​GIVEAWAY: (5) eBook copies of WHISPERS OF THE PAST. For a chance to win, simply leave a comment on the  authors’ tour page as well as any other tour stop.

 Inspiration can come from places where you least expect it, but writers often have places where they go or rituals that they do with the expectation that inspiration will come. Some writers must have a quiet place to allow their creative juices to flow, while others have certain music that they listen to when they want to be inspired. For me, going out into the wilderness and pondering the wonders of nature allows me to clear my mind and seems to invite creative thoughts and ideas.
“The Woman in the Water” came to me on just such an occasion. I was spending some time at a nearby lake that I visit often. Normally, I approach the lake from the creek below and hike up to it, over and around the massive boulders that border each side of the dam that contains it. On this particular day, the water was very high, spilling down over the top of the dam and down into the creek in gushes and torrents, making the foot path below impassable, so a came in from above and found a nice boulder about three quarters of the way to sit and meditate on.
I wasn’t searching for inspiration, but while I sat there watching the waters spill over the top of the dam, a story began to form in my mind. I knew the wall supporting the dam lay behind the water flooding over was there, yet it was all but invisible behind the gushing water, as if it didn’t exist at all. It was easy to imagine that there could be a whole other world hidden by the curtain the water provided. I soon found myself pulling out my spiral notebook that I used to carry everywhere, and jotting down the thoughts in my head, so the story wouldn’t be lost.
When I returned to my computer, typed the whole thing out and “The Woman in the Water” was born. It may have taken an afternoon to develop, but it only took about an hour to get it down on the page. The story revolves around a woman who passes through the curtain of water and disappears as a man perched on a boulder above, as I had been that day, watches. Unable to stop thinking about what he’d seen, he returns at a later date, when the water is lower, to search for evidence that what he saw was real. I won’t tell you what his conclusion is. I’ll let you decide for yourselves.
You can read “The Woman in the Water” and seven other great paranormal stories in the WordCrafter paranormal anthology, Whispers of the Past. Get your copy here: https://books2read.com/u/38EGEL
​Where did you get your most unusual inspiration? Let me know in the comments.

AUTHOR BIO:
Kaye Lynne Booth
For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is her passion. It is a very strange time indeed when Kaye Lynne does not have at least three WIPs, in addition to her other writings, teaching and other life activities. Kaye Lynne lives, works and plays in the beautiful mountains of Colorado.
Visit her author's blog and website, "Writing to be Read" to learn more about Kaye Lynne Booth and her writing.
Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Kaye-Lynne-Booth/e/B071791Y9W
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​Thank you for supporting this author and her "group" tour.  To follow along with the rest of the tour, please drop in on the authors' 4WillsPub tour page. 

If you'd like to schedule your own 4WillsPub blog tour to promote your book(s), you may do so by clicking HERE.

​What was it like for children growing up in rural Suffolk during World War 2?
Elsie and her family live in a small double-storey cottage in Bungay, Suffolk. Every night she lies awake listening anxiously for the sound of the German bomber planes. Often they come and the air raid siren sounds signalling that the family must leave their beds and venture out to the air raid shelter in the garden.
Despite the war raging across the English channel, daily life continues with its highlights, such as Christmas and the traditional Boxing Day fox hunt, and its wary moments when Elsie learns the stories of Jack Frost and the ghostly and terrifying Black Shuck that haunts the coastline and countryside of East Anglia.
Includes some authentic World War 2 recipes.





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Hello, my name is Robbie, short for Roberta. I am an author with six published children's picture books in the Sir Chocolate books series for children aged 2 to 9 years old (co-authored with my son, Michael Cheadle), one published middle grade book in the Silly Willy series and one published preteen/young adult fictionalised biography about my mother's life as a young girl growing up in an English town in Suffolk during World War II called While the Bombs Fell (co-authored with my mother, Elsie Hancy Eaton). All of my children's book are written under Robbie Cheadle and are published by TSL Publications.
I also have a book of poetry called Open a new door, with fellow South African poet, Kim Blades.
I have recently branched into adult and young adult horror and supernatural writing and, in order to clearly differential my children's books from my adult writing, I plan to publish these books under Roberta Eaton Cheadle. My first supernatural book published in that name, Through the Nethergate, is now available.

I have participated in a number of anthologies:

• Two short stories in #1 Amazon bestselling anthology, Dark Visions, a collection of horror stories edited by Dan Alatorre under Robbie Cheadle;
• Three short stories in Death Among Us, an anthology of murder mystery stories, edited by Stephen Bentley under Robbie Cheadle;
• Three short stories in #1 Amazon bestselling anthology, Nightmareland, a collection of horror stories edited by Dan Alatorre under Robbie Cheadle; and
• Two short stories in Whispers of the Past, an anthology of paranormal stories, edited by Kaye Lynne Booth under Roberta Eaton Cheadle.

Robbie Cheadle
Website
https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/
Blog
https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15584446.Robbie_Cheadle
Twitter
https://twitter.com/bakeandwrite
​Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/robertawrites/?modal=admin_todo_tour

AMAZON OR OTHER PURCHASE LINKS:
TSL Publications:
https://tslbooks.uk/product/while-the-bombs-fell-robbie-cheadle-and-elsie-hancy-eaton/
Lulu.com:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/robbie-cheadle-and-elsie-hancy-eaton/while-the-bombs-fell/ebook/product-23768958.html
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Robbie-Cheadle/e/B01N9J62GQ
​

Thank you for supporting this author and her tour.  To follow along with the rest of the tour, please drop in on this author's 4WillsPub tour page. 

If you'd like to schedule your own 4WillsPub blog tour to promote your book(s), you may do so by clicking HERE.
​

I Am Not Homeless
 
She haunts me all the time
I close my eyes
And her battered image
Looms large before me…
Unkempt hair, soiled clothes
An eerie, emaciated figure
Always at the bottom of stairs
Sweeping the floor with her stole.
Always cleaning…
Cleaning the dust from the footwear
Kept outside the Sikh temple,
I visit sometimes.
Never does she enter
To pay obeisance
Never does she miss that, though
Never pays attention
As she rubs her forehead
At the bottom of the stairs
Again and again…
A thousand times, it seems.
I look at her each time
A thought reverberates…
Who is this lady?
Why is she so desperate?
I sit at the bottom of stairs
To attract her attention
She looks at me
With empty expression!
I muster all the courage
To ask: are you homeless?
She muttered, under her breath
“I have two sons!”
© Balroop Singh. (2010)

 

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​I call myself a realist though most of my poetry rides on the wings of imagination. I know realism is boring and harsh; modern writers have almost abandoned it but it is ironic that this hypocritical world cannot do away with realities of life that stand before us every single day. However hard we may try to escape them, we can’t eliminate them.
 
Inspired from a real life incident, I wrote the above poem to calm the turbulent emotions within me. My culture nurtures and upholds strong family values. Anyone who doesn’t respect and care for a parent is looked down upon; the responsibility is often handled by sons but daughters too have taken up this task since they are becoming economically independent and traditionalism is giving way to modernization.

​Thank you so much for dropping by to support Balroop!  We hope that you will take your support even further by picking up a copy of her book.  We ask that you also please 'LIKE'  this page, leave a comment and share it on social media before leaving.  To follow along with the rest of her tour, please drop by the RRBC "SPOTLIGHT" Author forum.

Would you like this kind of support?  Join Us at RRBC!

Salutations!
I am elated to find you here at Day 4 of 7! I am humbled by the kindness of my wondrous host for sharing some blog space today. I hope to interest you bookish types in trying my first book in way too many years, this my only collection of short fiction: Comes this Time to Float: 19 Short Stories by Stephen Geez. You could add another “by Stephen Geez” to that, as I put the moniker in the subtitle, too. I’d be forcing it to find a theme, except maybe that all my stories try to look at something I think is important, but told in a decorative sort of way. Written here and there among novels over two decades, they show a variety of genres and styles, as I get restless. Now they’re tucked between jacketed hard covers and softs, or in e-however-you-likes.​

​The Enticement
Each tour stop will offer the opening paragraphs of a story from the book, then link to the full story online.  Two will also link to audio-shorts narrated by me. The promo video my cohort and I made will be foisted on you every day. We like to use narrators, but that didn’t seem right for my own trailer, so, well yeah, me. On the last day, assuming anyone comments, we’ll tell you how to find out if you’re a random book winner and try one more story in both text and audio. If any impress you, check out my widely varying novels and collection of memoir essays. Find any blogs you miss on the Events page at 4WillsPublishing.com, link below. Be sure to follow our hosts’ blogs and discover their writing, maybe post a thank-you-too.
And you, I thank, too.

The Book Blurb
Prepare to think as you explore these wildly disparate literary short stories by author, composer, and producer Stephen Geez. Avoiding any single genre, this collection showcases Geez’s storytelling from southern gothic to contemporary drama to coming-of-age, humor, sci-fi, and fantasy—all finessed to say something about who we are and what we seek. Some of these have been passed around enough to need a shot of penicillin, others so virgin they have never known the seductive gaze of a reader’s eyes. So when life’s currents get to pulling too hard, don’t fight it, just open the book and discover nineteen new ways of going with the flow, because NOW more than ever Comes this Time to Float.​

Today’s Sample: “Holler Song”

Retta danced the willy-nilly, grabbed at slick branches, then lost both feet and whomped back-end down on the ice.  Hit ’em mean like that and 70-year-old bones act scared, then angry, then out for revenge—and they’ll complain bitterly for weeks. It’s not how hard the ground is, makes ’em mad; it’s how brittle the bones has got.
 
Now a sheet of frozen slick, this low patch in the double-rut drive-back had been needing some ’dozer work a long time running, one of many get-to’s set for when next year’s lump-sum money could hire some younger help. Hardly anyone drove it but Randall, easing the pickup ’tween overgrown mirror-snaggers when he brung groceries and what-not to Lurlene and her girl. Deputy Wallace used to ramble back here regular-like to pretend friendly and keep an eye for signs local cookers mighta set up, but when he found Hollis’s makeshift lab a ways down Cutter Road, his brother Cletus shot him dead. State Police come in and tore ’ern up from there to right up Middleton Holler just beyond. Now a new deputy’s done took over, but ain’t yet been out here lying about smells to claim “probable cause” when he trespasses on Lurlene and Retta’s private property. This very minute would be a good time, him to show for a howdy-ma’am, seein’ as how there’s an old lady needs picking up off her arse.
 
Retta rolled over on her side and wound up mashing the holdin’ end of that pocketed fish-knife into her thigh, then managed despite bad arthritis to pull herself up and set about shuffling forward, keeping to the treeline for more grab-branching. She came to sight of cousin Lurlene’s place, built by their granddaddy when he carried his unimpressed young bride here for a lifetime of second thoughts in the hills of East Tennessee. Lately the place looked embarrassed at being let to run down, but now the dim gray fog and last night’s snow gave it a fairy-tale gingerbread-house look, all sugar-frosted and gleaming with drips of icing drooping its eaves. Wisps of smoke fed by a stingy stack of splits curled from the chimney and bent north to tickle more sleet from dark clouds of a mind to paint these hollers another coat of quick-freeze.
 
Lurlene stepped out and stood on the wide, covered porch. Ten years younger than cousin Retta, she looked real old of a sudden. Bundled in wool coat, crochet hat and scarf, jeans and hide boots, she’d already got a mind to head out. “Found her, didn’t they?” she asked as Retta stopped at the slicked-over bottom step. Eyes red and swole, Lurlene had been crying, imagining the worst and expecting nothing better.

​A Geez Author Blurb
Stephen Geez grew up in the Detroit suburbs during the American-auto domination. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. He retired from scripting/producing television and composing/producing television music, then expanded his small literary management firm into indie-publisher and multi-media company Fresh Ink Group. Now he works from a deck overlooking the lake in north Alabama, helping other writers share their compelling narratives with the world.
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Thank you for supporting this author and his tour.  To follow along with the rest of the tour, please drop in on this author's 4WillsPub tour page. 

If you'd like to schedule your own 4WillsPub blog tour to promote your book(s), you may do so by clicking HERE.
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