Nancy LaPonzina, Debut Author Is In The House!

It's a banner week for Rebel Ink Press with a host of new releases and several talented debut authors.  One of those debut authors is our guest, Nancy LaPonzina.  Her novel Nardi Point released this week from Rebel Ink Press and I'm delighted to welcome her to the blog to share some thoughts, an excerpt from her novel, the delightful cover, and more!

GUEST BLOG POST

Nancy LaPonzina – Nardi Point

You just can't make this stuff up!

So, let's say you decide it's time to take your relationship forward to a more permanent arrangement–trade in the townhouse/apartment for a house and finalize a place to start a family if you can. Big change! Bigger commitment. Let's say your guy isn't that excited about taking the situation in that direction. What happens when a series of twists and turns that shape the financial decision to build the house of your dreams suddenly uncovers prehistoric, Native American artifacts on the construction site and jeopardizes everything? This is the story of Nardi Point, a new subdivision in Raleigh, North Carolina and the dilemma is indeed authentic. Really?

Set in the Piedmont of North Carolina, Raleigh has been listed prominently on several top ten places to live lists. Its northern suburbs reach up to Falls Lake and the Neuse River. Some ten thousand years ago, Native Americans migrated from points south at the time of year when large white shad and other fish were plentiful in the river. These indigenous people used fish weirs, or traps, to catch large numbers of fish and set up temporary fish processing camps to prepare and salt the fish provisions for their own use and for trade. How do we know this?

Over the years, farmers tending their fields discovered bits and pieces of artifacts. Many were historic ceramic ware, buttons, nail heads from the 1700s, while others were prehistoric pottery sherds, projectile points, Atlatl, and grinding, scraping stone tools. Not Jurassic Park–North Raleigh. During the '90s when work was in progress to enlarge the Neuse River basin to help reduce flooding potential and create Falls Lake in the process, some 41 sites were identified as worthy of archaeological exploration. If you realize Egyptian pyramids are but 3,000 years old, the size of the discovery is huge. In fact, during construction of Wakefield Plantation and the Wakefield High School, the extensive grading and building activity uncovered both historic and prehistoric artifacts–including some ancient burial sites.

Here's the dilemma Laurinda Elliot must suddenly meet. Construction companies pay big dollars for tracts of hundreds of acres of land on which to develop housing subdivisions. Should artifacts be discovered, it suits rogue builders to continue on–fast. Cover them up and no one is the wiser. Their greed propels them to lose the history of the family of man. Once an artifact is removed from where it's found, the contextual information is lost forever. Laurinda Elliot and Leyla Jo Piper discover ancient potsherds. Laurinda's partner Dan Riser is not feeling committed to any of it. What happens when Laurinda must decide to move forward with the construction that brings a wedding and family closer to existence versus doing the right thing and following up with the State Archaeology department to help conserve archaeological resources? Will digging up the past, bury Laurinda's future happiness? Nardi Point is her story.

Here's the blurb:

Should the past make way for the present...
Stylish brunette Laurinda Elliot is the type of accomplished business woman glossy magazines feature on their covers. Effectively managing a software product development team in Raleigh, North Carolina, her drive and savvy delivers all the perks: an upscale townhouse, a Porsche Boxer convertible and designer clothing. Yet she yearns emotionally for a different success—one that brings her surprising first time experience with vulnerability. Her uber software code developer partner, Dan Riser, can't buy into the new direction she's leading them, but goes along to keep the peace, and more importantly, beautiful Laurinda.

Or the present make way for the past—and love...
When prehistoric, Native American pottery artifacts are discovered, the ancient past collides with the present leaving Laurinda and Dan's relationship hanging in the balance. Laurinda must trump construction economics and greed to preserve her commitment to her dream, uphold her friendship with alternative healing practitioner, Leyla-Jo Piper, and answer to a new romance, all the while attempting to conserve North Carolina history.

Will digging up the past bury her future? Nardi Point explores the thread of life that blends past, current, and future to recognize the importance of knowing who we are in the story of life

And here's an excerpt -

Leyla Jo left Laurinda with Colson to investigate where he'd been digging. She had a feeling she needed to honor. She squatted and scooped up what he'd dropped, barely able to identify where it had fallen in the fast fading light. Her ungloved fingers troweled the clay then grasped a hard piece of brick or something? It looked like broken, broken pottery maybe? She examined the buff-gray colored sherd resting in her hand. Leyla Jo's head pitched into thundering silence that clamped a pulsating, muffled pressure through her body. She felt distanced from where she stood, disconnected. Her heart felt squeezed and she involuntarily took in a great gasp of air.

What’s ... what’s happening? A hazy image appeared of a small-framed, young woman with dark, long hair, who struggled with a buff-colored clay pot, as she carried it to a roaring river's edge. Leyla Jo's eyes burned and she squinted harder. The woman's feet were ankle-deep in red-sucking clay, yet she plowed forward, fighting its hold on each footfall. And then, just as suddenly, Leyla Jo crashed out of the image back to the clearing and turned the piece of pottery carefully in her palm. Thick, buff-gray, it had some type of imprinting, impossible to make out the detail now in the growing dusk. A sizzle crept up from her spine, through her shoulders, and locked her position. She knew enough about metaphysical occurrences to pay attention. Time and place came out of sequence and like the disorientation a time traveler would experience, she found herself in a space from long ago.

Three years old and barefoot, she stands on a sorry, ramshackle porch of a small, Carolina farmhouse. An old woman, it's Aunt Beatrice, holds her small hands together tightly in hers and looks into Leyla Jo's eyes. She looks back into Aunt Beatrice's brown, sun-wrinkled face and knows something's happened, something she doesn't understand. The dear old woman tells her, momma won't be back, never mind a father gone long before.

"Will anyone come for me?" Leyla Jo asks.

Aunt Beatrice takes a small round basket made of coiled dried pine needles and places it into her small hands. Leyla Jo knows she is being given a treasure, even then, and recognizes it's a connection, a link to another time. Aunt Beatrice hastily wipes away tears, the only tears she remembers the dear old woman shedding, then pulls her protectively into her arms. The summer sun edges down behind the pine-covered foothills of Robeson County. That night, Leyla Jo's small makeshift bed tucked next to Aunt Beatrice's room, becomes comfortably permanent. She loves the safety its warm pinecone patchwork quilt provides.

Here's where you can buy Nardi Point:

http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-nardipoint-779956-148.html

Also available wherever Rebel Ink Press books are sold including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookstrand.

And here's where you can find out more about Nancy!

Website: www.nancylaponzina.wordpress.com
Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4IvixrsfiE