[Book Tour- Excerpt] She's the One Who Can't Keep Quiet [GIVEAWAY]

She's the One Who Can't Keep Quiet 

(Book Five of the War Stories of the Seven Troublesome Sisters)

by S. R. Cronin

GENRE: Historical Fantasy

BLURB:

Do you know what your problem is?

Celestine, the fifth of seven sisters, is tired of hearing about hers. Father thinks she’s frivolous because she likes pretty clothes and caters to the crowds in the taverns who adore her music. Mother thinks that because she’s the most social daughter in the family, she can’t keep quiet about anything.

They’re both wrong. Celestine hides a secret she has kept for most of her life.

As the family beauty and a talented musician with a lyrical voice, she has the best prospects for marriage to a prince. When such a liaison never happens, people assume Celestine is too choosy. But even in somewhat tolerant Ilari, a daughter hates to disappoint her family. How can she tell them she’s in love with a princess instead?

Lucky for Celestine, all her sisters are obsessed with an invading army headed to their realm. Celestine would rather ignore the threat and enjoy the freedom their lack of attention gives her. But, her voice can unlock a power that may help save Ilari. And the woman she loves is determined to fight these invaders. And her family, for all their talents, seems clueless about how to motivate the masses.

Celestine knows she can inspire the citizens of Ilari to do what needs to be done. Is it time to put her inhibitions aside and use her voice to save those she cares about?

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EXCERPT

The day was overcast and cool, but not cold, and on the way back I saw Coral had come outside for air. As I got closer, I heard her talking to a donkey tethered nearby. Hmm.

“Go to sleep, little donkey.”  She repeated in a soothing singsong voice. Of course. She practiced her luski thing. I hadn’t realized it worked on animals, too. Well, maybe it only worked on some, because this particular donkey stayed wide awake.

“Go to sleep, little donkey.” I joined in with her, singing along playfully. After a couple of repeats, the donkey gave me a look of understanding, laid down in the dirt, and closed his eyes. It was the weirdest feeling. I started to laugh, then the donkey I rode stopped and also dropped to the ground, spilling food and drink and catching the hem of my skirt tight under his body. As I pulled the edge of the skirt out through the mud, I could hear him snoring.

Coral turned to me in amazement. “You’re an animal luski?”

“Certainly not! No animal on our farm ever did what I’d told it to do.”

“What made these two respond to you now?” she asked.

I had no idea, but I intended to find out. We needed to gather up all the animals we could find.

As the afternoon wore on, we discovered that cats, dogs, rabbits, and donkeys ignored me whether I spoke, sang, or played an instrument when I gave my orders. I tried giggling, shrieking, whispering, and whistling for good measure but they still didn’t care. Coral met with a similar lack of success. They only paid attention if she used her luski voice and I sang along.

Ryalgar arrived in the middle of all this and, as was her way, she got right to the usefulness of our discovery.

“We need to know if this works with horses. If we can make the Mongol’s horses go to sleep, then we’ve got the invaders right where we want them. War over.”

I couldn’t imagine a good horse behaving in such a way. The ones on our farm showed intense loyalty to us. Asking one of them to defy us when we wished to ride was akin to ordering me to dump the bucket of water over my head. It wasn’t going to happen.

I pointed this out to Ryalgar and she agreed.

“We need to try this out on horses carrying riders they know and love. And on bigger groups of horses. Noise could be a problem.”

Noise was an issue in any tavern. It would be one in battle, too. What did one do with a noisy crowd? One brought in more musicians.

“We should have a lot of singers,” I said. “Choirs and choruses of them. Do you think the quality of the voices matters? If not, I can teach half the realm to sing along.”

Sherrie Cronin writes stories about people achieving the astonishing by developing abilities they barely knew they had. She’s made a lot of stops along the way to telling these tells — living in seven cities, visiting forty-six countries, and working as a waitress, technical writer, and geophysicist. She’s lost too many beloved cats to mention, but has acquired a husband and three children who are all doing fine, despite how odd she is.

Today she lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina where she writes, answers a hotline, and occasionally checks her phone for a message from Captain Picard. She still hopes to get the chance to pursue her remaining dream in life and become Chief Science Officer on the Starship Enterprise.

Author Social Media Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cinnabar01 

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Amazon: www.amazon.com/Sherrie-Cronin/e/B007FRMO9Q

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/s-r-cronin

Author Blog:  https://troublesome7sisters.xyz/

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GIVEAWAY

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