Guest Author - L. Blankenship

Please welcome Guest Author L. Blankenship!

Disciple is a six-part, gritty fantasy romance -- the fifth part of the series has just hit the electronic bookshelves. Kate Carpenter is a peasant girl determined to serve her homeland as a healer in wartime. She never thought the crown prince and a ne'er-do-well knight would notice her along the way.

Back cover:

Kate faces winter with a broken heart: betrayed by one lover, the other lost to her.

Kiefan will not give up on the alliance his kingdom desperately needs — even though the Caer queen refuses to speak to him.

Anders, alone and despairing, faces the Empress’s seductive offers of power and privilege.

Each of them must carry the ongoing war in their own way, whether cold, alone, or backed into a corner. Each must patch together a broken heart as best they can. Duty will throw them together soon enough and they must be ready.

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Read Disciple, Part I for FREE

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Disciple, Part VI

ends the series early next year!

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Excerpt from Disciple, Part V

She walked to him on delicate feet. He managed to sit up, trembling from the cold, from the pain, from half-remembered terror. That she was a little thing, trailing a braid of black hair thick as his arm, that her lush curves would’ve whetted his appetite anywhere else — that was all a lie, he knew in his bones. She was far more than she appeared.

“Such work to save you from the Shepherd, and you race back to his arms? You judge in haste, Anders.”

“I serve my saints,” he gasped out. “I’m discipled by —”

“You are elect, and bound to the Empress.”

His resolve steadied, in rejecting that. “I am a Blessed knight of Wodenberg. Proven in battle. I belong to Saint Woden.” He had his knight’s crest as proof, loose and straggly from melted snow but proof.

The Empress stood over him, without even gooseflesh from the cold. “And what did he give you, for your service? Blessings? A sword? Your sounding does tell it truly; you were as born to the sword as to the saddle. Woden only gilded a lily, with his claim. What you truly need, la…” She crouched down, looked Anders in the eye. “That is a true shifter, to teach you art.”

His chest ached where he’d been stabbed. Anders shifted away from her, pulse pounding in his throat. “Saint Aleks taught me. He showed me how to work it out myself.”

“Saint Aleksandr,” she said, overly patiently, “was a mere stonecutter with stars in his eyes. He did harvest his shifting charms, or I’m a scullery whore.”

Anders straightened, bristling in Saint Aleks’ defense, but the Empress held up one finger in warning. The bond in his palm tingled. Anders shut his mouth.

“Do not waste my time, sir. I am empress of eight kingdoms. I take few apprentices, and spare not my enemies. But mayhaps there is one man in Wodenberg worth sparing. And what, at home, draws you?”

Kate’s name leaped to his lips, and froze there. Her hands, glowing with kir, catching Kiefan as he fell. Stemming the fountain of his blood. Anders’ eyes closed as the pain in his chest stopped his breath. The sword had hurt, too.

When his eyes opened, they swam with tears. “I have…” Kate had said she loved him. But not even a glance at his mortal wound… had their nights together been a lie? Pity?

“For they left you to die,” the Empress said, voice softer. “And I did mend you, then. Saw your worth and bound you, Elect.”

Left him to die. And now they were finally rid of him. Anders’ heart skipped in cold terror; how happy was Kate, now that he was gone? This vulture had plucked him from the Shepherd’s shadow, done what Kate wouldn’t…

“Stay, and you will master your gifts. Which none understand as your own kind do.”

There’d been none in Wodenberg who could teach him; Saint Qadeem himself had said as much. Since Saint Aleks was killed, Anders had largely been left to his own devices. He met the Empress’ eyes, and she was all the world had left for him to choose. Because without Kate…

With her betrayal tearing a ragged hole in his chest at each breath, Anders nodded.

The Empress touched his shoulder, and his aches melted away. The cold vanished. Kir flooded in, lifting his head with a deep, cleansing breath. She stood, and a small blade spun out from one hand. His knight’s crest, she gathered up in the other. With a slash, it came away and she held the handful of flaxen hair before his face. Then dropped it.

“For you are mine. Come home.”

Love Chipotle? So Do I, Just Not Their High Prices

I absolutely love Chipotle burritos. While still calorie bombs, they are at least a bit more healthy than Mickey D's Big Macs with lower fat and sodium contents - well, based on what you put in them.

When I treat myself, it's the shredded pork burrito with the white cilanto-lime rice, mild garden salsa, sour cream, cheese and yes, I do spend the extra $2 for guac. I realized one day that I could probably make my own burrito for less, much less, so I thought I'd try. I found some recipes on-line, tweaked them over a couple of tries at it and came up with the perfect shredded pork burrio at a cost per burrito that Chipotle can't touch.

First, the grocery list (prices are rounded and based on suburbs of Chicago; your price will probably be less):

3-4 lb pork loin roast - $10
1 lb. basmati rice - $3 (you will only need about 1/4 of the bag per recipe)
12 oz sour cream - $1
12 oz. cheddar-jack shredded cheese - $2
1 pint garden salsa - $2 (I get the pre-made, you can certainly make your own for about the same cost)
1 pkg flour tortillas - $1
1 bottle lime juice - $1
1 bunch cilantro - $1
1 jalapeno - $1
1 red onion - $1 (only need about 1/4 of it)
3 avocados - $3
16 oz. chicken broth - $1
1 gal orange juice - $3 (only need about a cup, but I know I'll drink what's left)

You will also need a variety of spices which if you're a cook, you probably already have on hand. If I had to guess, the spices would add up to about $0.50, so pretty negligble when considering recipe cost:

salt
cumin
coriander
oregano
cinnamon
garlic powder
bay leaves

Total cost - about $30. This recipe makes approximately 10-12 burritos depending on how full you stuff them, so making the burritos at home costs less than $3 a burrito (and you will have rice and OJ left over, so the cost per burrito is even less). One burrito with guac at Chipotle is $9. You do the math.

The recipes are really, really easy and prep time is less than 30 minutes. Cooking time, well, to do it correctly, needs about 9 hours. The pork is slow-cooked, but again, toss everything together in the morning and you have burritos for dinner.

First, the pork:

Combine the spices listed above sans the bay leaves. Coat the pork with the rub. You'll need between 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon of each spice, depending on the size of your roast.

Put 2-3 bay leaves at the bottom of a slow cooker and add the rubbed pork. Carefully poor 16 oz. (2 cups) of chicken broth into the slow cooker, trying to not rinse the rub off the pork. Add 1 cup of orange juice. Cook on low for 9 hours, until the pork falls apart.

Be sure to retrieve and discard the bay leaves!

The rice:

At hour 8 of the pork cooking, start the rice. Melt one tablespoon of butter (or use canola oil, but the butter tastes better) in a sauce pan with a lid. Saute on high 1 cup of the rice in the butter for five minutes. Add two cups hot water, stir and cover. Cook on low for 15-20 minutes, until the water has been completely absorbed. Turn off heat, let rice sit with lid on for 30 minutes. Do NOT open the lid.

After 30 minutes, add 2 tablespoons of lime juice and kosher salt (to your taste) and about 1/4-cup chopped cilantro to the rice. Stir well and put lid back on.

The guac:

After the rice is ready, mince about 1/4 of the red onion. Take out the seeds and ribs of the jalapeno and mince. If you're not into jalapenos like me, only use 1/2 of it. Extracate the flesh of the 3 avacados and chop coarsely. Put everything in to a mixing bowl, add salt to taste and if you want, some lemon juice (adds a little more flavor and helps the guac from turning brown) and a little bit of lime juice (again, the salt and lemon/lime juices should be to taste). Mash away. I like mind a little more lumpy than usual, so again, do smash to your liking.

Now you're ready to assemble. Pull out the flour tortillas, sour cream, shredded cheese and garden salsa and have at it. I personally stuff it so full you have to eat it with a fork, but you fill it to your heart's content. You of course can add different salsas, lettuce, beans, but that will add a little to the cost, but still, no where near the $9 you'd spend at Chipotle. It is SO worth it as you can add/subtract ingredients to your own taste. Plus, this being in your own home, enjoy with a margarita!

And believe me, it tastes even better the next day after the flavors have had a day to meld.

If you like this recipe, leave me a comment. If you want more recipes, let me know - I've got quite a few classics with my own touch added.

Beat The Heat Blog Hop - Damn it's hot out there!

Okay, I do live in Chicago and we're used to weird weather (Tornadoes in February? Snow in May? Heat wave in December? Yep, we got it all.) But this year has taken the cake. Polar Vortex (windchills -50 degreee F) this winter, spring didn't come until May, no summer until the last two weeks of August (and counting - seems summer wants to take over September according to the long-range forecast. What's a girl to do in regards to her wardrobe? I never put away the sweaters and long-sleeve shirts, so my closet is overflowing now with all my clothes. I've reached the point that tank tops can be worn for Christmas and sweaters can be worn for Memorial Day. I'm not digging this weather. 

One way to beat the heat or to escape the cold, depending on the day ... hell, depending on the hour ... is to curl up on the couch with a good book. What is that you ask? Do I have any recommendations? Well, of course I do! How about a free read? It's a little short story I wrote years ago and was originally published by XoXo Publishing. Unfortunately they closed their doors, so I'm offering it as a free read and hope you'll come back in a couple of weeks to check out the sequel. 

Without further ado, click here for link to Smashwords for the free read of Twenty-Four Hours, the first story in The Guardians Series. Then be sure to hop on to the next author in the tour for another chance at the raffle and for more book recommendations. Then don't forget, the second story, Michael's Journey, will be available September 9th.

 
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Guest Author Spotlight: A. Morell

Please welcome Author A. Morell, announcing her new book release "Half Past Forever."

Half Past Forever: A Glimpse into Eternity
 
Thank you for hosting me today, Sherrie.

I recently experienced my first foray into the M/M Romance Group's summer writing event on Goodreads, this year titled Love's Landscapes. It was by far the largest fiction-writing event I've ever taken part in, and while challenging at times, it turned out to be a gift for myself as well as for my letter-writer.

(For those who don't know, this writing event works by having group members find photos they like and writing a request letter to serve as a writing prompt. Authors of all experience levels can choose to participate by claiming a prompt.)
This is the image and letter that spoke to me:

Dear Author, 

This man I'm kneeling before isn't someone I know well, matter of a fact we only met three days ago. Yet he tells me something that's hard for me to believe, he tells me he is immortal. That’s not all though he seems to believe I’m the man he has dreamed about for thousands of years, that I’m his mate. The more I think about it the more I believe, well I believe that he isn’t exactly human I’m not so sure about the mate part. Still I can’t imagine what’s supposed to happen now. 

Requests: please; have story taken place in current time period 2014, tell how they met, characters in late twenties early thirties, no instant love but should be a happy ever after.

This hit on so many of my guilty pleasures’immortals, destined mates, and happily ever after. How could I resist’ The men were almost completely in shadow, too. I could make them whatever I wanted.

Knowing that this was just for fun and wouldn't be going to a professional publisher gave me a freedom I didn't expect’the freedom to experiment. Of course one should be willing to experiment with their writing, but it's hard not to get caught up in your own insecurities when you know it's up for professional review. I still don't think I went crazy, but you could say I at least let my hair down and my thoughts wander. Out of it came a character I really want to revisit: Levin, the immortal.

There are a lot of creatures in mythologies and folklore around the world that live forever, most of them through some sort of evil power. I wanted to take one and expand on those potentially dark origins, and thrust this unnatural creature into the world of humans.

By the time the story, Half Past Forever, gets started, Levin is more than a thousand years old. It would have been impossible to tell his entire story in the month and a half I had to write it, and admittedly harder to identify with a man who lives forever. So we follow Callum, the destined mortal, instead, and get the first glimpses of Levin's many years along with him.

The possibilities for those years are endless. Maybe one day we'll know the beginning and middle of Levin's story, but for now, we can have the happy end of it.
It begins with the joining of two separate paths...

**** It’s not an impulse that pulls him inside. Still he thinks nothing of it - why should he, when he comes to these kinds of places on his own so often? Man, woman, or more, he takes wherever he knows he can.

But the instant he’s through the door he feels it. It’s the pulse of the universe aligning every star just so to center around this one moment, around him. It’s all everything he’s seen and heard and smelled and tasted before, but never felt.

He feels it now.

The floor circles and sprawls around him, wide and deep and drenched in the blue that haunts his dreams. He understands now what it was, what it’s been all this time. A stage rises in front of him. He feels the music beating in his bones and rooting his feet to the ground.

He’s lived forever, and only now does he feel the clock begin to tick.

**** Blue eyes lined in black pierced through the stage lights to gauge the slow-growing crowd, searching for those who might shell out for a private dance once he got down to the floor. Most were balancing bills and beers in their hands, some more precariously than others as they followed his gyrating and flexing as the light played along the sheen of oil on his muscles. Honestly they all looked the same to him at this point. It was the size of the note he was concerned about.

Every motion of his routine was just muscle memory by now, and as it neared the end he caught sight of a dark figure at the back of the room and right in the middle of the floor. Callum couldn’t make out his features from here but he could tell he was staring, and he thought it odd the way he didn’t move at all.

It wouldn’t be Monday without a creep hanging around, he supposed, and he finished his dance by tossing his tearaway shorts into the crowd. God, those things were awful. He had never expected to be back in them four nights a week, but then he’d never expected that the budget crisis for social workers would result in him losing his job, either. Life was just full of surprises.

A few more groups of people had wandered inside by the time Callum made it down to the floor and his mood improved marginally. Pasting on a flirtatious smile, he headed for the tables to go make some new friends, scouting for the bigger spenders- and then stopped short.

The man doing his best statue impression was right in front of him. He was tall, with light eyes and fair hair that glowed in the blue phosphorescence of the club lights, and a dark coat that hung at a perfectly tailored endpoint at the thigh. He was still here, still staring, still as a ghost. Callum half expected him to disappear if he blinked - he almost wished he would, then maybe those eyes wouldn’t be lancing right through him.

  Available now for free download. For an exclusive sneak peek at my upcoming release, Puncture Wounds, check out the Birthday Bash down below.
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Cover Reveal - Two Red Leaves

Cover reveal time! "Two Red Leaves," the sequel to "Last of the Summer Tomatoes" is due out this fall. Release date coming soon!

New Publisher/Editor in Town!

Please help me welcome Cool Beans Publishing and Editing! They offer both publishing and editing services for all authors. (Publshing and editing are not mutually exclusive.)

Cool Beans Publishing & Editing

Click on the company link above to check them out!

If I could turn back time ...

And no, not going to sing the Cher song.

A friend recently asked me if I could go back in time, to what time would I go? I couldn't answer at the time. Would I go back and try to stop the JFK assassination or Lincoln's? Would I try to prevent 9/11? Kill Hitler? Or more close to home, would I go back to stop my uncle from riding his motorcycle to work that awful August morning?

I've thought and thought and I've come to the conclusion ... I would want to go back and experience a Christmas with my grandparents one more time. To enjoy that innocence that has been lost. To not have a care in the world other than being good so Santa would bring presents - and of course hoping Santa could find me as I was at my grandparents' home and not in my own home. To be young again, running around in my grandparents' basement with my cousins, grabbing one of those tiny bottle Coke-Colas they used to make. Or at my other grandparents' place, running up and down the field, from great-grandma's place and back. 

I'd love to have one of grandma's hugs again - either one of them. And I'd ask my grandpa about his experiences from World War I - something I regret I never did. Or ask my other grandpa about how he lost his thumb as a boy and how he dealt with it. I'd actually love to watch Laurence Welk with my grandparents again ... although as a kid back then, I found it very boring.

So I would be selfish; I'd go back for myself. Not to change the world, not to change history, but to have that one, singular feeling of a childhood Christmas, one more time.

So, what would any of you guys do if you could go back in time? Anyone is welcome to post.