Bell Bridge Books

Whisper of Shadows is the third book in my Diamond City Magic series. If you haven’t had a chance to look at them, they can be summed as:

In a world of diamonds, drugs, magical mafias, one woman must come out of the shadows, risking her life and even her soul, in order to protect her family and the man she loves.

Riley is the woman in the above description. She’s lived her whole live under the radar. She’s got a magical talent that is highly sought after by the mafia, the government, and anybody who’s every needed to find someone. She lives hand to mouth, taking small jobs and pretending to be a hack, while secretly using her talent to find kidnapped children.

Price is a cop. His brother runs one of the local mafias and Price does jobs for him sometimes. That connection alone makes believe he’s as corrupt as every other cop on the take–which is most of them. Riley’s been anonymously reporting the found children to him as in fact, he’s the least corrupt cop she’s every encountered.

She makes of point of trying not to let him notice her, but finds herself working with him, despite her best judgement. Their relationship is rocky. She’s been taught not to trust anybody, but especially cops and people associated with the magical mob. She frustrates Price because he knows she’s keeping secrets and he’s sure they could get her killed, and he desperately needs her help. He’s put between a rock and a hard place when he promises to protect Riley, and then his mafia king-pin brother demands that Price turn Riley over to him.

What I like about their relationship is that it’s based on a real appreciation and liking for one another. Price is alpha, but he’s not so alpha that he doesn’t realize he has to keep his autocratic tendencies under control if he wants to keep Riley in his life. She’s got a lot issues in her past that are coming back to haunt her–her mother’s murder and her father’s disappearance ten years later. She close to her step-mother and siblings, as well as a few friends, but she’s also a loner with a tendency to hold everybody at arm’s length.

In writing about these two didn’t want a lot of fights about stupid or predictable things. A lot of their difficulties have to do with how each of them work through their own troubled feelings. They both have to watch each other walk into danger (or run, as the case may be). They both have to make sacrifices and compromises to be together. They also have to figure out how to communicate with each other. Both have a habit of secrecy that that’s hard to overcome.

I like writing about Price and Riley. I like seeing their relationship grow and deepen. I like that their problems are natural and that a simple conversation doesn’t solve them. They take work and hard choices.

If you get a chance to pick up the Diamond City books about Riley and Price, I hope you enjoy and feel free to visit my website and drop me a line and tell me what you think: www.dianapfrancis.com  I’d love to hear from you.
 

About the Author:

Diana Pharaoh Francis is the acclaimed author of a dozen novels of fantasy and urban fantasy. Her books have been nominated for the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award and RT’s Best Urban Fantasy.Whisper of Shadows is the third book in her exciting new urban fantasy series–The Diamond City Magic Novels.

Mama was a Diva

by Marilee Brothers

If you’re looking for a warm, fuzzy, my-mama-was-the best-mother-ever story, you might want to stop reading now. My mother was a diva long before the word became part of the current vernacular. The only daughter of doting parents, she was clad in frilly dresses, wore a giant bow in her hair, learned to read at four and became a concert pianist in her teens. She was a beauty with an independent streak. In the roaring twenties, she bobbed her hair, visited speakeasies and sneaked cigarettes. At age 23, she married my father, an outstanding athlete whose pitching record for the University of Washington still stands.

My sister Beth came along first. Five years later, I was born. I’m not sure what troubled my mother, but some of my earliest memories are of long, sulky silences where we knew we’d done something wrong, but weren’t sure what it was. She was unable to express anger and disapproval and eventually, turned it inward. For years she was stricken with migraines and depression. One of my jobs was to tiptoe into the darkened bedroom and rub her aching forehead.

As my sister and I blossomed into our teen years, things became more difficult for our mother as her beauty began to fade. It was almost as if she resented the daughters she’d given birth to. At age twelve, I was a tall, gawky, shy kid. I remember crying when she refused to help me fix my hair. Fortunately, I had a big sister.

Years passed. My sister and I married into warm, loving families and had children of our own. Both of us stayed connected to our birth family, especially me since we lived in the same town. Mother was in her late eighties when the miracle happened. She had a slight stroke. Yes, I know. That sounds heartless. But truly, my mother, the former hypochondriac, was transformed into a different person. She was physically unaffected by the stroke, but her mental attitude underwent a cataclysmic change. She became the sweetest little old lady on the face of the planet. In her former life, a hangnail was a good reason to take to her bed. When she was 89, she fell and broke some ribs. I said, “Oh, that must hurt!” Her response? “Nope, not at all.”

On her last birthday, the 94^th, it fell on Mothers’ Day. Her May 13^th birthday often did. I have a picture in my office of the two of us posing with her birthday cake. The day she died, my husband received the call first and got to her bedside before I did. Later, he told me she was restless and uncomfortable until I arrived to hold her hand. She then relaxed, looked at me and smiled. I was with her as her breaths became farther and farther apart and finally stopped altogether. I am so thankful that, in my mother’s later years, I was able to make the mother-daughter connection I’d been longing for. It’s never too late.

Pick up Marilee Brothers’s Bell Bridge titles today: