'BeJeweled: The Flight of an Angel'; Book Launch Celebration Tour with Author Chelle Ramsey

Good morning all,

Today I am excited and honored to be the second stop of the whirlwind blog tour for author Chelle Ramsey.  Ramsey is hitting all the hot spots celebrating the release of her latest book 'BeJeweled:  The Flight of an Angel'.  In case you missed the sizzling excerpt from BeJeweled yesterday, whet your whistle and check it out right here on Te Russ' blog.

The beauty salon is a solid fixture in a woman's world.  A woman's hair is her crowning glory whether the economy is good, bad, or otherwise.  We might have to pass up that purse, getting the car washed this week, or wait on that new pair of shoes, but we are not going around with our hair looking any kind of way; if we can possibly help it. lol.  So what better backdrop for a juicy novel than a beauty salon?  We can always count on some relaxation, catching up on the latest happenings, sisterhood affirmation, and sometimes even a little drama.

'BeJeweled' delivers all of this and more.  And Chelle Ramsey has stopped by today to share with us a glimpse into the creative forces behind the birthing of her latest book.  Thank you so much for joining us today and answering the questions inquiring minds want to know.  Let's get started.

Pamela Kay:  What can you tell us about "BeJeweled The Flight of an Angel?”

Chelle:  BeJeweled is the first novel in a four book series. Each story focuses on the main character: Olivia, the salon owner; and one of her stylists, nail techs, or masseuses. There are other background characters that you get to know, who will have their own story.

BeJeweled: The Flight of an Angel focuses on Olivia and Angel Franklin, a hard working stylist with dreams of owning her own salon. However, with being berated by another co-worker, constantly finding herself in the center of BeJeweled’s gossip, and her husband’s constant infidelity, she’s losing hope quickly. With years of looking the other way, she realizes that she can no longer ignore his “side chicks” when it hits close to home. Angel may have to make a decision that may leave her raising their only son alone.

Olivia is working on opening a second salon, but when things in the shop spiral out of control, she finds herself being torn in several different directions. A spiritual woman, Olivia attempts to inspire her workers to rise above their adversities. Yet, her attention is diverted when the only man she has ever loved returns to Atlanta. Questioning his return, the status of his marriage, and his intentions, Olivia finds herself once again laying her heart on the line. With the possibility of finally discovering love, she realizes an old promise she made will be tested. Between the drama in the shop, and her own drama surfacing, Olivia finds her faith tested.

Pamela Kay:  What sparked the idea for this story? 

Chelle:  I wanted to write a story whose main character was inspirational. All of my other novels have an inspirational message; however, the main character is usually deep in the conflict of the story. Olivia does have conflict that she must resolve; however, she is steeped in her faith. And she rests on her faith to bring her through whatever may come. I wanted to show a single woman who could be strong, successful, and still inspirational. She aspires to be a Proverbs 31 woman if she ever has a family of her own.

Pamela Kay:  How did you develop and differentiate your characters? 

Chelle:  I created my characters with personalities that real people in their situations would embody. I envisioned how an Olivia, Angel, or Belinda would react in any given situation. I recalled the years of going to the salon and the various personalities I encountered there, and allowed my imagination to flow. The characters are as real to me as someone standing in front of me conversing with me. As I heard their voices speaking different words, or phrases I wrote them down and made those their tag words. Finally, I went on an internet search to find the pictures of my characters as I saw them in my head, so that I could flesh them out. This is the first novel that I have used an outline with, thanks to fellow author, MJ Kane. It enabled me to recall important things about them, such as their insecurities, worst memory, greatest fear, favorite color or piece of clothing. Coming from different backgrounds and cultures enabled me to differentiate their personalities.

Pamela Kay:  Who do you imagine is your ideal reader? 

Chelle:  My ideal reader varies, it can be the woman who is feeling as if she is too old to pursue her dreams, to the young woman who is trying to overcome an abusive relationship. It may be the successful woman who has never had a family, but as middle age approaches she finds herself wanting more than a career, but the love and warmth of a family. Above all, my ideal reader is the person who is facing or has faced life challenges, and needs to know that they can overcome adversity with belief in themselves, and faith.

Pamela Kay:  What do you hope readers take away from this story? 

Chelle:  I hope readers become empowered to look beyond the traditional happy ending. I want them to realize they can create their own life ending, despite their challenges. I want them to look within and learn to believe in themselves and love themselves above everything else. Because only then can they learn to love others and give the best of themselves to the world.         

Pamela Kay:  What is your writing process? 

Chelle:  My writing process involves jotting an idea down on a piece of paper when it occurs to me. This can happen if I am out and about, or in the middle of the night from a dream I have had. Most of my stories come from dreams. As soon as I have a free moment, I sit down and free write. In other words, I let the words, ideas and thoughts flow from my head, down through my fingers and onto the computer screen. I never question it in the beginning.

When I come upon certain topics, such as a career unfamiliar to me, an illness, or legal situation I take a couple of days to research that area thoroughly. I return to the writing process and write that situation as realistically as possible into the story. After I have written the complete novel, I go back revise, edit, and send it to my Beta readers, and possibly revise some more. This is the first novel that I have actually used an outline in, which I created after the first few chapters were written.

Pamela Kay:  What authors most inspire you? 

Chelle:  Terry McMillan, Connie Briscoe, James Patterson, Stuart Woods, and Nora Roberts.

Pamela Kay:  What one book, written by someone else, do you wish you'd written yourself? 

Chelle:  There is no book that someone else has already written that I wish I had written. I say this because if there are books out there like that, had I written them, they would be a completely different book. Everyone has their own ideas, voice, perspective, and creativity…so no two books will ever be the same. Therefore, I write what my heart desires and let every author have his or her own story. 

Pamela Kay:  Thank you for opening up and sharing with us today Chelle.  And readers please be sure to mark your calendars so you can join Chelle on the next stop of her tour when she visits the fabulous blog of author Chicki Brown on May 12, 2014.

About The Author

Chelle Ramsey

An avid reader since her primary years, Chelle saw books as an escape mechanism. Excited by the worlds, and characters that could be created with a touch of the imagination, she began writing her own stories at the age of 12. The more enamored with storytelling she became, the more she wanted to create stories about the suffering, and hardships she saw others enduring, with one twist…her characters would rise above their adversities and limitations, but not always with traditional endings.

This busy wife, and mother of three, exchanged her Girl Scout Leader pins for her creative writing pen, as she began to focus on publishing her novels. In her spare time, when she isn’t writing, she enjoys reading mystery novels, watching the NBA, remodeling their home with her husband, and spending time with him and their children. Having received her MBA in Human Resource Management, she says she cannot wait for the day when writing becomes her full-time career. “If I can show my readers they are not alone, in dealing with their challenges, and that they can rise above their limitations, I have achieved my goal,” Ramsey says.

Contact Info:

Website: www.cmichelleramsey.com

FB: Author Chelle Ramsey

Twitter: @ChellesBooks

Pinterest: authorcmramsey

Blog: www.writingmydreams.com

Purchase the Book Online at:

Amazon.com

BarnesandNoble.com

Obtain Graphics from the Media Kit:

http://bit.ly/TywebbinPublicityMediaKits

                  

'Scandal' season finale recap; death of a child, birth of a lie, daddy's home

Kerry Washington plays Olivia Pope in ABC's hit drama 'Scandal'

(photo credit:  Kerry Washington via Facebook)

Spoiler alerts:  Let’s dissect last night’s awesome Scandal finale.  Episode 18 was ‘The Price of Free and Fair Election’ and the price was terrible and costly.  Aired Thursday, April 17, 2014.

First, we can all exhale after wondering whether Rowan (Daddy Pope) had survived the shanking Maya (Momma Pope) had given him at the end of last week’s episode.  Momma Pope tells Liv that if she had truly wanted Daddy Pope dead, he would be, and sashays out of the hospital room.  Liv and Daddy Pope have an actual father/daughter talk with Daddy Pope showing more tenderness than he has in all three seasons.
Just when it looks like Cyrus is about to have a change of heart, Jake makes sure the news gets out that there is a bomb set to go off in the church.  Alas, the bomb goes off anyway just as they are finishing the process of evacuation.  Unbelievably, evil Vice President (VP) Sally escapes unharmed.  She is about to be whisked away in her waiting limousine when public relations guru Leo convinces her that they must take advantage of this opportunity (televised of course) to show that she would put her own safety at risk to help her fellow Americans.

Taking cunning to a new level, Leo begins smearing ashes all over VP Sally’s face and makes sure the camera sees VP Sally tending to the wounded strewn willy nilly in the church parking lot.  She Florence Nightingales her way gingerly through the crowd, making sure to assist the victims with the most blood splash for the benefit of the TV cameras.  When the network cameras switch from President (Pres.) Fitz’s speech to focus on VP Sally, Liv fears all hope for them to win the election is lost.

But the camp refuses to give in and vows to fight to the end.  So the whole family shows a united front and is there to back Fitz as he makes his biggest campaign speech yet.  While he is speaking Mellie screams out behind him.  Their son Fitz IV is going into convulsions with blood coming from his mouth and nose.  Pres. Fitz dashes from the podium and in what has got to be one of the top three most poignant moments in the show, cradles his son like a baby and carries him down the stairs.  The pained look on his face was pricelessly real.

To everyone’s surprise, especially the viewers, the son dies.  We did not expect this at all.  Many Scandal groups on Facebook and Twitter had been debating all week about who would die.  Would it be VP Sally, Harrison, Quinn, or Leo?  No one ever dreamed that it would be a child.  Shonda Rhimes, master of plot twists and turns, had stunned us again.

Suddenly it was Cyrus and Liv sitting in the hospital waiting room.  They discussed how the death of Pres. Fitz’s son could turn the tide and win the election with a sympathy vote.  They chatted a few minutes about what monsters they must be to even be thinking about political strategy when Pres. Fitz had just suffered the death of his son.  But they brace themselves and convince Fitz that he can win.  Before they leave the hospital Fitz gets word that his son’s death was no accident and that a vial (supposedly under lock and key) of the particular strain of meningitis that his son died from had been reported stolen.

Everyone immediately knows that it had to be Maya (Momma Pope), and the search is on.  Daddy Pope limps down the hospital hallway and gives his condolences to Fitz.  He says that all differences aside, he is a father too.  He says he knows Fitz wants Momma Pope’s head on a platter and he is just the man to bring that platter to Fitz.  Then it’s revelation time.  Fitz tells Liv none of this (politics) matters.  He just wants them to move to Vermont and have babies.  Liv tells him that Mellie needs him because Fitz’s father raped Mellie.  And that as much as she loves him, if he left Mellie at her most vulnerable, he wouldn't be the man Liv loves.

Fitz is shocked.  First his son dies and now this.  How much more can one man take even if it is a finale?
Fitz opens the door and for the first time ever we see him touch Mellie with pure compassion.  He is so sorry for what his father did, as Mellie finally is able to stop crying in a drink, and lean her head on Fitz’s shoulder for a good cry on him.  This is the second of the most poignant moments in the season.  She assures Fitz that she’d tried to fight off her father-in-law, but that she’d done a DNA test to be sure and their dead son was Fitz’s
.
In the third of our most poignant moments, Fitz is alone in the oval office.  He, the most powerful man in the free world, walks in, shuts the door and drops.  He is not felled by an assassin’s bullet, but the crushing weights of his son’s death and the betrayal of his wife’s rape by his own daddy drop him to his knees.  He is alone on the floor of the oval office weeping as one without hope.  Fitz more than earned an Emmy in this episode alone.

Momma Pope is captured, handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a car, but she is smiling.  Somehow Harrison realizes that things aren’t making sense and traces the missing vial of bacteria back to Daddy Pope.  He confronts him while we are still fighting to digest this news.  Momma Pope has always been presented as the anti-Christ and Daddy Pope was seen as the only prayer to hold back her evil reign of terror.  In an instant everything we think we know about human nature is turned upside down.  It turns out Daddy Pope orchestrated the death of Fitz’s son.

His justification was that he’d promised Liv that he would never harm a hair on her beloved Fitz’s head.  And he didn’t, he just took out the son.   Poppa Pope has checked himself out of the hospital, against his doctor’s orders, and, surprise, is now back in command of B6-13.  He cajoles Liv to go away with Jake and remove herself from the dirtiness of this business.  Poor Live is just demoralized.  She feels everything is her fault and everyone she loves gets hurt.  She says, “I am the Scandal.”

Cliffhangers:   (see video recaps here)

The season ended with Liv and Jake flying off on Daddy Pope’s private plane.  Will they be back?  Fitz calls Liv, she looks at the phone, and then hits ignore.

Mellie was raped by her father-in-law and had an affair with Fitz’s old friend VP candidate Andrew.  Sure the test said the baby belongs to Fitz.  But why did we see a big envelope of money changing hands at  the DNA laboratory last episode?  What are they hiding and what did they change?

Years ago Huck’s family was lost when B613 threw him in the hole.  Quinn and Charlie find out where the family is and Quinn shows Huck the house.  Huck knocks on the door and his wife opens it.  The scene cuts away just as recognition is dawning in her eyes.  It’s interesting that the wife is being brought back in just as Quinn and Huck are tearing everyone’s eyes out with their animalistic mating rituals.  Is a love triangle in the future?

When Harrison learns that Daddy Pope is behind the murder of Fitz’s son, his first inclination is to tell Liv.  Daddy Pope can’t allow that and the last thing we see is him turning towards Harrison raising a gun.

And finally we see Daddy Pope looking down into the dreaded hole.  Momma Pope, weave still glamorously layered in place, looks up with a coy smile through the bars as Daddy Pope closes the top down on her.  What is with this smile again?  When we first met Momma Pope she was chewing her own wrists to the bone in order to escape.  Now she’s sitting in the hole smiling like she is at a tea party.  Something is amiss.

Real life 'Scandal'; actor charged with threats to murder wife and kill himself

Columbus Short at NAACP Image Awards, February 2014

(photo credit:  Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for NAACP)

Roughing up his wife, fighting in bars, and now threatening murder-suicide; these are not scenes from another thrilling Shonda Rhimes script, but the actual life of actor Columbus Short, a cast member on her hit ABC series ‘Scandal’.  Just yesterday Short’s wife, Turee Tanee, filed for divorce from him for the third time and has also been granted a restraining order.  There is a laundry list of accusations, but the shocker is that Tanee alleges that Short held a knife to her throat and threated to kill both of them.

Fans had already stirred up a social media frenzy about the highly-anticipated ‘Scandal’ finale tonight, but now many are riveted to see what the outcome will be for Short in real life.  Rhimes reportedly ordered Short to straighten up his act after he was involved in a bloody fisticuffs in a bar on March 15^th.  She made it clear that the show “will not tolerate negative press”.

Short and Tanee have been married since 2005 and are the parents of a 2-year-old daughter.  This isn’t the first time Short has been in the news.  There was a huge controversy when Short, a former much-in-demand backup dancer, admitted to having had a fling with his then boss Brittany Spears in 2004.  He was a dancer and choreographer for her Hotel Onyx Tour when tales of them kissing on tour fueled the breakup of his first marriage to Brandi, pregnant at the time with their now 9-year-old son.

Tanee alleges that this latest incident occurred on April 7^th, with Short coming home drunk and ended with her barely managing to escape.  She was only able to flee a short distance because she says Short had flattened her tire.  The judge immediately ordered Short to leave the home.  There is a hearing scheduled on May 8^th to determine if the restraining order will become permanent.

"Scandal" recap: Mellie said knock you out!

Mellie and Fitz come to blows

(photo credit:  abc.go.com)

Aired Thursday, April 3^rd, on ABC, Episode - “The Fluffer”

Well to get the medical miracle out of the way, Harrison seems to have recovered rather quickly from his sleep-inducing injection last week and is back in tip-top Gladiator suit form.

Liv, still hurt from President Fitz’s harsh “I’m talking to my wife,” rebuttal last week, tries to play the icy dead-eyed stare game and calmly asks Fitz “what service am I billing you for today?’’  Wow!

Fitz shows his hypocritical side with a fierceness when he orders Liv to “make it stop!”  He brazenly asks his own mistress to make sure the vice presidential candidate stops sleeping with Fitz’s wife, Mellie.  The nerve.

Of course Liv, the strongest woman in D.C., but weak for Fitz, goes straight to Andrew and tells him he has 24 hours to decide whether he wants to be vice president for the next four years, or does he want to pleasure Mellie for the next three months which, according to Liv, is about how long it will be before Mellie gets bored with him.

Andrew protests that this is about love, not politics.  However as he watches Liv and Fitz interact for the cameras and how smoothly she lays on the role of the loving, touchy-feely wife, he begins to doubt if what Mellie feels for him is any realer than the act she puts on for the press.

Later that evening, Mellie sidles up to Andrew and gives him the come hither smile.  Andrew says he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for them to continue sleeping with each other.  Without another word Mellie spins on her heel, marches into Fitz’s office and reaches back from Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico with a roundhouse slap heard around the world!

Fitz almost goes down, the people he was meeting with are speechless, and the secret service agents (Fitz’s supposed protectors) don’t make a move.  She accuses Fitz of not letting her have anything.  Taking Andrew was apparently the last straw.

Then there was the Hallmark family dinner moment…not.  For the first time ever viewers were treated to Momma and Daddy Pope at dinner with their beloved Livvie.  Momma Pope wasn’t invited, but that’s never stopped her before.  Where most families reach for each other’s hands to grace the food, these folk were grabbing for knives and making threats.  Momma Pope stayed just long enough for Liv to get the phone call that Claire (one of Momma Pope’s operatives that was sneaking info to Liv) was dead, and then sashayed off.   Notice how everyone ends up dead in the streets on this show?  Poor Claire sprawled in the street with her throat sliced open.  Always outside.

Just when we thought Liv was going to give in once again, she grew a backbone and stood up to Jake’s begging, refusing to let him into her apartment.  Then she showed up at his apartment and went way above and beyond the call of duty.  Let’s just say she worked him out, put him to sleep and snuck the data off of his phone.  What that woman won’t do for her country.

Super Quinn and Charlie and Team Gladiators all find out around the same time that Momma Pope has a bomb.  Liv tells Huck to shut down the communication system, and he does, but in the process Momma Pope gets away and no one knows where she is going.

Out of the blue Jake bursts into the office and (horror of horrors) grabs Liv around the throat and slams her against the glass-paned door…hard!  Before crazy Huck and the other Gladiators can make a move, Jake whips a gun in their faces and waves it back and forth, keeping them at bay.  Believe it or not, that’s the kind of stress Shonda Rhimes (creator of Scandal) left us under.  She’s a great writer, but her episodes are not at all blood-pressure friendly.  But we love it.

Oh and the previews next week left us with a glimpse of President Fitz speaking and a bomb underneath the stage.  Not necessarily saying that the bomb was ticking under the same stage Fitz was on, but that’s all we were given.

Be sure to catch the next episode, Thursday, April 10^th at 10:00pm on ABC.

What's Behind My Book "Revelations"

Good morning all.  Please drop by Cynthia's Blog today and learn about the inspiration behind my book "Revelations".  http://bit.ly/tXB25W .  Christian Drama, Family, Suspense and more.  Thanks.