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Buy The Agent! Help animals!
The Agent is here! I’m so excited! This is Natalie and Tully’s story. He’s a former FBI agent turned security consultant. She’s a hair salon owner recovering from an abusive marriage. The attraction between them is instant but they both have powerful reasons for not acting on it. Then Natalie receives threatening notes and turns to Tully for help. I love these two characters so much and had a blast writing their book.
As always, I will be donating a portion of my royalties (including pre-orders and international sales) for the first two weeks after release day on January 5th to animal support groups nominated by my amazing newsletter subscribers. They give me a tough job every time as I have to choose just three for my big donations. I guarantee a minimum of $1,000 to each but the more books I sell, the higher the amount goes. So please spread the word!
Mobi and Skoda hope you will help increase my donation!
I just couldn’t stop with three so I added $250 donations to additional groups that I thought equally worthy. Honestly, I wish I could donate to every one of the 40+ organizations nominated.
Here are the chosen ones:
$1,000 minimum donations to each:
Southport-Oak Island Animal Rescue (S.O.A.R.), NC – a no-kill animal rescue, S.O.A.R. resides on approximately 3 acres of property. There you will find dog kennels for up to 14 dogs; a large fenced-in run and training area where the dogs can play without being leashed; a cattery with open rooms as well as cat kennels and 2 houses for cats living with FeLV (feline leukemia virus) and FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus). S.O.A.R.’s goals are: to give abandoned cats and dogs a second chance at a new life by placing them in their new “furr-ever” home; raise public awareness about animal rescue and other animal issues throughout Brunswick County, NC; educate pet owners about the importance of spaying and neutering and proper pet care; rescue and assist cats and dogs in need.
Texas Best Choices Animal Rescue, TX – an animal rescue and sanctuary just east of Dallas, in Quinlan, Texas. We have 22 acres devoted to housing healthy, happy rescued dogs and puppies. As a no-kill rescue organization, we promote spaying/neutering and the humane treatment of all companion animals. Our mission is to rescue, rehabilitate, and re-home dogs and puppies that are hungry, helpless, and homeless in the Quinlan / Hunt County area and beyond.
Unconditional Love Pet Rescue, AR – committed to helping abandoned, neglected, and abused pets; finding loving homes; and educating the public about responsible pet ownership. All of our animals are pulled from overcrowded shelters and animal control facilities. We will also accept pets from owners who can no longer care for their pet. When the animal enters our program, it is treated for any medical needs, is brought up to date on all vaccinations, and is spayed or neutered. When the animal has been determined healthy and socialized, it is placed for adoption. We work with families throughout the northeast, focusing on New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine, and Vermont.
$250 donations to each:
Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue, TN – a group of volunteer dog lovers whose mission is to rescue, provide sanctuary, and ultimately to re-home abandoned, stray, and neglected dogs in Mississippi and Tennessee and surrounding areas. We rescue from the Mid-South where almost all the shelters are EXTREMELY high kill and then we transport them up North for adoption.
Halfway Home Pet Rescue, ME – We focus our mission on the rescue and rehabilitation of cats and kittens from Caribou and surrounding communities who are not eligible for admission to other area shelters. HHPR provides medical care, social and emotional rehabilitation through our foster home networkand a safe haven that is “half way home.” HHPR provides community support by: providing pet care assistance to families in crisis; promoting spay/neuter; assisting low income homes with spay/neuter resources; offering equipment for temporary fostering of strays; practicing Trap/Neuter/Relocation of area feral colonies; and providing community education about animal welfare issues.
Paws 4 You, FL – a volunteer, donor-subsidized animal rescue organization based in Miami, Florida. Over the last 11 years, we have served the vital need of sheltering, fostering, and placing dogs in the southern part of Miami-Dade County. We offer life-saving services and employ various strategies to place and keep animals in loving, lifelong homes. These include: saving dogs from abandonment and euthanasia; providing needed medical care including, but not limited to, spaying, neutering, vaccinations, and emergency procedures; and providing a safe retreat/shelter with the end goal of adopting dogs into safe and loving families.
Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando, FL – More than 6,000 homeless dogs and cats will turn to the Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando for caring, compassion and hope through our animal shelters this year. Pet Alliance provides food, medical care and shelter for dogs and cats until they find their new homes. The average length of stay for dogs is 8 days and for cats is 15 days. Pet Alliance’s live release rate averages around 96%, making it what is considered a “no kill” shelter. Pet Alliance also works to develop progressive and innovative programs that help keep pets and people together. This combined with initiatives to minimize the number of feral cats being born will help reduce the number of dogs and cats that need to enter the shelter. Pet Alliance also provides low-cost spay/neuter surgeries and animal wellness through our public veterinary clinics.
The Raptor Trust, NJ – The Trust’s professional staff supplies the highest quality medical care and maintenance to all avian patients. A fully equipped medical infirmary, including an intensive care wing, exists on site. Although begun as a raptor care facility, the Trust now offers assistance to all native wild birds. The goal is always to return all viable individuals to the wild. In the ten year period of 1986 through 1995, over 25,000 wild birds were admitted to the rehabilitation facility—half of which were set free.
Thank you for your support of my donations! I so appreciate your help!
Your purchase of The Hacker supports animals!
I’m going to be honest here: I cried as I visited the websites of all the amazing animal support organizations nominated by my newsletter subscribers. It breaks my heart not to be able to donate to every one of them because they all deserve it. 
A portion of the first two weeks of royalties (including pre-orders and international sales) from The Hacker will go to three rescue groups. As always, the minimum donation I make to each will be $1,000. If sales of the book go higher, I will donate more. (For The Money Man, I donated a total of $6,000 to animal rescue groups.)
After a lot of debating, I’ve chosen the groups below—but all of them were worthy. If only I had more royalties!
Forgotten Cats of Delaware: https://forgottencats.org/ The leading trap, neuter, vaccinate, return (TNVR) nonprofit in the region. Servicing Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, Forgotten Cats specializes in TNVR in order to humanely reduce the homeless cat population. Valuing all lives, Forgotten Cats is a no kill organization.
My sister cares for a colony of feral cats in her hometown in Virginia and my daughter worked for a vet clinic that served feral colonies in Pennsylvania so I am supporting this cause to honor their commitments.
Happy Homes Rescue: http://www.happyhomesinc.org/ A no-kill, volunteer-based, non-profit organization that rescues cats and kittens from shelters and outdoors, bringing them to safe indoor environments. They are also heavily involved in TNR efforts in the Old Bridge, NJ area. They strive to help reduce the unnecessary euthanization of cats and kittens in New Jersey and New York.
I’m all about cats nowadays, as you know, and this is a small organization that’s been hit hard by the COVID-19 lockdown, so they really need the help.
Freedom Service Dogs: https://freedomservicedogs.org/ They unleash the potential of dogs by transforming them into custom-trained, life-changing assistance dogs for people in need. The clients they serve live with disabilities like autism, traumatic brain injury (TBI), multiple sclerosis (MS), muscular dystrophy (MD), Down syndrome, cerebral palsy (CP), spinal cord injuries, and more. They also serve veterans with post-traumatic stress (PTS).
As the reader who nominated this organization said, “This organization performs miracles!”
The truth is that all the folks who give of their time and resources to animal rescue are miracle workers.
With gratitude to all the authors
I live in New Jersey, a mere twelve miles away from New York City, so my area has been hit very hard by COVID-19. We wear masks; we social distance; we wash our hands until our skin is about to flake off; and we stay home as much as possible.
Since I am a writer and sit at my home computer for work even in normal times, my job has changed virtually not at all. That makes me lucky. (On the other hand, I am grateful and admiring of the folks who continue to staff the grocery stores, the post offices, and all the health care facilities for being selfless and courageous. We could not survive without them. A big thank you!)
However, all the terrible and tragic news often overwhelms me, so I have sought the things that have brought me comfort all my life: books.
Recently, I discovered—and ripped through at light speed—the many volumes of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, an incredible science fiction series with some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever encountered in literature. I literally wept when I read the last book because I would miss all my friends from the Vorkiverse.
Even more than that, I needed to be on another planet, in another time, and that was the enormous gift Ms. Bujold gave me.
I want to say thank you to her and to all the other authors who have swept me away from reality when it became too much. I have depended on the kindness of these strangers my entire life. They have broadened my horizons, reassured me, made me laugh when I felt more like crying, made me cry but in a good way, and made me believe in the human race again, which isn’t so easy these days.
I thank them from a place of profound understanding of what it takes to make that gift to a reader since I am a writer myself. My heartfelt gratitude goes to all those who have spilled their imaginations and guts onto the page, so that I could use them to refill my well and go forward in my life with a refreshed spirit.
Your support increased my donation!
Wonderful news! Because of you, my enthusiastic and generous readers, I was able to increase my donation to the three chosen animal rescue organizations from $1,000 each to $1,500 each. Thank you for buying The Money Man in the two weeks after its release (or anytime before its publication date)! Since I base my donation on a percentage of my royalties during that time period, your purchase of my book added extra to my guaranteed donation. You guys rock!
These are the three organizations which just received donations of $1,500 each (nominated by my amazing newsletter subscribers):
Cat Team 7, Norfolk Naval Station, VA
Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, Medford, NJ
Wisconsin Humane Society, Milwaukee campus
I also donated $250 each to these equally worthy groups (again thanks to nominations by my newsletter subscribers):
Hobo Hotel for Cats, Lake Charles, LA
Brownie Blondie Foundation, Puerto Rico
Exotic Feline Rescue Center, Center Point, IN (because of my trip to Africa!)
Heaven Can Wait, Ontario, Canada (because horses!)
Lothian Cat Rescue, Edinburgh, Scotland
My readers are the most amazing readers in the world! Thank you for your support!
THE MONEY MAN is available now!
Woohoo! THE MONEY MAN is finally out in the world! It’s always an exciting day for an author when her book baby gets released into the hands of readers. That closes the circle of her creation. A huge thank you to everyone who buys, reads, and enjoys my new book! I hope you love spending time with my characters as much as I did.
Y
ou can buy it here:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/2BbBqFo
Print: https://amzn.to/2OR3mX2
Audio: https://amzn.to/2IUlhZa
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-money-man-nancy-herkness/1132798099
My newsletter subscribers nominated over 50 animal rescue groups!
I am thrilled by how many of my fabulous readers are animal lovers. I recently sent out a newsletter saying that I would donate $1,000 or more of my royalties from THE MONEY MAN to each of three animal rescue groups. (If you don’t get my newsletter, you can sign up here.) When I asked my subscribers to nominate their favorite organizations, I was overwhelmed with the response. More than 50 nominations poured in!
Honestly I wanted to choose all of them. Every single group is doing amazing work and deserves support. It took me hours of agonizing to make the final decision as to which ones I would choose. Even then, I expanded my recipients, adding six more to receive smaller donations.
Since I can’t give to them all, I want to share links to all the organizations nominated by my incredibly big-hearted readers. I hope you’ll take a look and perhaps choose one or two to support yourself.
I will donate a minimum of $1,000 to:
Cat Team 7, Norfolk Naval Station, VA
Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, Medford, NJ
Wisconsin Humane Society, Milwaukee campus
I will donate $250 to:
Here are the many more just as worthy of donations (in no particular order):
Newsletter upgrade
Since it’s a new decade and things change along with the passage of time, I’ve decided to up my game on my newsletter to—wait for it!—once a month. Crazy frequent, right? LOL! I hope I can keep up the pace. (Sign up here!)
Here’s what you’ll find each month:
- A writing update: where I am with my writing projects and when you can expect the next book. Expect teasers and excerpts!
- Something about animals. You know I love them. Most of my readers do too. So you’ll be hearing about mine and other people’s. Because who doesn’t enjoy a good cat meme?
- Food, a topic near and dear to most of our hearts. Right now I’m cooking HelloFresh and on Weight Watchers.
- Any other topic I think would interest you, my wonderful readers. But I’ll keep it brief, I swear.
So, if you haven’t signed up, I hope you will join the fun! You’ll get a free novella when you do. If you aren’t sure whether you’re on the list or not, sign up again because my email service weeds out duplicates.
Note: I never share my newsletter email list with anyone else. It’s just you and me, wonderful readers!
Collaborating with my daughter
My latest release, SECOND ACT, features a heroine who’s a veterinarian. By a strange coincidence, my Darling Daughter was in her final year of veterinary school when I was writing this book. The truth is that I probably couldn’t have written it without her, but the more important truth is that it was so much fun to work with her on the medical scenes.
I give Darling Daughter major credit for taking the time to answer my questions and check my accuracy when she was in the midst of crazy rotations, doing things like vaccinating evil, biting piglets or helping “dummy foals” (yes, that’s what they call them) learn how to nurse from their mothers on night shift at the ICU. Yet she was always patient with my inquiries and mistakes and cluelessness.
Darling Daughter admits that she enlisted her fellow vet students when I would set her a problem like this one: “What kind of ailment could a cat have that would require an emergency visit, would not kill the cat, but meant that the cat needed to stay at the vet for X number of days?” (I insisted that no animal would die in the making of this book.) Evidently, a group of students would sit around and brainstorm on these kinds of requests. Sometimes, the response was that nothing fit my parameters but here were some possibilities if I could be a little flexible.
The emails would fly thick and fast as we tried to work out a viable solution for my story line problem. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to see my child’s expertise at work, especially as she generously shared it with me.
Once we had the ailment nailed down, Darling Daughter would walk me through the problem and the treatment step-by-step. In the scene where Jessica and Hugh operate on a cat in the middle of the night, Darling Daughter made sure that I kept the procedure sterile and sent me photos of all the equipment that would be used. I even got a video of how to anesthetize a cat. Then she read the scene after I’d written it and corrected all my mistakes—of which there were many, sometimes in the service of the fiction. But Darling Daughter was not going to let me get anything wrong, although she did allow me to gloss over a few steps to keep the pacing swifter.
We spend so much time teaching our children as we raise them. It was such a joy to have the favor returned in spades as my child educated me.
The dogs thank you!
Even though Brodie is a purebred golden retriever, he is a rescue. I adopted him after he’d been through four previous owners. He had some behavioral issues but he’s always been a sweet boy.
Brodie and I thank all my fantastic readers for buying SECOND ACT so I could donate to three terrific animal assistance organizations. You all made it possible for me to donate $1,000 to each of these groups:
National Police Dog Foundation
I so appreciate my fabulous newsletter subscribers for nominating these worthy organizations! I love getting know the folks who do such amazing work for our critter friends.
SECOND ACT is “eagerly anticipated”!
Here’s something new and different: my new book, SECOND ACT, has been chosen as one of the most eagerly anticipated romance novels of 2019 by a dating website in the UK! I’m very flattered because who would be more interested in reading a love story than folks looking for a new romantic partner?
Check out the website post here and read about the other books they’re looking forward to.
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