Golden Leaf Award Finalist spot for Watch Over Me!

I was delighted to visit my fellow writers at the New Jersey RWA Conference and to attend the luncheon with other finalists for the Golden Leaf Awards.  

Thank you for a wonderful honor!

 Good company!

Great logo!

Delighted that Watch Over Me was named a finalist in the Daphne duMaurier Awards! Thank you Kiss of Death Chapter of Romance Writers of America!

Daphne du Maurier Award

I'm delighted that Watch Over Me, Book 2 of my Code Talker Chronicles, has been nominated for a Daphne du Maurier Award!  The award is given by the Kiss of Death Chapter of Romance Writers of America.  It honors Romantic Suspense /Mystery novels.

It's named for the famed 20th century novelist Dame Daphne du Maurier, author of Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, Rebecca, and The Birds.  What stories!  They have been adapted into movies and TV series many times became they hold up and readers love them.  Here is Dame Daphne in her youth...
What an honor!  Thank you! 

Back from the Chanticleer awards ceremony with a lovely blue ribbon!

Thank you Chanticleer for the honor of First in Category: Chatelaine Award 

(Romance/Women's Fiction) for Watch Over Me!

Award Season!

Hollywood is not the only place with an award season.  We in the world of storytelling put on our Sunday best and peace about come spring too.  I'm delighted to announce that my second in the Code Talker Chronicles, Watch Over ME has been shortlisted for a Chanticleer Award.

So off I go April 20 to 22, 2018  to the Chanticleer Conference in Bellingham, Washington.  I love the Pacific Northwest and it is book country, maybe thanks to all those cosy rainy days?

I H    Hope you are enjoying the Season of Light!  The tradition of welcoming neighbors in for a hot drink  toast to the new year has been around for over one thousand years.  Wassail!  Good Health! Here's a recipe for your slow cooker that you can keep going all day...

                         

  4 cups hot brewed tea

4 cups cranberry juice

4 cups unsweetened apple juice

2 cups orange juice

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup lemon juice

3 cinnamon sticks (3 inches)

12 whole cloves

In a 5-qt. slow cooker, combine the first six ingredients. Place the cinnamon sticks and cloves on a double thickness of cheesecloth; bring up corners of cloth and tie with string to form a bag. Add to slow cooker.

Cover and cook on high for 1 hour or until punch begins to boil. Discard spice bag. Serve warm. 

Yield: 3-1/2 quarts.

Book 2 of Code Talker Chronicles is out!  

I'm delighted with the response from readers about Watch Over Me.  

 "...kept me up way too late on work nights because I couldn't put it down, but that's how you know a really great book!"

"...can't wait for the next in the series!" 

Many many thanks to my wonderful editors at BWL, Catherine Brown and Jude Pittman, and cover artist Michelle Lee.  What a team!  

This one is my love song to New York City, where my parents were born.

It’s the summer of 1942 in New York City. War widow Kitty Charente’s night on the town with a man she thinks is her company’s visiting salesman turns into a hunting ground.  Luke Kayenta is a Navajo code talker, and a Nazi agent is in pursuit.  American isolationists are searching for Luke too.  And his superiors at the the U.S. Office of Strategic Services want to know if he’s cracked under torture in Spain. Kitty and Luke must evade capture from one enemy and death from another as they race from the Lower East Side to the Savoy Ballroom to Coney Island, aided by unlikely allies in the Canadian and French spy networks, a Harlem baker, and even Weegee, the city’s most famous tabloid photographer.