trying to move on with his life in Cumberland, Md. Alice and her sons continue to haul coal along the 184.5-mile-long C&O Canal. It is dangerous work, though, during war time because the canal runs along the Potomac River and between the North and South. Having had to endured death and loss already, Alice wonders whether remaining on the canal is worth the cost. 

She wants her family reunited and safe, but she can’t reconcile her feelings between David and her dead husband. Her adopted son, Tony, has his own questions that he is trying to answer. He wants to know who he is and if his birth mother ever loved him. As he tries to find out more about his birth mother and father, he stumbles onto a plan by Confederate sympathizers to sabotage the canal and burn dozens of canal boats. He enlists David’s help to try and disrupt the plot before it endangers his new family, but first they will have find out who is behind the plot.

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Genre – Historical Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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Website jamesrada.com

10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Copper Witch by @JessicaDall #BlogTour #MustRead #HistFic

1. 60,000 words of the original manuscript were written in one month as part of the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) program in 2011.
2. Character Antony Fletcher was in part named for the character of the same name in Sweeney Todd—a boy who falls irrevocably in love with a girl he finds beautiful before ever speaking to her.
3. It was originally planned for the story to take place over the course of one year, with things beginning to grow in spring and “dying” in winter. After writing started, however, the artificial time constraints felt too cramped and were quickly abandoned.
4. Protagonist Adela’s personality was in part inspired by an episode of House, MD where Dr. House tells a woman, “Psychopathy can get a bad rap. It doesn't necessarily mean you're violent. Just that you're completely without conscience.”
5. Most of the research for the book not completed online was done at the American University Library, Jessica’s alma mater.
6. Not just a surname, Tilden is also a street near Jessica’s old apartment.
7. Though the name “Penrith” was made up by mixing and matching place names until finding something that sounded good, it was later found out that there is, in fact, a town of Penrith in Cumbria, England, which is placed nearly exactly where Jessica would have placed Penrith as a “real world” equivalent.
8. If asked after her favorite food, Adela would likely say peafowl.
9. The idea of a “prequel” following Adela’s mother, Elizabeth, has been considered, but—if started—would likely be the last Broken Line book written.
10. As currently planned, The Copper Witch is the only Broken Line book that’s plot does not deal with outside countries in any significant ways.

Adela Tilden has always been more ambitious than her station in life might allow. A minor nobleman’s daughter on a failing barony, Adela’s prospects seem dire outside of marrying well-off. When Adela catches the eye of the crown prince, Edward, however, well-off doesn’t seem to be a problem. Thrown into a world of politics and intrigue, Adela might have found all the excitement she ever wanted—if she can manage to leave her past behind.

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Genre – Alternate Historical Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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Website http://jessicadall.com/

Holderby’s Landing by J. D. Ferguson #Historical #Excerpt #BookClub

“I, Ben and eighteen regular infantry volunteers, made a forcedmarch for two days into Florida to scout out a supposed gathering, en masse, of hostiles south of the Altamaha River. It was reported by traders that it was so. Thieving bastards! It was all a lie, to secure prisoners for interrogation. The Indians were backward, not stupid. They knew what was happening to their north and wanted details from which to prepare their defenses. The traders wanted things left alone. They had made a fortune milking the Indians for years and wanted no change to business. We were sacrificed to their greed and the Indian’s desperation.” Colonel Thorne pauses and puffs his cigar in agitation at the memories. A blue haze drifts lazily away from him on the soft morning air.

“We were attacked during our second day of marching, near dusk. It was along a swamp road with the palmetto and pine woods to our right and the sluggish water blocking our retreat. The Indians were on us so quickly we barely had time to respond. Ten died immediately; two others wounded. We formed a line behind fallen logs and beat off the next attack. They could have stormed us at any time and killed us all, but that was not their purpose. Not that we suspected anything at the time. We were fighting for our lives; our dead comrades strewn about us. We endured the night, the bugs, the slopping water to our backs, until one of our wounded soldiers, Private J.G. Bean - all of 16 years, and shot through the gut - was dragged screaming from his bed roll in the jaws of an alligator that must have been twelve feet long. The men were panicked. Now we watched to our front and our backs. We watched and waited for two more days and nights. The second wounded soldier gave in to his wounds.” The normally staunch and controlled man scans the pruned and sculptured grounds before him as if seeing the primordial ooze of that dismal swamp. His gray eyes are framed with worry.

“The third day the savages had had enough of waiting. They wanted it over and they intended to have us, alive or not. They came out of the woods to our front and we stopped them with a fierce volley. We had all our guns if not our soldiers, and we were ready. The little road before us was now two bodies deep with the fallen. The rotting corpses and blow flies disturbed by a new addition of dead. We reloaded again and made ready. We were three less when the next attack came. This time they did not stop. The fighting progressed to hand-to-hand; knives and hatchets, brawn and grit. We backed our small band into the swamp water with the Indians pushing us with their slashing and stabbing every step of the way. As we backed away thorough the slime-coated waters the pursuing savages had to thin their front to pursue. The shallows, luckily for us, were just about two men wide. The other pursuers were floundering in water over their heads. They could not wade through it because of its depth, and could not swim in it because of all the rotting and growing things. The swamp that had trapped us was now saving us; saving us…at least the two of us that were left.” Justin’s heart is in his throat. He is standing with bated breath, staring at the introspective man at his side. The man he thought he knew all about.

When Justin Thorne, coddled student and heir apparent to Sylvan Springs Plantation, is forced to find his heritage, his manhood, and his destiny, in the space of one brief spring, all hell breaks loose on the banks of the Ohio River. His Virginia of 1836 is a time of transition and enormous growth. Northern industrial might and southern aristocracy, abolitionist movements and slave cultures, collide in turmoil and lay bare the raw needs and desires of those intrepid spirits confronting the frontiers of the antebellum South. Coming of age is an expected result of time and circumstance. It happens to all who live so long, but to each within the dictates of their own lives. The process is on-going and ever dynamic. Every person is a precious product resulting from the effects of nature and nurture. 

One's ancestry, culture, and environment collude in myriad ways to make us; all as different as each life's story, and as singular as snowflakes. This theme is played out over-and-over throughout the world and throughout history, in millions of places like Holderby's Landing; as similar and as different as each human is to the other. Holderby's Landing is a single glimpse in time at the coming of age of a land, a community, and a few determined souls thrown together in love, strife and chance. What they make of the time, the opportunities and themselves is the story told and the living breath of this book.

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Genre – Historical Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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Website www.jdferguson.net

Jesse James & the Secret Legend of Captain Coytus by Alex Mueck @alexmueck #historical #humor

Bob Younger, who was younger than the other Younger brothers, put both hands up. “You’re trying to tell us bedding a girl is more fun than whipping a Negro? How dumb do you think I am?”

“Did you ever meet the Swedish skier living in Booneville, Ingemar Skidmark?”

Bob’s eyes seemed to reverse, as if he was looking within himself. “No,” he finally said.

“Hey.” Little Archie scowled. “He’s the village idiot.”

The Captain shrugged.

Jesse James clapped his hands. “I’ll tell you what’s better than sex. Gold. When you’re rich, you can have all the women you want.” He cast a friendly and charming smile at the Captain, who was torn between hatred and smiling back.

Edwards refilled his plate and said proudly, “Remember, the gold is for our future, the Knights of the Golden Circle.”

The Captain squinted at him. “Can we vote on a name change? This Golden Circle doesn’t sit well with me. I had a few thoughts. How about A.S.S.E.S? Alliance of Southern Sons Equals Success.” His face gleamed with pride.

“I don’t think so,” Edwards muttered.

“S.S.S. The Southern Stud Service?”

Edwards shook his head.

The Captain nodded. “True. Not with this crowd.”

He chewed as he spoke. “The Knights of the Golden Circle is a fine name.”

“I disagree. You’re not knights, for starters.”

Edwards’s face flushed like he’d never considered such. He composed himself and said, “At the top of the command, there are rituals that foster knighthood.”

“Until I see a sword and shield, I’m calling that bogus.” The Captain dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “And why a golden circle instead of silver square?”

Edwards dropped his fork and bit his lip in thought.

The Captain filled the void. “The Pseudo-Knights of the Red Rhombus would make a welcome change.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Tangerine Triangle?”

Frank James snapped his fingers. “I like that!”

“A historical fiction comedy that packs as much heart as humor.” —Michael Dadich, award-winning author of The Silver Sphere

When a Harvard history professor receives a thesis paper titled Jesse James and the Secret Legend of Captain Coytus, from Ulysses Hercules Baxter—an underwhelming student—he assumes the paper must be a prank. He has never read such maniacal balderdash in his life. But after he calls a meeting with the student, Professor Gladstone is dismayed when Baxter declares the work is his own. As he takes a very unwilling Professor Gladstone back in time via his thesis, Baxter’s grade hangs in the balance as he attempts to prove his theory.

It is 1864 as philanderer and crusader Captain Coytus embarks on a mission to avenge his father’s death and infiltrates the Confederate Bushwacker posse looking for the man responsible, Jesse Woodson James. Accompanied by the woman of his dreams, Coytus soon finds himself temporarily appointed to be the sheriff of Booneville and commissions his less-than-loyal deputy to help him carry out his plan.

But when tragedy strikes, the Captain is forced to change his immature ways and redefine his lofty mission—more or less."

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Genre - Humor, Historical Fiction

Rating – R

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