WHERE: Glenn Dale, MD – Marietta House
WHEN: October 7 @ 2:30pm
WHAT: Historic House Tour, Reading, Signing, Costume Contest (with prize!), Refreshments
October 7th – come join us for a supernatural afternoon of readings, refreshments, and tour the historic home. Are there ghosts? You tell us!
Marietta House Museum’s “Author’s & Playwright’s Corner” presents supernatural fiction with authors H.L. Brooks, and Dea Schofield. This event is a great opportunity to support independent women authors. Continue reading →
Leonardtown, Maryland is a cute little main street sort of a historic town. They’ve got a great little cafe called the BTB Coffee Bar & Speakeasy as well as a chocolate shop, among other things. They also have a cute, crammed-to-the-rafters bookstore called Fenwick Street Books. I had a signing there this past Friday.
The first Friday of each month Leonardtown has a little event. The shops stay open later and there is music and other things happening. This past Friday however, it was grey and chilly and damp, so turnout was kind of low. However, some people did come by the bookstore and pick up a signed copy of Red August. Any time somebody takes time out of their day to say hello to me and to spend their hard-earned money on my book, I am truly grateful.
This theme of this particular First Friday was Emergency Responders – so there was an author sitting next to me selling and signing his children’s books. It was nice to have good company while we waited for customers.
I believe Fenwick will be carrying my books. I will keep you posted on that once I get confirmation. So, if you’re in Southern Maryland and want to support a local business and a Maryland author, you can just go buy my book there!
Thanks for all of the support!
James Burd Brewster and H.L. Brooks at Fenwick Street Books, Leonardtown, Maryland
These are excerpts from the book Red August, by H.L. Brooks – read by actors Erica Smith and Will Hardy. It is available at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Nobel and iBooks, among other places. Links can be found at http://www.hlbrooks.com
In this scene Red/August has been meeting her handsome neighbor near the stream that runs down their properties. They read books and discuss them.
******
This reading took place at Scarborough Fair Bed & Breakfast in Baltimore, Maryland.
*This is an abridged version meant to be read out loud.
Book Synopsis
What if you found out that you were descended from a long line of clandestine fighters, and that your family was still at war? Or that the love of your life was something other than human? August Archer thinks she’s a normal teenage girl—even though she has been having disturbing and erotic dreams about wolves lately. Still grieving over the loss of her bookish, charming father, and wondering over his final gift of a red hooded cloak, August is uprooted from her New York City apartment to a tiny town in Maryland, and the rambling Victorian house where he grew up. There she meets a wise woman with a gift for herbal medicine, the gentle old man who keeps the house in repair and the grounds thriving, and her new neighbor: an enigmatic, irresistibly fascinating man who refuses to talk to her, yet who seems to know her better than she knows herself, and fuels her most intense romantic fantasies. But it’s when August begins to coax her feisty Scottish grandmother out of her self-imposed catatonia that a strange tale of werewolves and hunters emerges—one in which the man of her dreams may be her family’s oldest enemy—in this modern-day telling of the Red Riding Hood story.
This is the second of four videos of Erica Smith and Will Hardy reading excerpts from Red August.
In this chapter, titled Talking to Strangers, August/Red is working at an apothecary in town, of which “Wolf” is a customer. He enters the shop and August hides when she sees him. This is their second encounter, the first being on Halloween night the year before. That night August immediately felt attracted to her new neighbor, but he wouldn’t give her his name. He didn’t even shake her hand when she tried to introduce herself, telling her they couldn’t be friends in such a small town.
You can watch the first video in my previous post, or go to YouTube HERE.
What if you found out that you were descended from a long line of clandestine fighters, and that your family was still at war? Or that the love of your life was something other than human? August Archer thinks she’s a normal teenage girl—even though she has been having disturbing and erotic dreams about wolves lately. Still grieving over the loss of her bookish, charming father, and wondering over his final gift of a red hooded cloak, August is uprooted from her New York City apartment to a tiny town in Maryland, and the rambling Victorian house where he grew up. There she meets a wise woman with a gift for herbal medicine, the gentle old man who keeps the house in repair and the grounds thriving, and her new neighbor: an enigmatic, irresistibly fascinating man who refuses to talk to her, yet who seems to know her better than she knows herself, and fuels her most intense romantic fantasies. But it’s when August begins to coax her feisty Scottish grandmother out of her self-imposed catatonia that a strange tale of werewolves and hunters emerges—one in which the man of her dreams may be her family’s oldest enemy—in this modern-day telling of the Red Riding Hood story.
There was a reading of Red August at Scarborough Fair Bed & Breakfast in Baltimore this past Saturday. Actors Erica Smith and Will Hardy read excerpts from the book and we enjoyed warm cider with a tiny audience.
This particular excerpt is one of about four I will post.
The excerpts I chose include those where August and Faolan have interaction. I came to realize that the excerpts may give the impression that the book is straight romance, but it’s a fairy tale adaption of Red Riding Hood set in 1980s small town Maryland.
Find out where to buy Red August by visiting HLBrooks.com.
VIDEO INFO
This is an excerpt from the book Red August, by H.L. Brooks – read by actors Erica Smith and Will Hardy. It is available at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Nobel and iBooks, among other places. Links can be found at http://www.hlbrooks.com
In this scene Red and her handsome neighbor meet for the first time. She is new to town. She’s had a rough several months, including having been assaulted by somebody, which she is trying to heal from. On this night she watches something kind of naughty on TV and falls asleep and wakes up restless in the middle of the night, so goes for a walk along her property.
This reading took place at Scarborough Fair Bed & Breakfast in Baltimore, Maryland.
*This is an abridged version meant to be read out loud.
Book Synopsis
What if you found out that you were descended from a long line of clandestine fighters, and that your family was still at war? Or that the love of your life was something other than human? August Archer thinks she’s a normal teenage girl—even though she has been having disturbing and erotic dreams about wolves lately. Still grieving over the loss of her bookish, charming father, and wondering over his final gift of a red hooded cloak, August is uprooted from her New York City apartment to a tiny town in Maryland, and the rambling Victorian house where he grew up. There she meets a wise woman with a gift for herbal medicine, the gentle old man who keeps the house in repair and the grounds thriving, and her new neighbor: an enigmatic, irresistibly fascinating man who refuses to talk to her, yet who seems to know her better than she knows herself, and fuels her most intense romantic fantasies. But it’s when August begins to coax her feisty Scottish grandmother out of her self-imposed catatonia that a strange tale of werewolves and hunters emerges—one in which the man of her dreams may be her family’s oldest enemy—in this modern-day telling of the Red Riding Hood story.
Please hop over to the Scarborough Fair Bed & Breakfast website and look at this place. It’s the cutest and has the best theme ever: literary. They are a highly rated B&B that is in a wonderful section of Baltimore within walking distance of great shopping, food and one of my favorite museums The American Visionary Arts Museum.
Don’t forget to check out their packages page – one of them includes some theatre and dinner and flowers.
Scarborough has graciously offered to host a reading of Red August just in time for the holidays. Also, did you know that you could get a room discount of 30% until March!? Trust me, I don’t even live that far from Baltimore, but I got the Grimm room (I mean, seriously – how could I NOT stay in the Grimm room?) for Will’s birthday a couple of years ago and we loved it. We kicked around town all day and then rather than driving back, we lounged around in our room, being sweet to each other and eating Dangerously Delicious blueberry birthday pie. Then to top off the amazing decadence of it all, we got to eat the wonderful breakfasts that Barry makes. Everything was fresh and homemade.
They also have a sampling of locally made items near the entrance – including locally roasted coffee and scarfs and stuff.
Erica Smith & William Hardy
The reading in Baltimore will be an expansion of our last reading at The New Deal Cafe. Actors Erica Smith and William Hardy will be reading passages for about an hour. The theatre in one of the packages mentioned above? That theatre is Spotlighters, which William Hardy (who also happens to be an amazing writer, and my lovah) used to perform pretty regularly at years ago. Baltimore is full of great stuff.
There will be some hot cider and traditional Scottish black bun (a Hogmanay tradition) as well as other refreshments. Stop by for the reading, check out the B&B and then go shopping.
“I absolutely loved this book and the characters! I immediately fell in love with August she is such a smart young lady, takes crap from no one and is a very relatable character; Oh, and Faolan, gosh that man is complete perfection such a gentleman and he loves to read, he is very swoon worthy. The side characters also have a place in my heart; the way H.L. Brooks wrote them just makes them so lovable.”
H.L. Brooks 