Please welcome Sharman Burson Ramsey....
Treasure on St. George Island, Florida
I thought that would get your attention!
While my second novel In Pursuit does not contain a treasure map, it does include the tale of a kidnapping to find the treasure map of Captain Kidd and the story of the elusive treasure of the infamous William Augustus Bowles. Cassandra King writes: In Pursuit is a rollicking story of kidnappings, lost treasures, Red Stick Creeks and Seminoles, betrayal and revenge, populated with well-known historical figures such as Jean Lafitte, Billy Bowlegs, William Weatherford, and even Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson.”
But it is also the continuation of a love story that began during the Creek Indian War in the first novel of this family saga Swimming with Serpents. Joie Kincaid rescued the arrogant Godfrey Lewis Winkel from sure death after the Massacre at Fort Mims when they were little more than children. Four years later the two are kidnapped from a popular London tea room by the pirate José Gaspar and brought back to his lair in Charlotte Harbour. The annual Tampa Gasparilla Festival celebrates this pirate whose exploits inspired the names of Captiva Island, Sanibel Island, and, of course, Gasparilla Island.
My writing began with a genealogy website that expanded into a Southern culture website, Southern-Style.com. When I discovered that my fourth great grandmother was Native American that set me to wondering what the world was like for that woman in that time and place (Southwest Alabama, 1813). Things look different when you see them through another set of eyes. The result was Swimming with Serpents which was published by Mercer University Press (Sept 2012.)
But what happened to the survivors of Horseshoe Bend?
That research led me to a sad story of betrayal of the Blacks and Red Sticks who served with the British in the Corps of Colonial Marines and the tale of the Negro Fort. The Negro Fort was built on Prospect Point about eighteen miles up the river from present day Apalachicola. Andrew Jackson renamed it Fort Gadsden. In July of 1816 a lucky hot shot hit the magazine of the fort in Spanish territory immediately killing the approximately 300 men, women and children within the fort.
I wanted to tell the story from the viewpoint of the Blacks, Red Sticks and Seminoles, the Americans and the British. Joie Kincaid and the scholar Godfrey Lewis Winkel, introduced in Swimming with Serpents, stepped forward telling me their adventure and providing me with the vehicle. The pirate Gasparilla sends goons to a tea room to kidnap the scholar with a treasure map, Godfrey Lewis Winkel. They accidentally take beautiful Joie Kincaid dressed as a street urchin along with Godfrey and a story of passion unfolds. Joie must overcome a childhood of abuse and rejection to accept love she had never known while embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.
Together they weather the tempests of pirates, illness, the Seminole War, family vendetta, and a hurricane to find their way to each other and a love neither could have imagined. Interwoven in this action-packed adventure is the long-forgotten tale of hope and betrayal at the Negro Fort, the plight of the Red Sticks after Horseshoe Bend, the greed of a pirate longing for a legacy, Andrew Jackson’s single-minded vision of a nation’s manifest destiny.
I write books I like to read with female protagonists of strength and courage that touch my heart and make me cry -- and are so human they make me laugh. I like their men to be worthy of being called the hero to my heroine.
Recently the moderator of a panel I was on at the Decatur Book Festival, Randal Harber, formerly with CNN, paid me the compliment of saying In Pursuit ought to be a movie. He mentioned the final scene in the book particularly. An author can only dream.
I am currently working on a murder mystery series beginning with Mint Juleps and Murder, a novel that Michael Morris calls the “Ya Ya Sisterhood meets Murder She Wrote” that takes place in a plantation house amazingly similar to my own grandparents’ house in Alabama. Genetic memory gives it an interesting twist.
Take In Pursuit and a bottle of your favorite wine (mine is a Riesling) to your coziest reading nook, drift back 200 years and imagine the sails of a pirate ship in the distance. Think of Joie and Godfrey.
In Pursuit (Mercer University Press, 2013)
6 x 9 | 280 pp. | Paper, $20.00t | 978-0-88146-454-2 | P473
e-book, $16.00 | 978-0-88146-458-0
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SharmanRamsey
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6231639.Sharman_Burson_Ramsey
Blog: http://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.sharmanbursonramsey.com
GIVEAWAY:
The publisher is giving away physical copies of BOTH Swimming with Serpents and In Pursuit as a prize to one reader. They need to be shipped only in the US. To enter, just leave a comment on this post and then fill out the rafflecopter below. Good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Treasure on St. George Island, Florida
I thought that would get your attention!
While my second novel In Pursuit does not contain a treasure map, it does include the tale of a kidnapping to find the treasure map of Captain Kidd and the story of the elusive treasure of the infamous William Augustus Bowles. Cassandra King writes: In Pursuit is a rollicking story of kidnappings, lost treasures, Red Stick Creeks and Seminoles, betrayal and revenge, populated with well-known historical figures such as Jean Lafitte, Billy Bowlegs, William Weatherford, and even Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson.”
But it is also the continuation of a love story that began during the Creek Indian War in the first novel of this family saga Swimming with Serpents. Joie Kincaid rescued the arrogant Godfrey Lewis Winkel from sure death after the Massacre at Fort Mims when they were little more than children. Four years later the two are kidnapped from a popular London tea room by the pirate José Gaspar and brought back to his lair in Charlotte Harbour. The annual Tampa Gasparilla Festival celebrates this pirate whose exploits inspired the names of Captiva Island, Sanibel Island, and, of course, Gasparilla Island.
My writing began with a genealogy website that expanded into a Southern culture website, Southern-Style.com. When I discovered that my fourth great grandmother was Native American that set me to wondering what the world was like for that woman in that time and place (Southwest Alabama, 1813). Things look different when you see them through another set of eyes. The result was Swimming with Serpents which was published by Mercer University Press (Sept 2012.)
But what happened to the survivors of Horseshoe Bend?
That research led me to a sad story of betrayal of the Blacks and Red Sticks who served with the British in the Corps of Colonial Marines and the tale of the Negro Fort. The Negro Fort was built on Prospect Point about eighteen miles up the river from present day Apalachicola. Andrew Jackson renamed it Fort Gadsden. In July of 1816 a lucky hot shot hit the magazine of the fort in Spanish territory immediately killing the approximately 300 men, women and children within the fort.
I wanted to tell the story from the viewpoint of the Blacks, Red Sticks and Seminoles, the Americans and the British. Joie Kincaid and the scholar Godfrey Lewis Winkel, introduced in Swimming with Serpents, stepped forward telling me their adventure and providing me with the vehicle. The pirate Gasparilla sends goons to a tea room to kidnap the scholar with a treasure map, Godfrey Lewis Winkel. They accidentally take beautiful Joie Kincaid dressed as a street urchin along with Godfrey and a story of passion unfolds. Joie must overcome a childhood of abuse and rejection to accept love she had never known while embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.
Together they weather the tempests of pirates, illness, the Seminole War, family vendetta, and a hurricane to find their way to each other and a love neither could have imagined. Interwoven in this action-packed adventure is the long-forgotten tale of hope and betrayal at the Negro Fort, the plight of the Red Sticks after Horseshoe Bend, the greed of a pirate longing for a legacy, Andrew Jackson’s single-minded vision of a nation’s manifest destiny.
I write books I like to read with female protagonists of strength and courage that touch my heart and make me cry -- and are so human they make me laugh. I like their men to be worthy of being called the hero to my heroine.
Recently the moderator of a panel I was on at the Decatur Book Festival, Randal Harber, formerly with CNN, paid me the compliment of saying In Pursuit ought to be a movie. He mentioned the final scene in the book particularly. An author can only dream.
I am currently working on a murder mystery series beginning with Mint Juleps and Murder, a novel that Michael Morris calls the “Ya Ya Sisterhood meets Murder She Wrote” that takes place in a plantation house amazingly similar to my own grandparents’ house in Alabama. Genetic memory gives it an interesting twist.
Take In Pursuit and a bottle of your favorite wine (mine is a Riesling) to your coziest reading nook, drift back 200 years and imagine the sails of a pirate ship in the distance. Think of Joie and Godfrey.
6 x 9 | 280 pp. | Paper, $20.00t | 978-0-88146-454-2 | P473
e-book, $16.00 | 978-0-88146-458-0
In In Pursuit, Creek half-breed and survivor of the Creek Indian War, Joie Kincaid and the nemesis she rescued from certain death after the Massacre at Fort Mims are kidnapped from a tea room in London. Joie awakens with amnesia—after having been struck on the head—to find herself in the hold of a ship sailing to the pirate Gasparilla’s lair in Charlotte Harbour and bound to a man she finds strangely familiar. To save himself and Joie, the preeminent scholar Godfrey Lewis Winkel is forced to take heroic action. As a story of passion unfolds between the two, Joie Kincaid must overcome a childhood of abuse and rejection to accept love she had never known. Together they weather the tempests of pirates, illness, the Seminole War, family vendetta, and a hurricane to find their way to each other and a love neither could have imagined. Interwoven in this action-packed adventure is the long-forgotten tale of hope and betrayal at the Negro Fort, the plight of the Red Sticks after Horseshoe Bend, the greed of a pirate longing for a legacy, Andrew Jackson’s single-minded vision of a nation’s manifest destiny, and the British officers who seek to redeem a promise and forge an empire. In Pursuit continues the family saga begun in Swimming with Serpents, a story of love, war, and redemption set against the Creek Indian War.Amazon - Mercer University Press - Barnes and Noble - Book Depository UK
Sharman Burson Ramsey earned a BSE at the University of Alabama and was an Honors History MSE graduate at Troy State University. This radio talk show host and adjunct professor is webmaster of a Southern Culture website (Southern-style.com) where she writes on Genealogy, History, Manners and Etiquette, Gardening, Recipes and Weddings. The discovery of her Native American heritage led to the writing of Swimming with Serpents and In Pursuit, the first two historical romance novels of a family saga set in the early 1800s. Murder and Mint Juleps, a contemporary mystery series set on a family plantation in Alabama, is also now in the works.Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharman.ramsey
This mother of three and grandmother of five is married to soon-to-be retired attorney Joel Ramsey. They split their week between Dothan, Alabama, and Panama City, Florida and enjoy traveling now to speak at festivals and events.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SharmanRamsey
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6231639.Sharman_Burson_Ramsey
Blog: http://sharmanbursonramsey.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.sharmanbursonramsey.com
GIVEAWAY:
The publisher is giving away physical copies of BOTH Swimming with Serpents and In Pursuit as a prize to one reader. They need to be shipped only in the US. To enter, just leave a comment on this post and then fill out the rafflecopter below. Good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
sounds awesome!!! Thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteGreat post, I can't wait to read some of your work :)
ReplyDelete