Musings of Two Creative Minds

  FOR THOSE WHO ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH THIS SERIES, HERE'S A QUICK OVERVIEW... It all starts in New York City, 1947. Former police officer, Rafael Jones has returned from Europe where he oversaw a special international team who gathered evidence for the Nuremberg trials. Now he’s opened up for business as a private investigator and already has two cases lined up. But little does he know that these two cases are connected… in more ways than one . Rafael is about to discover there's another side to the city, and the world, that he never dreamed existed. For he soon finds himself facing the supernatural in the form of a cult run by vampires. Their leader is both surprising, and yet a historical figure who was described by his assassins as almost impossible to kill. Sensing there's something more to our hero, he decides to make Rafael his new 'brother' in blood, hoping to make him part of the plan to retake Russia as a new Tsar. However, Rafael has other plans. Altho...

What a way to start a brand new the year! Helen just got a Kirkus Review of her first novel "Forever's Too Long", calling it... "A tense, thrilling paranormal adventure with a striking cast." Here's the full review: A supernatural crime novel set in the 1940s focuses on a private detective. This series opener begins in 1947. The narrator of the story, Rafael Jones, has set up shop as a private investigator in New York City. Rafael has an extensive background in law enforcement (both civilian and military), and he is eager to strike out on his own. No sooner has he put the sign up for Harmony Investigations than he is approached by a British woman named Clara Thomas. Clara has been sent to persuade Rafael to work for Interpol. She is a sharp woman, with a degree in mathematics from Oxford, who knows how to handle herself in a fight. She can also fly a plane. Rafael doesn’t need that much convincing, and he soon learns that working with Clara will be fun....

This entry may seem to be a repeat but every year I get asked about how to gift e-books to someone. So here you all are and I hope everyone takes advantage since giving someone a tale they will love can be priceless sometimes... Okay gang, the big day is drawing near and you still want to get a few more gifts but don't know what to buy, or don't want to go out into the stores which have already pulled down half of their displays and are lining up Spring stuff. What to do, what to do... how about giving someone a good book to read on their Kindle? It's fast, easy, and you can have it delivered on Christmas Day and know it will arrive on time...                                    Didn't know you could do this? Neither did I for the longest time. I only found out a couple of years ago when we released "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home". I found myself rewarding some of our beta-readers with a...

Allan and I created this trailer for my soon-to-be released second novel of the Forever Detective series.

REVIEW BY ALLAN KRUMMENACKER 5 - STARS "What price for sanity?"     Waverly Hills Sanatorium is an actual place in Louisville Kentucky that the author visited as part of a paranormal investigative team. By the author's own admission their paranormal experiences where 'minimal', I feel the setting and strangeness of exploring an abandoned place with so much history lent a great deal to the creation of this novel.       Ben Clausen has landed a job teaching English over at the U of L, and is now searching for a place to live. His search has brought him to the most unlikely place to find an apartment, one half of the old Waverly Hills Sanatorium a place famous for its tragedies and ghostly legends. Only one half of the place has been converted into apartments, while the remaining half is still in severe disrepair and is kept off-limits, perhaps for very good reasons.     But beggars can't be choosers, and with the rent priced jus...

Last night Helen and I finished the final story for our upcoming anthology!      Thank you!  Thank you!  You're all being too kind.  But today's post is not to talk about the anthology itself, as much as what went into making it.  How did it differ from writing full-length novels?  Was it easier?  Was it harder? What was the process like?  Where did we get all the stories for it, etc.?       Well, for starters, coming up with a decent number of stories was and wasn't hard really.  Helen had been writing stories long before e-books and well before I tried my hand at penning a tale.  I can easily say I learned so much from her earlier attempts at getting published, and let me tell you she got damn close to seeing some of her work in print.  But, that's a tale for another entry.       What I want to say is that I learned a lot about what to expect when I decided to try  going...