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PC  Zick

Trails in the Sand

Literature & Fiction

Trails in the Sand follows environmental writer Caroline Carlisle as she reports on endangered sea turtles during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As she delves into the story, she uncovers secrets about the past that threaten to destroy her family unless she can heal the hurts from a lifetime of lies. Her journey reveals the truth behind mysteries that have plagued her family for three generations. Lost journals, a fake tablecloth, and nesting sea turtles lead her to discover why her uncle committed suicide, why her sister developed anorexia, and why her mother only wanted acceptance from those she loved. Caroline and her husband Simon discover love lasts despite decades of separation when he was married to Caroline’s sister. Caroline’s niece Jodi, caught in the crossfire of family tensions and lies, struggles to find a way to forgive the past so she can move into the future. Trails in the Sand explores the struggles to restore balance and peace, in nature and in a family, as both head to disaster. Through it all, the ancient sea turtle serves as a reminder that life moves forward despite the best efforts to destroy it.

Book Bubbles from Trails in the Sand

From the Author

During the real-life drama of BP's DeepWater Horizon oil spill, I served as a public relations director for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. I handled the media for the sea turtle nest relocation project that took place during the summer of 2010. At the same time, I was beginning a new relationship with a lost love from thirty-five years ago and was in the process of moving to Pittsburgh. Two weeks prior to the oil spill, twenty-nine miners were killed in a coal mine explosion in West Virginia, just a few hours from where I was moving. It all fell into place to write about the oil spill, the coal mine disaster, and a family facing disaster. Trails in the Sand explores the efforts to restore and redeem what has been damaged.

Live from the Road

Literature & Fiction

Live from the Road takes the reader on an often humorous, yet harrowing, journey as Meg Newton and Sally Sutton seek a change in the mundane routine of their lives. “Is this all there is?” Sally asks Meg after visiting a dying friend in the hospital. That’s when Meg suggests they take a journey to discover the answer. Joined by their daughters, they set off on a journey of salvation enhanced by the glories of the Mother Road. Along the way, they are joined by a Chicago bluesman, a Pakistani liquor storeowner from Illinois, a Marine from Missouri, a gun-toting momma from Oklahoma, and a motel clerk from New Mexico. Meg, mourning for her dead son, learns to share her pain with her daughter CC. When Sally’s husband of almost thirty years leaves a voice mail telling her he’s leaving, both Sally and her daughter Ramona discover some truths about love and independence. Death, divorce and deception help to reveal the inner journey taking place under the blazing desert sun as a Route 66 motel owner reads the Bhagavad-Gita and an eagle provides the sign they’ve all been seeking. Enlightenment comes tiptoeing in at dawn in a Tucumcari laundromat, while singing karaoke at a bar in Gallup, New Mexico, and during dinner at the Roadkill Café in Seligman, Arizona. The four women’s lives will never be the same after the road leads them to their hearts – the true destination for these road warriors.

Book Bubbles from Live from the Road

Travel Down the Mother Road

This novel is actually based on a very real trip I took with my best friend and our daughters who were in their twenties and begged to accompany us on our mid-life adventure tour down Route 66. So many magical things happened on the journey with four women crammed into a mini-van for two weeks. Those events inspired the fictional story of four women discovering many things about their life while on the road. I'd never share the things that really happened on our trip. The fictional version doesn't even come close to what really happened. I hope you enjoy the journey.

Tortoise Stew

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Florida Fiction filled with intrigue, corruption, twisted love, and outrageous Florida characters A Florida Environmental Novel from Award-winning author, P.C. Zick Small town politics at its best, worst, and wildest in this novel about the development of Florida at any cost.

Book Bubbles from Tortoise Stew

Insight on opening line

In early 2002, I was a reporter for a 5,000 circulation weekly newspaper in north Florida. One Tuesday morning in February, I made my rounds of the local city police departments to pick up the police reports for the past week before heading to the newspaper's office. When I turned the corner, police tape encircled the building, and I saw my coworkers wandering around outside. That morning someone dropped a bomb off in the paper's drop box. The bomb, filled with little bits of glass and nails, shot 70 yards outside the building when set off by the experts. Fortunately, I went away to the Keys a few days later for a planned and now much needed vacation. As the breezes blew through the curtains of the beach house, I woke with a line in my head. "The bomb sat on Kelly Sands' desk for an hour before she noticed it." I opened my laptop and typed in the line. The first line of Tortoise Stew never changed through many revisions.

Love on Trial

Love on Trial

Romance

Two lawyers on opposite sides of the aisle despise one another...at first. When Jude Crandall fights for justice, she is a formidable opponent. Malik Moore may hate his job as an attorney for a prestigious Chicago law firm, but he stands up to the force of prosecutor Jude in the battle of opposites. They disagree on most everything, except the love they both feel for their dogs, a Boston terrier and a Jack Russell terrier. When their mothers meddle, Jude and Malik find it impossible to avoid one another. But his Persian heritage and her father's political aspirations and biases throw the biggest barrier of all between them. Their dogs, Clyde and Suzanne, show them how to love. It's up to the two lawyers to overcome culture, religion, and their families to find happiness. The two lawyers are forced together by their dogs and their mothers and discover they have more in common than not. Love on Trial is the first novel in the Rivals in Love sweet contemporary romance series. Rivals in Love showcases the Crandall family siblings who are all in successful careers. But they forgot one thing while becoming rising stars. They forgot all about love. Their father a U.S. Senator aspires for high office, but their mother, the heir to a fortune, only wants her children married and with children.

Book Bubbles from Love on Trial

The relationship starts

I love this scene from the first chapter because it sets up Jude's character and her rough exterior juxtaposed with her soft side with her dog Clyde. Also it begins the tension between the two lawyers when Malik sees her in the park talking out loud to Clyde. Very cute encounter!

P.C. Zick

Romance

Leah Bryant lives a quiet life helping others. When her future mother-in-law, Geraldine, threatens her causes, she's left confused by the hypocrisy and befuddled by a stranger who roars into town on a Harley. Dean Davis never wanted to return to his hometown. But when his father dies, he knows he must return and faced his mother, Geraldine, and his ugly past. When Leah discovers the stranger is the brother of her fiancé who she'd been told was dead, she's drawn to him and furious about the deception. Both are bowled over by an intense attraction to one another. The magnetic pull draws them into a passionate embrace within minutes of meeting.

Book Bubbles from P.C. Zick

He rode a Harley into her heart.

This scene takes place minutes after Leah and Dean meet. At first, she believes he's one of the homeless she feeds at the kitchen in her church. But then she discovers his past is intertwined with her present. I adore "love at first sight" stories especially when the love is forbidden. And thus starts the whole tense tightrope of this romance.

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