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by Susan Sloate

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Music Fiction

Date Published: 09-30-2025

Publisher: Covfefe Press

 

 For anyone who’s ever said, “They’re playing my song!”

 

On Halloween Eve, 1961, in his dingy Bronx walkup apartment, seventeen-year-old Jimmy Welton hears the opening notes of a song in his head. Jimmy’s still mourning his firefighter father, who taught him to play the guitar but recently died in a house fire, leaving his family destitute. Jimmy takes this song, about all he misses from his life now, to the New York amusement park where he works after school. There, he meets Mark Morgan, a rebellious teen with his own band, who eventually invites Jimmy to join them. And the rest is rock’n roll history…

The GooseBumps become a worldwide phenomenon, and the songs they write and sing together become the backbone of rock musical history. And the song Jimmy first heard on Halloween, “Wrapped in Gauze”, becomes the song that not only comforts him in that terrible time but also comforts others: Victoria, recently divorced and dealing with an unthinkable family tragedy; Carolyn, whose final flippant words to someone in pain can’t be taken back; and Jack, battling back from unimaginable loss with the help of his cheeky therapist and a song he thinks he hates.

 

SCENES FROM A SONG is the story of a song that makes us smile, that breaks our hearts, that stays with us forever, and the very special band that started it all.

Excerpt

Mark went on, “Jimmy’s got a great new song we hope you’ll get up and dance to. It’s so new, we’re playing it here for the first time. I don’t even know it!”
     The audience chuckled—they clearly liked Mark—but Jimmy was suddenly nervous as Mark swung the microphone toward him. They’d liked the first songs, and Jimmy had kept up fine with Kellen on guitar, but he and Mark hadn’t sung harmony yet, and the new song that Mark had generously allotted lead to him wasn’t coming up till later. He had to put “Bawk Bawk” over.
     He took a deep breath and stepped up to the mike, trying to sound reassuring and confident. “Hi, folks. This is new, and, well, we hope you like it. It’s a dance song, and we’ll do all the moves up here, and you can just follow us. The song is called ‘Bawk Bawk’.”
    He did the four-count lead-in and Kellen came in behind him, with Mark backing him up. Hammy bashed out a steady rhythm, and Jimmy launched into the vocal, trying to pump up the energy with exuberant gestures. He strutted, he clucked, he waved, he pumped his elbows together like a chicken.
     The audience just about died laughing.
     No one clapped. No one stomped their feet. No one got up and danced.
     But they did laugh their heads off, all the time Jimmy was singing. They laughed so much they could hardly hear the vocal, though he kept going doggedly till the end. He remembered to do the high whistle and the click of his heels, and when he bobbed his head like a chicken for the final notes, the audience all but fell out of their seats. Jimmy began to feel like a fool.
     Hammy played the last beats on the drums, and Kellen finished strumming his guitar with a flourish.
     As the last notes died away, Jimmy gave an embarrassed nod to the audience. They finally stopped laughing.
     They began to clap.
     They began to cheer.
  In a moment, the room was echoing with stomping feet and yelling patrons.

 

About the Author

 SUSAN SLOATE is the author or co-author of more than 25 published books. This includes 3 editions of Forward to Camelot, a time-travel thriller about the JFK assassination that became a #6 Amazon bestseller, was honored in 3 literary competitions and was optioned by a Hollywood company for film production. She also wrote the autobiographical Broadway novel Stealing Fire, which became a #2 Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release, and Realizing You (with Ron Doades), for which she invented a new genre: the self-help novel.

Susan has also written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way, which won the silver medal in the 2007 Children’s Moonbeam Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest for The History Channel. She has also been a sportswriter and a screenwriter, edited the popular Kyle & Corey young-adult book series, managed two political campaigns and founded an author’s festival to promote student literacy in her hometown outside Charleston, SC. She has appeared in multiple volumes of WHO’S WHO IN AMERICA, WHO’S WHO IN ENTERTAINMENT and WHO’S WHO AMONG AMERICAN WOMEN.

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by Jan D. Payne

About the Author

Jan is a member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West. She and her husband live in northern Minnesota with their three big dogs—Kaibab, Rudi, and Orrin. Visit her website at: jandpayne.com

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-Enter the embattled woodland of the Lizard King Anole

-Behold a tail of enchanting alliances beyond sword and shield, claw and cutlass

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by Stephen Cox

Genre: Spooky Paranormal Victorian Murder Mystery

The Crooked Medium’s Guide To Murder

by Stephen Cox

Genre: Spooky Paranormal Victorian Murder Mystery

London 1881. Can two crooked women stop a murder?

 

Extravagant medium Mrs Ashton and her lover, blunt working-class Mrs Bradshaw, run a spiritualist scam. Mrs Ashton secretly reads minds.

Believing that Mrs Ashton is genuine, grieving Lady Violet craves the truth behind her mother’s untimely death. But Lady Violet’s powerful husband Sir Charles hates spiritualists. Has he killed before?

Uncovering this MP’s wicked crimes will put all three women in terrible danger…

 

To solve a shocking murder, look on both sides of the grave.

 

“An astonishing feat of twisting plots and perceptions”

“It’s deliciously twisty, with women who won’t be told, a young bride in peril, and the delicate art of a con.”

“A book I’ve been looking for all my life. Queer found family all wrapped up in a supernatural murder mystery. Absolute perfection.”

“a brilliant, gripping story. .. if you’re looking for a great new book to read, I encourage you to check it out.”

“…an actually intriguing mystery.”

“with a new murder thrown in and a couple of pre-existing ones uncovered, we get an astonishing story of redemption with well-plotted but never signposted twists and turns thrown in at every stage.”

“…a murder mystery with a supernatural spin. … the premise and plot were great. The story is very atmospheric with a very nasty aristocrat villain. ..an entertaining read…”

 

**Only .99cents!**

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Stephen Cox is a writer living in London. He’d read every Holmes, Christie, and Sayers before he was 21 and did Holmes fanfic in school. He has also read The Moonstone six times. With a science degree, he has always been a fan of history and the imagination.

The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder contains the strong characterisation, women protagonists, authentic period setting, and wide-roaming imagination of his other works.

He says ‘It’s a rip-roaring twisty story, with relationships under stress and surprising readers at every turn.”

His first two novels, Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds, were called “heartfelt, imaginative and gripping”, with wide praise in the national press.

Stephen says, ‘I wanted female rogues as my leads – people who lead a crooked life, who need to keep secrets, yet can be kind and generous too. This is a rigorous detective story with a client in trouble and old crimes to be solved. It has everything – a brutal man, a Lady in danger, and the past and present feeding the action. Can these outsiders possibly win? Queer women certainly existed and made lives together in Victorian England, as those with eyes to see can see,’

 

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by Jamil McGhee

@RABTBookTours #RABTBookTours #PennyandFriends #JamilMcGhee #ChildrensBook

 Children’s Book

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by Merie Robie

Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction

Three elder stateswomen in the music industry, scarred by scandal, addiction, and forced retirement, go all in to create a killer comeback album.

Wild Flowers

by Merie Robie

Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction

Three elder stateswomen in the music industry, scarred by scandal, addiction, and forced retirement, go all in to create a killer comeback album. As they learn to trust themselves and dive back into songwriting, they entwine their lives and voices in ways they couldn’t have imagined alone.

Everyone has forgotten about soul singer Honey Conaway, except that she stabbed a producer’s eye out at a party and left drunk and stumbling like some glitzy Medea. Everyone loves Gloria Redmond: Girls grew up listening to her country-tinged, smart-alecky tunes, but she has become irrelevant past her prime. And everyone knows Sian Star, not for her time fronting the pop band The Whirlygirls, but for driving a red Porsche into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. When these three women create an award-winning comeback album together, each is challenged by the version of herself that pushed her out of the spotlight in the first place.

 

What readers are saying:

“A beautiful novel about three vibrant, memorable women who refuse to abandon their passion for music despite their struggles with aging, caretaking, and the frustration of thwarted dreams. Gloria, Honey, and Sian are an inspiring reminder that nothing is over until it’s over.”

Jane Delury, Author of Hedge

 

“Drop the needle on this power chord of a novel and feel it pull you in. A resonant story about friendship, songwriting, and serendipity, and about how all of us, even aging country stars, can reinvent ourselves.” — Elisabeth Cohen, author of The Glitch. 

 

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Meri Robie is a writer and editor living in Baltimore. Her novel Wildflowers will be published by Watertower Press in 2025. Her play, “Light Strikes a Deal” was included in the Rapid Lemon Theater’s Variations on Night festival (2025), and she earned Honorable Mention for the 2023 Page One Contest by Gutsy Great Novelist (gutsygreatnovelist.com). She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. You can find her volunteering as an usher for various Baltimore theater productions, driving Baltimore School for the Arts students to local art events, or scribbling away notes in the front seat of her car at stop lights.

 

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by C. W. Holcomb

@RABTBookTours #RABTBookTours #ChaosWorldsBeyond #CWHolcomb #Fantasy 

 C.W. Holcomb’s writing style and major influences include a wide variety of well known novelists that came before him including, J.R.R Tolkien, Mary Stewart, Raymond E. Feist, C.S. Lewis, Robert Jordan, Elizabeth Hayden and Frank Herbert. The biggest influences on his style were Terry Brooks and Terry Goodkind. He has drawn inspiration for his novels from other areas as, well including, animated shows and video games.

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@RABTBookTours #RABTBookTours #FamilyTies #MichelePackard #Suspense 

 When an unidentified patient is admitted to a psychiatric ward, her erratic behavior and cryptic journal entries leave the staff scrambling for answers. Fragmented tales of abandonment, conspiracy, and violence spill from her lips, blurring the line between reality and delusion.

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by Pascal Bouquillard

@RABTBookTours #RABTBookTours #EdenTheFinalSolution #PascalBouquillard #Dystopian

2054, to combat the chronic anemia of the sedentary population, who live cloistered and under government tutelage, the pharmaceutical company Orson and Orson, of which Nucleus is the main shareholder, developed a regenerative pill called Jouvence. Everyone is clamoring for it. “Unfortunately,” the side effects of the miracle product affect the libido of the consumers, causing them to literally die of pleasure.

Nucleus manipulates governments to gradually rid the planet of the surplus humans who no longer have a place in a society where finance has supplanted mass consumerism. His hope is to turn Earth into a true Eden for his people who are, in his eyes, the only humans worthy of survival. However, a persistent infertility crisis amongst his kind, casts a dark shadow over his once-promising vision of a utopian future. Meanwhile, in the Metropolis, some Sedentaries, including Winston, manage to escape the systematic and inevitable extermination set in motion by Nucleus.

Will they be able to survive the persecution of the army of liberty and the reactivation of the GMO seeds of hyper-accumulating hyacinths that has covered the entire planet?

Gripping, provocative, and chillingly prescient, Eden: The Final Solution is a dystopian tour de force that challenges the limits of progress, morality and reimagine the Orwellian dystopia, shaped by the excesses and anxieties of our time. Fans of Brave New World and 1984 will find themselves enthralled—and terrified—by this haunting vision of the future.

About the Author

At the end of the ’80s, he spent several years touring Europe and French-speaking countries with the “Trio Français de Guitare”, which he co-founded and which specialized in transcriptions of works by early 20th-century composers. Unfortunately, focal dystonia prevents him from pursuing a career as a classical guitarist. He then obtained a scholarship to the “Maitrise de Musique Baroque de Versailles”, where he played tenor and was introduced to conducting.

In the ’90s, he co-founded the progressive rock band Saens, in which he was composer, singer, bassist and acoustic guitarist, and with whom he released three albums: Les Regrets d’Isidore D, Escaping From The Hands Of God and Prophet In A Statistical World.

In 1997, he conducted Benjamin Britten’s opera “Noah’s Ark” at the Cathédrale Saint Louis in Versailles, the Église Saint Augustin in Paris and the Théâtre de Poissy. That same year, he was invited to conduct a group of musicians from the Orchestre National de France at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, on the occasion of Mstislav Rostropovich’s 70th birthday.

He then moved to the USA to find the woman he was to marry. Interested by the turn the world economy is taking, he returns to his original political passions.

After more than 5 years of research and reflection as part of a virtual focused group of French citizens, and driven by the anxieties provoked by his discoveries, he launched into the writing of “Eden” and the “Practical Guide toward an Atomic Democracy”.

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by Jim Lester

The newspaper war between William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World is raging, while in Cuba a brave band of Cuban rebels are struggling to overthrow the tyrannical rule of Spain.

As war fever builds, Cassie O’Conner, one of the first female reporters of the era, goes undercover in an insane asylum, where she makes a discovery of historic proportion: a plot to assassinate President William McKinley. But before she can act on her discovery, Cassie is kidnapped and whisked away to Cuba, forcing the Journal and the World to join forces in a daring rescue attempt.

Can they return her to Washington, D.C. in time to stop the assassination of the president?

Full of action, adventure and romance, THE BLUE RIDERS is a fast-paced, hard-to-put down historical thriller.

About the Author

Jim Lester holds a Ph.D in history and is the author of three successful young adult novels–Fallout, The Great Pretender and Shadow Games as well as two exciting historical thrillers, Deadline:New York and Call to a Nightmare. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, he now makes his home in Colorado.

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