Jude Pittman and
I have a multi-faceted relationship.
She’s my publisher, my writing partner, my friend. Our lives have the most fascinating mixture
of similarities and differences. The
foremost difference is she’s West-Coast Canadian and I’m Deep-South
American. The foremost similarities are
two-fold. We’re both writers, and we’re
both paralegals with extensive legal backgrounds who’ve spent more years in law
offices than either of us care to admit.
Unlike many cyberspace friends, we’ve actually met. That’s because Jude masterminded a wonderful
ten-day vacation to Hawaii (specifically Maui—she’d been offered the use of a
friend’s condo for two weeks) last April that included me and her daughter
Roxanne, who’s also a Books We Love editor. Roxanee’s also my editor because she refuses
to let anybody else edit me. I protested that no, I couldn’t come. And Jude refused to let me not go. That’s not awkward phrasing. That’s the literal truth. She refused
to let me not go. So I went. The author’s picture of the two of us shown
above was taken on that tour, in fact. Jude’s a steam rollin' jauggernaut, an
immutable force of nature. Don’t believe me?
I can prove it.
Let me tell you
an Hawaii story. She'd booked us a tour, "The Road to Hana", which
is a scenic highway along the coast of Maui, 30 miles or so, that takes three
hours to drive. There's a reason for that. It has about 300 hairpin
turns and 50+ single lane bridges where one side of traffic has to wait for the
other side of traffic to come over. Beautiful beyond belief and
occasionally, absolutely hair-raising. Anyway,
she booked a tour on a 12 passenger van, the deluxe tour. And the 12
passenger van picked us up at our condo. The problem arose when the
passenger van connected at a Mall where they were feeding us breakfast
with a big bus, Greyhound size, with 25 people taking the tour. And indicated
that we were to get on it. Now, the guy driving the mini-van that picked
us up was great, the guy driving the big bus wasn’t. Let’s just say his people skills were
challenged. This driver proceeded to
"assign" seats because "we can't separate the newlyweds, now can
we?" In other words, he was splitting me, Jude and Roxanne up.
How did this play with our Jude? Not. At. All.
She refused to
get on the thing. "If I'd wanted a Greyhound bus, I'd have booked a
Greyhound bus.
And I frankly don't give a damn about the newlyweds as I paid
considerably extra for the deluxe tour."
Needless to say,
we exited the bus and Jude called the tour company. The conversation proceeded as follows: "I paid for the deluxe tour on the 12
passenger van with captain's seats, which is what picked us up. I am NOT
getting on a bus the size of a Greyhound with 25 passengers and assigned seating."
They put her through to the home office. The original driver of the
twelve-passenger van who picked us up waited, as did the other bus.
Roxanne and I just sat down on a planter curb in the parking lot to wait.
Like I said, we were with an immutable force of nature. Jude went through the whole process again with
the home office. This time she added that if they couldn’t accomodate us, she
expected to be taken back to the condo and not left in a Mall parking lot. She
further advised there was no need to hold the other bus up because she was NOT
getting on it and if they couldn't get it resolved, they needed to have someone
take us back to our condo and she'd take it up through her law office when she
got back home. The home office said they'd call us back.
Through all this,
our original mini-van driver enjoyed himself hugely. It was very obvious. He loved it. The
tour company called back and said there’d been a mix-up due to the on-line
booking.
(Though I have a private
suspicion the fact that neither the deluxe van nor the Greyhound size were
quite full as things were and the Greyhound would be completely full if the
tours were consolidated, thus obviating the need to run the smaller bus at all,
might have had more to do with it.) But to their credit, they rectified the
situation quickly. The big bus pulled
off without us, and our charming driver of the mini-van pulled off with the nine
people he'd picked up. Thus we enjoyed our own tour in the deluxe van. With
Captain's seats. Jude sat down beside me and said "And that's why
Books We Love has survived when so many other small presses haven't."
Indeed. And that’s Jude Pittman for you. It was
a fabulous day, my personal favorite
day of our entire Hawaiian vacation. Our
bus driver Ben was a native Hawaiian, very handsome, very charming. He treated
us like queens and thought Jude was the bomb.
At one of the stops I told him I was sorry he didn't get his day off but was
really glad he was our driver. He laughed and said he wasn't sorry at all, he got paid more for driving
this van anyway. He further assured me Jude was one of the greatest characters
he'd ever met. And I do believe my southern accent made a big hit with
him, too. I’ve often found that most
folks are fascinated with a southern accent and believe me, nobody I met in Hawaii had the least
trouble peggin’ the approximate site of my birth. All in all, it was a memorable day with
memorable people, and Jude made certain to give the tour company and driver Ben
a stellar review on their website. They deserved it. They gave us a day of stories and memories.
Sisters of Prophecy – Ursula
Sisters of Prophecy
Book 1
Jude Pittman and Gail Roughton
Genre: Paranormal, Time Travel
Publisher: Books We Love, Ltd.
Date of Publication: September 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-77145-310-3
ASIN: B00O2DTE1M
Number of pages: 164
Word Count: 50,000
Cover Artist: Michelle Lee
Book Description:
What’s a girl to do? Katherine Shipton has a painting that talks, an ancestor who won’t stay in her own century, and a former boyfriend with a serious ax to grind against her new fiancé. She already has a full plate, but when said ancestor sends her tripping back and forth between the 15th and 21st century without benefit of psychedelic drugs, the poor girl begins to doubt her own sanity.
Then her best friend, a high fashion model with more than her own share of psychic energy, and her troubleshooting aunt show up on her doorstep in response to a psychic SOS Katherine swears she didn’t send. Life couldn't get more complicated.
At least, that's what she thinks until her oilman fiancé disappears in the Gulf of Mexico and a DEA agent knocks on her door.
Available at Books We Love and Amazon
Excerpt
Three
“Okay, where the
hell is she?” Sylvia glanced around the room. The only Mother Shipton in sight
was the sketch of an old woman on the half-finished portrait.
“In the portrait
again, maybe?” Katherine picked up her palate and brush, ready to call Mother
Shipton back.
A loud blast of
rock-n-roll roared into the room, followed by a high pitched shriek.
“What the—” The
girls raced down the hall, following the sound. Mother Shipton stood in front
of the television, hands clasped over her ears.
Katherine
grabbed the remote and clicked the TV off.
Mother Shipton
turned to face them. “What—what manner of sorcery is that?” She pointed at the screen. “And that noise! Surely ‘tis from Lucifer himself.”
“Lots of folks
say that about hard rock, and that’s a fact, but more about Ozzie Ozborne than
Metallica.” Sylvia laughed. “Welcome to our
century, Mother Shipton. That’s a television. Tuned to MTV.”
“‘Tis a devil
box!”
“Don’t throw
stones, Mother. Your century smells like hell. Guess we all got our little sack
of rocks to tote around.”
About the Authors
Jude Pittman emigrated from Canada to the United States with her mom and brother when she was 14. Her time there included 12 years in Texas where the genus for her first murder mystery, “Shadows Are Deadly” now part of Jude’s “Murder on My Mind” trilogy first took root. In 1992 Jude returned to British Columbia where she met her husband John. The couple moved to Calgary, Alberta where they continue to live. Descended from the Shipton line, Jude has always been fascinated with the historical and legendary stories about her late and often maligned ancestor, Mother Shipton and her gifts of prophecy. The Sisters of Prophecy series is a fictional account of those Shipton sons and daughters who inherited Mother Shipton’s gifts.
Gail Roughton is a native of small town Georgia whose Deep South heritage features prominently in much of her work. She’s worked in a law office for close to forty years, during which time she’s raised three children and quite a few attorneys. She’s kept herself more or less sane by writing novels and tossing the completed manuscripts into her closet. A cross-genre writer, she’s produced works ranging from humor to romance to thriller to horror, sometimes in the same book. She’s never quite sure herself what to expect when she sits down at the keyboard. Now multi-published by Books We Love, Ltd., her credits include the War-N-Wit, Inc. series, The Color of Seven, Vanished, and Country Justice. Currently, she’s working on Black Turkey Walk, the second in the Country Justice series, as well as the Sisters of Prophecy series, co-written with Jude Pittman.
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