Iceland Trip- part one

The Pearl- one of the places we visited on the first day

I had a wonderful time on my trip to Iceland this last week. It was a birthday present to myself. When I received the information about the trip through the Authors Guild in an email and saw the trip was the week of my birthday, it felt like kismet. I told hubby about the trip and said I’d like to go. And being the best hubby ever, he said, “Go.”

The wonderful thing about this trip was it had been put together to not only take us to the usual tourist sites but it also had literary events set up just for us.

I left Boise, ID on Sunday afternoon and arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland at 8:30 am on Monday. An hour and a half later, after taking two buses from the airport to my hotel, Center Hotel Arnarhvoll, I had time to put my things in my room and grab lunch and meet our guide, Ragnor, in the lobby before we headed out to see the area near our hotel.

That day we toured the National Museum of Iceland. It had the story of the island and many exhibits of the way the earliest occupants lived. The first inhabitants of Iceland were Norsemen. They came from Norway in the 900s because they didn’t want to pay taxes and follow the rules of the king.

These first people were considered pagans because they didn’t have structured religious beliefs. Though through the Icelandic Sagas and what I learned, they had similar views of the earth and life as the American Indian. They believed there was a creator and also that earth, animals and the solar system had a part in their journeys on earth.

This was one side of the living space. See the other bed behind this one.

One of the interesting pieces of the museum was this replica of a house they would have lived in. The beds were not long enough for anyone to lie down. I was told they slept sitting up in the beds, each facing the opposite direction. This kept down the hanky-panky and allowed for family members and non-family members to share beds. A small home could sleep 8 people as there were four beds in this particular replica.

We drove by the Parliament building, sculptures, and many of the city’s landmarks. The other place we stopped was the Hallgrimskirkja church. It was beautiful and had a statue of Leif Erickson in front.

The huge organ in the church is the largest in Iceland.

The walk up the stairs was worth the views from the tower. We could see all of Reykjavik from all four sides of the tower.

That evening we had a three course dinner at a downtown restaurant. Even though it was fish (which we had at either lunch or dinner or both every day) I enjoyed the ambiance and the meal. As well as getting to know the 9 other members of our tour group.

This wall not only at one time held back the ocean, it was a wall of the restaurant where we had dinner the first night.

I’ll be posting a couple of blog posts a week here with photos and escapades of my Iceland trip. Follow my blog if you want to see all the things we did and photos of Iceland.

$0.99 Birthday Special!

From now until July 1st you can purchase the Letters of Fate Trilogy as an ebook box set for only $0.99!

It’s my birthday month and I like to give. So for this limited time you can get Davis, Brody, and Issac for a steal of a price. The normal price for these this box set is $9.99.

These are my “mail-order grooms” books. Only instead of the hero getting a letter from the heroine, he receives a letter that changes the course of his life and puts in the way of his future bride.

Three historical western novels filled with steamy romance and the rawness of a growing country.

Davis: Davis Weston receives a letter from his sister asking him to marry a friend. Widowed with two small children and a ranch to run, Mariella Swanson knows she needs help, but isn’t sure her heart, or neighbors, will accept her marrying a stranger. Can the two compromise or will fate once again leave them alone?

Brody: After receiving a letter, Brody Yates finds himself escorted across the country to work on a ranch rather than entering prison. However, a revenge driven criminal, the Oregon high desert, and his grandfather’s beautiful ward may prove more dangerous than anything he’d faced on the New York docks.

Isaac: The last thing Isaac Corum needs or wants is a snooty woman. Dang it all, the woman doesn’t do a single blasted thing she’s told, and Isaac can’t just sit back and let her go traipsing off into the mountains alone…

Universal link: https://books2read.com/u/47zp6R

Authors4Veterans Giveaway

I’m excited to share this amazing giveaway with you all. It was such a privilege to participate in this year’s annual Authors4Veterans charity drive. Not only did we help veterans’ families, we also have 4 bags to share with our readers.

So, to back up a little bit, Authors4Veterans is a non-profit organization started by Stacey Joy Netzel and PJ Fiala in 2017. The purpose of Authors4Veterans is simple; they contact fellow authors like myself, asking for a small monetary donation and books, swag and comfort items. They bag them up in beautiful canvas zippered bags and deliver them to Fisher House Wisconsin. Fisher House is a fantastic organization, located on the VA grounds in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where military families who need temporary housing can stay while their loved one receives care at the VA hospital. This is all free to the families. There are currently 84 houses in operation. You can find out more about Fisher House here – https://www.fisherhouse.org/

Authors4Veterans’ came to be as Stacey and PJ both come from strong military backgrounds and they wanted to give back in some way. To date, our author bags have been given to over 115 families. Sometimes families have little notice that they have to rush to the hospital and these bags come in handy as they usually contain toothbrushes, toothpaste, shower soap, hand lotion, etc. in them as well as the books and swag. Families are given a bag upon check-in. Fisher House has shared that the families are often over-come with emotion at the generosity of the authors and how comforting the bags have been.

So, all that said, we also want to give something to our readers! Enter the giveaway below for a chance to win your own Authors4Veterans bag filled with goodies. The giveaway ends at 11:45p CST on June 20^th. Four winners will be drawn and announced on June 21^st. There are several opportunities for you to enter the giveaway, and of course, sharing it is always appreciated.

Enter the giveaway here – https://authors4veterans.com/2019/06/june-reader-giveaway/

Good luck everyone.

Vacations Turn into Books

In January my husband and I took a trip to Reno, Nevada. I had the highest bid for a two-night stay at the Peppermill in a silent auction the year before.

I set it up, knowing we also had an amount we could spend at the spa. All the way there I all I could think of was a nice body massage and one for hubby. We went into the spa and discovered we didn’t have enough to cover two massages. I said we could still get two but frugal hubby said, no. I signed up for a massage and my husband had a gentlemen’s pedicure.

This was a fancy spa. I entered an area just for women to change and then I could join my husband in a co-ed area with a hot tub, sauna, and a quiet lounge where we waited for our treatments. I had expected my husband to join me in the lounge, but he didn’t arrive before they called me back to the room for my massage. It turned out he’d been taking a tour of the three floors that made up the spa.

I was taken to a room and asked to slip under the sheet on the massage table. I did as I was asked. As I laid there face down, staring at the floor waiting for the masseuse to come back, my mind wandered in the direction it seems to go more and more these days. I thought, “I could be a dead body and no one would notice.” That, of course had my mind flying to all sorts of scenarios. The masseuse came in and started my massage. The whole time I was still figuring out how I could have a murder in a spa like the one I was at, and how to involved Shandra Higheagle the main character in my mystery series.

By the time my massage was over, I had the story starting in my head. After dressing, I went out and started asking the people at the sign-in desk a bunch of questions about how a spa that size was run, while I waited for my husband to come out of the men’s side.

Back home, I started coming up with a method of murder that would be plausible and started the book Toxic Trigger-point. The book opens with Shandra opening a door to a massage room and seeing someone face down on the table. She thinks she’s got the wrong room and waits in the hall. She and the masseuse discover the woman on the table is dead.

I love when I can work something I’ve experienced into a book. I’ll be taking a jet boat ride in a couple of weeks to learn more about the Hells Canyon area to set a Gabriel Hawke book there. My need to know the settings for my books will also take me to Iceland this month. My goal is to have Hawke go there to teach or learn more about tracking on cold conditions. (watch for blogs and photos about both trips)

Another great thing about traveling, our 40^th anniversary trip will be to Hawaii, where I hope to send Shandra for book #14.

Seeing the places I use as settings in books helps me to experience it not only through me but through my characters.