Guest Post with Cathy Cash Spellman - Lark's Labyrinth

Photo Credit: Dakota Cash

Multiple New York Times and International Bestsellers, a Paramount Movie, book sales in 22 countries, Cathy Cash Spellman writes stories about love, friendship, adventure, and history. Known for her big sprawling sagas and memorable characters, Cathy writes the kind of stories women like to lose themselves in, and then remember long after the book is done.

Her books range through several genres: contemporary, historical, mystery, mystic and romance. Several take place in two time-frames, both current and historical.

Bless the Child was a Paramount movie in 2000, starring Kim Basinger and Jimmy Smits, and Paint The Wind has been optioned for film and TV.

Cathy is an Astrologer, Martial Artist (Black Belt Goju Ryu Karate) and has expertise in Chinese Medicine, several alternative healing modalities and many metaphysical disciplines.

She has written for Self, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, Mademoiselle, Cosmo, Penthouse, Mode, Kung Fu and many other magazines about women, health, empowerment, sexuality, spiritual philosophy and Astrology. She blogs for The Huffington Post and The New York Times.

        

  

Print Length: 674 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1461177367
Publisher: The Wild Harp & Company, Inc. (November 28, 2017)
Publication Date: November 28, 2017
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
Language: English

Praise for LARK'S LABYRINTH

"Politics and religion collide as Spellman delivers another fast-paced, suspenseful, and totally enjoyable thriller... The author constructs a blistering story--replete with political and religious intrigue--that never slows down and will keep readers turning the pages of this spectacular thrill ride." ―Publisher's Weekly

Praise for CATHY CASH SPELLMAN

“...Almost impossible to put down. The Author has the ability to produce one powerful scene after another and the action draws you helplessly on...” ―Publisher’s Weekly on So Many Partings

“...A cross between The Thorn Birds and Ragtime...” ―ALA Booklist on So Many Partings

“Flows along with an inexorable narrative current that propels the readers from one involving episode to the next.” ―Booklist on So Many Partings

“An energetic plot that never takes a breather.” ―Kirkus Reviews on Paint the Wind

“A western extravaganza.. a plot teeming with outsize characters.” ―Publishers Weekly on Paint the Wind

“I have never read a book or connected with an author who has touched me so deeply – as a mother, a grandmother, and another psychic kindred soul!” ―Elizabeth Taylor on Bless the Child

“This book has really touched my heartstrings as both a mother and grandmother. And Cathy Cash Spellman is one hell of a writer!” ―Maureen Stapleton on Bless the Child

“With a seductive, at times spellbinding style, author Spellman (An Excess of Love) incorporates ancient myths into an entrancing romantic thriller.. Spellman succeeds in capturing the reader’s close attention as an unrelenting sense of foreboding drives the narrative forward with power.” ―Publisher’s Weekly on Bless the Child

DEFINING MOMENT DURING YOUR YOUTH WHEN YOU REALIZED YOU WANTED TO BE A WRITER.
The Moving Finger Writes…

My childhood was spent in a haze of books and familial propriety. The small-town-America life, where children safely walked alone to school and dawdled their way home, lulled into daydreams by the sweetness of the neighbors’ gardens, is probably gone now, but the visuals are clear to me still. A wall of rambling roses at Mrs. Flynn’s… an exaltation of wildflowers behind Dr. Goldstein’s mansion… the New York skyline beyond the great river that separated me from my destiny, or so I believed. Wait for me New York, I’m coming… I’d breathe to it from Boulevard East, staring out at the glittering, beckoning megaliths of Manhattan. All those childhood images are as close to me now, as the scene outside my office window.

Photo Content from Cathy Cash Spellman

Life was good, except for my mother’s Vesuvian temper, which I’d more or less learned to deal with by going underground to my imagination. I also went to the library, a magnificent old edifice with all-but crenellated battlements, an ivy covered round tower and several leftover suits of armor, collected by some turn of the century tycoon, who’d created a castle that would become a book depository… and my escape to Paradise.

To this fairytale place, I would go on my bike most afternoons, to do homework and read. The tower housed the Classics, which no one cared a fig about, so I had it and them to myself, an elegant fortress world filled with other people’s dreams. I read my way around the room methodically as a mouse nibbling a round of cheddar, literary nourishment plumping up my psyche. I lost myself in the words of the greats, and dreamed the impossible dream of someday seeing my own books on a library shelf.

They had a copy of the Rubaiyat, similar to the edition my father had given me, which I cherished as if it were a sacred text. I can recite most of it still, having read it so often, that the pages frayed:

“The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,

Moves on: Nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line

Nor all thy Tears wash out a word of it.”

The Rubaiyat thrilled me as no other single volume. The words and woodcuts gave life a sinister, tawdry tinge; they implied a vulnerable and mysterious underbelly I hadn’t suspected. And those pictures! Lusty men with wine flasks fondling women’s breasts. Sickle-scythed Death stalking a carefree young couple as they played together. If life could be like this for Irish Catholics as well as Arabs and Victorian poets, there’d be a lot to learn about, after I left Weehawken, New Jersey.

Photo Content from Cathy Cash Spellman

I hadn’t been back to Weehawken in many, many years, but when my High School honored me with a lovely award, I returned. Dakota was with me and I’d been telling her about my beloved library since she was old enough to read, so off we went to show her my stained glass sanctuary of a round tower, my suits of armor, my vine covered stone steps that led to the tower room where the beloved tales resided. And it was all gone. So very gone that no one, not even the librarian, remembered it had ever been there at all.

The library had been redone, as I suppose it had to be with the passage of time… the antiques replaced with practical metal tables and chairs… the floor plan altered to accommodate computers. I felt as disheartened as if the Cathedral at Chartres had been replaced with cinderblocks. So the moving finger had, indeed, moved on, as the poet said, and all my Piety nor Wit could lure it back…

Photo Content from Cathy Cash Spellman

Yet, my magical tower still lives as vividly in my mind as on the last day I sat there, in the big leather armchair, in the virtual company of some of the greatest thinkers ever to put pen to the page. I can smell the old paper and bindings, hear the tap of ivy on ancient windowpanes, feel the power of the silence and the eloquence of ages, alchemically combined in one magical cauldron. Without this stately sanctuary would I ever have written the historical stories that brought me both fame and joy, I ask myself? Perhaps nothing can keep a writer from the tales that live within… but maybe I would not feel as if I’d lived these tales, as well as written them, had it not been for this tiny time-warp that put me in the company of the poets, kings and knaves, the heroes, heroines, rogues and lovers whom I met in the long forgotten books of my tower room.

The Spear that pierced Christ’s side on the Cross has played a secret, but major role in history. Charlemagne, Constantine, Otto the Barbarian, The Knights Templar and Adolf Hitler all owned it... and believed it gave them the power to rule the world.

What if they were right?

The first time Dr. Cait Monahan ever heard of the Spear of Longinus was the night her husband was murdered because of it. That was when the terror began.

…right before the U.S. Government, the CIA, Neo Nazis, the Vatican and a secret cabal of 13 powerful global manipulators sent their assassins after her and her 9 year old.

 ...just before a lethal secret propelled her across Europe following a riddle that hadn’t been solved since the Holocaust.

…just before Cait Monahan became entrapped in an interdimensional labyrinth that her own husband may have helped design.

Now she’s a player in a game that has led to mystery, magic, mayhem and murder for over 2000 years, and only the help of a tribunal of long dead men may be able to save her.

Vibrant and cerebral, filled with intrigue, Conspiracy Theory and more ancient secrets than the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lark’s Labyrinth pits characters you’ll care about against a mystery you’ll want to solve.

Inside Lark’s Labyrinth is a secret men have killed for …now a woman, her sister, her child and their small band of friends are all that stand between us and the dark, insidious power that’s a hairsbreadth away from ruling the world.

You can purchase Lark's Labyrinth at the following Retailers:

  

And now, The Giveaways.

Thank you CATHY CASH SPELLMAN for making this giveaway possible.

1 Winner will receive a $50 Dollar Amazon Gift Card.

1 Winner will receive a $25 Dollar Amazon Gift Card.

WEEK ONE - REVIEW AND INTERVIEWS
APRIL 13th MONDAY JeanBookNerd GUEST POST
APRIL 14th TUESDAY TTC Books and More GUEST POST
APRIL 15th WEDNESDAY BookHounds INTERVIEW
APRIL 15th WEDNESDAY Cover2CoverBlog SPOTLIGHT
APRIL 16th THURSDAY A Dream Within A Dream EXCERPT
APRIL 16th THURSDAY Reading Adventures of a Book Dragon REVIEW
APRIL 17th FRIDAY Life Within the Pages REVIEW
APRIL 17th FRIDAY Gwendalyn's Books REVIEW & EXCERPT

WEEK TWO - REVIEWS
APRIL 20th MONDAY Nay's Pink Bookshelf REVIEW
APRIL 21st TUESDAY Ya It's Lit REVIEW
APRIL 22nd WEDNESDAY Insane About Books REVIEW
APRIL 22nd WEDNESDAY Books and Zebras REVIEW
APRIL 23rd THURSDAY Crossroad Reviews REVIEW
APRIL 23rd THURSDAY Author Kelly Riser REVIEW
APRIL 24th FRIDAY Movies, Shows, & Books REVIEW
APRIL 24th FRIDAY Casia's Corner EXCERPT

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