I'm updating my profile because I have some news.

In October of this year I finally finished and published a book that I have been working on for years. It's called Julia's Heart and it is a mystery wrapped in a ghost story. This is what it's about:

Julia's Heart is a pebble, shaped by the sea. Her toddler son found it on an Oregon beach and her husband had it engraved with their initials and hung on a chain. It was the one piece of jewelry she never took off, the most identifiable item found with her remains, and the thing to which her restless soul is tied.

Julia Lodge was a Black woman married to a white man and raising a small son. Nothing in her fragmented memories explains why she's dead nor how her skeleton wound up in a cave overlooking the Pacific. Then a curious teenager finds her body and the police arrive. She discovers the year is 2018. She's been a missing person since August of 1986. The detective in charge of her case is a racist cop she has a personal history with and the prime suspect is her own beloved husband.

With her heart in the cop's pocket, Julia is drawn along on her own murder investigation, chasing an incomprehensible reality that will challenge everything she believes she knows.

So, anyway, that's my news! :) Thank you for reading my stories and for being so encouraging all this time!

Loretta Ross (aka Elfinblue)

http://

Grammar notes:

Cas knows, I'm as fallable as anyone, but I try hard to get my grammar and punctuation right and really obvious errors are like fingernails on a chalk board when I see them. I don't usually say anything -- I figure when people ask for reviews they want encouragement, not an English lesson -- but since I have this forum, of sorts, I thought I'd list a few that I see often. I'll add to this as I think of more.

"If you think that, you've got another thing coming" -- I see this ALL the TIME! The saying is, "if you think that, you've got another THINK coming". In other words, "think again".

Effect/Affect -- Effect is almost always a noun. "What effect will this have on you?" "That is the effect we are going for." When it is used as a verb, it means "to bring about". "We need to effect change." It does NOT mean "to alter or have an influence on". That is affect, which is always a verb (except for one really obscure medical usage in the field of psychiatry). "Her scorn was bound to affect him." (Affect can also mean to adopt a mannerism or style of dress or to pretentiously take on some trait, as in, "he affected a British accent".) Clear as mud?

Pass/Passed/Past -- Pass is a verb meaning to go by or exceed. "I'm going to pass that car." "She hopes to pass her test." The past-tense of pass is passed. "We're going in a circle -- we already passed this house three times!" Past is an adjective ("past presidents") or a noun ("we learned about the past") or an adverb ("he walked past the cemetery") or a preposition ("the barn is past the house") but never a verb. It's really understandable that this is confusing. Past started out in the Middle Ages as a deviant of passed, but in modern English the meanings have diverged.

Apostrophes -- Apostrophes are only used for plurals in the case of abbreviations and symbols. "She saw several M.D.'s" or "there are too many @'s in your URL". With regular words apostrophes have two meanings: possession and contraction. Winchesters means "more than one Winchester". Winchester's means "belongs to one Winchester". Winchesters' means "belongs to more than one Winchester. In this area, singular possessive pronouns (his, hers, its) often confuse people. These words are complete alone and don't need apostrophes to clarify their meanings. His means "belongs to him", hers means "belongs to her", and its means "belongs to it". It's is a contraction of the words "it is". In contractions, the apostrophe takes the place of the missing letter or letters, in this case the second i. If I see "there were three angel's in the yard" I'm going to ask "three angel's whats?" (Noting that it would be three of something belonging to one angel.) (It occurs to me that Winchester's can also be a contraction meaning "Winchester is", such as in "Winchester's gonna go postal!" or "Winchester has" as in "Winchester's got a plan". You just have to figure that out from the context.)

Using pronouns in conjunctions -- If you need to use two or more pronouns in a phrase and you're not sure if you should be saying I/me, he/him, she/her, they/their, there's a trick you can use. Just put each of the pronouns in the phrase alone and the right one should be obvious. For example, take the phrase "they gave he/him and I/me a box of chocolates". (I was going to say "a rough time" but I decided I'd rather have a box of chocolates. ;)) Put each pronoun into the sentence alone. "They gave he a box of chocolates"? Nope. So, "they gave him a box of chocolates". Then, "they gave I a box of chocolates"? Doesn't work. You need "they gave me a box of chocolates". So your correct phrase is "they gave him and me a box of chocolates".

Sorry if I'm being pedantic! That's just me.

Elf