Who or What is Killing the Seniors on Sunshine Boulevard? #MFRWhooks

Book Hooks Blog Hop #MFRWbooks

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog. Today we're joining the Book Hooks Blog Hop sponsored by the Marketing For Romance Writers Group. (#MFRWbooks) Each participating blogger shares an excerpt from a novel. I'm featuring my paranormal suspense, Terror on Sunshine Boulevard. Hope it will give you smiles and chills.

You're invited to come on along to visit authors sharing their books with you. The link to the list of participants is at the end of the page. Have fun!

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Paranormal Suspense

Back of the Book: Rescuing a naked woman lying in a geranium bed? Investigating mysterious murders Not the usual calls for first responder Jim Hart. He expects slip and fall accidents or low blood pressure emergencies in his retirement community of Citrus Ridge Senior Community and Golf Resort. The ghastly crime scenes turn the winter time fun into a terrifying season of death and mystery when the authorities cannot track down the predator responsible. 

Jim and his wife Gloria could escape the horror and grief by returning to their northern home, but concern for their friends and residents keep them in Florida. With the entire community in a dither over the deaths, the Harts participate in the normal winter activities of golfing, dancing, and pool parties with their friends to distract them from the sadness and loss.

Can Jim and Gloria work with the authorities to discover who or what is killing the seniors on Sunshine Boulevard and stop the increasing body count?

Excerpt: Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

The entire community buzzed with the news about the strange death of George McDonnell. The Tampa newspapers reported it in the regional sections and the radio station interviewed local officials and the county health department on the situation.

Until the cause of death could be determined, those who were in the house on the afternoon of the discovery were quarantined. Not knowing what kind of disease, poison, or accident killed the poor man, authorities were not taking chances to allow a possible outbreak. Police were brought in to guard the house twenty-four hours a day to keep sightseers from the danger of whatever or whoever was in or around the property.

There were many curiosity seekers. Even Mr. Tweeble drove his electric wheelchair over to the McConnell residence. His little dog, Jingles, barked and whined, refusing to go within a block of the place. He finally picked up the feisty terrier and put it on his lap to drive past the house. The dog jumped off and raced the other way until he was brought up short on his leash. He howled until his master turned the cart around and left the area.

* * * *

“Jingles! Jingles! Hush up, will you? It’s three o’clock in the morning. You’re going to wake the neighborhood with your barking.”

Jingles produced the most pitiful howling Mr. Tweeble ever heard.

Fearing his dog was sick, Mr. Tweeble rolled himself out of bed, fumbled putting on his glasses, and shuffled into the kitchen. Using the night light in the hood vent over the old stove to see the dog, he discovered the animal scampering back and forth near the back door.

“Jingles, come ‘ere, boy. Are you sick?” Mr. Tweeble picked him up and gently held the dog close to his chest. He switched on the ceiling light so he could see the precious face he dearly loved. He checked Jingles’ brown ears and his brown and white furry body for any injuries, and then cradled him to his rotund belly.

“It’s all right, little guy. Come on. Come on to bed with me. You must want to go out to chase a rabbit, eh?” As he slowly shuffled his way back to his bedroom with the dog, he wondered what was wrong. Mr. Tweeble made a mental note to check behind the couch for an “accident” in the morning.

He lay down on the rumpled bed and enfolded the trembling dog in his arms. Suddenly Jingles wriggled free and sprang up barking non-stop. He leaped from the bed and raced out of the room. A flash of searing yellow light filled the bedroom blinding Mr. Tweeble, and the smell of his own scorched flesh burned his nostrils.

***

Available in Paperback at Amazon and in ebook formats at major digital retailers.

Click here to order at these online booksellers.
***

Birthday Gift for YOU
Image by Holger Grybsch from Pixabay 

Birthday Gift for YOU: I celebrated my birthday this past weekend and I want to keep the celebration going.  So let me send you a PDF copy of Terror on Sunshine Boulevard.  Then you can leave a review on the amazon and/or Goodreads site. A new book to read for you AND a review for my book. Now that's a great birthday gift!

If you would be interested in reading this paranormal mystery and writing an honest review for it, I will email the PDF format for your reading pleasure to the first ten readers who request the copy. Offer ends on Sunday, June 2 at 11:59 pm ET. But there is no deadline to write the review!

Thank you for your consideration.

My email address is jqrose02 at gmail dot com.

Click here to visit bloggers who are participating in the Book Hooks Blog Hop. Enjoy meeting new authors and visiting your favorites. 
Thanks for stopping by.

Memorial Day at the Vietnam War Memorial

Memorial Day, May 27, 2019

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story blog.
The upcoming weekend in the US is Memorial Day Weekend, usually what is considered the beginning of summer with the celebrations usually centered around a cookout on the grill of hot dogs, hamburgers and brats. 

But there is a somber part of the holiday also. Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering and honoring persons who have died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Flags are placed on the graves of the service personnel who bravely served to protect our freedom and time is devoted to reflecting on their service and sacrifice.

I recall a trip to Washington, D.C. where my husband and I visited the Vietnam War Memorial. The path that takes a visitor along the length of the memorial brought tears to my eyes as I read the names of the soldiers who died in that turbulent war. Perhaps it was because this was my generation's war and I knew many who served and suffered from the after-effects of such atrocities and those who lost their lives in the jungles of Vietnam.

When I came across a poem found in William Zinsser's Writing About Your Life, I was touched by the story he tells about meeting the poet, Duong Tuong Tran when he and his wife visited Hanoi in 1996. Duong Tuong was one of Vietnam's most influential art critics, writer, poet and translator of American and Russian literature into Vietnamese. Zinsser included Duong Tuong's touching poem he wrote after visiting the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In Remembrance

"When we visited this memorial with the list of names of those who lost their lives in service to our country inscribed on the long, dark wall, I was moved to tears. This poem brings me back to that solemn visit so many years ago as if it just happened to me." William Zinnser

AT THE VIETNAM WALL

because i never knew you
nor did you me
          i come

because you left behind mother,
father and betrothed
and i wife and children
          i come

because love is stronger than enmity
and can bridge oceans
          i come

because you never return
and i do
          i come

          DUONG TUONG Washington, D. C., November 21 1995

Format an eBook for Publishing by J.Q. Rose, #Authortoolboxbloghop

#AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog and to the Author Toolbox Blog Hop #AuthorToolboxBlogHop which meets every third Wednesday of the month to share resources and tips for authors. Thanks to Raimey Gallant for hosting this venture. 

Please join us to learn more about the craft of writing and to meet bloggers who are dedicated to helping each other become the best writers possible. Click here for the list of participants. Take a break and visit them. 

I will be away from the office this week so I can't visit hop participants, but I'll catch up when I can. 

***

Format an eBook by J.Q. Rose

Format an eBook by J.Q. Rose
#Authortoolboxbloghop

Indie Publishing--If you want to publish your ebook to amazon, Kindle Create is a tool provided by amazon to build your eBook. I haven't used it, but I plan to with my next book! Click here for information on Kindle Create.

Smashwords offers the FREE Smashwords Style Guide to create, format and publish an ebook. Click here to get this helpful guide.

I have used Draft 2 Digital for my latest indie-published eBooks. Just download your ms file to the site and D2D does all the formatting for you. They're very helpful. I had a glitch with my Table of Contents and they explained what I had done and fixed the headings for me, so all I had to do was to download the file they sent me. What a relief! In 2011 when I downloaded a file to Smashwords, I spent hours and hours and days and days working on a TOC. Thank you, D2D! Click here for information about self-publishing with support from D2D.

***

Traditional Publishing--Procedures for book publishing have changed so much since eBooks have come into our lives. Formatting the manuscript can be different for each publisher. The best advice is to read the guidelines from the publisher you plan to submit to and format EXACTLY how the publisher wants the ms. Your ms may not even get a look if it is not formatted according to their instructions.

If you would like templates for formatting your manuscripts, click here to download templates from the William Shunn site. This also provides a rounded word count. I haven't used them, but they are well-known in the industry.

Please leave a comment below letting us know about your experience in formatting and suggestions for other possible places for distribution of your books. Thanks!

Thanks for stopping by. 
Now hop on over to more bloggers to discover nuggets of information 
you can use in writing, publishing and marketing.
 Click here for the list of participants.

*** 

About J.Q. Rose

Whether the story is fiction or non-fiction, J.Q. Rose is “focused on story.”  

Author J.Q. Rose

She offers readers chills, giggles and quirky characters woven within the pages of her mystery books. Her published mysteries are Deadly Undertaking, Terror on Sunshine Boulevard and Dangerous Sanctuary released by Books We Love Publishing. 

Using her storytelling skills, she provides entertainment and information in articles featured in books, magazines, newspapers, and online magazines. With her non-fiction book for girls, Girls Succeed! Stories Behind the Careers of Successful Women, she returned to her first love, writing about real people. 

Click here to visit and like the J.Q. Rose Facebook page.
Thank you!

Memorable Mother's Day 1976 Excerpt

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog!
This Sunday, May 12, we celebrate Mothers, always the second Sunday in May. It's a special day to honor our mothers or the person who was so important in a child's life.

When we were in the flower business, Mother's Day was the biggest day of the year. I bet you thought it would be Valentine's Day or Christmas. But no. I was surprised when we bought the shop and the owner told me how crazy busy this day would be. And she was right!

I'm writing a memoir about that first year in business, so I thought I'd give you a glimpse of what my first Mother's Day in 1976 was like. You can imagine being a newbie in the flower industry and being thrown into this whirl of activity.

Memorable Mother's Day 1976 by J.Q. Rose--Excerpt

Boxes of special Mother’s Day containers for the wired flowers service like Teleflora arrived. We didn't really receive wires, like a telegraph line. The orders were phoned in. Of course, there were no emails since the internet wasn't even on the horizon in 1976.

Like a kid at Christmas time, I reveled in unboxing the lovely vases that only Teleflora members could offer to their customers.

We were also members of Redbook and Florafax. I was a bit fearful of having so many wire services opening us up to delivering flowers from people all over the country. But they also allowed us to send flowers through florists located throughout the country. We kept a percentage of the sale and charged a service fee for the flower service.

The week of Mother’s Day, we had even more buckets of fresh flowers in the cooler than for any previous holiday in order to make arrangements for the anticipated sales. Colorful sweetheart roses and orchids for corsages also took up space. The cymbidium orchids created elegant corsages which could be made several days in advance because they held up so well out of water. 

Cymbidium orchids for Mom's corsage
Image by Takashi Murakami from Pixabay 

I quickly learned how to put an orchid corsage together by covering the wire with floral tape, forming a hoop with the covered wire  and  placing it behind the orchid to protect the fragile petals rather than piercing the stem with the wire. 

Other flowers made into eye-catching corsages kept the secret that the poor flower was pierced and wrapped and twisted into that lovely balanced shape, but all the wicked piercings and twistings were covered with floral tape and leaves, so no one saw the behind-the-scenes torturing of the flowers that went into the design to become a delicate corsage.

In 1976 there were no big box stores selling corsages or plants and fresh flowers. No grocery stores or gas stations on the corner sold flowers. Florists were kings in the domain of supplying moms with a gift of flowers. Flowers were what you bought mom. Not a new Keurig coffee pot or Ninja blender. Not even jewelry. So you can imagine how that one day was so important to florists in order to make their money for the year because it was even bigger than the Christmas season.

***

Needless to say, I was overwhelmed as we went through Mother’s Day week and the piles of orders for delivery in time for Mother’s Day tested the strength of the clips. Yes, clips, not just one clip for the day. We had to grab several clips to hold all of the orders.

I separated the floral orders into separate piles-- potted flowering plants and hanging baskets, planters, fresh arrangements, and corsages. Bringing order to the piles soothed my ragged nerves a bit, and I felt I was contributing to helping with moving the order-filling along. Although we had worked nights before Saturday to try and get ahead of the orders, the work on the design table on the Saturday before Mother’s Day was daunting. I’d get the pile trimmed down, but Winifred kept taking orders! I remembered my floral design instructor’s words—“No matter if you have $50 worth of orders on your table or $500 worth, you’ll have them done by the end of the day.” I hoped he was right!

This memoir is not completed. I am looking for a title. Any ideas? Please leave a title or comment below. Thank you.

***

I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day, and even if you don't celebrate the day on Sunday, you can always say, "Thanks, Mom" any day. 

My Mom in 1956
Thanks, Mom. Have a Heavenly Mother's Day!

To all Moms and those who were like a Mom to a child, have a relaxing Happy Mother's Day!

* * *