Charles W Jones, Author - Blog

Today, I’m honored to host the amazing Harriet Hodgson and her book Calling All Grandmas! Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment. GIVEAWAY: (2) $5 Amazon gift cards Adding Emotion to Nonfiction Writing I’m a non-fiction author, yet my writing contains emotion. Sometimes my emotions are detailed in descriptive sentences. Other times they are expressed with dialogue. Writing about emotions takes extra effort. Why should you add emotions to nonfiction writing? Emotion links the author and reader. Rob Parnell, in his website article, “How to Write About Emotion,” says emotions make us uniquely human. Life isn’t all about what happens, he continues, “it is the way we react to events and people and the things they say that defines our experience of the world.” Emotion serves as a “hook.” Dialogue is one way to hook a reader, according to Mary Jaksch. She expands this point in her website article, “3 Things You Need to Know about Using Dialogue in Non-Fiction.” What makes dialogue a hoo...

GIVEAWAY Check this out! You can win a $25 Amazon Gift Card & 1 e-book or paperback copy of one book in the Haunted Shores series (Winner’s choice). Simply leave a comment below for your chance to win! Why set a Christmas mystery in sunny Florida, of all places? This is one the first questions I’ve received from readers of my new ghost story/mystery, SCARLET AT CRYSTAL RIVER. That is, after they share how much they love the two kids, and the romantic honeymoon, and Luis, and the manatees And it’s a fair question. When you mention a Christmas mystery, images of snow-covered cabins and frosty mugs of hot cocoa spring to mind. Of feet stomping the frozen ground and breaths expelling a white cloud while questioning suspects. Not swimming in the warm surf or lounging on the porch in only a shirt. Before beginning the first draft of SCARLET AT CRYSTAL RIVER, I’d read quite a number of Christmas mysteries, from Agatha Christie’s Hercule Parole’s Christmas to Mary Higgins Clark’s The ...

Please welcome back Breakfield and Burkey as they talk about some short stories. Giveaway (7) ebook copies of “HOT CHOCOLATE” Please leave the authors a comment anywhere along the tour for your chance to win one of these awesome prizes. Zara appears in several stories of the Enigma Series. We created her as a Darknet hacker and one of our original characters readers love to hate. Like our readers, we both loved and despised her choices. She kept reminding us that part of her complexity as a character evolved from her rough beginnings and ill-treatment by despicable men. Her survival methods made her hard and cynical—focused only on her payday and next mark. Buzz Buswald II is affectionately known as Buzz. He first appears in The Enigma Factor as Jacob Michael’s classmate from school. Buzz comes from wealth, well-educated, yet somewhat lazy. Along his journey, Buzz has made some bad choices with fortunate outcomes. Both characters received lots of comments from readers throug...

GIVEAWAY:    (3 winners)  (1) e-book copy of “NIGHTMARELAND”, (1) e-book copy of “THROUGH THE NETHERGATE”, and (1) $25 Amazon gift card. (leave a comment to enter) Who was Henry Scarle? Henry Scarle is one of the ghosts from Through the Nethergate, who allies himself with Margaret. He becomes her love interest during the story. Henry Scarle was employed by a wealthy businessman named Mathias Kerrison to look after ships transporting corn and other goods at Whitacre Burgh. Mathias Kerrison owned the Bungay Straithe navigation on the River Waverney. Henry noticed that some of the goods were being stolen and stood guard one night to see if he could identify the thieves. He identified two local men and reported them to his master. The thieves learned of his actions before they could be caught and detained and they boarded the ship where he was working and beat him to death. His body was left floating in the river. An extract from Through the Nethergate “Two burly men...

Stumbling into the Interesting I have a thing about research. To say that I love it would not be an overstatement. It might be safe to assume that almost all writers could make such a claim, and especially writers of historical fiction who tend to get lost in the pulling together of another time and place. Usually we wind up choosing to tell the stories we stumbled upon while lost in the library stacks—the unexpected, delightful little tidbits that made us say, “That’s so interesting!” My newest release is certainly one of those. The project came about because my family and I had recently moved into a new neighborhood in Salem, Oregon where we felt immediately and warmly welcomed by our new neighbors. My sons, then ages three and five, quickly made friends with all the other littles running around. It was a wonderful place to be, with a small grade school at one end of the subdivision and a Latter-Day Saints church at the other. I soon came to realize that most of our wonderful new nei...

American Agony Blog Tour Post #06 This is a special communication meant to honor some very special Americans, so I’m very grateful to my host and you readers for this opportunity to speak out. It’s more than likely that you have a relative or friend who has served in the military, or is serving our country as we speak. These special souls have been assured they’d be well-cared-for when they return from battle, that when they are sick or get old and infirm, our Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals and doctors will take good care of them. Moreso, those who come back alive but severely injured—brain damage, amputations, paralyses, unrelenting pain, and post-service injuries and illnesses—these people deserve to be cared for with the empathy and medicines required to keep them healing and comfortable. Unfathomably, even before the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) began their attacks on the opioid treatment of pain in the general populatio...

Day 5 From the Author This is Day 5 of “Songs of Heartstrings” Blog Tour. I want to thank 4WillsPublishing for setting up the tour and my host to have me here. This poetry collection includes nine themes: Songs of Nature, Songs of Dissonance, Songs of Physical Healing, Songs of Marriage, Songs of Parenthood, Songs of Tribute, Songs of Reflections, Songs of Challenge, and Songs of Inspiration. Each of these themes covers various aspects of my life experience. Many poems are illustrated with my photos and watercolor paintings. Songs of Heartstrings received a 5-Star review from Readers’ Favorite: https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/songs-of-heartstrings?fbclid=IwAR092vCKbtTdbUea6kW90qdVvrvxYHpUdkpCueW7XtcUzKNMzukisBgVBfs . Other book reviews are available on Amazon: http://wwAmazon.com/dp/B07K1S47W9  Highlighted Poems from Songs of Parenthood Photography, watercolor painting and ceramic painting are several of my favorite hobbies. I painted “Mother-Daughter Holding Hands” which illus...

Today, I welcome Guy Worthey, a fellow Wyoming Native. He’s talking about his Ace Carroway series and he has a Giveaway! Please be sure to leave a comment below for your chance to win one of the following prizes: -(3) Kindle ebooks – Winner’s choice (US residents only) -(1) $10 Amazon gift card (US residents only) or $10 (via PayPal for non-US residents) Greetings one and all, and a hearty thank-you to my kind host and 4 Wills Publishing! In this second blog tour stop we meet our protagonist, the complex and potent Cecilia “Ace” Carroway. We are joined once again by our stalwart but fictitious interviewer, Mr. Bigg Faquir. Good day, FAQ. FAQ: Greetings. Is that a jelly stain on your shirt? GW: I don’t know. Maybe. But ask me about Ace Carroway. FAQ: If I can stop staring at that stain. Go ahead. Who is Ace Carroway? GW: Born at sea in 1901, mixed-race Cecilia Carroway is everywoman, transcending boundaries of nation and class. Growing up, her natural intelligence bloss...