A book with a bit of everything

If there is one thing I’ve learned in four years as an indie author, it’s that people like certain things in the books they read. They like appealing characters, drama, humor, history, a quick pace, and a healthy dose of intrigue. They like a satisfying ending.

While it’s easy to incorporate all of these elements into a series, it’s not easy to incorporate them into a single book. Doing so requires planning, patience, and imagination. It means finding a balance.

With Indiana Belle, I think I found that balance. My eighth novel, the third book in the American Journey time-travel series, is one that hits all the right notes.

Like September Sky, Mercer Street, and the novels of the Northwest Passage series, Indiana Belle looks at the past through the eyes of the present. Unlike the other books, it offers a glimpse of the distant future too.

On Valentine's Day 2017, Cameron Coelho, 28, is a quiet loner working on his doctorate in history in Providence, Rhode Island. Then he receives a package from an old woman in Indiana that turns his world upside down.

Armed with revealing letters, diary pages, and a mesmerizing photograph of Candice Bell, a society editor murdered in 1925, Cameron follows a trail that takes him to Geoffrey Bell, the “time-travel professor,” and the age of flappers, jazz, and Prohibition.

Readers who like natural disasters, like those presented in The Journey, The Fire, and September Sky, will get one here. The Tri-State Tornado, one of the most destructive storms in history, gets ample play. So do speakeasies, car races, and religious revivals.

Readers who like murder mysteries, like the one in September Sky, will get that too. They will also get a love story and a snapshot of a rebellious era that is still firmly etched in the American imagination.

In writing Indiana Belle, I pulled the best elements from each of my first seven novels and put them in a story that I hope will entertain, inform, and amuse. The work, available as a Kindle book on Amazon.com and its international sites, goes on sale today.