Chasing Lightning

Chasing Lightning: The Pursuit of Successful Living in America is the culmination of an exploration of the American dream and the struggle to live a “successful life.” Wondering if they were on the right life path and in the right career, author Chris Moeller and friend Brian Ardinger quit their jobs, packed up their worldly belongings, and set off on a 6-month journey across America to explore the meaning of success and happiness in today’s society. Through interviews and chance meetings with over a hundred people, they gathered information for their Quest-4 web site (www.quest-4.com) and stepped closer to understanding their own place in the world around them. Written as a travel adventure, Chasing Lightning is a parable for modern times. Join Chris and Brian on their quest as they leave their old lives behind and journey out into the unknown in search of answers. Explore the roadways and sights of America, meet and talk to people of all walks of life, hear philosophy on successful living and draw your own conclusions. Are you on your right path? Are you following your life’s calling? Is there a secret to living successfully? Join in the quest and find out…

To acquire content knowledge through reading, students must understand the complex components and diverse purposes of informational texts, as emphasized in the Common Core State Standards. This practical book illuminates the ways in which a text's purpose, structure, details, connective language, and construction of themes combine to create meaning. Classroom-tested instructional recommendations and kid-friendly explanations guide teachers in helping students to identify and understand the role of these elements in different types of informational texts. Numerous student work samples, excerpts from exemplary books and articles, and a Study Guide with discussion questions and activities for professional learning add to the book's utility. This is a valuable guide for teachers in grades 2-8, academic coaches, site administrators, and curriculum directors implementing the Common Core standards to increase the rigor and level of reading in all content areas. Instructional strategies, sample lessons, anchor charts, examples of student work, and interactive templates are provided in each chapter.Teachers and those engaging in professional development can use this book to support their efforts to plan lessons that require students to engage with text, think critically, discuss their understanding, and write about information embedded in complex informational text.--Lori Greenwood, MA, Educational Leadership Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education, Plumas Lake Elementary School District, Plumas Lake, CA

I say my Crossroads Hotel gives the magical a refuge from the world, but things are going too far, too fast. First, Drake, one of the dragons I’ve tangled with in the past, shows up with a dragon egg, of all things, asking me to guard it from all comers. This is after the sheriff’s grandfather nearly wrecks on my front door and begs me for a place to hole up. Not only that, but my grandmother has a new ally, a mysterious crow Changer who might be more dangerously powerful than we know. When the dragon egg proves to be more important that Drake is letting on, Mick and I embark on a quest to discover who murdered the kid’s mother, and what new and dangerous foe will stop at nothing to eliminate me, Mick, and my friends and family to obtain the egg and begin the destruction of all dragon-kind.

A crossbow’s twang in the middle of the night warns me that an enterprising vampire slayer has come to kill my resident Nightwalker, Ansel, a permanent guest in my Crossroads Hotel and my friend. When I and my dragon boyfriend, Mick, intervene to save Ansel’s un-life, we discover that the attack is only the beginning of an oncoming storm. I already have my hands full trying to keep my evil half-sister under control, planning for my father’s upcoming wedding, and figuring out what the woman who claims to be Coyote’s wife wants. On top of that, I have a few dragons on my back, plus I’m worrying about Mick, who’s behaving strangely again. It seems that every slayer around is now is after Ansel, who fears he killed the woman he loves in a Nightwalker frenzy. Things are made more complicated by the fact that Ansel and his girlfriend might have unearthed an artifact of incredible magic. Now I have to choose between protecting Ansel or facing the most powerful magical beings in the world, who are willing to destroy me, Mick, her hotel, and everyone I’ve ever cared about to get to Ansel and his secrets.

Chasing Lightning (new release edition) is the provocative story of Scarlett Faye Turner's coming-of-age in the 1960s. Her journey into sexual self-discovery and acceptance is at times hilarious, sometimes shocking, and always entertaining. When she isn't mouthing off and scandalizing just about everybody in the backward river town of Dillinger, Pennsylvania, Scarlett has her nose buried in a book dreaming of a life far away where fame and money can keep her safe from the bogeymen of her childhood and the consequences of following her heart. Scarlett believes falling in love makes you as crazy as her neighbor who chases thunderstorms with her camera. She is positive no one in their right mind would risk being struck by lightning any more than they would by love. But that resolve quickly crumbles when seductive Gina Jamison shows up Scarlett's senior year and knocks her heart sideways. Their improbable meeting and steamy love affair starts Scarlett on a journey that will take her across the years and through a succession of lovers...from a women's college in West Virginia to the magical desert of New Mexico to the sexual liberation of Paris in the 1960s...from the arms of a woman she can never forget to the depths of her own soul and a painful realization that promises to transform her completely.

Follow Christopher Kammel, his wife Karie O’Donnell, and children Gabriel and Lusius for nine thousand miles across the United States. Along the way they visit more than ten National Parks, National Monuments and countless National Forests as they crisscross their way through the wild west. It is an epic family road trip that lasts twenty-seven days during which they travel with no itinerary, making decisions on the fly, finding adventure and beauty around every turn. Join them and learn interesting facts about this country and this amazing land we live in. To enhance your experience log on to www.27dayz.com and view pictures and video clips of their amazing adventure.

At Big Bass Lake and Mobile Homes, a development "planted in the hill and abandoned like a crop gone bad," whiskey-soaked Weezal Peterson has worked hard to forget his past-and largely succeeded. Over the course of the story, several intertwining narratives-including a young woman's search for a husband after being accused of murdering the previous two; the meteoric rise of a colonial-era ink company; and the wavering convictions of a failed writer and farmer who expresses his despair by cooking fragrant meatballs-come crashing together in a rural Pennsylvania trailer park. In the conflagration, Weezal's history, and his future, are revealed to both the reader and to Weezal himself. Smart and sweet, poetic and wild-and delectably raunchy-A Smile Shy spares us none of the details of these characters' sorrows and horrors: poverty and addiction, loneliness and domestic violence. And yet every page is infused with both a crackling humor and an immense tenderness.

Enjoying life as a retired pirate, William has no interest in chasing adventure. He’s lived two lives already and earned some rest. But he can’t ignore the call of family needing help, so he drags his partners along into the growing chaos of Arcini. Only he has the ability to prevent the monarchy’s downfall. But the cost of finding the truth might be too much, even for an immortal champion. Jonathan’s career as the ‘Angel of Death’, the ‘Winged Avenger’, is over. No one has any use for a pirate commander with no crew to command, so he settles for the predictability of the mundane instead. There’s little excitement, but there are also far fewer knife wounds. At least the trip to the Arcinian palace will be a diversion from the boredom of retirement. When he’s offered the command of a ragtag brigade of new militia recruits, though, he realizes that his skills as a warrior aren’t as obsolete as he’d thought. He only hopes that his feisty crew of Enuldesh soldiers can learn to follow the orders of an Annali pirate. With a gourmet kitchen, a bountiful garden, and unlimited freedom, Jai has everything he wants in the life he shares with his partners. He can cook to his heart’s content and no longer has to worry about battles and the fickle whims of the sea. He even takes the visit to the palace in stride, confident in his familiarity of the place where he’d spent much of his life. Thrown back into palace routines and prejudices, however, it’s apparent that he hasn’t quite escaped his past life. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and ghosts that he thought he’d laid to rest keep popping up to haunt him. Three powerful immortals with all of eternity on their hands now find themselves racing against time and staring down death to preserve what they love and care about. If they can’t stand against the unstoppable forces of fate, then everything they know will be gone. Their legacy will be one of failure and destruction. And they alone will remain to face the consequences. This work is intended for a mature audience and contains mature content. For a more comprehensive list of content tags, please see this book’s information page at the author’s website. Keywords: mm romance, sword sorcery magic quest, alternate universe AU, knight romance, royal romance, mm fantasy romance, gay fantasy romance