Book Birthday Blitz: Feel-Good Stories by Sarah Swatridge
Today is the book birthday for Feel-Good Stories by Sarah Swatridge and it’s a blog blitz! This book is made up of heart warming stories! And today on this site Sarah is sharing an extract from the story Hey Mr Postman! She is also having a giveaway if you live in the UK!
Book Description:
An eclectic mix of heart-warming stories, full of memorable, quirky characters. Read about the heroic postie, the eccentric duke, a spoilt parrot, a true friend and a determined would-be husband. Perfect bite-sized reading with your favourite drink.
Buy Your Copy Here:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
A note from Sarah:
Hey Mr Postman! – One for romantics! Set around Valentine’s Day, a postman goes the extra mile to make sure he delivers a message…general feel-good story and the sort of postie everyone would like to have.
Hey Mr Postman!
Simon, the postman, looked again at the postcard. It definitely said ‘49 Franklin Avenue’ and yet there only seemed to be thirty well-established homes.
He was fairly new to the area, having moved on his thirtieth birthday! Perhaps there was a Franklin Road, Street or Crescent? He checked his phone. The signal wasn’t great but eventually he found there were no other similar road names.
Of course, that didn’t account for any new-builds. It seemed to take an age before new postcodes were updated.
He studied the postcard. The picture was of a bunch of roses. The warmth of the red made him smile. They cheered him on a bitterly cold February morning. It was almost Valentine’s Day; this card could be really important…
It was addressed to Lizzie Halladay, so he looked up that name, but the search wasn’t helpful. Time was getting on and he needed to finish his round. He slipped the postcard in his pocket and continued on his way.
He returned to the depot and spoke to his supervisor. Together they examined the postcard but even the postmark wasn’t clear. They had no clue as to who had sent it. It wasn’t even signed, and the message seemed rather cryptic. “So, what do we do now?” Simon asked.
“There’s nothing more we can do.” His boss shook his head. “The policy is to place it in the ‘undelivered’” tray for one month, after which it’s shredded and the paper recycled.”
Simon wasn’t happy with that. “I don’t like to stand in the way of true love,” he said. “Can I try and track her down?”
“Not officially,” his supervisor said, then added, “It’ll have to be in your own time. “And don’t do anything to give the post office a bad name! And remember, we haven’t had this conversation?”
Want to read on? Buy your copy now!
About the Author:
Sarah Swatridge’s name can often be seen in women’s magazines worldwide such as My Weekly, Woman’s Weekly, Fiction Feast. She also writes novels, mainly historical, which can be found in the Large Print section of your public library. These novels are standalone and the themes vary from – women setting up a co-operative together in response to dishonest traders in the area (United we Stand) to stories set around employees in a biscuit factory (Biscuit Wars, Gentle Annie, Cakes in the Biscuit Factory etc) to the work of pawn brokers (Adam’s Emporium) or a woman in 1900 wanting an adventure before agreeing to marry (Biddy’s Big Adventure – also available from Calibre Audio if you have problems accessing print in the traditional way).
Contact Sarah:
Website
Facebook Profile
**UK Giveaway**
Enter to win one of two paperback copies of An Honourable Wager by Sarah Swatridge
Enter to win here!
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box above. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
Blog Tour: Guest Post: Invisible by Heleyne Hammersley
Today I am helping to end the blog tour for Invisible by Heleyne Hammersley by sharing a guest post! She shares about her journey with her character DI Kate Fletcher and the series. This one was just released on September 23rd and is book six in the series. **She is also having an international giveaway where she is giving away five kindle copies!**
Book Description:
An icy morning, a muddy riverbank. The body of a promising swimmer is found in the River Don close to Thorpe. Returning from a six-month absence, DI Kate Fletcher leads her first murder case since she nearly lost her own life to a desperate killer.
Grappling with her own doubts and insecurities, she has to negotiate a team transformed by differences in staffing and in attitude. Everything has changed and nobody is comfortable.
A second body leads to a strong suspect, but the evidence is circumstantial and far from clear cut. Kate’s ex-Detective Sergeant finds the breakthrough they need to help track down a cunning and meticulous murderer who has no conscience and no fear of consequences.
But can Kate act in time to prevent more deaths?
Buy Your Copy Here:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
I’ve been on a bit of an adventure! Not one of my usual walking or cycling trips but an exploration of a world I knew nothing about a few years ago.
My DI Kate Fletcher series originally did quite well with a publisher but, after a slump in sales, I opted to take back my rights and have a think about where to go next with Kate and her team. It turned out to be a very long think. Over a year later, I decided to republish the whole series myself on Amazon Kindle. The problem was I had no idea where to start. I had no idea how to format my Word document for Kindle, no idea how to market the book once it was live and no idea what to expect in terms of sales as the books had already been around for a while.
I’d love to say I watched a couple of videos and did a bit of reading and worked it all out, but in reality I asked a lot of questions and received a lot of excellent advice from others who were on a similar journey. There are some amazing and generous people in the online writing community! I managed to find a cover designer who understood what I wanted and I finally pressed ‘publish’ on Closer to Home in March 2024 with the other titles following later the same year.
But I had nothing to follow them up with. I’d almost given up on Kate and had written two books in a potential new series set in Cumbria, but she wouldn’t let me write her off (pun intended) and I found myself thinking about where I’d left her in 2021. Was it right that the series finished with her battered and broken? And what about her relationship with Nick? I felt there was quite a lot of unfinished business. So Invisible was born.
The story picks up six months after the end of Shattered when Kate finally returns to work after an extended absence. Her team have survived without her, but there have been changes in both personnel and attitude and she has to navigate new personalities and changed relationships while trying to apprehend a vicious serial killer – all the usual police procedural stuff.
I’m so happy with the result. I asked Morgen, who’d edited one of my previous books, if she’d get rid of all my worst writing habits and she did a great job. My cover designer came up with a design that fits well with the rest of the series and…I’m publishing in paperback as well as on Kindle. (Another adventure, complete with pulling my hair out, screaming and throwing things!)
I have no idea what to expect on September 23rd when Invisible will be published. I hope there will be reviews. I hope that they’re mainly positive. I hope that people who enjoyed the other books in the series will come back for another story, despite the long gap.
I think it was a good decision for me to continue Kate’s narrative – hopefully there’ll be people out there who’ll agree.
About the Author:
Heleyne Hammersley is a British writer based in Cumbria. She writes psychological suspense thrillers and crime novels.
Heleyne has been writing since junior school – her first work was a collection of poems called ‘Give Them the Works’ when she was ten years old. The poems were carefully handwritten on plain paper and tied together with knitting wool.
When she’s not writing, Heleyne can often be found wandering on the fells or cycling the back roads of Cumbria in search of coffee and cake.
Contact Heleyne:
Threads @heleynehammersleyauthor
Instagram @heleynehammersleyauthor
**International Giveaway**
Enter to Win one of five Kindle Copies of Invisible (distributed via Amazon)
Enter to win here!
*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box above. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
See the entire blog tour here:
Blog Tour: An Extract from The Songs That Find Us by Andrea Darby
Today I am taking part of the blog tour for The Songs that Find Us by Andrea Darby by sharing an extract from the novel! This one was just released this past Tuesday, September 22nd! **And if you are lucky enough to live in the UK, she has a fabulous giveaway going on!
Book Description:
Lizzie thinks the difficult years are behind her.
She has a happy marriage, a career she loves, and a daughter beginning to find her place in the world. But when her husband Ed receives a devastating diagnosis, long-buried secrets surface – shattering everything Lizzie believes about their life together.
Now Ed is desperate to set things right before his memories slip away.
Meanwhile, their adopted daughter Beck is searching for answers of her own that could change the family forever.
After rediscovering her love of singing, Lizzie brings together a community where friendship, kindness and music forge unexpected connections — and perhaps a way back to one another.
Buy Your Copy Here:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
A note from Andrea:
This is from an early scene of the novel featuring one of the novel’s three narrators, Beck. The other two narrators are her mum Lizzie and dad Ed — so the reader gets three different perspectives as the story unfolds. Beck has recently moved away from the tensions at home to live in London with best friend Meg and decided to look for her birth mum – though she hasn’t told her adoptive parents. Here, she’s in a café with best friend Meg after a trip to a few local charity shops.
Beck
We’ve barely settled onto a comfy leather sofa with our usual espresso macchiatos in short glasses when Meg pulls the rust-coloured vase from her inside pocket, plonking it down on the wooden table.
‘What the— ? ’ I gaze around the room. ‘Stealing from a charity shop. That’s low, even for you.’
‘Call it borrowing. We’ll take it back when you’re bored with it.’
‘When you put it like that.’ I smile, but I’m uneasy. We’re not students anymore – I thought we’d moved on. Meg’s parents are loaded so she doesn’t need to steal.
A text pings in from Dad:
Will get the costings across shortly.
I read it to Meg. ‘Clearly not meant for me.’
‘Old-gen alert! My mum’s done that a few times. One was actually a sext . . . ewww, cringe.’ Meg shudders.
I laugh, but Dad’s message mess-up troubles me a bit, which must show on my face because Meg asks about him.
‘He’s having a few tests and scans. I think the doctor has pretty much put it down to stress. That’s what Dad said anyway. Of course, Mum’s hyping it up.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. Stress can really wear you down.’ Meg sips her coffee. ‘Bad news about Leo’s twenty-first.’ She looks earnest. ‘Sophie’s going, apparently.’
The thought of facing her again drags in my belly, a swell of dread, and irritation. ‘Hopefully it’s the last time I’ll ever see her.’
‘Why, you gonna bump her off? Getting ideas from all those psycho thrillers you read?’
‘Don’t tempt me. Her family’s moving to France, and she might join them.’ I cross two heavily ringed fingers. ‘Au revoir, bitch.’
‘Just stay away from her jacket at the party.’ Meg splutters a laugh over her drink.
‘What a fuss she made.’ I bite at some loose skin by my fingernail. Maybe what I did was extreme, but Sophie deserved it, for all her games with Jai. ‘Anyway, it couldn’t have been me, I don’t smoke anymore.’
‘Even Sophie’s not that stupid.’
I sip my coffee. ‘Can’t believe Leo’s twenty-one. I don’t think his party will be in the same league as one we’re organising at work for a client’s fiftieth birthday. A champagne fountain and ice sculptures. He’s even hiring a bloody orchestra.’
‘Impressive.’
‘Sadly, as a low-grade admin assistant, I won’t make the guest list.’ I wince as I rest the coffee glass on my thigh, catching the bare skin. ‘God, I need more money. My wage is pathetic.’
‘What about asking your parents?’
‘Why do you think I’m heading home for a couple of days?’ I expect a lecture: ‘You chose to live in London. If you can’t afford it then . . .blah-blah.’ But I’ll probably get money, so will have to suck it up.
‘A chance to tell them about searching for your birth mother perhaps?’
I stay silent, watching a family pile into the café, two children hidden under green umbrellas with huge frog eyes. ‘I’m following this great blog by someone looking for her biological family.’ I tap on my mobile. ‘Here, have a read.’ I hand it over.
‘Hang on, this isn’t it . . .’ Meg looks puzzled ‘. . . FreeToAGoodHome . . . sounds like furniture recycling or something.’
‘That’s what she calls the blog.’ I’ll have to spell it out for Meg, as usual. ‘She’s referring to herself, as a baby, when she was put up for adoption.’
‘Aww, that’s so sad,’ Meg says, pouting a bit.
Yes, it is sad.
Really sad.
About the Author:
Andrea Darby writes commercial women’s fiction with book club appeal, exploring emotionally engaging stories about family, relationships, resilience – and hope. Her stories are for readers who enjoy thought-provoking, uplifting novels with plenty to discuss. Andrea is a prize-winning journalist with more than 20 years’ experience as a writer and sub-editor on newspapers and magazines. Her articles have been published in regional and national titles, including Prima, Best, Take a Break, Prima Baby, Woman and Dogs Today. She plays several brass instruments, sings in a choir and teaches piano from her home in Gloucestershire – where she’s lucky to have very understanding neighbours. Ideas for writing often come while listening to music or walking Betty the cockapoo through muddy fields.
Contact Andrea:
Website
Twitter @ADarbyAuthor
Instagram @andreadarbyauthor
**UK GIVEAWAY**
Win signed copy of The Songs That Find Us, luxury tea, luxury chocolate and William Morris pen
Enter to win here!
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the link above. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
See the entire blog tour here:
