Pizza Princess Face-Lift

This is one of my older works and it's gone through many incarnations.  Today I made the dough, then made the pizza, took the photo and built the cover.  Dona deserves it.

Dona Gimignano is the daughter of a tough guy.  Not in that way, not quite.  He's in the pizza business but Sam's not beyond strong-arming someone over a pie.  When he dies, he leaves Dona in charge of the pizza empire as well as an illegal shipment of Parmigiano Reggiano.  She wants out.  She wants no part of it.  But you know what they say, the Family just keeps dragging you back in.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the love of her life, the skunk, the snake with the nose for news, crime reporter, Martin Costello, wasn't hot on the story.  Take a number in stand in line.  This weekend everyone is after Dona and the fake cheese--the DA, the rival crime family, and her own dumb brothers who want to marry her off to a guy she can't beat up, Man Mountain Mean.

Hot times.  Summer in the city.  Really hot times.  The DA is having her followed hot.  The Mob is breathing down her neck hot.  Dona would prefer it if Martin Costello was breathing down her neck, literally, but instead he’s trying to get the story.

That’s why they broke up in the first place--his nose for news.  Journalist before anything, Costello needed a story more than he needed her and Dona needed him. 

By now, Dona just needs some freaking stability in her life, but can she get it?  Fuggedaboutit.  She sees the light at the end of the tunnel when her father, Sam the Pizza King, dies but it’s the biggest subway train in the five boroughs coming for her with a shipload of fake parmesan on board.

Some girls dream of being a princess.  “It ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.  Trust me on this.”

Sweet Tarts and High Heels

I think telling the story of how this story came to be is longer than the story itself so I'll just say it's an experiment.  At first, I wasn't going to put my name on it at all but I rethought that.  For now, my name won't be on the cover.

Some years ago I saw a documentary on exotic dancers.  All the women were interviewed and told their stories.  They told the good parts, editing out the bad, but one woman let her facade slip a little and I became fascinated with her.

This story is my way of telling her story, the story she couldn't tell, the story I invented for her.  The experimental part is pretending there is a Noel Adrian, Ph.D.  Let's see if that works or is just confusing.  It's a fiction in a story.

Here's the blurb

Noel Adrian, Ph.D. wants to know how young and beautiful women become escorts in Beverly Hills.  Of course, they meet Miss Doucette and are recruited.  The money is great, the lifestyle moving among the rich, powerful and attractive is even better.  But as sociologist, Dr. Adrian wants the backstory.

Tierney has no reluctance to sharing her story.  She’s not proud of her life but she’s not embarrassed either.  Her new world is much like her old one but now she’s not scraping by and she knows how to punch back.  But the past is more difficult to shake off than it looks and under pressure, Tierney reverts to what she knows best.  Will this time be any different.

And it is definitely not for children.  Mature audience only.  Although there's nothing all that graphic and if you're 12 and read it you won't understand half and the other half will seem stupid.

Blue Raja

I decided to give the cover a facelift before I put it on Kindle Select for its Freebie on Jan. 15.  This is a book I'm quite fond of and I hope it will find an audience.

The story takes place in our now and about 30 years into the future when a violent and primitive people called the Khryza swoop out of far northern Europe and take over the planet.

You're saying that's impossible.  How can a small group of people control everyone else?  "Superior will," 15 year old Delaney is told.  And of course, Blue Raja, the plant that confers unimaginable mind powers to anyone brave enough, or stupid enough, to use it.

This is the story of the resistance.  Some people still believe life has value and freedom is worth fighting for.  And some people believe these people should be dead.

Murder Is Exhausting

I sent Barry and Berry Mitnick to a spa and they came back refreshed, with a new look and a title that reflects why they had to go to a spa in the first place.

There are several reasons why this isn't like the other cozy mysteries.  It's not so cozy, I didn't write all the others and the father and daughter love each other.  I'm a little tired of adult children having the same relationship with their parents as they did when they were teenagers.  Grow up already.   Also, the puppy helps solve the murder.

Here's the blurb

The Mitnicks come from the clothing industry in New York City.  It’s not exactly the high fashion trade, but close.  Berry did go to Paris and work for some of the renowned couturiers to learn more but when she designs, the clothes tend to be a little off-market for anyone in the real world to wear.  Who’s going to wear an evening gown with one wing sticking out of the back?  No one, that’s right.  So Berry packs up her sewing machine, at 27 sort of a failure at what she thought was her life, and comes to live with her father on a ranch in the beautiful central coast of California.  Immediately there's a murder.  And a handsome, irritable sheriff, a cute blacksmith and a group of older women Berry calls a harem chasing her father.  Is she hadn’t been involved in a murder before, maybe Berry could ignore it and let Sheriff Mark Fernandez do his job without input from her.  But she knows what it’s like to never learn who killed someone she loves, and vows not to let it happen this time.  As everyone knows, anyone who kills once, is willing to kill again to keep the truth buried and Berry is getting just too close for anyone’s comfort.

Happy New Year's & Free Amazon Weekend

Wishing all of you the very best 2012 and I have three free books available today on Amazon.
Bad Apple 1, Schtupid Cupid and the Verrine book.  So something for everyone.  Except men.  Sorry guys, you're watching football anyway.

I did finish my YA novella yesterday but it needs a bit more tweaking so I'll let you know when that's available.  I'm very excited about the cover.  No, I didn't take the photo--I wish I did!  But it's a good one anyway.

Today I also start working on a cookbook I hope to have ready by next month.  Lots of work to do and I hope I have the energy for it all.

Merriest of Christmases To You All

I would like to thank all my wonderful readers for supporting me this year.  I'm glad you enjoyed my work and hope I continue to please and entertain you with new stories and new books.   Merry Christmas.  Happy Chanukah.

Your Early Christmas Present

Or Chanukah gift.

I just published a novella titled Schtupid Cupid.  If you liked Viva and Bel Miller, you'll see them here as well as their cousin, Lis.

Right now it's free on Smashwords as an epub but I hope soon BN and Amazon will match the price.  If you don't want to wait for your mobi file, email me at the contact me to the right and I'll be glad to send you a copy.

Lis Miller isn’t looking for a man, a boyfriend, a husband or a companion but her cousin, Viva, the nationally known Mating Maven, can’t resist butting into her private life.  The result?  Duress Dating.  In order to keep peace in the family, Lis is treated to, or is that tormented by, a series of attempted matches each one more hair-raising than the last.  With the Jake, the pilot, Lis’s hair is literally raised as he turns the plane upside down on the way to Block Island and a gourmet meal of fried Mars Bars.

When Viva arranges for Lis to go to California to do the flower arrangements for a friend’s wedding, the flight makes national headlines.  All she wants is some peace and quiet.  And has it until she realizes it’s all a set-up to pair her with the owner of the ranch.

Cupid proves to be more unpredictable than expected because on her way to living a happy life as a singleton, Lis Miller falls in love.  Running true to everything that’s happened in the past weeks, the match is crazy, insane and heart-thumpingly mad.  Just how stupid is Cupid?

Flash of Light

The sequel to Flash has been finished and will be available at BN and Amazon soon. 

Kip Chanin can find herself in trouble faster than the shutter speed of a good camera and that’s usually the reason.  It’s how Kip looks at the world and how she wants to tell the story in the photos she takes that gets people talking and makes them furious.

In one day, Kip takes a portrait of her Alex Milne’s brother, Gabe, overdosing, gets him to the hospital in time and is fired by her agent.  By the end of the week, everyone in Europe knows she’s the idiot photographer who took pictures of her “lover” while he was shooting up.  That kind of publicity does not go over well with Alex.  But life moves too fast to wonder for long if she’ll be forgiven—for anything.  Kip has an 80 year old murder to solve, portraits to take of scruffy rock stars and a friendship to create with a shy jazz singer.  All while trying to manage Alex who is 6,000 miles away in serial snowstorms with his sizzling hot co-star throwing herself at him.

When Alex finally arrives back in Los Angeles, they go out into the Mojave Desert where Kip announces they’re not coming home until the issues between them are solved.  At an inn, with one room with one bed left, the question of what happens next is obvious.  The answer is more complicated than Kip expects.

The past has surprising ways of sneaking up on people and Kip finds ways to put history behind her and Alex.  But not always.

If you would like a free copy, email me and specify whether you prefer the book in epub or mobi. 

New Cover For Flash

I've been so busy trying to finish Flash 2 that I haven't had much time for anything, not even doing the normal cleaning out of the garden that should be done before the snow.  Missed that.

I decided to give Flash a new cover and I'll probably change it again before too terribly long after my Photoshop skills improve and I get more memory for the computer so it doesn't crash in 3D mode!

Flash

That's the title of my new YA and unfortunately it's not live at Amazon or BN even right yet but it will be soon.
It's a bit more mature than I usually do but books are unpredictable things.

Here's the blurb

Celebrity.  A by-product of talent or the goal.  The crumbs of greatness or the whole cake.

When Kip “I lied about being 18 for so long, it seemed like the truth” Chanin, arrives in Los Angeles with her mother who wants to work in Hollywood, it doesn’t take her long to understand that this is a factory town and the product is an illusion.  To help support her two-person family, Kip grits her teeth, puts aside being a news photographer and becomes a paparazzi.

Kip’s first photo is of Alex Milne, the handsome and volatile young actor.  That one photo changes both their lives.  An evening being detained in the Beverly Hills Police Station expands Kip’s world and opportunities both wanted and unwanted confront her.  To lasting shock and pain, Kip learns the identity of her father and she sets out to solve a murder that’s been gossiped about in Hollywood for the last 80 years, tainting the Milne family to the present day.

One thing Kip learns to her core is that life is real even in a city dedicated to creating illusions.

And here's the cover.  Now that you've read the blurb, you know that since Kip is a photographer she'd be taking pictures of this celebrity, she wouldn't BE the celebrity.