About the Book

Book: Voices in the Sanitorium

Author: Amy Lynn Walsh

Genre: Historical Mystery, Women’s Fiction

(This is not horror or paranormal. Readers will have no trouble falling asleep after reading this!)

Release Date: October, 2022

Relocating from Manhattan, teenage Aislyn must adjust to life near the abandoned West Mountain Sanitarium. One night, Aislyn joins new friends in the old ruins — and seems to return home with a different personality. Not long after Aislyn purchases a diary written almost a century ago by Bridget, a young patient recovering from tuberculosis on the sanitorium grounds, strange things begin to happen.

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

Amy Walsh writes historical and contemporary romance, mysteries, speculative fiction, and women’s fiction. She is a 5th-grade writing teacher in an urban public school. Amy and her husband, Patrick, have three children. Amy considers herself greatly blessed in the roles God has given her as an earthling, including aspiring wordsmith, teacher of youngsters, nature appreciator, tea aficionado, avid dessert fan, book fanatic, lover of family and friends, and Christ follower.

More from Amy

Mam’s Apple Cinnamon Scones with Maple Cinnamon Glaze

These are the scones Katherine’s mother makes the morning their new friend Cadence comes for an Irish tea. This time of fellowship marks a turning point in the plot of Voices in the Sanitorium.

[Insert Kick-Off 1 Picture Here]

The dough:

2 3/4 cups flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 stick of softened butter

1 diced small apple

3/4 cup cinnamon chips (optional)

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup applesauce

For best results, follow the steps below. However, if you are as busy as Katherine is with four children and a thriving Irish textile business, you can just melt the butter in the microwave and throw all the ingredients together at once, and these scones will still be delicious.

• In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon.
• Mix in the butter just until the mixture is crumbly
• Stir in the chopped apple and cinnamon chips.
• Mix the eggs, vanilla, and applesauce in another bowl, then add these to the dry ingredients.
• Make sure you have parchment paper or have floured your baking sheet.
• Drop scoops of the dough onto the baking sheet. (about ¼ cup scoops)
• Bake for 20 minutes at 425 degrees or until golden brown

Notes:

If pressed for time, Mam just makes drop scones. When guests are coming, she forms the dough into a circle about ¾ inch high, cuts the dough into pie pieces on the parchment paper, then gently pulls the pieces apart and uses her fingers to form them into perfect isosceles triangles.

Sometimes Mam puts the dough into the freezer after forming it on the baking pan. She says freezing dough for a half hour makes them softer. Katherine has never noticed a difference.

Glaze:

• 1 ½ cup powdered sugar,
• 1⁄2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 ½ Tablespoons maple syrup

If the glaze needs to be thickened, add more powdered sugar. If it is too thick, add more syrup, cream, or milk. You can put it in the microwave for about fifteen seconds if it starts to get firm while you wait for the scones to come out of the oven.

Blog Stops

Babbling Becky L’s Book Impressions, October 17

Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, October 18

Jodie Wolfe – Stories Where Hope and Quirky Meet, October 19 (Author Interview)

Avid Reader Nurse, October 19

Texas Book-aholic, October 20

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, October 21

Locks, Hooks and Books, October 22

Connie’s History Classroom, October 23

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, October 24

Denise L. Barela, October 25

Becca Hope: Book Obsessed, October 26

Blogging With Carol, October 27

For Him and My Family, October 28

Tell Tale Book Reviews, October 29 (Author Interview)

Mary Hake, October 29

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, October 30

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Amy is giving away the grand prize package of $40 Amazon card, a hardcover copy of the book, and historical memorabilia related to the West Mountain Sanitarium in 1931!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for nine extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

https://promosimple.com/ps/28796/voices-in-the-sanitorium-celebration-tour-giveaway

What qualities do you look for in a hero or heroine?

I try to envision realistic characters, with both positive and negative traits and a capacity for growth.  I tend to gravitate toward some neurodivergence as well.  I like to create couples who would balance each other out in real life – just like my husband and I do – ha ha!

My upcoming release is Nellie with the Apron Strings series.  The premise of this series is so fun, and I think ladies with all sorts of reading interests will love it.  A copy of one book, Mrs. Canfield’s Cookery, is passed from one woman to the next each decade for a century.  Each author in the series took a different decade, a different U.S. setting, and a unique trope to tell the tale of a woman whose life is changed by the wisdom shared by Mrs. Canfield.

If Nellie was a student in 2023, she would probably be identified as having ADHD or qualify for the gifted program.  Possibly both.  She has a phenomenal memory and is very gifted in recitation.  But as a child, she was always a bit of a mischief-maker at school and at home.  Until her father was sent to the West Mountain Sanitarium with lung disease, Nellie’s focus was on becoming a professional actress.  But as the story begins in 1931, she has just given up her plans to share a flat in New York City with friends who are also aspiring actresses.  Now she must find a job to help provide for her family and pay for her father’s treatments.

One of Nellie’s biggest strengths as an actress, her gift of blarney and the ability to improvise, becomes a weakness when she wins herself a job she has had little preparation for.  Her job in the Clarinda House kitchen therefore begins with much angst of her own making.

Nellie’s love interest, Mason, is a serious guy, a pillar in the community as a board member of the Glen Alden Mining Company.  Unlike Nellie’s more fun-filled upbringing, his father had him memorizing scripture and preparing him for the roles he would inherit since he was a toddler.  But Mason too has his weaknesses, one being that sometimes he takes too much upon himself and doesn’t allow the women in his life to share in the responsibility –namely his younger sisters. His overprotectiveness has hampered his siblings’ growth.  This same quality, of course, causes some issues with headstrong, Irish-tempered Nellie.

Do you have a favorite scene in your latest release?

I will stick with talking about Nellie to follow up with the last question.  It’s very hard for me to pick a favorite scene.  I have a favorite nature scene, a favorite tear-jerker, and a favorite humorous episode.  I love the life lessons Nellie learns through Mrs. Canfield’s Cookery Book and how they tend to relate to her real-life challenges.  And I enjoy her interactions with Mr. Mason Peale, even though I wrote them myself – haha.

Oh my goodness, it is so hard to pick one scene.  I guess I will go with one of Nellie’s rare moments of quiet reflection.  Her little brother Johny is recovering from a concussion, and she is lying on a blanket shaded by a grove of poplar trees while he naps.

She turned to her side to observe her brother.  He had the most darling profile.  His tiny snores lifted his hair gently away from his forehead, making her smile even though her mind was spinning faster than Uncle Bernie’s Model T wheels down West Mountain. So much to consider.  From light-hearted memories she’d made over the past few weeks to burdens she didn’t want to carry.

She rolled onto her back again and rested her hands under her head.  Why had God decided to create poplars just as He had?  With leaves that bristled and danced in the faintest wind even when other trees stood solemn and immovable.  Was there a message from the Creator in these heart-shaped leaves with silver underbellies?  In how from a distance these trees look like a swarm of joyful fairies celebrating sunlight?

What creation message do you think God meant for Nellie, and us,  to realize as we observe the beauty of dancing leaves?

Who are your favorite authors?

I have to say I am a fickle fan because all too often my favorite author is the one whose book I am currently reading.  Just like I love all sorts of singing voices, I enjoy a plethora of styles, genres, tropes, and eras.  I love how God authored all of us, and then gave us the capacity to be authors ourselves.  Each and every person on the planet has a story.  And some have the capacity to create entire imaginary realms that blow my mind.  Wow!  We have a Creator who created incredibly gifted creators!

I have become friends with so many wordsmiths who are also incredible personalities.  They are generous with their time and talent despite having busy and often challenging personal lives. Groups of Christian writers truly take the time to encourage one another and build one another up as 1 Thessalonians 5:11 commands.

Because I have too many favorite authors to mention them all, I will give a shout-out to five talented authors whose novels I’ve read in the last week or so.  Anne Perreault, Pepper Basham, Carrie Turansky, Naomi Musch, and  Angela Ruth Strong – your latest novels are so different from each other, yet all so brilliantly written, and each with messages that women need to hear.  I enjoyed every page of each of your novels.  Keep writing, please!

How do you get your story ideas?

 Anywhere and everywhere.  I love it when my husband drives and wants to just listen to music, so I can building-watch and imagine the people who live and work within them. I’ve been inspired by places I’ve been on vacation, items in antique stores, conversations, Bible verses, articles I’ve read, people I’ve met… Decades of compulsive daydreaming equals the ability to come up with a storyline with any random object, I guess.   

 What do you plan to work on next?

 I am in the middle of writing a mail-order bride story for the Brides of Pelican Rapids series.  Oh my goodness, I just received the cover proof designed by Evelyne Labelle a couple of weeks ago, and I am so in love with the cover.  This is a new trope for me, but I am familiar with the era having written two novels set in the 1880s already.  I also love writing about children, and the story involves a widower with four young children – one is a little imp, of course.  The heroine who was raised working in an apothecary shop just wants to make her elixirs and liniments in peace.  Poor woman.  I have a feeling her goal of a platonic marriage to a general store owner is going to be upended.

I have other projects in the works, sequels to some of my other novels and books for two new multi-author series that have yet to be announced – one is a medieval fantasy and the other is a contemporary romance.

I also am editing a collection of memoirs celebrating how lives have been changed by service dogs.  The authors are so courageous and resilient despite the hurdles life has given them.  I am honored to facilitate this anthology project which will be released in April.  Hopefully, it will raise enough money that someone in need can acquire a canine companion.

However, this is my youngest daughter’s senior year of high school, so I am planning to enjoy creating real-life stories with her.  We have a lengthy bucket list of memories to make this year.