Blog Tour Giveaway : Wealth & Privilege and Brains & Beauty

Wealth & Privilege and Brains & Beauty

Brains and Beauty Excerpt

Excerpt 1

There was grunting, and the sound of wood groaning, and then a wet thump as they lifted and threw something. Regina could tell that there was a little more room behind her shoulder blades. There was more grunting and dragging and thumping. Then she heard them both groan.

“What’s going on back there? Have I been cut off at the waist?” she asked. Not being able to see what was wrong, or the progress they were having, was making her anxious.

“The next layer is completely wedged in. We can’t do this without tools,” Isaac told her.

Both men hurried away from her, making her worry for their safety. She had also found their company reassuring. What if neither one of them was able to find her again?

That’s when she saw the flickering orange glow in the distance. “No.”

Yes. It didn’t seem possible – but in the midst of water floating below, and pouring from above, something had caught on fire.

Regina started listing in her head all the accelerants that might be contained in a single drygoods store: tar, pitch, turpentine, kerosene. How many homes used all of them? How many gas lines were ruptured all over the city? How many wood stoves were knocked into them? There was no way this heap would NOT be set on fire.

And here she was, stuck, in the middle of it. No doubt about it, she was about to die in the same town in which she was born. It was a shame, really. She had such high aspirations.

Wealth and Privilege Excerpt

Excerpt 1

Irritating his mother wasn’t specifically Thomas’ favorite hobby.  She did, however, seem to excel at providing him with opportunities to do so. He didn’t have to try very hard.  His very existence was an obvious irritant to her.  It wasn’t because of who he was – Thomas knew perfectly well it was all about what he wasn’t.

He wasn’t everything his older brother Benjamin had been; quick and clever and charming and talkative.  The entire Baldwin family – especially his mother, Eugenia Baldwin, aspiring family matriarch and his most verbal critic – admitted that Thomas was the much more handsome of the two.  Then everyone shrugged.  Pretty is as pretty does.

Thomas had to agree on that point.  He gladly would have traded his bright blue eyes and much-admired dark hair for the ability to know what to say to people.

He stood at the entrance to the ballroom in his parents’ house, surrounded by giggling girls all wishing him a happy birthday with their dance cards not-so-subtly dangling from their wrists.  Trying to smile, he offered his hand to accept the little pencils and sign the blasted things.

What Does Your Office Look Like?

My life being what it is, I have figured out something. I am The Chosen One of Kali, Indian Goddess of Chaos and the Destroyer of Egos. I accept my fate.

My office makes a great metaphor for my life. Or is it my personality? Chaos and destruction everywhere you look.

I know there’s furniture in here somewhere, but it’s a little hard to tell sometimes. It’s the darnedest thing about horizontal surfaces: they attract papers. There is nothing more irresistible to a piece of paper than an empty horizontal surface. When an empty horizontal surface isn’t available, a horizontal surface with only 2-4 layers of papers will do. Binders and folders and books don’t care for bare horizontal surfaces as much; they prefer a nice, cushy layer of papers underneath to keep them warm.

Tapes and CDs like to nest in packs. Or maybe they’re covens. Herds? Whatever one calls a burrow of music, they pick a spot in a nice, comfy corner, like the one between the record player/VHS deck/cassette player tower stacked next to my monitor. (I am a dance instructor, and there are times that the only way I can get my hands on a certain recording that I need is to digitize it from an older source.) They then stack themselves one on top of the other like a bunch of teenagers crashed on a beanbag in a puppy pile watching horror movies.

The poor printers have to go on strike from time to time just to get attention… because of course, the top of a printer is also a horizontal surface. But printers don’t appreciate being buried under papers. They are the ones who generate the papers in the first place, and they need some breathing room. They suffocate easily. There’s nothing like a paper jam to make the crazy occupants of this office clean the papers off the top and out from in front of the paper tray.

The true mystery of the office lives under the table where the scanner and old photo printer and the tidy reams of virgin paper sit. It’s where old computer parts go to die. This is sort of like the “man cave” of the office. I don’t go in there. No matter how many dust bunnies are mating against the silver side of an old CPU (I think that’s what it’s called), or how tall the stack of out-of-date software gets, or how far it crawls out into the middle of the room, that is my husband’s domain, and encroachments into that territory are not advisable. Some things are best left alone.

Jeanette Watts is a dance instructor and performer of many different kinds of dance, a costumer, a former television producer, and a big softie who can’t learn to say no when people need help with their festivals. It makes it really difficult for her to get time to write.

 Website: www.JeanetteWatts.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeanette.watts.94

Twitter: @JeanetteAWatts    

Purchase Links

Amazon: Wealth and Privilege: https://www.createspace.com/4352661

Brains and Beauty: https://www.createspace.com/5865403

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wealth-and-privilege-jeanette-watts/1115581019?ean=9781490934518

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