MY DEAD TRUE LOVE

My Dead True Love
by Kim Pierce

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GENRE: Women’s literature

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BLURB:

When a newspaper reporter’s fiancé dies abruptly, she questions how he could just cease to be.

Dogged by unbidden thoughts, odd coincidences and unexplained phenomena, Ann Stewart becomes obsessed with finding out what really happens after we die and whether her beloved Gregory is still out there. She finds her answer, which takes her and a close-knit coterie of women to the edge of the cosmos—and the core of their own hearts.

Based on a true story.

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EXCERPT

“It was definitely Gregory,” Connie declared, forcing herself to return to the vision. “As clear as if he were standing next to me. Smiling.”

“If you saw him”—and I still wasn’t believing—“did he see you? Did he see me?”

It made no sense, but I had to know more.

“I don’t know. I tried to un-see him. I really did,” she said, turning to me, something akin to terror twisting her face. “This ‘seeing’ is a part of me that triggers so much shame—and reactivates the trauma. Like shell shock.” Red mottling crept up Connie’s neck and onto her cheeks.

She saw him. The words slid off my brain as if she were speaking in tongues. What did that mean?

“Could it have been your imagination?” I offered wanly, not wanting that to be the case.

“Yes, I suppose it could.”

Neither of us believed it.

I waited.

“What would it mean for you to ‘see’ him?” I pressed.

Tell me. Even if it makes no sense.

“That there’s something wrong with me,” came her acrid reply. “Deeply, terribly wrong. At least that’s what my father would say. And a lot of other people who make judgments about what I can do.” She slammed the car into park a little too aggressively.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said, getting out of the car.

Connie shut down.

“I need to go home for a while,” she said.

Tell. Me. More.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Kim Pierce is a former Dallas Morning News writer and editor who completed the Writer’s Path fiction program at Southern Methodist University. My Dead True Love is her first novel, inspired by events surrounding the death of her fiancé in 1998. She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her partner and three cats.

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A randomly drawn winner will receive a $50 Amazon/BN GC.

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Interview With …

Have you ever had an imaginary friend?
I have not.

Do you have any phobias?
I really dislike high places with narrow ledges. Do not make me look down. I also have an irrational fear of being trapped inside a car that’s under water.

Do you listen to music when you’re writing?
After years of writing in a noisy newsroom—I can write with three TV stations blaring at once—I prefer to write in the silence in my home office. One exception: When I was writing my grief journal after the real-life Gregory died, I listened incessantly to Celtic music with a little Kitaro mixed in.

Do you ever read your stories out loud?
Oh yes. This is true of news stories as well as fiction. Reading out loud helps you feel the rhythm and cadence of your words and whether the narrative flows. The worst editor I ever had would keep hijacking the cadence of my news stories so they sounded stilted and jerky.

Tell us about your main character and who inspired him/her.
Ann is an accomplished journalist who loses her fiancé abruptly and becomes obsessed with finding out what really happens after we die. Dogged by unbidden thoughts, odd coincidences and unexplained phenomena, she persists in her search even though it challenges her “just the facts ma’am” mindset. While My Dead True Love is based on my story, the book is truly Ann’s story.

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ANY FIN FOR LOVE Book Blast

This post is par of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Click on a tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

She could almost hear the fish laughing at her . . .

Cody Ryan’s father never missed fishing the annual Loon Lake tournament until his unexpected passing. So this year, Cody packs up her how-to fishing videos and her dad’s old johnboat and gives him one final entry.

Gage Connor needs some R&R away from his coast guard deployment catching drug smugglers along the Louisiana coast, so he borrows a bass boat from his buddy and heads to Loon, Alabama to do some fishing.

When Gage and Cody meet at Loon Lake, their attraction is immediate and intense—until the two discover there is only one boat slip left on the lake and they both need it, and there’s only one vacant hotel room left in Loon and they both want it. Thus, their competition begins. Both vow to keep their distance from the other to fight the temptation, but fate has other plans. The tournament pairing party picks the two-man teams and chooses Gage as Cody’s partner.

For two days.
Alone on a boat.
Working as a team.

Good things come to those who bait . . .

Read an Excerpt

Feeling the hotel room being yanked out from underneath her, Cody lost her grip on her temper. “I don’t care. I arrived here first.” She wheeled on Velma. “Tell him.”

Velma had a hard time meeting the man’s glittering green eyes, and Cody feared the worst. “Velma, you have to go with the first person who arrived here, and that was me.”

Velma visibly wavered, and her gaze bounced between Cody, Mr. Never-Had-Any-Patience, and her twin, who looked ready to burst into tears.

“It’s not your fault, Sister.” She patted Delma’s hand. “You didn’t know we were upstairs. I’ll handle this.”

Velma faced her two potential guests and announced, “We’ll flip for it.”

Delma immediately beamed.

“What?” Cody cried.

“Fine by me,” the stranger snapped and crossed his arms on his oversized and quite muscular pecs. Not that Cody was staring.

Velma reached into her apron pocket and drew out a silver dollar. She smiled at Cody. “Since you were here first, you can call it, and you can have heads if you want. I always liked heads in a coin toss, and I always got lucky calling heads.” Her eyes twinkled at Cody.

“Fine. Heads it is,” Cody said.

The coin flipped high in the air. Velma deftly caught it with her right hand and smacked the coin on top of her left. “Heads it is,” she proclaimed.

Cody blew out a sigh of relief.

“Hey, wait a minute,” the stranger complained.

“See for yourself.” Velma angled her hand for him to snatch a glimpse and then chucked the coin back into her pocket.

Cody stared him right in the eye. “I win.”

He eased closer—almost nose to nose—and she reconsidered her idea to gloat. His emerald eyes darkened, turned almost black, and locked onto hers. She could hear and feel each breath he took, because she held hers. Waiting.

“Share it with me.”

His gaze never wavered. She could feel it, almost like a caress.

“I promise I won’t touch you . . . if you don’t want me to.” The latter implied he wanted exactly the opposite.

About the Author:

Petie spent a large part of her career working at Walt Disney World—”The Most Magical Place on Earth”—where she enjoyed working in the land of fairy tales by day and creating her own romantic fairy tales by night, including her new series, The Cinderella Romances. She eventually said good-bye to her “day” job to write her stories full-time. These days Petie spends her time writing sequels to her regency time-travel series, Lords in Time, and her cozy-mystery-with-romantic-suspense series, the Mystery Angel Romances.

Petie shares her home on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with her horticulturist husband and an opinionated Nanday conure named Sassy who made a cameo appearance in No Angels for Christmas.

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Petie McCarty will be awarding an Autographed paperback copy of Cinderella Busted (US only) to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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