Rough Edges

Welcome to PRAIRIE ROSE PUBLICATIONS, a new publishing company for WOMEN AUTHORS ONLY! We are now accepting HISTORICAL WESTERN and HISTORICAL WESTERN ROMANCE submissions of all lengths. Do you have a manuscript to submit? We'd love to take a look! For more information, please contact Livia J. Washburn or Cheryl Pierson at our          PRAIRIE ROSE PUBLICATIONS website!   http://prairierosepublications.yolasite.com/

Livia:     livia@flash.net

Cheryl:   fabkat_edit@yahoo.com

 

On November 1, 2013, our debut anthology, WISHING FOR A COWBOY, will be released in both digital and print formats. We have a great lineup of heartwarming Christmas stories by some wonderful authors for you in this collection.

What do these stories have in common besides romance, the old west, and Christmas? A wonderful Christmas dish of some kind, complete with recipes in the back  of the book! Each story features a particular food that you'll be able to make for your own Christmas dinner with the delicious recipes our heroines use to cook up pies, cookies, springerle and other holiday treats for their sweethearts. Mark your calendar for November 1!

~ A four-story Western collection from award winning author Cheryl Pierson ~

A Night for Miracles ~ Widow Angela Bentley takes in injured Nick Dalton and three orphans on Christmas Eve. Angela determines to keep her distance – until the children drag in a scraggly Christmas tree.

Homecoming ~ A holiday skirmish sends Union officer, Jack Durham, on an unlikely mission for a dying Confederate enemy. Will a miracle be able to heal his heart and reunite him with his beloved?

Meant to Be ~ Robin Mallory is shocked when she is tackled by a man in a Confederate uniform. A flat tire and a coming snowstorm have stranded her in the middle of a re-enactment – or is it?

Scarlet Ribbons ~ Persuaded by a vendor, Miguel Rivera ~ El Diablo ~ makes a foolish purchase—scarlet ribbons. Will they, and a mysterious meeting, set him on a new path?

A number of years ago Livia wrote a novel for a series of heartwarming Americana romances published by Berkley.  It was called MENDING FENCES, and it centers around the Fence-Cutting War in Brown County, Texas during the 1880s.  My family is from Brown and Comanche counties, so I've heard about the Fence-Cutting War all my life.  My dad told me that some of the fences that got cut are still there, so we drove down to take a look at them and research the area.  The result was a novel that may be a heartwarming romance, but it's also a Western and has some nice gunslinging action in it.  And it's one of the few novels set in the tiny real-life town of Zephyr, Texas, for those of you who knew where that is.  (I know there's at least one of you familiar with the Brownwood area.) Anyway, I thought this was a fine book and it's available now for both the Kindle and the Nook, so check it out.

This week we've gotten three more of our books posted on Barnes & Noble for their Nook.  I meant to have more than that done but have been too busy with other stuff.  More books should go up next week, but right now those of you with Nooks can get COSSACK THREE PONIES, ALURA'S WISH, and YESTERDAY'S FLAME.

Livia's historical novel YESTERDAY'S FLAME is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. This is one of several paranormal romance novels she wrote about ten years ago, and it's probably my favorite of the bunch. It has a nice time travel paradox, a very appealing heroine, plenty of action, and since it's mostly set in San Francisco in 1906, a kick-ass earthquake. Great stuff. The Kindle version is also a special expanded edition, with some material that wasn't in the original edition. You know my opinion is totally unbiased, so check it out.

Livia's paranormal/historical romance novel ALURA'S WISH is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. This one's set in medieval times, complete with beautiful ladies, noble knights, swordfights, outlaws, swordfights, a couple of bickering djinn, swordfights . . . well, you get the idea.  It's remotely possible that at some point in the writing, I may have said, "Why don't you put some more swordfights in it?"  (Ah, you should have seen the looks when she was working on the Hallam novels and my contribution was to keep saying, "Why don't you have Hallam get hit on the head?")


Anyway, she did several of these paranormal romances for Berkley a number of years ago and they're all great fun.  I'm sure all of them will be available for the Kindle in the reasonably near future.  It's good to see this one back out there, under her name this time.

I hope you’ll all forgive me for getting a little close to home with this week’s Forgotten Book. Actually, I sleep with the author, so you can’t get much closer than that. But I think YESTERDAY’S FLAME qualifies for this series. It’s an excellent book that didn’t draw much notice when it first appeared several years ago.

Livia wrote several romance novels for Berkley, of which YESTERDAY’S FLAME is the last and in my opinion the best. (They’re all good, of course.) This one is a time travel yarn in which a female firefighter from modern-day San Francisco is mysteriously transported back to San Francisco in 1906, a few weeks before the famous earthquake. There’s plenty of romance, of course, as the heroine meets and falls in love with a 1906 fireman, but Livia throws in some other good stuff, too, such as tong wars, secret passages, mysterious assassins, and a very neat little time travel paradox that’s a beautiful example of an author planting something early on in a book that doesn’t pay off until much later. And then of course, there’s the earthquake itself, which gives the whole book a nice epic feel, and another little twist at the end . . .

I’ve read quite a few romance novels over the years, since Livia was working in that field and I try to help out with the editing and plotting. I especially enjoyed the ones I’ve read by Marsha Canham, Teresa Medieros, and Amanda Quick (who’s really Jayne Krentz), because they usually include plenty of action, adventure, and mystery to go along with the mushy stuff, as we used to call it. I think Livia’s romances meet that same standard. She wrote four for Berkley: MENDING FENCES, under the name Livia Reasoner, a Western about the Fence-Cutting War in Brown County, Texas, in the 1880s; and three paranormals under the name Elizabeth Hallam: SPIRIT CATCHER, a contemporary Western mystery featuring an extended cameo appearance by a series Western character we both worked on years ago; ALURA’S WISH, a medieval novel featuring djinn, noble knights, and plenty of swordplay; and YESTERDAY’S FLAME, the subject of this post. All well worth reading, in my opinion . . . but of course, I’m biased. I wouldn’t steer you wrong, though. Trust me on this.