The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES Michele Drier's New Book: Ashes of Memories.
Author Michele Drier is the author of The Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries and The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles. Michele writes Romance and Mystery novels.
Ashes of Memories
Author: Michele Drier
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Getting what you wish for can bring unintended circumstances.Jennifer in New York and Matt in San Francisco worry that they're losing their memories. Jennifer from an earlier trauma and Matt while watching his father succumb to Alzheimer's. After finding a new medical technology designed to help people with cognitive disorders, they independently track down a grey-market supply, but when they meet they find unknown terrors.
Excerpt from Ashes of Memories
CHAPTER ONE
CHICAGO
2023
Pain.
White hot focus.
There wasn’t anything else. She lay in a ball, arms and legs pulled tight around her body, holding her right arm against her with her left hand. The arm couldn’t move, the bones knocked against each other. Her head pounded, even her hair hurt, her scalp was on fire.
How long had she been here? Her mind reached for memories. Was it yesterday that he came home? Yes. He screamed at her because no food was ready then he’d snatched her pony tail, tore out the band, grabbed a handful of loose hair.
“I’ve told you not to pull it back.” He bunched a fist and plowed it into her stomach. She doubled over, he pushed her to the table, bending her over and kicking her legs apart. A heavy arm across her back holding her down, the other hand pushing her skirt up. In a red haze she heard him swear as he ripped her panties off.
“You bitch, you never learn,” as he rammed himself into her. Her body recoiled at the onslaught, tensing, the pain increasing. She felt her vagina tear and she cried out.
“You like that?” He pulled out, shoved her to the floor, leaving her there as he crashed out of the apartment.
She drifted, her mind taking her to another place, a place where there was no pain, no him. When the door slammed, she was back, back in the kitchen of the squalid apartment she spent her days cleaning. Glass jingled as he put the bottles of vodka down. He kicked her in the stomach and went into the front room, turning the sound up on the televised basketball game.
Hours later, maybe today, he pulled her into the bedroom by her hair, sliding across the tile floor of the kitchen on her own blood. She remembered the baseball bat coming at her. He’d pulled her to her feet. She’d flung her arms across her face to protect it. He never hit her face, only parts of her that didn’t show. The bat connected with her arm. She felt the bones give way in a burst of pain that dropped her to her knees. That’s when he swung again and hit her head.
She must have blacked out until she felt him grasp her hair and begin dragging again.
“Look at you, you slut. You’ve peed yourself. The floor’s wet. You smell.” He kicked her hip with his booted foot hard enough that she skittered across the floor, her blood and pee slick across the wood.
Someone moaned, the keening sound of an animal.
“Shut up. Just shut up you bitch.” Then white rockets of pain eclipsed her as he broke her femur with a vicious swing of the bat. “Nobody’s coming to help you.”
How long did she lay there while he raged around the apartment? He had the bottle of vodka in one hand and the bat in the other. Greyness again.
Then the sound of pounding. The front door. “Open up, it’s the police!” He screamed “No…no,” and swung the bat at her head again before turning to rush the police.
She heard shots before she blacked out again.
He was dead. She died before the medics got her to the hospital. The morgue attendants excised the chips.
Author Genre: Romance, Mystery
Website: Michele Drier
Twitter: @MicheleDrier
E-Mail: mjdrier@gmail.com
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Author Description: I was born in Santa Cruz, California to a family that migrated west to San Francisco in 1849. Unfortunately, they never found gold, nor did they buy (and hang onto) any California land. My mother named me Michael, after author and actress Blanche Oelrichs, who wrote under the name of Michael Strange. After months of saying, "Yes, she's a girl. Yes, her name is Michael," my mother finally caved and I became "Michele." I was read to as a child, and needed always to have a book with me. My maternal grandmother belonged to a writing club in San Francisco in the early part of the 20th century and wrote poems and jingles--one of which won her a travel trailer during the Depression. I've lived in San Francisco, the Bay Area, the Central Valley, the Sierra, Southern California and the North Coast.
My first career was in journalism, and I spent seven years as a staff writer with the San Jose Mercury News. After returning to Humboldt State University to complete school and work on a master's, I fell into my second career, as a non-profit administrator.I spent time as a reporter and editor for daily papers in California. I was the city, metro and executive editor for daily newspapers in California's Central Valley and managed non-profit agencies, including a legal organization serving roughly 10,000 senior citizens in Alameda County. I'm a member of the Society of California Pioneers and Sisters in Crime and live in California's Central Valley with a cat, skunks, wild turkeys and an opossum (only the cat gets to come in the house).
Author's Book List
SNAP: I, Vampire
- The Kandesky Vampire Chronices 9Maxie Gwenoch, LA-based media star, VP for International Planning for the multi-national gossip conglomerate, SNAP, has finally agreed to marry Jean-Louis Kandesky, a 500-year-old Hungarian vampire a leader of the family that owns SNAP.
Is marriage a big change? Not as big as the fact that Maxie is now a vampire, as well. When munitions from the Kandesky Enterprises weapons plant in Slovakia turn up at the bombing of a Royal's house in England, Jean-Louis and his "brother," Nik, are hot on the trail of shadowy terrorist groups dealing in international weapons sales. Are the Kandesky arms being sold to terrorists groups? Should Maxie use her new-found vampire strengths to ferret out the scum?
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Amazon
KOBO Store
SNAP: All That Jazz
- The Kandesky Vampire Chronices 8Nik and Jazz, both employees of Kandesky Enterprises and passionate lovers, are having a tumultuous time. Are their differences too great? She's a contemporary, hip, young career woman working in the fast-changing world of celebrity gossip journalism in Los Angeles. He's a 500-year old vampire living in Kiev, Ukraine and running the Kandesky Munitions factories. She deals with celebs and sun, he deals with terrorists and dark.
Is their overpowering attraction enough to build a life-long future, or will their relationship fizzle out before Maxie's and Jean-Louis' wedding, dying faster than a Fourth of July sparkler?
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Amazon
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KOBO Store
SNAP: White Nights
- The Kandesky Vampire Chronices 7Nik, the third-in-command of the Hungarian Kandesky vampire family, has been handling the family's interests in Czech munition factories for upwards of four hundred years. He's been a contented bachelor, throwing himself into business until Jazz strolls into his life. Jazz is Maxie Gwenoch's successor as the managing editor for SNAP, the international celeb gossip magazine, another Kandesky company. Maxie, Nik, Jazz and Jean-Louis, the Kandesky second-in-command, are headed to Moscow to assess the business potential for a SNAP Russian bureau, until an old enemy shows up. Set against the tensions between Ukraine and Russia, the short Russian nights teach Maxie to cherish her time with Jean-Louis while Jazz faces her own questions about loving a vampire.
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Amazon
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KOBO Store
SNAP: Happily Ever After?
- The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles Book 6Loving Jean-Louis for eternity doesn't mean that Maxie Gwenoch will let him turn her. Jean-Louis is a vampire, is gorgeous, is the second-in-command of the Kandesky Family of Hungarian vampires, and is her boss at SNAP, the multinational, multimedia celeb gossip empire where she is the VP for International Planning. She moves to Kiev to build a home with Jean-Louis and finds her future under a cloud from Leonid, a rival from the Huszar family, now living in a bolthole in the ruins of Chernobyl. Will Maxie find safety by giving up her days and joining Jean-Louis in the vampire nights?
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Amazon
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KOBO Store
SNAP: Love for Blood
- The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles Book 5When Maxie Gwenoch snags the job as managing editor of SNAP, an international gossip conglomerate, she's looking for fame, fortune and Jimmy Choos. What she finds is a media empire owned by Baron Kandesky and his family. A family of vampires. They're European, urbane, wealthy and mesmerizing. And when she meets Jean-Louis, vampire and co-worker, she's a goner.
Maxie believes she's found her ultimate career. She doesn't realize that she's found a family feud like none other, a centuries-old rivalry between vampire families, with her as the linchpin. Bells ring with Jean-Louis, but she doesn't realize they're alarm sirens until she learns that Jean-Louis is second in command of the Kandeskys...but by then it's too late.
In this fifth book of the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, Maxie and Jean-Louis come to deeper understandings after her rescue from Leonid, a Huszar strong-man who kidnapped and brutally abused her. They reach a separate peace against the backdrop of the death penalty trial of Huszar leader Matthais, bringing an end to centuries of war between the two vampire families.
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KOBO Store
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DANUBE: A Tale of Murder
- The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles Book 4The Kandesky management trio, Stefan, Jean-Louis and Pen, find themselves embroiled in a war with their rivals, the Huszars, which is bad for PR and bad for business, but after a judicious assassination they hammer out a pact.
This fourth book of the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles tells of peace agreements with their rivals and the growth of their now-international business ventures.
It also follows Jean-Louis as he meets and falls in love with a young artist, Magda, who desires travel and adventure but never imagined the world the Kandeskys inhabit
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KOBO Store
Plague: A Love Story
- The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles Book 3The third book of the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles begins the saga of the family's start during the chaos of 14th century Hungary. When Stefan's wife and infant son die in a minor plague outbreak, he has nothing to live for, so Theron's turning him to a vampire is just a way out of his anguish.
Until he takes over the estate of a merchant, recruits Jean-Louis to teach him business and meets Lady Penelope Kandesky.
Plague returns to Budapest and this time paves the way for Stefan to become Baron Stefan Kandesky, a businessman who builds a trading empire with the help of Jean-Louis and Pen.
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Amazon
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Audible
SNAP: New Talent
- The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles Book 2In the second book of the SNAP Kandesky vampire series, Maxie Gwenoch, media-savvy editor of the multinational celeb gossip magazine SNAP, is pummeled in Paris and kidnapped in Kiev as the Huszars ramp up the race to oust their centuries-old rivals, the Kandeskys.
SNAP's owners, the Kandesky family of vampires, built the world's most popular celeb coverage empire but this isn't just a business take-over. These powerful vampire families lived with an uneasy peace for four centuries until Maxie came in to boost SNAP's coverage and started making inroads into the Huszar's traditional hunting territories.
Although Jean-Louis, Maxie's lover, vampire and second-in-command of the Kandeskys, tries to keep her safe, Maxie is determined to do things her way, a way that may lose her her job, her love and her life.
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Amazon
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KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Delta for Death
- The Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries Book 3California is in the middle of a catastrophic drought and water managers are scrambling to find ways to conserve the resource. The Governor has proposed a plan to dig massive tunnels under Delta, a sprawling tract of islands, sloughs, farms, marinas, resorts and historic small towns. The project will ship Sacramento River water south, to the thirsty corporate farms and cities of Central and Southern California, not a popular idea in Northern California.
When two bodies turn up at a state corporation yard in the tiny Delta hamlet of Freeland, Amy Hobbes and her police reporter, Clarice, are determined to find out if water is an issue worth killing for.
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KOBO Store
Labeled for Death
- The Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries Book 2Vineyards around Monroe are being harvested, the ripe grape bunches sliced off the vines and trucked to wineries, where they’ll be crushed to make some of California’s finest wines. Amy Hobbes, managing editor of the Monroe Press has other stories in mind, until Clarice Stamms, her cops reporter blows in with news about another harvest, two bodies tucked up under the vines. The field workers were stabbed and their throats sliced. Are they just victims of a worker’s anger?
When the town’s most popular and well-known hooker turns up at the vineyard’s labor camp, sliced and stabbed as well, Amy and Clarice are on the hunt again, the adrenaline tingling down their nerve endings.
Who’s the killer stalking the vineyards and why?
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Edited for Death
- The Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries Book 1Amy Hobbes never expected to solve anything tougher than a crossword puzzle. When she left her job as a journalist in Southern California, she planned to give the adrenaline a rest, but her next job, managing editor of a local newspaper, delivers some surprises. After a respected Senator and World War II hero dies and two more people turn up dead, the news heats up. Both victims had ties to a hotel owned by the Senator's family. With the help of reporter pal Clarice and the new man in her life, Phil, Amy uncovers a number of shadowy figures, including a Holocaust survivor who's spent sixty years tracking down Nazi loot. It's a complex and dangerous puzzle, but Amy can't walk away until she solves it.
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Author Recommended by: HBSystems Publications
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eBook Author’s Corner
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