Don't Touch EBook Release Day!

Don't Touch is available on Smashwords today!

Blurb
Dr Ryan Reign has unlocked a gift she calls a curse. Detective Jackson Prince and his partner need her help to stop a serial killer before he murders again.

One problem Dr. Reign can't touch or be touched. She's become a recluse never leaving her home for fear of what she might'see'. Jackson knows he has to help her accept her gift or there will be more deaths. 

It takes a woman's touch to catch a killer. 

Excerpt 

 It had been months since she had ventured outside of her lawn. Ryan didn’t understand what was happening to her at first. Since the incident on her last day at work, she has tried to make sense of it. Or at least find out what it was and how to stop it.

            She sat at the computer nursing a cup of cocoa February in Florida was the dead of winter. It would be up in the seventies in another week but right now it was in the forties. Ryan was searching the net for the gazillionth time. VISIONS, VISIONS BY TOUCH, PSYCHIC were the search words she used. The screen blinked and an all too familiar list popped up. Near the bottom of the page was something different. “The Circle.”

            Clicking the link she waited not expecting anything. The site came up and they had all the usual. Tarot, crystals, books, psychic readings. “Usual BS, I could have just gone to Cassadaga for that.”

            Cassadaga fancied themselves the psychic capital. Might be, the entire town was palm readers, mind readers, astrologists, numerologist, you name the psychic brand and there was a store front for it. In the past they have had to block the town off on Friday the thirteenth and Halloween due to all the traffic and weirdness.

            Just as she rolled over to exit the page she saw a flashing box. “Have a question about your gift? No, I have a question about my curse though.”

            She typed in a brief description of her problem. When I touch stuff I see things. Am I crazy? Hitting send with her email, attached Ryan sat back and felt the sting of tears. How much more can she cry? Every day for the last who knows how long now she cried. About to sign off her mailbox blinked.

Hi Ryan,

            My name is Barbara. I have a gift like yours, it is called psychometry. Or object reading. You can see bits of others lives by touching things they touched. Especially when the emotions are strong.

            Ryan blinked psycom-a what? Object reading? Barbara went on to explain the positive and negative hands, one leaves an imprint the other can read it.  She shook her head and clicked reply. “I don’t care how it works. How do I turn it off?” Send. A few minutes later.

            You can’t turn it off. You can learn to control it. Which hand is your positive hand? The one you “see” with. It is usually the hand you write with. Use the opposite one more until you get control of your gift.

            “Get control! I want it gone!” She screamed furious. She hadn’t been able to go anywhere or even touch her sister without some kind of vision haunting her. Angry, she signed off and paced the floor.

           

            They pulled up into the driveway of an old Victorian home on the lake. Not many of these homes lasted through the ages but this one had been kept pristine. The detectives walked up the porch and noticed the furniture was covered in plastic sheets. Maybe the good doctor was gone on holiday, or playing a round of golf.  Thomas knocked on the door. The door opened a crack, he held up his badge. “Good afternoon, I’m Detective Thomas Lord and this is my partner Jackson Prince, is Dr. Reign home?”

            Ryan stepped back and wiped her face then opened the door a bit wider. “I’m Dr. Reign, is there a problem detective?”

            Jackson stepped closer to the door. “Dr. Ryan Reign?”

            Her eyes narrowed a bit. “Yes, Dr. Ryan Reign. Want to see my drivers license, Detective Prince or should I give it to his lordship?”

            Thomas shot Jackson a look then turned back and smiled warmly. “That won’t be necessary, I apologize we were uh… under the impression that…. Well what we’re here for is to ask you about one of the last cases you worked on.”

            She tilted her head a bit and glanced at the folder. “Which case?”

            Thomas opened the folder where she could see. “The murder of Jillian Hilliard.” The men watched as every bit of blood drained from her complexion. Ryan swayed and caught the door to stay upright. Jackson reached a steadying hand and she jumped back away from him.

            “Don’t! Don’t touch me! I’m… I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She slammed the door. Ryan leaned against the oak and slid to the floor sobbing hysterically as the vision she saw that day replayed its self. Only now it was worse she had a name to go with the horror she had to witness.

            Jackson shook his head as Thomas headed down the steps behind him. “I don’t understand, Jack, you were only trying to keep her from falling.”

            “I don’t’ think that was it. Every drop of blood drained from her body when you opened that file. What ever happened to her that day has that lady terrified.”

            That night Jackson couldn’t sleep. He had the sinking feeling this was going to get much worse before it got anywhere at all. 

 Grab your copy on Smashwords  for $.99 launch week special March 25th through 30th! 

Want to get a paperback copy or meet the author. Come see me March 30th at the Authors in the Park event Spring into Art! Get all the details here Events and Appearances  or AIP on Facebook 

Author Chat with Joyce Harmon

Today we're welcoming author Joyce Harmon to the Ludis! So sit back with your cuppa and enjoy our chat as we talk about Joyce's Winery series and latest 

When did you first consider yourself an author?

Oh, always! I was writing Star Trek fanfic (though I didn’t know to call it that) in junior high. Back then, there was nothing to do with your stories, though. You just wrote them out in long hand and let your friends read them.

  

Tell us a bit about your latest work Died on the Vine. 

Update! Died On The Vine now has a sequel! Look for the further adventures of Cissy and her friends in Bidding On Death.

But back to Died On The Vine. I actually wrote this book in the mid-90s. I was planning to submit it to publishers and agents. But when I finished the story, it was too short for submissions – mystery publishers wanted works of at least 60,000 words, and Vine was around 45,000. So I needed to make it longer. The other problem was that I had made the story very ‘up to date’ and in the mid-90s, what was up to date seemed to change every day. Just when I’d updated something, something else changed and had to be updated – it was a moving target. Another difficulty was that I had a Vietnam War backstory, and as time went on, my characters would wind up being too old. Life ensued and the manuscript got filed away.

Then last year, I realized that I’d been calling myself a writer all my life and didn’t really have anything out there for people to read, and it was time to get serious. (I’d had a diversion for a number of years writing screenplays, none of which sold of course.) I decided that 2012 was going to be The Year Of The Writer. And with the advent of ebooks, getting published was much more plausible and your story could be any length it needed to be.

At that point, I remembered, hey, I wrote a novel once – and I dug out Died On The Vine, the original manuscript without all my attempts to bring it up to date. I reread it and the stuff that had looked outdated ten years ago now looked (IMO) like quaint period detail.  I only had the paper manuscript, since it was written many computers and several word processing softwares ago, so I had to retype the whole thing. But I kept it as it was, set it in 1996, and wrote a present day prologue and epilogue.

I published it via Smashwords and Amazon, and it’s available on all the ebook platforms. So far it’s doing pretty well, especially on Barnes and Noble.

  

What inspired your setting of a Virginia Winery?

I retired from the Navy in the mid-90s. My first post-retirement job was at the local winery. I took tourists on tours of the winery and conducted wine tastings. It seemed to me that it would be a neat location for a mystery, so I wrote one.

I’m still milking my own experiences for story fodder. After the winery, I worked as a local newspaper reporter, and then I spent a number of years as an eBay seller. I would go to the local auctions and buy things to resell on eBay. I used that experience for my sequel, Bidding On Death, where Cissy and her friends becoming involved in on-line auctions. I set Bidding On Death in 1998.

Did you learn something new about yourself or the craft of writing while working on this story, if so what was it?

I don’t know if I actually learned anything new, but I relearned how much I enjoy creating a fictional world and immersing myself in it. My stories always contain humor and I tend to crack myself up.

How would you spend a day inside of your book?

I’d track down Cissy and Julia and see what they were up to – which is usually pretty interesting. Maybe play with Polly the dog and Tough Stuff the cat. And I’d make sure to find time to stop by Della’s Kountry Kitchen for some pie.

Do you write every day or when the muse hits?

I try to write every day when I have a story in the works. Some days it’s harder to get going than others. When I’m really in the middle of it, I try to keep to a weekly word count goal, though that resolution has been more broken than kept recently.

How do you develop plots and characters? Do you have a set formula?

I don’t think I have an actual formula. I usually get a premise first, and then form the characters who’d have to deal with that premise. With my winery mysteries, I now have a set group of characters, though I expect each new mystery will introduce new ‘regulars’.

If you could spend time with any writer living or past who would it be and why?

Michio Kaku. I have a bit of a crush on him anyway, and maybe in person he could explain string theory to where I understood it.

Do you have any works in progress you can share with us?

I have premises for several more winery mysteries, but right now I’m trying something different. I’m writing a Regency romance. My mysteries are very breezy and informal, so Regency is quite a change of pace. It’s much more formal and mannered. My intent is to write a pure Heyer-style comedy of manners – no sex scenes, no time travel, no vampires or zombies.

After the Regency, I might write the next mystery, but I also have a screenplay I plan to novelize – science fiction action-adventure.

Is there something you would like to say to readers and/or fellow writers?

Just that writing should be fun. I can’t give a lot of career advice because I’ve just recently started putting my work out there, and I have no idea whether or not I’m on the right track to writing success. It’s all a crapshoot anyway, so the key is to enjoy the process; that way, if it doesn’t lead to fame-n-fortune at least you enjoyed what you were doing. When I see people on writing discussion groups saying resignedly that they supposed they’d better write a young adult paranormal romance because that’s what’s selling these days, and I know that they don’t particularly enjoy young adult or paranormal or romance - ! Sheesh. Write the sort of stuff you’d want to read!

Where can we find Joyce Harmon and your books? 

Amazon

Smashwords

The Village Wordsmith blog

Readers hurry over to Joyce's blog The Village Wordsmith! She is giving a way 10 copies of Died on the Vine so hurry and don't miss out. Next week she will be giving away Bidding on Death!