Drew Martin had lived in Hellsprings all his life, man and boy. He’d probably die here too, he reflected, as he began his morning routine. Day in, day out, always the same. The job as watchman, it’s solitary lifestyle, suited him, loner that he was. No one knew this area better than he did, nor the locals. The job of watchman was naturally his. Couldn’t belong to anyone else, that was for sure. Because the town had a transient population. People came here, made some money and cleared the hell out. But not Andrew Cornelius Martin. He was one of the few people who had actually lived here all his life. For all of his solitude, he knew everything that went on in the area. It was said that he could hear a pin drop miles away. When he slept, it was like a dog slept. With one ear open. He had contacts everywhere and an encyclopaedic brain. When it came to Hellsprings and its comings and goings. He had very little use for any other type of knowledge and if the truth be known, any other type of knowledge had very little use for him. He went into the town several times a week and stocked up on whatever he needed. Including discreet information. He spoke little,. listened a lot and absorbed everything he heard, something like a sponge. No one was quite sure about it, but it was understood that he had a connection with a lady in the town, Jessica Hinkley, who ran one of the local drinking establishments. But no one could be quite sure about it, as Drew Martin never spoke to anyone about it. And Jessica Hinkley certainly never discussed the matter with anyone. However, any opportunist with a view to befriending the lady with a view to getting their feet under the table in Jessica’s saloon was soon given the message that their attention was unwelcome. So it was generally understood that she was off limits. There was, however, no need to worry that the lady’s charms were going to waste, however. She had the self-satisfied smile of a woman perfectly contented with her lot in life.
Part 8
Darkness There But Something More – A TBC Book Blitz
Print Length: 182 pages
Publisher: The Blue Pencil
Publication Date: June 30, 2017
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
Genre: Paranormal
DARKNESS THERE – BUT SOMETHING MORE – About This Book:
Who has not been intrigued and enthralled by the spirit world, ghosts and other other-worldly beings? Or to say it in a simpler way, the paranormal? Ambiguous presences surround us. Whether they are in the form of stories narrated by our grandparents, or in the form of haunting, riveting supernatural stories in books and movies, they have held us under their spell. They continue to engage and allure us from our youngest days and even until the present. In fact, the prominence of paranormal investigators, Ghostbusters and others documenting the supernatural world in today’s age, which is overpowered by science and technology, shows that we crave to push our boundaries as rational beings and delve into the phenomena which we cannot define or explain tangibly.
This anthology of 30 selected ghost stories by an international group of authors celebrates the spine-chilling thrills and sense of awe and bewilderment which we feel in the presence of this inexplicable world. A world which is inhabited by supernatural beings. Pick up a copy of DARKNESS THERE – BUT SOMETHING MORE and experience the cataclysmic, weird, and at times, the benevolent spirit world. You will never experience a dull moment in this roller-coaster ride!
It would be great if you can add this book to your TBR list
The Author/Editors
Dr Santosh Bakaya
Dr Santosh Bakaya is the recipient of various international awards. We’ll mention some of them right now.
- She won the Reuel Award for literature in2014 for her long poem, Oh Hark!,
- The Poet Laureate Award for Ballad of Bapu, Oh Hark! And Where Are The Lilacs? [2016 Poetry Society of India, Gurugram, Haryana, India]
- The Universal Inspirational Poet Award [2016]
- Incredible woman of the Year Award, 2015 [Incredible Women of India blog]
Santosh Bakaya, an academician. poet . essayist and novelist, has made her mark both in prose and in poetry. Her three mystery novels, [The mystery of the Relic, The Mystery of the Jhalana Fort, The mystery of the Pine cottage] for young adults (YA genre), were very well received in the 1990s
‘Flights from my Terrace’, her e-book of 58 essays, published on Smashwords in 2014, now has a printed version [Authorspress, Delhi, 2017]. Ballad Of Bapu, [a poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Vitasta publishers, Delhi, 2015], and Where Are The lilacs? [Authorspress, Delhi, 2016] have received international notice and recognition.
Her poems have figured in the highly commendable category and Poem Of The Month category in Destiny Poets, a UK based poetry website. Her poetry has also appeared in various ezines in throughout the English speaking world.
She has co-edited UMBILICAL CHORDS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF PARENTS REMEMBERED, published by Global Fraternity of Poets, Gurugram, Haryana. And now, she brings us DARKNESS a collection of ghost stories. [Blue Pencil] Under the Apple Boughs, her second compilation of poems, is her most recent book [Authorspress, 2017]. In July, 2017, an Award for Literary Excellence was conferred on her by Bharat Nirman, an international NGO.
You can stalk her @
Lopamudra Banerjee
Lopamudra Banerjee is a writer, poet, editor and translator, currently based in Dallas, USA. She has a Masters’ degree with thesis in creative nonfiction writing from the Department of English, University of Nebraska, at Omaha. Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant’s Wayward Journey, her debut memoir/nonfiction work, (Authorspress, 2016) has received Honorable Mention at Los Angeles Book Festival 2017. The manuscript has also been First Place Category Winner at the Journey Awards 2014 hosted by Chanticleer Reviews and Media LLC, USA. Her literary works have appeared in numerous journals, anthologies and ezines.
Her fiction has been featured in Silhouette I & II anthology (Authorspress), among other places. She has received the Reuel International Award 2017 for Poetry and also Reuel International Award 2016 for her English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s novella Nastanirh (translated as The Broken Home) instituted byThe Significant League, a renowned literature group in Facebook, and the book is available in Amazon Kindle. Her debut poetry collection ‘Let The Night Sing’ has recently been published by Global Fraternity of Poets. Also, her collection of selected stories by Rabindranath Tagore in English translation, ‘The Broken Home and Other Stories’ has recently been published by Authorspress.
You can stalk her @
Grab Your Copy From
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In The Cottage By The River
Sipping one’s supermarket sauvignon
In one’s local authority dwelling (so fortunately addressed)
One reflects on the vicissitudes of fortune
Yes indeed, one is truly blessed
Check the Instagram account and you’ll wonder why
I don’t dwell in a cottage by the river with the swans swimming by?
I don’t work for a living – perish the thought!
The world needs those such as me
To reflect, ruminate and do what I ought
Making artistic creations which I share with the world for free
See my creations and you’ll see they imply
I live in a cottage by the river with the swans swimming by
In The Cottage By The River
Sipping one’s supermarket sauvignon
In one’s local authority dwelling (so fortunately addressed)
One reflects on the vicissitudes of fortune
Yes indeed, one is truly blessed
Check the Instagram account and you’ll wonder why
I don’t dwell in a cottage by the river with the swans swimming by?
I don’t work for a living – perish the thought!
The world needs those such as me
To reflect, ruminate and do what I ought
Making artistic creations which I share with the world for free
See my creations and you’ll see they imply
I live in a cottage by the river with the swans swimming by
Darkness There – But Something More TBC Book Blitz
The Knight’s Scarred Maiden by Nicole Locke: Cooking Up A Historical Feast
The Knight’s Scarred Maiden (Lovers and Legends)
A maiden for the mercenary
Mercenary knight Rhain is living on borrowed time. With a vengeful warlord pursuing him, he has accepted his fate—though first he must get his men to safety.
When he rescues mysterious and deeply scarred Helissent from her attackers, Rhain soon wishes he wasn’t marked for death. He can never be the man she deserves—his scandalous lineage alone dictates that—but Rhain can’t resist the temptation to show this innocent maiden how beautiful she truly is…
Lovers and Legends A clash of Celtic passions
Buy on:
Author Nicole Locke first discovered romance novels hidden in her grandmother’s closet. Convinced hidden books must be better, Nicole greedily read them. It was only natural she should start writing them (but now not so secretly). If she isn’t working on the next book in the Lovers and Legends historical series, she can be reached at:
Facebook Twitter Website Goodreads
Going Back In Time
The Knight’s Scarred Maiden is a story between a dangerous mercenary and a scarred maiden who rescues him. But there’s more to this tale than that.
There’s cooking and baking as well.The heroine’s family died in a tragic fire. Burned severely on the right side of her body, Helissent was healed with honey and herbs. When the innkeepers adopt her, she helps bring in patrons by baking honey cakes and more savoury fare. Her love of baking and cooking weaves its way throughout the story. She compares her struggles to failed bakes, and thinks of people like ingredients. She also talks in baking terminology, which confuses many a discussion.
On the run from a vengeful warlord, the hero Rhainstops at an inn and tastes Helissent’s cakes and food. Her love for it all weaves around him as well. Though it risks his life, he stays.
To truly understand the importance of food for Helissent, or why the cakes would be so good that Rhain would risk his life, I tried some of her recipes.But this story takes place in the 13th Century. These are medieval recipes.
I made sweet desserts like herb fritters, apple fritters, and honey cakes. I made raston and trencher bread. I tried to re-create the banquet scene. There was fish with sorrel sauce, fennel soup, almond chicken with raisin sauce.
Along the way, I made mistakes. But that helped, too. Helissent is a heroine who perseveres no matter the stakes. When a sauce went bad, she simply did it again, and so did I. She wouldn’t have given up making trencher bread, and I didn’t either.I even invited people over to share in the banquet. People’s pleasure of the food explained why a woman so alone in the world would find joy sharing her fare.
After my fifth attempt at honey cakes, I understood why Rhain would risk his life for something so seemingly insignificant as a cake. Because when they’re baked just right,they’re delicious. And this is a man who doesn’t expect to live very long.
He’s also a man, who finds Helissentremarkable and brave. Baking would require Helissent to be constantly around an open fire. Yet, it was a fire that killed her family and destroyed her home. A fire which scarred her body and made her skin tender to heat and touch. However, for the innkeepers who adopt her and for her own self-worth, she continually risks those flames. Is it any wonder why she would risk her life and face the warlord who intends to kill the man she loves?
So you see, there is somuch more to this story than tragic pasts and vengeful warlords. There is also Medieval food and falling in love…
The Curse of Lakeham Abbey
Author Sally Quilford is an awesome storyteller with the knack of keeping readers glued to the page long after they should have put down their book and started making the dinner. She’s a favourite author of mine. Reading Sally Quilford is one of my guilty pleasures, like drinking red wine and eating chocolate. Given the choice between an evening of television and an evening reading one of her books, and the book will win every time. Her new release, The Curse of Lakeham Abbey, looks bewitching and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Today, Sally is sharing her thoughts regarding the setting of her new novel. I’m honoured to welcome her to MBB. Take it away, Sally!
The Place’s Fault
And setting in The Curse of Lakeham Abbey
One of my favourite poems is The Place’s Fault by Philip Hobsbaum. It is about a child, possibly a refugee, who is teased mercilessly by children from the town to which he has moved. By the end of this tense poem, in which the victim even blames himself for looking ‘odd’, he understands that the tormenters are the product of the place in which they live.
The poem has always made me think about setting and how it can affect people. Anyone who has lived in social housing and tried to further their education will tell you that it’s very difficult when others feel threatened by your attempts to better yourself. As a legal advisor, I had a client – a recovering drug addict – who told me that he had stopped going to the drop-in centre because not only did pushers hang around outside, but he could not get away from the people who weren’t trying as hard to recover as he was. Places influence us, whether they’re big towns, medium sized estates or a couple of offices in the town centre that had been given over to drug rehabilitation.
Lakeham Abbey, which has now appeared in three of my novels, is one such place. In its first appearance, in The Dark Marshes, it was a fairly generic Gothic pile, with secret rooms and a ‘ghost’. My heroine, Hetty, had gone there as a young bride and it almost drove her mad. In its second outing in The Secret of Lakeham Abbey, the secret rooms had become Blytonesque, forbidden rooms and priest holes, perfect for a young sleuth, Percy Sullivan and his friend to explore in a ‘Golden Age’ type murder mystery. By the time I wrote The Curse of Lakeham Abbey, I was inspired by the domestic noir of modern day, and saw the Abbey as a prison, or gilded cage, full of affluent people who each wear a cloak of happiness. One by one those cloaks fall off, revealing an undertone of darkness that can only lead to murders. Percy has grown up and the scales have fallen from his eyes, making it harder for him to be the hero he would like to be, or to see the heroic in others.
One of the characters says the Abbey is cursed (hence the title), and I wanted to explore how much this setting affected every character, as it starts to leak secrets that people would rather keep quiet. The Abbey is a prison to them, because their secrets keep them there, for whatever reason. But is it really to blame for the things they do? Can we blame our setting for the mistakes we make or the dreams we fail to follow? I’ll let readers decide that and I hope they enjoy thinking about it as they read the novel.
***
The Curse of Lakeham Abbey – Blurb
Everyone knows that Lakeham Abbey is cursed. All the stories say so. Throughout the years, there have been mad women, murders, and a general feeling of misery that drives people away. When another murder takes place there, it only adds to the legends.
Some seventy years after his first visit to Lakeham Abbey, Percy Sullivan returns. He has lost none of his truculence nor his thirst for justice. The Abbey has been turned into luxury apartments, of which down-on-his-luck Percy is one of the first new residents.
When Julia Marsh is murdered and her husband, fading rock star, Jake, is imprisoned, Percy is determined to find the killer and free the grandson of his greatest friends. Tensions rise as secrets that threaten to destroy everyone are uncovered. In a place where no one is entirely innocent, how will he ever find the guilty?
***
The Curse of Lakeham Abbey is released on 15th August 2017 and is available to buy from Amazon.co.ukhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1973988623 (paperback) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Curse-Lakeham-Abbey-Sally-Quilford-ebook/dp/B0748MN67L/ref=sr_1_21?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501492456&sr=1-21 (Kindle)
And Amazon.comhttps://www.amazon.com/Curse-Lakeham-Abbey-Sally-Quilford/dp/1973988623/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501492330&sr=1-3&keywords=Sally+Quilford (paperback) https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Lakeham-Abbey-Sally-Quilford-ebook/dp/B0748MN67L/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501492421&sr=1-2 (Kindle)
Amazon India: https://www.amazon.in/Curse-Lakeham-Abbey-Sally-Quilford-ebook/dp/B0748MN67L/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502867137&sr=8-1&keywords=the+curse+of+lakeham+abbey+by+sally+quilford
DISCOVERING ME by Divyanjali Verma – A Young Indian Author
Divyanjali Verma is a young writer from Lucknow in north India. She recently published her novel DISCOVERING ME. She is currently studying clinical psychology in Amity University in NOIDA, north India. In this interview, she shares her thoughts on her book, which by all accounts, is an absorbing read.
What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
Inspiration… I am not too sure whether it could be labelled as such, but I did have motivation to write. This started off as an article for the school magazine, but was deemed to be too long to be published so i shelved it. Then one of my friends requested me to continue and well, i was not doing too good academically that year, so writing was a way to prove to myself that i wasn’t worthless. So in a way, the motivation was to keep myself from slipping into depression.
Why do you like writing?
I like to write because it acts as an outlet for thoughts that i cannot express out loud. Also, it is a great way to discover like-minded people. I started reading voraciously at the age of 10, moving on to writing was an easy transition. Devouring the words of L.M.Alcott, J.K.Rowling, Christopher Paolini, Dan Brown, and Agatha Christie, among a lot others, I began to wonder what my own words would turn out to be like on paper. Once I started, there was no end. Writing is an escape, solace, a relief from reality. Since I generally use a penname while posting write-ups on social media, it also helps me to hide as I write in metaphors about all that I feel and want.
How long did it take you to write this book?
It took me a year to complete the book and another to finish editing it to my best ability. Examinations and joining college kept me from working on it as much as I wanted to and so it took me two years to be done with it.
What was the hardest part of your writing process?
Hardest part of the writing process for me was to pen down the conversations. I am not one to talk much out loud. I prefer written to vocal, and so coming up with the words that the characters said to each other was difficult. Aside from that, i was bleeding ink and it was quite easy. However, since I am in a better place currently, I’m having difficulty slipping into that mode again so in a way, the hardest part has been to start with the sequel.
What was the shortest?
What took the least amount of time were the parts with King Rusoe and Lady Charlise. I had the most fun writing them and had to tone down some of the scenes because my friends felt they would be too mcuh for a young audience (laughs). Considering the society I live in, it is completely okay for there to be violent scenes whereasmy morals might have been questioned if I had added some romantic parts in the manuscript. Therefore I let my imagination fly wherever it wanted when it came to those chapters and one cana very well say that they wrote themselves.
Intempus – Discovering Me
“Sometimes all it takes to change everything you thought true is a single sentence by a single person.” And sometimes it takes three.
All Danielle Hayes ever wanted was a normal, boring life, full of monotonous repetitions, but three statements destroyed all chances of her wish ever coming true-
1) “Don’t call me ‘Daddy’, I’m not your father.”
2) “I am Daniel Hayes, your brother.”
3) “I’m a Lamia, dear, a witch. Dan’s one too, as are you!”
Read on as the saga commences and Danielle begins the journey to find her roots and discover who she really is while coming to terms with magic, family and above all, the feeling of home in the midst of increased revelations of mysteries which supposedly have no explanations.
Get this book here: Amazon India (ebook/ book) Amazon US Amazon UK Kobo
With Opened Eyes
Thought you’d fooled me, didn’t you?
Well, maybe for a while.
Your kind words helped a lot
When I needed a reason to smile.
But now, alas, I understand
You played a game with me
For you, I was a scapegoat
And now, at last, I’m free.
Thought you’d fooled me, didn’t you?
But you know, that couldn’t last.
Virtual charm is deceiving
I’m remembering the past.
Giving me tedious work to do
For a fraction of the rate,
I was your ‘cheap option’,
Well, that’s no more my fate.
Gone from my existence
I miss you not at all
Why needs a friend who turns on you
When on their help you call?
The laborer deserves his pay
So the good Book proclaims,
You think it fine to deny someone
Their legitimate fee? Oh, shame!
That bunch of silly stories
Of stately. Regency halls
Can carry on with the lunacy
Of enceinte ladies dancing in balls
Stiff upper lips proclaiming love
When never was it done
Not to humiliate themselves
They’ll pay right coin to get work done
Thought you’d fooled me, didn’t you?
Truth came out in the end
My owe will come back seven times
As karma is my friend.
All About Books, Reading & Writing 