The Show Must Go On Going out to the Empire in 1926 wasn’t just a one-movie event. The films were part of an evening’s entertainment, which also included live music from the theater’s orchestra and Mighty Wurlitzer – the best theater organ in America. There was even more – various kinds of entertainment including a vaudeville troupe – musicians, dancers, comedians, actors, illusionists, and more. These troupes traveled from one theater to another by train. They did it all the time. It should have been routine. Then there was the Great Train Derailment. It didn’t just go off the tracks, like an ordinary train derailment. This one flung its passengers through time and space. The famous New York talent agency, Tobler and Jones, had promised to send some of their best acts to accompany the Empire’s debut of Charlie Chaplin’s new film, The Gold Rush, but when they hadn’t arrived in time for rehearsal the previous day, I began to worry. An expensive long-distance telephone call assured me they were on their way. Then we heard about the Great Train Derailment. All over the country, according to the newsies, train passengers were showing up in the wrong places – Read More
Tag: Celebrate Lit
Who Stole Cinderella’s Shoe?
This is an exciting day! As you may have heard, I have an upcoming book in Celebrate Lit’s Ever After Mysteries series. You will love this collection of fairytale-inspired mysteries set in the 1920’s! My book, Murder at the Empire, won’t be released until October 5 (although you can preorder it HERE), but the first one in the series, The Last Gasp by Chautona Havig, is available TODAY! To celebrate the release, the Ever After authors are doing a short blog hop, complete with a mini-mystery story and prizes. I get to go first, telling the story of Cinderella’s Missing Shoe. (Spoiler Alert: I don’t have it!) Every day this week, another author will share her part of the story! Who stole Cinderella’s Shoe? I’ve always been a rule-follower. I don’t steal things. I don’t even covet things. At least, I never did before, until I saw The Shoe. I still don’t know what came over me. I’ve visited art museums and seen many beautiful things in my life. The Empire movie palace is filled with amazing and exotic treasures, and none of them ever tempted me. It wasn’t until John Starek – the Emperor himself – showed me Read More
The Purple Nightgown by A.D. Lawrence
About the Book Book: The Purple Nightgown Author: A.D. Lawrence Genre: Christian Historical Suspense Release date: March, 2021 Marvel at true but forgotten history when patients check into Linda Hazzard’s Washington state spa in 1912 and soon become victim of her twisted greed. Book 10 in the True Colors series—Fiction Based on Strange-But True History Heiress Stella Burke is plagued by insincere suitors and nonstop headaches. Exhausting all other medical aides for her migraines, Stella reads Fasting for the Cure of Disease by Linda Hazzard and determines to go to the spa the author runs. Stella’s chauffer and long-time friend, Henry Clayton, is reluctant to leave her at the spa. Something doesn’t feel right to him, still Stella submits herself into Linda Hazzard’s care. Stella soon learns the spa has a dark side and Linda a mean streak. But when Stella has had enough, all ways to leave are suddenly blocked. Will Stella become a walking skeleton like many of the other patients or succumb to a worse fate? Review I’ve enjoyed the True Colors books that I’ve read – fictionalized stories based on historical true crimes. This one was unusual and interesting. The author did a good job of Read More
Murder at the Empire ~ the cover reveal!
When I was invited to participate in The Ever After Mysteries, a Celebrate Lit collection of 1920’s mysteries inspired by fairy tales, I couldn’t resist. I’m a great fan of mysteries from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and I read at least a thousand fairy tales as a child. To be honest… I set about it backward. I knew I wanted to write about a young woman who plays the organ for silent films at a movie palace, so I pulled out some of my old books (yes, the fairy tales books from my childhood) and looked for one that could serve as a basis for my story. It didn’t take me long to realize that The Nightingale was the perfect choice. The Nightingale is set in China, where an Emperor has a palace filled with beautiful and very fragile treasures. It’s so full of these things that no one can move through it easily, but he wants it all on display. In his gardens, he has gardeners tie bells on the prettiest flowers, so no one misses them. One day, he hears a nightingale singing, and he has it brought to the palace. He’s surprised to learn that Read More
Smoke Screen by Terri Blackstock – a review
Smoke Screen ~ A New Story from a Favorite Author! I heard a writing teacher say once that it’s much harder to write a truly good character than to write a flawed one. She said that readers would dislike the “perfect” people. I thought I’d feel that way about the hero of Smoke Screen. After Nate nobly saved an entire family (and their dog) from their burning home, then worried more about his team than about his own injuries, he was looking a little too good to be true. Ho-hum. But then the author did her trademark thing: she made his life messy. She gave him a very complicated family. She gave him a bad reputation. Now, he was a genuinely good and likable guy, but he was interesting, too. Terri Blackstock is really good at that! The heroine was easier to dislike – a weak woman with a drinking problem, when she should have been stronger and stayed sober if she really wanted to keep her kids. Instead, she wallowed in self-pity and hopelessness. So irritating. But… just as she has in so many other books, Terri Blackstock took that character and made her real. She was still doing Read More
Fragments of Fear by Carrie Stuart Parks
Fragments of Fear From award-winning author Carrie Stuart Parks comes a new novel with danger that reaches from a New Mexico Anasazi archaeological dig to micro- and nano-chip technology. Evelyn Yvonne McTavish-Tavish to her friends-had her almost perfect world in Albuquerque, New Mexico, come to a crashing end with the suicide of her fiancé. As she struggles to put her life back together and make a living from her art, she’s given the news that her dog is about to be destroyed at the dog pound. Except she doesn’t own a dog. The shelter is adamant that the microchip embedded in the canine-with her name and address-makes it hers. Tavish recognizes the dog as one owned by an archaeologist named Pat Caron because she did a commissioned drawing of the two of them months earlier. The simple solution is to return the dog to his owner, but she arrives only to discover Caron’s murdered body. After meeting undercover FBI agent Sawyer Price the mystery deepens as more people start disappearing and Tavish becomes a target as well. Her only solution is to find the links between microchip technology, an Anasazi site in the desert, her fiancé’s death, a late-night radio Read More