The Conspiracy - Chapter 1 & 2 - more to come soon!

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The Conspiracy

$13.95

"The Black Sheep Squadron Strikes Back"

Abducted

I woke up. I was surrounded by darkness. Pitch-black. I was thirsty, so thirsty, my tongue felt like a dried out old sock, too big for my mouth, about to choke me. Fortunately I always keep water next to my bed, I wanted some. That would help, a sip of water would do…but I was too weak to reach for it.

I was wondering, who was hammering something. That fool, he woke me up.

I turned to reach for my water bottle, fumbling for it in the dark, that's when I realized that the hammering was inside of my head…

The short movement had caused all the pain to centre in my head, with a painful sigh I sank back and was out instantly.

When I woke up again, it was still night. The pain was still there, too, as was the thirst.

I fumbled for the light switch and could not find it; neither could I find the water bottle, or my sheets. I was down right miserable.

I decided to wake up my husband, so he could take care of me. As I reached over to the left to shake his shoulder, I felt a cold wall. He was not there.

There was not supposed to be a wall. I always sleep on the right side of the bed, close to the door; Kevin sleeps on the left side. Next to him were lots of empty space and then the closet. But now, instead of Kevin, a wall was next to me. I felt utterly confused. For so many years, ever since we had been married, Kevin was on my left. This was odd.

I was too tired and my head hurt too bad for me to figure it out, maybe, I was not even awake, maybe I was just dreaming…I went back to sleep, or into another bad dream.

Chapter 1

"Hi Daddy, do you know where mommy is? She does not answer the phone." Timmy was angry. She knew that he always called after school, why could she not simply answer her darn phone!

"I don't know, little man, maybe she's in a meeting. She didn't answer my calls either." Kevin answered. He had not been surprised, when his calls had went unanswered, they had argued earlier and lately his wife had made it a habit not to answer his calls after an argument. But Timmy, she always answered his phone calls she was crazy about the little guy, as was he. He looked at his son's lovely face with the freckled nose, the hazel eyes and the full lips, now in a frown, the full dark curly hair, he remembered his wife commenting on these curls when Timmy was a baby ..You know, my Grandma always said curly head kids are very creative and every curl will stand for a different fury. We'll have our hands full with this boy, just wait and see!

"I tell you what," he said, " we'll have some Mc Donald's and if she doesn't call by the time we are done, we'll go and do something else, like bowling or miniature golfing, what do you say?"

"Alright, but it still sucks, I have something important to tell her." Timmy answered.

"Can't you tell me? I think that being your Daddy entitles me to be told important news!" he challenged his son, his brown eyes shining with pride.

"Yeah, but it's not the same." It was obvious that the boy wanted to be begged to share his important information.

"Come on, get in the car" Kevin smiled, "and then, please, tell me the important news. I think that I really should know. And, it would feel so good to know something important about you before your Mom does."

"I won the spelling test in school today! I was the only one who could spell the last four words!" Timmy's face was flushed with excitement and pride. He was twelve years old and had spent most of his life in Germany, visiting a German school. He was in fifth grade and had still problems with some German Grammar, but his English was coming along well.

His Mom was German, but most of the time they were talking and writing English at home, because to this day Kevin never had picked up how to speak or write German fluently.

They had come to Germany a few years ago, as civilians, working for the US military. There intentions had been to stay about three years and then return to the states. Somehow, every year something else had come up and prolonged their stay.

Considering Timmy's heritage and his problems with German grammar, his success in the spelling test was really great. Kevin was proud of his son.

"That must have been some awfully hard words, if you were the only one who could spell them!" Kevin said with pride.

"Well, it was in English class." Timmy answered, hoping to impress his father even more.

"Wow, you are absolutely the greatest! Put it here little man!" Kevin held out his big, brown fist and Timmy's small fist connected with his Dad's.

"So, can the best English- word-speller-ever have a twenty piece chicken nuggets and a milk shake?" the boy asked with a grin.

"Sure son, what ever you want" Kevin grinned back.

It was a warm summer evening and they chose a place on the outside of the crowded McDonalds restaurant. Timmy was happily dipping his chicken nuggets in sweet and sour sauce and sipping on his milk shake.

Kevin was munching on his Big Mac and sipping his soda.

"You know," he said between bites, "I was thinking, maybe we should drive out to the lake and rent a boat for an hour."

"Yeah, and then we will play a round of miniature golf, that will be fun! I bet you five bucks that I can beat you!" Tim replied.

"Do you have five bucks?" Kevin asked.

"I don't need them, because I'm going to beat you." The boy giggled.

"Ah, I see. Then eat up and let's see what you've got." Kevin challenged him.

They drove out to a little park with a lake, a miniature golf course, ponies, ball courts and a beautiful playground.

They went to the little golf course first.

After Timmy beat his Dad by eight points, they walked over to the lake and rented one of the white and blue paddleboats.

"She still has not called" Tim complained.

"Probably a bad reception out here" Kevin replied, paddling the little boat to the middle of the lake.

They took turns paddling and talked about Championship wrestling, basketball and the latest movies. Before they knew it, the hour was over and they had to turn in the boat.

On the way back to the car Tim pulled his cell phone out and tried to call his Mom again. She still did not answer the phone. He left a message on her answer machine.

Kevin could not help, but to wonder if something had happened to her. It was after 9pm. She should be home by now and wondering, where her guys were. He pulled out his cell phone and called his oldest stepson, Frank.

"Hey Frank, have you heard from your Mom?" he asked

"Nope, I have not been home all day. It's going to be a few more hours ..till I get there." The boy answered. He was twenty years old and more out on the run than anywhere else. If he was not at work he was meeting with his friends.

"Alright, later." Kevin hung up the phone and put it back on his belt.

"Maybe she went out with friends or to the gym" he offered.

He knew that she would not really go anywhere, without checking with Timmy and letting him know where she was. Actually, he was pretty sure, she would let him know as well if she had some plans. It was not like she had been all that mad in the morning. And even if, she definitely would let Timmy know, where to reach her.

When they got home, her car was not there. They went upstairs to their apartment; no sign of her, no message on the answer machine, no indication that she had been home since she had left for work in the morning.

"Do you have any home work to do for school tomorrow?" he asked his son.

"No, all done." He answered.

"Then how about, if you put on your PJ's and we watch a movie, your choice." Kevin suggested.

"O.K., let's watch a Jackie Chan movie" those were Tim's favourites.

While the boy changed and brushed his teeth, Kevin put in the movie and got two sodas out of the refrigerator. Then he sat down on the couch. Timmy sat right next to him, bringing his pillow and his blanket with him.

Through the first half of the movie he stayed awake, checking his phone frequently to make sure, it was turned on and he didn't miss his Mom's call. Then he finally fell asleep.

It was almost midnight when Frank came home.

Kevin still had not heard from his wife and had not been able to reach her.

"Hi, where's Mom, sleeping already?" Frank greeted his stepfather. He was very tall, over six feet, with short blond hair and dark blue eyes, the same eyes as his Mom.

"No, she did not come home. And she did not call either. I need you to do me a favour and call all the German hospitals in the area and maybe the police. I already checked with the MPs and the military hospitals." Kevin replied.

"Shit!" was Frank's only comment as he picked up the phone and started calling around.

An hour later they still had no clue about what had happened and where she was. But they at least had reason to believe that for right now she was not involved in some accident.

"That's weird, man" Frank said, shaking his head, "I think, I'll jump in the car and go looking for her."

"Where do you want to look?" Kevin wanted to know.

The only place he could think of was the air base where she worked as a detective for a civilian company. He doubted that she would be there; she didn't like to hang out there after work.

"I don't know, I thought I'll check the air base, the two gas stations where she likes to stop and maybe Eddie's place."

"I already called Eddie, they haven't seen her all day. I called Sonja and Marla too. They have not heard from her either." Kevin felt beat. This was the first time ever in eighteen years that he didn't know where his wife was. He was worried.

"Well, I will go and check all the other places then. If she shows up, give me a call, and don't worry, she'll be fine." With this Frank turned around and left.

Kevin stayed, hoping that his wife would show up any minute now, safe and unharmed.

Somehow it did not feel like she would.

Chapter 2

I woke up again, still surrounded by darkness, still thirsty and still suffering from a splitting headache.

This time I managed to sit up. At least now my head was clear enough to realize that I was not at home in my bed.

I still was wearing my clothes and I was lying on the ground.

I reached in my pants pocket and fumbled for my lighter. I found it and flicked it on.

The weak light revealed a small dirty room with shelves on one side and a heavy door across the room.

I crawled to the shelves and found a bunch of dirty, dusty wine bottles. I opened one of them and smelled on it. Is seemed to still be all right. I took a long swallow.

I felt a little better. More light headed, but not all that thirsty anymore. The lighter in my hand got hot and I dropped it.

Carefully I put the bottle down and felt the dirty floor, hoping to find my lighter. There, that was it. I flicked it back on and looked for my purse.

Finally I found it. I looked for my cell phone. It was not there. The lighter burned my hand and I dropped it again. Ouch! I crawled on the floor fumbling for the lighter. There, finally.

I sat on the floor in the dark, wondering, how I got here and what I wanted here.

I could not remember. The thinking made my head hurt worse. I flicked the lighter back on and got my purse. I found my pain pills and grabbed the wine bottle.

Great, I had to let the lighter go in order to get the pills out of the container. In the dark I wrestled with the top of the pill bottle. I poured some of the pills into the palm of my hand. Four. Good, could not come much worse, if I took four of them with wine. I dropped them into my mouth and swallowed with two big sips of the wine. Then I put my lighter back into my pants pocket.

I decided not to think about where I was and why I was here any more. It was too much trouble to figure it out. I would leave it up to Kevin. As a matter of fact, he could just figure it all out, while I was sleeping.

"Let me know, what you come up with, hun'." I said and laid back down. "Give me back my pillow," I said and then I was asleep again.

Stay tuned for chapter 3 and 4! You know you don't want to stop now.

The Conspiracy: The Black Sheep Squadron Strikes Back
R&B Pratcher
$13.95

June Bear Adventures: The Missing Pies
Birgit Pratcher, Roger Pratcher
$11.95

Matt and Spencer in Their Great Adventure
Birgit Pratcher, Roger Pratcher
$19.95

One Family's Adventure: The Cheating Landlords
Roger Pratcher, Brigit Pratcher
$16.95

Keep the Writing Going

To Keep the Writing going

just my two little cents on small ideas that can help in big ways to keep on writing

Lately quite a few people have asked what they can do to keep the writing going and complained that they keep losing interest in their projects after a while or, at least come to a dead end.

It is not unusual to lose interest in a project for a while. After all, writing a book from beginning to end is a lot of detailed and dedicated work. After you’ve wrote the entire manuscript you still have to edit everything over and over again.

Often it does depend on simple the project alone, is it fiction or non-fiction? After all, if you write non-fiction, you can stretch the facts only so far and the wording, even though it is important, should not be continued into clouds of boredom.

Often it is indeed the inspiration that is missing. To inspire yourself is not all that hard. A lot of times reading a book does wonders. Taking a walk, taking pictures, watching a movie or two, go fishing, all of this can feed you with new and creative ideas. Just sitting somewhere and watching people, animals or simply nature, can spark ideas and feed the muse to do the job.

In moments that you do feel inspired you should take notes, write down or talk into a little recorder all those great ideas and later you can sort them out.

So now you might have tons of great ideas for 20 different books and are still not half way done with one, but you have plenty tools now.

First of all, it will be your book, so you can use your imagination any way you see fit. Even on your characters.

Here it is always good to take little notes to describe the way you see your individual characters. Write down their names, what they look like, what they like and don’t like, what they do and read, develop the character, soon you might feel like they are a friend, like they have become more than just your imagination.

You still might not feel ready to write a book of several hundred pages. What you can do now is write it as a short story or a poem.

In the meantime a really great tool are Writing Exercises. Most writers practice their writing skills each day.

You don’t have to do it for hours. Here is a very easy way to "train" yourself with your writing: Chose a headline, something you see on the net or in a newspaper or the headline of a story someone once wrote. Then start typing about the subject for at least ten minutes straight, without stopping, without correcting any mistakes. Once your time is up or your fingers stop because you can’t think of anything else, go through what you just created and do your corrections. After a while you can go on to 15 minutes or more and writing will become rather easy.

Don’t feel bad if you have several manuscripts that are not finished. We always have about 5 or 6 ideas that we have started on and will finish later. A great help for a lot of writers is the "outline" of the story, you write it like an excerpt and it can help you not to lose your focus on the plot and characters.

Another trick you can use is this: You start the story that you want to write and share it. When you see that people are reading it and want to know what will happen next it will encourage you to continue.

Just like any artist, authors do need an audience.

Another way to ensure you keep writing, just to keep going is blogging. Here you don’t even have to stretch your imagination, you just write down whatever comes to your mind, it can be fiction or non-fiction, events of a day or week, things that rock your world and things that make you think or angry, or anything else.

A nice way to blog away and to get a lot of reading in is simply doing reviews. Of course you don’t have to concentrate on books alone, reviews can be done on movies as well or even on magazines.

I wish you lots of luck and many creative moments! (I will return to my X-Box now to find a creative moment myself, lol)

Why don’t you inspire yourself with one of our books:

The Conspiracy: The Black Sheep Squadron Strikes Back
R&B Pratcher

June Bear Adventures: The Missing Pies
Birgit Pratcher, Roger Pratcher

One Family’s Adventure: The Cheating Landlords
Roger Pratcher, Brigit Pratcher

Matt and Spencer in Their Great Adventure
Birgit Pratcher, Roger Pratcher

The Book Children Love

June Bear Adventures - The Missing Pies is an exceptional children's fantasy book, promised to keep the kids and tweens turning pages all the way to the very end. Even some adults can't help themselves and have to read it from beginning to end, enjoying every word of the fantastic adventure.

paperback, 236 pages, ISBN:  978-1432703523     $11.95 

Here are the opinions of some readers:

Francis Lynn, author of teen/young adult novels:

Kids and their parents should appreciate "June Bear Adventures - The Missing Pies". Birgit and Roger Pratcher are a husband and wife team, whose books are always on the original and humorous side. Their new children's book is no exception. It's a tantalising story, and like most detective stories will make readers want to carry onto the end. It might be too lively for bedtime stories though!

Brooke, singer and songwriter:

I Love Your June Bear Book!!!
I LOVE YOUR JUNE BEAR BOOK!!!!!! I had the most wonderful time reading your book during my long plane ride! I feel like I have been on a delightful adventure!! I am looking forward to sharing your book with my KWAV listeners . . . I am thinking about spreading the contest over 3 weeks . . . just to add more time to have fun!! I shall thoroughly enjoy sharing your book with others . . . it's a treat for me to be able to share something I believe in so much!! I truly think your book would make an enchanting movie!! I can envision magical sequels / episodes to come!! I look forward to when I can read another June Bear adventure book of yours!!!

Comment by Brooke Singer and Radiohost on KWAV.biz, California

V.G. Greene, a reader

VG. Greene, a true bookworm and a mom, 09/12/2007

This childrens book does remind of the wonderful tales the Grimms brothers brought to us in our childhood. Elves, witches, magic dragons and in the middle children with an innocent and brave heart, ready to save the world! This is one book I will cherish and read to my children over and over again!

You should not let your child, niece, nephew or grandchild miss out on this beautiful fantasy novel. Buy it right now, at AMAZON world wide!

Amazon.com    Amazon Germany     Amazon. France   Amazon Canada   Amazon UK

More Ways to Support our Fellow Writers

We have been thinking about how to offer even more support for our fellow authors and came up with a blog of Special Offers and Contests.
We will try to keep you updated on this blog about all the great stuff and the great deals going on about twice a month and we do hope that you will enjoy this new feature on our support site here.
Like always, if you are a writer or publisher, feel free to let us know if you have something special going on or would like some support, we will continue to do our best to help you out.
Just like the Featured Author, we will also post these blogs on our website, www.wonderfulstories.net and Birgit

Our books are found at Amazon.com, uk, etc and other great bookstores.
Have a great weekend!
Birgit and Roger

Featured Author: Tracy B. Evans

Featured Author:

 

Please meet mystery/suspense author Tracy B. Evans.

Her first book Fatal Kidnapping is a thrilling mystery, fast paced and filled with suspense. While her debut novel Fatal Kidnapping is taking off to a great start, she is busy writing on her next manuscript, which will be another suspense thriller. The title and the plot are still a secret, but we are sure it will be as exciting as Fatal Kidnapping!

Her favorite books to read are mystery thrillers and sometimes a little romance.

Sometimes Tracy likes to write poetry, which is not published at this time.

 

See what Debra Gaynor from ReviewYourBook.com had to say about Fatal Kidnapping:

Fatal Kidnapping
Tracy B. Evans
ISBN: 978-1-4343-2512-0

Author House, 2007
Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for ReviewYourBook.com, 11/07
Twists and turns…
5 Stars

A day never went by without Katie Stone calling her father at least once, but on that fateful day she didn't call. She and fiancé Caleb had agreed to meet for dinner, but she didn't show up. Something was wrong; Katie was missing. Terrified her father and fiancé turned to the local sheriff. Sheriff Day found her car at the Grocery Store. The town began to search for missing Katie.

When I review a book, I usually give a much longer summary. This time, I intentionally kept the summary short so that I would not give away any of the astonishing story. Fatal Kidnapping is like a roller coaster ride there are enough twists and turns to keep you holding on to the edge of your seat. I found the plot amazing; I was still trying to figure out " who done it" up to the last chapter. My only criticism of Fatal Kidnapping was the dialogue in a few places it is a little contrived. The plot falls heavily on the dialogue, which is good. I like books with a lot of dialogue. Tracy B. Evans is a talented writer. The cover deliciously hints at what lays inside. The characters are well developed; Caleb, loving and supportive, and Jed, a father that loves his daughter deeply. As a child, Katie was filled with pain. Fans of mystery and suspense will cherish this one.

 

Visit Tracy at MySpace

 

Visit Tracy at www.tracybevans.com

 

Fatal Kidnapping,  Paperback, 216 pages, $ 12.78 at Amazon

$13.04 at Barnes and Noble

 

 

Fatal Kidnapping:
Katie Stone felt all alone. At the same time, however, she never felt alone. Katie was constantly checking over her shoulder in fear, a perpetual and eerie feeling that someone was watching or following her. Unfortunately, no one would believe her. In Fatal Kidnapping, Tracy B. Evans' new book of love, death, and abduction in a small town, the refusal to believe Katie turns into disbelief when, suddenly, Katie disappears.
When Katie's father, Jed, does not hear from her and neither he nor Katie's fiancé, Caleb, can find her, Jed contacts his close friend and the town's sheriff, Jack Day. Sheriff Day is clueless when it comes to conducting a search for a missing person, as he has never had to deal with any major crimes in such a small town. He eventually calls together a group of people from the town to meet him at the police station and begins the search for Katie. As the townspeople look high and low for the missing girl, the search begins to seem pointless. They find nothing to aid them in the investigation, and no sign of Katie. Caleb fears that Katie has left town because she has decided that she does not want to marry him after all. Then, suddenly, a few days later, Katie is discovered. She is bruised and battered, but she is alive.
Katie begins to tell Sheriff Day what happened to her during the time she was gone, but Sheriff Day is immediately frustrated and confused. Why is she beginning her statement with details about her childhood? Katie tells him he must listen to the whole story or he will never believe her. Wanting to get to the bottom of things, Sheriff Day agrees, and he can not believe what he learns next. When Katie is finished, Sheriff Day believes he has discovered the truth behind her kidnapping. But has he really, and will the truth ever truly be revealed? Katie is adamant that the statement she has given is correct, but how can the kidnapper be a man who has been dead for years?
Follow Katie's story and its incredible conclusions in Fatal Kidnapping.
More information is available at www.tracybevans.com .

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Dear Friends,

our newest Featured Author is posted in the "About Me" section on our site.

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Wonderful Stories!

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