Ho Ho Ho

A very short post today, but hopefully one you'll like - since it's the holiday season and all, I'm giving away free copies of  Basement Blues. Just call me Santa's lil helper.

Head on over to Smashwords and use voucher code ES96G at checkout for your 100% discount.

This version of the book can be either downloaded to your e-reader or pc or printed off if you'd rather have a hard copy - either way, enjoy and have a great festive season!

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Latest reviews :

5.0 out of 5 stars Great collection of spooky stories!, 31 Oct 2011

By Tabitha's Attic - Published on Amazon U.S.

This review is from: Basement Blues (Kindle Edition)

Basement Blues and Other Stories is a collection of spooky tales by Janet Sked to get you in the scaring mood.

Janet starts us off with Basement Blues a fun noir style story. Only this time instead of ole' Sam Spade our detectives are "monsters". Astrid, a vampire, Ruth, a ghost and Bill, well, you have to read the story to find out what he is, run Blue Moon Detective Agency. They specialize in handling the more unusual cases and they get a doozy of one when Susan, a zombie with a problem, shows up. Susan has a ghost in her basement that is trying to kill her...again. Why, you ask? Now, if I told you that I would give away a wonderful gasping twist in this fun spooky tale about how monsters can make the best of friends.

In her next tale Dim, Janet wrenches your heart out with a story about a man turned child by the horrors of war and how they continue to haunt and terrify him into his innocence. Charlie went to war to serve his country and came back with half a brain, literally, and a fear of the dark. When his convoy was hit by friendly fire he was trapped for two days with his dead comrades under an overturned half buried truck. Now he is being taken care of by his ailing grandmother and ignored by a sister he adores. What is it in the dark that scares him so much? When you find out it will make your skin crawl and want to scream in terror.

And last, but not least is Pushing Janey, a tale about a young man, Phan, and a young woman who catch each others eye in Piccadilly Station. Unfortunately, before Phan can learn the young woman's name she has a terrible accident and is killed. Why is it then that the young man is still seeing her at the Station with a strange star like dark spot on her back? To make things even weirder he starts to see other people that are there one minute and gone the next, each with the same star shaped dark spot. Are these people trying to tell him something? Find out what the dead are saying to Phan in this physiological thriller that will leave your head spinning.

Janet even throws in the first three chapters of her début novel Wolfsong at the end of Basement Blues and Other Stories to tantalize our imaginations and bring us into a world of myth, monsters, and magic that leave us yearning for more.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two good stories, one amazing story, 11 July 2011

By Jamie Schultz - Published on Amazon U.S.

This review is from: Basement Blues (Kindle Edition)

This is a short collection of three very different stories. Basement Blues is a humorous paranormal detective story that has a lot of fun playing with the classic vampire, ghost, and zombie tropes. Who do you call when you're a zombie with a psychotic washing machine haunting your basement? Blue Moon Detective Agency! The humor is right on, very much in the vein of Terry Pratchett, and the characters are lovably entertaining. I would have liked the main character to have more agency in the final outcome (no pun intended), but this story was a fun read nonetheless.

The last story, Pushing Janey, was a bleak ghost story that caught me totally by surprise in a couple of ways over just a few pages. This story is *not* funny, but it's very well-executed and it will keep you guessing until the end.

It was the middle story, Dim, that blew my mind. It elevates fear of the dark into something almost tangible--I don't think I've read a story that tackles that particular subject so well, or with such a unique approach. The description and atmosphere are chilling, the characters are fascinating, and the overall story execution is spot-on. This is one story that will get you to get up and turn on all the lights in the house--in the middle of the day.

This collection is worth it for Dim alone, but read the rest and you won't be disappointed!

WolfSong Paperback and thoughts on ebooks vs paper

The paperback edition of WolfSong is now up on Amazon.com here for anyone who doesn't have an e-reader.

I never expected to feel so excited over holding a physical copy of the book, but that's exactly what happened when I opened the proof box and pulled the book out.

I do think I need to rework the cover totally, but that needs to go on hold until next year, when my life regains some semblance of sanity and I might actually have some free time.

The fun part was telling my folks the physical book was out. I think my mom was more excited than I was (I think she plans on casually taking a copy out at her next ladies club meeting and waving it at people). She has also now decided I am, indeed, a "real" writer, and that was  interesting to me.

It seems a lot of people don't consider an ebook to be real, whether they have an ebook reader or not. From the writer's perspective, this can be frustrating - the same amount of time and energy goes into it whether it's published as an electronic or paper copy, but I think we underestimate the desire to physically touch something.

I haven't bought a paper version of a book since my brother bought me my kindle (best Christmas present ever!), although I think I'll have to break down and go back to paper to catch up on the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews, since the publisher STILL hasn't released e-book rights for half of them in the UK. It's not nice to deprive an addict of her favourite paranormal series, publishers. Ahem.

But although I haven't bought a physical book in a long, long time, I still have around 300+ tree books at home. I love the feel of a tree book, and every now and then I cheat on my kindle and pick up one of my much-read books and fall into one of my favourite worlds again.

Those books are mine. They feel real and tangible in a way that e-books don't, despite their convenience. When I moved to the UK and had to give away my books, it hurt.

Some of it may have to do with the item itself. An e-reader is a pretty anonymous piece of equipment, if you think about it. You can't be pretentious on the tube and flash the cover of the latest must-read at people, and you can indulge in whatever your guilty reading pleasure is without trying to hide the cover.

Ebook readers are light, convenient, and a great way to get cheaper books. But it doesn't feel like a book, or smell like a book. Until you flick the switch on it, it doesn't look like a book, and then it only resembles a book to the person engaged in the screen.

And keep in mind, my generation is the one that likes tech, uses tech, needs it to function - and doesn't trust it. It malfunctions. It eats your important stuff like documents and images, and corrupts them, won't tell you why. If you're me, every now and then it literally blows up or catches fire, and you're left with a funny scorch mark on the wall and a confused look on your face..

What will happen ten, twenty years down the line, as more and more people get comfortable with the ebook concept, remains to be seen. I doubt we'll see the end of physical books in my lifetime, although they may (probably will) become rarer.

Until someone designs an ebook cover that flashes the actual book you're reading across it, and changes when you change the book, I think that feeling will remain, at least for our generation. We need the sight, scent and feel of a paper book to feel like it's "real", to know that it's ours.

Richard Shury On Motivation : Guest Post

My friend Richard Shury recently got his awesome holocaust/fantasy book  Laid Hold the Dragon (UK link) up as an e-book for us e-book fans. The Amazon.com link for readers outside the UK is here.

(Can I just say I wish I'd thought of that title? It just pushes all my buttons. Don't judge me.)

Of course, far from satisfied, I bugged the poor boy until he agreed to do the blog post below for me; which I hope you enjoy - I think whether you write or not, you'll identify with what Richard says.

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Motivation comes and goes, so I try and grab on to it when it does swing by. It has been a while since Laid Hold The Dragon was written, let alone published. 

It began as other pieces of my writing have, with an idea from another book, merged with a scene in my head. In my mind’s eye it plays out as a scene in a movie, vivid, colourful, but initially without context. The swirling mists of the story gradually coalesce and take solid form, and the thing comes together. For me, the process is often chaotic, which lends it a certain energy, but also means I have to write a lot of notes in order to ensure that the final product will make some kind of sense. It’s a balance between precision and emotion, or between patience and the desire to blurt out as much of the imagery in my head as possible before it fades away.

I have been thinking back to the original motivation for the book, besides being sick of thinking about writing one for some time and actually wanting to get on with it. I had been interested in (but not a believer of) Christian Apocalypse theory, or whatever it is called, and I remember thinking ‘what if the End of Days didn’t go according to plan?’ That was where it all started. Actually, thinking about it, that would make a fairly good movie tagline. Ok, maybe not. In any case, I liked the idea of drawing on this warped vision of the future, and warping it even further, whilst being able to tell very human stories through my characters and through their visions. Incorporating the science fiction elements into the book was just another fun, though challenging, aspect of what I wanted to achieve.

The impetus for creation, as mentioned earlier, is often drawn from other works, or from the seeds of concepts expressed in these works, be they works of fiction or otherwise. I often find that my best ideas for science fiction (or the ones which seem so to me) have sprung from today’s science or ways of thinking. Translating the excitement and fascination of these concepts into something readable and equally as exciting is the challenge I have taken on; if I have not completely succeeded, perhaps it will not be too much excuse-making to say that it is a struggle to truly express these concepts; and indeed, the struggle itself has its own rewards.

It would seem the ultimate test is always how readers feel once they have finished reading (and, indeed, whether they do finish reading), and whether they come to the end with a sense of satisfaction and time well spent; if you are one of those who has been intrigued enough to pick up a copy, I hope I do not disappoint. If you would like to give me feedback, I’d love it, but please be gentle; it’s my first time.

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Follow Richard on twitter - @RichardShury, or say hi to him on GoodReads -  and of course you can still pick up the tree version of Laid Hold on Amazon.com here.
Laid Hold the Dragon is also up at Smashwords, the Sony reader e-bookstore, and Barnes & Noble has stock of both the paperback and e-book.

A bad day in Manchester

Most of my regular readers are aware I travel quite a bit for work. 
This past week saw me in Manchester, which is where things went, shall we say, pear-shaped. As in I have achieved the crowning moment of WTF, also known as Bad Moments in Time.


To set the scene - I realised after I got there that I'd picked up the wrong overnight bag.


No phone charger. No pajama's. No toothbrush. No soap.


Feeling a bit grumpy with myself, I waded into the local Primark, then grabbed dinner and hit the budget hotel I was booked into.


And that, dear readers, is where my night went very, very wrong.


They put me into one of the disabled rooms. This is a good thing on the one hand, since it meant I had an actual bath. One the other hand, the freaking genius who designed the layout of the room (and please believe me when I say I someday hope to meet said genius, preferably while armed with a blunt instrument of choice) had put the light cord on one side of the bathroom doorway, and the Oh-Bugger-I'm-Dying alarm on the other.


I was tired. I pulled the wrong cord.


After ten minutes off frantic slapping at every flashing light and buzzer I could see, reception knocked on the door, laughed at me, graciously waved off my apologies and re-set things so they stopped flashing and beeping.


I ran my bath, stripped in the bedroom since there was nowhere to put my clothes in the fridge - sorry, bathroom - wrapped a towel around my aching torso, and stepped through the door, which clicked shut behind me.


Remember the freaking genius room layout?


In an attempt to raise the bar even further, the bathroom door and the main room door were identical. And next to each other.


I suppose, for the average person who isn't dog-tired and prone to having weird things happen, this would be a perfectly acceptable thing.


Unfortunately, the person they put in this room was me.


I'd taken a full step onto more carpet before I realised the following:


1) The bathroom didn't have carpet in it when I ran my bath.
2) The room I was in was way, way too big to be the bathroom


My mental process for the next 30 seconds was:
"Huh. Wait. Oh, no. I did not just do this to myself. I'm in the freaking hotel corridor!! Crap!!!  Wearing a very small towel!! Mommy!!!!"


To add insult to injury, the corner of my very small towel was caught in the door. It took some acrobatic maneuvering, including the judicious application of my heel against the face of the door, to retrieve it.
Anyone entering the hotel corridor at this point in time would have seen a short, chubby, naked female wedged halfway up a door jamb, gibbering gently to herself. 


Towel retrieved, I gingerly (bare feet, economy hotel carpet) made my way to the escalator and down to reception, which consists of a vending machine, the reception desk, a small row of shabby couches - and a full size plate glass window, on a very busy main road.


To add insult to injury, reception was currently full of 5 or 6 well-oiled young guys, one of which spent the time I was down there trying to figure out if I was real or a side-effect of the local watering-hole.


(Note - trying to hide behind a vending machine and hissing "Hey! Reception lady. Cooeee!" while wearing nothing but a towel gets a strange reaction from drunks trying to check in.)


Reception lady eventually followed my semi-hysterical whimpering around the edge of the vending machine, took one look at me, and clapped both hands over her mouth.


"Oh, God!" She said.


"Yes," I said. "Um. Help?"


I have to give her credit. She was very sweet about the whole thing, and instead of calling either the cops or the local mental hospital, got me back into my room before I got frostbite. Since I was turning a delicate shade of blue by this stage, I was  grateful; to the point that I hardly heard her roaring with laughter all the way back to the elevator. I was too busy trying to get feeling back into my toes.


Before I attempted another walk to the bathroom, I wedged the room chair against the outside door.


My bath was cold.


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J H Sked is the author of WolfSong & Basement Blues.

You can find WolfSong on Amazon, Sony  e-bookstore, Nook, iTunes &  Smashwords. Basement Blues is on Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes  and  Nook 

Halloween Tales - Part 2

My earliest paranormal experience happened when I was pretty young, and sorry to disappoint the horror fans, but it was anything but scary.

I'm not sure of my exact age at the time, but my folks reckon no more than five. I came down with some bug or another - kids that age always seem to have something, but considering it knocked me into bed for a couple of days it must have been nasty - and I remember lying in bed, under the covers,  feeling unbelievably thirsty.
My head hurt, my body hurt, my mom had left the room, and all I could think about was a glass of water in my plastic Skippy cup, with little beads of liquid running down the sides, and that my throat would feel better once I'd taken that first sip.

Since I was too sick to even try climbing out of bed, I squeezed my eyes shut (the wallpaper pattern was dancing when I looked at it, and it made the headache worse), and just whimpered a little.

When I felt a woman's hand touch my forehead, and then a pair of lips kiss the top of my head, I thought my mom had come back in.
But when I opened my eyes, it was somebody I'd never seen, wearing a pink dress, and smiling at me. I remember she had dark hair, and I thought she was pretty, and I liked her perfume.

I wasn't scared - considering my past history of happily wandering up to strangers and chatting to them if my mother took her eyes off of me for a second, that's not too surprising - and when she smiled at me, and said she'd come to see how I was feeling, I didn't actually think twice.

I told her I was thirsty. She went into the bathroom and came back with my water, and then she said she couldn't stay long but it was lovely to see me. And then she left.

When my mom came in a few minutes later, I asked her if her friend would be coming back, and to please say thank you for the water, because I'd been too busy drinking it to say anything.

Mom asked me what I was talking about. I told her. The now empty Skippy cup sat beside my bed, and I showed it to her.

I'm fairly sure my mom freaked out at that point, since a few minutes later she was on the telephone to dad, who came home early from work, and I'm also fairly sure they searched the house.

There was nobody else there. My mom hadn't had any visitors, her friends were at working, and the doors were locked.

I do know I was back on my feet the next morning, and that I never forgot the lady in the pink dress, who visited me and was kind.

Every now and then I would mention her while I was growing up, and my parents would exchange uneasy glances and change the subject.
 
A couple of years ago, my parents came out to the UK on holiday, and we took a trip up to Windsor to see my dad's cousin.

Halfway through the visit, Stuart hauled out a stack of very old photographs he'd found, and we were happily looking through them and passing them around, with my dad excitedly pointing out faces of family and friends from fifty odd years ago.

Stuart passed dad and I one particular photo and said: "You might want to take that one, cuz."
Both of us looked at it. Both of us got very quiet.
It was a picture of a pretty young woman with dark hair, and although she wasn't wearing the pink dress, I recognized her immediately.

I looked at my dad and realised it was a picture of his mom. She'd passed away when he was a teenager. I had never seen a colour photo of her.

We stepped outside for a cigarette, dad still looking a bit melancholy.

"She was beautiful," I said.
"Yes," he agreed. Then, added: "You looked a bit strange in there."
"Yes, well. You remember telling me how you wished we'd met your mom?" I asked.
He nodded, and took another draw on his cigarette.
"Dad, the pink lady, when I was sick. That was her." I glanced at him and he nodded, slowly. "She's the one who brought me my water. So technically, I reckon I met her."

My dad flicked the last ash from his cigarette away, and cleared his throat.
"She had a pink dress she wore a lot when I was little," he said. "You're sure?"
"Yes," I said. "It was her."

When we went back inside, my father was smiling.

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J H Sked is the author of WolfSong & Basement Blues.

You can find WolfSong on Amazon, Sony  e-bookstore, Nook, iTunes &  Smashwords. Basement Blues is on Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes  and  Nook 

Halloween tales - Part 1

I've had a few people ask what triggered my interest in the paranormal, and the honest answer is - it's always seemed interested in me.

It seemed polite - and wise - to return the favour. In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd share a couple of the stranger things that have happened.

One of my earlier experiences, and one which scared the daylights out of me, happened when I was a pre-teen. It's also the reason I never sleep with a mirror facing me if I can help it; I never want this particular experience again.

I'd moved schools. One of the friends I'd left behind was a girl who had long, curly black hair that fell well past her shoulders. I would have given a lot for hair like that; my own was mousey-brown and cropped short. Considering I still managed to get gum in it (don't ask - it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do at the time), I can't blame my mom for keeping it that way.

I missed my friend; we phoned and visited each other for the first few months, but when new friends came along, we drifted out of touch.

I hadn't thought of her in months. Then, late one night, something woke me up.

I have no idea what made me wake up, shivering from cold, despite it being the middle of summer. I do know that I sat up, feeling uneasy, feeling that there was something wrong.

After a few minutes, I decided to get a glass of water, and switched on my bedside light. As the glow through the lampshade sped through the room, I looked over at the dressing table, with the fancy mirror - and I froze.

My hair was tumbling, in dark, lustrous curls, past my shoulders. It was long enough to show strands almost at my waist, swinging as I gasped and inhaled, ready to scream - and then it was gone. The glorious curls in the mirror vanished and my room started to warm up again.

Eventually I climbed out of bed to go to the bathroom, which I needed very badly right then.

I had no idea what had happened. All I knew was that it scared me badly enough to sleep with my light on for the next 2 nights.

3 days after the ghost hair episode, the phone rang. My mom sat me down to tell me that my friend had died in a car crash a couple of days earlier.

It didn't take a genius to make the connection, and I knew she'd never hurt me - but more than 20 years later, I try not to sleep with a mirror facing me. I've lost more than a few people since that night - and I have no urge to find out what else will visit me through that silver-backed gateway.


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J H Sked is the author of WolfSong & Basement Blues.

You can find WolfSong on Amazon, Sony  e-bookstore, Nook, iTunes &  Smashwords. Basement Blues is on Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes  and  Nook 

Guest Blog - Jacqueline Dick

If you're on twitter and you have an appreciation for poetry, do yourself a favour and look up Jacqueline Dick, who twits under the handle @fumanchucat. If you're not on twitter, wonder over to her website, http://1emeraldcity.wordpress.com and have a look at her longer work. 
Poetry is a difficult art form to get right. To manage it in 140 characters, touch your audience, and evoke a genuine response, lifts it into the realm of magic. 
Here's one of my personal favourites of her micro-poetry:
Moon sees / barbed wire /and hides / behind cloud


So when I stumbled over her words (got to love that re-tweet button), and then got chatting to her and then managed to sweet-talk her in guest blogging for me, I got very excited (yes, I get excited a lot. Dealing with remarkable talent does that to me, every time). 


Then she sent me the post below, which for me - and no doubt a lot of us writing folk out there - just sums up the whole story.          


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Why Do I Write? – a short personal essay

 I’m at a cocktail party. Guy standing next to me at buffet table, scarfing little toothpicked meatballs and double dipping cracker spread. “So waddya do?” he asks me. ”About what?” my wise-guy retort. Oh , I knew full well he’s not asking me if I have a viable solution to oil spills. I know what’s he’s asking and why. But do I want to be defined by what I do for a living, or for an avocation? Well, do I? Partly, yes.”I’m a writer,” I said, scarfing my own little stash of meatballs. Guy lifts eyebrow. “Oh? So waddya write?” “Words, words, words…..” I cleverly parry, borrowing from Hamlet. 

Why dance, why paint, why blow notes and air through a tuba…because we have to. But what does that really mean? 

 The real answer for me? It’s as if someone is knocking at my door and I’m ambivalent about answering. Or the telephone is ringing….now on it’s 4th ring before it goes to message. Damn it! Okay! Answer the knock on the door. Pick up the dang dong phone! I gotta know who’s at the door. Who is phoning me. Same with writing. Something is nagging at me. A thought, maybe evoked by a hurtful remark by an acquaintance. A racist remark overheard on a bus. I have to explore, it, define it somehow. I don’t paint, I’m not a photographer. But I do have a way with words. And with writing…any emotion evoked by beauty, need, anger, love, there comes that knock on the door to my soul. That persistent call… to explore the universality of these feelings, to dissect, to find exactly the right words that will cause me and others to say “Yes!” That epiphany, that aha! moment. And, to mitigate the loneliness of experiencing that moment by sharing it with others. 

 There’s the added question. Do I write for myself, or for others. Both. First, what am I thinking, feeling about the topic. Gotta get it down. Define it, and that defines part of me. Someone else’s critique is valuable in that it forces me to sometimes go on a word diet, or change the recipe a little to make it more distinctive, more palatable. So, sure, I write for others. That helps me to validate what I think, what I write. And when my colleagues and readers review and critique, if they nail it, I’m emotionally and spiritually nourished. 

Falling Up 

Walkin’ Downtown 

Mood down black-brown 

Sun-filled Farmer’s Market 

Sensuality of rainbowed ripening fruits 

 Basket cornucopia overloads 

Spilling to ground 

 Strong sinewy male helping hand  

Frisson on neck’s nape 

 Sudden senseless jealousy 

Of fruit hand touched

Unwelcome crazed thought  

Stranger’s fingers prodding, testing me 

From hand to eyes 

Amused, blue, crinkled-cornered 

 Naked confusion, damn! 

 Unfair full wattage smile 

 Ancient recognition, trampolining heart  

Starting no-net tightrope walk 

Falling, falling, falling 

Up 

 -0-

 A Little Night Music – a poem 

 Cellos’ deep sounding smile 

Scent of earth and rain 

After the storm 

Petrichor 

 Now the darkling

 Bass, violas, castanets 

Sound nocturnal romance

 Exciting moon and stars to dance

 Lyre 

Oboe 

Ecru sounds

Of a lyrical moon 

Piccolo and flute

Fugue to 

Twinkling lights

 En pointe stars 

Tenor chants 

Plaintive song
In wee hours

Only shadows hear

 Music 

The sounds of flowers 

The strings of the firmament 

The heart’s harp 

Poetry that needs no words 

 -0-

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J H Sked is the author of WolfSong & Basement Blues.

You can find WolfSong on Amazon, Sony  e-bookstore, Nook, iTunes &  Smashwords. Basement Blues is on Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes  and  Nook 

Coming Home - the Carsons

Almost a month ago, I posted a very short blog about a soldier who contacted me regarding Operation e-book drop, and tweeted about it.

I got a tweet back, and a comment from Bert Carsons, and started swapping a bit of banter. A couple of days later, his wife Christina, joined in, then Kathy Hall and Dannie Hill. Great bunch of people, and talented writers - I'm having to eke out my book buying, but trust me, you don't want to miss this bunch - and if you're on twitter, hit them up - I'll their tweet handles at the bottom of this post. At the very least, you'll want to look at their blogs (and if Dannie & Kathy don't have you in stitches, there's a good chance your sense of humour fell off at the last stop).

The last couple of weeks have been difficult - stress levels I've never had before, and hope to never achieve again. A couple friends I've made on twitter - Teresa, Rayray, Rebecca,  Lorraine and Mhairi Simpson have helped with a great deal of it just by being hysterically funny.

The Carsons - and I'm definitely including both here, because I've never come across a couple that seem to function so symbiotically; these two go together like bare feet and beach sand - have been a reason for to get up in the morning.

Bert Carsons started making whooping noises about WolfSong. He tweeted me about it, he told Christina about it, he tweeted me some more.

Then he started tweeting quotes from my book. Then he got Iggy Pintado to retweet it and suggested I follow him (of course I did), and Iggy promptly DM'd and offered to retweet something for me.

Let's just say that I've been floating on air for most of this weekend.

The part that blows me away about all this is that Bert did all of this off his own bat. And it's not like he's got that much free time on his hands; he has three books out, two more coming in September, according to his blog. He works a day job. And a look at his twitter stream shows a very active and social man, with over 2500 followers.
And he found the time to do this for me. To interact with one very newbie author who often suffers from foot-in-mouth and a tendency to trip over her own feet.

I'm the first to admit that I can be very cynical about humans, up to and including myself. But people like the Carsons blow that theory out of the water. Bert uses "Yours to count on" as his trademark signature. I can say from experience those aren't just words. He lives them.

So now when I can't sleep, or when I get up in the morning, I touch the little blue bird on my phone. I check out my friends and their feeds, and it feels like coming home.

Twit-buddies you want in your life:
@BertCarson
@CarsonCanada  - Christina Carson
@RedMojoMama - Kathy Hall
@DannieC_Hill   
@iggypintado  - entrepreneur and social business manager; be warned you may spend hours just scrolling the links on his feed and clicking
@AMhairiSimpson

Not for the faint-of heart, but killer one-liners and hearts of gold:
@Lil_TweetyPie
@geminicad9098 
@CreepyWalker
@MissHaunted
@magicdarcy

Thanks to all of you.

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J H Sked is the author of WolfSong & Basement Blues.

You can find WolfSong on Amazon, Sony  e-bookstore, Nook, iTunes &  Smashwords. Basement Blues is on Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes  and  Nook