The Story Behind Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea by Richard I. Levine

 

 

 

 

 

The Story Behind Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea

By Richard I. Levine

I definitely didn’t plan this book or these characters in advance. This is my sixth novel and each time the idea came to me in a way that would make most people would think I need to be examined by a professional. Nonetheless, whether I call it my little voice, intuition, my spirit guides or angels, it’s not only the idea for the story that comes to me without warning and from out of nowhere, but it’s also an ongoing inexplainable inspirational feeling that seems to take over during the writing process. I suppose that’s called being in the zone. 

But as with my other novels, the people, the locations, and the basic story simply comes to me in a vision and music has always been the trigger that seems to set the wheels in motion. And there’s no predicting which piece of music will do that, but I suspect that it has something to do vibrational energies (mine and the music) that are vibrating at the same frequency. When it happens, it’s as real to me as anything that anyone sees in front of their eyes. So, it’s not just any music or particular songs, but it’s the way they are orchestrated--tempo, key, volume, types of instruments--that have instantaneously given birth to a story, its characters, relationships, locations, etc. For me, that kind of music, that vibration, simultaneously creates a feeling and a picture that resonates. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, I know I have my next novel. And then there’s this little voice in my head (spirit guides? Guardian angels? Intuition?) that says something to the effect: “This one, do this one”. With Like Driftwood On The Salish Sea there were a couple of orchestrated pieces from a movie soundtrack that gave birth to Mitch, Jess and the Rockwell-esque smalltown in the Pacific Northwest where they lived.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they met in the fourth grade, it was love at first sight for Mitchell Brody and Jessica Ramirez. He was the freckle-faced kid who stood up for her honor when he silenced the class bully who’d been teasing her because of her accent. She was the new kid whose family moved to San Juan Island, Washington, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and whom Mitch had thought was the most beautiful girl in the world.

She was his salvation from a strict upbringing. He was her knight in shining armor who had always looked out for her. Through the many years of porch-swinging, cotton-candied summer nights, autumn harvest festivals, and hand-in-hand walks planning for the ideal life together, they were inseparable…until 9/11, when the real world interrupted their Rockwell-esque small town life, and Mitch had joined the Marine Corps.

This is not just the story of a wounded warrior finally coming home to search for the love, and the world he abandoned twenty years before. It is also the story of a man who is seeking forgiveness and a way to ease the pain caused by every bad decision he’d ever made. It’s the story of a woman who, with strength and determination, rose up from the ashes of a shattered dream; but who never gave up hope that her one true love would return to her. As she once told an old friend: “Even before we met all those years ago, we were destined to be together in this life, and we will be together again, because even today we’re connected in a way that’s very special, and he needs to know about it before one of us leaves this earth.”

Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea is available at Amazon.

 

Richard I Levine is a native New Yorker raised in the shadows of Yankee Stadium. After dabbling in several occupations and a one-year coast-to-coast wanderlust trip, This one-time auxiliary police officer, volunteer fireman, bartender, and store manager returned to school to become a chiropractor.

A twenty-five-year cancer survivor, he’s a strong advocate for the natural healing arts. In 2006 he wrote, produced, and was on-air personality of The Dr. Rich Levine Show on Seattle’s KKNW 1150AM and after a twenty-five-year chiropractic practice in Bellevue, Washington, he closed up shop at the end of 2016 and moved to Oahu to pursue a dream of acting and being on Hawaii 5-O.

While briefly working as a ghostwriter/community liaison for a Honolulu City Councilmember, a Hawaii State Senator, and volunteering as an advisory board member of USVETS Barbers Point, he appeared as a background actor in over twenty-seven 5-Os, Magnum P.I.s, NCIS-Hawaii, and several Hallmark movies. In 2020, he had a co-star role in the third season episode of Magnum PI called “Easy Money.”

While he no longer lives in Hawaii, he says he will always cherish and be grateful for those seven years and all the wonderful people he’s met. His 5th novel, To Catch the Setting Sun, was inspired by his time in Hawaii.

Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea is Levine’s first foray into the romance genre.

Website & Social Media:

Website ➜ http://www.docrichlevine.com  

X ➜ https://www.twitter.com/Your_In8_Power 

Facebook ➜ https://www.facebook.com/RichardLevineAuthor/ 

Instagram ➜ https://www.instagram.com/rilevinedc 

 

The Story Behind A Glimpse Too Far by Karen Charles

 

 

 

 

 

The Story Behind A Glimpse Too Far

By Karen Charles

The inspiration came straight from my own life. The final chapter of A Glimpse Too Far mirrors a profoundly personal experience my husband and I went through, though fictionalized in the broader context of the novel. We had gone to a summer gathering hosted by our mortgage broker at a beautiful lavender farm, an event that had always been lighthearted and joyful. That year, though, a moment of unexpected mystery changed everything.

There was a palm reader at the party, someone we approached more for fun than belief. But what she told us stayed with me, details she couldn’t possibly have known, and predictions that seemed too specific to ignore. We brushed it off at the time, but when one of her forewarnings came true two years later, our world turned upside down.

What followed was a harrowing season of surgeries, setbacks, and learning to survive in ways we never imagined. I had to become a nurse, a caretaker, a source of strength when everything inside me was unraveling. But through it all, my husband and I held onto each other, our bond becoming something deeper and more resilient than it had ever been.

That’s where the heart of the story came from, not just the palm reading, but the journey that followed. The mystery. The endurance. The love that refused to let go. A Glimpse Too Far was born from that combination of strange coincidence and raw, lived experience.

It’s fiction, yes, but its soul is real. Writing the book became a way to process, reflect, and ultimately share a story about the unseen forces that shape our lives and the courage it takes to face them together.

A Glimpse Too Far was self-published by Bookbaby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A terrifying gift. A government cover-up. And a past that won't stay buried.

Elouise thought she had left the past behind. After a tragic accident, she woke with chilling ability to see glimpses of people's pasts and futures. She’s spent years trying to live a normal life. But when a powerful senator pulls her into a high-stakes game of deception and control, she realizes her gift is no longer a secret—it’s a weapon. And he intends to use it.

She must make an impossible choice: play his deadly game or risk everything to expose the truth.

Danger closes in. Now, Elouise is running for her life, hunted by those who will do anything to silence her.

Who can she trust? The boyfriend who swore to protect her? Or the man who wants to own her gift—at any cost?

A Glimpse Too Far is a pulse-pounding thriller filled with menace, betrayal, and a race against time. Will the truth be uncovered before it’s too late?

To order your copy, visit Amazon and BookBaby.

Karen Charles is the author of Freeman Earns a Bike, a children’s book, and two thrillers based on true stories. Fateful Connections takes place in the aftermath of 9/11, and Blazing Upheaval takes place during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles and the Northridge earthquake. She has two businesses: a global company that trains international teachers to teach American English, and an Airbnb on a beautiful bay in Washington State, where she resides with her husband. Her latest book is the psychological thriller, A Glimpse Too Far.

Website & Social Media:

Website ➜ www.weaveofsuspense.com  

X ➜  http://www.x.com/karenra24229683 

Facebook ➜ https://www.facebook.com/karen.rabe.7/ 

The Story Behind Knot of Souls by Christine Amsden

 

 

 

 

 

The Story Behind Knot of Souls

By Christine Amsden

I spent most of 2020 working social media for two state senate campaigns. Politics is always fraught, but with COVID looming large, casting a shadow over everything we did, it was an especially hard year. Tensions and tempers were high, and being on social media, I had a front row seat to hatred-inspired trollish comments and messages that are the hallmark of online political discourse. Fueled by algorithms that segment us into echo chambers, we don’t talk to each other. We just try to score points.

At the end of that year, weary of social distancing and deeply saddened by all the hatred, I sat down to write a novel. I’ve written novels before, of course, but this time I wanted to make myself feel better. After staring at a blank cursor for a few minutes, I typed out three words:

Write something happy.

I gave Joy her name before I gave her a plot. :) 

It’s hard to write a book that is tonally different from how you’re feeling. I recognized that early on, and I shifted my goal slightly to the idea of writing something hopeful. 

The key hope I wanted to develop? The idea that two very different beings can work together for a common purpose. That even when they disagree with one another, they listen and gift the other a simple benefit of the doubt: good intentions. 

The idea that they would share the same body popped into my head almost immediately, and not quite out of nowhere. I’ve long been fascinated by stories of body sharing, uncommon though they may be. In fact, the biggest challenge I had early on is the simple truth that most of these stories involve aliens, and I wanted to write fantasy (although the line between these genres is fuzzy, as I will shortly demonstrate). I spun through notions of ghosts and spirits and quickly dismissed them as being tonally off. I wanted to write something more hopeful than dark, so this isn’t a ghost story, even if Joy briefly thinks it is in Chapter 1 (as she tries to figure out what’s happening to her). 

I can’t remember the moment when writing about the Fae occurred to me. It wasn’t an obvious choice because Fae don’t normally possess people, but I had run into interpretations of Fae as aliens before, an interpretation that brought me full-circle back to my initial inclination. I did mention that the line between fantasy and science fiction is fuzzy, right? I even make this observation explicit in a brief getting-to-know-you exchange in Chapter 17:

“So … you’re an alien?” Joy asked.

“That’s what you got out of my story?”

“I’m curious about your powers and how they work. I thought it was magic, but if you’re an alien, then maybe not?”

“What’s the difference?” 

Once the notion of Fae as aliens clicked into place, the world sort of exploded in my mind. They’re not corporeal, they’re beings of energy, of light and sound, and their magic works through sound, through the Songs of the Fae. They can possess people … and animals and plants (although plant possession doesn’t come up in the book) … and some of them do this regularly. Some of them live in the real world, human lifetime after human lifetime, and some of them absolutely refuse to do so. This is the big rift between them. And where would incorporeal Fae hang out? Probably not somewhere where humans tend to live, so I put them on the frozen continent of Antarctica. An insight that, in a flash, had me reconnecting my interpretation with the traditional notion of the Winter and Summer Courts.

This was a fun story to write. At its heart are two damaged souls, one powerful but unable to trust, one trusting and in need of claiming power. Together, they work magic. 

I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

 

 

 

 

Two souls, one body …

When Joy wakes up in an alley, she knows three things: she was brutally murdered, she has somehow come back to life … and she is not alone. She’s been possessed by an inhuman presence, a being that has taken over her dying body. That being is powerful, in pain, and on the run from entities more dangerous than he is.

Shade, a Fae prince on the run, didn’t mean to share the body he jumped into. Desperate and afraid, accused of a murder he didn’t commit, he only sought a place to hide—but if he leaves Joy now, he faces discovery and a fate worse than death.

Forced to work together to solve multiple murders, including her own, Joy and Shade discover hidden strengths and an unlikely friendship. Yet as their souls become increasingly intertwined, they realize their true danger might come from each other … and if they don’t find a way to untangle the knot their souls have become, then even the truth won’t set them free.

Knot of Souls is a stand-alone buddy love fantasy that forces two very different beings to work together … and come out stronger on the other side.

Knot of Souls is available at Amazon.

Christine Amsden is the author of nine award-winning fantasy and science fiction novels, including the Cassie Scot Series.

Speculative fiction is fun, magical, and imaginative but Christine believes great speculative fiction is about real people defining themselves through extraordinary situations. She writes primarily about people, and it is in this way that she strives to make science fiction and fantasy meaningful for everyone.

In addition to writing, Christine is a freelance editor and political activist. Disability advocacy is of particular interest to her; she has a rare genetic eye condition called Stargardt Macular Degeneration and has been legally blind since the age of eighteen. In her free time, she enjoys role playing, board games, and a good cup of tea. She lives in the Kansas City area with her husband and two kids.

Author Links

Website ➜https://christineamsden.com/wordpress/

X ➜ http://www.x.com/christineamsden 

Facebook ➜https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christine-Amsden-Author-Page/127673027288664?ref=hl