We’re staying in Canada today but are headed west. “Go west young man” as the saying went. Although, to be more politically correct these days, I guess it should say ‘young people’. Anyway, we’re off to the province of Alberta and the city of Calgary.
Home of the famous Calgary Stampede and host to the 1988 Winter Olympics, Calgary is a cosmopolitan city which can attribute its growth to the Canadian oil industy.
It’s nickname is “Cowtown”.
In previous years, I’ve had a virtual party on occasions such as this. Well, life got in the way and I’ve had to dig out a short post from a few years ago, and resurrect it.
For all you Irish folk or descendants of Irish folk or anyone who likes to get together and listen to good music and drink green beer…
May the luck o’ the Irish be with you.
#BookHugs #ALoveRestrained
Philadelphia police officer Kylee Parker is dedicated to protecting and serving. She sees the work in absolutes: right and wrong, black and white, good guys and bad guys. That is, until she chases a drug dealer into a dead-end alley and finds the bad boy she had a painful crush on throughout her teen years has turned into a more dangerous and more attractive man.
Jayson Donovan knows he doesn’t deserve someone as good as Kylee Parker. As the right hand man to a local drug-pushing mobster, he’s solidly on the wrong side of Kylee’s moral compass. But he can’t help reaching for her time and again when he knows he shouldn’t.
Even when his secrets threaten them both.
Where to purchase A Love Restrained
Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords | iBooks | Kobo
Enjoy the following excerpt from A Love Restrained:
Spring in the city brought people out of winter hibernation like a siren song, but as the temperature rose, so in turn, did the crime rate. Cops had to be sharp as they walked the streets of Philadelphia. In her ten years on the force, on these streets, she’d seen a lot of crazy and often stupid criminals do a lot of crazy and often stupid things. But to be so brazen, or so plain dumb, as to do a hand-to-hand drug buy right in front of two uniformed officers rode high on her list of top ten.
“Tell me you saw that?”
“Saw what?” Hunks of half chewed soft pretzel fell from Sherman’s mouth.
Pete Sherman’s not a bad cop, just not an observant one whose paunch portrayed his love of all things fried and his reupholstered recliner. He hadn’t seen a thing in the last six months. But he took direction well, despite the fact he had seniority.
“There, across the street.” She pointed. “The junkie walking east just scored off the guy in the leather bomber heading west. I swear the dealer looked right at us before the exchange. Call it in, Pete, and grab the junkie. I’m going after the dealer.”
Sherman didn’t argue. She took off into a quick lope, kept her footsteps light so as to not alert the man she pursued. The spring day had drawn people out and the complaints of the pedestrians she weaved through grew loud. The guy glanced over his shoulder, and the edge of his mouth tipped into a grin before he sprinted around the corner.
“Cocky jerk.” She turned the corner, and shouted, “Stop! Police.”
She ran clean and fast, closing the distance between them with little effort. The dealer ducked into an alley she knew to be a dead end. She slowed and put one hand on the butt of her service pistol as she approached. He had his back to her, his hands on his hips as he stared at the brick wall in front of him.
“Philly PD, you’re under arrest. Slowly put your hands above your head and against the wall to your left.” She closed the few feet between them, using her free hand to release the handcuffs from her belt, the other remaining on her weapon. She cuffed him, with practiced efficiency, and then read him his rights before leading him out of the alley, preferring to do the pat down with her partner present.
“Kylee Parker, I’ll admit I daydreamed a time or two about you cuffing me, but it was never in this context.”
For more information, including cover art, trailer and buy links, see:
http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Flade_Becky/a-love-restrained.htm
About the Author:
Home is where the heart is and Becky makes hers with her very own knight in slightly tarnished armor, their three daughters, son-in-law, two grandsons, and their psychotic cat Jaxon. When she’s not busy living her own happily ever after, she’s writing about someone else’s.
Contact Details:
http://www.beckyfladeauthor.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BeckyFlade
https://twitter.com/beckyflade
http://www.amazon.com/Becky-Flade/
http://www.goodreads.com/Becky_Flade
#BookHugs
Jim Henson once said, “My hope is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here.” I live my life by that same ideal; it’s posted in my office, on my media stand in fact, so that I never forget to be kind, thoughtful and considerate in every interaction. May your every dream be a reality and every day a poem.
Not one of the nicer days we’ve had weather-wise but since returning to England from Wales, there have been cooler, rainy days.
Our first stop of the day was Castle Rising Castle.
The brisk wind, as evidenced by the billowing flag, made it feel even colder when I took to the top of the curtain wall to get a photograph of the castle keep.
I’m a junkie when it comes to collecting interesting rocks when on vacation and despite the weather, I found an interesting one.
When we’d had our fill of this castle, we visited the toilets one last time and ventured down the road to Castle Acre Castle.
We could have walked to Castle Acre Priory from here but with the weather threatening to close in, we opted to drive.
In the end it wouldn’t have taken any longer because dear Satnav Sally had a very hard time finding the place.
I don’t have pictures of the bailey gate but we did drive through it a couple of times.
We’d almost given up on the priory altogether, when we spotted an English Heritage sign at the main road so followed it instead.
We made a quick stop in Swaffham on the way back to Old Catton for a stop at a bank machine for some cash followed by another stop at a different services – this one located right on a roundabout.
When we got back to Catton Old Hall, I took my laptop down to the dining room where I connected to the Wi-fi and got the blog post up and scheduled for Monday. I didn’t like leaving it quite that long but I assumed that these places that offered free Wi-fi, it really did work everywhere in the building.
Don’s cousins were picking us up to take us to the The Fur and Feathers Inn for supper.
I got a number of pictures of all of us but there always seemed to be one person in each shot that turned out to be ‘not-so-good’ so they won’t get posted.
We had a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and when we left the restaurant we went back to theirs for a drink. Since they wouldn’t let us even chip in on the bill from the restaurant, when we got back to theirs, I sneakily signed and presented Susan with a copy of The Secret of Hillcrest House as a thank you. We also had bottles of maple syrup for them but forgot them back at our room.
Don and I could have walked home but Andrew, who was the DD for the night took us back to Catton Old Hall.
Tomorrow, we’re moving on to Market Rasen with a stop for lunch at my writer friend, Nicky Wells’s house. But first, we’ll have to swing by Susan and Andrew’s house to drop off the maple syrup.
Canadian author 
Michael J. McCann is one of the nominees for the 2015 North American Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing by a Canadian or US author. McCann has been nominated for his latest novel, Sorrow Lake, which is set in eastern Ontario and is the first book in a new series featuring Ellie March and Kevin Walker of the Ontario Provincial Police. McCann is also the author of the Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel series set in Maryland.
Last year’s winner of the Hammett Prize was Stephen King for Mr. Mercedes.
For the list of 2015 nominees, please see http://www.crimewritersna.org/news/index.htm.
You’ve seen the cover of Tim’s Magic Christmas revealed a bit at a time every day this past week. Now, it’s the unveiling of the actual book!
I received an email from CoBa Studios & Print Shop at 7:20 pm Friday, June 12th saying that my books were printed and I could pick them up any time. The email went on to say that they would be open from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm the following day if I wanted to pick them up then.
Can we say no brainer? I couldn’t wait to see all my “book babies” even though I already had a proof copy. Saturday morning, I was up early (nothing new there) and ready to head to CoBa’s location in Merrickville to be there shortly after they opened.
Once I got my “book babies” home, I transferred them from the copy paper box I’d brought them home in (a bit difficult to do a series of unveiling photos in a box with no lid) to these “plain brown wrappers” which were the perfect size!
So, let the unveiling commence!
Blurb:
For Tim Frost, Christmas 2011 is a washout. No Santa. No presents. Nothing. His father lost his job when the mill closed and now the family is on the verge of losing their home.
A chance encounter with Nick Kringle, a modern-day Santa Claus, teaches Tim that the greatest gift you can receive is the gift of giving.
Currently, Tim’s Magic Christmas is only available in paperback. If you’re interested in finding out more about this book or purchasing a copy, please leave a comment.
The Vicuña is related to the llama and lives in South America. These animals have soft wool but they can only be sheared once every three years… not to mention have to be caught first as they are completely wild.
At first I wasn’t going to do this because I had gone most of the year without my connection to Jetpack being fully functional – sometimes not functioning at all because I wasn’t able to connect to it. But in the end, I thought ‘what the heck’ and here are my results.
Thank you WordPress.com stats helper monkeys for keeping tabs on my site.
Able Cane coming to you from the City of Lights. My capable cohort, Roxie Rebel, has been able to catch up with the world-famous author, Melanie Robertson-King.
So, Roxie, what can you tell us – or better yet, show us?
Well, Able, it’s been hard to get her photo without being spotted and even harder to get good shots with my best zoom lens broken. But this is what I’ve managed so far with what equipment I’ve got.
Thanks for… ahem… sharing those photos with us, Roxie. Hopefully, you’ll get your camera fixed soon so that you’ll be able to get some better pictures.
This is Able Cane signing off from Paris.
The Paparazzi Pair are on the trail of a late-breaking story. Able Cane coming to you live from Pearson International Airport where world-famous author, Melanie Robertson-King and her husband, have just passed through security and are now working their way to their departure gate. I’ll see if I can catch up with them and get a word, or a hint as to their destination. Melanie isn’t moving too quickly – as you’ve heard she was injured in a mishap in her home about two weeks ago. I nudge my companion, Roxie Rebel, the photographic genius behind a number of the pictures you see in all the big tabloids.
We move swiftly to the check-point only to be thwarted by a burly security guard. Damn! I so wanted to get a word. Thankfully Roxie has her biggest telephoto lens on her camera and she starts shooting, holding the camera high in the air.
Oh dear, we have to run…
Let me catch my breath. *huff and puffing* That was too close. We’ll have to try a different approach to find out where Melanie is jetting off to. Never fear, the Paparazzi Pair will track her down wherever she is.
Tune in again…
Where do you think Melanie and her husband are going? Leave your guesses in the comments below.