Love Bites...Sometimes

Imagine a night out celebrating a friend’s birthday, hopping from bar to bar, when you bump into someone, and not just anyone. The moment you lock eyes, you’re convinced he’s the one. What happens next?

When you encounter him again, would you seize the opportunity, even after discovering he’s not what he seems? He has a secret, cleverly hidden in plain sight. Do you take the plunge into this uncertain romance, or cautiously test the waters?

Fairy-tale love stories are often fraught with obstacles before the ‘happily ever after.’ This is the beginning of my journey with Bryce, a mesmerizing dark brunette with piercing green eyes and a smile that can stop time. Love can bite, and sometimes you want to bite back. But every bite has its price. Are you willing to pay it?

Dive into a love story that’s as thrilling as it is mysterious. The question isn’t just whether love conquers all, but whether you’re willing to pay love’s toll.

M.A.X.X.

Marie Winterfield founded and directed the S.N.O.W. agency, a group of advanced investigative search and rescue specialists, is world renowned for cracking the toughest cases. When a massive power outage in New York City compromises the FBI, CIA, and NASA; Marie takes on her hardest case ever; taking on a top-secret agency that was believed to be shut down, but has actually gone global, kidnapping, killing, and framing innocent people for crimes they did not commit.

When things get out of hand and people start dying, Marie realizes that even her closest friends and colleagues have been corrupted, and her enemies are everywhere. She isn’t safe at home, at work, she isn’t safe… anywhere. Can Marie stop this group of computer criminal masterminds before it is to late or are they even the real enemy? Hold tight in this nonstop futuristic thriller with all the twists and turns that come with it.

Magda by the River

Angela Young’s novel, Magda by the River centers on the captivating journey of Magdalene, known affectionately as Magda. Feeling suffocated by the monotony of her small village life, weary of battling societal expectations, and yearning for acceptance, Magda longs for change. Her life takes an exciting turn when she joins a traveling troupe of performers, where she forges deep friendships that open her eyes to the possibilities and ‘more’ she has been seeking.

However, the most significant journey in Magda’s life is the introspective one. It’s a path that leads her to a profound understanding of her identity and self-acceptance, making Magda by the River not just a story of adventure, but also a tale of personal discovery and growth.

Manifesting Memories

What does a memory look like? Often it will appear personal and sacred because we have created it ourselves with every sensual focus we brought to our experience. Then, we sprinkle our thoughts and perspectives on it. A memory will reconnect us to the past for a  reimagining, a review, and a reframing. It will end up looking very much like who we are.

I hope the stories on these pages will entice you to return home to your own memories. Will you be stirred by how your memories have shaped you? Do they help reveal to you how unique you are? How have you chosen to be in life because of your memories? Reflecting on our memories may reveal how we truly belong to ourselves and to one another.

Enjoy the journey,

 Darlene

March Forth in Love

Do you believe…you don’t know what you don’t know? What if I told you the last harvest predicted by thousands of scientists was to be 2080, would you believe me? Would you believe today it is a scientific observational truth that the last harvest is 2080? Do you know what that means? It means that we will no longer be able to grow any crops because our soil will be dead. It also means that every single one of our future grandchildren’s lives will end in starvation by the time they are forty years young. The smartest men I have ever met in business have told me: “Terri…never underestimate how much money in marketing it takes to change human behavior.” In 2020, Mother Nature managed to change human behavior worldwide by creating the coronavirus. Mother Nature aka GOD will continue to change our behavior because our lives depend on it. Our future depends on humanity changing its selfish behavior. In order to survive the morass we have found ourselves in, we must ‘march forth in love.’

Mary McKenzie

On a rainy Seattle night, beautiful and vivacious local author Mary McKenzie is celebrating her latest triumph of a best-selling book with friends and family at a local bar, when a phone call sends her into the alley to a destiny with a man who brutally changes her life forever.

As Mary returns to her life in the public eye, she begins a fast-paced race to discover who is trying to make a mess of her life.

Suffering panic attacks that have controlled her since the attack, Mary begins to try to continue her life. Aided by her loving and protective brother and Danish blond goddess Hege, her head of security, Mary is better protected than the President.

The cast of characters from her past and present includes the intelligent and sensual FBI Profiler, Michael Gryffin, who causes Mary to take a different kind of fall.

From the San Juan Islands to beautiful Pike Place Market, they are pursued by a mystery man who threatens her very life. When Mary finally thinks she is safe, the panic is just beginning.

Max's Manual for Good Manners

Children need to learn basic etiquette beyond saying, ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’

In recent years, rude behavior and bullying have become the ‘new norm’ while common courtesy seems to be a thing of the past.

What separates humans from animals is our ability to reason and manage our emotions.

Yet, what if children could learn manners from a story about a dog who struggles with the same emotional challenges as they do?

Training children and dogs is not an easy task.

This book aims to teach children manners through the eyes of a dog named ‘Max,’ who is modeled after my own dog, ‘Mad Max.’

Me and You - You and I

Madison Dorsay loves to put on paper the ongoing thoughts, conversations, sights and sentiments that surround us every day. In particular, Madison is drawn into the meanderings of wandering spirits and their intertwined relationships in an eternal love of life and each other, interrupted by the occasional interlude. The poems collected here reflect collective thoughts and considerations made during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact they had on love, togetherness and the realization that we are never alone.

Me 'n' Clint

Called “One of the best horse stories you’ll read in a long time,” Me ’n’ Clint is less a “how to” than about the trade one young fellow unexpectedly fell into, fell in love with and bounced around in over much of a lifetime. Written with an authentic voice and wonderful balance of humor and expertise, this unusual telling, straight from the horseshoer’s mouth, offers the reader a window into the everyday trials and tribulations of a farrier that you will find both interesting and hard to put down whether you’ve ever had a horse or not.

Mikey Speaks Out

On the day of my birth, my mother had already decided that she wanted to give me away. She had made this decision even though she had not yet known the extent of the problems that would confront me. As it turned out, there were many, including the fact that I was not born a beautiful baby.

Actually, I was considered to be quite ugly, disfigured by a cleft lip and palate that left a gaping hole in the middle of my face. In addition, I was born deaf, covered with bruises, and showed signs of haemophilia, an ancient life-threatening hereditary bleeding disorder.

I longed to be hugged, kissed, and cuddled in my mother’s arms, but that was not about to happen. Instead, I spent months in a hospital crib, as I recovered from complicated facial surgery. Following the surgery, I was placed in a dark room of a foster home, and left to languish in loneliness for several months.

On a dark snowy night, shortly before Christmas, a man and woman arrived at the home of my foster parents. They had driven five hundred miles through a blizzard, and requested to see me… see me! No one had ever before asked to see me! My only previous visits away from the foster home were trips to the hospital for painful medical procedures.

Mirror of Time

Thomas Roop has been fortunate enough to travel widely through his life, learning from a wide variety of cultures, traditions, and religions. These encounters inculcated and developed a love for humankind. While travelling through Denmark, he encountered and fell in love with the work of the 19^th century poet, novelist, and playwright Hans Christian Anderson. The literature of T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, and others are all evident influences on Roop’s own work. All of these encounters inspired him to share his own ideas, reflections, and insights in this anthology of poetry.

Mourning Bands On

Mourning Bands On is an accessible journey into the hypersensitive world of today’s American law enforcement. The reader is brought into the law enforcement world through an introduction to the history, function, and development of the American police model. With an understanding of policing’s role in American society, the reader is then immersed into the raucous and contentious cultural upheaval which American policing is currently experiencing.

Using well-known examples, the reader is challenged to consider how American culture is affected by critical incidents and the portrayal of those events in our media intensive world. The reader will review the cases in the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, as well as others. The cases are presented as a narrative of events supported by the findings and legal conclusions of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Each incident is reviewed with a view of how the incident effected American society and brought change to American culture and thus policing.

The reader will experience how American policing has changed through legislative, societal, and cultural pressure resulting from the reviewed critical incidents. With an appetite for more, the reader is encouraged to further explore the relationship between societal norms and American policing.

The work concludes with a final challenge to the reader. How do we, as a society, reform American policing to move forward after this unprecedented period of cultural change? The author offers several possible reforms to enact, what can you add to the conversation?