Saturday 27 September 2014

Maggie Shayne Author Spotlight




About this author

I live in the teeny, tiny town of Taylor, NY, (Alliteration Alert!) though my mailing address is Cincinnatus, my telephone exchange is Truxton and I pay taxes and vote in Cuyler. All of these are at least in the same rural county in the southern hills of New York State; Cortland County. There are more cattle than people here. The nearest “big” cities are Syracuse and Binghamton and they are an hour away, in different directions, and not really all that big by most standards, though they both seem humongous to me. I look out my window to see rolling, green, thickly forested hills, wildflower laden meadows and wide open blue, blue skies. My road is barely paved. The nearest neighboring place is a 700 acre dairy farm.


My house is a big, century old farmhouse. I moved in here after my divorce in 2006. Just a little over a year later, the house, which I had named, SERENITY, burned. It was 99% gutted, and I lost my two dogs, Sally, an 11-year-old great Dane, and Wrinkles, my 14-year-old, blind bulldog. This was the culmination of my Dark Night of the soul, which had seemed to hit me all at once in 2006-2007. My mother died that year, after a 14 month battle with pancreatic cancer. She was only 60. The youngest of my five daughters had left home that same year, and while that’s not a tragedy at all, it felt like one to me. Then came the divorce. And finally there was the fire--it seemed my darkest night wasn’t quite finished with me after all. I had lost almost everything before that point, and as I poked through the wet ashes and soot the next day, I realized that I had now been stripped all the way to the bone.

No better time to start over. (And no, I didn’t come to that realization that day--there were a few days of wallowing in pity first, particularly the day after the fire, when I hit a deer and smashed up my car, which I was practically living in!)

That’s when I started to laugh. Just sat on the side of the road as the deer bounded, uninjured and carefree, out of sight, and laughed. It was just too ridiculous at that point, to do anything else!

And from there, I picked myself up, and brushed myself off, and said, okay, there’s only one way to go from here. Forward. And that’s what I did. There I was at the age of harrurmphemmph, living in my one, mostly undamaged remaining room, with a dorm-sized mini-fridge, a futon, a TV, my cat (nine lives!) and a laptop. And not much else. (Though thank goodness the room that survived the fire, was a room that had its own attached bathroom!)

Since then I have rebuilt my beloved home, which really has become my haven, my “Serenity.” I share it now with my fiancĂ©, Lance, and we have accumulated quite the little family together. “Little” being a relative term. We have a pair of English Mastiffs, Dozer and Daisy, who weigh 203 pounds and 208 pounds respectively, and a little pudgy English Bulldog named Niblet, who is bigger than both of them, inside her mind. We also have the aforementioned cat, Glorificus (“Glory” for short,) who adores her canine pups and keeps them firmly in line. And we've acquired a pair of stray cats as well, a mother and son, Luna (Lulu for short) and Butters aka Buddy. Lulu showed up pregnant during a lunar eclipse, had a litter, and vanished again. We found homes for all the kittens except one. Butters. We got him fixed and kept him. A few months later, Lulu returned, again expecting. This litter was born on the "Monster Moon." Again, all the kittens were spayed and neutered and placed in homes, and this time we got Lulu to the vet in time to spay her before the cycle could repeat. 

Glory is not amused.

She has a story of her own, my old Glory cat, having been with me before the Dark Times descended, she went through it all with me, moved with me, survived the fire, and remains with me still. She's tolerating the newcomers. Barely.

My partner is an artist, a mechanic, a welder and an inventor, and the rumors are true, he is much younger than I.


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Books and Buy Links


The Littlest Cowboy



Sheriff Garrett Brand was shocked to find a baby on his doorstep.

While his siblings joked that maybe he wasn't such a responsible guy after all, Garrett knew he was nobody's daddy. But the Texan was intent on discovering the identity of this little cowboy's mama...

All Chelsea Brennan wanted when she arrived at the Brand ranch was her nephew...and answers about her sister's mysterious death. But she never expected a rough and rugged lawman to act like a proud father and lavish the baby with love. Especially when Garrett claim he didn't have love to give. And now Chelsea wanted much more than she'd bargained for-to be a Brand herself...








Three hundred years ago, Raven St. James was accused of witchcraft... Only one man tried to free her from the hangman's noose--Duncan, the town minister, who died trying to save her. Three hundred years later, the accused witch still lives and longs for her love... At last, after centuries of loneliness, Raven has found her precious Duncan. But as he awakens to the passion of his past life, so too does the evil that tore them apart. Now Raven and Duncan must prove their love for all eternity..


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eternity-Immortal-Witches-Book-ebook/dp/B00B02HMDK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411759980&sr=1-1&keywords=maggie+shayne+eternity
http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Immortal-Witches-Book-ebook/dp/B00B02HMDK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411760104&sr=1-1&keywords=maggie+shayne+eternity


The Gingerbread Man



Publisher’s Weekly Raves: “A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”

“A gripping story of small town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.” –New York Times Bestselling Author Lisa Gardner

Since the day her baby sister was taken, Holly’s mind hasn’t been the same. PTSD, panic attacks, nightmares and blocked memories have plagued her ever since. And now they’ve returned.

Hard-edged Detective Vince O’Malley’s most recent case penetrated even his protective shell. Ordered to take time off to recover, he can’t let go, and on his own, follows the clues to Holly’s small upstate NY town.

His presence stirs ghosts from the past, shadows of a little girl lost, the suspicions of some tight-lipped locals with secrets to hide, and more than that inside Holly’s fragile mind and untouched heart.

“Maggie Shayne's books have a permanent spot on my keeper shelf. She writes wonderful stories combining romance with page-turning thrills, and I highly recommend her to any fan of romantic suspense.” –New York Times Bestselling Author Karen Robards






Sleep With the Lights On (Brown and de Luca #1)




Rachel de Luca has found incredible success writing self-help books. But her own blindness and the fact that her troubled brother has gone missing have convinced her that positive thinking is nothing but bull. Her cynicism wavers when a cornea transplant restores her sight. The new eyes seem to give her new life, until they prove too good to be true and she starts seeing terrifying visions of brutal murders crimes she soon learns are all too real.

Detective Mason Brown's own brother recently died, leaving behind a horrific secret. In atonement, Mason donated his brother's organs, though he's kept the fact quiet. Now he wants to help Rachel find her brother, but when he discovers the shocking connection between her visions and his own brother, he suddenly has to do everything in his power to save her from a predator who is somehow still hunting from beyond the grave.


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