A Cape May Diamond - the Nor'easter of 1962

2013 Winner Independent Publisher Book Awards (bronze medal) for best eBook fiction. 

One of the tragic bits of historical information in A Cape May Diamond, is reference to a massive storm that devastated the town of Cape May in 1962 (13 years before the story takes place). They called that storm the High-Five. Here is an excerpt from A Cape May Diamond about that storm with photos of the devastation.

"They all remembered it. How could they forget the Ash Wednesday nor'easter of 1962, one of the worst storms of the century? They described it to Tom as the storm where the ocean met the bay. It was that bad." 

Where the Ocean met the bay

"The forecasters hadn’t thought it would amount to much when it first appeared on the radar. They said it would blow through with minimal impact, but they were wrong. An unusual combination of weather patterns coinciding with the Spring equinox caused it to stall in the mid-Atlantic for almost three days where it pounded coastal areas with continuous rain, high winds, and tidal surges, and dumped large quantities of snow inland for several hundred miles. Cape May went through five record high tides during that storm, and so it came to be called the High-Five."

Aerial photo of one of the five record high tides

"The seawall that ran the length of Beach Avenue had been a boardwalk back then, dating back to the late 1800s, but the High-Five lifted it off its moorings like so much kindling and tossed it into the center of town, damaging everything in its path."

The boardwalk

"Beach Avenue collapsed when the storm pulled the sand out from under it, leaving behind craters filled with abandoned cars and chunks of concrete that the angry unrelenting sea picked up and hurled into the buildings along the strip. Very few escaped nature’s fury in that High-Five of 1962 when the ocean met the bay."

Beach Ave

"Many saw the High-Five as the beginning of the end. Some money trickled in afterwards. The roads were repaired with federal disaster relief money. They built the seawall. The salvageable buildings were shored up and the ones destroyed were bulldozed, but the town was never the same after that. The High-Five had washed away the quaintness from Cape May, and people just gave up. Many left for good, boarding up and abandoning their homes. Insurance companies pulled out, leaving the Dew and everyone else along Beach Avenue at the mercy of the sea."

Ocean Avenue

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 I invite you to sample the book at Amazon. Here are the links. Thanks!

A Cape May Diamond

Genre: Literary Fiction/Mystery

Published: September, 2012

Read a sample at Amazon.com

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A Cape May Diamond

Now available in paperback and on Kindle

Genre: Literary Fiction/Mystery

Published: September, 2012

Read a sample at Amazon.com

Amazon Kindle (U.S.) 

Amazon Kindle (U.K.)

Amazon Kindle (DE)

Amazon Kindle (FR)

Amazon Paperback

A story of life, love, and a journey of a thousand years…

It was Monday, May 19th, 1975. I’ll never forget that day. The Vietnam War had ended with the fall of Saigon that April, and the world was mired in one of its worst recessions ever. Unemployment in the United States was nearly nine percent, inflation even higher, and leadership lacking. The Watergate scandal had cast a smear across American politics, resulting in Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 to avoid impeachment, and his successor’s immediately pardoning him to close the book on an unhappy chapter in U.S. history.

It was not a good time for anyone and a particularly hard time for the old Victorian town of Cape May. The crown jewel of the New Jersey shore had fallen into neglect and disrepair and was dying a slow death. Once the elegant summer home to presidents and kings, it had become the last refuge of the deposed.

That’s where I met Tom Ryan. Tom was a king, or so he would have you believe, but unlike Richard Nixon, when Tom was dethroned, he wasn’t sent home with a slap on the wrist. He was sent to prison. He was a convicted draft dodger, but one of the lucky ones released early by President Ford as part of his mass clemency after Nixon’s pardon. The problem was, Tom had nowhere to go when he got out, so he took the money his dad mailed to him and spent it on a bus ticket to get as far away as possible to a place where nobody cared who he was or what he had done, a place where nobody cared about anything. That place was Cape May.

As hard a time as it was for everyone, it was harder for me because that was the day I met Tom Ryan. I should have turned and walked away. I knew it when he first looked at me, but I didn’t, not my first mistake, but one that would make Monday, May 19th, 1975 the hardest day of my life.

This is the story of how Tom Ryan and I met and how things never quite work out the way you think. You might find a love story in here somewhere. You might not. You might find a message hidden in one of the nickel pop bottles collected by the beachcombers from some of the most beautiful white sand beaches in the world. You might even find a little mystery, but life is a mystery, isn’t it?

A Cape May Diamond

My next novel, A Cape May Diamond, is nearing completion. It's the long-awaited sequel to Four Years from Home. In it you will finally see what happened to Tom Ryan after the mess he made in Four Years. I was thinking of calling Another Mess, or That's a Fine Kettle of Fish, but settled on A Cape May Diamond. I'll be posting more on this another time, but briefly it's a story of love, redemption, and the smell of dead fish.

I ain't 'fraid of no Ghost

Karen Cole is someone I met through the wonderful world of Twitter, and she's a ghost! Ooooo, scary, huh? No, not really. She's not that kind of ghost, nor is she a zombie, vampire, or any other type of undead creature. She is a professional ghost writer. Please take a few minutes to read through her guest post. It's very informative and I found it quite interesting. Thanks!

Hire a Ghost Writing Service!

By Karen Cole

Ghost writing is the process of writing an article, book or anything else on behalf of another party - when the texts are officially credited to that other party. Ghost writers are the people who normally do this, and they are typically hired by executives, celebrities, politicians and even musicians. However, over time this service has started to lean toward the academic side, where there is much ghost writing of academic material on various subjects.

Ghost writers have a certain degree of participation in the creation and management of such documents. Some ghost writers simply churn out an item, while in other cases ghost writers are hired to proofread items. There are also ghost writers who do writing on a certain topic, following strict guidelines that are provided by the client.

The services of a ghost writer have many advantages, and some of them are listed below:

Expenses: hiring a ghost writing service can end up saving you a lot of money. This is because ghost writing is relatively cheap as compared to other types of services, for instance the hiring of professionals in your field. Professionals are usually very busy people, and in most cases they have large orders waiting for them. It is due to this and other reasons that the fees charged by industry professionals can be exorbitant. A ghost writer usually researches on the topic, and comes up with high quality items.

Time: most clients usually do not have time to write their items themselves, so they begin hiring ghost writing professionals. The clients usually have very busy schedules, such as marketing their books (when the client is a writer). This does not give them time to write or proofread and make corrections to their items. A ghost writer can do this for you, so that you can have sufficient time to continue with other business.

Extensive research: this is another factor that makes people hire ghost writers. Ghost writers usually have excellent research skills, due to the experience they have gained over time in researching their ghost writing. This ensures that if you hire the services of a ghost writer for your items, you will be sure to get high quality research work from your ghost writer.

Anonymity: ghost writers are usually anonymous. This can be a big advantage for people intending to write a book, screenplay, memoir or even an article. The ghost writer stays in the background, and no legal cases will emerge years later after the success of a book. The ghost writers also have the necessary referencing style experience - this ensures that you do not fall into the trap of plagiarism, in case you are writing academic papers or serious medical research.

Reliability: ghost writers usually operate on deadlines. This can be important, in case you don't know if you might be able to finish an item in the given time. You can set a deadline with a ghost writer, and expect the finished work within a specified period.

Ghost writers provide writing services for some very reasonable fees. You can hire these services if you want to create a text of some type, but you do not have the time, means, writing abilities or creativity to do so.

GHOST WRITER, INC: Karen Cole is an affordable book ghost writer, copy editor, proof reader, rewriter and book author with a team of 100+ writing field and book / screenplay workers, some of which are New York Times best-selling authors. We do inexpensive marketing, promotions and publishing or optioning assistance, and we have contacts with literary agents, commercial publishers and literary or film field professionals. We also offer ghost writers for music and composition, such as rap music and other genres, and we have ghost writing for Facebook and Twitter as well.

Spring into Summer

My good friend, Eden Baylee, has a new book out, a collection of erotic novellas called Spring into Summer. Please take a moment to read the charming little piece she wrote here, and if it's something you might be interested in, check out a sample on Amazon (links are below), and buy a copy to take to the beach if it's your cup of tea! 

Thanks!

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In Praise of Irish Men

Larry is an author of Irish descent I respect deeply. I admire his passion, humor, and lyrical way with words. 

He’s generously offered up some space for me to blog about my new book, Spring into Summer — a collection of four erotic novellas.

What Larry does not know is he had a hand in inspiring one of the stories in the book called “Unlocking the Mystery.”

I visited Ireland many years ago in search of a man—not for myself, but for a girlfriend of mine.

Doris was a woman who by all accounts was happily married, but she confessed to me one day her first love was an Irishman she had dated many years earlier while living in Dublin. She knew I was taking a trip to Ireland and asked if I could find him and see how he was. She had broken his heart when she ended the relationship to move back to Germany. I had no idea how big Ireland was and whether it was possible to find him, but off I went with only a name to go on.

Wouldn’t you know it? I found him in Killarney just by making a few phone calls. I met him in a pub and we shared a few pints. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when he stared at the picture of Doris I gave him. It was thirty years later, and he was still brought to tears. 

The passion and humor of the Irish men I met on that trip and since then have stayed with me. If you’d like to read a story inspired by lovely men just like Larry, I’d be honored if you picked up my book.

Bio

Eden Baylee writes literary erotica. Her stories are both sensual and sexual, incorporating some of her favorite things such as travel, culture, and a deep curiosity for what turns people on. Spring into Summer is her second collection of erotic novellas.

Links

Website

Blog

Twitter @edenbaylee

Facebook

Youtube

Pinterest

Buy Links: Ebook formats

Amazon.com      

Amazon.UK

I'm Interviewed about 12|21|12

Click here to read the exciting interview with me about 12|21|12

12|21|12

The world ends for someone every day. 

One day it will end for everyone.

Is life just equations and numbers, and everything explainable logically and mathematically, or is it a trail we simply follow to its end? Do we go to Hell for our sins, or does Hell comes to us?  Would we be better off alone, or should we continue to strive for the common good? It’s 12:21:12 p.m., and the clock is ticking. You might want to think about it while there is still time.

12|21|12 is a work of science fiction, isn’t it?

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Now available on Kindle at all Amazons.

Click here to read a Sample

Purchase Links:
Amazon Kindle (U.S.) 
Amazon Kindle (U.K.)

Indies Unite for Joshua - Supporting an author's son in his fight against leukemia

The Story

We are a worldwide group of independent authors, publishers, and artists rallying to support a fellow writer. 

Joshua is the 21-year old son of author, Maxwell Cynn. Max writes speculative fiction, science fiction, and romance. His son has been diagnosed with Acute T-cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia. The cancer has invaded every part of his body: brain; spleen; liver; lymph nodes; and he has a mass in his chest. Joshua has had to suspend his studies while undergoing aggressive chemotherapy and will not be able to graduate this semester. With three-and-a-half years of a 4.0 GPA toward a degree in philosophy, his peers and professors consider him brilliant, as of course, does his father. Joshua would have been the first person in Max's family to graduate college.

To learn more about this amazing young man, read Max's incredible post. 

To lean more about what you can do to help, please read Indies United for Joshua

Thanks.

Laugh more or else

You don't laugh enough. No, stop that. Listen to me - you don't laugh enough. You need to laugh more to enjoy life. Trust me, it works.

Am I talking to you? Not really. I'm talking to myself. And, yes, I am crazy, but you and I both knew that. I decided a short while ago that I was taking life too seriously. Not anymore.

Myself told myself to find one thing funny every day and it would improve my outlook on life. So that's what I'm doing. Oh, I'm still writing. I am working on the Four Years from Home sequel and another shorter piece about the end of the world, or something like that. But I am making time every day to find something that makes me laugh and I'm posting it on my Facebook Author Page here -> 
CLICK HERE AND LAUGH MORE OR ELSE!!!


Here's a sample of something I found funny. I made it up, so I call it my funny thing, because it's mine.

Its harshest critics say PIPA is unenforceable...

Follow my on Facebook. Laugh it up, fuzzball.

Am I Working on a Sequel?

A question many have asked (if you count 3 as many). I am indeed working on a sequel to Four Years from Home. After kicking around some ideas and writing two semi-failed attempts over the last year, I am well into the next sequel try - a kind of sequel to the third power.


Some I have discussed the process with feel that writing a sequel is as simple as this:

But I have broken down the actual process into three steps and dramatically visualized it here for you:

1. Implanting the seed.
2. Hatching the idea.
3. Living with the gross.

But, in the end, it is the writer who must be happy with the effort and the results, and the writer who must at all times keep in mind that no matter how good something is there will always be critics.