Skip to content
  • Home
  • Review Policy
  • Linktree
  • Contact
  • Menu Item
  • Menu Item
  • Menu Item
  • Menu Item
Westveil Books

Westveil Books

& Other Hobbies

  • Home
  • About
    • Meet Jenna
    • Review Policy
    • Linktree
  • Book Blog
    • Book Reviews
    • TBR
    • Old Posts Archive
  • All Bookish Posts
    • SciFi & Fantasy
    • Horror
    • LGBTQIA+ Books
    • YA Fiction
    • Historical Non-Fiction
    • Misc Fiction
    • Misc Non-Fiction
    • Canadian Authors
  • Everything Else
    • Artsy Things
    • Rainbow Things
    • Other Hobbies
    • Neurodivergence
    • Chit Chat
  • Contact
  • Toggle search form
  • The Prism Affect by J. Wint – 4 Star Book Review Book Reviews
  • Blackcoat by Steve McHugh – 4 Star Book Review Book Reviews
  • Book Review: Credible Threats by Daniel Meyer Book Reviews
  • Author Guest Post with Scott P. Southall & 4 Star Review Author Interviews & Guest Posts
  • Ashlords – 5 Star Book Review Book Reviews
  • Cemetery Boys – 5 Star Book Review Book Reviews
  • 5 Star Review: Rise of the Red Sun by J. Edwards Holt Book Reviews
  • The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson – 4 Star Book Review Book Reviews
  • The Sojourn Season 1 Volume 2 – 5 Star Audiobook Review Book Reviews
  • Koush Hollow by Leigh Goff – 4 Star Audiobook Review Book Reviews
  • 4 Star Review: Straight Expectations by Calum McSwiggan Book Reviews
  • The Isle of a Thousand Worlds – 5 Star Book Review Book Reviews

Author Guest Post with Charlene Bell Dietz: The Flapper, the Imposter, and the Stalker

Posted on August 28, 2023 By Jenna No Comments on Author Guest Post with Charlene Bell Dietz: The Flapper, the Imposter, and the Stalker

In 1923 ten million families own the Model T, America’s most popular automobile. Ziegfeld Follies comes into its heyday and jazz reigns as king of music. This is the time when prohibition dominates social gatherings, and F. Scott Fitzgerald becomes the Flapper expert.

Welcome to the August 28th stop on the blog tour for The Flapper, the Imposter, and the Stalker by Charlene Bell Dietz with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, more guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.

Author Guest Post

The Roaring Twenties: a Prohibition Bash

If The Flapper, the Impostor, and the Stalker had been an 1850 instead of 1923 book, I would have title it The Hatchets, the Ice-cream makers, and Garters

Hatchets
Carrie Nations, in 1901, believed God told her to close all taverns and bars. She took to throwing rocks at establishments selling alcohol. Then in 1909, some crazy man in Topeka, Kansas handed Carrie a hatchet. Carrie began storming taverns, swinging her hatchet while her “do gooder” sisters sang hymns and threw the rocks.

Ice Cream
Then WWI started. U.S. officials claimed they needed the wheat, barley, and grains used for making alcohol to feed the troops. The US government shutdown all breweries. Considering our opponents of WWI, think of the names: Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, Miller, and others. They employed thousands of workers and paid heavy taxes.

Coors turned their bottle production into ceramic wares. Anheuser Bush made ice-cream, using their cold-storage trucks to move their frozen products wherever they wanted. Others turned to making malt. It made excellent bread, but add a little yeast, you get beer.

The 1918 Volstead Act push the prohibition movement into law, enacted in1920 by the enforcement of the18th Amendment.

Garters
The Flapper, the Impostor, and the Stalker opens with a scene of an upper middle-class, Minneapolis family. Their college-bound daughter studies upstairs, while her parents enjoy their cocktails downstairs.

If prohibition started in 1920 then how could the parents be drinking in 1923?

The public had one full year to prepare for prohibition. Private citizens built wine cellars, stockpiled wine and liquor, and some bought out liquor stores.

The law prohibited the manufacturing, the sale, and the transportation of alcohol, not the consumption. Therefore, a couple could enjoy a night out in a restaurant and bring their own alcohol.

Also, a person could drink legally if they had a prescription. Your prescription might read: Take 3 ounces every 3 hours for stimulation until. . . stimulated.  You could refill your prescription every ten days.

Gangsters stockpiled too, buying complete liquor stores, robbing drug stores, and holding up trains. They smuggled liquor from Canada, bootlegged, made bathtub gin, along with rotgut moonshine. Anyone could make a buck by opening basements, garages, backrooms, and closets where a patron could enjoy a little nip for a few coins. Much of this peddled liquor, foul tasting and dangerous, contained industrial alcohol.

Alleys and closets gave way to nightclubs. To gain access to these up-scale places, a customer had to know someone or have a password to get in. Speakeasies became the happening places.

The federal government didn’t understand why people kept drinking, ordered quinine, methyl alcohol and other toxic chemicals added to industrial alcohol. Many became blind and numerous others died.

When a flapper and her crowd went out on the town for the night, they knew death might be one cocktail away. Some flappers carried booze hidden in a flask, tuck snuggly in their garter.

The young run-away teen in The Flapper, the Impostor, and the Stalker, navigates the thrilling, dangerous streets of Chicago in 1923, and is plunged into an alcoholic world of gangsters, deception, and adventure. All of this seems far removed from the world hatchet-swinging Carrie Nation and the U. S. government had envisioned.

About the Book

The Flapper, the Imposter, and the Stalker
Inkydance Book Club Collection Book Two
by Charlene Bell Dietz

Published 21 November 2017
Quill Mark Press

Genre: Mystery, Historical, Suspense
Page Count: 276
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

A privileged teenager from Minneapolis in 1923, scraps her college scholarship and runs away to become a flapper in dangerous, chaotic Chicago. In her search for illusive happiness, she confronts the mob and then must contrive a way to not be murdered.

Goodreads Synopsis:

In 1923 ten million families own the Model T, America’s most popular automobile. Ziegfeld Follies comes into its heyday and jazz reigns as king of music. This is the time when prohibition dominates social gatherings, and F. Scott Fitzgerald becomes the Flapper expert. Younger women all over the country shun having to wear corsets and trailing Victorian dresses like their mothers. These ladies rebel against waist-length braids in favor of the right to bob their locks. They argue for free speech and equality, beg to wear lipstick, and on occasion, show their knees.

When college-bound Kathleen McPherson, in Minneapolis, pushes her family’s traditional boundaries, she’s horrified to discover a stalker intent on killing her. A classmate, whose romantic life seems to parallel Kathleen’s, is stabbed to death near Kathleen’s home. Gossip implies the murdered girl carried on with an older man.

Kathleen and her best friend run away to Chicago to escape the knife-wielding stalker and to find happiness as Flappers. Instead of an entertainer’s life full of fun and frolic, Kathleen encounters deception, death, heartbreak, and revenge. Not only does the stalker continue to pursue her, but now she must rescue her best friend from gangsters, and Kathleen must make certain she, herself, isn’t murdered by the mob.

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | B&N | Publisher

Excerpt

May I help?” A man’s voice came from behind. Kathleen glanced at him. A thirtyish man of average build in a brown wool suit and a green-checked bowtie with a brown fedora in his hand nodded at Sophie.

“We’re fine, thank you.”

“Listen, kid,” he said, “lots of you babes come to Chicago hoping to get the big break. Most never get to audition. Heartbreaker, I see it every week.”

He took out a starched, white handkerchief and handed it to Sophie.

“Missy, don’t you worry. You both are real lookers, and with those long gams . . .” He nodded at Kathleen and winked.

“Please, sir, leave us alone.” Kathleen glanced back at Sophie.

“Seriously, I know this guy who owns a club. He’s looking for new talent—”

“Mister.” Kathleen said, “I’ve read about guys like you. Get lost.” Kathleen pulled the handkerchief away from Sophie and shoved it at him. “Come on, Sophie. He’s one of those old men preying on young girls. Pick up your valise.” Kathleen jerked Sophie’s arm and pushed past him toward the exit.

“Hey—no offense. Ladies, I know people who can—”

Kathleen glowered and waved him away with the back of her hand. “We’re respectable women.”

Sophie sniffed, tilted her nose up, and strutted out with Kathleen into the cold sunlight and city noise. Swell. A pimp, and Sophie is hysterical. What in the heck do we do now?

About the Author

Charlene Bell Dietz writes science and historical-suspense, award-winning mystery novels and short stories.  Her award-winning short stories have been published in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers 2016 Anthology and SouthWest Writers 2019 Anthology.   The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur combines family saga with corporate espionage. The Flapper, the Impostor, and the Stalker propels readers back into 1923 frenetic Chicago during the Roaring Twenties. Both these novels were named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2018, and each won the coveted Kirkus Starred Review.  Her latest novel, The Scientist, the Psychic, and the Nut, gives readers a frightening Caribbean vacation. Her current work in progress, a biographical historical novel, starts in England in 1638 and ends in precolonial Maryland. Charlene, a retired educator, traveled the United States as a consultant for Houghton Mifflin Publishers after a career of teaching little ones, older ones, and college graduates. Surrounded by forests and meadows, she currently lives in the foothills of the mountains in central NM several miles from the small village of Torreon. Charlene is the current president of Croak & Dagger, New Mexico Chapter of Sisters in Crime. She belongs to Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and SouthWest Writers.

Website | Amazon | Goodreads

Giveaway Alert!

Charlene Bell Dietz will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
July 17Kit ‘n KabookleJuly 24Sandra’s Book Club
July 31The Avid ReaderJuly 31Gina Rae Mitchell
Aug 7Aubrey Wynne Timeless LoveAug 14Joanne Guidoccio
Aug 21Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and InterviewsAug 28Westveil Publishing
Sept 4Literary GoldSept 11The Key of Love
Sept 11Readers RoostSept 18wendi zwaduk
Sept 25Fabulous and BrunetteOct 2travel the ages
Oct 2Long and Short Reviews

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Author Interviews & Guest Posts, Book Promos Tags:Charlene Bell Dietz, goddess fish promotions, Historical, Inkydance Book Club Collection, mystery, suspense, The Flapper the Imposter and the Stalker

Post navigation

Previous Post: Book Review: How to Draw a Giraffe – The Alice May Way by Alice G May
Next Post: Guardians by T.J. Baer

Related Posts

  • Twice Hung by Vanessa C. Hawkins Book Promos
  • Midpoint: A Memoir by Patricia Angeles [Tour Spotlight] Book Promos
  • Author Interview with L.R. Braden & #Giveaway Author Interviews & Guest Posts
  • Myth Agent [Book Tour with Excerpt] Book Promos
  • Narrator Interview with Anne Marie Lewis, The Wing Cycle Author Interviews & Guest Posts
  • Mage Breaker by Sean R. Frazier Book Promos

Comments (0) on “Author Guest Post with Charlene Bell Dietz: The Flapper, the Imposter, and the Stalker”

  1. Goddess Fish Promotions says:
    August 28, 2023 at 8:36 AM

    Thank you for hosting!

    Loading...
    Reply
  2. Bea LaRocca says:
    August 28, 2023 at 12:29 PM

    Thank you for sharing your guest post, bio and the book details, I enjoyed reading about the events leading up to Prohibition and I am looking forward to reading this book. Are you a fan of the fashions of the era that your story is set in? When I hear the term “flapper” I envision a woman dressed in the distinctive attire of the time

    Loading...
    Reply
  3. Charlene Bell Dietz says:
    August 28, 2023 at 1:53 PM

    Hi Bea,
    Yes, I am a fan of the glittery, swishing, high-heel kicking, short skirted clothes. These young girls must have had so much fun dressing up for a night on the town. Pearls, fans, cigarette holders, and garters, with their hair bobbed and covered with stylish little cloche hats. However, at my age, I’d look pretty ridiculous dressing like that. Thank you for following my blog travels. I’m glad you enjoyed the post about prohibition. I just couldn’t figure out how people drank all the time, when the government tried so hard to shut it down. I just had to research. Such funny business. Makes you understand why our government often gets things so very wrong. Enjoy your day.

    Loading...
    Reply
  4. Charlene Bell Dietz says:
    August 28, 2023 at 1:54 PM

    Thank you, so much, Westveilpublishing, for hosting my story. You’ve really given it a whole lot of real estate. I appreciate your doing this, and I’m enjoying reading your other posts.

    Loading...
    Reply
  5. Sherry says:
    August 28, 2023 at 8:50 PM

    Looks like a great read.

    Loading...
    Reply
    1. Charlene Bell Dietz says:
      August 29, 2023 at 12:25 PM

      Thank you, Sherry, for following my blog tour. Good luck.

      Loading...
      Reply
  6. Marcy Meyer says:
    August 28, 2023 at 9:59 PM

    Love the cover. Looks amazing. Sounds like a really interesting story.

    Loading...
    Reply
    1. Charlene Bell Dietz says:
      August 29, 2023 at 12:26 PM

      Hi Marcy. This book has won some pretty prestigious awards. Thank you.

      Loading...
      Reply
  7. Rita Wray says:
    August 29, 2023 at 12:04 PM

    Sounds like a good book.

    Loading...
    Reply
  8. Charlene Bell Dietz says:
    August 29, 2023 at 12:26 PM

    Rita, I suspect you read a lot. I bet you would enjoy my books.
    Thank you for following.

    Loading...
    Reply
  9. Piroska says:
    August 30, 2023 at 2:27 AM

    The book sounds very intriguing. Great cover.

    Loading...
    Reply
    1. Charlene Bell Dietz says:
      August 30, 2023 at 11:12 AM

      Thank you. I was fortunate to have a chance to help design my cover. Sometimes authors have no say. The photo is the only photo I have of my aunt as a young girl who ran away and became a flapper in Chicago in 1923. She was the inspiration for my writing this book.

      Loading...
      Reply

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

We migrated web hosts and we're still working on restoring images. Thank you for your patience!

Badges

Professional Reader
Reviews Published
80%
50 Book Reviews
NetGalley Beta Tester
Frequently Auto-Approved
Intellifluence Trusted Blogger
  • Archive Feed
  • Author Interviews & Guest Posts
  • Blog
  • Book Promos
  • Book Reviews
  • Book Talk, Tags & YouTube
  • Bookworm Things
  • Chit Chat
  • Featured-Old
  • Horror
  • Main Feed
  • SciFi & Fantasy
  • TBR
  • YA Fiction
  • July 2025
  • June 2025
  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Original content © 2021-2025 Westveil Books | Submitted content rights remain with the rights holders.

%d