Today, I am welcoming author Jan Sikes to Roberta Writes to talk about her new novel, JAGGED FEATHERS. Welcome Jan!

Feather art

Thank you, Robbie, for inviting me to your blog site today to talk about my new book, JAGGED FEATHERS! I appreciate your generosity.

I remember a few years ago, as I scrolled through Pinterest, I found some artwork that was literally breathtaking. I knew when I found it I wanted to use it someday in a story. So, when I created my character, Nakina Bird, I gave her the artistic gift of painting on feathers. I had to research some of the basics in order to write it, but what a fascinating and delicate medium. Here are a few examples. If you’d like, visit Pinterest and take a look at some of the amazing feather art.

When Vann Noble discovered an assortment of feathers and paint supplies in the bottom of Nakina’s backpack, he was more than a little curious. Any type of art interested him, but especially art that used things occurring in nature.

Excerpt:

She (Nakina) spread clean paper, assembled her paints and brushes, then reached for the feather. “The first thing you have to do is prime the feather or set your base, and I do that with a spray fixative.”

Vann pulled up a stool beside her. She smoothed the feather with her slender fingers, almost as if she were combing it. He found himself wondering what those fingers would feel like on his skin. Dammit! He had to keep his thoughts focused and quit acting like a touch-deprived fool. “So, shaping is important?”

“Yes. Then once you have it exactly how you want it, spray both sides with the fixative.” She reached for a spray can, and the movement caused her thigh to brush against his.

“Do you have to wait for it to dry?” He fought to ignore the touch.

“On a feather, it dries almost instantly. Do you by chance have any masking tape?”

“I’m sure I do somewhere.” He pushed up from the stool and rummaged through drawers on a side cabinet. “Here you go.” He placed the tape in the palm of her hand, and his fingertips lightly brushed her soft skin. His breath quickened.

She carefully tore off three small pieces and attached them to the back side of the feather, then pressed it down onto the paper. “This just helps stabilize and strengthen the spine. You can’t imagine how many quills I broke when I was first learning.”

He rested his elbows on the table while she squirted small dots of acrylic paint onto the paper. Using short brush strokes, she outlined the profile of a dog. “You’re going to paint Champion!”

She smiled. “It was appropriate for this feather. It seems the piece you’re working on and this feather are symbolic. So it needs Champion on it too. The most important thing is to always paint in the direction the feather lies.”

“Uh huh. That makes sense.”

Her face relaxed, and a half-smile graced her lips. The soothing, rhythmical strokes of the brush spread through Vann, and for the first time in hours his mind quieted and peace washed over him.

Champion came alive one brushstroke at a time on the inky surface of the raven’s feather.

Nakina was right. This piece was symbolic in every way. It might be one that he’d keep for himself.

What was it she had said about a raven’s feather? It represented creation and knowledge. Those were both important to survival in life.

He found incomparable comfort in creating art, and it was vividly apparent that Nakina did as well.

Her long, slender fingers moved with grace over the delicate medium. He followed her movement, taking in each detail. Her face softened, and the furrow between her brow smoothed.

When she laid down her brush, an uncanny likeness of Champion occupied the surface of the feather.

Vann let out a low whistle. “That’s amazing.”

At the whistle, Champion jumped to his feet and trotted over.

Nakina loosened the masking tape and lifted the feather from the paper. She held it up in the sunlight. “Thanks. Do you think it looks like him?”

“What do you think old boy?” Vann patted Champion’s back.

The dog let out a short bark.

Nakina laughed. “Looks like he approves.”

“So do I. That is truly fascinating and something I’ll try my hand at someday.”

***

Have you ever seen feather art before? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. If I were an artist, I would certainly try it.

Book trailer

Blurb

Vann Noble did his duty. He served his country and returned a shell of a man, wounded inside and out. With a missing limb and battling PTSD, he seeks healing in an isolated cabin outside a small Texas town with a stray dog that sees beyond his master’s scars. If only the white rune’s magic can bring a happily ever after to a man as broken as Vann.  

On the run from hired killers and struggling to make sense of her unexplained deadly mission, Nakina Bird seeks refuge in Vann’s cabin. She has secrets. Secrets that can get them all killed.

A ticking clock and long odds of living or dying, create jarring risks. Will these two not only survive, but find an unexpected love along the way? Or, will evil forces win and destroy them both?

Universal purchase link

https://linktr.ee/Rijanjks

Social media links

WEBSITE: http://www.jansikes.com

BLOG:   http://www.jansikesblog.com

TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/jansikes3

FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorJanSikesBooks

PINTEREST: https://www.pinterest.com/jks0851/

GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7095856.Jan_Sikes

BOOKBUB:   https://www.bookbub.com/authors/jan-sikes

LINKEDIN:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jansikes/

AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE: https://www.amazon.com/Jan-Sikes/e/B00CS9K8DK

About Jan Sikes

Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2022/02/10/goodbye-wethersfield/

After taking a walk to see the bushmen paintings and Anglo Boer War etchings I featured for last week Thursday Doors post, we travelled into the tiny town of Nieu Bethesda to do a little exploring. I’ll tell you a bit more about this fascinating tiny town in due course, but today, I am featuring the garden of the Owl House.

Helen Elizabeth Martins in a South African artist who worked with concrete and glass. She installed her elderly and ailing father, who was believed to have been emotionally abusive to his family during her younger years, in an outside room which she painted black. She ended her life at the age of 78 by drinking caustic soda.

“Helen Martins’ Owl House, often cited as South Africa’s finest example of outsider art, is an extraordinary, other-worldly home of concrete and ground glass sculptures. Her creativity conjures up an array of emotions: from wonder to excitement, curiosity and sadness.”

You can read more about Helen Martins and the Owl House here: https://www.graaffreinet.co.za/listing/owl_house_nieu_bethesda

Let’s start with pictures of the concrete and glass structures in her garden:

If you’d like to learn more about Helen Martins, you can watch this 7 minute video about her life:

The Hay Bale by Priscilla Bettis

What Amazon says

Contemporary Southern Gothic meets weird horror in this new novelette from Priscilla Bettis.

Professor Claire Davenport yearns to be a mother. After suffering four miscarriages, the university microbiologist tries and fails to qualify as an adoptive mother. Then Claire’s husband leaves.

Alone and emotionally wounded, Claire takes a summer sabbatical from her microbiology classes and escapes to rural Virginia to heal. There, she meets local farmers with strange agricultural practices.

Claire moves into the historic manor house she rented for the summer, and an abandoned child greets her. Is the child real, an answer to her prayers? Or is he a figment of her tormented emotions? Perhaps the tight-knit locals are playing a trick on the science lady from the city.

Whatever the boy’s origin, Claire is determined to find the truth, but the truth may be bloody.

My review

The Hay Bale is one of the best horror short stories I’ve read in along time. It is clever and creepily disturbing with a climax that will have you wondering about it for a long time after you’ve finished reading the last page. For me, it was a bit reminiscent of Children of the Corn by Stephen King with it’s remote rural setting and deviant cult-like community beliefs and behaviours. The author created and maintained the same breath-holding tension.

Claire is a successful career microbiologist who has had four miscarriages and had to face the realisation that she cannot control her own biology. An unsuccessful attempt at adoption due to her unstable mental condition has led to the complete breakdown of her relationship. In an effort to pull herself together and get back on her feet, Claire has rented an old farmhouse in a remote location. She plans to rest and come to terms with her losses and future path.

Soon after her arrival, Claire starts to hear strange scratching sounds. She also meets the peculiar minister of the local church who warns her to keep away from a seemingly diseased hay bale. Are the two tied together, and if so, how?

The story is well written and fast paced with good tension throughout. If you like good horror and are not feint hearted, you will enjoy this dark short tale. 

Purchase The Hay Bale

Amazon US

I Wouldn’t Be Surprised: A Short Story by D.L. Finn

What Amazon says

Do you ever wish you could take back your words? Janice and Dale Hart sat around the dinner table laughing at silly “I wouldn’t be surprised” jokes that included UFOs, Bigfoot, hand-delivered food, and serial killers. A week later, an innocent plate of food is left on Dale’s truck in the middle of the night. That’s only the beginning, and the presents go from harmless to life-threatening. Will the Harts find help in time to survive an evil bearer of “gifts”? Find out in this paranormal thriller.

My review

This is an entertaining short story about a couple who amuse themselves over dinner one evening by playing a game of ‘what if’. The following day, Janice finds a plate of bread in her husband, Dale’s, truck. None of the likely people they know gave them the bread and Janice cannot work out who the giver is from the security camera footage.

The circumstances of Janice’s life become even stranger as the days pass and, to make matters worse, her dog is also jumpy and behaving strangely. It seems as if the game she and Dale played that night is coming true in a weird and frightening way.

This is a nicely written story with a good interest factor and a unique plot . There is an interesting twist at the end of the book.

Purchase I Wouldn’t Be Surprised: A Short Story

Amazon US

Handprints by Wanda Adams Fischer

What Amazon says

After their husbands commit them to a state mental institution in Massachusetts, two women become friends. Were they–and the other women who filled the place–even mentally ill? Anne was eccentric, to be sure, and her Boston fireman husband decided it was more than he could bear. Edna loved to read and write poetry; her husband said she wasn’t “a good wife,” so he called the constable and had her taken away to the state mental hospital. She craved companionship and found Anne during her first night at the place. Edna called Anne “Anne of Green Gables”; she told everyone who’d listen that she was Edna St. Vincent Millay. This novella looks at the way they cope with spending the rest of their lives in a state mental institution with humor and Anne’s visitors from the outside world–and how they make a Christmas surprise visit to the site of the old mental hospital as spirits after their deaths.

My review

Handprints is a haunting short story about an ordinary woman, who believes herself to be poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, with whom she shares a first name. Edna’s husband has her committed to a state hospital for the insane in Mattapan, Massachusetts. At the hospital, Edna becomes friends with another woman, whom she calls Anne of Green Gables. Anne has also been committed to the mental institution by her husband. The time frame is 1940 and it was quite easy for a man to have his wife declared insane, and institutionalised, at that time. The ladies were committed for life and led limited lives where they were treated like young children and given the same clothing and even the same haircuts.

Edna is completely abandoned by her husband and has no visitors. She is desperately lonely and seeks to befriend Anne’s three grandchildren. They are left alone in their mother’s car for a short period, when she collects Anne for Sunday lunch every week. Edna attempts to make contact with the children by placing her hand on the window, hoping one of them will return the gesture. None of them ever do.

This story is beautifully written and certainly makes you think as the narrator is unreliable and you can’t distinguish the truth from her imaginings. It is not possible to determine whether Edna has been committed under false pretenses by her husband who just wants to be free of her, or whether Edna truly is mentally unbalanced. In my personal opinion, the narration leans towards Edna being mentally ill. Her strange behaviour, namely, her conviction that she is a famous poet, and recitals of the poet’s poems at unexpected times, could also have been the result of the suppression by life of an active mind and imagination, in other words, complete boredom due to an unfulfilling and mundane life.

This is an interesting short story and definitely worth reading. 

Purchase Handprints

Amazon US

Today, I am visiting Rebecca Budd from Tea, Toast & Trivia with a travel discussion about the amazing Cango Caves in South Africa and the surrounding area.

You can listen to the podcast here: https://teatoasttrivia.com/2022/02/07/season-4-episode-7-travelling-to-cango-caves-south-africa-with-roberta-eaton-cheadle/

Thank you, Rebecca, for inviting me over for this enjoyable conversation.

I thought I’d also use this opportunity to share a few more of my pictures from this incredible system of caves and a YT video I took during our tour.

About Rebecca Budd

In the words of Rebecca Budd:

“When I first came to WordPress, I went absolutely crazy with blogs.  It was my way of exploring different aspects of my life.  Clanmother is my backward look at the past and the stories that reflect many of the realities that we experience in our modern age.  LadyBudd is a photo blog where I document my moments and thoughts that come when I travel with my camera. ChasingART is about the never-ending exploration of our creative spirit. OnTheRoadBookClub speaks about my love of books. TakingtheKitchen is my return to my kitchen.  And my latest blog, Tea Toast & Trivia, is joining the podcast conversations. Your visits and comments are always appreciated so feel free to explore by following the individual links.

For me, blogging is about finding kindred spirits.  And there are many out there.  As Anne of Green Gables once said:

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”“

Find Rebecca Budd

Rebecca’s blogs:

Lady Budd

Chasing Art

On the Road Book Club

Clanmother

Tea, Toast & Trivia

The Book Dialogue

Rebecca’s Reading Room

Taking the Kitchen

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChasingArt

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChasingArt

Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2022/02/03/wethersfield-houses/

The accommodation at Ganora Farm where we spent the first night of our road trip was lovely. Here are a few pictures of doors and scenes from around the farm:

We went on a tour to see the Bushman paintings on the farm. These are a few pictures:

If you’d like to read a bit more about Bushman art, you can do so here: https://writingtoberead.com/2022/01/26/dark-origins-african-myths-and-legends-the-san-previously-bushmen-part-1/

During the Second Anglo Boer war, the family was taken captive by the British. All except one son who escaped and lived under the rocky overhangs on the farm for three months before he to was captured and sent to a prison of war camp. During his time in hiding, he created some etchings which still survive:

What Amazon says

Imagine, if you will, a near future where governments adopt policies that suit them rather than the people they were elected to represent.

Imagine a near future where old age and chronic problems are swept away with expedient legislation.

I know; it’s an unlikely scenario.

However, it’s a scenario in which Cassie Lincoln finds herself.

It’s a scenario that compels her to take action.

It’s a scenario that leads to despair and danger. 

My review

As a qualified chartered accountant, I work a lot with statistics and have a good knowledge of economics. As a result of my background and the unfortunate lack of blinkers over my eyes, I could appreciate the horrible economic reasonableness of this unusual dystopian story.

The book starts in the present when a young baby dies on the way to the hospital. This is shocking to the reader because the child dies of an illness that is treatable by antibiotics provided proper healthcare is accessed timeously. It is revealed quite quickly that the seriousness of the baby’s illness and symptoms were underestimated by the NHS staff member who took the mother’s emergency call and an ambulance was not made available. Underfunding and understaffing of the NHS are strongly hinted at as being the root causes of the infant’s death.

The next few chapters continue to set the scene for the dire funding gap faced by the government with regards to healthcare. The baby’s mother, Cass, is revealed to be a nurse working in a NHS hospital and well aware of the strain under which the whole system is operating. The story alternates between insights into discussions between the health and finance ministers and the prime minister about the funding crisis and possible solutions thereto, and Cass’s insights into what is happening in the hospitals and medical world.

New legislation is passed to reduce the burden on the health system. Initially, the changes appear positive and include elective euthanasia for chronically ill and dying patients. The author does an excellent job of showing how acceptance of these small initial steps in acceptance of unnatural death, lead to a change in the general attitude and thoughts of the population about death. Before long, additional legislation is being passed which takes the choice of death out of the hands of elderly and chronically ill people and stage is set for the slow eradication of human rights.

Cass and her family are witnesses to the gradual erosion of the societal beliefs and values they’ve grown up with and instilled in the younger members. Her family members all react differently to what they see happening all about them and all are drawn into a fight against the mass manipulation of the public by the government and return to an autocratic leadership style.

This book has an exciting and tense storyline which will keep you on the edge of your seat, but it was the dystopian setting that really made this book a fantastic read for me. The possibility of solving future economic crisis caused by overpopulation and an aging population that lives much longer than in the past, in this inhumane and legislated way is mind boggling. The fact we know this crisis is imminent, if not already here, makes it all the more frightening.

Congratulations to the author on an excellent and thought provoking book.

Purchase Acts of Convenience

Amazon US

Alex Craigie Amazon Author Page

About Alex Craigie

Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.

Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back.

When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.

Trish has had two books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. Both books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the NHS at its heart.

Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.

Book lovers are welcome to contact her on alexcraigie@aol.com

For a period last year, I didn’t share reviews of my books to my blog. I thought it might demonstrate a lack of independence if I did so and some of the book distribution platforms are so focused on independence, they sometimes remove genuine reviews.

I have changed my mind about sharing reviews and so I am sharing two today, as well as my new YT book trailer for A Ghost and His Gold. I’m also sharing the YT book trailer for Through the Nethergate because I like it.

Through the Nethergate

A lovely review by author and blogger, Teri Polen. Teri has some amazing books in the horror and science fiction genres so take a look around while you are over there:

https://teripolen.com/2021/04/29/through-the-nethergate-by-roberta-eaton-cheadle-bookreview-ya-supernatural/

And here is the video in case you missed it:

A Ghost and His Gold

A wonderful review by author and blogger, Rox Burkey, half of the writing duo Breakfield and Burkey. They have a series of techno thrillers called The Enigma Series and also have a number of lovely short stories. You will find links and details on Rox’s delightful blog:

A Ghost and His Gold

Here is my smashing new book trailer:

Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2022/01/27/revolutionary-wethersfield/

During our recent road trip, our first stop was at Ganora Guest Farm near Nieu Bethesda in the Eastern Cape. I planned an overnight stop here so that we could see the Karoo fossils and Bushmen (San) paintings the area is famous for, as well as some etchings from the Second Anglo Boer War.

You can find out more about Ganora Guest Farm here: https://www.facebook.com/Ganora.Guest.Farm/

We arrived late in the afternoon on Day 1 of our road trip, after an 8 hour drive from Johannesburg. The area where Ganora Farm is located is called the Groot [Big] Karoo and is semi desert. The region has been getting uncommon amounts of heavy rains and was the greenest I’ve ever seen it. The clouds opened shortly after our arrival at the farm and the torrent of rain caused a flash flood at the nearby rivulet. The owner’s son nearly came unstuck trying to cross the river in his 4 X 4 while it was in flood.

You can hear the rushing water in this short video:

In the early evening, the owner showed us his amazing fossil collection and we listened to a 45 minute talk about the mammal-like reptile fossils of 280 million years ago found in this area. That is a long time before the dinosaurs…