New release sample: WHITE ROSES

Mt. Zion Ridge Press

Listen to the Books on the Ridge podcast for a discount code to get $1 off ebook, audiobook or print from Mt. Zion Ridge Press!

 

"Likely prospect?" he greeted Angela, as she came back down the hall. They paused in front of the large room where the reporters worked.

"Maybe. But we really don't have any openings. Something about her caught my attention. I'm not sure what." She rubbed her temples and attempted a smile. "Please tell me Dad isn't trying to install another arcade game on the file server?" She gestured at the cluster of workers gathered around the stacked unit of CPUs and printers, with a jungle's worth of cables leading out to the other computers in the office.

Andrew Coffelt had inherited the Tabor Picayune from his father and had gladly embraced every advance in technology. Curt sympathized with Angela, because her father was a little too eager to rest on his credits as publisher, semi-retired yet still in the office every day. His delight in trying out new software on the office system was a constant source of frustration for Angela. The only thing that kept her from banning her father from the office was the fact that his experiments hadn't interfered with the publication of the paper. Not yet, anyway.

Curt suspected that even if Andrew caused a power blackout of downtown Tabor Heights for a week, Angela still couldn't ban her father from the paper. They both loved it too much. He just wished she wasn't stuck with being the adult while her father enjoyed his second childhood.

"I think he's just checking out the FBI site that Loni decided to access. Tracking the White Rose and identifying him has become the favorite hobby here," Curt offered.

"Unfortunately." Angela's brown eyes lost focus. Then she shuddered, wrapped her arms around herself, and continued down the hall to the lunchroom, her shoulder-length black hair streaming out behind her with the impetus of her exit.

"Something wrong?" He followed her.

"Everything lately reminds me of the White Rose. That woman who was just in here—”

"Looks like both his targets?" He nodded when she stared at him. "I noticed. She reminded me of someone I knew when I was a kid."

"You might have known her. Toni said she lived here for a few years. Toni Napolitano. Sound familiar?"

Curt started to say no, then choked. "Short for Antoinette?"

He remembered Angelique's little sister, trying to tag along with them when their gang from school went to play kickball. A scrawny kid, she pouted a lot when Angelique told her to stay home. Curt thought she was four years younger than him, putting her in third grade while the rest of them were in seventh.

"Yes, Antoinette. Her credits are impressive. She brought a folder full of clippings." Angela sighed and put down the coffee carafe without filling her mug. "We can't really afford another reporter on staff right now. But it wouldn't be fair to just tell her no without at least examining her work."

"Look at it this way." Curt's smile felt stiff. "She looks so much like the White Rose's targets, would you feel right giving her a job that would have her all over town, letting him get a good look at her?"

"That's not funny." She dumped cream and sugar into her cup before reaching for the carafe again.

"I wasn't trying to be funny." He glanced toward the open door of her office. "So, those clippings she brought. What did she write?"

"Everything. Her specialty seems to be investigative reporting. If you ever feel like you need a partner, I'd seriously consider her."

"Nah, not yet." Curt stayed in the kitchen when Angela went back to her office.

Investigative reporter, huh? He felt sick with the certainty of what brought Toni Napolitano back to Tabor Heights. Somehow, she had heard about the White Rose, the two women he had terrorized, the one he had killed. She heard about the notes, demanding undying love and purity; the white roses left on doorsteps and even inside the victims' houses. The threats against any men who trespassed on his territory. 

Just like he had done, had Toni made the connection between the White Rose and her sister's murder? Did she feel duty-bound to hunt him? Just like Curt felt duty-bound? After all, he found Angelique's body, left lying like so much discarded forest trash in the park.

 

New release sample: WHITE ROSES

Mt. Zion Ridge Press

Listen to the Books on the Ridge podcast for a discount code to get $1 off ebook, audiobook or print from Mt. Zion Ridge Press!

 

"The White Rose?" Ted Gruber, the senior advertising rep, sauntered into the room. "Bet you anything he got rejected by e-Harmony. Maybe we should get the cops to subpoena them to open up their records."

Curt and Max exchanged glances. She muttered about a queue full of stories that needed to be edited and hurried out of the lunchroom. Ted sidled up next to Curt and went up on his toes to see through the gap into Angela's office. He whistled.

"Who's the cutie? Looks kind of familiar... Hey, is she victim two? What's her name, Karen? Kate?"

"Katrina," Curt muttered. "That's not her."

His stomach twisted and he stared at the young woman, standing now and shaking hands with Angela. Make her hair longer, exchange that brown blazer for a fuzzy pink sweater, and make her twelve years old… she could be Angelique Napolitano.

But Angelique was dead. Nearly twenty years now.

Curt shook his head. He was seeing Angelique everywhere, lately. He had nearly knocked himself out on the basketball court two weeks ago, when he looked up in the stands and thought he saw her sitting there, cheering for Tabor Christian's team in the inter-church basketball tournament. The look-alike was Sheila McGuire, Officer Frank McGuire's niece. Her parents were Army doctors, both on duty overseas.

Ted stomped over to the coffeemaker and tossed a quarter into the donation jar. Everyone was supposed to put in fifty cents for the coffee. "Some loony thinks he's in love and plays Cyrano DeBergerac, spouting love poetry from the bushes. When the girls get scared, he gets nasty." He spilled coffee on the counter, then scattered as much sugar as he put in his coffee. He picked up the sponge from the tiny sink, made a half-hearted swipe at the mess, left it sitting there, and headed out of the lunchroom. "What happened to the good old days when a guy saw a girl he wanted, clobbered her over the head and dragged her back to his cave?" He disappeared down the hall to the front of the long, narrow office space.

"I bet you got rejected by e-Harmony, too," Curt muttered.

He heard the doorknob click and pretended to read the six-month-old copy of Writer's Digest. He sauntered to the doorway of the lunchroom, watching from the corner of his eye as Angela walked the stranger to the front of the office. The long hallway down the far side of the office unit went from front to back, giving Curt a clear view of the traffic at the front door. He watched Angela and the Angelique look-alike shake hands. Several knots of tension in his gut and shoulders loosened when the young woman walked out the door.

CELEBRATE! New release and get-it-before-it's-officially-out SALE!

 

WHITE ROSES, book 4 of the Tabor Heights series, is NOW available.

To celebrate the release, you can get the EBOOK and the AUDIOBOOK and save $$$ on the downloads.

How?

Go to Ye Olde Dragon Books and visit the storefront.

That easy.

Normally the ebook is $4.99 and the audiobook is $9.99, but you can save $2 on each if you buy THIS WEEKEND.

The sale price is only good THIS WEEKEND. That means come Monday morning, it's back to regular price.

PLUS!!!!!!

COMING MARCH 1:

INQUEST

AFV Defender series, Book 4.

You can get the ebook and audiobook NOW, before everyone else, by again, going to Ye Olde Dragon Books and visiting the storefront. Same price -- same savings. How can you miss out? Find out what the crew of the Defender is up to before everyone else AND save $$$.

By the way .... if you haven't heard, the Defender books are kinda-sorta based on stories and friends and personnas from when I belonged to the USS Defiance of Sacramento, a Star Trek club .... and in INQUEST, the Defender is sent on a mission with the most notorious ship in the Fleet. The Inquest has a reputation like a certain other notorious ship and rule-breaking captain .... not naming any names. But the rumors are that if you're sent on a mission with the Inquest, it's kind of like going to serve Vader .... your chances of survival are pretty slim .....

So, will the crew of the Defender survive this mission? Get the book and find out!!!

Don't leave yet!

There's MORE to the celebration -- and your savings.

THE BEASTLY BEAUTY, Book 2 of the Enchanted Castle Archives, is due out April 1 (nope, not joking!).

You can listen to chapters on the Ye Olde Dragon's Library storytelling podcast right now. We're up to Chapter 12 as of yesterday.

BUT, you can get the ebook at Ye Olde Dragon Books, going to the storefront, and .... here's that word again .... SAVE through this weekend. Regularly $4.99, but you can get it for $2.99.

So, celebrate the release of WHITE ROSES with me, and go get those savings!!!

New release sample: WHITE ROSES

RELEASE DAY!!!!

Mt. Zion Ridge Press

Listen to the Books on the Ridge podcast for a discount code to get $1 off ebook, audiobook or print from Mt. Zion Ridge Press!

 

"Who's that?" Curt Mehdlang moved back from the table in the lunchroom at the Tabor Picayune, until his shoulders touched the top of the hatch window looking out over the river behind the building. It gave him the perfect angle to see through the gap in the curtain over the porthole window into Angela Coffelt's office.

A dark-haired young woman sat opposite Angela's desk while the editor looked through a sheaf of papers. As assistant editor for the twice-weekly newspaper, Curt would have known about any interviews. So what was she doing there?

"Hmm?" Max Randolph, one of the copyeditors, pulled her mug of hot water out of the microwave and stepped over next to Curt. "Oh. She's here for a job interview. I heard her tell Myrna she was a reporter at a newspaper out in Iowa somewhere."

"Job interview?" Curt shook his head. “When did we advertise?”

"We didn't." Max raked her fingers through her mop of dark hair and twisted her combs back into place to hold it out of her eyes. "I heard her say she just moved back to town. Takes a lot of guts, moving without a job to go to, in this economy."

"A lot of confidence," he muttered, still watching the composed, familiar-looking woman. "Not much going on to warrant new staff."

Something about her oval face, those big, dark eyes and the way she tipped her head to one side. He knew he should recognize her.

"Hmm?" He jerked, startled when Max touched his arm. "Sorry. A lot on my mind."

"I said, how can you say there's nothing going on, when the White Rose is still on the loose? That's kind of exciting. Sick, but exciting."

"You and Tony aren't going to use it for your next book, are you?"

"Spare me." Max rolled her eyes and ripped open two packets of raspberry hot chocolate mix for punctuation. "We write romances. Sickos preying on innocent girls, demanding love, sight unseen—that’s not romantic."

"Maybe we should check the personal ads at the PD and any other papers, to find someone who's been advertising for months and can't find his true love." Curt's stomach twisted and his mouth tasted like he had bitten into moldy bread. How could he make a joke about the White Rose Killer? Gretchen McKenzie was dead, and now Katrina Harper alternated between terror and frustration.

"I don't think someone like the White Rose would waste time and money on advertising. He's the kind of guy who sees what he wants and punishes anyone who won't give it to him."

Upcoming release sample: WHITE ROSES

Mt. Zion Ridge Press

Listen to the Books on the Ridge podcast for a discount code to get $1 off ebook, audiobook or print from Mt. Zion Ridge Press!

Snow frosted the stiff grass over Angel's grave. Toni shivered, seeing in her imagination the white roses that had been there every time she came to the cemetery, until her parents couldn't take the pain, the cruel, silent taunting from the unidentified killer, and moved them to Indiana. Shaking, she crouched and leaned against the simple cross that held Angel's name, and her dates of birth and death. She had a hole in the index finger of her driving glove, but she ignored the wet and cold to clear out the engraved letters in the gray and pink granite.

There were no roses on Angel's grave. She supposed she should be grateful. How long had the roses continued? Until he found a new true love to haunt with notes and roses and demands for eternal loyalty?

"He's doing it again," she whispered, and her throat tried to close up.

Toni blinked away tears that felt as if they had been building up for years, just waiting to burst out. Her head ached from the pressure. She rubbed the tears away with the back of her fist. Now wasn't the time for crying. Not yet. When the White Rose was caught, exposed, and punished, then she could cry. Then she could finally ask her parents to forgive her for keeping Angel's secrets from them. Why hadn't she tattled on her sister? Their parents wouldn't have approved if they found out Angel had a boyfriend. They would have made her break up with him. She wouldn't have gone to the park to meet her boyfriend. She wouldn't have died, strangled by fencing wire and left lying in the dirt.

Tabor Heights still felt small, quiet, and safe. Just like it had when Toni, Angel and their parents had moved here. She had liked her small classes in school and the quiet, tree-shaded streets. She had felt safe going anywhere she wanted.

Toni hadn't felt safe since Curt Mehdlang went to the park to look for Angel and came back with the police, pale-faced and red-eyed from crying.

She had to get that job at the Picayune. She needed a job, and working for the local newspaper would give her all the information she needed, immediately. People expected reporters to ask questions.

"Please, God, if You're listening to me anymore, I have to have that job. I have to do it for Angel."

Standing, feeling a little wobbly in her knees, Toni stepped backward from the grave. She wondered where the other murdered girl was buried. She wondered what the current target of the White Rose Killer was doing right that moment. Did she feel curious about the man who wrote her those demanding, frightening love notes? Did she feel angry?

Toni thought about contacting the police, to ask to talk to the girl. Would they believe her, if she told them about Angel and her theories about the White Rose? Would they think she was a crackpot, capitalizing on someone's terror? Would it do any good to tell anyone? 

Bottom line: she had to do something. Even if she had to do it alone.