Excerpt, Author Interview & Giveaway - A Thin Slice of Heaven by p.m. terrell

A Thin Slice of Heaven

by p.m.terrell

 

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BLURB: 

She had arranged to meet her husband in Northern Ireland for a second honeymoon, but when Charleigh arrives at the remote castle, she receives a message that he won’t be coming—and that he’s leaving her for another woman.  

Stranded for the weekend by a snowstorm that has blocked all access to the castle, she finds herself three thousand miles from home in a country she knows nothing about. 

She is soon joined by Sean Bracken, the great-grandson of Laird Bracken, the original owner of the castle, and she finds herself falling quickly and madly in love with him. There’s just one problem: he’s dead. 

As the castle begins to come alive with secrets from centuries past, she finds herself trapped between parallel worlds. Caught up in a mass haunting, she can no longer recognize the line between the living and the dead. Now she’s discovering that her appearance there wasn’t by accident—and her life is about to change forever.

 

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EXCERPT:

He moved closer to her until he was leaning over her, looking deeply into her eyes. She felt his presence more than she recalled feeling any living being, and yet she knew… She didn’t know what she knew, she realized. It was beyond her comprehension. 

Her eyes traveled along his shirt. It appeared custom made and fit him like a glove. She reached out to stroke the fabric. It felt coarse and yet soft, as if the fibers had originally been more abrasive than modern-day clothing, but it had been worn into a suppleness like her favorite pair of slippers. Her fingers traveled along the sleeve. She felt his muscle beneath it, rippling slightly as her fingertips pressed more deeply against him. The seconds passed as she continued moving along his arm until she felt the short, fine hair on the back of his hand. Then she traveled upward once more, memorizing the contours until her palm rested across his shoulder. 

He never said a word but his eyes didn’t leave hers, even when her own scrutinized the hand-sewn seam of his shirt sleeve that lay a few inches below his shoulder, or the folds of fabric in the sleeve that was just short of billowing, or the carefully constructed cuff with the slightly misshapen, handmade buttons. 

When her palm reached his face and her fingers followed the line of his jaw, she asked hesitantly, “How is it that I can—?” She stopped herself. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Maybe if she knew, he would disappear and she would be left alone in this massive castle. Perhaps if he wasn’t here, the moon and the stars would seem to disintegrate as well until she was left with nothing but the inky blackness of a night that would feel too long and too painful to endure.

 

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Let's learn a little bit about p.m. terrell

What is your writing environment? 

I have an office that is separated from my house. There are windows all around for a 360 degree view, and in front of one window is my desktop. Everything looks like an office environment, which is right in line with the way I feel about my work—it’s a business and not something I do when I feel like it, or when the mood grabs me. I do have motivational pictures and plaques everywhere though!

Who is your perfect hero/heroine and why? 

Scarlett O’Hara. When you think about it, she was completely unprepared for real life: spoiled, catered to by slaves, brought up in a class-system environment of privilege and power. When the war struck home, she had a choice: she could lament yesteryear as Ashley Wilkes did, or she could close the door on the past, roll up her sleeves, and call up every ounce of determination and grit she could muster. My favorite scene was at Tara when she dug up a shriveled vegetable, ate it raw, and then doubled over. But she rose back up, stood with her fist high, and vowed to the heavens that she would never be hungry again. I didn’t always agree with her methods, but she did get the job done.

What authors have caught your interest lately and why? 

Shane Hayes: he wrote an amazing book (The Last Dreamgirl) about a woman who is abducted and held prisoner by a man who is infatuated with her. It is not my usual cup of tea, but he wrote the story so well that I could feel a kinship with both the kidnapper and his victim, and how I wanted the story to end wavered from scene to scene.  

David Pereda: a master of suspense, he travels the world and it shows in his plots and settings. His most recent, Twin Powers, is about psychic twins, one of whom is abducted. It includes scenes in Cuba, Dubai and America, and he managed to keep me on the edge of the seat from start to finish.

What type of book have you always wanted to write? 

I think I would have written the books that I have, but I do sometimes yearn for the Golden Years of publishing. There was a time when stories were told because they needed to be told, and decisions were made on the basis of the story. It often seems today that accountants make the decisions and shelf lives, even of successful books or classic tales, are getting shorter.

Top 3 things on your bucket list? 

Live in a cottage at the edge of a lake or the sea.

Tour Europe.

Relax.

I’ll probably obtain the first two.

How did you get the idea for this particular novel? 

I loved the book, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and I loved the movie (but not the campy television series). But I always wanted the Captain and Mrs. Muir’s love affair to go deeper. I can still picture the captain’s home by the sea, the large kitchen and the master bedroom with its balcony and telescope. 

I also loved What Dreams May Come, the story of a man who died and his eternal love for the wife he left behind. Weaving those two stories together and placing them in a remote castle without access to the outside world, were the basis of A Thin Slice of Heaven. 

What is your favorite scene in your new release? 

When Sean is explaining to Charleigh how he can be seen although he is a spirit; how he can regulate his energy so that he can disappear… or he can be felt as strongly as a living, breathing being.  

What are you working on now and when can we expect it to be available? 

My 20^th and 21^st books (as yet untitled) are in the production stages now; one is the next in the Black Swamp Mysteries series and the other is the third installment of the Ryan O’Clery Mystery Series. They should be released in 2016 and 2017, respectively. 

 

I am in the research stages of a trilogy about three brothers who leave Ireland for America; one is my ancestor. What happens to each and why is fascinating. 

What do you like to do when you are not writing? 

I love to read romantic suspense and true adventure. I also breed freshwater angelfish. And I love traveling to Ireland. It’s the most magical place on earth. 

What is one interesting fact about you that readers don’t know?

I am painfully shy. Most people believe I am an extrovert but I have forced myself to be more outgoing. But I often would love to curl up inside like a turtle into its shell. I could be quite content.

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links: 

p.m.terrell is the pen name for Patricia McClelland Terrell, a multi-award-winning, internationally acclaimed author of more than twenty books in five genres: contemporary suspense, historical suspense, romance, computer how-to and non-fiction. 

Prior to writing full-time, she founded two computer companies in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area. Among her clients were the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Secret Service, U.S. Information Agency, and Department of Defense. Her specialties were in white collar computer crimes and computer intelligence, themes that have carried forward to her suspense.  

She is also the co-founder of The Book ‘Em Foundation, an organization committed to raising public awareness of the correlation between high crime rates and high illiteracy rates. She is the organizer and chairperson of Book ‘Em North Carolina, an annual event held in the real town of Lumberton, North Carolina, to raise funds to increase literacy and reduce crime. For more information on this event and the literacy campaigns funded by it, visit www.bookemnc.org
 

Links: 

Author’s website: www.pmterrell.com  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pmterrell  

Blog: www.pmterrell.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/author.p.m.Terrell  

Book Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7QYLfXSQeo  

 

 

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 Amazon - Kindle     Amazon - Paperback  B&N - Paperback    Nook    Smashwords

  

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GIVEAWAY: 

p.m.terrell will be awarding a Celtic Butterfly Suncatcher similar to the one mentioned in the book, symbolizing both the never-ending cycle of life and the metamorphosis of a butterfly to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway