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2011 Global eBook Awards Nominee

Not One of Us is for sale on Kindle and NOOK for $2.99

 The paperback is available from Amazon for $11.00.

Winter has a little way to go, so and treat yourself and curl up with a good book -- my book!  Start by reading the first chapter at the bottom of this blog.

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I'm afraid I have sad news. Fellow indie author L. C. Evans lost her fight with cancer earlier this month. Her friends would like to see her sales move into the top 100 in her genre on Amazon this week as a tribute to her and her family.

I recently read one of Linda’s mysteries, The Witness Wore Blood Bay and highly recommend it. It is her second mystery featuring amateur sleuth Leigh McRae.

In Talented Horsewoman, the first book of the Leigh McRae horse mystery series, Leigh McRae discovers a body. She also ends up investigating the murder, making one mistake after the other until she gets shot, although she nails the killer.

 In The Witness Wore Blood Bay, Leigh's friend Candy, a fellow horsewoman, finds herself accused of murdering a man the police say was her lover. Naturally, she turns to Leigh for help, but Leigh has promised her fiancé, the wonderful Adam, that her detecting days are over. Of course, that doesn’t stop her trying to find who's poisoning dogs in her cousin’s neighborhood, but that’s different.  She made a promise . . . but she seems to be Candy’s only friend. She is sure this gentle young woman is innocent and cannot abide injustice.

I enjoyed the setting – lots of horses and dogs – and the recession-devastated small town of Del Canto, Florida. This book has all the requisites of a mystery: red herrings, adultery, a cold husband, and a protagonist with a soft heart and a hunk of a boyfriend; not to mention the denouement, which I guess I shouldn’t mention further! And, this is not the usual “horsey” book. The characters are neither wealthy nor upper crust and, while the protagonist seems driven to investigate local crimes, she’s not very good at it, resulting in several funny episodes.

About the Author, L. C. Evans

Linda’s writing career began with short stories and humorous essays. Her work has been published in a variety of magazines, including Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Woman's World, and Ladies Circle among many others. She lived in North Carolina with her husband Bob, their Chihuahuas, and a grandson. She was the author of the Amazon bestselling Kindle book, We Interrupt This Date, The Witness Wore Blood Bay, and Talented Horsewoman, as well as several other titles.

Here is the Amazon link to buy Linda’s books.  

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AL.+C.+Evans&keywords=L.+C.+Evans&ie=UTF8&qid=1327064370&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B001K86DKM 

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Short Stories: You can find six of my recent short stories, The Shoe, Lost, Mother Knows Best, Forgiveness, Mousetrap, and Casting Out Sin, at the short story website:

                            www.shortbreadstories.co.uk

The latter two are set in England, so I thought I'd post them on a U.K. site.  Mother Knows Best, my one and only venture into Sci-fi, could be set just about anywhere, and Lost is a piece of flash fiction set in Paris. The Shoe is set in Pescara, an Italian town on the Adriatic, and Forgiveness, flash fiction, is set in anywhere in Spain.

Membership in Shortbread Stories is free and there are hundreds of stories to choose from. You can select by genre or author and either read online or download. Comments and ratings are encouraged, although by no means mandatory.

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Now let's talk about Not One of Us . . . .

My heroine.  She's classy, she's cultured, and she's a killer.  O.K., anti-heroine.  I don't think it's giving too much away to share the first chapter.  After all, you don't really know that much about anybody, do you?

GREAT PRICE!  ONLY $2.99 on Kindle and Nook and $11.00 for paperback.  Did you know you can buy a Kindle copy and download it to a disc to give to a friend?  Or, just gift it straight to a friend who has a Kindle -- follow the directions under the buy box. Did you know you can buy a Kindle book and have it downloaded to your laptop or other electronic device if you don't have a Kindle?  Lots of options. 

Buy the book now, it's just a click away.  Enjoy!

NOT ONE OF US

By D. A. Spruzen

CHAPTER 1

            Pansy made her first kill at fourteen, albeit with the best of intentions.  But I’m not Pansy anymore.  I became someone quite different, despite all the obstacles placed in my path by others, circumstances that forced my hand and made a few more casualties inevitable.

            I need to write everything down now—the things I had to do—and try to show the sense of it all.  When people read it they will understand that I had no choice and not think so badly of me.  After all, I never had anyone to stand up for me, I had to solve my own problems the best way I could.  My solutions might be considered somewhat extreme, I know, but I couldn’t lose everything I had always dreamed of and worked for.

            I wanted a good life in a normal place doing normal things.  I wanted respect.  That meant a good job, a good husband, and a nice home in a nice place.  I used to look through fancy magazines in the midtown drug stores until they chased me out.  I gathered up a dream and held onto it: a white house with a tall fence and big old trees.  Lots of green.  The only trees where I lived were scraggy and half-dead from car exhaust, so my dream-trees were a vague impression of the kind I had seen in those magazines, hemming wonderful perfect gardens that encircled wonderful perfect houses.  I imagined vases of pink and blue flowers posed on polished tabletops—generic flowers like children paint because no one I knew ever had flowers in their home, unless you count dusty plastic ones, and even then I knew better.  Drapes and blinds shrouded the windows; no one could spy on me and only the invited could enter.  I got all of it but, as everyone knows by now, I didn’t get to keep it.  I had a good run, though.  Not bad for someone like me.  I can’t complain because I did very well considering my starting point—a grungy family living on the roughest street in Hell’s Kitchen.  No bite of the Big Apple for us.

            A Washington suburb seemed like paradise to me—I could stay the same person for years.  Too many people knew me in New York in spite of all the time and money I spent on hairdressers and cosmetics to change my look—red hair in a short pixie cut and Cleopatra eyeliner one year, and a nylon ash-blond wig and false eyelashes (a strange 60’s fashion fad) the next.  Each time I changed jobs I changed my look, my apartment, and often my name, too.  New everything.   I had to keep my life smooth, you see, bumpy rides are not to my liking.

            There came a point when I wanted to—had to—get out of New York and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

            I burned my old journal long ago—it was too risky to hold onto it once I married.  Now I must begin again.  

            I’ll be long gone by the time you read this.  Know that I did my best; suspend judgment until you are done.  Don’t bother looking for me.

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I'll be back!  (D.A., that is, not the killer.)