Fairy Tale Retellings, Book Two (standalone)

Historical Romance (Medieval)

Date Published: 04-10-2024

Little Red Riding Hood reimagined with a dark and realistic twist.

Princess Blanchette’s world shatters when the Black Wolf tears apart her castle and everything she holds dear. All she clings to is the vow she made to her grandmother on her deathbed.

Hailed as the people’s champion, Sir Rowan Dietrich liberates the capital in a quest for vengeance. He takes Winslowe Castle with an army at his back and his wolf, Smoke, at his side.

United by a shared cause and powerful attraction, Rowan and Blanchette embark on a journey of self-discovery and redemption—a path filled with loss, transformation, and ultimately, the healing power of love.

Can Norland’s resplendent princess, with her captivating beauty and spirit, tame the fabled Black Wolf?

Inspired by the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, Red Kingdom is a passionate historical romance about the enduring quest for love and the longing for a world at harmony.

*Red Kingdom is a standalone installment in a series of reimagined classic fairy tales. Due to adult content and themes, it is not intended for readers under the age of 18. 

What you can expect from Red Kingdom… 

Dark, Medieval Setting

Enemies to Lovers

Slow Burn

Broken Alpha Hero

Strong Heroine

Wolf Companion

He Falls First

Redemption

Warring Kingdoms

About the Author

I live in Sunny California with my dashing husband, who inspires my romance novels every day!

Writing has always been an integral part of my identity. Before I physically learned how to write, I’d narrate stories to my mom, and she’d record them for me.

I graduated from Chapman’s film school, where I often received the feedback on my scripts, “Your stories and characters are great, but this reads like a novel!” That’s when I realized my true calling.

In my free time, I frequent reptile expos, lift double my body’s weight, and indulge in dinosaur trivia.

I’m passionate about writing stories that explore what it means to be human and to be loved. My books focus on hope, courage, and redemption in the face of adversity.

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Red Kingdom – ExcerptSelections.doc

Blanchette spots the Black Wolf during the siege. Death at her feet.

Death in her home.

Death in the air.

Death screamed in every corner of her mind.

Then she saw him. Rowan Dietrich, the fabled Black Wolf of Norland, strode through her castle like awaking nightmare. His armor was crudely made, black as the surrounding night, the helm’s dark metal twisted into the shape of a wolf’s snarling head. But the most striking thing about him was his height. He towered above the other fighters and battled with a chilling methodicalness.

How he moved and fought frightened Blanchette the greatest. He looked collected. Even mildly amused. As if this were nothing more than a game. Blood soaked his sword as the blade whirled, whipped, slashed, and claimed lives in a macabre dance of death. And that wolf clung to his heels, its muzzle wet with blood, snarling and leaping at any man who dared come close to its master. Monster. Demons.

The Black Wolf of Norland had always had a mist of legend around him. She remembered the stories her mother and governess had often whispered after the feasts and in the dark of the night. “To me,” the Black Wolf called to a soldier a few yards away, his deep voice effortlessly carrying above the tumult. He didn’t need to yell, not even over the mayhem.

The force of his tone was enough. One of her father’s guards raised his blade, but too slowly. Rowan Dietrich’s longsword cut his head off, then came flashing back in a terrible two-handed slash that took another soldier in the leg. With quivering anger, she realized that this man—this wolf, this beast—was the reason the sky was falling on her family. She clutched the dagger, wishing she could stand a chance against him. How good and right it would feel to plunge the blade deep into his heart and avenge what would likely be the end of her family’s dynasty. Of course, she’d never survive him or his demon wolf. avenge her family, if she was to keep her promise, survival meant everything.

Angela is a blogger and author of Christian women’s fiction and Christian romance. Her latest release is Making Music Together.

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A Recipe for Discovering Your Ideal Career

Nonfiction / Career

Date Published: March 30, 2022

Publisher: ‎Getting Results Inc

What do you want to be when you grow up?

That may have been fun or easy to answer years ago, but for teens and young adults, it’s a question that can be disconcerting at best… and sometimes downright frightening now that the question has become real.

Career choice is a huge decision with layers of consequence.

In Find Your Flavor, Lauren Doyle walks readers through the step-by-step process she uses with the young adult clients she works with which include:

Integrating your interests, strengths, and lifestyle desires to create the recipe for the ultimate career success.

The importance of playing, experimenting, and sampling with potential ingredients to be included in your career recipe.

How to distinguish between enduring intrigue v.s. hobby-like interests.

Better understanding and mastering your own mind for more successful life outcomes.

Guidance on how to get your foot in the door (or on the ladder).

Learn to use existing social networks to help you land a position in your chosen field.

She offers specific exercises that help readers put these critical, but often ‘invisible’ concepts to work to uncover the perfect recipe for choosing the ideal career. Whether you are a teen considering a college major or a young adult about to launch into a professional role, you’ll definitely want to read this book and ‘find your flavor’ that will put you on the path to success and life-long fulfillment.

Lauren Doyle has been helping professionals make more money and have more fun the majority of her career as a business coach. Due to the fact that her background is diverse and includes a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, she has had the opportunity to help many of her clients’ adult children navigate the daunting challenge of choosing a career they love and to set them up for untold success. Her skillset is an unusual talent that allows her to connect with this younger population and relate to them through her own personal successes.

 This book was written for you because she wanted to codify what has helped her and her clients achieve a life and career by design. Maybe it is her love of puzzles that allow her to help her clients put together the challenging puzzle of choosing a career that will marry each client’s unique talent with their enduring passions to cook up the perfect recipe for choosing a rewarding career ideal for them. 

 Her ‘outside the box’ thinking she helps her clients and herself live a fulfilling business. She truly practices what she preaches. The concepts she shares has allowed her to: live on the beach in San Diego, become a snowbird in her 30’s spending ½ the year on a lake in Michigan and the other ½ in beautiful Sarasota, Florida. She has been able to do this while achieving financial freedom as a result of cooking up her own recipe of creating a national business coaching firm, buying and selling millions of dollars of real estate and being a great Mom and wife. 

 She sat in your place once and has uncovered the formula that will help you ultimately determine yours. Her practical approach makes her style relatable and the steps easy to implement. 

 She has a passion for renovating all things to make them better; from countless properties to hundreds of lives and businesses, she seems to have mastered the art of putting the right pieces in place to create the desired experience. 

 In addition to this book, Ms. Doyle has also written The Hijacker: Overcome Self-sabotaging Behavior, a book that takes a deeper dive into the impact of understanding Human Operating Systems. 

 With her Psychology and business background gives her a unique perspective that is most helpful in writing the ultimate recipe for career success. 

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Fiction

Publication Date: August 2, 2021

Publisher: MindStir Media

A Golden Thread is a human odyssey of redemption, discovery, and revelation. From the beginning, the protagonist, Jonathan, near to rock bottom in his life. He is estranged from his wife and son. He will do anything to reunite his family. As he struggles to cope with his shame and regret, an inexplicable phenomenon has him in its grip; he is slipping back in time at increasing intervals. Along with this experience, there are the vivid nightmares that bring him back to relive recent past lives. Just when it seems there is no way for this situation to get more extraordinary, Jonathan learns the phenomenon is connected to even bigger things than he could have ever imagined, and he, having no memory of his part, is a key part of an epic struggle between two forces that in the end will determine the fate of humanity.

About the Author

Richard Norton grew up in Portland, Maine. He has spent 28 years in social work providing supports to individuals with Intellectual Disabilities. Richard is an artist, musician, and writer. He currently lives in Windham with his wife and son.

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Brandyn Cross is a multi-media artist, as an accomplished writer, recording artist, songwriter, filmmaker, and actor. 

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Excerpt:

Sara Vevang, Freedoms’ Dance

Your Love

Your love is like a summer wave
A winter’s cool crisp breeze
It makes me laugh
It makes me cry
It brings me to my knees
Your love amazes me
Drives me to peace
Renews my mind again and again
My worship is extravagant when I look at You
No matter what my life brings
It’s all I live to do

You Take Pleasure in My Every Prayer

We are never separated
You vindicate me as I walk in all integrity
Redeeming me in Your gracious love
Purity is what You seek
Refining fire burns darkness out of me
Your blood You shed on Calvary
Paid the price
Now I’m forever
In communion with
My Jesus Christ

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EXCERPT 1

TRIS LOST ALL visibility as the airplane pierced a thick slab of fog. She slid her focus from the miasma outside the cockpit window to the flight instruments in front of her. They were her eyesight now. She trusted them. They told the truth.
She scanned the gauges and smiled. Tris heard their silent language; woman and machine entwined in the exceptional conversation of flight.
“Clear Sky Two-Five-One, cleared for the approach,” the Columbus, Ohio approach controller announced over a scratchy connection. Tris nodded to Captain Danny Terry, sitting two feet away in the left seat. His jaw clenched as he worked the radios on their last flight of the day.
“Gear down,” Tris commanded.
The landing gear groaned and clicked as they lowered into position. Locked on final approach, the turboprop glided toward the runway, a concrete slab somewhere below them. Its twin engines spun in sync on the airplane’s wings. Tris monitored every bump and twitch of the plane. She answered each with a tap of the controls.
Flying is a series of small corrections Tris nudged the yoke to bank the airplane left, the plastic coated steering column cool beneath her hands. She thought of all the ways pilots measure movement: degrees of heading, feet of altitude, ticks of the clock. Always counting up, down, until the next critical moment. As Clear Sky 251 slid toward the ground, Tris counted down.
Then she saw the flash. Just for a second, an amber warning light flickered.
“Danny, check the gauges. We had a caution.”
“Five hundred,” the airplane’s synthesized altitude alert announced. Tris checked the altimeter. So close to the ground and they still had zero visibility through the late-summer glare.
“I don’t know,” Danny said as he scanned the gauges. “Wait. It’s the oil pressure on number one. The needle’s going crazy. It could be nothing, just a blip.”
Or the number one engine could be about to fail.
“Ok.” She’d need full power on both engines to climb if they couldn’t land—and she might not have it.
“Nothing in sight.” Danny squirmed forward in his seat to catch the first glimpse of runway lights. His breath grew more labored with every foot of altitude they lost. He wouldn’t see the runway until the very last second, if at all—right when Tris would decide to land the plane or thrust it back up into the soup.
“Roger.” Tris stayed focused and in control. As seconds passed, the plane slid lower, lower, in a stable descent. The only sounds were the whir of spinning dials, the click of needles, the white noise of flight. Tris eyed the altimeter, her hands soft but firm on the power levers.
Danny’s hand twitched behind hers; a backup. He strained to see the runway. Decision time loomed a few feet away.
The caution light blinked again. Tris had to keep her eyes on the navigation gauges. The closer the airplane got to the ground, the more sensitive those indicators became. If she strayed off course, even a little, she’d lose all guidance and have to climb, or else there was no telling where they’d hit the ground.
She felt Danny’s hands move closer to the controls, protecting them in case she faltered.
She didn’t. Tris saw the runway, dead ahead.
“I’ve got it,” Danny said quickly as he
keyed the mike. “Columbus Tower, Clear Sky
Two-Five-One, runway in sight.”
“Roger, Clear Sky Two-Five-One, Runway Two-Four, cleared to land, wind two-five-zero at three knots.”
“Landing,” Tris said. She looked outside, blinked to focus, and kept the plane moving straight along the runway centerline, edging toward the earth. The altimeter registered field elevation just as the plane’s rear wheels softly touched the ground.

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Have you ever wondered how an author comes up with pages and pages of content that keep you absorbed for hours or even days? How do they edit it so it’s error-free and worthy of being read? In this guest post, J. F. Pandolfi, author of Mr. Pizza, a mainstream novel, takes us behind the scenes and shows us what his writing and editing process is like. Enjoy!

My Writing Process—Still a Work in Progress

by

J. F. Pandolfi

Writing fiction pretty much involves coming up with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But it’s how we choose to get from one phase to another that can be all over the map.

In writing “Mr. Pizza”, my first novel, I synopsized every scene before penning the first word of the first chapter. Some people are just more comfortable planning every step of the journey upfront. In my case, I think that resulted from having practiced law for many years, which has a tendency to induce chronic anal retentiveness. That said, during the course of writing there were times when the story decided it wanted—even needed—to veer off the pre-determined path. Those detours turned out to be the most exhilarating part of the experience for me.

So for my new book—a sequel that takes place twelve years after the first book ends—I decided to toss out the old game plan. I knew the general storyline I wanted to pursue, but that was it. I just started writing. I’m currently about a quarter of the way through my projected page count. Has it been unsettling? You bet. Like being adrift on a raft in open seas. Or how I felt when my parents took away my pacifier when I was eleven. (What, like you don’t have any issues?) Another thing that required getting used to was taking time after a chapter to figure out what comes next. Other than those occasional detours I mentioned, I didn’t have to deal with that in writing “Mr. Pizza”.

On the whole, I think the occasional angst, and the sometimes lengthy post-chapter interludes, have been a fair trade-off for the excitement of making new discoveries as each chapter comes into focus. But that may change as I get deeper into the book. I’ll have to see. If I find it’s turning out not to be the ideal route, I’ll tinker with some hybrid middle ground.

Another subject I wanted to touch on is: revising your work, i.e. self-editing. It’s something we all need to do, more than once, before having a professional editor take a look. There’s a theory that says you shouldn’t edit on-the-fly. Get through your first draft, then go back to the beginning and start editing. Supposedly, editing as you go disrupts your artistic flow.

But I need to do my first edit of a chapter as soon as the chapter is done. It has to feel right to me before I can move on. I don’t think it’s blocked up my creative aqueduct. (Although I’m not a psychologist, neurobiologist, or plumber.) I’ve also found there’s a practical benefit to how I work. If you change something substantive in a chapter, it could impact a subsequent chapter. By editing each chapter as I write, I can limit—to a degree—that potential domino effect. I may make additional changes when I re-edit, but they’re usually not as significant.

Writing doesn’t lend itself to one-size-fits-all. Explore the self-editing process until you find the method you’re most comfortable with.

Keep writing, and good luck!

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Historical Romance
Date Published: October 3, 2017
Publisher: Belle Reve Press

Today, I am happy to bring you an excerpt of Dennis and Greer, a non-fiction love story in letters and journals between 2 college students during the Vietnam era. Buried in a trunk for fifty years, this long-forgotten tale encapsulates the horrors of war and the innocence of young love.

College students, Dennis and Greer, met and felt a spark just before moving to different states. Their witty correspondence through letters conjured a desire to meet again, but Dennis tried to keep his distance; duty is more important than love.

As the two embarked on their journey into adulthood and navigated their relationship against the backdrop of war, they were writing a love story that will span the test of time. Edited by Molly Gould, this nonfiction reads like fiction.

You can read the beautifully-written excerpt below.

Excerpt:

Excerpt 1:

I delight in the prospect of returning to school. I am OBSESSED with the idea of going to Vietnam to fight. What scholasticism! What patriotism! How alluring, friendly, and evil are the girls in this part of the country! I am, in short, a man besieged. Not the least of my assailants is the memory of being in your arms. How I wish I were there now! These are not missionary thoughts, however, and if I could rid myself of them in one fell blow, I would render a hundred such blows without hesitation. You are more faithful than I, pray for me.

Excerpt 2:
Dear Greer (poetic, huh?)
This letter is written upon wrinkled paper, which (as you are an English major), you will realize is symbolic of suffering and hardship. From having gotten to know me you will recall that I am never a whiner so I will let the paper rather than the ink bear what ill tidings are to be borne. You may well ask why I have devoted the introduction of this epistle to such trivia. As in conversation, I find it necessary to fill the air with something while I think of something worthwhile to say. While you write “redundant” over the second “something” in typical gung-ho English major fashion, I will try to find something worthy enough in content and syntax to place before your well-read, though brown, eyes.
Not having succeeded in that undertaking, I will, being forced, continue amid trivialities and redundancies. How are you? I am fine. (The latter is a comment rather than an answer.) My present residence is in Carlin, Nevada (as a glance at the envelope, also wrinkled, will verify—redundancies are tricky) and I receive my mail at P.O. Box 835. May I say that I had a very pointed reason for mentioning the fact?
Out of fear that you will say within someone’s hearing that this letter is much bubble bath, as indeed its first two paragraphs are, I will turn to serious considerations. I long to have the outpourings of your keen mind and kind heart splashed upon my untidy mind (see above) like cool water in the sweating face of a Nevada summer laborer. In other, less revealing words, my first order of business is to insist that you write me a letter. I will even, in consideration of your talent, pay you by the word in typical professional fashion.
I dedicated this summer to ridding myself of fecund thoughts and to the corralling of vagrant impulses, to secluded study and spiritual growth. I’ve had my preliminary interview and I will be leaving on my mission in September. I have departed into the desert to prepare for my calling, to live with the wild beasts and eat locusts and honey. Please realize that your letters will be a tremendous help to me. I think of you often.

Memory, hither come,
And tune your merry notes;
And, while upon the wind
Your music floats,

I’ll pour upon the stream
Where sighing lovers dream,
And fish for fancies as they pass
Within the watery glass.
-William Blake

Sincerely yours,
Dennis

ASU graduate, Molly Gould, lived in the wilderness for 28 days when she was 16 years old (she’s your go-to-girl in the zombie apocalypse). She now confines herself indoors with the AC full-blast in her sunny sate of AZ. Occasionally, she’ll brave the scorching heat with her husband and four children.

When Molly inherited a treasure of vintage journals and letters, she was swept away by the love story contained within those writings. She couldn’t keep Dennis and Greer to herself, so she began transcribing and Dennis and Greer was born.

Contact Information

Website: mollygould.com

Facebook: @gouldmolly

Twitter: @mollymgould

Blog: https://mollygould.com/blog/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/mollygould/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17023721.Molly_Gould?from_search=true

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