Ruby’s Choice fun facts:
Chapter Titles: Ruby’s Choice is set in the late 1970’s and all of the chapter titles in Ruby’s Choice are songs from the 1970s.
Everglade General Store: There was a real Everglade General Store that was the basis for the store in Ruby’s Choice which was owned by Mr. Burns.
In fact, Everglade General Store and Post Office owned by Mr. Burns, and he was really my great- great grandfather and he eventually partnered with my great- grandfather, from 1865 to 1910. They also owned a lumber yard, saw mill, and blacksmith shop. It was known as the Burns Dynasty.
Campbell Ridge Cave: One of the most well-known caves in Middle Tennessee is Snail Shell Cave and it lies on an 88-acre preserve near Murfreesboro. I did go spelunking inside this cave many times during my college years. Inside, the cave has stalactites as large as a pickup truck which I reference in the story--and then some—but no totem, unlike what the girls in Ruby’s Choice, who found a totem and mystical stones from the Campbell Ridge cave.
Henry Horton State Park was constructed in the 1960s on the estate of the former governor of Tennessee, Henry Horton. The park is located on the Duck River and it has an Olympic-size swimming pool which is referenced in Chapter Two of Ruby’s Choice, it’s where Ruby goes to have fun at least once a week in the summertime.
MTSU: I am a proud alumni of MTSU and a True Blue Fan. Middle Tennessee State University is located at the geographic center of Tennessee, in Murfreesboro. It is the oldest and largest institution in the Tennessee Board of Regents system with an enrollment of about 23,000 students. The reason for the big shout out to MTSU is that all of my main characters in Ruby’s Choice attend MTSU.
Opryland USA was opened in 1972 and closed in 1997. The theme park offered many different venues for music and a host of park rides including roller coasters. The Opryland scene in Ruby’s Choice is a pivotal scene in my storyline.
The Tower: Reed takes Ruby to dinner at The Tower before they head out to the Bob Seger concert in Ruby’s Choice. There was a spinning restaurant which offered panoramic view of Nashville called the Polaris and it was located on the 28th floor of the hotel. The spinning restaurant referenced in Ruby’s Choice was opened in 1975 and closed in 2000.
Ruby’s Choice
Volume 1
D.F. Jones
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: D.F. Jones
Date of Publication: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 0986122742
ASIN: B011T77W08
Number of pages: 173
Word Count: 61,570
Cover Artist: Amanda Northcutt, Jones Media
Book Description:
Ruby’s Choice is a coming of age story set in the late 1970’s in Middle Tennessee with a splash of paranormal which will blossom in the second and third books of the series.
Ever since Ruby discovered an amber-encased spider web in the Campbell Ridge Cave, she has had dreams of births, deaths and glimpses into the future.
Ruby’s shift is coming to a close at Everglade General Store. As she stacks the last row of bath soap, Ruby recalls the delicious dream she had the night before. In the dream, a gorgeous guy is kissing a tickle spot, just behind her left earlobe, sending shivers up her spine. If only that dream could come true, instead of the one where a state trooper gives her a seventy-five dollar speeding ticket!
Ruby snaps back to reality when she hears the store’s front door bells chime. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say the frickin’ Adonis from her sexy dream just walked through the door.
Reed Jackson and Brent Brown introduce themselves to Ruby as members of the local baseball team her brother, George, manages. Brent mentions they specifically came out to the store to meet George’s hot, little sister. Ruby is slightly confused when she hears Reed murmur Tap It under his breath, but then she remembers the rumor going around campus about Reed and Brent’s dating game, where the two best friends compete to have a girl profess undying love to one of them. And Tap It is a winner takes all—all of what, though, Ruby has no clue. Ruby decides that she’ll play along, but according to her rules. She’ll suss out if either of these players is worthy of her love and respect.
One thing is for sure, Ruby is no pawn.
Who will be Ruby’s Choice?
Available at Amazon
Prologue
Ca m p b e l l
Ri d g e Ca v e 1972
RUBY, ANNA AND
SANDY HAD their backpacks filled with water, extra flashlights and batteries
for spelunking the cave on Campbell Ridge. Ruby had discovered the entrance of
the cave with her brother, George, five years ago, when they were looking for
Indian arrowheads. George had told her never under any circumstances to go
inside of the cave. But today, Ruby and her best friends, Anna and Sandy, were
looking for new adventures.
The girls were
deep inside the cave, surrounded by complete darkness with only their
flashlights to illuminate the interior walls. The limestone cave had beautiful
rock formations, crystals and stalactites. The cave underground had seemed
alien, almost unworldly. The air smelled of the dank earth, and the only sound
was running water from the stream that ran through the cave.
Ruby was forced
to climb over a boulder on her belly to squeeze through a narrow pass. The
boulder opened up into a hidden room. Ruby was still hanging onto the rock when
she yelled back at the girls, “Hey, guys, you have to see this!” And then she
slid down the rock into the room.
Anna and Sandy
scrambled up and over the boulder, shining their lights into the hidden room.
Anna slid down the boulder and entered with Sandy right behind her. The hidden
room was roughly the size of a bedroom. “Holy cow, there are ancient drawing’s
on the wall.”
Thousands of
years of groundwater had caused the rocks on one side of the cave to drop down
forming large stalactites the size of a pickup truck. The large drawings
revealed intricate details of each person etched in the stone wall. Sandy
inspected the drawings closer as she walked down the length of the wall. “It’s
a story. I read about ancient drawings like these in one of my National
Geographic magazines. This is far out.”
Ruby tripped
over a small rock, dropping her flashlight. The light on the ground lit the far
left corner, revealing a massive figure carved in the stone. “Geez Louise! This
dude looks like a freaking astronaut. Look at his helmet!”
Anna bumped into
Ruby, nearly making them both fall down. She held onto Ruby’s shoulder and
said, “That’s some spooky shit.”
Anna walked past
Sandy to the next group of drawings. “Here’s the same dude again. He’s holding
a totem and there are three people kneeling before him. This looks like a
ritual or rite of passage.”
Sandy sat down
on a rock, mesmerized by what they had discovered. She flashed her light toward
Ruby and Anna as they traced their fingers over the different drawings. Sandy
asked, “Do you think we should tell our parents or teachers?”
Anna and Ruby
walked over sit to on the ground next to Sandy. Ruby’s light fused with Sandy’s
as Anna’s light circled around to the other parts of the room. There was only
one wall dedicated to the drawings. Anna replied, “I don’t think so. A tribe
sealed this room for some reason. We should leave. I’ve got a weird feeling,
like we’re being watched.”
Sandy stood,
tipping over the rock she had been sitting on, causing her flashlight to point
downward. “Hey, look, something’s under this rock. Bring your lights over
here.” Anna and Sandy shined their lights over the place where the rock had
been, as Ruby knelt down, reached in and pulled out the object.
The girls
plopped back down on the hard ground, staring wide-‐
eyed at the totem. Ruby’s voice trembled. “It’s the totem in
the drawing, the same one the
deity is handing over to the
people kneeling on the ground. I
know this sounds weird, but this thing is pulsing in my
hands.”
Sandy reached
over to pluck the totem out of Ruby’s hand. The totem was around six inches
tall, made out of crystal and quartz with piercing sapphire eyes. The detailed
carvings made the image of the face
appear real, smooth as glass to the touch, as though sculpted by a master
artisan, and no matter which way they turned the totem, it seemed to be
watching them. “It’s a smaller version of the big guy in the corner. He is
looking at me.”
Sandy handed the
totem to Anna, who turned it over in her hands. “I see what you mean. This
little dude is shooting energy to my fingertips. We need to place this thing
back where we found it and get the hell out of Dodge. I have the creeps in
here.”
Ruby took the
totem and put it back in the hole. In another part of the cave, Ruby could hear
rocks falling. “We need to get out of here because the cave is shifting.” The
girls rolled the boulder back in place and made a hasty exit.
Outside in the
daylight, they sat on a rock ledge, out of breath and speechless. Ruby opened
her backpack and pulled out an amber-‐ encased spider
web. “Well, shut the front door, what the heck? Look y’all, it’s a spider web
inside a piece of amber?”
Anna found an
amethyst stone in her pocket, and Sandy opened her thermos finding a hiddenite
stone. Anna shook her head in bewilderment. “Well, I’m pretty sure these stones
weren’t with us before we went inside the cave. If I wasn’t so dad blame
scared, I’d take this back inside the cave, right now.”
Sandy stared at
her stone and then spoke quietly. “I don’t want to spook you any further, but
holding this stone gave me a vision of the deity who gave us the stones. In the
vision, he is relaying that we’re to keep the stones on our person at all
times. He will reveal to us in time what it means and we aren’t supposed to
talk about this again until he reveals it to Ruby in a dream.”
The girls looked
at each other wide-‐eyed, holding their stones in eerie
silence. They never uttered a
single word about the
totem or the stones
again—until years later.
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I am so excited to be a guest today! Thank you!
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