Thursday, March 31, 2016

Secrets and Lace: 28 Days Left

BY Unknown No comments

Hi everybody,

I just wanted to drop by and share a quick teaser with you. I can't believe Secrets and Lace (Fatal Hearts 1) will be out in just a few weeks. Get ready for the ride.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Release Blitz: Saving Kendrix by Elle Christensen

BY Unknown No comments

Title: Saving Kendrix (The Fae Guard #5)
Author: Elle Christensen
Release Date: March 23, 2016
Find on Goodreads
Alysia

I’ve lived in shadows all of my life
Feeling empty, but never knowing what I was truly missing
I’ve been taught to hide my talents and be invisible
Until Kendrix walks into my life and sees me. All of me.
I know he is my destiny, but he is holding himself back
There is something he isn’t telling me
I’m afraid when the truth comes out, it will tear us apart

Kendrix

I made a choice to give up my soul and forever alter my destiny
I embraced abilities that I’d kept hidden
But they don’t make up for what I’ve lost
It seems a cruel trick of Fate that I finally met the one who was meant to be mine
And yet, I can never have her
My job is to deceive Alysia and ultimately, to give her up
But the darkness calls to me
Tempting me to hide in the shadows with her forever 
Prologue
Kendrix
           
Hell is often portrayed as a burning pit of fire. However, I’m beginning to wonder if Dante had it right. It seems logical to believe that there are nine levels of hell that are broken down into something like another eighteen circles. Each one different. Each one designated to specific sins. And each one with their own unique atmosphere, not all of which are hot with fire. Where I stand, at this moment, is one circle of Hell. But, it is cold and dark, filled with misery at knowing what I’ve left behind and what is stretched before me. I do my best not to dwell on what was because there is no greater pain than remembering times of love and joy when they are forever out of your reach. You cannot pluck them from the past, and you’ll never find them in your future.
The only thing I have to cling to is my purpose, the reason I made the choice to fall into my own level of Hell. A small fraction of my soul is tightly gripped, enough to remind me what I must do and why I have no choice but to succeed. Beyond that, I have no comprehension of what my future holds after this assignment. I’m finally embracing my abilities as a fate reader, but I am blind to my own destiny. What I see before me is an eternal stretch of blackness.
I can only try my best not to succumb fully to evil. But, if I’m bound to live in darkness forever, is there really any other choice?
I’m a lover of all things books, a hopeless romantic, and have always had a passion for writing. Between being a sappy romantic, my love of an HEA, my crazy imagination, and ok, let’s be real, my dirty mind, I fell easily into writing romance. 

I’m a huge baseball fan and yet, a complete girly, girl. I’m an obsessive reader and have a slight (hahaha! Slight? Yeah, right) addiction to signed books. 
I’m married to my very own book boyfriend, an alpha male with a sexy, sweet side. He is the best inspiration, my biggest supporter and the love of my life. He is also incredibly patient and understanding about the fact that he has to fight the voices in my head for my attention. 

I hope you enjoy reading my books as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Monday, March 14, 2016

New Release: Blessing of the Elements by Tracee Ford

BY Unknown No comments

BLURB

Princess Ziltra lives a blessed life in the Kingdom of Kaycon until Queen Osatam of Buscom fixes her eyes upon the prosperous nation. To avoid taking up arms and ending decades of peace, Ziltra's father, King Jyson agrees to a treaty. However, Ziltra's innocence is the primary condition of the agreement. She becomes a sacrificial lamb.

Her world shattered, and her faith in her father gone, Ziltra finds solace among her small group of friends, especially her handsome bodyguard, Silwan. As their forbidden love affair blossoms, she suffers more betrayal and is banished from her own kingdom. She is forced to wander the wilderness seeking answers.

In a twist of fate, she discovers an ancient prophecy and becomes a powerful Shadow Knight, learning to wield the elements. She vows to take back everything that belongs to her, promising to avenge all who have been destroyed by Queen Osatam's curse. When Ziltra realizes her destiny, she finds more strength within herself than she ever thought possible. 

AUTHOR BIO

Tracee Ford has been telling stories her whole life. She is an award-winning novelist and the founder of Ozwind Publishing, LLC. 

Tracee’s first novel, The Fine Line, won a Five Star Reader’s Favorite Award in 2013 and her second book, Idolum, is also the winner of a Reader’s Favorite Award and was nominated by the Paranormal Romance Guild for Best Romantic Suspense novel of 2013, winning second place. Her third novel, Through Glass Darkly, won first place for Best Paranormal Romance (General) of 2015 and the Between Worlds Series won second place for Best Paranormal Romance of 2015.

Tracee has walked many paths in her life as a playwright, director, and a puppeteer. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences and Psychology which she earned from Shawnee State University. Currently, she is an instructor for the SSU Department of English & Humanities as well as the Department of Social Sciences. She also has a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology from the University of North Dakota. 

Tracee’s interest in the paranormal and her life experience has given her keen insight into the shadows that haunt our society, making her a brilliant author of suspense, but she is excited to expand her writing by exploring other genres. Tracee Ford is ready to take your hand and lead you on fantastic and thrilling new adventures.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
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Monday, March 7, 2016

Book Blast: CRUSHED by Deborah Coonts & $50 GC GIVEAWAY!

BY Unknown 3 comments


Crushed
by Deborah Coonts
GENRE: Contemporary  Romance

BLURB

In Napa Valley, he who has the best grapes wins. And in the pursuit of perfection, dreams and hearts can be crushed.

Sophia Stone is a widow on the brink of an empty nest, stuck in an unsatisfying job managing the vineyard for a mediocre Napa vintner. Faced with an uncertain future she wonders how do you choose between making a living and making a life? Between protecting your heart and sharing it? Five years ago, after her husband was killed in an accident, Sophia put her heart and dreams on ice to care for those around her. Now her home, her dreams, and her family’s legacy grapes are threatened by the greed of the new money moving into the Valley. Sophia has a choice—give up and let them take what is hers, or risk everything fighting a battle everyone says she can’t win.

Nico Treviani has one goal in life: make brilliant wine. A woman would be an unwanted distraction. So, while recognized as one of Napa’s premier vintners, Nico finds himself alone… until his brother’s death drops not one, but two women into his life—his thirteen-year-old twin nieces. In an instant, Nico gains a family and loses his best friend and partner in the winemaking business. Struggling to care for his nieces, Nico accepts a job as head winemaker for Avery Specter, one of the new-money crowd. And he learns the hard way that new money doesn’t stick to the old rules.

When Sophia Stone gets caught in the middle of Nico’s struggle to remain true to himself or sacrifice his convictions to make stellar wine, both Sophia and Nico are faced with a choice they never imagined. A choice that might extinguish the hope of a future neither expected.


PURCHASE LINKS (Click on Links):
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EXCERPT

 Chapter One

Sophia Stone knew life held few absolutes:  good wine is art, good Italian cooking is passion, a good child is a gift, and good news never comes in a certified letter.

“You sure this is for me, Tito?” she asked the postman who thrust an envelope toward her.  When she tilted her head she could read the word “Certified,” stamped in red like a guilty verdict across the front.

A heavy-set man, Tito had a ready smile and an easy, engaging manner. Each day while delivering mail, he also traversed the valley searching for tidbits of gossip with the zeal of an Army battalion scouring the countryside for insurgents.  St. Helena was a small community where the denizens believed mining each other’s business was an inalienable right granted on the theory that without the titillation everyone would fall over dead from boredom. “Yeah, looks like it’s from Charlie.  Certified, too.”  Tito didn’t have the decency to hide his interest as he mopped his face with a dirty handkerchief then stuffed it back into his rear pocket.  The wiping didn’t help—a sheen of sweat still covered his ruddy cheeks.  August had been hot with no break in sight.

Sophia eyed him.  She wouldn’t put it past him to have already steamed open the letter, a thought that made her a bit nauseous.  Why had she thought a small town in Napa Valley would be a good place to hide? 

“From Charlie, you say?”  Keeping her hands in her pockets, Sophia tilted her head further and tried to double-check the sender’s address.  Then she looked him in the eye.  “Any idea what it’s about?”

Tito looked like a bully when his bluff was called.  He shrugged—an exaggerated movement that seemed like the shifting of a mountain—but a noncommittal answer, leaving Sophia certain whatever was in that letter would be spread around the valley and germinating in imaginations as rapidly as seeds on a spring wind.

At an impasse, Sophia and Tito stood there, the letter between them, Sophia delaying the inevitable.  Unfortunately, with a dinner to cook and a cake in the oven, Sophia didn’t have time to see if she could outlast him.  So, with a sour downturn to her mouth and a knot in her stomach, Sophia took the letter.

Tito motioned for her to flip the envelope over.  “There on the back, that green card?  You need to sign that.”  Handing her a pen, he waited for her to sign, then tore off the return receipt, pocketing it.

Confirming the return address, Sophia gave him a distracted wave as he climbed back into his truck.  “Thanks, Tito.” A perfunctory nicety.

“Sure thing, Ms. Stone.”  In a shower of gravel, he gunned the mail truck back through the vineyard down the winding driveway leading to the valley floor.  Sophia glanced up as the trees enveloped him and her normal quiet smothered the sound, wiping away all vestiges of his presence.

Except for the letter.

From her landlord.

At least the return address was his—and Sophia was certain he hadn’t moved from the corner lot at the bottom of her hill.  She could probably throw a bottle and hit his roof, with a little help from the wind

Charlie had owned this patch of five acres on the top of Howell Mountain since his parents had died in a small plane heading up from L.A. over thirty years ago.  Sophia had lived here for fifteen of those years and, through feast and famine, the ups and downs of the wine industry, she’d never received a certified letter from Charlie.  In fact, she couldn’t remember having received any letter from Charlie.  Their business dealings were usually hammered out at the kitchen table over a bottle of wine and sealed with a handshake.  Napa Valley was a handshake kind of place.   

Sophia reached up and rubbed the worn piece of iron Daniel had nailed to one of the porch supports.  Tocco Ferro.  Her family had been steeped in the ways of the Old Country; her husband had become a believer.  Touch iron to ward off bad luck.   Being a bit too pragmatic, Sophia didn’t necessarily believe, but it couldn’t hurt.  God knew she’d had enough rough patches.  With a finger, she traced the initials the four of them had carved in the porch support.  Time had whittled their number to one … almost. 

Tapping the white legal-sized envelope on her open palm, she squinted against the sun as she looked out over her small patch of heaven.  A rolling hillside with a couple of acres under vine, grapes from the Old Country, grafts of her grandfather’s original vines.   A small garden flanked the house.  Her own private retreat sheltered from prying eyes by a ring of trees. 

The farmhouse had been billed as a “fixer-upper.”  She and Daniel had packed up the kids, moving up valley from the Bay Area, and spent the next several years making the remnants of a house into a home.  They’d bribed the kids into helping by letting them paint their own rooms.  Dani had picked pink, hot pink.  As if the view from his window wasn’t enough, Trey had chosen wood paneling and a bucolic scene of vineyards on one wall.  When he’d moved away for college, Sophia hadn’t had the heart to change it.  Perhaps she’d harbored the hope that he would come home someday.  He hadn’t.  Now Dani was poised to fly.

Soon Sophia would be alone, the house emptied of youthful buoyancy.  The prospect filled her with dread.  Stripped of purpose, she half-feared she would grow brittle like the old vines until the weight of loneliness shattered her into bits and pieces of who she used to be.  When Daniel had been killed, she’d had the kids.  Now the false friend of sadness stayed ever near, her house echoing with memories.  But memories didn’t make a life any more than the past made a future.  However, the past was her tether.  Without it, Sophia felt she would float away like a balloon loosed to the sky, growing ever smaller until vanishing from sight. 

While the house cradled her past, the rows of vines just reaching their peak marching down the hill across her two acres held her dreams.  Her grapes, started from grafts from her grandfather’s stock back in Italy, each juice-filled orb bursting with hope, with promise.  Her life’s work hanging on the verge of a promise.

Through the screen door, the aroma of a cake on the verge of disaster wafted into Sophia’s consciousness, and she turned and bolted for the kitchen, the screen clattering shut behind her.  With a dishrag to protect her hand, she opened the oven.  The smell of chocolate carried on billows of steam engulfed her.  She waved it away, squinting through the heat.  She deposited the cake pan on the stainless steel countertop.  Pressing her thumb lightly on the cake, she let out her breath in a long rush.  Just in time.

Her mother loved chocolate cake.  Sophia planned to visit her this afternoon.  Perhaps a peace offering would soften her harsh moods of late.

Sophia spied the letter, pristine white and accusing, laying casually on the sideboard where she had tossed it in her haste.  Without further thought, she stuffed it in the old cookie jar on the countertop and crammed on the lid.  That cookie jar held a lifetime of happiness and heartache—her marriage license, the kids’ birth certificates, Daniel’s death certificate and obituary—it could handle the letter as well.  Whatever problem lurked inside that envelope, it could wait.

Leaving the cake to cool, Sophia strode through the door to the porch, pushing through the screen and down the steps.  The grapes, fragrant in the midday sun, neared perfection—harvest a few days away, at best.  Sophia had plans for those grapes, unique varietals that would make unusual yet palatable wine … if she could just figure out the last piece.  She was close, though, closer than ever before.  Grapes—creating them, growing them, cajoling them to trust her—they were her true passion.  Unfortunately dreams didn’t pay the bills, as her mother never missed a chance to bludgeon her with that little bit or ironic reality.  So Sophia had to sell her skills to pay the bills and now found her days consumed with tending to grapes owned by Pinkman Vineyards, one of the vast commercial operations in the valley, that turned her carefully nurtured grapes into mediocre table wine.

She walked the rows testing the scent once more—the perfume of near perfection as her grandfather called the sweetness of grapes.  Memories filtered through the shadows of time like wraiths, translucent, elusive … fleeting.  When she quieted, stilled her mind and opened her heart, Sophia could hear his voice, rich and deep, his laugh, and smell the scent of earth and sun that clung to him, the wine on his breath.  But, she couldn’t see him anymore.  Like sun on paper, time had weathered and faded her mental pictures until only shadows remained, as if the present was slowly erasing the past. 

Worry dogged her, the letter and its unknown message on her mind as she tended to each vine, brushing back the canopy, weighing the clusters.  This far along in the season not much remained to do; nature would run her course.  This year Sophia had planted wildflowers and grasses under the vines to entice the bugs and keep them off the fruit.  The plan had worked well, as had her choice to prune more aggressively than normal this past winter. Under her care, her grandfather’s grapes flourished, and just now they were beginning to trust her, to give her their best.

This year’s wine had the potential to be the stuff of dreams.

At the far end of her property movement across the fence caught Sophia’s attention. Shading her eyes with one hand, she still had to squint against the assault of the sun.  Her next-door neighbors had sold their property recently to Specter Wines, a new player with new money.  Scuttlebutt had it the owner had made a mint somewhere back east.  Sophia shook her head as she watched heavy equipment struggle to tame the hillside, prepare it for planting.  These days it seemed just about every rich guy wanted a piece of Napa to cultivate his own grapes, make a signature vintage that would rock the world.

As if it was that easy.

PURCHASE LINKS:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AUTHOR BIO

My mother tells me I was born in Texas a very long time ago, but I’m not so sure—my mother can’t be trusted.  She’ll also tell you I was a born storyteller.  That I believe—I have the detention notices and bad-conduct reports to prove it.  However, the path from minor hyperbolist, or as I prefer to think of my former self, Grand Master of the Art of Self-Prevarication, to the author of the New York Times Notable Crime Novel and double Rita ™ finalist, Wanna Get Lucky?, the book that launched the bestselling series, was a bit tortured.

Someone once told me I lived a peripatetic life—yes, I had to look it up.  And he was right.  I’ve been everything from a mom, business owner, accountant, wife, pilot, flight instructor, lawyer …worse, a tax lawyer… to a writer. The three personas I’ve kept suit me the best: mom, flight instructor, and writer. And the other personas I’ve tried on then shrugged out of and discarded like an itchy coat were great grist for the story mill.

Chasing stories keeps me busy and out of jail…for the most part. Researching in Vegas can be a bit… sketchy. 

Prodded by the next adventure and the police, I keep moving. Right now I have a house in Texas, but that will change soon. I lived in Vegas for 15 years—the longest I’d stayed anywhere. And I get back there often. But other places, too, are calling.

Someone asked me the other day where I lived. The question stopped me cold.  Finally I said, “On Southwest Airlines, third row, window seat, either side.” Always in search of a story.  And the adventure would be perfect if they could just stock a split of nice Champagne.
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GIVEAWAY!!

Deborah will be awarding a $50 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here
Enter to win a $50 Amazon/BN GC - a Rafflecopter giveaway

Friday, March 4, 2016

27 Books That Will Get You All Hot And Bothered by Arianna Rebolini

BY Unknown No comments

Are you looking for a book that will send your mind spinning, read this article.
I need to grab a few of those. The covers already got me hot and bothered:-). I LOVE it!
Go and check out the article by clicking HERE. Let me know if you found the article useful.

Writing the Fatal Hearts Series: Behind the Scenes 4

BY Unknown No comments

When I write a book, I can never sit at a desk. I'm a couch kind of girl. I'm much more creative that way.  Introducing my workspace. #writingfatalhearts

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Writing the Fatal Hearts Series: Behind the Scenes 3

BY Unknown No comments