A Heart of Three

The Write Way Café welcomes Lynn Hammond. She shares what inspired her to write about conjoined twins.

Tell us a little about A Heart of Three.
Luna and Rose were born conjoined. Doctors kept telling the parents their children would not make it. One of the twins was weaker than the other and the kidney didn’t function correctly. These girls proved the doctors wrong fighting through life. They grew up being bullied and called names like freaks but that didn’t stop them. After they were older and lost their parents they decided they wanted to find someone to love. So, the girls decided to do a TV show but instead of going on national TV they decided to go with a mountain trip get away with four guys. Luna and Rose were so excited but scared also. How would the guys react? Would they call them names? These two girls showed these guys how great it would be to have them both.

If A Heart of Three was made into a movie, who would play your main characters, and why?
I would probably ask Abby and Brittany Hensel to play the parts. After I started writing my book, a friend of mine told me to read up on these two twins, that it might help me write my story. I was so astonished how these two could be perfect for the book just like Luna and Rose.

Who is your intended audience and why should they read your book?
Anyone 18 and older. We all want romance, love, compassion, suspense and humor. When I write I always put something that happened in my life in my books.

How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your book?
Well one night my editor told me she wanted me to do something different than my usual novellas. She said you are really good thinking outside the box so I did some thinking and I came up with conjoined twins trying to find their perfect mate. Working in the medical field I get to see a variety of medical concerns and it made me think that everyone needs their Happy ever After.

Who is your favorite character from your book and why?
Luna one of the twins. She held a lot in and when something tragic happened she recoiled from love. The frightened little girl came out. My heart would hurt when I would write about her but I love Rose too though. They both could feel what the other was feeling.

How about your least favorite character? What makes them less appealing to you?
Todd was a jerk and always complaining about something. He reminded me of one of my high school classmates.

Tell us a little bit about your cover art. Who designed it? Why did you go with that particular image/artwork?
HD Thomson does my covers. She owns Bella Media Management. She is always on top of my vision of my covers. She makes them come alive. Looking up photos for conjoined twins was very hard. I bought a stock photo and she conjoined them perfectly to how the twins are joined in my book. When I wrote the book, I didn’t know the photo she created would really be so perfect.

Give us an interesting fun fact or a few about your book.
Well the twins made a list of activities they wanted to do with the guys. One was trout fishing. When I was writing it I had to make some humor out of it. I like to make readers laugh.

If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
Well that's really hard because I have a few authors who have helped me through my journey to write. Each one does a different genre too. I was a reader for so long and followed these authors everywhere and when I stepped up and told them I wanted to write they all jumped in to help: K.C. Lyn, Lexi Post, Kayce Lassiter, T.M. Cromer.

Do you have any unique talents or hobbies?
I sure do. I love to make Tutu's and wear them to my author conventions. I do several activities of making blankets, stuffed sock animals, homemade soaps, homemade candles, and wine bottle flower vases.

What can readers who enjoy your book do to help make it successful?
Leaving reviews really helps authors know how a reader likes the book even if they don’t. This is how we learn. Readers share our posts and other things with others.

What can we expect from you in the future?
Well my goal is to add more description into my novels. I like to be straight to the point and move on but I have seen more readers want to know a lot more about what’s going on in the book and more about the characters.

Luna

I was born conjoined to my sister, Rose. The doctors told our parents that we would never survive. Our bodies were joined from our shoulder to our hip. We only had one kidney, one breast, one arm, and one leg each. The thing that really wigged out the doctors was we had only one vagina but two uteruses.

Rose

Well, since my sister, Luna, thinks our lives will turn around, she has signed us up for a dating TV show. The thing is a three-day getaway to find our perfect mate. She thinks if we do this, our lives will be complete, but I, on the other hand, I think it’s a load of crap. What man would want a freak like us?

We have four men to choose from and lots of activities. Will we find a mate or end up alone forever together?

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Lynn Hammond works fulltime as an LPN but writes at night. She lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She is an RWA member. She loves to make children’s tutu's in her spare time. Every night before bed she takes time to read. She loves romance, paranormal romance, and erotica. She is a proud mother of three beautiful girls, two beautiful grandbabies, two boxer pups, two lizards, seven ducks, and loves spending time with her husband riding in her father’s old corvette. She is a new author writing New Adult romance and would love to hear from readers. You can contact her at lynnhammondauthor@gmail.com. To find out more, please visit her Facebook page.

Tuesday Special: Secret Shepherd

James Osborne

www.JamesOsborneNovels.com

**GIVEAWAY!**

James is giving away 2 copies of Secret Shepherd.  

To be entered, simply leave a comment and check back on 

Monday March 4th to see if you are a winner! 

A single act of kindness plunges Paul and Anne Winston into jeopardy. After rescuing a gifted youth from an international drug cartel, the gang retaliates by offering huge rewards for the murders of the young philanthropists and their two small children.

And that’s just the start of their troubles—Paul has discovered the drug boss is having an affair with Anne’s mother. Then things get even worse… police forbid him from telling newly pregnant Anne about it, forcing Paul to break a solemn vow.


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Chapter One

Westland Place

London, UK

September 9, 1994 

     Life was good... really good!
     Paul Winston hung up the phone and leaned back from his huge antique oak desk, a happy man. 
     Oh, wow! he thought. We’re pregnant! At last! 
     Affection and excitement coursed through his athletic body.
     Paul turned his leather high-back chair to gaze at a picture on the wall beside his desk: their wedding, two and a half years earlier. 
     What a gorgeous bride you are, my lovely Anne! he thought, admiring his young wife dressed in her resplendent bridal gown.
     Above the picture hung an aerial photo of the ranch in Colorado where he grew up. Beneath their wedding picture was a framed photo of his investiture three years earlier as Lord Paul Winston, the 12^th Earl of Prescott.
     His intercom buzzed.
     “Excuse me, My Lord,” boomed the voice of Clementine Shackleford, his executive assistant. “There’s a young man here to see you. Won’t give his name. Doesn’t have an appointment. Shall I tell him to come back?”
     American-born Paul chuckled to himself. His notion of protocol was more casual than his matronly executive assistant’s, once described by a visitor as ‘having the combativeness of a Sumo wrestler, merged with the heart of Florence Nightingale’.
     He started to ask Ms. Shackleford to show the young man in when he heard her shout,
     “Stop! You can’t go in there!  Stop right now!”
     A loud bang startled Paul. Experience left no doubt it was a gunshot. 
     Good Grief! he thought. I hope Mrs. Shackleford’s okay! 
     Paul leapt from his high-back chair and sprinted across the enormous office toward the door. Halfway there the door flew open. A young man rushed in. He pointed a handgun at Paul’s chest.
     “Back up!” the intruder shouted.
     “Easy now,” Paul said as he lifted his hands away from his body, open palms toward the intruder. “What can I do for you?”
     “Where is it?” the gunman demanded.
     “Where’s what?” Paul replied.
     “The safe, asshole! I know there’s a bloody safe in here somewhere!” the intruder shouted. “Behind one of those pictures? Show me!”
     The agitated young man waved his left hand toward more than a dozen portraits and landscapes that adorned the oak-paneled walls, some priceless, dating back centuries
     “There’s no safe in here that I know of,” Paul replied.
     He was surprised to see the young man’s dark brown eyes scan the oil paintings with appreciation. 
     Is this his first attempt at an armed robbery? Paul wondered.
     He looked closer. The younger man, a head shorter, wore faded black jeans and a stained sweatshirt with a football (soccer) logo. His eyes darted around uneasily. The features were Middle Eastern, his long black hair unkept and overdue for a trim.
     “It’s behind one of those, right?” the skinny young intruder demanded. “Show me or I’ll slice up every friggin’ one of them until I find it.”
     He pulled out a combat knife and held it poised to slice something... or someone.
     Paul stepped toward the nearest painting, an original sixteenth century portrait of King Henry VI. The gunman moved back warily. Paul could see the smaller man was intimidated by his height and fit two hundred pound physique. That was encouraging. He grabbed the sides of the portrait frame with both hands. It didn’t move.
     “It’s secured to the wall, just like all the rest.”
     Paul started toward to the next painting intending to do the same.
     “I told you, show me the bloody safe!” the intruder repeated. “Hurry up, goddamnit!”
     Paul sensed the gunman was feeling pressed for time.
     Mounted on the wall beside that painting was a souvenir stone axe a First Nation friend from Canada had given Paul. The axe, called a temahikan, was a replica of axes used by the Algonquin peoples before Europeans began their colonization of North America. 
     Suddenly, Paul sensed movement behind him. He ducked and whirled, instinctively grabbing the intruder’s right hand with the gun. His attacker’s other hand held the combat knife with a razor-sharp blade.
    Over his shoulder, Paul caught a glimpse of the knife streaking toward his lower back. He was off-balance, with just a split second to react.

*

     In the outer office, Clementine Shackleford struggled to her knees. Her right arm would not respond properly to her wishes. She looked down at the searing pain in her right chest. A large bloodstain surrounded a hole in her dress. 
     My word, she thought. How am I ever going to fix that hole? 
     Realizing the irony of that thought helped keep her alert long enough to direct her attention to the security panic button on her desk. The middle-aged executive assistant managed to push the button with her left hand, and then felt herself losing consciousness. She fought hard but couldn’t stop the darkness from coming over her... that annoyed her to no end.

*

     “Okay, fella,” Paul said, tightening a knot on the restraints while pressing his knee down firmly on the back of the gunman’s neck, forcing his face into the carpet. “This ought to hold you.”
     The assailant was belly-down, his nose and mouth bleeding onto the deep pile of Paul’s beige carpet, arms tied behind his back and feet lashed together.
     “Damn!” Paul said looking down at the blood smears. “That was a really nice carpet before you made such a mess of it.”
     Moments earlier, he had realized just in time the intruder was about to stab him from behind with a combat knife. He’d caught the young man’s gun hand and forced it behind the intruder’s back sending the gun flying, allowing Paul to twist his body, seize the other hand and shake the knife loose. He’d leveraged the assailant’s arm into a hip-check, slamming the disarmed youngster’s face to the floor.
     While kneeling on the stunned intruder’s back, Paul had removed the young man’s bootlaces and used them to bind his arms and feet.
      “Lucky for me, I learned to wrestle calves on my parents’ ranch in Colorado,” Paul chuckled. “You picked the wrong guy, fella.”

###

About James Osborne: 

     James Osborne is a bestselling author whose latest novel, SECRET SHEPHERD, has just been released (Solstice Publishing Inc., Farmington, MO). The novel is a sequel to his award-winning mystery, THE MAIDSTONE CONSIRACY. Osborne's other novel, THE ULTIMATE THREAT, twice was an Amazon bestseller.
     A collection, ENCOUNTERS WITH LIFE: TALES OF LIVING, LOVING & LAUGHTER, was named Best Short Story Collection of 2015 in an international readers poll. His essays and short stories have also appeared in more than a dozen anthologies and literary journals.
     Osborne's varied career includes investigative journalist, college teacher, army officer, corporate executive and business owner. You can check out SECRET SHEPHERD here, http://a.co/d/dxRqeQe and his other work here, www.amazon.com/author/jamesosborne. His website is www.JamesOsborneNovels.com. 

Solstice Author's Site

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