An Oldie but a Goodie | Chelsey M. Ortega

An Oldie, but a Goodie: From Here to Fourteenth Street by Diana Rubino

Posted on October 26, 2023 by Chelsey M. Ortega

From Here to Fourteenth Street was re-released in 2015 with The Wild Rose Press, after I revised it and gave it a new title. It was originally titled I love You Because with my first publisher. It’s the first in a trilogy, The New York Saga, featuring 3 generations of the McGlory family. Tom McGlory, an Irish New York cop, and Vita Caputo, an Italian immigrant from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, meet and fall in love despite the overwhelming odds against them in 1894. They overcome economic hardship, prejudice, hatred, and corruption in this tumultuous world.

Book Two, Bootleg Broadway, is set during the Prohibition era and features Tom and Vita’s son Billy, a scatterbrained musical genius. My objective was to get him into one mess after another, and had no trouble doing that, once I got to know Billy.

In Book Three, The End of Camelot, Billy’s daughter Vikki is the heroine. Set around the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, Vikki realizes her husband Jack was embroiled in the plot to kill the president, but his mission was to prevent it. Jack was found dead in the bathtub of his hotel in Dallas, the same day of the assassination. When the Dallas police rule his death accidental, Vikki vows to find out who was behind the murders of JFK and her husband. With the help of her father and godfather, she sets out to uncover the truth.

My inspiration for From Here to Fourteenth Street was my great-grandmother; businesswoman, politician, small-time bootlegger, wife and mother. She was way ahead of her time. I modeled Vita after her, and since 19th Century New York City history always fascinated me, it came naturally to weave her story through that world, brining sights, sounds and smells of the streets and tenements to life.

I am a strict plotter – I work out a detailed outline, and for the last few decades, I’ve been using the Donald Maass workbook Writing Your Breakout Novel. It contains questions to ask your characters and explains how to outline your story. I find it invaluable for structuring my stories.

For this and most of my historicals, I usually spend about a year researching and writing. I write 2,500 words every day, and don’t quit until I’ve reached that goal.

Diana writes about folks through history who shook things up. Her passion for history and travel has taken her to every locale of her books: Medieval and Renaissance England, Egypt, the Mediterranean, colonial Virginia, New England, and New York. Her urban fantasy romance Fakin’ It won a Top Pick award from Romantic Times. She is a member of the Richard III Society and the Aaron Burr Association. With her husband Chris, she owns CostPro, Inc., a construction cost consulting business. In her spare time, Diana bicycles, golfs, practices yoga, lifts weights, plays her piano, devours books, and lives the dream on Cape Cod.

Connect with Diana at www.dianarubino.com

It’s 1894 on New York’s Lower East Side. Irish cop Tom McGlory and Italian immigrant Vita Caputo fall in love despite their different upbringings. Vita goes from sweatshop laborer to respected bank clerk to reformer, helping elect a mayor to beat the Tammany machine. While Tom works undercover to help Ted Roosevelt purge police corruption, Vita’s father arranges a marriage between her and a man she despises. The story has a paranormal twist – Vita and Tom work together against time and prejudice to clear her brother and father of a murder they didn’t commit, as Vita’s friend Jadwiga, a medium, helps them find the killer with some help from the otherworld – and some creative thinking.

An Oldie but a Goodie: A Shop Girl in Bath by Rachel Brimble

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Chelsey M. Ortega

Thanks so much for having me here today, Chelsey, and for the opportunity to tell your visitors a little bit about the first book in my Shop Girl series, A Shop Girl in Bath. The book was published five years ago today on July 1^st 2018, and it is so wonderful to be celebrating all its past and (hopefully!) future sales 😊

The book is set in Bath’s finest Edwardian department store and opens in January 1910. It is a story of female empowerment, family drama and, of course, romance! The heroine is Elizabeth Pennington, the eager heiress of Pennington’s who is passionate, ambitious and desperate to wrench the reins of the store from her father who would much prefer to be passing Pennington’s onto a son rather than a daughter.

When he finally relents and hands over the running of Pennington’s to Elizabeth, she is determined to bring the store into the new decade and encourages the store’s shop girls to embrace their own aspirations and dreams. Not long after she takes over, our hero and master glove maker Joseph Carter enters the store in a bid to secure a contract for his collection of gloves. From there, Elizabeth and Joseph become a business dream team and romance blossoms along the way with plenty of drama and intrigue to keep the reader turning the pages!

A Shop Girl in Bath was inspired by my love of the British period dramas Mr Selfridge and The Paradise. I adored these shows and if your visitors did too, I am sure they will enjoy this series. After the shows finished, I had a nagging compulsion to create a department store series of my own but focus almost entirely on the ambitions and personal lives of the women. The series goes on to encapsulate the growing opportunities for women as well as major Edwardian events such as the fight for the Vote and even a shop girl travelling aboard the fated Titanic for New York…

I am lucky enough to be able to write full-time and treat my writing as a job the same as any other, working from 8.30am – 5.30pm with a lunch break in between. I am naturally disciplined, but I think my commitment (I will often squeeze in a couple of hours or so on the weekends, too!) comes from my absolute love for writing. I am a plotter at heart and spend a lot of time getting to know my characters and writing a chapter plan before I begin the actual writing. Once I’ve started the first draft, I write from beginning to end without looking back. The hard work comes in the following drafts, but the first draft is my opportunity to have fun!

People have often asked me how I have managed to be so prolific over my career having written 29 books in sixteen years and it is very much due to my writing process. However, in January 2022, I embarked on a history degree so my writing time has definitely been drastically reduced! I have gone from writing two and half books a year to one and a half. On top of that, I am a firm believer in the joy of paying things forward whenever you can, so I also run a First Chapter Critique service for aspiring romance and women’s fiction writers. The writer sends me the first 3,500 words of their novel and I fully critique the pages as well as providing them with a 3-4 page report on characterization, dialogue, setting etc. specific to their story. If any of your visitors would like to know more, I invite them to visit my dedicated webpage at https://rachelbrimble.com/first-chapter-critique-service/ for all the details!

Rachel lives in a small town near Bath, England. She is the author of 29 novels including the Ladies of Carson Street trilogy, the Shop Girl series (Aria Fiction) and the Templeton Cove Stories (Harlequin). Her latest novel, Victoria & Violet was released 17^th October 2022.

Rachel is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association as well as the Society of Authors and has thousands of social media followers all over the world.

To sign up for her newsletter (a guaranteed giveaway every month!), click here: https://bit.ly/3zyH7dt

Follow Rachel on her website: https://bit.ly/3wH7HQs

1910 – A compelling tale of female empowerment in Bath’s leading department store. Perfect for the fans of the TV series Mr Selfridge and The Paradise.

Elizabeth Pennington should be the rightful heir of Bath’s premier department store through her enterprising schemes and dogged hard work. Her father, Edward Pennington, believes his daughter lacks the business acumen to run his empire and is resolute a man will succeed him.

Determined to break from her father’s iron-clad hold and prove she is worthy of inheriting the store, Elizabeth forms an unlikely alliance with ambitious and charismatic master glove-maker Joseph Carter. United they forge forward to bring Pennington’s into a new decade, embracing woman’s equality and progression whilst trying not to mix business and pleasure.

Can this dream team thwart Edward Pennington’s plans for the store? Or will Edward prove himself an unshakeable force who will ultimately ruin both Elizabeth and Joseph?

A Shop Girl in Bath can be purchased here: https://geni.us/fl1Cxi

An Oldie but a Goodie: The Lost Chord by Lyndi Alexander

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Chelsey M. Ortega

The Lost Chord came out in April of 2018. The book took some time to find a publishing home, but finally landed at Dragonfly Publishing, Inc. where it has done well. I was happy to have the book come out in April, because that is Autism Awareness Month—and so is April 2023!

The Lost Chord has a unique heroine, in that she is on the autism spectrum. The inspiration for Bee Warrick is my own daughter, Tasha, who is autistic, and approaches much of life from a very different perspective than we do. In the story, Bee is 15 years old, an imaginative young lady who spends a lot of time in her own world. She doesn’t realize that her “world” is actually made up of spots in several different universes, and she has been travelling among them her whole life.

As one who suffers with Sensory Integration Disorder, she is overly sensitive to loud noises and often stims by running her hands through bins of rocks, feeling sand on her fingers, etc. She is very educated about rocks and crystals and will eventually choose a talisman gem for each of the travelers commensurate with their chakra.

Corydon Briggs: Cory is 17, a minor athlete who plays on the varsity football team for his school on our Earth, in Universe E, but he’s no star, never will be. He’d rather play in the marching band, but his brother, six years older than he, died as a rising football star so he is pressured to live up to Stan’s standard by his firmly middle-class parents. An avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy, he’s moved on to online video games where he can become a hero, a role he believes he can’t hold in real life.

Devlynn Kayne: Devlynn comes from B Universe, where the black race has privilege and whites do not, and she is a black girl of 16. She is a star student, bound for higher education in the sciences, perhaps medicine someday. She shuns extracurricular school activities, concentrating instead on her after-school business designing web sites, which has made her quite a bit of money. She thought she had her whole life planned out before her—until she meets the quest for the Chord.

Hana Moss: Hana is essentially a wild child, having been raised by a single dad who’s an artist and musician in the desert in Universe F. They’ve pretty much kept to themselves. She’s home schooled and never had siblings, though she has many friends through the Netlink, their version of the internet. She’s had an eclectic upbringing and has created a “family” from a number of pets, a couple of wolf-dogs and a small wildcat, but also an iguana, a tarantula and a tank of salt water fish.

Maxian: Max is tall and thin, bookish, and comes from Universe A. His eyes are startling blue, with a vertical pupil like a cat’s, and a light coat of fur that can almost pass for body hair, a trait developed by his people to compensate for the fact his planet is further from their star than Earth, with less light and heat. He is reckoned at 8 revolutions by the ways of his people, but in Earth years would be about 18. Max’s gift is perfect pitch, and is honored among his kind for his ability to sing the Stories, the verbal history handed down from generation to generation. He carries a set of wooden runes carved into wood, and uses them to divine his choices.

The Conductor: He is the raison d’etre of the journeys of these children, coercing, teaching and leading them into position to fulfill the prophecy to unite all the “notes” or “keys” into the lost chord. A former professor of music, before music was banned on his homeworld in Universe H, he has the secret information passed to him by Ruane Alm that can heal the universe by bringing together the lost Chord.

See the book trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRTzaB5rUKo

This story was actually written for NaNoWriMo, so unlike my usual pantser mode, I needed to work the plot, characters and settings out before November 1, since I only had 30 days to complete it. I did finish on time, which I’m proud of. 😊 Probably half of my published books have started this way. I find that ticking deadline quite an inspiration.

I hope that this book opens a window into the world of how someone on the spectrum thinks and perceives, and shows that even though they may not approach life as we do, that they have unique and valuable gifts to share.

Lyndi Alexander always dreamed of faraway worlds and interesting alien contacts. She lives as a post-modern hippie in Asheville, North Carolina, a single mother of her last child of seven, a daughter on the autism spectrum, finding that every day feels a lot like first contact with a new species. Follow Lyndi’s journey at her website: Lyndi Alexander’s Worlds of Fancy.

A poisonous wave is spreading disease and discord across the eleven known universes. Seven special people, known as Keys, must strike the Lost Chord in order to restore the balance. Among those Keys is Bee Warrick, an autistic teenager from Earth who has traveled between the realms for years without realizing it.

Can Bee help the Conductor find the other Keys before a bitter enemy strikes the wrong chord and shatters the universes?

An Oldie but a Goodie: Flight Path by Lisa Wilkes

Posted on April 3, 2023 by Chelsey M. Ortega

Hi, I’m Lisa Wilkes. I am an author, flight attendant, licensed social worker (LMSW), and animal rescuer. I live in Florida with my spouse and a handful of adorable rescued furbabies. I often joke that I run a mini zoo but, with each passing year, it seems to get less mini! Which is fine by me.

Flight Path is my debut romance novel, published by The Wild Rose Press in 2020.

Callie Schneider, the book’s free-spirited protagonist, doesn’t simply march to the beat of a different drum, she breaks out dancing. And singing. And grabbing a partner to join her as she twirls around.

This whimsical stewardess believes tethers are for boats and roots are for trees. In Callie’s fast-paced, jet-setting world, freedom is the key to happiness. Although her apartment is located in San Francisco, her true home is someplace among the clouds, cruising at a speed of 40,000 miles per hour toward the next amazing destination. Callie is a daydreamer, a creative soul with dreams as wild as her layover in South Florida last month.

Speaking of that overnight, there are a few details Callie can’t remember. It’s not her fault she partied big; her long-time buddy was working that airline trip, and he’s the absolute best bad influence Callie’s ever known. When repercussions from that evening come back to haunt Callie, she is forced to make an uncomfortable decision. One that could cost her everything.

Flight Path is a tale of unexpected love. It explores the power and authenticity of romance—even for those who dodge every relationship, for fear that it might curtail their independence. This whimsical novel reminds us that freedom and love are not mutually exclusive; when pursued with equal fervor, they tend to complement each other quite nicely.

Flight Path is my first published novel, but not the first book I wrote. My previous books (all 12 of them) remain unpublished. I found it nearly impossible to break into the literary industry. Mountains of rejection letters take a toll on a person, even a fiercely optimistic individual like myself. For a few years, I was shattered. My heart had broken one time too many. I lost all hope in fulfilling my childhood dream of being a published author.

Then, in late 2018, I penned Flight Path. I was in grad school at the time and managed to finish the entire book during winter break. Writing a full-length novel in one month is unusual for me! This storyline had been brewing in my mind for ages. I decided, why not? Might as well give this silly writing dream one last shot. I figured if I could return to graduate school in my mid-thirties, with a spouse and a full-time traveling gig and a home full of rescue animals, I could do anything. So, I sucked up my pride and continued chasing that crazy ambition I’d fantasized about since youth.

Flight Path was inspired by my experience in the aviation industry, along with a detailed dream I had while living in Lower Pac Heights, an iconic neighborhood in San Francisco. This was my first novel featuring a flight attendant. I wanted to give the world a glimpse inside the life of a professional traveler. In addition, I aimed to inspire those who break the mold, the ones who believe that life is meant to be savored and enjoyed and appreciated. Risk-takers, daydreamers, and mavericks could revel in this tale of dazzling, breathtaking love…found in the least likely of places.

When it comes to my novels, I’m a planner. I let the concept ruminate in my head for months before setting pen to paper. I outline each novel, although occasionally my well-laid plan is scrapped in favor of an alternate ending. When I write, I become obsessive. Full-throttle mode doesn’t begin to describe my writing style. Books take me anywhere from four to six months to complete, with Flight Path being the rare exception.

On March 31, 2023, my second novel, Mid-Flight was published. Although this book features a different flight attendant, Lexi Brennan works at the same airline as Callie. There are a few obvious similarities between the two books, although Mid-Flight’s plot and genre deviate significantly from those of its predecessor. Mid-Flight is set in 2037/2038. This dystopian thriller/romance hybrid depicts love in a chilling, post-apocalyptic setting. It is a story of loss and redemption. It is also a tale of love’s amazing ability to transform us all.

100% of my royalties from the first week of sales for Mid-Flight, March 31^st through April 6^th, will be donated to Rags to Riches Animal Rescue, Inc., a 501(c)(3) here in Tampa.

Rags to Riches is one of the amazing nonprofits I partner with on a regular basis. They take on the hard cases, never turning down a chance to save an animal in need. I hope to start my own nonprofit someday. In the meantime, I am thrilled to help by contributing my time, energy, and resources to existing charitable organizations. After all, my books are meant to be inspiring, to elicit an emotional response from readers eager to explore worlds unknown. What better way to spread joy than by using those same books, written with a lot of grit and even more heart, to benefit the people and animals who need it most? So, that’s what I intend to do.

You can follow Lisa Wilkes on her website: Books by Lisa Wilkes

Amazon: Lisa Wilkes

Instagram: Lisa Wilkes (@travelisa1984)

Lisa’s animal rescue Instagram page: furever-luvd_fosters-n_flights

Flight Path and Mid-Flight can both be purchased on Amazon.

Flight attendant Callie Schneider doesn’t remember much about her wild South Florida layover. Her one night stand with sexy stranger Andrew was great, but a relationship is the last thing on her mind. Her life, a blend of global adventures and dazzling nights, is already perfect. Repercussions from that night threaten her carefree lifestyle and she is forced to reevaluate what is truly important. Will a bi-coastal romance filled with surprises she could never imagine finally bring her down to earth?