Sorry I’ve been absent lately. I have been trying to finish the last book in the Harrell Family Chronicles series, Remy’s Dilemma.
This book should have been out before now but sometimes life gets in the way. No excuses but I do think it will be worth the wait. I hope you agree.
Dive into the town of Leeward one more time and get your goodies at Goodie Galore Bakery. Roxanne and her business partner, Kendra have opened their bakery and are making a sweet impact on the town.
Get you grub at Hole in the Sky Pub where the beer is out of this world. Ethan quit college to brew beer but don’t worry, who needs a fourth degree.
Janie and Mike are finally tying the knot if their wedding doesn’t go up in flames.
If Sothy doesn’t run away, she might make a success of her new craft store.
Remington Harrell is the oldest of the Harrell siblings and the one expected to fix everything. Whether it’s a friend accused of murder or saving the local phosphate plant there’s nothing he can’t do, except relationships. After his last girlfriend threatened to kill his sister and sell her child on the black market, he’s been a little apprehensive about dating. With cyber-attacks on the phosphate plant escalating along with threats to the employees, Remy worries his family and friends will be the next targets. When he realizes the threat comes from someone in Sothy’s past. They must team up to stop the cyber-attacks. But if Sothy isn’t willing to share her secrets, can Remy trust her with his heart?
Thanks to my daughter-in-law, Brandi Lupton for finding a friend willing to share a photo with me for my upcoming cover! Thank you Linda and Lee Major, and Flame for allowing me to use your image!
Every time I think I have learned what it means to be an indie author I discover there is something else I didn’t know, didn’t do correctly or forgot. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m often publishing in the middle of the night because I have to go to work at my bill-paying-job the next day, or I have this amount of time to write or learn how to do something, let’s write. Too often I feel there are only a few hours in the day I can devote to being an author and I have to divide them into writing, editing, marketing, publishing, etc.
Being an indie author is much like any other small business owner. As the owner everything falls to you and until you make money you can’t afford to hire others to take up some of the slack. So, you juggle all of the jobs that have to be done and too often you find out the hard way what you don’t know. For me, it’s marketing. I don’t want to go around shouting buy my book, buy my book! But please, buy my book!
But how else do you market if you don’t shout out here’s the book buy it? I don’t know. I just want to write. I take classes both online and in person. I belong to several writers’ groups, and I study what I see others doing. But while money is a problem, it is also the limit of time. How best to spend my time as well as my dollars?
In writing this new book, Willow’s Secrets many of you will be surprised that it is Book One of The Harrell Family Chronicles. This is because of one of those things I didn’t know. When I finished The Leeward Files series with Book Five Red Steel, I thought it could also serve as my Book One for The Harrell Family Chronicles, B-U-T it doesn’t show up that way and if I want new readers who may start at the new series, I need a new number one that would begin the series in such a way as to let readers know enough of what happened before but not bog them down. If they are interested enough they might want to go back and read the first series but if not, they could just wander through the new one. UGH! The things I do to myself.
If you have followed me for any length of time, you know I’m basically a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants, heck, I live by the seat of my pants. With six sons and my husband, no matter how many plans I make, I often have to adjust them. It was difficult at first and then it just became my normal.
About The Harrell Family Chronicles new book, Willow’s Retreat, I didn’t want to interfere with the stories that were already published but felt I needed an origin story. I looked to the older adults to give me what I needed to write book one. Willow’s retreat combines the loves and marriages of the three Harrell brothers who inherited the farm from their father: John, Charlie and Robert, told from the points of view of John, his wife Willow and their son, Rider.
Book Description
The farmer and the psychiatrist. Willow and John should have never met, much less fallen in love, but they did. Thirty years later their relationship is in limbo. When her nephew dies in a tragic fire, Dr. Willow Rider knows she has to repair her relationship with her husband and sons before it’s too late. She is a terrible mother and an awful wife but she’s an awesome therapist. Can she take her own advice and save her family?
Saint John, the oldest of the Harrell brothers has sacrificed everything to ensure his family’s happiness. Isn’t it time he grabs his own happiness? He is willing to do anything for a second chance with Willow, even take her crazy bet. But as he makes the same stupid mistakes, he pushes her farther away.
When a motorcycle club believes the only thing keeping them from gaining control of the local sex trafficking cartel is the Harrell family, they are their town come under attack.
Willow and John’s second chance at happiness may go up in flames as they find themselves at war with the Steel Marauders.
Cover Reveal August 1st
Events:
Cover Reveal Sunday, August 1st, 2021
Book Launch Tuesday, August 24th, 2021
Book Blog Tour Tuesday, August 24th – Thursday, August 26th, 2021
If you would like to be a part of the Blog Tour you can sign up here. (Just click on the link)
Join the fun at The New Romance Café Facebook Page, December 2nd 12 pm until 9pm for our International Release Party! We’re celebrating our first historical romance anthology. It is one of two winter anthologies we’re releasing this year!
I am so honored to be a part of this awesome group. My friend and fellow Pamlico Writer, Tammera Cooper invited me to check out this group and I fell in love with the page, the people and the program. Andie Wood the page founder and her team of awesome moderators have worked tirelessly to put out five anthologies this year. FIVE! All the proceeds have gone to breast cancer research. In the spring I was able to fill in when a family emergency took out the original author. While I’m so sorry she was unable to participate, I’m so thankful for the opportunity to have been a part of that first anthology.
I hope you will join us as we celebrate the launch of this most recent anthology. For many of us it was a labor of love. “Kisses and Other Scandalous Pastimes,” is our first historical romance. My story, “If Only in My Dreams,” is the story of lovers torn apart by war and duty. When Lydia’s brother is killed at Pearl Harbor, she calls off her wedding. After graduating nursing school, she joins the Army Nurses Corps and leaves her heart in North Carolina.
As we celebrate this, our fourth anthology, “Kisses and Other Scandalous Pastimes,” I’m struck by how much has happened in such a short time. Like the short stories and novellas, we write, we have accomplished much in so little time. It takes true heroes or in this case, heroines to accomplish such great feats. I won’t call names for fear of leaving someone out, but I think these amazing women deserve a bow. I will mention Andie Wood who brought us all together. She wanted a safe place for beginning writers to learn from more experienced writers. A place where we could share ideas and experiences. The New Romance Café Facebook page is a place to share our love of books both reading them and writing them.
When I first started writing this story, I knew I wanted to write about World War II. I love history and for me, this was living history having known so many who played a part in the war from my great aunts who went off to work in munitions’ plants, to my great uncles who served in every branch of the military to my grandfather who was a merchant marine and to my neighbor, who was a Navy nurse. So many stories swirled in my head I didn’t know where to begin. When Lydia first made her appearance, I knew she was going to be from my home state of North Carolina and a nurse. Then Jeremy came on the scene and I tried to decide who he’d be. With a husband who is a mechanic both by trade and talent, I decided that Jeremy, like my husband could take anything apart and make it better. He could drive anything with a motor. Unlike my husband, I thought he might also like to fly air planes. My baby sister’s father was a pilot and flew me around when I was a kid. After I got used to my stomach lurching when he did a loop de loop, I loved it.
In a short story, you don’t have the time or space to really build up a relationship, especially if you are still learning like I am. I thought I’d start with the couple already planning their wedding and work my way back. Figuring out the mechanics of telling the story can be as difficult and as interesting as developing the story itself. I could tell the story in a straight line and that’s often the best way. By flashing back to when Lydia and Jeremy were a couple then back to the war, I hope the story lives up to the title. “If only in my dreams,” is a line from the Christmas classic, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Our Allies banned the song from being played fearing it would negatively affect morale. No matter if you are in a war zone, or just far from home, when you are missing those you love, it is often the comfort of dreams, memories, letters and phone calls that help us through. To me, the song and thus my borrowed title remind us of what is truly important, as the Bible says, the greatest of these is love.
I hope you will join us for our book launch. “Kissing and Other Scandalous Pastimes” is available Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. The other The New Romance Café anthologies are on sale now for a limited time for 99 cents at all major retailers. Check out these wonderful eBooks and know that the purchase of these books support breast cancer research worldwide.
I’ll be your host from 8:30 pm until the end. Don’t forget, December 2nd, The New Romance Café Facebook Page. You will have to join to participate but you will be glad you did. There will be gifts, prizes and games. It’s a real party. If you stop by, don’t forget to say hello and I’ll put you in a drawing for a $5 Amazon Gift Card.
I look forward to seeing you all there!
sherrilhollister.com/Suspense She Writes Bookstore Dismiss
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