Just a reminder for all the bookworms out there: It’s time to get in the mood for Valentine’s Day with a bit of historical romance! If you are within driving distance, join me this Saturday for a time of Book Reading & Discussion.
If you experience any issues with seeing the information in the photo above, please see my Midwest Storyteller facebook page for the event.
If you’ve already finished reading “Hear My Whisper”, I hope you’ll come and let me know what you’re looking forward to in the sequel.
If you haven’t read it, take this opportunity to sample some selections and see if it draws you in.
Have you been to a Book Reading before? Actually, I haven’t! Perhaps you can leave me a comment and tell me what to expect!
If you are within driving distance, join me this Saturday. It’s all happening at Boonslick Regional Library’s Boonville branch. We’ll do a reading, have discussion and then we’ll read some more!
Curious about the book? Here’s a preview –
“And you can be certain of one thing, Abigail. I’m no angel.”
Julia Lansing stumbles into an embarrassing scandal when she’s discovered in a compromising position with a U. S. senator!
Though she’s innocent and it was all a misunderstanding, the shame burns. Matters are made worse later at dinner, when she seeks to hold her mother’s hand for moral support and finds herself holding a strange man’s hand by mistake! With mishaps abounding, how on earth is she meant to survive her trip to Savannah? Returning to her predictable life back home would be ideal—if it weren’t for the handsome Adam Cole. What is she meant to do about him?
Meanwhile, Beatrice Lansing, Julia’s mother, is expanding her business ventures in dress-making. With only a short amount of time to stay in Savannah, she’s striving to showcase her designs and build the network of employees and customers she came to create. Can she make her dreams come true, or will she return to Missouri empty-handed? And why is she receiving telegrams from her husband about explosions and replacing curtains?
Set against the backdrop of Savannah, Georgia and the small town of Morgan’s Landing, Missouri in 1904, Hear My Whisper, book one in the Morgan’s Landing series, invites you to follow Julia Lansing as she navigates the mores of a different city, state, social class, and the newfound interests of a young man (or two or three). Can she make the choice that’s best for her own happiness? Can her family succeed in the pursuit of their dreams? Or will it all come crashing down?
Though I’ve never cared for aviator shades and my car is not equipped with AI, it does communicate with me, mostly in a silent, passive-aggressive manner to let me know of its refusal to cooperate with my simplest demands. No, I don’t think my little buggy and I would attract many viewers with a weekly show. I do, however, write at night.
By nature, I am already a night owl and that helps, but I’ve had to face the issue of blue light. Eye strain is a real thing and so is the problem of not being able to shut down the little gray cells after hours staring at a huge computer monitor and living in a completely different world.
I can hear your suggestion that I should write during the day. This is not an option. My days are filled with nothing but fun and games provided by Fruity Pebbles and Lil’ Snookie.
Having done my research, I ordered a quality pair of glasses that has blue light blocking imbedded throughout the lenses – not merely a coating that renders them useless with the slightest scratch. I was given a delivery window of three to six business days.
This, folks, is where things went south. To be exact, they went not only south, but every direction imaginable multiple times! This small package, which I could have slipped into any decent sized handbag, began to travel more than I have in the last decade.
The image above (though not a map by any means and shouldn’t be used as such) gives an idea of how the United States Postal Service works to meet its efficiency and budgetary goals.
Using the tracking link provided by the Postal Service, I saw that the little box left San Diego and came straightaway to Olathe, Kansas and then went on to Kansas City. This made logical sense and I began to look forward to its arrival.
I suppose, however, that the poor thing couldn’t stand the cold, because it took off for Avondale, Arizona. After this, it couldn’t resist a jaunt over to Phoenix. Finding Phoenix a bit congested, my glasses returned to Avondale. Mysteriously, they returned to Phoenix again and I began to wonder if they’d become victims of a car-jacking. When they made a bee-line back to Avondale again, I imagined them being confused by roundabouts.
After finally having their fill of the dry desert air, they must have put in a request for transfer, giving the Postal Service some inkling that a mishap had occurred. They stepped in and, like the heroes that they are, properly and rightly brought my package all the way back to Olathe, Kansas. Now, I thought to myself, we are getting somewhere.
My spectacles were, indeed, getting somewhere. They took off for Abilene, probably because it was the prettiest town they’d ever seen. Those in supervisory positions with the Postal Service must have gotten wind of it at this point, declaring, “This must cease!”, because my package was then sent straight to Columbia, Missouri.
This is where I got excited. Now they could be on a delivery truck and at my house within hours. They certainly would have been if they hadn’t zoomed right past on the interstate and gone back to Kansas City! Thankfully, they made a U-turn there, but instead of taking the appropriate exit ramp, they merely waved as they passed again.
Once back in Columbia, some dear soul blessed with snappy, happy little neurons spotted them, and spying a truck destined for my hometown, shoved them in it.
That’s when I went to my local post office and told them that under no circumstances should they let them out of their sight. They merely sneered and told me I should’ve paid express mail fees.
Yes, Dear Readers, these are your tax dollars at work!
All’s well that ends well. Once the glasses arrived over a week late, I began putting them to good use and am busy every night getting the sequel to “Hear My Whisper” ready for you. This second book in the “Morgan’s Landing Series” is projected to release in the summer of 2026.
I’d love your feedback on “Hear My Whisper”, so please leave a comment. More importantly, leave a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads and at my publisher’s website, Ozark Hollow Press.
If you or anyone you know is within driving distance, please join me at this event. We’ll be able to chat about my book (and yours if you have one), the story behind it and the road to getting it published. Spoiler Alert: There are lots of ins and outs, do’s and don’ts and surprises involved!
Coming SOON: Details on events in the near future –
December 6th – Boonslick Regional Library in Boonville, Missouri
December 7th – Missouri River Regional Library in Jefferson City, Missouri
I pondered for a moment as to what my subscribers might enjoy having the opportunity to win for the month of October and then, in a flash of brilliance, I realized that I have a brand new novel out and you might just like one for the First Friday Freebie! I’m quick like that.
Let me tempt you with this from the back of the book.
“And you can be certain of one thing, Abigail. I’m no angel.”
Julia Lansing stumbles into an embarrassing scandal when she’s discovered in a compromising position with a U. S. senator!
Though she’s innocent and it was all a misunderstanding, the shame burns. Matters are made worse later at dinner, when she seeks to hold her mother’s hand for moral support and finds herself holding a strange man’s hand by mistake! With mishaps abounding, how on earth is she meant to survive her trip to Savannah? Returning to her predictable life back home would be ideal—if it weren’t for the handsome Adam Cole. What is she meant to do about him?
Meanwhile, Beatrice Lansing, Julia’s mother, is expanding her business ventures in dress-making. With only a short amount of time to stay in Savannah, she’s striving to showcase her designs and build the network of employees and customers she came to create. Can she make her dreams come true, or will she return to Missouri empty-handed? And why is she receiving telegrams from her husband about explosions and replacing curtains?
Set against the backdrop of Savannah, Georgia and the small town of Morgan’s Landing, Missouri in 1904, Hear My Whisper, book one in the Morgan’s Landing series, invites you to follow Julia Lansing as she navigates the mores of a different city, state, social class, and the newfound interests of a young man (or two or three). Can she make the choice that’s best for her own happiness? Can her family succeed in the pursuit of their dreams? Or will it all come crashing down?
To enter to win a free paperback copy of “Hear My Whisper”, the first book in my “Morgan’s Landing” novel series, the first thing you need to do is become an email subscriber HERE if you haven’t already done so. Then, “Leave a Comment” on this post, saying, “Can’t wait to curl up with a good book!”
Subscribing is FREE and First Friday Freebies are FREE – don’t you just love it?
Often I fail to invite you to follow Midwest Storyteller on Facebook HERE and on Instagram HERE, so check those out.
SHARE this post through Facebook, Instagram, X, Pinterest or send the link in an email to all your friends so they can enter to win!
Previous freebies can be found on the “Freebies” page. Take a look at the gifts subscribers have been winning.
Once again, a winner will be chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight tonight, October 3rd by leaving a comment which says, “Can’t wait to curl up with a good book!”
And now, here are the complete First Friday Freebie Rules by clicking HERE.
Don’t delay. You know you’ll forget if you don’t enter now! Subscribe if you haven’t already, confirm and comment to enter before midnight tonight, October 3rd! “Hear My Whisper” is available for pre-order right now, so get all the details on that right here.
Note: I have noticed that if you order extras for family and friends, the publisher will give you FREE SHIPPING. Any combination such as two hardcovers, a hardcover and a paperback, or three paperbacks (or, of course, more) will qualify for free shipping.
Upon release, physical books will also be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
NOTE: If you do plan to order an ebook, I would strongly encourage you to do so on Amazon. This helps build numbers for my book that might give me one of those “bestselling” banners upon release. That, my dear readers, would be nice!
My publisher has set the “official” publication date as November 18th. However, that is to allow for any unexpected “stuff that happens”. I am expecting to have physical books available in early to mid-October.
The act of kindness that would mean the most to me is for you to post your review of Hear My Whisper to platforms like Goodreads.com, Amazon.com (or whatever platform for book reviews you prefer). This will help give the book a strong base to have staying power in the long term.
Here’s a bit from the back of the book:
“And you can be certain of one thing, Abigail. I’m no angel.”
Julia Lansing stumbles into an embarrassing scandal when she’s discovered in a compromising position with a U. S. senator!
Though she’s innocent and it was all a misunderstanding, the shame burns. Matters are made worse later at dinner, when she seeks to hold her mother’s hand for moral support and finds herself holding a strange man’s hand by mistake! With mishaps abounding, how on earth is she meant to survive her trip to Savannah? Returning to her predictable life back home would be ideal—if it weren’t for the handsome Adam Cole. What is she meant to do about him?
Meanwhile, Beatrice Lansing, Julia’s mother, is expanding her business ventures in dress-making. With only a short amount of time to stay in Savannah, she’s striving to showcase her designs and build the network of employees and customers she came to create. Can she make her dreams come true, or will she return to Missouri empty-handed? And why is she receiving telegrams from her husband about explosions and replacing curtains?
Set against the backdrop of Savannah, Georgia and the small town of Morgan’s Landing, Missouri in 1904, Hear My Whisper, book one in the Morgan’s Landing series, invites you to follow Julia Lansing as she navigates the mores of a different city, state, social class, and the newfound interests of a young man (or two or three). Can she make the choice that’s best for her own happiness? Can her family succeed in the pursuit of their dreams? Or will it all come crashing down?
There’s one way to find out! Pre-order now.
Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts. Are you considering writing a novel, a true story? Smuffy says he’s going to enjoy the book in his happy place – in the bathtub for a long soak. Where’s your favorite spot to curl up with a good book?
I am so excited! I hope you are excited along with me. The first book in my Morgan’s Landing series, Hear My Whisper, is available for pre-order. Take a look at the cover.
Hear My Whisper will be available in paperback and hardcover editions and also as an ebook. I don’t know how the relationship is between you and the books you read, but I make friends with mine. Though I’ve read a few books on Kindle (mainly because I couldn’t find them anywhere else), I’m a true book lover and I like to hold the physical book in my own two hands. In our household, we are all book sniffers, burying our noses in the pages to see if they smell as a good book should. I neglected to discuss this fine point with the publisher, so I am hoping that when my own copies of Hear My Whisper arrive, they pass the sniff test.
If you’d like to pre-order physical books (paperbacks and hardcovers) and get a savings of 20%, click here: Hear My Whisper | Ozark Hollow Press From September 24 to September 29, 2025, you can use the promo code WHISPER20 to get 20% off your pre-orders. After this date, the retail prices will be:
– Paperback – $17.99
– Hardcover – $25.99
Now for ebooks. They’re great to have with you when you’re on the go, but a trifle difficult to get autographed.
If you’d like to pre-order the ebook, click here for Barnes & Noble:
Until September 29, the pre-order price for the ebook will be $2.99. After September 29, the ebook price will increase to the retail price of $5.99.
I would strongly encourage, if you can possibly do so, to pre-order on Amazon. This helps build numbers for my book that might give me one of those “bestselling” banners upon release. That, my dear readers, would be nice!
My publisher has set the “official” publication date as November 18th. However, that is to allow for any unexpected “stuff that happens” and I am expecting to have books available in early to mid-October. That’s right around the corner!
The act of kindness that would mean the most to me is for you to post your review of Hear My Whisper to platforms like Goodreads.com, Amazon.com (or whatever platform for book reviews you prefer). This will help give the book a strong base to have staying power in the long term.
Here’s a bit from the back of the book:
“And you can be certain of one thing, Abigail. I’m no angel.”
Julia Lansing stumbles into an embarrassing scandal when she’s discovered in a compromising position with a U. S. senator!
Though she’s innocent and it was all a misunderstanding, the shame burns. Matters are made worse later at dinner, when she seeks to hold her mother’s hand for moral support and finds herself holding a strange man’s hand by mistake! With mishaps abounding, how on earth is she meant to survive her trip to Savannah? Returning to her predictable life back home would be ideal—if it weren’t for the handsome Adam Cole. What is she meant to do about him?
Meanwhile, Beatrice Lansing, Julia’s mother, is expanding her business ventures in dress-making. With only a short amount of time to stay in Savannah, she’s striving to showcase her designs and build the network of employees and customers she came to create. Can she make her dreams come true, or will she return to Missouri empty-handed? And why is she receiving telegrams from her husband about explosions and replacing curtains?
Set against the backdrop of Savannah, Georgia and the small town of Morgan’s Landing, Missouri in 1904, Hear My Whisper, book one in the Morgan’s Landing series, invites you to follow Julia Lansing as she navigates the mores of a different city, state, social class, and the newfound interests of a young man (or two or three). Can she make the choice that’s best for her own happiness? Can her family succeed in the pursuit of their dreams? Or will it all come crashing down?
There’s only one way to find out! Pre-order now.
Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts. Are you considering writing a novel, a true story? Smuffy says he’s going to enjoy the book in his happy place – in the bathtub for a long soak. Where’s your favorite spot to curl up with a good book?
Yes, it is my present situation that brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from P. G. Wodehouse’s writings:
I am, indeed, far from gruntled as I bring you the first half of this update on my novel series, “Morgan’s Landing”. The artists who have been given the task of cover design must have also been given something designed to induce a coma. Everything is ready and nothing is stopping us from going to print – except the cover. I thought the cover would be the least of my worries. All I asked for was something eye-catching and beautiful that carried the general feeling of what lay within its pages.
Having not read what lay within its pages, the artists must have assumed that I am one of those Russian novelists Wodehouse wrote about when he or his characters made observations like these –
“In the spring, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove—but not in Russia, where they shoot poets for writing that sort of thing.”
In “The Clicking of Cuthbert” we find: “No novelist anywhere any good except me. PG Wodehouse and Tolstoy not bad. Not good, but not bad. All the rest worse. I spit me of them.”
“A Russian novel is where everyone is called Ivan and either dies of consumption or spends 400 pages deciding whether to.”
This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian novelist. . . . Vladimir specialized in gray studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide. . . .
One character, a Mr. Mulliner, said of himself, “I have a tender heart and I dislike to dwell on the spectacle of a human being groaning under the iron heel of Fate. Such morbid gloating, I consider, is better left to the Russians.
Another, while suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, prompted the narrator to remark, “If he had been a character in a Russian novel, he would have gone and hanged himself in the barn.”
One reference attempted to look on the bright side: “Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually give out.”
And my personal favorite: “No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi’s Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day’s work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka-bottle empty.”
You dear Russian folks out there have all my respect and admiration. However, I’m thinking P. G. Wodehouse had a point back in the day when he took a poke at some of your novelists.
I, however, am not a Russian novelist and you can expect something a bit brighter from the “Morgan’s Landing” series. This is likely what has put some sand in the gears with the book cover.
The first cover they sent me was absolutely beautiful in that it had the depth and tone of an Old Masters painting. However, the woman featured there, though her hair and clothing fit the description of the main character, sat in a windowless, darkened room and looked as though she were consumed with thoughts of ending it all.
After that, things took a turn, but it seemed to be on a path that was not reflective of the book’s setting.
Next, I received a cover design that looked representative of the character and setting, but the addition of a sky filled with black storm clouds convinced me once again that the artists thought they were designing something for one of those Russian novels.
Not that the characters in “Morgan’s Landing” don’t have their troubles – they do! However, the sun does shine in Morgan’s Landing and there is a lot of fun within those pages. Tweaks have been suggested and now we wait. Hopefully, we won’t wait too long because I want these books in your hands and mine.
If you’ll remember, there is a “Morgan’s Landing” screenplay circulating out there amongst several productions. One of them in particular has taken the positive step of attempting to bring in A-list talent for one of the main roles and if that comes to fruition, things could start to get even more exciting! It’s hard to be disgruntled with all that going on. In fact, I’m about as gruntled as I can get!
My part in this is to wait. It’s as if my “baby” has been put up for adoption and there is nothing I can do other than wait for a producer to give the screenwriter a “Let’s go!” I so appreciate award-winning screenwriter, Alan Roth, who has done a wonderful job of writing the screenplay and in getting it into all the hands of the people who need to see it. If any of you are inclined to add a request for blessing a favor in this matter to your prayer list – go to it!
Hopefully, my next update will be a release date for Book 1 in the Morgan’s Landing series. It’s entitled “Hear My Whisper” and will be with you as soon as the cover design is finalized. Following the release, there will be book signing events and I hope to see you there.
Many of you have a story to tell. DON’T WAIT to get started! The road ahead is full of bumps and detours.
Leave a comment and tell me what is stirring in your heart and mind to write. It may be fiction or it may be a true story that you can’t bear the thought of being lost to the ages. I know I have one of those and I hope to have the time to start on it soon.
