Indie Advent Calendar
It’s day 2 of the Indie Advent Calendar, organised by Kay Macleod for the 3rd year in a row (follow the link above to see the full event) and today sees two authors for you to discover.
Josie Jaffrey – The Gilded King
If you love Young Adult Dystopian Fantasy, then The Gilded King is for you!
In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well.
Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, a boy who believes in fairytales that Julia’s world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside.
But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained.
Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight.
One way or another, the walls of the Blue are going to come down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.
Margaret Standafer – The Inn At Misty Lake
Welcome to Misty Lake, a charming small town in Northern Minnesota and home to the McCabe siblings: Jake, Joe, Frank, Riley, and Shauna, all of whom are eager to meet you! This year in the Advent Calendar event, I’m featuring Book Two in the Misty Lake Series, The Inn at Misty Lake, a clean, romantic suspense novel that tells Riley and Susan’s story. Like all the books in the series, it can be read as a stand-alone story.
Susan Taylor needs a fresh start. Tired of Chicago and especially of her job at a posh hotel, she figures she’s found the perfect solution to her problems in Misty Lake. Converting an abandoned farmhouse into a bed and breakfast means she will finally have the chance to be the one calling the shots.
Riley McCabe has his doubts about the project Susan proposes. As a contractor, it’s hard to refuse a long-term, good-paying job, but the house has so many problems, he’s convinced it would be smarter to just tear it down. However, he quickly learns that when Susan makes up her mind, it’s awfully hard to change it.
When Riley’s past suddenly becomes his present, Susan is forced to fight for her inn, her life, and the man she is hoping will be part of her future.
I loved writing The Inn at Misty Lake. Riley and Susan quickly became two of my favorite characters and I thoroughly enjoyed the banter that came so easy to the two of them. Tracking their progress on the farmhouse overhaul was a blast! My husband and I have been married for nearly thirty years and during that time have tackled many home improvement and remodeling projects. While we’ve never taken on anything quite as ambitious as Riley and Susan’s project, I had some experience to drawn on, a willing expert in my husband, and found so many incredible resources online when researching that sometimes I lost most of my writing day browsing through remodeling websites. People have such incredible imaginations and ingenuity! I hope you’ll check out Riley and Susan’s story as well as the adventures of the rest of the McCabe siblings in the other Misty Lake books and let me know what you think.
When I’m not writing (or losing myself in “research”) I’m working as a substitute teacher in middle school and high school, gardening, hiking, walking my dog, traveling, or reading. Actually, I’m always reading, and have found ways to incorporate it into most of the aforementioned activities.
Merry Christmas and best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year!
Alex R Carver 
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