Taste of Kiwi: Blog of Author Shelley Munro

The Sinful Sirens post is below, but please do check out Tracy’s post first and enter her contest!

I’d like to welcome Tracy Lane today, author of Paranormal Properties. She’s speaking of ghostly things and happenings, and of course, a little about her latest release. Don’t forget to leave a comment and enter her contest. Over to Tracy!

I am Tracy Lane author of Paranormal Properties. The main character is Jake Weir, a 14 year old boy who realizes he can see and hear ghosts. Hauntings are most intense around children entering puberty, as kids this age are emitting immense amounts of energy. This is very true of Jake. He comes to terms with seeing ghosts even though he was a huge skeptic up until he met Frank Barrone, Dusks oldest ghost. I want to share some interesting facts about ghosts.

Most ghosts are happy, but some still cling to an emotional pain. Frank is a happy ghost, although he wants to find out who murdered him and where they buried his body.

They can make sounds that are audible. True, but Jake can hear Frank talk just like he did when he was alive. They have meaningful conversations.

Ghosts favor night due to the decrease in daytime energy use. Not true with Frank, he comes and goes all times day and night. He is not limited to night appearances.

Ghosts retain all the memories and emotions of their lives. True, Frank recounts several instances in his life with Jake.

Ghosts make friends with other ghosts from different eras. And they can also make enemies with same ghosts. You will see what I mean towards the end of the book.

If a spirit was a jerk while living, they will probably still be a jerk while a ghost. Frank has that holier than thou attitude and it comes out every once in a while. He is not a jerk though, just a bit on the pushy side.

Some alleged hauntings are actually a "residue," which is a past event that replays itself over and over. This actually happens in chapter four of my book but also has ghosts interacting with each other. This chapter was my favorite to write, I made the live world seem dead and the dead world very alive!

I hope I have taught you some things about ghosts you did not know, how they interact with our world and their own world. How some ghosts want nothing more but to be noticed by the living and acknowledged in our every day life. I also hope you enjoy my book.

Tracy Lane

Paranormal Properties
Paranormal Properties Book One

Tracy Lane

Genre: YA Paranormal

Publisher: Pants on Fire Press

ISBN: 978-0982727171

ASIN: B00BMHF6X6

Number of pages: 192

Word Count: 33,000

Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/NwIoLYHHznU

Amazon Print Kindle

Book Description:

Jake Weir, while on the set of his parents ghost hunting TV show, agrees to help a ghost investigate a 61 year-old murder.

Jake Weir is not like the other kids in Dusk, North Carolina. Then again, Dusk, North Carolina is not like other cities. Known as one of the most haunted cities in America, behind Salem, Massachusetts and New Orleans, Louisiana, Dusk is ground zero for Jake’s ghost hunting parents.

The Weir family has arrived in Dusk eager to scope out some of the town’s 127 reported "paranormal properties," which just happens to be the name of their own ghost hunting show: Paranormal Properties. What Jake doesn’t know, and what his parents could never imagine, is that Jake can see ghosts! And hear them. And talk back to them! This talent comes in handy when he runs into Dusk’s oldest, most famous ghost: one Frank Barrone, a one-time lounge singer made famous by his booze-soaked ballad, "Barroom Eyes."

Frank was gunned down by a local mobster in 1951 and has been searching for his killer ever since. When he learns that Jake can see and hear him, Frank makes young Jake a deal: if Jake will help Frank find his killer, Frank will help his parents find a ghost to film for their upcoming Halloween Special on Public Access Channel #319. Jake enlists the only friend he’s made in Dusk, an overweight tomboy nicknamed "Tank," to help him track down Frank’s killer. As clues emerge and old leads heat up, Frank and Jake learn they make quite a team. But will Jake find Frank’s killer? And will Frank find a real haunted house in time for Halloween?

“Paranormal Properties is a great, family-friendly Young Adult novel about a boy who can talk to ghosts. Equal parts Scooby-Doo, CSI and the Hardy Boys, you will enjoy getting to know Jake, Frank and Tank as much as I did. Now, if only ‘Paranormal Properties’ was a real show I could watch on TV every week…” ~ Rusty Fischer, author of Zombies Don’t Cry

CONTEST: Complete the rafflecopter to go into the draw to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Let’s do the hop! Check out new books to make your reading pile soar and maybe win a prize while adventuring through the hop participant’s websites. This hop is sponsored by Under the Covers and Guilty Pleasures

A few weeks ago I read an article about ways men can make their women swoon and feel special. Here are a selection:

1. Ask her to dance.

2. Put your arm around her when you introduce her to your friends and family.

3. Kiss her eyelids.

4. When she’s walking down the street, across the room or up stairs to meet you, walk toward her as soon as you see her.

5. Grasp her hand when a sexy woman walks by.

6. Mention your upcoming anniversary before she does.

7. Call her just before you get on a plane.

8. Order her coffee and make sure it’s exactly how she likes it.

9. Worship her breasts.

10. Draw her a warm bath.

11. In the middle of a conversation, tell her you love her.

12. Kiss her hand in front of your friends.

13. Notice when she’s wearing something new.

14. Make love to her and focus entirely on her needs.

Source: Men’s Health.com

Charlotte Dixon, the heroine from my recent release One Night of Misbehavior is charmed by Ashley Marlborough. He’s definitely swoon worthy. He’s rich, talented and possesses charisma by the bucket load. On top of that he’s kind. He brings her coffee and he focuses on her until she feels very special, even if she fights him every inch of the way.

He wears his scars on the outside. She keeps hers safe inside.

Charlotte Dixon ignores her stepmother’s edict and, in an act of disobedience, attends one of the social events of the year—a masquerade costume ball. Charlotte’s naughtiness escalates when she dances and smooches with a sexy mystery man. The night of anonymous passion that follows makes her yearn for a different life, but the next day she’s back to her dull routine of household management.

Advertising tycoon, Ash Marlborough is about to set a private investigator on the trail of his nameless princess when she waltzes right into his place of work. Charlotte is shocked to meet her masked man in the flesh, and even more perturbed when he asks her out on a date. Despite craving another night of sexy loving, she doesn’t have time for a man, not when she wants to reinvent herself and grasp a new, improved life with both hands. But Ash knows what he wants, and he’s determined to win the heart of his princess. Let the dance of seduction commence.

Warning: Contains a conniving stepmother, selfish stepsisters, a grandmother with fairy godmother tendencies and a sexy masked man who is willing to face them all for the love of a good woman.

Order ebook at: Smashwords| Amazon Kindle| All Romance ebooks| Barnes & Noble| Kobo|

CONTEST: Do you have a swoon worthy addition to my list? Complete the rafflecopter for a chance to win an Amazon Gift certificate.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

For more chances to win prizes, check out the other participating blogs!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

~ Grab your current read

~ Open to a random page

~ Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

~ BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

~ Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser this week is from Ink by Amanda Sun. I’ve just started reading this paranormal young adult story, and I have to say I haven’t looked forward to reading a book this much for ages. Both the cover and blurb absolutely seduced me. Ink is due for release on 25 June 2013.

If she saw me now, the way I was pressed against the wall all spylike, she’d think I was eavesdropping, and I didn’t need rumors circulating about me. I was already a gaijin, an outsider—I didn’t need to be a weirdo, too.

Note – this is an ARC so the final text might vary.

On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.

Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they’ll both be targets.

Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive.

Pre-order from Amazon

What are you reading this week?

I’m visiting Maria Zannini today where my post is about Cinderella Breaking Bread.

My cupcake course was a bit different from what I’d thought it would be. I don’t know why I thought I’d be piping icing. The lesson was with sugar paste and was lots of fun—sort of like reverting to childhood and dabbling with play dough.

These are my materials. I’ve rolled my sugar paste into pea and marble shapes ready to make my snowman.

Here are my final creations. I have a snowman, a pine tree and two roses and a leaf on the cupcake. An octopus on the biscuit. A fish that looks a bit like a tadpole and my cake pop hedgehog. You need to use your imagination with the hedgehog. The photo didn’t do it justice!

I hope to see you over at Maria’s blog.

Welcome to Sneak Peek Sunday. The rules are simple.

1. Post 6 paragraphs (no more, no less) from either a WIP or a published work.
2. Open to both un-published and published authors.
3. Post the link back to Sneak Peek Sunday so that others can hop along.
4. HAVE FUN!!

My sneak peek today comes from one of my earlier Ellora’s Cave releases—Summer in the City of Sails.

A little setup – Summer is staying at her Uncle Henry’s place alone. It’s the middle of the night and two men have broken into the house. Summer does the only thing she can – she jumps out of her window and goes to the neighbor’s place for help.

Something tackled her, sending her flying. Summer landed on her back in the middle of a mattress. The air hissed from her lungs as someone pinned her in place.

“Don’t move,” a harsh voice said next to her ear. A hand moved down her arm and across her chest, freezing when it came into contact with her breast. This time, the succinct Anglo-Saxon curse didn’t raise so much as an eyebrow. The body pressing her into the bed moved, but not enough for her to draw a good lungful of air. A bedside lamp switched on. She blinked at the surge of bright light.

“You.” Nikolai glared down at her. “What the devil are you doing in my bedroom?”

Summer swallowed. His hand was warm, and she felt her nipple hardening under his touch. Humiliation at her body’s betrayal made her tense even as she savored the spike of sensation.

“Um…would you mind taking your hand off my breast?” The way her nipple was cozying into his palm—talk about a newsflash. Being this close to the man was unnerving, especially since he was the enemy. She refused to think about how good it would feel if he rearranged their bodies a fraction. Nope. She wasn’t going there.

The furrow between his brows deepened. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

Summer in the City of Sails is available in both e-book and print formats. Follow up books featuring Nikolai’s friends are Soldier of Fortune and Biding His Thyme

Order at: Ellora’s Cave (eBook) | Ellora’s Cave | Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | Amazon Kindle | All Romance ebooks

To read more sneak peeks follow this Sneak Peek link. Sneak Peek Sunday is sponsored by Sara Walter Ellwood.

With the arrival of cooler weather, I decided to make soup the other night. I wanted to make a soup in the crockpot and chose this recipe for carrot and lentil soup from Joan bishop’s New Zealand Crockpot and Slow Cooker Cookbook.

Ingredients:

1 onion, chopped into dice

3 cloves crushed garlic

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 Tablespoon grated fresh ginger

2 large carrots

7 cups of vegetable or chicken stock

300g split red lentils (about one cup)

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat the crockpot.

2. Combine all the ingredients apart from the lemon juice and the salt in the crockpot.

3. Cover with lid and cook on high for five to six hours.

4. Add the lemon juice and salt to taste.

5. Cool a little then puree either in a food processor or with a blender. Return to the crockpot and reheat.

6. Serve with a spoonful of Greek yoghurt swirled in the top and fresh bread or pita bread.

Shelley’s Notes:

1. I added some chopped leeks to my soup since I had some in the fridge.

2. This soup was really easy since I dumped everything in the crockpot and left it to cook. The final product was delicious. I’d definitely make this soup again.

What is your favorite soup to eat/make?

Most of us are time-poor these days, despite advances in technology that help us to complete tasks more quickly. In the writing world there is subtle pressure to write and publish several books each year in order to stay in front of the reader. Sometimes we feel like a hamster running on a wheel, at least I do.

We need to make a conscious effort to relax, to challenge ourselves in a way that makes us feel rested and refreshed, ready to tackle that wheel again.

Tomorrow I’m heading off on a cake decorating course. I get to learn how to decorate a cupcake. My piping skills are rudimentary, so I’m looking forward to attempting and hopefully conquering a new skill.

I’m also going to knit a pair of socks. I have a book that tells me how, and I’m hoping my socks will turn out like the pretty ones in the pictures. While I have knitting experience, I’ve never tackled socks before. An interesting assignment, and I’m hoping there won’t be any self-destruction involved!

Not only will I get time out from my normal routine, but I’ll have some interesting experience to draw on when I write my next book.

How do you refill your creative well? What hobbies and interests take you away from your normal routine?

Eyes give me problems. During the writing of my books, my characters change eye color regularly. Sometimes I don’t catch it, but luckily my editor is on the ball. In the book world there are lots of heroes and heroines out there with green eyes. Lots. Quite a few heroines have violet ones too. Not so common in everyday life. I’ve been thinking I should pick a color and allocate that color to all my characters. It would solve my problem!

Thirteen Interesting Facts About Eyes

1. The colored part of the eye is called the iris. It contains pigmentation that determines the color of the eye.

2. Eye colors are determined by the parents, but a child’s eyes aren’t a combination of the parents. The eye color depends on the genes and there are lots of possibilities as to the end result.

3. Most babies are born with blue eyes. A color change occurs if a brown pigment called melanin develops as the baby grows.

4. Darker colors dominate so brown beats green and green wins over blue.

5. Emotions can change the iris color and the pupil size.

6. Eye color can also change with age. This usually happens with those who have a light eye color to start with.

7. If the eye color of an adult changes dramatically it can be an indication of a disease. Check with your eye doctor!

8. The human eye blinks around 4,200,000 times a year.

9. Blinking helps keep our eyes moist.

10. Only one-sixth of the eyeball is visible.

11. The eyeball remains the same size as it was at birth.

12. Our eyes can detect 10 million color hues (not sure who counted this), but we can’t see ultraviolet or infra red light.

13. The human eye can distinguish 500 shades of gray. (not 50 as a certain book would have us believe!)

According to an online survey about eye color the most popular color is green followed by light blue. Hazel, dark blue, gray, honey, amethyst and brown came next in descending order.

My eyes are light blue.

What color are your eyes? For you writers out there, do you vary your character’s eye colors from book to book or do you tend to stick to the basic brown or blue? Readers – do you care what color eyes the characters have?

We’re heading into winter down this end of the world. Our spring bulbs are starting to sprout out of the earth, the broccoli is ready for harvest and the spinach is still going strong. The carrots grew well but they’re all terribly deformed. They’ve grown into very rude shapes! This is caused because the soil isn’t fine enough. The tiny clumps and stones in the soil create havoc, making the root vegetable grow sideways in order to gain nutrients. They still taste good though.

Thankfully, the lemons are almost ripe. We use lemons a lot in our cooking, and we’ve missed not having any during the last two months.

Our cyclamen plants have started to flower. They’re a pretty flower and come in shades of pink, red and white. The other day Mr. Munro popped into the garden center to buy some lettuce plants. He came out with a new cyclamen plant for me—a two tone one in pink and white. Isn’t it pretty?

Mr. Munro planted the lettuce in a container—one we put out on the deck for easy access. I was out yesterday morning. When I arrived home I thought the lettuce looked very flat and droopy. I think Bella, our puppy used it for a sun bed again. I’ve barricaded it now, so we’re hoping the lettuce will recover.

When Mr. Munro and I first married we used to have a lot of house plants. It took ages to water them, and going on holiday was a mission because we had to work out how to keep them alive or organize someone to water them.

After we came back from our overseas jaunt we didn’t replace our indoor plants. At present I have three. Two little palms that can go for a month without water and the above cyclamen. Once the cyclamen finishes flowering we’ll find a spot for it in the garden. They die off and come back each year during the winter, so this is the perfect houseplant for us.

Do you have houseplants? Are you good at keeping them healthy and alive?

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

~ Grab your current read

~ Open to a random page

~ Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

~ BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

~ Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I’m currently reading Lord of Darkness by Elizabeth Hoyt. This is book five in the Maiden Lane series, one that I highly recommend to any reader who enjoys historical romance and hasn’t already discovered Ms. Hoyt. She’s my favorite historical author. Her books are set in the 1700s rather than the regency period.

This teaser is a little longer than usual. I couldn’t resist.

The night Godric St. John saw his wife for the first time since their marriage two years previously, she was aiming a pistol at his head. Lady Margaret stood beside her carriage in the filthy St. Giles street, her glossy, dark curls tumbling from the velvet hood of her cloak. Her shoulders were square, both hands firmly grasped the pistol, and a murderous gleam shone in her pretty eyes. For a split second, Godric caught his breath in admiration.

In the next moment, Lady Margaret pulled the trigger.

BOOM!

page 1, Lord of Darkness

BLURB:

WHEN STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT
He lives in the shadows. The mysterious masked avenger known as the Ghost of St. Giles, his only goal is to protect the innocent of London. Until the night he confronts a fearless lady pointing a pistol at his head—and realizes she is his wife . . .

BECOME LOVERS…

Lady Margaret Reading has vowed to kill the Ghost of St. Giles—the man who murdered her one true love. Returning to London, and the man she hasn’t seen since their wedding day, Margaret does not recognize the man behind the mask. Fierce, commanding, and dangerous, the notorious Ghost of St. Giles is everything she feared he would be—and so much more . . .

DESIRE IS THE ULTIMATE DANGER

When passion flares these two intimate strangers can’t keep from revealing more of themselves than they had ever planned. But when Margaret learns the truth—that the Ghost is her husband, Godric St. John—the game is up and the players must surrender . . . to the temptation that could destroy them both.

Purchase Lord of Darkness

What are you reading this week?