Sunday 30 November 2014

Character Interview: A Right to Love by @Liza0Connor



Today, I’m interviewing Liza O’Connor’s sexy pirate, Jacko B. Goodnow.
Melissa: Jacko, it’s so nice to meet you.

Jacko: Truly? That’s not the typical response I get from ladies.
Melissa: How do they normally react?
Jacko: They usually faint. I cannot enter a house or walk down a street where genuine ladies are taking a stroll without causing one or more tumble upon the sight of me.
Melissa: Well, you are very good looking in a dangerous sort of way.
Jacko: *shrugs* I am what I am. I’ve worked very hard to improve the man I am inside, but there’s nothing I can do to alter the way people perceive me. They look at my dark skin and see a gypsy, and as everyone knows gypsies are thieves, pirates, and murderers.
Melissa: But I sense you are better than that.
Jacko: I’m trying to improve so that I only murder and steal from bad people. And I will never return to being a pirate. I was a young boy when I was conscripted into piracy. I had no choice in the matter.
Melissa: You’ve had a rough life.
Jacko: The first years were good. But when the English townsmen slaughtered my family, life took a decided turn for the worst.
My mother had the gift of foresight. Her tarot cards foretold I would become a good man with many sons, two loves: one small, one great, and become a wealthy man, so she sent me off to London to earn my keep at a pub while she and my people were slaughtered at our camp in Essex.
Melissa: You can’t blame her for wanting a better life for you.
Jacko: Well, I did blame her for many years. The trouble with tarot cards is that they fail to mention all the disasters that occur between your current life and the one promised. For example, upon learning my mother had died and there would be no further money for my apprenticeship, the bar keep sold me to a captain as his cabin boy. So off we go and run into the worst pirate on the seas. Even though the captain surrendered his ship, the pirate killed them all…except for me. I was taken on as his cabin boy and beaten and abused for years. When I became 17, the captain made me his first mate, and once I had the allegiance of the men, I blew his head off and brought the ship back to London. Discovering no one would pay me a living wage, I took to stealing, which I have a natural gift for. During one theft I ran into Xavier Thorn…do you know about him?
Melissa: I do. He’s the finest sleuth in London England during the Victorian Age.
Jacko: He offered me a job working for him, where I would steal and murder for the good of the country rather than for the crime lords.
Melissa: I am aware of that. For you are in both book 1 & 2 of the Adventures of Xavier & Vic.
Jacko: I’m in more of them than that. You should get onto Liza O’Connor and make her publish faster.  But that’s beside the point. In book one, if you recall, I fell in love with Lady Anne. Only what you don’t know is that it went badly, so I returned to London a wealthy, but heartbroken man.  In book two, I steal an old woman from Bedlam and take her back to her daughter’s estate. Do you recall the event?
Melissa: I do.
Jacko: Well I finally thought things were turning around for me. Alice and I are so in tune that we can almost read each other’s thought. My love for her is immensely more than I had with Lady Anne, which it makes me question if I loved Lady Anne at all.
Melissa: I’m glad things have finally turned around for you.
Jacko: Hold off on the celebrations, because after granting me the taste of true love, fate is now determined to keep us apart.
Melissa: What are you going to do?
Jacko: Fight to my last breath. Now that I have felt the love of an angel, I cannot live without her. I will reclaim my love or die trying.
Melissa: I wish you good luck. I think you and Alice are well suited for one another.  And for my followers, Liza advises Jacko’s love story be read after book 2 or 3 of the Adventures of Xavier & Vic, since his book gives the conclusion both to their courtship and to what happens to Alice’s evil step-father.




Jacko, a gypsy with a great love for stealing, rescues a suffragette from Bedlam. Upon returning the elderly woman to safety, he meets her blue-stocking daughter. Alice has decided she prefers managing her estate farms over London society. She is resigned to never marry until the handsome and surprisingly wealthy man with a dark past and several identities steals her heart.


Alice feared she would never be able to compete with Jacko’s memory of Lady Anne.  She bit her lower lip. “Was she really that lovable?”
Jacko met her worried eyes. “At the time, I thought a woman could not be more so. Xavier told me I was wrong. He said I’d be better off following the tarot cards than my heart. And he has no respect for gypsy beliefs.” Jacko grinned. “But the cards said the love of my life had yet to come.”
Alice was glad the cards were against Anne, but she worried she might fare the same fate. “When did they say she would come?”
Jacko’s eyes sparkled. “After I came into a great fortune, which I figured would happen soon after hell froze over.”
More than willing to give him a fortune, if that was all that prevented her from being his true love, Alice leaned forward. “How much do you require?”
“I have it already. I won’t go into the details, but I was well paid for stealing a great deal of evidence from a mass murderer who kept himself untouchable through blackmail.” He met her eyes. “It is not my lack of money that should concern you.”
A knife drove through her heart. “You still love Lady Anne…”
“No. Since I’ve met you, I realized Anne was right. Our feelings for one another were love, but only a little one, not the love of a lifetime.”
She breathed out in relief. “Then what do you fear?”
“Your contempt.”
His words made no sense to her. “That is not possible. Why would you fear such an inconceivable thing?”
“Your heart is full of sweet honey. How can you love a murderer?”


A Right to Love
Free with Amazon Kindle Unlimited

A Right to Love is a spin off
of the Adventures of Xavier & Vic’s
Humorous, Late Victorian, Romantic Sleuth series

Book 1
The Troublesome Apprentice

Book 2
The Missing Partner

Book 3
The Mesmerist
All Xavier books Free with Amazon Unlimited


Liza O’Connor was raised badly by feral cats, left the South/Midwest and wandered off to find nicer people on the east coast. There she worked for the meanest man on Wall Street, while her psychotic husband tried to kill her three times. (So much for finding nicer people.) Then one day she declared enough, got a better job, divorced her husband, and fell in love with her new life where people behaved normally. But all those bad behaviors has given her lots of fodder for her humorous romances. Please buy these books, because otherwise, she’ll become grumpy and write troubled novels instead. They will likely traumatize you.
You have been warned.
Mostly humorous books by Liza:
Saving Casey – Old woman reincarnates into troubled teen’s body. (Half funny/half traumatizing)
Ghost LoverTwo British brothers fall in love with the same young woman. Ancestral ghost is called in to fix the situation. And there’s a ghost cat that roams about the book as well. (Humorous Contemporary Romance)
A Long Road to Love Series: (Humorous Contemporary odd Romance)
Worst Week Ever — Laugh out loud week of disasters of Epic proportions.
Oh Stupid Heart — The heart wants what it wants, even if it’s impossible.
Coming to Reason — There is a breaking point when even a saint comes to reason.
Climbing out of Hell — The reconstruction of a terrible man into a great one.
The Troublesome Apprentice — The greatest sleuth in Victorian England hires a young man who turns out to be a young woman.
The Missing Partner — Opps! The greatest sleuth in Victorian England goes missing, leaving Vic to rescue him, a suffragette, and about 100 servants. Not to mention an eviscerating cat. Yes, let’s not mention the cat.
The Mesmerist The Mesmerist can control people from afar and make them murder for her. Worse yet, Xavier Thorn has fallen under her spell.


FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT
Investigate these sites:
WIN A FREE COPY OF
A TROUBLESOME APPRENTICE

Just leave me your email address and it’s yours

Saturday 29 November 2014

Review: Hard to Come By by @laurakayeauthor


HardToComeBy cvrHard to Come By (Hard Ink #3, 11/25/14)

Caught between desire and loyalty…
Derek DiMarzio would do anything for the members of his disgraced Special Forces team—sacrifice his body, help a former teammate with a covert operation to restore their honor, and even go behind enemy lines. He just never expected to want the beautiful woman he found there.
When a sexy stranger asks questions about her brother, Emilie Garza is torn between loyalty to the brother she once idolized and fear of the war-changed man he's become. Derek’s easy smile and quiet strength tempt Emilie to open up, igniting the desire between them and leading Derek to crave a woman he shouldn’t trust.
As the team’s investigation reveals how powerful their enemies are, Derek and Emilie must prove where their loyalties lie before hearts are broken and lives are lost. Because love is too hard to come by to let slip away…

Buy at Amazon | Amazon.ca | Amazon UK | B&N | iTunes

Hard to Come By on Goodreads

And don’t miss the other Hard Ink books, now available:


Review:

LOVED IT. The hard ink series just gets better with every book. Marz's book was the one i've been hanging out for from the very beginning and i was not disappointed. Emilie is the perfect woman for Derek and the chemistry between the two was spot on. Oh and the end perfect exactly what I'd been hoping since the first book. Cannot wait for the next book.

Overall I give this 5 out of 5

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Free Book: Truth in Lace by Tempeste O'Riley

Truth in Lace by Tempeste O’Riley Desires Entwined, #3.5 Gay, Gender fluid, Contemporary, Coming of Age Publisher: Dreamspinner Press Release Date: November 5, 2014 (ebook) Length: Short / 24 pages   Order: Dreamspinner Press All Romance Add to: Goodreads   Description:
When Alexander James Noble looks in the mirror, he sees a freak looking back at him. Despite his high grades and plans for culinary arts school after graduation, his parents would hate him if they really knew him.
Forced on a shopping trip with his twin sister, Lyric, and her friends, Alex eyes the girls jealously, longing to be able to dress like them—to be them. The constant struggle of being “gender fluid,” wrestling with an identity that seems to change daily, begins to wear on Alex. But all those questions and fears seem more manageable when his sister gives him his first skirt and lace panties.
Other Stories by Tempeste:  
Designs of Desire (book 1) Simple Desires (Part of the Grand Adventures Anthology)
Praise:   “I found it a beautiful tale of unhappiness changed to romance and then love with a happy ending.”
—Rainbow Book Reviews, on “Designs of Desire”
“Tempeste O’Riley clearly has designs on our attention with Designs of Desire, a story as heart breaking as it is heart warming."
—Sensual Reads, on “Designs of Desire”
“The writer did an excellent job with the characters, they are likable and perfect. Not perfect in the way that they have no flaws, but in a way that they grab you and complement each other.”
—Love Bytes Reviews, on “Temptations of Desire”
  About the Author:
Tempeste O’Riley is an out and proud pansexual gender fluid whose best friend growing up had the courage to do what she couldn’t–defy the hate and come out. He has been her hero ever since.
Tempe is a hopeless romantic that loves strong relationships and happily-ever-afters. Though new to writing M/M, she has done many things in her life, though writing has always drawn her back–no matter what else life has thrown her way. She counts her friends, family, and Muse as her greatest blessings in life. She lives in Wisconsin with her children, reading, writing, and enjoying life.
Tempe is also a proud PAN member of Romance Writers of America®, Rainbow Romance Writers, and WisRWA. Learn more about Tempeste and her writing at http://tempesteoriley.com.
Website Goodreads Twitter Facebook Google + DSP Blog