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Monday, December 05, 2016

COUNTERFEIT - Lee Carver - One Free Book

Dear Readers, Lee is a dear friend of mine. I mentored her for several years, and now she’s helping other authors who want to Indie publish. I love her writing. Her characters are well-developed, and she does the research to make sure her stories are authentic, even though her characters and their plot lines are fiction.

Welcome back, Lee. Why did you become an author?
I had just re-retired after six years as a volunteer missionary in the Brazilian Amazon, and wanted to illustrate real missionaries and life in the Amazon. The jungle is not anything like that of Tarzan movies, the missionaries are real people. I have tremendous admiration for those we worked with, yet they are faulted as we are, and most have strong personalities. They need that to face the challenges and frustrating limitations that complicate their mission. The characters in my Brazilian novels (three yet to be published) aspire to bring life and breath to these people and their surroundings.

If you weren’t an author, what would be your dream job?
I wanted to be a medical doctor for most of my life through college, but was talked out of it by friends and received no encouragement from my parents, teachers, or friends. I became a high school biology and chemistry teacher instead. If I had it to do over again, I would persist on the path to medicine. But I would never have met my husband on that path, which is the one huge compensation for my life as it played out.

If you could have lived at another time in history, what would it be and why?
I was a child in the 1950s, which were far more peaceful and relaxed than today. I was safe and free to roam on my bike in ways that are unimaginable today. Aspirin caps weren’t sealed and passengers just bought a ticket and walked onto an airplane—not that I did until after graduating from college. I would like to spend more time in that era in my small Alabama town.

What place in the United States have you not visited that you would like to?
My husband and I want to drive through the Northeast in autumn. We’d planned to this year, but our daughter and her teenage daughters moved in with us during their relocation from Michigan to Texas, and we felt it better to stay home with them. Maybe next year.

How about a foreign country you hope to visit?
Been there, done that. We’ve lived in Greece, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Indonesia, Brazil, and Spain, and I’ve traveled in forty-nine countries. Europe is expensive, the Middle East is dangerous, and travel has become a royal pain. Life and travel in the United States is so much better!

What lesson has the Lord taught you recently?
As I wrote in the back of my previous book, Retreat to Shelter Creek, pardon me if it sounds sanctimonious, but at this ripe age, I’ve finally learned that the only things worth spending your days on are what’s done with and for God. This includes raising a family and getting an education and holding a job, and I did those things. As a Stephen Minister and member of the Prayer Shawl Ministry, showing love and support for others has become my mission at this time and place. People hurt. Friends suffer and die. I want to be there for them and their families.

Tell us about the featured book. 
Kendra Cooper copied fine art, but she never sold the paintings as originals. As a librarian at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, she needed the extra income to pay her college and graduate school debts—tuition her father refused to pay because he considered the study of art to be useless. She’d scrimped for years to take a vacation in Europe and see the great masters. She never dreamed she’d be suspected of painting fraudulent fine art.
Richard Reed, art professor at Emory, agreed to a summer stint with the Experts Group of Interpol to identify frauds and assist in finding their source. With no detective training, no gun, this should be a fun summer in Europe. He had nothing to show Interpol until observing Kendra at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum intently studying and photographing 17th and 18th Century art, his specialty. Maybe she was the lead he needed. When the police raided her apartment and found her masterfully-painted copy of Vermeer’s Milkmaid, he was convinced.
Unfounded accusation moves to a tentative working relationship as Kendra and Richard combat greed and deception to gain what cannot be bought.

Please give us the first page of Counterfeit.
Richard eased his cell phone from his pocket and snapped a photo of the young woman from the back, recording little more than her clothing and height. And her slender frame. She had stood in front of the Vermeer for a good twenty minutes, sometimes taking a step left or right, backward or forward. At times she slipped a small camera out of her jeans to snap a specific area of the canvas, which the Rijks Museum allowed without flash, her attention focused on each element of The Milkmaid.

Sure, the painting was beautiful. Exquisite even. But for detail and complexity, it didn’t compare with Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, which covered most of the wall at the end of the gallery. A shifting swarm of museum visitors gaped and photographed that canvas, his personal favorite. Such intricate detail. Such masterful use of shades and focusing.

Maybe he’d finally stumbled upon a lead to the counterfeit art. He could be back on the plane in a few weeks with a feather in his professorial cap. The element of danger in this assignment had intrigued him at first, but he was way out of his element.

The woman sighed and checked her watch. Richard smoothly moved to a painting on a different wall, turning his back to her and bending his face down to the information plaque at the right. Her steps sounded toward the double glass door.

He looked up as she waltzed through the great hall as if she owned the place and was scanning it for decorating ideas about the ball she would give that weekend. Her expression, glimpsed from the side, radiated a calm pleasure.

Not what he would expect from a fraud artist.

How can readers find you on the Internet?
www.amazoncurrents.homestead.com
www.facebook.com/lee.carver.507 


Thank you, Lee, for sharing this new book with us. I am eager to read it, and I know my readers will be, too.

Readers, here are links to the book. By using one when you order, you help support this blog.
Counterfeit - Paperback
Counterfeit - Kindle

Leave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of the book. You must follow these instructions to be in the drawing. Please tell us where you live, at least the state or territory or country if outside North America. (Comments containing links may be subject to removal by blog owner.)

Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any pertaining local/federal/international laws.

The only notification you’ll receive is the winner post on this blog. So be sure to check back a week from Saturday to see if you won. You will have 4 weeks from the posting of the winners to claim your book.

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20 comments:

  1. This book sounds very intriguing. Thanks for sharing.
    Connie from KY
    cps1950(at)gmail(dot)com

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  2. Hi, Connie. Have you ever traveled to Europe?

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  3. Sounds like a fun book. I love the juxtaposition of an exotic European setting and an ordinary gal with hopes and dreams and student loan debts :)

    I look forward to reading it, hope I win the book copy... and I also hope you get those stories about the missionaries in the Brazilian jungle published too!

    Sara, from Ft Worth TX (the Kimball is awesome!)

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  4. Being a Fine Arts major and having traveled to Europe several times, I'm looking forward to reading this book!
    Cathy from DFW area

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  5. Sounds like a great book! Thanks for sharing!

    Beth in Montana

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  6. Wow, I was in art ed and love the Kimbell, the DMA,SMU,the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the National Gallery, the school in Florence, and read _Fake_ years ago. This sounds like a good one!
    Margo in the USA

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  7. (Turns out I have Stendahl Syndrome! My guide in Florence told me that when she saw tears in my eyes as I looked up at David! Haha Not quite as bad as Stendahl, though. He gained in the Uffizzi Gallery, overcome by the beauty of all the art. Whoops, tears here.)

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  8. (Not "gained," "fainted"!

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  9. Sara, writing an "ordinary girl" with extraordinary talent was a fun project. Have you ever known someone who didn't know how great he/she was? That's my Kendra. Hope you can get into her head.

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  10. Cathy Rueter, I had no idea you were a fine arts major. I'm just an appreciator. We got to see some of the world's greatest art museums while living in Spain and South America. What a treat for the whole family! (Not so much in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and a couple of the other places.)

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  11. Hi, Beth. We Atmore girls love to travel, don't we? Does your city (I won't name it here) have a good art museum that hosts traveling exhibits? The Kimbell in Fort Worth is amazing.

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  12. Margo, I've probably never cried upon viewing fine art, but I've certainly stood in awe. Monet's lily pads in the Louvre come to mind. And before that day I had no idea those paintings were so large! He's still my favorite impressionist.

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  13. Lee, I had no idea that you had published another book. Thank goodness for Lena Dooley. I have nearly every book by you that is available on Amazon - Even a paperback copy of Flying for Jesus that I purchased for my Husband. Congrats on the new release and Merry Christmas.

    Terrill - WA

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  14. Sharon Richmond Bryant4:59 PM

    Enter me!!
    Conway SC.

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  15. Hi, Terrill. I appreciate your enthusiasm! Did you hear about me from Lena's blog? All my books are available on Amazon in both Kindle and print. Just don't be confused by the author whose name ends like mine, but all her books have shirtless cowboys in a tight clench with women. ;) Those aren't mine. I'm working now on a trilogy set in the Brazilian Amazon.

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  16. Hi, Sharon. You're entered in the drawing. What interests you most about "Counterfeit?"

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  17. Book sounds great would love to win. Love the interview I would love to be able to travel, I have been blessed got to travel two different cruises one to Greece and Turkey and the other to Spain, Rome and France.

    Lourdes Long Island New York

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  18. Lee - I, actually, didn't first hear about your books on Lena's blog. Maybe, a year and a half ago I had a chance to purchase a paperback copy of Love Takes Flight and it had sounded so good. Counterfeit sounds just as good. I like to mix up my romance with some mystery and suspense. And I would be shocked if I saw a shirtless hunk on your book cover. A hunk, maybe, but not shirtless. :-)

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  19. Hi, Lourdes. Aren't cruises fun? We enjoyed the two-week European rivers cruise so much. But now we want to see more of America! The variety of US National Parks is amazing. Next autumn we hope to drive through New England as the leaves turn. Texas has nothing like that, nor did my home state of Alabama.

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  20. Terrill, I'm working on a trilogy set in the Brazilian Amazon. These books were originally written for a publisher who sold out--and that line discontinued. Now another publisher has expressed interest, but wants them much longer. The project of expanding them without watering them down has been harder than expected. If the stories survive, you'll be hearing about them through Lena and my own FaceBook.

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