Wednesday, 10 December 2014

Release Blitz: Wicked by Jennifer L Armentrout @jlarmentrout

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We are over the moon excited to bring you the Release Day Launch for Jennifer L. Armentrout's WICKED! WICKED is a New Adult Paranormal Romance and the first book in Jennifer’s Wicked Trilogy!

  Wicked

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  WICKED Synopsis: Things are about to get Wicked in New Orleans. Twenty-two year old Ivy Morgan isn’t your average college student. She, and others like her, know humans aren’t the only thing trolling the French Quarter for fun… and for food. Her duty to the Order is her life. After all, four years ago, she lost everything at the hands of the creatures she’d sworn to hunt, tearing her world and her heart apart. Ren Owens is the last person Ivy expected to enter her rigidly controlled life. He’s six feet and three inches of temptation and swoon-inducing charm. With forest-green eyes and a smile that’s surely left a stream of broken hearts in its wake, he has an uncanny, almost unnatural ability to make her yearn for everything he has to offer. But letting him in is as dangerous as hunting the cold-blooded killers stalking the streets. Losing the boy she loved once before had nearly destroyed her, but the sparking tension that grows between them becomes impossible for Ivy to deny. Deep down, she wants… she needs more than what her duty demands of her, what her past has shaped for her. But as Ivy grows closer to Ren, she realizes she’s not the only one carrying secrets that could shatter the frail bond between them. There’s something he’s not telling her, and one thing is for certain. She’s no longer sure what is more dangerous to her—the ancient beings threatening to take over the town or the man demanding to lay claim to her heart and her soul.   Wicked Teaser 1

Excerpt:
He left me standing there as he disappeared into the bathroom, and I tried to make sense of what just happened. All I knew was that the punch-in-the-chest sadness that came whenever I thought of Shaun wasn’t there. And I didn’t know what to make of that.
Or anything.
Taking a deep breath, I put my clothes on his dresser and all but dashed into the bed, and good Lord, the mattress was comfy! I scooted to the middle and froze, having no idea what side he slept on or if he had a side. I totally had a side—always the furthest away from closet doors because I was a dork. Straightening the shirt out so my undies weren’t saying hi to the world, I tugged the blanket up to my hips and lay flat on my back.
I so needed an adult to explain to me what the hell I was supposed to do from this point on.
There wasn’t much time to stress over it because Ren returned from the bathroom. His ever-present half grin spread as he saw me. I clutched the blanket, my breath caught in my throat. My heart pounded so fast that I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack, and God, wouldn’t that be embarrassing. I swallowed nervously and willed my heart to slow.
Turning off the lamp, shadows fell around Ren, but when he faced me, I could tell that he’d frozen. I couldn’t make out his expression as he bent, taking a hold of the covers on his side.
“Ivy?”
“Hmm?”
He slowly edged the covers back from his side and climbed in, and although I couldn’t make out his eyes, I knew he was watching me. “I’m happy that you’re here.”
My fingers eased off the blanket.
As he stretched out beside me, my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and I could see that he was smiling. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“Good. That’s all I wanted to hear.”
Wow, the warmth that flooded my chest could’ve turned me into a puddle of goo in that bed. I waited for him to make a move on me, but seconds ticked by. He seriously was behaving himself. I dared a quick peek at him, and found I could not look away.
Ren lifted his arm closest to me, and a heartbeat passed. I hesitated for a moment, and then, my heart pounding even more, I slid over until my leg brushed his. He curved his arm around my waist and drew me up against his side, guiding me down until I was nestled against his warm, bare chest. Another moment passed and then I lowered my cheek, and the simple pleasure of lying like this nearly broke me right open.
A picture of a fresh cupcak placed on a sensual female butt
   
Author Photo

About Jennifer L. Armentrout: # 1 NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY Bestselling author Jennifer lives in Martinsburg, West Virginia. All the rumors you’ve heard about her state aren’t true. When she’s not hard at work writing. she spends her time reading, working out, watching really bad zombie movies, pretending to write, and hanging out with her husband and her Jack Russell Loki. Her dreams of becoming an author started in algebra class, where she spent most of her time writing short stories….which explains her dismal grades in math. Jennifer writes young adult paranormal, science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary romance. She is published with Spencer Hill Press, Entangled Teen and Brazen, Disney/Hyperion and Harlequin Teen. Her book Obsidian has been optioned for a major motion picture and her Covenant Series has been optioned for TV. She also writes adult and New Adult romance under the name J. Lynn. She is published by Entangled Brazen and HarperCollins.

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Thursday, 4 December 2014

Romance Adventures Blog Hop


So most of you who probably think I have been off in the romance author wilderness and for the most part you'd be right. I have been working on a few projects here and there but the biggest project I've been working on is my first full length novel which is due to be published in the new year.

Matronly Duties (Post-apocalyptic Dystopian Romance) (May 2015)

Bethanie Greene has had her life planned out for her since the age of thirteen. After twelve years of training to be the next leader of her nation, all of her hard work and dedication is about to come to fruition. She is about to be installed as Matron of Oceania.

While taking her usual Sunday run, her world is turned upside down when she is attacked and knocked unconscious by Trads, extremists of the rogue political element of Oceania. A handsome stranger comes to her rescue and takes her home to his family for care.

When she awakens, Bethanie meets the young man’s unconventional family, and they show her a life she never knew was possible, opening her eyes to some of the injustices perpetrated upon the citizens of Oceania.

After returning to her life Bethanie sees everything with new eyes and no longer just accepts what she is told. Through a series of events, she learns that nothing in her world is as it seems, including the family that made her aware of it.

Can just one day change everything and test her faith in all that she believes? Can Bethanie eventually make sense of everything around her? Will she find love amidst her turmoil and still manage to fulfill her duty as Matron?



For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card please leave a comment with your email address.

Check out the other amazing authors participating in this hop.



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:
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A TROUBLESOME APPRENTICE

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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.
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