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I'm a travel journalist and an author.
I love traveling to interesting places and then telling the world all about my journeys.
You can read many pf my stories at my Ezine, American Roads and Global Highways
I am mighty proud of my books. They are all very different. I write fiction,
nonfiction and travel books, some with a touch of paranormal. ​
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My Newest Book is out!

American Music: Born in the USA
A History of American Music
ISBN: 978-0-9861109-7-9
Print book $24.99
I am offering bookstores 40% discount.
Contact me for more information or a sample PDF.

The book is a 230 page book with color photos of many places related to music history.
Autographed copies can be arranged.
There is an eBook version
.

American Music A history of American Music                          They Brought the Seeds

    When early settlers came to America they often brought few material items, but they brought many customs, traditions, and music of their homeland here. These things, mainly the music took root in America's soil and grew.
    These emigrants came for many different reasons. Some came to escape poverty and find a better life. Some were forced out of their homeland by war. There were many who had no choice but were torn from their families and homes and brought here.
Unlike some versions of history state, this was not a land  just “discovered.”    
    There were indigenous groups with established cultures who had lived here for thousands of years. In spite of the misconception that all Indians wore feathers, lived in teepees, and had the same culture, Native American music and culture differed regionally and from tribe to tribe. They each had their own music as well.

    America really was a melting pot then. The music of Native Americans, white settlers, and the Black enslaved people mingled to create new forms and songs from Delta blues and “Hillbilly” music, to Rock. My biggest question is does the music reflect the culture, or does the culture reflect the music?
    This is the history of American music. From its birth in the 1700s through the 20th century. This is not the music of the elite, the operas, or the classics. It's the music of the people. It's not always a pretty story. Sometimes labor pains are hard, but in the end, it shouts loud and clear, 'I was Born in the USA!'

What others are saying about American Music: Born in the USA

I've had a fascination with music for most of my life.  I'm not gifted with the ability to play but I adore sitting back and listening to talented artists move me with their compositions.  What really helps me to enjoy the music is getting some knowledge on the artists and genre's that I listen to.  There's no doubt that American music vastly influences nations worldwide, and as seen in Kathleen's book, has been influenced by those brought to America.  Inside you'll find a diverse look at the different genres of American music along with their origins.  You'll need to set aside a few nights at least to complete the book. I found it very enjoyable and intend to read it again. 5 stars for American Music: Born in the USA: A history of American music. -- History Nerds, authors of Scáthach: Warrior Queen from the Isle of Skye and other books.

American Music: Born in the USA is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in music! This book is a comprehensive journey through the history of all genres of popular music in the USA. Author Kathleen Walls nicely combines an engaging storytelling style with personal anecdotes and memoir, along with meticulously thorough historical research, with the very pleasing result that after reading this short and easy to understand volume you will have learned a potted history of American musical knowledge while being thoroughly entertained. Not only is this book packed full of famous and lesser-known musicians, but there is an admirable gender balance; all too rare in an industry where women are still under-represented, and many female musicians have been forgotten and left out of history books. The book is packed full of interesting photos, which complement and add depth to the written content, bringing it alive.

Musicologists and fans, feast your eyes on this book. Also suitable for readers who are not very  knowledgeable about music, as in learning about it you will absorb much fascinating history of the development of American society and culture. Highly recommended. --Elise Baker author of Voices of Freedom

There are lots of wonderful information and stories in it! --Emily Epley Travel and Tourism Director for Cleveland County, NC

That's a tremendous undertaking. We all need a copy of her book. Pam Cox, Scott County,VA Tourism Director

 

My Travel ​Books

 

Color Saint Augustine

My newest book is a way to virtually visit Saint Augustine. It's a coloring book for grown ups (but kids will love it too.) It's a spiral bound, letter size (8.5' x 11') book with an actual photo taken by me of one of the attractions in Saint Augustine. The opposite page is the same photo converted into a black and white line image for you to to color. It's 64 pages with 30 photos and 30 pages for you to color. On each photo and each color page there is a little about the story of the image . 

 

 

 

Wild About Florida: South Florida   Reg. Price $16.99 Special sale price for print book $14.99
Geography has dealt Florida a lavish hand when it comes to natural gifts. The Sunshine State is filled with unusual flora and fauna. South Florida is home to the endangered Florida panthers and the only North America crocodiles. The Everglades swarm with wildlife from birds such as wood storks, ibises, flamingos, roseate spoonbills and dozens of others to mammals such as black bears, bobcats, fox squirrels and raccoons. When it comes to reptiles, you will find more alligators than you ever dreamed of as well as gopher tortoises, caimans, green anoles, five lined skinks and hundreds of other snakes, turtles and lizards. Take a boat ride into the surrounding waters of the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, you will find dolphins dancing in your wake. Drop on down to Big Pine Key, which is the only place you can encounter the tiny Key deer in the wild. You will probably spot a few sun-loving iguanas as you island hop through the Keys. South Florida's plant life is also abundant and rich. From the native mangroves, which are at the root of the food chain to the colorful exotic Brazilian pepper, which threatens native plant life but seems impossible to eradicate to the delicate wild orchids, which thrive on air alone, your senses will be overwhelmed by the color and variety. Then there are also all the refuges, preserves, parks and zoos that make South Florida a nature lover's paradise. Wild About Florida- South Florida is a guide no outdoorsman- or woman- should be without. It lists those hard to find places and provides the inside scoop on those magnificent spots you might never find on your own. It portrays Florida's wonders with original full color photographs.




Wild About Florida: Central Florida   Reg. Price 13.99 Special sale price for print book  $12.99
Central Florida has the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf beaches much like other parts of Florida, but in many other ways it is distinct and unique. The Florida scrub jay, a bird many Floridians believe should be our state bird, is found nowhere in the world except central FloridaCentral Florida is bisected by one of the most unique rivers in the state and perhaps even the world. First off, the St. Johns is the longest river in Florida and one of the few in the country to flow north. The total distance the river drops from its source in marshes southwest of Melbourn to its mouth in the Atlantic near Jacksonville is less than 30 feet, or about one inch per mile, making it one of the laziest, slowest-moving rivers in the world. Also due to the fact that it is born in the salty estuary marshes of Indian River County, passes through salt springs and then receives an infusion of salt at the mouth, creates a more brackish river. It's the only river in the country that is home to saltwater stingrays. Then there are the whooping cranes. There are only three whooping crane colonies in the United States. Central Florida's Polk, Osceola and Lake counties are the home of the only non-migratory flock of whooping cranes. Citrus County is host to the ultralight-led migratory flock that winters in Chassohowitzka National Wildlife Refuge near Crystal River. And then there is -- but why not just read the rest of the book to discover all the things that are uniquely central Florida. We also have some great black and white illustrations inside to help visualize the wild wonders of central Florida.




Wild About Florida: North Florida  Reg. Price $12.99 Special sale price for print book $11.99
Come explore caves, hills, whitewater falls and lots of other fun things you didn't expect to find in Florida. North Florida still lets you enjoy the sun and sand of Gulf and ocean beaches, you expect in the Sunshine State but there is so much more. The northern counties are totally different from their southern and central counterparts. Wild About Florida: North Florida is the ultimate guide to eco-travel in Florida. Hike an aboveground cave at Florida Caverns State Park. Think you need to travel to the mountains for whitewater fun? You can find that right here in Florida at Big Shoals State Park offering the largest whitewater rapids in Florida. Looking for rare and exotic wildlife? How about the Sherman fox squirrels at Gold Head Branch State Park or the white squirrels at Ochlockonee River State Park? Into reptiles? You can view white alligators at Saint Augustine Alligator Farm. And that just scratches the surface. This book will tell you when and where to find all the outdoor fun you can imagine in north Florida. Like its south and central Florida counterparts, it is a guide no outdoors person should be without. We also have some great black and white illustrations inside to help visualize the wild wonders of north Florida.
 



Georgia's Ghostly Getaways  Special sale price for print book $15.99
Come with me on a visit to Georgia's ghostly getaways. They offer spirited excitement and haunting beauty. From the seaport of Savannah to the Appalachian Mountains, the Peach State has its share of spooky spots. The spirits come in both sexes and all races. You can even find animal ghosts. Join me as we look behind all the creaky doors and eerie mansions at Georgia's most spectral sites.
It's probably just coincidence that these spooks choose to abide in some of the most interesting places in all of Georgia. It would be an awful shame to visit these haunted sites and miss out on some other fascinating places just around the block. So, in order to get the most enjoyment out of each place with a haunted site, Georgia's Ghostly Getaways will also recommend other places of interest in the area.  






Hosts With Ghosts  Special sale price for print book $18.99
Meet the hosts who have the Haunted Hotels around the Southeast and lots more spooky sites you'll want to visit.Places like New Orleans where ghostly tales inspired Anne Rice who lived and wrote there.

What travel experts say about this book: 'What a fun read! I learned a lot I didn't know before! Nancy S. Millar, Vice President and Director, McAllen TX Convention and Visitors' Bureau 
'Great!' Ruth Sykes, Vice President, Media Relations & Marketing, Macon, GA Convention & Visitors Bureau  
'What a wonderful, comprehensive haunted history.' Beth Krauss, Media Relations Manager, Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau. 







Finding Florida's Phantoms sale price 13.99
Florida! The land of sunshine and wide-open beaches. But even the Sunshine State has its dark secrets. Places where centuries old spirits remain tied to earth. Beneath the facade of fun and make believe, lurkes the real Florida.
 




My Fiction ​Books 

 

Missing-- Gone but not Forgotten

 Jon rapped hard on the door, Sheriff's Department responding to your call. Please open the door.

When the trailer became silent and the door swung open, Clair's first thought was this was another child in the family. The person standing in the doorway was about five foot three or four, thin to the point of emaciated, with long brown hair straggling in her face. She was wearing a rumpled tee and a pair of skinny jeans and tennis shoes. Her large blue eyes with a totally blank expression gave the only hint that this was 17-year-old Autumn Daily, the person reporting the missing child. She looked like she was stoned out of her mind on some strong chemicals. Behind her, loomed a man a bit over six feet in his mid-twenties. He had dark short hair, a small mustache and, weighing about 160 with enough muscle to take on either detective. His knuckles were bloody as if he had been punching something or someone. He clarified that by slamming his fist into the trailer's side. “It's about damn time you get here. Some fucker took my daughter! If I find ‘em, I'll kill 'em so you better get them first.”

These words lead Detectives Jon Capono and Clair Alexander into a search for a missing child. in a rural Florida community. Drugs, family feuds, underage sex, and lots of lies abound. Tthe story is based on an actual case.  In real life, this case has never been solved. I lived in the county where the abduction occurred at one time, and followed the case from day one, so it feels very personal.

 

The Ranch House Heist

Life gets really complicated for Casey when high-dollar art begins to disappear. And people she knows are dying. Casey and Roger are at a pivotal point in their relationship, but will Casey survive to make any decisions?

 

 

Double Duplicity

Book 2 in the Realtor Mystery Series

Casey's in trouble again. It's bad when you have a tenant you're evicting renting one side of a duplex and dying in a suspicious fire. When her twin sister shows up, and the police start investigating your motives, you've got double duplicity.

 

 

The Tenant from Hell

Book 1 in the Realtor Mystery Series

It's usually just routine for Casey Clark, Property Manager at Peller Realty. When a tenant refuses to pay rent, just evict and move on. Not so with the tenant from Hell. When the police find Casey alone with the dead tenant and the murder weapon, it draws Casey into murder, drug rings, ghosts, Indians, and a hectic trip to Hell in Georgia. Her worst problem of having to deal with her psychic cat, Dixie, not getting along with Casey's pirate boyfriend's parrot, changes into scrambling to stay alive.

 

 

 

For Want of a Ship

John Roy came to New Orleans with his family in 1843. He found prosperity and a home. He was assistant supervisor to Beauregard building the Custom House when the war erupted. It was only natural when the Civil War broke out he would remain loyal to Louisiana. He built cannons to arm the forts but he soon discovered that the sea and ships beckoned to him, He built one of the few submarines and helped outfit some of the most famous Confederate warships. After the fall of his city, he ended the war helping build the CSS Missouri, the last Confederate ironclad to surrender in American waters. Follow his only slightly fictionalized story told here for the first time.

 

 

 


Under a Bloody Flag
In Kansas and Missouri, the War Between the States started long before Fort Sumter. Daniel Fitzgerald, a Southerner who tries to settle Kansas and leave behind his tormented Louisiana roots, soon finds that in Kansas Territory you have to take sides or die. Taking sides doesn't lessen the chances of a violent death, it just determines who is going to try and kill you.
For Massachusetts-born Rebecca Styles, who comes to Kansas to insure freedom for slaves, the choice is easy. Or is it? When she meets Daniel, she is forced to take a new look at all the ideas she took for granted, like all Southerners are evil and all abolitionists are good.
Daniel's half-brother and former slave, Andre, knows his first loyalty belongs to his friends and family, not a lofty ideal, but he can't sit by and do nothing when injustice stares him in the face.
Throw into the mix all the larger-than-life characters who played a part in the sectional violence which led the nation into its bloodiest war and you have a novel with all the drama of the era. You'll meet James Lane, John Brown, JEB Stuart, Robert E. Lee, Joseph Shelby, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, and the other men and women who have shaped this nation into what it is today. You will never look at any of them as just characters in a history book again. This is a historical novel unlike any you have ever read before. It is a blend of history, action and romance. Facts read like fiction, and fiction could have been fact. It is a story of a time that changed a nation and a handful of people who lived and died in our nation's most colorful era.  







Under a Black Flag
Kansas and Missouri heated to the boiling point during the War between the States. Follow Dan and Andre as fate leades them different ways. For Dan and Becky, Missouri only offers the illusion of peace. Dan is drawn into Quantrill's raiders.
Andre is drawn into a web of intrigue that leads him back to New Olreans in search of the plans for John Roy's submarine, to Charleston at the start of the war, and many other dangerous places.








                 
Last Step Special sale price for print book $11.99
Vickie's daughter is dead. Just one more dead druggie among the hundreds that die each year in Jacksonville, Florida's drug infested slums. The police aren't concerned about her drug-related death. Vickie needs to know. Was it an accidental overdose, or murder? To find the anser, she must leave her safe life behind and plunge into the terrors of the drug culture. Will the search lead her to love? Or will she end up on a morgue slab, just one more casualty in the war against drugs?
Hank's mistakes caused the death of those he loved most. Drug addiction is his sworn enemy. His chosen life has no place in it for love until he meets Vickie.
Joe's money and power haven't been able to save his marriage or his son's love. He seeks Vickie's love but what are his secrets?
Vickie's daughter is dead. Just one more dead druggie among the hundreds that die each year in Jacksonville, Florida's drug infested slums. The police aren't concerned about her drug-related death. Vickie needs to know. Was it an accidental overdose, or murder? To find the anser, she must leave her safe life behind and plunge into the terrors of the drug culture. Will the search lead her to love? Or will she end up on a morgue slab, just one more casualty in the war against drugs? Hank's mistakes caused the death of those he loved most. Drug addiction is his sworn enemy. His chosen life has no place in it for love until he meets Vickie. Joe's money and power haven't been able to save his marriage or his son's love. He seeks Vickie's love but what are his secrets?
               







 Kudzu Special sale price for print book $11.99
After a painful divorce, Casey returns to the haven of her childhood, her great grandmother Weesie's tiny log cabin. Nestled deep in the Appalachian Mountains of North Georgia, the cabin rekindles memories of her happiest years as a young child enjoying Granny Weesie's tales of treasure. Casey seeks a peaceful refuge she will share only with her cat, Smokey. However, much more than early memories await Casey in Bluejay, Georgia. By chance, or was it design, Weesie's childhood diary turns up in the cabin. The scrawled pages transport Casey back into the late nineteenth century. Far from finding the peaceful time she expects there, she uncovers a web of adultery, murder and intrigue that threatens to entangle Casey's twenty-first century life. That life threatens to become more complex when her new neighbor turns out to be a handsome victim of his own marital disaster. Lee Schmidt has vowed never to let another woman mangle his life. As Casey is drawn deeper into Weesie's life and times, her 'real' life becomes more complicated by her growing attraction to Lee. Some strange occurrences happen in the cabin mirrored by tales of ghostly sightings in her family history. Her involvement with things past increases. As she travels back to 1879 via Louisa's diary, she meets an intriguing cast of characters. Donald Stuart, her 'sister' Lillith's faithful lover, David, his evil hearted twin brother, Ma and Da Garrett, Louisa's parents and her own direct ancestors, and the other inhabitants of early Bluejay. Kudzu shows you a different part of the South, past and present. Mystery with a touch of romance and a smidgen of paranormal.


The Scoop  $.99 at Kindle
Experience life in American under a ruthless, narcissistic president. Can he succeed in destroying democracy as we know it? Does he have the potential to destroy the world in a nuclear holocaust? What will it take to stop him? Although many of the events occurring in the book sound unbelievable at first glance, much is taken from history and similar events that have really happened.
Of course, President Runk and his appointees are fictional. If anyone notes a resemblance to Donald Trump, naturally, that is just a coincidence. This book will have you hanging on for one hell of a rough ride.

By Any Other Name $.99 at Kindle
Loretta learns that one harmless white lie can lead down strange paths. Little by little, her heedless statement draws her into a dead woman's identity. Will her deception bring her true love or death? She struggles with her growing attraction to Greg, the rugged attorney, who accepts her as his dead friend's daughter. As she is drawn deeper into the web of deceit, it becomes increasingly clear someone wants to kill her. The motive, her share of a vast English estate.

Is it Richard, her supposed half-brother who has the best motive, or Polly, his doting aunt, with her knowledge of herbs and poison? Could it be Nat, the seductive outsider, who offers friendship? Perhaps it's Morgan, Nat's handsome twin, who romances Loretta. Is it her or her fortune he desires? Perhaps even sickly Arabella, the twins mother, could murder to help her children. Worst of all could it be Greg, who has captured her unwilling heart? Does he return her love or is there someone else he wants? In the entire family, only little Drew and his two beloved dogs appear trustworthy. But even he has his secrets

My Non-fiction Books

 Man Hunt: The Eric Rudolph Story
Get into the mind of a fugitive. When writing this I lived in Blairsville, GA, less than an hour from his home in North Carolina and interviewed many people who knew him and his family.

Sarah's Story- A Confederate Girl's Diary Reg price is $17.99
This is a reprint of an  actual diary written by Sarah Morgan Dawson during the Civil War.

I have quite a few copies and can make you a great deal on this one

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Sarah's Story: A Confederate Girl's Diary Special sale price $6.99
See the Civil War South through the eyes of Sara Morgan Dawson who lived to tell about it.  







Tax Sale Tactics Special sale price $4
Learn how to buy tax foreclosure property at a fraction of its value.


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My Apps and Tours
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North Georgia Mountains

 

Doing Downtown Atlanta

 

Tampa Gone Wild

 

Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge

Jacksonville,
Best Value City

 

Atlanta Wild

Pittsburgh

Mesa Verde

Tour Jordan

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