April 2016 Bewitching Book Tours Magazine

Bewitching Book Tours Magazine Issue 44 April 2016

Bewitching Book Tours Magazine is a publication of Bewitching Book Tours and Bewitching Books.

Editor: Roxanne Rhoads Design Editor and Layout: Roxanne Rhoads Cover Artist: Michelle Berryman Contributors include Bewitching Book Tours Authors and Tour Hosts www.bewitchingbooktours.blogspot.com Ad space rates are: $40 full page ad $20 half page ad $10 quarter page ad You can subscribe to this magazine at http://issuu.com/bewitchingbooktours Š Copyright 2016 Stock images from www.123rf.com and www.pixabay.com

Have You Read Last Month’s Issue?

Table of Contents April 2016 Page 5 Witch of the Cards by Catherine Stine Page 13 Living Large Stories from the Wilds of Louisiana by Susannah Sandlin Page 18 Flash Fiction: The Spelling Contest By Bonnie Gill Page 23 Introducing Marley Bennetts the Vampire from the Improbables Page 27 Beneath the Surface by M.A. Church Page 30 Captive Creature by Angelique Voisen Page 32 Full Moon Dating: New Moon by Julia Talbot Page 36 Dragons Among Them by Kyra Jacobs Page 39 Karissa Laurel’s Top Ten Kick Ass Women in TV and the Movies Page 49 Quick Tips for Authors- Guide to Using a Pen Name By Roxanne Rhoads Page 53 Interview with Jianne Carlo Author of Soul Deep Page 58 From Engineer to Fiction Author Wesley Banks Page 63 Sam Poling Discusses Dark Fantasy Page 68 Witch’s Cursed Cabin by Marsha A. Moore Page 71 Tempting The Light by Bonnie Gill Page 81 Whereafter by Terri Bruce Page 84 Dishing with Chef Yon Yurdlemon By D.S. Auffenorde

The Allure of Creepy, Ramshackle Beach Towns as Settings for Dark Fantasy

What is it exactly that makes edgy beach towns the perfect setting for sinister fantasy and historical suspense? I’ve always been attracted to the dark side, and particularly to strange beach towns. So far, I’ve set two novels in them.

When I first moved to New York City after college and a stint out west, you couldn’t tear me away from the dilapidated boardwalks of Coney Island. This was back before the arcade was renovated, back when the sideshow by the sea with its sword swallower and human pincushion were on full display. It was when a hungry, dirty capybara was caged in a box that read: Only $5 To See the Biggest Rat in the World! This poor critter was a plot point in Dorianna, my paranormal twist on Dorian Grey. And no surprise, I set Dorianna in Coney Island, and installed a sexy villain in Wilson Warren. He was an agent of the devil disguised as a videographer who prowled the beaches, making girls into viral Internet sensations for a very high price.

Fast-forward to my new novel Witch of the Cards, set in 1932, about Fiera, a sea witch who has a special talent with Tarot (and not just reading the cards). Of course, I set it in a shady shore town, in this case, Asbury Park, NJ. You see, I’ve been coming to this gentrifying coastal town for years and know it well—its sunny moods but also its spooky, moody shades.

Around the turn of the century, and up until around 1945, Asbury Park used to be the stomping grounds of the glitterati. There were grand concerts in the art deco Convention Center, and people dressed to the nines would stroll on the boardwalk at night. Then came the race riots of the 1960s and the economic crash, and the place fell into major disrepair. Its only remaining claim to fame was The Stone Pony, where Bruce Springsteen rocked into the limelight.

About fifteen years ago, when I first ventured into the Asbury convention center, there was a huge hole in its roof that seagulls flew in and out of. And there was only one lonely saltwater taffy store on the boardwalk run by an ancient lady who seemed to have stepped out of a Stephen King novel. In Witch of the Cards the taffy sold in the shop has very odd effects, and I installed an illegal speakeasy in the taffy store basement. I turned the (actual) Paranormal Museum on Cookwell Avenue into a place to hold séances that often went horribly wrong.

In Witch of the Cards, even the ocean hides terrible secrets.

There’s something about the scent of saltwater and hotdogs, the splintered, salt-dried boardwalk and the scream of people hurtling down on the arcade rides that gets my blood charging and my imagination firing. What about you?

Here’s a snippet of a scene when Fiera and her date Peter venture down to the basement speakeasy in the taffy store: “Perhaps I was far too gone, but I didn’t care. Peter and I danced and danced. The room filled with the overflow from the convention hall dance—young lovers, bootlegger types with wide ties and cigars, older women with twinkling earrings and heavy bosoms, even a prostitute or two. I thought so anyway, because they wore way too much rouge and came alone to sit brazenly up at the bar with the gin rummies.

This time I couldn’t say whether or not I stepped on Mr. Dune’s polished wingtips. This time, he probably couldn’t be sure if he knocked his bony legs into mine. We had many more nips of absinthe, and I wolfed down another green-swirl taffy and before I knew it, I was leaning provocatively against Peter and laughing like a wild banshee.

I remember gaping up at him to see his black hair all disheveled and him mumbling indistinctly. And I, thinking that he was the most gorgeous human being I’d ever seen. I remember Dulcie grabbing one of my arms, and Peter grasping the other. I remember all of us howling at the crescent moon over the ocean, and the shocked sideways glance of the hotel proprietor as we all stumbled in.

I recall pulling out the Tarot he’d given me, and laying them out on the bedroom rug. I recall babbling at him—about a witch and a swindler and a boat—not necessarily in that order. I can still picture his expression of shocked surprise but not at what.

And I remember Peter’s lips branding my forehead—how could I ever forget that—while shocks of his lush black hair dangled deliciously on my burning cheeks. The last thing I recall before things went dark was kicking off my shoes.”

Witch of the Cards Catherine Stine Genre: paranormal historical suspense Publisher: Konjur Road Press Date of Publication: March 16, 2016 ISBN 13: 978-0-9848282-6-5 ISBN-10: 0-9848282-6-5 ISBN 13: 978-0-9848282-7-2 ISBN 10: 0-9848282-7-3 Number of pages: 265 Word Count: 76K Cover Artist: Mae I Designs

Book Description: Fiera was born a sea witch with no inkling of her power. And now it might be too late.

Witch of the Cards is historical, supernatural romantic suspense set in 1932 on the Jersey shore.

Twenty-two year-old Fiera has recently left the Brooklyn orphanage where she was raised, and works in Manhattan as a nanny. She gets a lucky break when her boss pays for her short vacation in Asbury Park. One evening, Fiera and her new friend Dulcie wander down the boardwalk and into Peter Dune’s Tarot & Séance, where they attend a card reading.

Fiera has always had an unsettling ability to know things before they happen and sense people’s hidden agendas. She longs to either find out the origin of her powers or else banish them because as is, they make her feel crazy. When, during the reading, her energies somehow bond with Peter Dune’s and form an undeniable ethereal force, a chain of revelations and dangerous events begin to unspool. For one, Fiera finds out she is a witch from a powerful sea clan, but that someone is out to stop her blossoming power forever. And though she is falling in love with Peter, he also has a secret side. He’s no card reader, but a private detective working to expose mediums. Despite this terrible betrayal, Fiera must make the choice to save Peter from a tragic Morro Cruise boat fire, or let him perish with his fellow investigators. Told in alternating viewpoints, we hear Fiera and Peter each struggle against their deep attraction. Secrets, lies, even murder, lace this dark fantasy.

Amazon

Amazon UK

iBooks

Kobo

Amazon CA BN

Scribd

Amazon AU Inktera

Excerpt: The absinthe put me in a dreamy state. Added to the mix was the sensual comfort of sitting next to Peter, who served as a buffer between Alyse and me.

Somewhere in the room, a chorus of faint voices floated around, high and sweet. Or was the sound merely in my head? How could it be? Peter asked me a question, but it took three repetitions for me to understand him over the low-slung jazz notes infused with the chorus of invisible soprano cherubs singing at me.

“Have you always had a talent for the unseen?” I heard him ask.

“Whatever do you mean? It was you who saw things that weren’t there.” I had to right myself because I found myself swooning so much I nearly fell into Peter’s lap.

“But it was you who eked it out of me.”

“Little old me?” I giggled.

“Yes, you,” Alyse agreed. “I was there, too. You have some strange talent. Can you describe how it works?

You must be aware of it.”

Everything was turning light and frothy like a magical cake icing. The barkeep was chatting up the fellows at his counter, the card players exhaled in cheery gusts of laughter, and the waitresses flounced around like so many sunny meadow flowers. I didn’t see the harm. “I do sense things. Always have.”

“What kind of things?” Peter and Alyse asked in tandem. Their unexpected accord matched the soprano voices singing harmoniously in and around my head.

I giggled again. “Do you hear them?”

“Hear what?” Peter looked around, spooked.

“Children, little voices.”

Alyse’s brows creased. “What are they saying?”

“They’re singing.” But the entire mood of the room had changed in an instant. Their radiant energy soured.

The children of the ether weren’t singing any more. They were starting to weep, over something very sad.

Over me.

How did I know this? No idea. A hard frost shot through my bones. I took a big gulp of the absinthe. Perhaps it would block out the voices, the wailing of innocents.

“What is it?” Peter took my hand. His concerned touch cut through the horrible, chilling ache and melted me.

“What’s the matter, Fiera?” His face paled, and right then, I knew he heard them too. “They’re crying, aren’t they?” he whispered in my ear, tickling my soft lobe. “Crying over you.”

“Yes.” I leaned on him, letting the voices cry for me.

We hugged and I swear I felt his sudden, hot tears melt through the shoulder fabric of my dress. It was infinitely sad, infinitely tender.

The invisible cherubs whirring inside my head took translucent form and slipped out of me. They soared around the room like hardscrabble angels, flitting past Dulcie as she danced; sliding, their soft baby feet gliding over the long bar counter, and right through the man with the hookah. He glanced up for a moment as if he, too, felt the supernatural breeze. Then he bowed his head back down and took a pensive draw on his smoking device. Eyes closed, I saw green paisleys and floating leaves, the rushing of a cold stream bubbling under me, which filled me with terror.

I came to with a gasp.

“What is it?” Alyse asked. How could I tell her of this suffering, shot through with spectacular floating objects, and my strange, sudden affinity with Mr. Dune?

“I see children weeping,” I admitted. “They’ve been hurt.”

“How?” Her voice grew anxious.

I silently asked them. “They’re babies. They can’t say.”

When I looked over at Peter, it was obvious he was in the same deep trance he’d been in when we first met.

His eyes were glazed as if whatever he was experiencing was far from this basement speakeasy. “What is it? What do you see?” I whispered.

“They’re fading. They’re dying. They’re being—” “Snap out of it, Mr. Dune.” Alyse gave him a stern shaking. “You’ve had too much absinthe.”

“It’s not that!” I insisted.

“Then tell me what it is, Fiera,” she said.

“It’s a vision. Of something real from long ago.”

“How long ago?”

“As long ago as there is a long ago.” I sounded ridiculous. Alyse Bone was right. The absinthe was crazy making. Or was it the taffy? I leaned into Peter’s limp shoulder, reached over and shook him, too, but with more patience than Alyse had.

His eyes fluttered open, and he gazed at me with that same calm as when he awoke after the séance. As before, his expression was clear of emotion, blissfully unaware of what he’d whispered to me minutes ago.

“Well, there you are,” he slurred. “You look positively ravishing. Dance?”

“Thanks, don’t mind if I do.” I bumbled to my feet.

“You two really drank the coffin varnish.” Alyse gave an unbecoming snort as she rose and drifted away.

Perhaps I was too far-gone, but I didn’t care. Peter and I danced and danced. The speakeasy filled with the overflow from the convention hall dance—young lovers, bootleggers with wide ties and cigars, older women with twinkling earrings and heavy bosoms, even a prostitute or two. They wore too much rouge and sat brazenly up at the bar with the gin rummies.

This time, I couldn’t say whether I stepped on Mr. Dune’s polished wingtips. He probably couldn’t be sure if he knocked his bony legs into mine. We had more nips of absinthe, and I wolfed down another green-swirl taffy.

Before I knew it, I was leaning provocatively against Peter and laughing like a wild banshee.

I remember gaping up at him to see his black hair all disheveled and him indistinctly mumbling. And thinking that he was the most gorgeous human being I’d ever seen. I remember Peter and I howling at the crescent moon over the ocean, and the shocked sideways glance of the hotel proprietor as we stumbled in.

I recall pulling out the Tarot, and laying them out on my rug. I recall babbling at him—about a witch and a swindler and a boat. I can still picture his expression of shocked surprise.

And I remember Peter’s lips branding my forehead—how could I ever forget that—while shocks of his lush black hair dangled deliciously on my burning cheeks. The last thing I recall before things went dark was kicking off my shoes.

About the Author: Catherine Stine’s novels span the range from futuristic to supernatural to contemporary. Her YA sci-fi thrillers Fireseed One and Ruby’s Fire are Amazon bestsellers and indie award winners.

Her YA, Dorianna won Best Horror Book in the Kindle Hub Awards.

Heart in a Box, her contemporary YA was an Amazon Hot New Release in Teen and Alternative Family for over eight weeks. She also writes romance as Kitsy Clare. Her Art of Love series includes Model Position and Private Internship. Book three, Girl and the Gamer, launches this summer. She suspects her love of dark fantasy came from her father reading Edgar Allen Poe to her as a child, and her love of contemporary fiction comes from being a jubilant realist.

To unwind she loves to watch “bad” reality TV and travel to offbeat places.

Catherine’s website: http://catherinestine.com/wp/ Newsletter: http://goo.gl/V7QltB Blog: http://catherinestine.blogspot.com/ Catherine on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorcatherinestine

LIVING LARGE: STORIES FROM THE WILDS OF LOUISIANA Susannah Sandlin You gotta admit it—Louisiana makes a great fictional setting. Even if you take away New Orleans and its storied history, supernatural influences, and rich culture, the rest of the state—at least the Southern half of the state can hold its own. It’s why I keep returning to Louisiana whether I’m writing about paranormal critters or sexy human game wardens, as in my new release WILD MAN’S CURSE. (Even my Penton vampires paid a visit to my favorite state.)

Admittedly, I’m biased, having lived in New Orleans for many years, but I also have lived in various spots in Alabama, Illinois, California, and Texas. I’m plotting a possible move to Florida. But still, it’s Louisiana I turn to when I start thinking up story ideas.

Every state has its own version of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, so why did I want to set mine in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana? Here are my five major reasons: 1) I’m a fan. Louisiana’s Wildlife and Fisheries department has a number of divisions. Some of the agents are biologists and ecologists, working to save the state’s fragile and crumbling wetlands and its rich aquaculture. But I have been fascinated with the enforcement division—the law enforcement officers of the department—ever since they were virtually first on the scene in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, bringing in boats from all over the state, plucking people out of the floodwaters while the politicians were still arguing. Idiots shot at them, but still they kept at it in hundred-degree temperatures in filthy water. I became a fan.

2) They’re badass. How can someone irreverently called a “possum cop” be badass? Believe me, these are great romantic hero material. The enforcement division’s training is said to be second only to U.S. Special Forces. Think about it: they have to work carrying heavy equipment and body armor in hot bayous full of snakes and gators and where almost every human they encounter has a gun of some kind. And maybe has been drinking. A bad combination.

3) Terrebonne Parish has the harshest of the harsh in terms of terrain. Located dead center at the bottom of the state and jutting into the Gulf of Mexico, Terrebonne is Louisiana’s second-largest parish (what we call counties) and is more than half water. The half that isn’t water is often fragile marsh and wetlands and a thousand tiny islands reachable only by water. In a parish that is as broad as it is long, only three narrow north-south roads stretch through the watery lands south of Houma, and only one makes it past the halfway point. While a drug deal falls under the jurisdiction of the parish sheriff, the officers most likely to stumble across a drug deal gone bad, while roaming the parish waterways, are the wildlife agents. And yes, they can arrest you just as well as a sheriff’s

4) Terrebonne has a diverse, rich culture. Celestine Savoie, the heroine of WILD MAN’S CURSE is part Cajun (descended from the French Acadians driven out of Canada by the English in the 1700s), part Creole (descended from the French-speaking free people of color who settled in the region about the same time); and part of the Chitimacha band of Native Americans, who are indigenous to this land. Her great-aunt is a voodoo practitioner, and Celestine has a few moves of her own. Here and in the Atchafalaya basin north of the parish, one will still occasionally find old-timers who speak only a local version of French. People live close to the land here, and you won’t find a more big-hearted and beautifully eccentric population anywhere.

5) Danger! It never hurts to set a suspense or thriller novel in a dangerous place, right? It might not be the type of danger one normally thinks of—crime rates or terrorism potential—but this land at the bottom of the country has alligators. A LOT of alligators. Snakes. A LOT of snakes. Nutria—big orange-toothed swamp rats. Did I mention hurricanes and frequent flash floods?

So those are the reasons I picked wildlife agents—and a place full of wildlife—in which to set the Wilds of the Bayou series, of which WILD MAN’S CURSE is the first. I hope you’ll check out my agent, Gentry Broussard, and fall in love too.

Wild Man’s Curse Wilds of the Bayou Series Book One Susannah Sandlin Genre: Romantic Suspense Publisher: Montlake Romance Date of Publication: April 5, 2016 ISBN: 978-1503934740 ASIN: B017IKQWAG Number of pages: 284 Word Count: approx. 86,000

Cover Artist: Michael Rehder Book Description: The bones said death was comin’, and the bones never lied.

While on an early morning patrol in the swamps of Whiskey Bayou, Louisiana wildlife agent Gentry Broussard spots a man leaving the home of voodoo priestess Eva Savoie—a man who bears a startling resemblance to his brother, whom Gentry thought he had killed during a drug raid three years earlier. Shaken, the agent enters Eva’s cabin and makes a bloody discovery: the old woman has been brutally murdered.

With no jurisdiction over the case, he’s forced to leave the investigation to the local sheriff, until Eva’s beautiful heir, Celestine, receives a series of gruesome threats. As Gentry’s involvement deepens and more victims turn up, can he untangle the secrets behind Eva’s murder and protect Celestine from the same fate?

Or will an old family curse finally have its way?

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Book Depository

IndieBound

Excerpt: CHAPTER 1 The bones said death was comin’, and the bones never lied.

Eva Savoie leaned back in the rocking chair and pushed it into motion on the uneven wide-plank floor of the one-room cabin. Her grandpere Julien had built the place more than a century ago, pulling heavy cypress logs from the bayou and sawing them, one by one, into the thick planks she still walked across every day.

She had never known Julien Savoie, but she knew of him. The curse that had stalked her family for three generations had started with her grandfather and what he’d done all those years ago.

What he’d brought with him to Whiskey Bayou with blood on his hands.

What had driven her daddy to shoot her mama, and then himself, before either turned forty-five.

What had led Eva’s brother Antoine to drown in the bayou only a half-mile from this cabin, leaving a wife and infant son behind.

What stalked Eva now.

The bones said death was coming and, once Eva was gone, the curse should go with her. No one else knew the secrets of Julien Savoie and this cabin and that box full of sin he’d dug out of the bayou mud back in Isle de Jean Charles.

Might take a while, but sin catches up with you. Always had. Always would. And the curse had driven Eva to sin. Oh yes, she had sinned.

She’d known her reckoning would catch up with her, although it had taken a good long time. She’d turned seventy-eight yesterday, or was it eighty? She couldn’t remember for sure, and the bones said it didn’t matter now.

On the scarred wooden table before Eva sat three burning candles that filled the room with the soft, soothing glow of melting tallow. She’d made them herself, infusing them with the oil of the fragrant lilies that every spring spread a bright green carpet over the lazy, brown water of the bayou. The tools of her ritual sat on an ancient square of tanned hide passed down through generations of holy ones, of those blessed by the gods with the ability to throw the bones.

A small mound of delicate chicken bones, yellowed and fragile from age, lay inside the circle of light cast by the candles. Daylight would come in an hour or so, but Eva didn’t expect to last that long. Death was even now making his way toward her.

She leaned forward, wincing at the stab of pain in her lower back. Since the first throw of the bones had whispered her fate two days ago, she’d been cleaning. Scrubbed the floor, worn smooth by decades of bare feet.

Washed the linens, folding them in neat piles in a drawer at the bottom of the old pie safe. Discarded most of the food in the little refrigerator that sat in the corner. Dragged the bag of trash down the long, overgrown drive past LeRoy’s old 1970 Chevy pickup that she still drove up to Houma for groceries and such once a month. Left the white bag at the side of the parish road for the weekly trash collection.

She’d spit on LeRoy’s truck as she passed it because she couldn’t spit on the man who bought it. He was long gone.

Now the cleaning had been finished. Whoever discovered her raggedy old body wouldn’t find a mess, not in Eva Savoie’s house.

A few minutes ago, with the old cabin as clean as she was capable of making it, she’d thrown the bones one last time. Part of her hoped they’d read different, hoped she’d be granted a few more days of grace.

But the bones still whispered death. Eva accepted it, and she sat, and she waited. At least the girl, Celestine, would inherit a cleaned-up house. The girl, Antoine’s granddaughter, knew nothing of the secrets, nothing of the curse. Eva had made sure of that….

Eva waited for her heart to fail—that seemed to be her most likely way to go. As she rocked she noted each steady beat, biding her time for the instant when the thump-thump-thump would falter and her breath would catch, then stop. She reckoned it would hurt a little, but what if it did? The curse had doled out worse ends to those who came before her.

She’d doled out worse herself.

The buzz of a boat’s motor sounded from outside the cabin, faint but growing louder. Wardens on patrol already, most likely.

The boat’s engine grew louder, finally coming to an abrupt stop so near, it had to be right outside her door.

Silence filled the room once again, until through her bones she felt the thud of someone jumping onto the porch that wrapped around the cabin. The porch formed the platform on which the house sat, linking it to the spit of land behind it when the water was normal. When storms blew through, it provided an island on which the cabin could sit or, if need be, float.

As heavy footfalls crossed the porch, Eva struggled to her feet. Every pop and crackle of her joints knifed streaks of pain through her limbs as they protested the cleaning they’d done, followed by the sitting.

Prob’ly a game warden, checkin’ on her. Too bad he hadn’t stopped a little later, after she was gone. She didn’t like to think of her body having to bake in the hot cabin for days before anyone found her.

But the curse was what it was, and the bones said what they said.

The knock, when it came, was soft, and Eva reached the door with the help of a sturdy cane she’d carved herself. Opening the door, she squinted into the glare of a flashlight that seemed almost blinding after the soft light of the candles. She peered up at a young man with eyes that gleamed from beneath the hood of a jacket. He was not a game warden, and it was too hot for a jacket.

“Who are you?” Her voice cracked. She knew who he was. He was Death.

“The devil come to pay you a visit, Eva.” The man’s voice was smooth as silk, smooth as a lie, smooth as death itself. “And you know what the devil wants.”

She knew what he wanted, and she knew the only way to end the curse was to deny him.

She’d been granted no easy passing by the Savoie curse after all, but she would die today.

The bones never lied.

About the Author: Susannah Sandlin is the author of the award-winning Penton Vampire Legacy paranormal romance series, including the 2013 Holt Medallion Award-winning Absolution and Omega and Allegiance, which were nominated for the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award in 2014 and 2015, respectively. She also writers The Collectors romantic suspense series, including Lovely, Dark, and Deep, 2015 Holt Medallion winner and 2015 Booksellers Best Award winner. Her new series Wilds of the Bayou starts in 2016 with the April 5 release of Wild Man’s Curse. Writing as Suzanne Johnson, Susannah is the author of the awardwinning Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series. A displaced New Orleanian, she currently lives in Auburn, Alabama. Susannah loves SEC football, fried gator on a stick, all things Cajun, and redneck reality TV. Web: http://www.suzannejohnsonauthor.com Blog: http://www.suzannejohnsonauthor.com/blog Newsletter: http://www.suzannejohnsonauthor.com/newsletter Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorSusannahSandlin Twitter: @SusannahSandlin Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/Susannah_Sandlin Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sj3523/

The Spelling Contest

By Bonnie Gill You are cordially invited to the ninety fifth annual Spelling contest. Please bring your most creative spell and compete against the nation’s most talented witches. The winners will receive medals and the prestige of holding the title. Please sign up early to ensure a spot. Sincerely, EWA. (Elemental Witches of America) I sat on my porch and read the invitation four more times, then shook my head to rattle an idea free from my brain. Halloween was only a week away. I still didn’t have a spell.

“Hey, Vicky. Got any more Mike’s Hard Lemonades?”

I glanced over at my best friend Essie, who sat on the porch next to me. Her long golden hair reflected the sun and her eyes reminded me of the green ferns that were planted along the garage.

“There’s a pack in the fridge. Want to grab one for me too?”

She disappeared into the little brick ranch I call my home.

I needed a spectacular entry for the contest this year. There was no way Misty McGillan was going to steal the gold medal away from me again. Every year she’s managed to sabotage my entry and win. Not this year.

Essie barreled out the front door armed with more drinks and an iPod dock. She placed the six pack next to the four empty bottles and turned on my playlist. “Hungry Like a Wolf” blared out of the speakers. She sat down and started piecing together her rifle with bag of Skittles next to her.

“What the heck are you doing to that gun, and what’s with the candy?” I popped a red one into my mouth. The tart cherry flavor awakened my taste buds.

“Hey, don’t eat those,” she smacked my hand away. “You know those teenagers that keep smashing Mrs. Pinkle’s pumpkins?”

I nodded.

“Well, I’m going to Skittle their asses this year if they go anywhere near her Jack O’lanterns.”

She loaded the rainbow of flavor candies into the hopper, not one dropped.

“You’re going to shoot them?” Did she loose her sanity when she fought in the war overseas?

A bright orange Skittle shot out the end of the gun and hit the tree with a ping. She adjusted a little knob on the side and shot one more. “It won’t kill them, but they’ll have big red welts on their butts.”

A synthesizer blared a few cords from the speakers. “Thriller!” My body responded to the rhythmic pounding of the beat. I stood. My head and shoulder ticked to each pulse.

Essie laughed. “Oh no, not the zombie dance.”

I waved her to join me. She refused; it didn’t matter. The vibrations flowed through my body and the ground fed me with power. My nerve endings tickled, my adrenaline spiked. I loved the feeling of magic.

An earthworm crawled through the grass by me. I projected my energy down to the worm and it stood up on end. His little head bobbed and his middle part thrust back and forth. I realized it mimicked my movements.

“Holy crap, Vicky, you got that worm doing the dance, too.”

Looking down, I noticed a few more, then poured more magic into them. A whole crew surrounded me.

“You have thirty-two so far. What’s the record?” She yelled over the music.

I clapped my hands over my head, two worms slapped their heads together to match. “I don’t have a record. This is a first.”

Prince Fred II, my black cat, jumped from his bed and smacked into a tree. He ran around in a circle, then stood beside to me. He was my familiar. My mind pulled the power through him and it amplified the strength. More worms rose from the dirt to join us. I was up to fifty now.

“Those on the ends are twisting weird.” She pointed with her bottle to the right.

I looked over. “They’re mating. Earthworms are always horny.” I needed control before it turned into a worm orgy. I focused on the procreating ones, they snapped apart and returned to the line.

The song finished and Essie started to clap. This would be my entry, now all I had to do was nail it for the contest.

The Spelling Contest was held Halloween evening in the middle of a forest preserve. The witches were divided according to the elements of their power. I was in the earth category. Air, wind, fire, and spirit witches formed separate groups.

Misty was called before me. She lifted her arms and chanted something in Latin as her eyes rolled back into her head.The dark mud moved in front of her and piled up to form into boxed shapes. She twirled to create turrets and a drawbridge for the mud castle. Two chipmunks scampered up the miniature stairs to the balcony. Everyone laughed and applauded as the rodents peered over the edge then kissed. I clapped and wished I had a skittle gun.

My turn was next. My coven stood behind me for support as the High Priestess hit play on the iPod. I looked around to see Prince Fred, my familiar, was missing. My stomach clenched and felt as if I swallowed a beehive while my gaze combed through the crowd. The beat started, no time to come up with an alternate plan. I had to wing it. My body soaked up the power from the earth as I expelled it out to all the worms. It tingled up and down my arms. Only about three quarters stood at attention in front of me. They wiggled to the beat, the others were coiled around each other.

A small mew came from behind me. Thank heavenly peas, I will get through this. Prince Fred licked his paw as I pulled the magical current through him. The rest of the worms sprang up and danced. The witches joined us in the zombie dance under the moon. Misty stomped away.

I had won the gold.

Hello, all you fine vampire fans ! Jonathan Charles Bruce here to do a guest post and provide you with literal minutes of entertainment!* I’d like to talk about one of the main drives behind creating one of the protagonists in Improbables: Marley Bennetts the vampire.

When I started working on the novel, it was important to me to play with the expectations of the genre. Typically in paranormal fiction (as you no doubt know already), the supernatural whatsits that populate the work tend to be surly loners who must keep their friends and loved ones at arms’ length. If they live long enough, they’re these weird artifacts of a different time, living anachronisms that somehow managed to cross their arms and hold their breath when confronted with the passage of time.

It was that last bit that really made me want to rework the character. I have training as a historian, and one of the most baffling things to me is when a long-lived character remains static. I’m 32 now, and I’m not the same person I was five years ago. How could a character live one or two or three hundred years and refuse to budge in their understanding of the way the world works? That’s not romantic, that’s outright unrealistic.

Said the man talking about vampires.

In the prologue, Marley is presented in the moments leading up to her transformation. She is from a peasant family in the French hinterlands and is saved from death by another vampire. Early life restricted by illness, her newfound vitality gives her the opportunity to experience things she never thought open to her. That joie de vivre infuses her character and is the most reliable aspect of her personality. In order to fit into society through the centuries, she has had to learn a multitude of languages, slip into different roles, and learn the ins and outs of various cultures.

Living forever with what amounts to super powers is not without cost, and Marley has seen much loss throughout her life. However, her extroverted nature sees her pulled toward others. The majority of her relationships with people are relatively surface-level, reserving the most effort and dedication to other improbables. This is very much a survival tactic—she knows that she will outlive

all of her human companions, so she minimizes her investment in them. When she feels like she’s getting too close, she abandons them and, in some cases, her entire identity as well, picking up a new name and life where her whims take her.

Marley, then, rebukes some of the more traditional expectations of the supernatural in these novels. She isn’t caught in a time warp, nor is she perpetually angsty. Moreover, she is well aware of the fact that popular culture has given vampires a public relations makeover, placing her less as “tool of darkness” and more “sexy superhero”. While she can be abrasive and set in her ways, she embraces what makes her human to every extent. *Minutes of entertainment not guaranteed; if minimum entertainment threshold is not reached, please consult your nearest book dealer.

Improbables Jonathan Charles Bruce Genre: Paranormal Romance Publisher: Booktrope Date of Publication: February 22, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-5137-0653-5 ASIN: B01BH86AWU Number of pages: 334 Word Count: 107,360 Cover Artist: Ashley Ruggirello Book Description: Abigail Wren’s new life fresh out of college is dull, even with her (almost) dream job at the local newspaper. The only real excitement she can get is found between the pages of an endless stream of paranormal romance novels she can’t help but love.

Then, on a snowy night in December, Abigail catches a glimpse of what could only be described as a werewolf. Enamored with the possibility, her investigation leads her to discover a paranormal population—improbables—harmoniously living in the midst of humanity. Between making eyes at a perpetually grumpy werewolf and hanging out with a vampire with a lust for life (and liquor), Abigail’s life takes a shaky step out of the ordinary and into the fantastic.

Just outside of the sleepy town of Whitewater, however, a force of rage is building. Born of hate and delusion, a living cataclysm threatens to devour everyone in its path—human or improbable.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Excerpt from Chapter Three: The trip back to the office was short and uneventful. Parking her car was also characteristically nondescript. On her way to the front doors, Abigail realized that the entire car ride had been on autopilot.

Along with that realization came the panic associated with losing a chunk of one’s precious life to monotony. And along with that came a sudden worry that she might have flattened a child without realizing it.

No. Surely that would have been memorable—right?

Right in the middle of a panicked mental recap of the events from picking up her book to arriving in the parking lot, she slammed face-first into a surprisingly warm wall of a person. She rebounded, only now taking in the red-and-black flannel shirt she had plowed into. Her hands shot out in an attempt to keep balance. A moment later, she felt someone’s hands on her forearms.

“Easy there,” came a gruff voice. Pulling herself out of her daze, Abigail looked up at the person she had run into, who was now also, kindly enough, keeping her upright. He was scruffy, a mop of brown hair bleeding into a full (if short) beard worried with the occasional silver strands. His eyes were an intense green, which, coupled with the red in his shirt, gave his appearance an unintentionally festive look. He was pale, but that was nothing out of the ordinary, considering Abigail had forgotten what the sun looked like in the weeks she’d been calling the Pacific Northwest home.

He was cute. In a ruggedly handsome way. Like a grizzled lumberjack.

Perhaps cute was not the word for it.

Abigail giggled, suddenly overtaken with the silliness of what just happened. “Thank you,” she said, certain she was coming across like an idiot. “You can let go now.” She smiled. The man obliged, returning a tight-lipped smile that seemed to err on the side of suffering-the-eccentric.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to…” he began before clearing his throat, “exist where you wanted to exist at the same time.” He looked every bit as awkward as she felt, which made her own discomfort slightly less overbearing.

She swallowed sheepishly. “It happens.” She suddenly felt the need to clarify what she meant, so she gestured back and forth between the two of them. “Existing at the same time and all.” She realized that the gesture didn’t seem to quite work in the situation, so she let her hand fall at her side as she averted her gaze.

“Try as we might!” he said with an exaggerated shrug. They exchanged unconvincing laughs before silence filled the void, mutated into a pause, then sat long enough to be uncomfortable. While the quiet was maliciously evolving, Abigail couldn’t help but trace her eyes up the man’s exposed and muscular forearms.

When she caught what she was doing, she wondered where her unintentional partner’s eyes were glued—no doubt, here was another person in Whitewater who would take any opportunity to drink in the sight of the newest and blackest resident.

Instead, she was a little shocked—and pleased—to see he was staring at the ground. He was legitimately embarrassed for slamming into her. In the city, if someone ran into you it was either a pickpocketing or just a nonstandard and jostly hello. In her hometown, it had been met with an impertinent huff and followed by a subpar apology. Here… well, if this was the first, being bumped into was hardly the worst way to get to know someone.

Hey, mountain man Joe, why don’t we walk into each other in front of a coffee shop some time? she thought. This Whitewater-only pickup line seemed dopey enough to be charming enough to work—and she couldn’t help snickering at the thought.

“What’s so funny?” he asked. She looked up at his eyes which had made a momentary migration to her face.

The smile from her laughter remained unbroken, but grew a touch larger. “Nothing, just, uh…” She gestured to her temple. “I’m hilarious up here, trust me.”

He tilted his head back, enough to give her a full look at what she assumed was post-embarrassment face-saving stoniness. He nodded. “Sorry again.” And with that, he brushed aside her, carrying some intense body heat with him, and walked away. She looked over her shoulder at the man, watching him for a few seconds. Something registered as odd, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Regardless of what it was that presently pricked at her brain, she shook it off. She had spent weeks feeling exasperated when people felt they were privileged enough to stare at her like a lab specimen; she wasn’t too keen on forcing that behavior on someone else.

No matter how green his stupid sexy eyes were.

She turned around to the glass doors and jolted at the sight of Lacy Renault, the woman in charge of business coverage. A tiny woman in her fifties with short-cropped silver hair, she watched Abigail come in with icy blue eyes and a gotcha-smile. She wore an immaculately tailored red business suit, giving her the appearance of a circa 2008 female presidential candidate.

Abigail stepped into the vestibule, grateful for the limited respite it provided from the elements.

“Were you watching that the whole time?” she asked, trying not to look too confused by Lacy’s grin. The expression was becoming a bit too knowing for her tastes.

“You running into Collins?” She asked. She opened her eyes widely, teasingly, and nodded. “Oh, my, yes!”

Abigail shrugged. “Something I should know?”

Lacy gave an embellished frown. “No, no. Just, uh…” She trailed off in the way people do when overstressing a manufactured difficulty with words. “Glad to see you’re taking in the sights.”

Well, this conversation immediately failed the Bechdel Test, Abigail thought icily.

About the Author: Jonathan Bruce began writing what amounted to terrible Star Trek: The Next Generation fan fiction when he was four… provided that you accept that “forcing other people to write what he said” is the same thing as “writing”. Although the original manuscripts are lost (or perhaps destroyed), we can rest assured that his prose has improved significantly since then. After high school, he began writing and directing plays which gradually improved depending on whom you ask. He discovered his love of a good fight scene after writing a Dracula knock-off which took a 19th century classic and made it less about Victorian yearning and 300% more about stabbing things in the jugular.

He has a Master’s Degree in History, thanks largely to his thesis focusing on MUSIC, a Milwaukeebased school desegregation campaign during the 1960’s. He also enjoys discussing/making fun of pop culture of the 20th century and reading books of a non-historical nature. In his off moments, you can catch him writing for fun or making inane movies about nothing in particular. www.jonathancharlesbruce.com https://www.facebook.com/jonathancharlesbruce/ https://twitter.com/JonathanCBruce

Beneath the Surface M.A. Church Genre: MM, Shifter Publisher: All Romance eBooks Date of Publication: April 1, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-943576-67-8 ASIN: Number of pages: 154 Word Count: 37k Cover Artist: Erin Dameron Hill Book Description: A whole different world exists beneath the surface.

The last thing Nisha expects while patrolling his territory is to find his mate, but his instincts tell him the handsome human diving into the surf is the one meant for him. Two bites and Kannon will be joined to him forever. But when Kannon’s father disrupts the mating process, Nisha releases his claim, hoping beyond hope his mate will one day return.

While free diving with his father, Kannon is bitten by a seductive merman. Although he swore to never go near the ocean again, the pull to return to the water and his mystery man remains strong.

Finally, after fifteen years away, an impromptu wedding brings Kannon back to the Seychelles, and his destiny.

Kannon only plans to stay on the island for a week, but this time Nisha won’t let his mate go without a fight. Merfolk and human culture collide as the embers of Nisha and Kannon’s mate bond ignite, and Nisha must complete the mating before it’s too late.

ARe Amazon iTunes Kobo Excerpt: A whole different world existed under the sea—lighting, sounds, even the feeling of otherworldliness. No matter how clear the water, it still played tricks, even on experienced divers.

The colorful tropical fish, artifacts, and the remnants of history buried beneath the waves— along with a mysterious landscape mostly untouched by humans—always gave Kannon a thrill. Parts of the reef weren’t very deep, so he had no trouble freediving.

This year for vacation, Kannon and his dad rented a boat and guide to take them to the reefs around the Seychelles. This was by no means the first time he’d gone snorkeling. Growing up along the California coast guaranteed Kannon was comfortable in the water.

The guide had warned them to stay together, but Kannon had other ideas. Besides, he wasn’t going that far off. After investigating the colorful reef fish and interesting coral formations—and seeing his dad was distracted—Kannon slowly but steadily wandered off on his own. An outcrop of rocks covered in algae caught his eye, and he went to investigate.

Many of the multihued native fish swam past him, curious as to what he was. It was funny how they circled him. Kannon held his hand out. A few braver fish darted in, nibbled at his fingers, and then swam off. God, what a rush it was. Nothing was better than this.

He drew closer to the outcrop, surprised it was much deeper than he’d first thought. Huh, not an outcrop, but the mouth of an underwater cave. Cool. From a distance it appeared to be nothing more than oddly shaped rocks. Peering inside, he was unable to see past the murky blackness within.

Curious, he reached his hand out, stretching toward the mouth of the cave. His scalp prickled.

A tingle washed through him. The water around him caressed his body as he hung weightlessly, staring at the cave entrance as his dick swelled in his trunks. What the…?

It wasn’t as if he made a habit of getting horny while diving, so what the hell? Torn between desire and unease, he hovered in the tropical water. Chills chased up his spine, and goose bumps broke out over his body.

His heart rate sped up—not a good thing underwater—and the feeling of being watched crept across his nerves. Something was in there, and his mind screamed at him to get away even as the urge to reach inside nearly overwhelmed him.

Kannon’s body swayed dangerously closer. His nipples ached as the water flowed past, and he had to force himself not to whimper as need struck him. He jerked back. There’s something waiting for me, just waiting for me to reach in so it can... what? So it can do what?

Jesus, he needed to get a serious grip on his imagination, and crap, he had to surface too. Lack of oxygen made the decision for him. All this panicking on his part had used up his air—stupid of him.

He surfaced and shook the hair out of his eyes. Wow, is that our boat way over there? Oh man, Dad’s going to kill me. Worried about the fit his dad was going to have, he was totally unprepared for the strange guy who popped up next to him, although “guy” might have been overly nice.

Kannon yelped, but the dude across from him just smiled. The androgynous, fey face wasn’t quite human. The long pointed ears were a good indication, as was the glimpse of sharp little teeth.

Oh, and the gills at its neck.

Azure blue hair floated in the water around shapely shoulders and cobalt blue eyes stared back at him. It was a visage that was hauntingly beautiful, otherworldly, and a tad disconcerting. The creature smiled slightly as if he agreed. It—whatever it was—scared the bejesus out of him.

Then it reached out and dragged Kannon under the water. Oh. My. God. Terror struck, and Kannon fought, kicking furiously as he tried to twist away, but it did no good. The creature was too strong, and its hands were everywhere.

Kannon fought to hold his breath. He needed to get to the surface and… he froze—just stopped fighting as something thrashed behind the other guy, churning up the water. No way. He stared in shock at the, the... its upper part looked like a regular human torso, but the bottom—a tail?

That’s a... a... no way!

The unbelievable sight of a tail—a long, shimmery tail with iridescent scales—was attached to the guy in front of him. It glistened in the sunlight that filtered through the water. There was only one human-like sea creature he knew of with a tail—and that was mermaids. Or mermen. Merfolk?

Whatever. Those were make-believe.

And this make-believe creature was trying to kill him.

Then it kissed him full on the lips, and thoughts of his murder flew out of his head along with every other rational thought. Before he could react, it stopped the kiss and twirled him around so they were chest to back. Well now, if he had any doubt it was male, he had his answer now.

There was no mistaking the hard cock poking him. The merman held him securely as they floated in the water. That marvelous fluked tail slowly flipping back and forth caused their lower bodies to rock together. It was kind of nice and… then the merman sank his teeth into the fleshy area between Kannon’s neck and shoulder. Oh fuck! What the what?

About the Author: M.A. Church is a true Southern belle who spent many years in the elementary education sector. Now she spends her days lost in fantasy worlds, arguing with hardheaded aliens on far-off planets, herding her numerous shifters, or trying to tempt her country boys away from their fishing poles. It’s a full time job, but hey, someone’s gotta do it!

When not writing, she’s exploring the latest M/M novel to hit the market, watching her beloved Steelers, or sitting glued to HGTV. That’s if she’s not on the back porch tending to the demanding wildlife around the pond in the backyard. The ducks are very outspoken. She’s married to her high school sweetheart, and they have two children. She was a finalist in the Rainbow awards for 2013.

For more information on other books by M.A., visit her official website: www.machurch00.blogspot.com https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5141393.M_A_Church https://twitter.com/nomoretears00 https://www.facebook.com/ma.church3

Captive Creature Angelique Voisen Genre: MM, Werewolf, BDSM Publisher: All Romance eBooks Date of Publication: April 1, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-943576-74-6 Word Count: 18k Cover Artist: Erin Dameron Hill Book Description: I thought I had nothing left to lose.

Betrayed and abandoned by those I love, and captured by the enemy, I learned death is a privilege, not a right. Nursing my vengeance and honing my hate is all I can do. Then he appears, turning my black and white world upside down.

Scar Greyback is Alpha to the largest werewolf clan in the region. Scar’s dominance frightens me, excites me. One touch and I know I’m his. His to possess and control, maybe even to love, but I can’t yield. I’ve been bred and trained all my life as a soldier to hunt his kind. Accepting his mating call will doom us both, but once I start on this road to hell, I can’t stop.

ARe Amazon iTunes Kobo

Excerpt: Hanging naked with nothing but blood, grime, and sweat clinging to my skin, and chains lashing my limbs to the rusty eyebolt on the ceiling, I recalled my beautiful mother’s words.

God gives only gives us what we can take. My mother whispered those words when she tucked me in bed, along with other poisonous ones. Grow strong, Gabriel. Be my avenging angel.

Think of your father, your uncle, your brother. Every one of the fallen needs our prayers, she said.

Harden your body and heart, because our enemies will show you no mercy.

It’s the first time I felt true despair, but not my last. Two other bolts lie close to mine, empty of captives, but even my human nose caught the tell-tale scent of copper, spilled blood.

To remain sane, I thought of other matters, anything to distract myself from my inevitable death. Death has no favorites, the master of arms back at the citadel always said. Still, the previous two occupants on either side of me must have wished their demise didn’t come too soon. Are they still alive, screams gagged by the endless rock walls and passages of Santa Olivia, the underground home of the city’s most prominent animal groups?

“Fuck this.”

Hearing the sound of my voice startled me. I hardly recognized myself. Had I always sounded so weak? I twisted in my chains, but it was futile. These chains are built to hold supernatural captives, but I’m only human. There’s no longer any fight in me. The fire in me has gone out, since the moment my friends and allies betrayed me to the hands of the enemy.

I whispered their names to the darkness, not as a prayer seeking salvation, but as a curse.

“Rafael. Michael. Pedro. Abraham.”

Every member of the Soldier of God is christened with the name of an angel or saint. Don’t ask me why. What we’re doing is for the good of humanity, our elders often liked to say, but the truth? Few of the soldiers believed in noble deeds. Most hunted the supernatural down not to cleanse the city of abominations, but because killing is all we’re good at. What we’d been bred for.

Die a noble death, a worthy one, some of my brothers and sisters would say, but it was no longer funny once real fear kicked in. The sound of the heavy bolt to the holding cell shifting made me still.

“Calm the fuck down,” I hissed, but my body refused to obey.

My heart quickened and my breaths came short. I’m Gabriel. Twenty-one-year-old Soldier of God and today’s the day I die.

About the Author: Angelique Voisen is a bisexual, twenty-something, type-2 diabetic and multi-pubbed writer who favors LGBT and menage pairings. She likes experimenting with different sub-genres and her stories may include cogs, fangs, space battles, kinky magic systems and happily-ever-afters. When Angel’s not writing, she’s gaming, watching B-rate action movies, or enjoying teatime with friends while enviously eyeing their cake.

For more information on other books by Angelique, visit her website: www.angelvoisen.blogspot.com https://www.facebook.com/angelvoisen

http://twitter.com/frances_ac http://www.pinterest.com/angelvoisen/ http://angelvoisen.blogspot.com/

Full Moon Dating: New Moon Full Moon Dating Stories 1-4 Julia Talbot Genre: MM, Shifters Publisher: All Romance eBooks Date of Publication: April 1, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-943576-69-2 Number of pages: 247 Word Count: 58k Cover Artist: Erin Dameron Hill Book Description: Together in one volume, the first four Full Moon Dating stories. This is just the beginning!

Full Moon Dating: Dating and Mating for Shifters and More!

Matchmakers Stone and Harve vow to find a mate for even the toughest to match shifter or vampire.

New Moon includes four novellas featuring werewolves, vampires, and were-kitties searching for their other halves, no matter how challenging.

Aiden and Ben: After these wolves get together, Aiden doubts he’s found his match. Ben knows better, but can he convince Aiden to stay?

Coy and Denver: City wolf Coy isn’t sure he wants to give up control. Denver is just the vamp to give Coy what he needs, but their match creates a whole new set of problems for the dating agency.

Evgeny and Feng: Tiger Evgeny worries his sheer size and strength turns off most lovers. Snow leopard Feng is an acrobat used to working without a net, but he falls hard for his tiger. When Feng disappears, Evgeny doesn’t know if he can find him soon enough to help.

Gage and Hamish: Gage is an impossible bottom. No one can tame this cat, but bear shifter and effortless Top Hamish is certainly willing to try.

Harve and Stone hope their success rate is 100%, but the path to true love is never easy.

ARe Amazon iTunes Kobo Excerpt: “Full Moon Dating. Have you tried our online site? Yes, I’m afraid you do have to go through the screening process. Really? I’ll be sure to tell 911 when I call them, you sick fuck.” The phone in the outer office slammed down with the musical jingle only an old rotary phone could make.

Very privately, Stone thought that was why Adelia had chosen that phone, and the very film noir detective office vibe she’d used to decorate her domain. It went with the pencil skirt and highwaisted blouse fashion statement she chose every day as well.

She appeared at his door, her victory roll (she had informed him they were called that when he referred to them as “those curly things”) hairdo just slightly mussed, signaling agitation. “Okay, I’m going to start sending the nutbag wannabe paranormals to you, boss. That guy wanted to date a vampire, so he could be a serial killer without actually having to kill someone.”

Stone sat back in his chair and raised a brow. “You’re way meaner than me, Ades. You deal with them so well.”

“There are some crazy bastards out there, boss.” He could almost see her tail, white-tipped and fuzzy, twitching.

“I know. That’s why this business is going to boom.” Stone grinned, tickled as hell that they had an office and a website. Now they just needed to facilitate their first couple, so they could get some testimonials.

Adelia gave him the hairy eyeball and then shook her head. “So, when do you want to go over the sheets?”

“Let’s look at them for an hour or so tonight. I’ve already run the points of comparison database.” They had stuff in their questionnaire that those other match and mingle sites didn’t have.

Lots of stuff.

Between his business and marketing savvy and Harve’s computer and psych training, they had a winner, right?

“You got it, boss. I think I already have a couple of good dates in mind.” She waggled her brows.

“I bet they’re gay,” he murmured. Adelia was obsessed with the idea of two men together.

That was why she worked for him.

“You think?” She flipped him off, playfully.

“Well, put them at the top of the pile.”

“Top of the pile for Mr. City Wolf and Mr. Country Wolf.”

“Oh, man.” He chuckled. “Tell me why they’re a match?”

“A little red wolf photographer from Dallas who’s had ‘bad luck with long-term commitment’ and a huge gray from up north looking for someone to ‘make his mate.’ It’s perfect.”

“Really?” He grabbed the folders she handed him and flipped through them. “Uh, little red is not into spanking.”

She snorted. “He’s stressed out and overworked. He might like it.”

“Adelia.”

“What?”

“We have to match them based on actual interests.” Maybe he’d ask Harve.

“Says who?”

“We’re a dating service!” He was trying hard not to smile. Harve was the psychologist slash computer geek. Adelia was the psychic. He was pretty damned sure of it.

“And we’re run by an incredibly observant business magnate.”

“Indeed.” He shook his head at her. “You’re such a freak.”

“Yeah, but I’m your freak and you adore me.”

“I do.” He gave her a fond grin before she trotted back out front to answer the phone, her heels clicking. Stone stared at the two folders on the top of the pile. The more he thought about the cowboy wolf from Wyoming who liked to top and the fussy little red from Dallas, the more he liked it.

Maybe he’d skip Harve altogether.

Stone picked up the phone and dialed the number in folder one. “Hello, Aiden Underhill? This is the Full Moon Dating site manager. You’re our grand prize winner this month. You’ve won an allexpenses paid trip to Jackson Hole.”

About the Author: Julia Talbot lives in the great Southwest, where there is hot and cold running rodeo, cowboys, and everything from meat and potatoes to the best Tex-Mex. A full time author, Julia has been published

by Samhain Publishing, Dreamspinner Press, All Romance eBooks and Changeling Press. She believes in stories that leave a mark, and that everyone deserves a happy ending, so she writes about love without limits, where boys love boys, girls love girls, and boys and girls get together to get wild, especially when her crazy paranormal characters are involved. Find Julia at @juliatalbot on Twitter.

For more information on other books by Julia, please visit her official website: www.JuliaTalbot.com https://www.facebook.com/juliatalbotauthor

https://twitter.com/juliatalbot http://juliatalbot.blogspot.ca/ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/283274.Julia_Talbot

Hi, everyone. Kyra Jacobs here celebrating the release of my latest novel, DRAGONS AMONG THEM. While romance is nothing new to me, writing in a fantasy world and being able to bend rules to my will certainly was prior to the start of this series. And oh, did I have fun with that!

In DRAGONS (Book 1 in the Kingdoms of Fire and Ice trilogy) the hero Zayne Godfrey is a dragon-shifting prince living in a hidden, medieval-ish realm. The heroine Adelaide (Addie) Miller, however, is a simple, independent gal who grew up in Indiana. When their worlds collide, age-old secrets slowly surface.

“You do understand that if I answer your questions honestly today, you may never look at me the same again, don’t you? It’ll be like I’ve grown horns on my head or something.”

“As a man who routinely dons scales and talons, horns would do little to scare me.”

Upon discovering I had written a book about shifters, for today’s post I was asked this question: If I was a shifter, what animal would I be?

Which, honestly, is a pretty tough question. I mean, Zayne had to be a dragon-shifter—that was the story that called me to write.

But if a wizard showed up on my doorstep tomorrow saying I could shift into anything I wanted to be, what would I choose?

As indecisive as I can be about choosing where to go out for dinner or what to watch on TV, something tells me the wizard might well give up and leave before I could make up my mind!

Lol But for the sake of this blog I’ll choose a Great Horned Owl. This way I could fly, I’d travel in silent stealth mode all the time, my head could swivel most of the way around so I could keep an eye on my kids from just about anywhere, and…here’s the best part…those “horns” on their head? They’re tufts of feathers that to me look like eyebrows.

As a writer who not only writes often about brow activities but also employs the use of them frequently herself, these brows would totally rock.

And come on—who’s gonna mess with a Great Horned Owl? They’re intimidating as all get out!

Okay, so that’s one of many of the creatures I’d pick. How about you? If you could shift into any creature, what would it be? While you think about that, here’s a little teaser from Dragons Among Them, where men truly do shift into dragons to save the women they love.

Happy daydreaming, everyone!

“Are you sure this is really such a good idea—” Addie stopped in midsentence as the prince turned from her, dropped trou, and moved to tuck those into his pack as well. He detached it from Will’s saddle and tossed it toward her. She had but a moment to enjoy the view before the air around them began to swirl. The wind swallowed Zayne in a mini tornado, then faded to reveal him in his giant, golden-scaled form. He stretched his wings, shook out his neck in the same manner Addie had seen Will do countless times now, and then turned his golden, glowing eyes her way.

She stared at him in awe. As a man, he was chiseled like a Greek god. As a dragon, well, he was spectacular. One golden brow rose as he stared back at her.

“Right. We fly.” She swung his pack over her shoulder and stepped forward while trying to tell herself this was all perfectly normal. Her, mounting a mythical creature to go for a spin in this fairy-tale world.

All. Perfectly. Normal.

Zayne’s head snaked downward, his warm breath washing steam over her as it drew close.

“Oh, nuh-uh. Don’t you even think about picking me up by your teeth and dropping me onto your back like some giant mama cat.” She shoved his muzzle away. “Just kneel down or something. I can climb.”

Zayne snorted but complied. Spreading his long, golden talons wide, he lowered himself to the ground, then used his nose to give her a careful nudge onto his back. The golden scales looked smooth as glass but had enough texture to offer her a foothold. She hiked up the skirt of her dress—Lord, she missed her jeans back home—and shimmied forward so she sat ahead of his wings. In place of a mane, Zayne had a row of golden, jagged spikes. With no reins, they would have to do. She took hold of the nearest two and cast his watchful eyes a worried look.

“I’m…I’m not hurting you, am I?” Zayne snorted, louder this time, then rose to his feet. Addie gripped the spikes as tightly as possible, sure she’d slip right off, but found herself surprisingly stable on his broad, sleek back.

She drew in a deep breath and reminded herself that no matter how scary this might get, one way or another Zayne would keep her safe. Hadn’t he proven that enough times by now?

The dragon beneath her stepped toward the center of the clearing, turned his face skyward, and spread his wings.

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing,” she whispered as she clamped her eyes shut and braced herself for whatever would come next. ###

Dragons Among Them Kingdoms of Fire and Ice Book One Kyra Jacobs Genre: PNR/Fantasy Publisher: Samhain Publishing, LLC Date of Publication: April 19th, 2016 ISBN: 9781619234406 Word Count: 66K Book Description: Prince Zayne Godfrey, heir to Edana’s throne, is betrothed to the lone princess of rival kingdom Forath. While his heart is not in the arranged marriage, he will do his royal duty.

When he finds a beautiful stranger cornered by a pack of wolves, he doesn’t hesitate to shift into his golden dragon form to save her. She thanks him by taking one look at him and fainting dead away.

Photographer Adelaide Miller is in England for a career-making shoot when a bizarre jogging mishap lands her in a dangerous, medieval-like world of royals, wizards and dragon-shifting men. Her first instinct is to find her way back, but the fire-breathing prince intent on protecting her threatens to melt her heart.

Zayne’s burning passion for Adelaide not only jeopardizes the fragile peace between two kingdoms, it uncovers a ruthless plot to destroy his family.

Remaining together may change Adelaide’s very definition of home—and expose one searing secret that could forever shift the balance of power in Zayne’s world.

Goodreads

Samhain

Amazon

BN

iTunes

About the Author: Kyra Jacobs is an extroverted introvert who writes of love, humor and mystery in the Midwest and beyond. When this Hoosier native isn’t pounding out scenes for her next book, she’s likely outside, elbow-deep in snapdragons or spending quality time with her sports-loving family. Kyra also loves to read, tries to golf, and is an avid college football fan.

Be sure to stop by her website www.KyraJacobs.wordpress.com to learn more about her novels and ways connect with her on social media.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KyraJacobsBooks Twitter: https://twitter.com/KyraJacobsBooks Website: http://www.KyraJacobs.wordpress.com Blog: http://www.IndianaWonderer.wordpress.com

Kobo

Karissa Laurel’s Top Ten Kick Ass Women in TV and the Movies In Midnight Burning, the main character, Solina Mundy, and her best friend, Skyla Ramirez, make a formidable team of female might. Together they struggle to stay alive while trying defeat an ancient evil that strives to destroy the world. I love stories of strong women, both in fiction and in the real world. Here’s a list of my top ten favorite kickass women who inspire me to achieve my goals and overcome my weaknesses.

10: Regina Mills—Once Upon a Time In the beginning Regina was motivated by revenge, but when she showed her capacity for devotion, love, and mercy, I fell for her. She’s strong and powerful, but still knows failure and heartbreak. It’s those flaws that make her realistic and sympathetic. She’s the epitome of: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

9: Selene—Underworld Selene can tear apart a werewolf by hand and look sexy as hell while she does it. When she finds evidence of a betrayal within her inner circle and family, she breaks the rules and risks the possible retribution of her father figure to find the truth. She trusts her instincts even when everyone doubts her. She always stays true to herself.

8: Scarlett O’Hara—Gone with the Wind Scarlett is selfish, spoiled, sly, and devious, but I wonder if she would have had to resort to such manipulations, if she had been a man. Not many women could have done what she was willing to do to survive during and after the devastation of the Civil War. Her stubborn determination saved lives and made her into a successful business woman despite societal restrictions on women at that time. She’s a hero I love to hate and hate to love.

7: Rey—Star Wars The Force Awakens When The Force Awakens premiered, I wanted to yell from the mountaintops, proclaiming my joy. For once, Hollywood has created a capable, smart, fierce female action star, and they let her be good at solving problems, hold her own among a cast of strong men, and retain her well-defined identity. But she is still clearly a woman (not just a man with boobs) with fears, weaknesses, and personal demons to overcome. The little girl inside me wants to be Rey for Halloween.

6: Carol and Michonne—The Walking Dead

Carol has evolved in ways I never expected from season one, when she was a meek victim of spousal abuse.

Instead of giving up after a series of horrible personal losses, Carol’s purpose clarified and sharpened, but her moral compass is less than steady; she’ll do anything, at any cost, to survive and protect the people she cares about.

Michonne and Carol are opposite sides of the same Walking Dead coin. Michonne shows up as a mysterious figure carrying a katana and two zombies on leashes. In the beginning she’s cold, distant, and hard. In the following seasons, she opens up, learns to trust, makes friends, and protects those she cares about. Where Carol has grown a thicker exterior, Michonne has shed some of her protective layers. Although they tend to be opposites, they are both fierce, lethal, and loyal. I want them both on my zombie apocalypse team.

5: Katie Daniels—Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews Kate doesn’t just defeat terrible monsters and bad guys with her awesome fighting skills, she also makes the pivotal decisions and retains a strong identity separate from the male characters. In some urban fantasy novels, the female lead could disappear, and the story could still go on without her, but not so with Kate. I keep her in mind as a standard whenever I’m writing.

4: Rhonda Rousey—UFC Mixed Martial Arts Champion Rousey’s not perfect—she’s said some controversial things in the past. She’s also been recently defeated in an embarrassing loss in a title fight. But, again, it’s her flaws that make her human and relatable. In my mind, she’s one of the first women to become a household name in a professional sport historically dominated by men. I can’t help admiring her.

3: Melissa McCarthy—Comedian Have you seen her in Spy? If you haven’t, then finish reading this blog post and run out and see it. Spy breaks molds and stereotypes and does the unexpected. No fat jokes. No damsel in distress. Just a capable woman overcoming her own self-doubts. Melissa has been doing amazing things for comedic women in Hollywood and finding massive success in a field typically dominated by men. I adore her, and I can’t wait to see her kicking butt in Ghostbusters.

2: Agent Peggy Carter—Marvel Comic Book Character Almost every enemy is bigger and stronger than Peggy, but she never lets her lack of laser-beam vision or bulletproof skin stop her, and she does it without ever compromising her values. She also demonstrates a compassion and grace missing from so many of her male counterparts. Some of those men would be more complex and well developed characters if they had Peggy’s heart mixed in with their brawn.

1 Captain Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver—US Army Ranger School’s first female graduates.

I suspect these two women didn’t only have to survive the program’s grueling physical demands. The psychological demands must have been exhausting as well. How many times did others tell them they couldn’t do it, or that women shouldn’t be there, doing a “man’s job”? How many times did they doubt themselves? Yet they overcame and succeeded. They are real life super heroes.

Midnight Burning The Norse Chronicles Book One Karissa Laurel Genre: Urban Fantasy Publisher: Red Adept Publishing Date of Publication: July 7, 2015 ISBN: 978-1940215501 ASIN: B01055ET1A Number of pages: 278 Word Count: About 95K Cover Artist: Streetlight Graphics Book Description: Solina Mundy lives a quiet life, running the family bakery in her small North Carolina hometown. But one night she suffers a nightmare of a vicious wolf devouring her twin brother, Mani, who lives in Alaska. When Solina learns her dream was real, she journeys to the Land of the Midnight Sun to search for answers.

Solina soon suspects Mani’s friends are more than they seem, and she’s certain they know more than they’ve admitted to the police. Val and Thorin resist and elude Solina’s efforts, but Skyla, an exMarine, joins her crusade for the truth.

As Solina and Skyla delve into the mystery surrounding Mani’s death, Solina learns her own life is tied to Mani’s friends, his murder, and the fate of the entire world. She must learn to control her newfound gifts and keep everyone safe because, if she fails, a long-lost dominion of gods and monsters will rise, and everything she knows will fall into darkness.

Amazon About the Author:

Barnes and Noble

Google Play

Kobo

iTunes

Some of Karissa Laurel’s favorite things are coffee, chocolate, and super heroes. She can quote Princess Bride verbatim. She loves to read and has a sweet tooth for fantasy, sci-fi, and anything in between.

Sometimes her husband convinces her to put down the books and take the motorcycles out for a spin or go hunting for rusty old relics at flea-markets. Karissa lives in North Carolina with her kid, her husband, the occasional in-law, and a very hairy husky named Bonnie.

Website – www.KarissaLaurel.com Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/KarissaLaurel Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/KarissaLaurel Instagram – https://www.instgram.com/karissalaurel Goodreads – http://www.goodreads.com/KarissaLaurel Pinterest – http://pinterest.com/karissalaurel Publisher Book Page – http://redadeptpublishing.com Youtube - https://youtu.be/fqYQcpqiItU Excerpt – Chapter One My brother, Mani, once told me Alaska was the first place he had ever travelled where he knew he was somewhere different—somewhere decidedly not home—before he ever set foot on the ground. I didn’t understand what he meant until now. Outside my airplane window, the glassy waters of Cook Inlet reflected a bright blue late-summer sky. Dark and looming, the Chugach Mountains encroached from the east. Far to the north, the ghostly, snow-crusted visage of Mount McKinley rose above the landscape, an ancient king, high on his dais, surveying his kingdom.

By comparison, Mani and I had been raised somewhere a little more commonplace. Home was a small town in the foothills of North Carolina, over three thousand miles away. And this was the first time I had ever left it. I probably should have eased into long-distance travel in the same way I eased into a cold swimming pool—one toe at a time. A trip over the border into Gatlinburg. A weekend visit to D.C. But no, I had taken a plunge from the high dive instead, and boy, was I in over my head.

The captain’s calm and assuring voice spilled across the cabin, announcing our approach and descent into Anchorage. Seatbelt signs chimed and flashed. A pair of flight attendants swept down the aisles, collecting trash and reminding passengers to raise seat backs and lock away tray tables. I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath, and urged my heart to return to its regular pitter-patter pace, but it refused to obey.

I breathed in again and trapped the breath in my lungs. Chill, Solina, I told myself. It’s only a week. I could survive anything for one week, right? And I wouldn’t be on my own. My brother’s best friend, Val Wotan, was at the airport waiting for me. Val had texted me a dozen times to make sure I hadn’t missed my connecting flights or fallen out of the plane somewhere over Canada. Val was expecting me, and I was a glutton for fulfilling others’ expectations. I also owed this trip to my

brother, to the honor of his memory. How could I ever look myself in the eye again if I gave in to my doubts? If I didn't give Mani my absolute commitment?

Val deserved my loyalty, too. In the few years I'd known him, Val had risen from casual acquaintance to something I wasn't quite ready to label, but just thinking of him made my heart beat a little faster, my breath come a little quicker. Val had earned my regard by being the sibling I couldn't be for Mani after he’d left home. He had watched Mani's back, made him welcome and comfortable in a strange and foreign place. He had even saved my brother’s life once.

I chuckled, remembering how Mani had loved to recount the story of the raging bull moose— deep in a rutting frenzy and crazed by the need to mate with anything female and fight anything that wasn’t. Not long after Mani had first arrived in Alaska, he and Val had gone off on a backpacking trip. They came upon the moose on the edge of a meadow and caught it off guard.

The moose turned its hostile gaze on Mani, lowered its rack, and charged. Stunned and uncertain how to react, Mani stood frozen in place and watched his life pass before his eyes.

Meanwhile, Val calmly drew a .44 Magnum from the side pocket of his backpack and fired off a warning shot. The moose reconsidered his challenge and lumbered away into the woods.

If only Val and his gun had been there the night my brother died. Then I might have been coming to Alaska for an entirely different set of reasons.

Reviews • "…a fascinating story that is well written, has entertaining dialogue, a fair amount of humor, and lots of tension. The ending caught me off guard with a huge twist. I can’t wait to read the sequel." ~ Big Al's Books & Pals • "So engrossing you forget to do necessary things like eat or go to the bathroom. I loved it that much!" ~ The Tome Gnome • “…a great weekend read, one of those where you eat a nice breakfast, sit down with a good book, and then wonder where the sunlight went” ~ The Eternal Scribe • "The characters were just as alluring and mysterious as the plot. I couldn’t get enough of them.

Sol was the best!" ~ Bookworm Coalition • "All in all, a great book, and an author that I'm going to keep my eye on." ~ The Gal in the Blue Mask •

“There is so much going on, you want to savor every page.” ~ Kelly Smith Reviews

• “Wonderfully written, I was drawn into the story from the very first page.” ~ I’m a Voracious Reader • “Norse Mythology really wasn’t my thing. But I can tell you it is now!!” ~ Literati Literature Lovers • “I will hope that Karissa Laurel does not keep us waiting long for more” ~ A Soccer Mom’s Book Blog

•

“I found it a refreshing change from the werewolf versus vampire theme.” ~ On My Kindle

• “Grab your mittens, the hot chocolate and get ready to enter the world of fantasy, told by a new and impressive author with an imagination as big as Alaska!” ~ Tome Tender • “The story keeps you guessing and keeps on the edge of your seat. I loved every minute of this book and wish I could read the next one right now.” ~ Snoopy Doo’s Book Reviews • “This book was awesome! It’s definitely on my list of ones I’m recommending to folks right now” ~ Reading to Distraction • “ I Highly recommend this book for those of you who enjoy a well written modern day Fantasy with a mythology you certainly haven’t read much on before” ~ So I Read this Book Today • “An urban fantasy novel that flows like traditional fiction yet starts things off like a mystery before adding in the supernatural was a lot of fun.” ~ One Book Two

What Makes Bewitching Book Tours Different From Other Virtual Book Tour Companies?

Bewitching Book Tours has been in business since 2010 making us one of the oldest virtual book tour companies around. We know book promotion.

Our authors are our number one priority. This is not a hobby or a side job in addition to the day job. This is our day job, which means we put our authors first.

Bewitching Book Tours offers multiple tour packages and services for authors- we have one day packages for cover reveals, release day blitzes, and one day tours. We also offer one week, two week and one month tours. Bewitching also offers Kindle Free Book Blitz tours to promote your Kindle free book for up to five days. Other services we offer are Twitter parties, Facebook parties, Press Release Writing, and radio interviews.

Custom packages are available.

Bewitching has optional special features including a monthly magazine, a BlogTalk Radio Show and we offer custom Bewitching Book swag creations such as bookmarks, keychains, purse charms and more.

The most important things about Bewitching is that your book starts receiving promotion as soon as you sign up with Bewitching. A media kit is created, tour banners are made, and a page goes up on the Bewitching Blog announcing your upcoming tour. An invitation is sent out to all the Bewitching Tour Hosts and your upcoming tour is shared throughout our vast network of social media which includes multiple Facebook pages and accounts, Tsu, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, Tumblr, and other book social sites.

Immediately your book has been put in front of thousands of book lovers. And we don’t stop there.

We continue to work on your tour scheduling tour stops, reviews and more depending on your tour package chosen.

Once your tour is set up we send you the tour schedule, materials and instructions so there is no confusion. You return requested materials to Bewitching and we handle the rest.

Once your tour has started we promote every single tour stop every day on multiple social media platforms several times throughout the day. Combine this exposure with the daily tour hosts’ and the author’s social media promotion of the tour stops and you have your book in front of thousands of readers every day.

Even after the tour Bewitching continues working for you. Your name and web link will be listed on our blog as a client and your tour pages will be archived, not removed. So they will always be available for readers to access. If Bewitching has special events in the future like calls for submissions, holiday contests or other multi-author events you will be invited to participate.

Quick Tips for Authors- Guide to Using a Pen Name

By Roxanne Rhoads Many, many professional writers use pen names. Kim Harrison and Nora Roberts are two NYT Bestselling Authors that instantly come to mind.

For years I wrote under both my real name and a pen name. At times it was really confusing, especially in the beginning when I had no idea when I should use both names and when I should just use my pen name.

Throughout the years of operating Fang-tastic Books, a book review and promotion site for paranormal authors, I found that many new writers are just as confused as I was in the beginning.

One time an author, who is man but writes as a woman, sent me all his promo info for his book under his pen name and his bio under his real name. His email and web sites were also under his real name. So I assumed that he had no problem with both names being used to promote his book (since he didn’t specify otherwise). As a reviewer and promoter I publish what authors send me, I don’t change their words except for misspellings.

Well, the author contacted me a few days later very upset because I used his real name and the pen name. I explained to him the problem and suggested a few ways to stop any confusion in the future.

The things I suggested to him are ways to keep writing names separate while making your professional life much easier.

First of all, set up an email account in your pen name. Many email servers like gmail offer this for free. Use this email account for all writing transactions and submissions under your pen name.

Create a signature line for your email. For a long time I wondered after I sent an email if I accidentally signed the wrong name. Now I use signatures with my email

accounts that include my name, email address, and web addresses so I never have to worry about signing the wrong name.

Create a bio for your pen name. This bio should not include any writing credits, jobs, degrees or memberships that are under any other name. When someone tries to verify the info in your bio and can’t find anything under your pen name you’ll look like a liar. So keep your names and bios separate unless you have no problem with both names being linked or being public knowledge. Some authors use different pen names for different genres, not because they are “hiding” or trying to keep their real name from the public eye. In that case you can include something like this at the end of your bio: “Suzanne Case also writes as Susannah Monroe”.

Set up separate social media accounts for your pen name. That way all your promotion can be done through those networking sites under that name alone. This is extremely helpful when you want to remain anonymous plus it helps build your author brand. You want to build an author brand, not a book brand.

Set up a blog using only your pen name. This is extremely easy to do, especially with Blogger, WordPress or Weebly and it will help with promotion as you can publish all your book covers and publishing information on the blog, entertain readers and draw people in. Try to get the URL with your pen name in it, such as www.JadeDesire.Blogspot.com or grab a custom domain name from GoDaddy.com and point your blog to the domain www.JadeDesire.com.

The last and most important thing to remember when using a pen name…don’t ever give anyone your real name unless absolutely necessary. Book reviewers, bloggers, book promoters- none of these people have any reason to know your real name.

Publishers and agents are the only ones that ever need to know your real name and sometimes there are ways around that as well.

In some localities you can file a DBA (doing business as) under your pen name.

This is the same as filing for a business name. Some cities/counties/states won’t allow you to file a DBA under a person’s name while others do. If you can, this will allow you to legally use that name for all transactions. You can even open a bank account using your business/pen name. To get around the use of a social security number you can file for a taxpayer id number.

The only drawback to going this route is that it leaves a paper trail that anyone can have access to if they know where to look but you won’t have to give your real name to publishers, editors or agents.

Decide which route works best for you then stick to your guns and keep your names as far away from each other as possible.

Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours Quick Tips for Authors Guide Roxanne Rhoads Book Description: Are you considering a virtual book tour?

Not sure where to start or exactly what an online tour will entail?

Roxanne Rhoads, book publicist and owner of Bewitching Book Tours, shares her virtual tour expertise in this Quick Tips for Authors Guide.

Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours will guide you in utilizing the best marketing tool available- a virtual book tour, which can create online exposure for your book, jumpstart your book sales, help build your author brand, and expand your network.

In this guide you’ll learn:        

what you should do before a tour the components of a great author website the best social media outlets for authors to utilize tips for building your author brand how to write great guest blogs what to expect from an online book tour the secrets of successful book tours how to schedule your own virtual book tour

And you’ll receive in-depth details about what to do during a virtual book tour to guarantee success.

Amazon

BN Kobo Scribd iBooks

Smashwords

Inktera

Createspace

Excerpt Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours by Roxanne Rhoads The world of publishing is continuously evolving thanks to technology and the Internet. It is now easier than ever to publish a book. But with the growing number of new books being released every day it is also harder than ever to get your book noticed in the crowd.

If your line of thinking includes- “If I publish it, people will buy it,” think again.

Indie publishing requires a dedication to self-promotion. Gone are the days an author hermits them self away to write, then hands the book to the publisher who does all the leg work for promotion.

Even NYT Bestselling authors and those with contracts through the big publishers still have to do a certain amount of self-promotion.

There are many ways to promote: social media, advertising on popular websites and blogs, print advertising in trade magazines, attending reader oriented conventions and events…but one of the best ways to get your book out there and build name recognition as an author is through a virtual book tour.

In this Quick Tips for Authors Guide, you will learn why a virtual book tour can be an author’s most effective marketing tool.

About the Author: Roxanne Rhoads has been working in the world of online book promotion since 2005. She has worked as a freelance writer, author, book reviewer, book blogger, editor, selfpublisher and book publicist. She has a unique advantage of knowing how multiple sides of book publishing and promotion operate.

Roxanne understands how book bloggers work and what they want to make their jobs easier while also understanding that authors need promotion to be streamlined, easy, and less time consuming.

Roxanne shares some of her knowledge in her latest release, Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours.

Author Website http://www.roxannerhoads.com Bewitching Book Tours www.bewitchingbooktours.com Bewitching Blog http://www.bewitchingbooktours.blogspot.com/ Facebook http://www.facebook.com/BewitchingBooktours

Do you write in different genres?

I love writing different genres at the same time. I always write a historical and a contemporary simultaneously. Right now I’m working on the first book in my new Viking Invasion series, Wùlfe.

I’m also in the middle of Wolf Raider, Book Three in the White Wolf series.

If yes which is your favorite genre to write?

That’s almost like asking a mother to name her favorite child . If I had to choose, it would be paranormal historical. The Viking Gods and lure fascinate me.

How did you come up with the title for your latest book?

Soul Deep came about because the heroine, Melanie, is a spiritual healer who hears the last call of a soul.

Wùlfe is the name of the hero in Viking Invasion. It seemed appropriate to use his name as the title.

Wolf Raider came about, because the alpha star of the tale is ‘Chainsaw Chad’ and he’s become famous (and wealthy) by raiding and ravaging corporations.

Do you title the book first or wait until after it’s complete?

For me, I can’t write a book without a title. So it comes first. I already have the titles of three books I’ll begin later this year, Fäng, Seathe, and Prymal Pleasure.

What is your current “work in progress” or upcoming projects?

I have ambitious plans for my writing this year. I hope to finish the last White Wolf, 2 Viking Invasion tales, and two more Hades Squad stories.

Can you share a little of your current work with us?

Here’s a scene from SOUL DEEP after Mike’s claimed Melanie:

An hour later, Mike couldn’t move a muscle. Delirium had him in a constant state of orgasm.

Coming for hours wrung a wolf dry. Emptied every ounce of energy. Reduced him to reflexive reaction.

They mated for three days straight. Melanie was insatiable. Curious about every sexual position invented in the history of the planet. Bookmarked the Kama Sutra on his laptop. Made amazing chocolate confections and experimented with what body part better suited a fudgy texture as opposed to a thinner, orange-flavored sauce. Spent hours studying his cock and testicles. Counted the hairs around his dick. With her teeth.

On the last day, she said it was her turn to tie him up, and Mike agreed, positive he’d plumb tuckered her out.

“I’ve had this fantasy about marshmallows and chocolate and your cock forever.”

He loved it when she pinked all over. With all they’d done these last few days, Mike figured his mate would’ve left her blushes behind long ago. But though she’d shed inhibitions in a free-for-all, color rioted over her beautiful skin at the sweetest times. Like now.

“Marshmallows?” Sticky and creamy and warm—worked for him. “Don’t chicken out now.”

“It’ll get sticky.” She gave him her signature up-from-under peek, her brown eyes twinkling wicked, sexy fun.

“You forget, I love you sticky.”

“I had a feeling you’d be game.” Scooting off the bed, she halted before her feet touched the floor, tossed her mane of luscious curls over one shoulder, and slid a side glance at him. “Where did you put that blindfold? And the rest of the toys?”

Do you have to travel much to do research for your books?

I don’t have to, but I do. My husband and I looove road trips. Because he’s originally from Canada and most of his family still lives there, we travel there at least once a year. We try to vary our routes with each trip. Last year, we drove through north-east Michigan and stayed in charming small towns.

The setting for my latest release, SOUL DEEP, was inspired by that particular journey.

Last year, we also visited Europe, and I overdosed on Viking sites. We visited Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (and Russia, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia—on a cruise). Since that incredible vacation, Viking books crowd my little brain. I’ve started no less than four Viking series…aaaargh!

Couldn’t resist posting some pics of the Viking Settlements we visited:

Who designed the cover of your latest book?

The multi-talented, Georgia Woods, CEO of Hartwood Publishing did the incredible cover for SOUL DEEP. Soul Deep White Wolf Book 1 Jianne Carlo Genre: Contemporary Paranormal Suspense Publisher: Hartwood Publishing Date of Publication: April 7, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-62916-303-1 Number of pages: 186 Word Count: 82,486 Cover Artist: Georgia Woods Book Description: Melanie is a White Wolf spirit healer—a maggishahwi--who hears the last call of a dying soul. She’s loved Mike Dorland forever. But her Cinderella hopes and glass-slipper dreams of a happy ever after

with her Prince Charming are shattered the day her father kills Mike’s while driving drunk. Now Mike hates her, and when Mike returns to their home town, she’s both devastated and thrilled.

Mike’s the eldest son of one of the original three founders of the quaint town of Chabegawn, and a half-breed wolf who’s found his mate—Melanie. Mike returns to find the town torn apart by a series of vicious and malicious black bear slayings. Then the town’s beloved, world-famous horse breeder vanishes and his ravaged remains are found.

Melanie’s bent on saving black bear mothers and cubs, and she will risk her life to bait and capture the killers. But Mike will gamble everything to protect his mate.

Amazon Download two of Jianne’s other ebooks FREE Sinner Soul Deep Excerpt – PG-rated, 529 words

Prymal Lust

“I apologize. I was totally out of line.”

Mike.

Her heartbeat went into overdrive. Melanie clutched her chest. Anger came to the rescue. She spun around. “Apology not accepted. You were plain mean and nasty. Just because you’re worth a fortune doesn’t give you the right to treat people like that.”

“I only ever apologize once, Melanie. And I never say anything I don’t mean.” Mike folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.

He knew her first name? Doc G. must’ve told him. She fought the fluttery belly quivers that always assailed her in his presence. Jutted the jaw Mama said was too square for any female. “Fine.

Apology accepted. Now if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

“Doc G.’s closing up. He says he’ll do the autopsy tomorrow. I’ll be here for it.”

Nooo. What in heck is wrong with Doc G.? Melanie gritted her teeth. Why does Mike want to see the autopsy?

“Do you want to wash up?” Mike angled his head toward the sink to the right. “I’ll drop you home. Doc got a call from Jim Balden. He thinks his mare’s dropping the foal tonight.”

So not what she needed. Or wanted. Mike Dorland driving her to the reservation and seeing the broken-down three-bedroom shack the White family occupied. Poor and proud and shunned, even by the rest of the tribe. Melanie straightened her shoulders. Tough titties. She was what she was and wasn’t nothin’ nohow going to change that.

“I’ll call a cab.” She made to move around him, and he caught her hand and drew close.

Too close.

He smelled like paradise. Like a warm sea so blue and clear and sparkling it hurt to see when you stared at the glinting waters. Like equatorial sun baking her skin and raising a hot sweat. Like a tropical breeze whipping exotic aphrodisiacs every which way and creaming her sex.

“Little idiot. I bet you intend to walk the fifteen miles. You always did act as if I stunk up your air.”

Had the floor turned liquid? No, her knees had. She grabbed the counter and tried to shake off the thick fingers circling her wrist in a steely but somehow gentle grip. “Stunk up my air?”

“Half-breed not good enough for a full-blooded Cwaatchii? For the daughter of a Ska Awhi?

For the granddaughter of Ixota Migziwa?”

His nose was so close she had to blink to get his features in focus.

Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. She licked her suddenly dry lips.

“That’s it.” He picked her up and jammed her against the wall. Her face was level with his.

Then he kissed her, and the world turned upside down and inside out. He tasted of all her pumpkincoach dreams, of all her tortured teenaged visions of knights, rescue, and happy every after, of every single, furtive pleasuring of herself with his image in her head. Smoky, citrusy, and stomachclenching delicious.

His hold on her firmed. His arm went around her waist, and when he nudged her legs apart, she surrendered. Worked her fingers into the silk of his hair and kissed him back, touching her tongue to his.

About the Author: Award winning author, Jianne Carlo’s motto is simple: Alpha Me Please.

While strong heroines, exotic locations, and cultural differences are her forte, she goes weak in the knees for bad boys, warriors, and alphas. Send her a man with an attitude and she’ll find the right woman to tame him.

Jianne loves hot and spicy food, stomach-plunging park rides, and is kept on her toes by her Viking husband of thirty-five years, and three, handsome grown sons. Jianne’s a Zumba addict who loves to cook. Her favorite possession is her ‘Robo-stove. There’s nothing she likes more than hearing from readers.

Website: http://www.jiannecarlo.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jianne123 Twitter: @jiannecarlo Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/jiannecarlo/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2508742.Jianne_Carlo Google+: https://plus.google.com/+JianneCarlo/ Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004D8XOLM

From Engineer to Fiction Author There’s several stereotypes about engineers. We aren’t good communicators, we’re introverted, we aren’t creative…this list goes on.

I worked in the world of civil engineering for nearly eight years. And to be perfectly honest, for the most part, I’ve found those stereotypes to be true.

Engineers work in a very constrained world. The physical properties of steel, concrete, and timber don’t change. Newton’s laws of physics always hold true. Ultimately there is no point in time where the engineer puts his or her pencil down, and thinks, “What if the elastic modulus of steel were actually 765 x 200 GPa?” Why don’t we do this? Because the elastic modulus of steel will always and forever be 207 x 109 GPa. We deal in the world of physical facts, not fiction. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be creative.

I’ve designed multi-barge systems to float bridges down a river. I’ve designed hydraulic winches with pulleys to replace mechanical trunnions in order to open and close a bascule leaf (what most people call a “draw bridge”). This takes a lot of creativity, but it’s not free flowing, it’s structured.

Fundamentally there are more hurdles for an engineer, or any left-brained thinker to overcome in order to break into a world of fiction.

I wasn’t always an engineer I was lucky enough to have been exposed to the right-brained world in college, because I wasn’t always an engineering major. At first I was an English major.

A lot of my influence comes from my father. For as long as I can remember he was always reading.

Just as any little boy wants to grow up like their dad, I started reading too.

I loved the school book fairs in elementary and middle school. Unlike others I loved the SRA reading system, which most people don’t remember or have never heard of.

In high school I read books during class while others tried to stay wake. After reading Emerson I began to write essays for fun.

Then in college I got hooked on the poetry of Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac, and Pablo Neruda.

I was going to be an English major…

Money makes the world go round It’s terrible to think that money changed my mind, but it kind of did.

At eighteen years old, I didn’t really know you could choose “fiction writer” as a profession, and there wasn’t any other field of literature or writing that I wanted to be a part of.

So, I resorted to the only other thing I was good at: math.

I enjoyed my engineering classes, except for thermodynamics – everyone hates thermodynamics – but I never really garnered a passion for the discipline.

And so in my free time, I wrote. Until one day, about eight years down the road, I decided that I didn’t ever want to look back on life and think, “Man, I wish I would have tried to publish a book.”

Instead, my wife and I came up with a twelve month plan to quit my job and pursue a career in writing.

I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m going to keep writing until I get there.

My Top 10 Sports Romance Movies and the One that Inspired In Her Eyes One of the most common questions I get asked is, “Why do you choose write romance novels?”

Traditionally speaking my first two books may fall in the “sports romance” genre, but they aren’t conventional romances like Nora Roberts, Danielle Steel, or Nicholas Sparks. Instead they focus on a specific story and feature the love interest that ultimately impacts that story.

For example, when writing In Her Eyes my initial focus was on a runner named Benson Wilder that was given a second chance to run at the collegiate level, after a tragic past. My goal wasn’t to write purely about running through. I wanted to show how love could impact Benson’s life, his focus, his decisions. It’s this intersection that draws me to writing sports romance.

With that said though, one of the main inspirations behind In Her Eyes was the story of Steve Prefontaine, which I first learned about in the movie Without Limits.

I love movies almost as much as I love writing, and so I thought it would be fun to share with you my top ten sports romance movies.

Top 10 Sports Romance Movies 1. Without Limits 2. Jerry Maguire 3. Days of Thunder 4. For Love of the Game 5. Cinderella Man 6. Tin Cup 7. Bull Durham 8. Karate Kid 9. The Cutting Edge 10. Top Gun As you may have noticed Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner seem to dominate the list. Regardless of that though, they all have in common a powerful story that is changed by love. And that’s what I hope In Her Eyes conveys as well.

In Her Eyes Wesley Banks Genre: Sports Romance Publisher: Chasing Pace Publishing Date of Publication: 3/14/16 ISBN: 978-0-9861934-2-2 ASIN: TBA Number of pages: 264 Word Count: 57,000 Cover Artist: Dane at eBook Launch Book Description: When Ben Wilder is given a second chance he focuses on the one thing he's always been good at: running. After walking on to the University of Florida he begins to quickly move up

the national rankings, paving a path towards the NCAA Track and Field Championships. Everything is going the way he planned, until the day he bumps into Casey Taylor.

New to Gainesville, and focused on her first year out of medical school, Casey is initially hesitant to let Ben into her life. But the truth is she's worried about letting a guy near the one thing she loves most: her daughter, Emma. After one fun and fateful night Casey can no long bury her feelings behind these excuses, and takes a chance on a guy she is slowly falling for.

Casey's relationship with Ben starts to gradually build into a love that she has never felt. But more importantly Emma has taken a particular liking to Ben. As they all spend more time together Ben is forced to confront painful memories when he starts to notice something hauntingly familiar in Emma's eyes.

After a local journalist uncovers the secret of Ben's past their lives begin to converge on a single promise that Ben Wilder has long since made: to never give up...no matter what.

Excerpt: Ben was tired, but he was excited when he woke up on Monday morning. It was Casey’s day off and Coach had given the team the week off, minus a team meeting this afternoon, since they had another month until the NCAA Championships.

Emma’s school started at seven forty-five which meant if he got to Casey’s around eight, they could spend the whole day just relaxing.

When he arrived the garage was shut, so he walked up to the front door. Before he could knock, though, the door swung open and Casey jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.

“My hero,” she said in a terrible southern accent. Then she started giving him little pecks all over his head and face.

He walked inside with her still wrapped around him and kicked the door shut. Laughing, he said, “Who is this strange girl, and what did you do with Casey?”She continued on in the southern accent. “You won the race for your beloved and claimed victory.”

Ben sat her on the backside of the couch and looked down at her. “What on earth has gotten into you?”

“You, Sir Runner. Now, take me, take me now.” Casey puckered up her lips playfully and Ben laughed.

Ben leaned in to give her a quick kiss, thinking she might taste or smell like alcohol, because right now that was the only explanation he could come up with. She tasted like…cookies.

He looked around the room and to his right, sitting on the kitchen counter, he found his answer. He let go of Casey and she fell backwards onto the couch.

“Hey!” she said as she hit the couch cushion.

Ben walked over to the kitchen and picked up a small tub of Cookies ’n Cream ice cream and a bag of Fudge Filled Chewy Chips Ahoy. He held up both and looked over at Casey who was halfhiding, half-peering over the top of the couch. “Please tell me you are not eating cookies and ice cream at eight o’clock in the morning.”

Casey jumped over the couch and came running at Ben, a ball of sugar filled energy. She wrapped her arms around his waist, her legs around the back of his calves, and inched her way up his

body. When she reached the top she bombarded his neck with kisses. “My hero,” she said. She stopped for a moment and looked at him with the most devious, sensual grin. She leaned in closer until there was almost no space between her lips and his. Then like a cheetah springing on a gazelle, she grabbed the ice cream with her left hand and the cookies with her right, hit the ground and took cover on the couch.

“You have serious problems,” Ben said.

Casey pulled out a cookie and dipped it in the ice cream and held it up for him to see. Then she started humming and dancing the cookie around like she was taunting him.

Ben took two steps, dove across the couch, snatched the cookie from her hand and shoved it in his mouth before she could barely move. She looked at him wide eyed and in complete silence and then jumped on him. They wrestled and tickled each other like five-year-olds, stopping every now and then for a quick cookie break.

This went on for about thirty more minutes and then she crashed on the floor next to him. Her head lay across his chest as he played with her hair until eventually he crashed too.

About the Author: Wesley Banks was born in 1983 and grew up on the west coast of Florida. He graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Civil Engineering. After spending over 7 years building movable bridges from Florida to Washington he decided to focus on his true passion: writing.

Wesley recently moved from Florida to Oregon to get back to the great outdoors that he loves so much. He lives with his wife Lindsey, and his two dogs Linkin and Story. Most of his time these days is spent writing, with as much rock climbing, hiking, or skiing as they can fit in.

Wesley’s debut novel, Hope In Every Raindrop, was released May of 2015.

Website: http://wesleybanksauthor.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wesleybanksauthor/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wesleybanksauthor/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/wbauthor Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/wbauthor/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13825271.Wesley_Banks

It has often been said that non-fiction may be more accurate, but fiction is more truthful. Indeed, fiction liberates the writer, granting them infinite paint and canvas through which to illustrate a truth, whether subtle or extreme. Creative writers, myself included, are motivated by this need to express the human condition.

When writing my novel, THE PART THAT DOESN’T BURN, I was desperate not only to convey what I knew about the human heart, but to discover more. I knew, deep down, that eventually my characters would take over and show something that I couldn’t. But in order for that to happen, I had to set the stage for it. In the end, only a dark stage allowed me to explore true desperation, and that infamous gray line between good and evil.

Dark Fantasy is difficult to define, even amongst professionals who swim in the genre. But simply put, it takes the wondrous elements of Fantasy and twists them into nightmares. I choose the word nightmare carefully. It entails the physical, monstrous horrors along with the horrors of the mind. It includes man’s worst fears, and possibly even his or her own descent into the demon they never wanted to become. Only here, hanging on the ledge of the cliff to oblivion, are all the little things that make us human mortally challenged.

Monsters are fun in fiction, but they shouldn’t merely lurk in swamps and around corners; they should lurk within minds and hearts as well. They should become the characters, and the characters become them: a disease impacting the heroes and the villains alike until you don’t know which is which anymore. Then the physical, literal monsters come at us again.

In this, Dark Fantasy becomes the most extreme genre when it comes to testing the human condition.

It makes you wonder: why is it so fun to read? Why do I care about characters who struggle with right and wrong? And why do I want to see these characters fighting through so much pain? At what point do we all just give up? Those questions answer themselves. Writers and readers alike are attracted to the genre to see how far humans are willing to go to not give up. Even our fiction counterparts must carry on when confused, dejected, tortured, and betrayed. And if they can find some sort of purpose, it gives us all some sort of purpose.

But a great Dark Fantasy doesn’t completely dissolve into heartless, mindless chaos only to leave its readers with a meaningless mess at the end. In a well-told story there remains a constant: a part of the human condition that even the fires of hell cannot burn. Whether the novel ends in tragedy or salvation, or somewhere in between, that constant must be there. It must tether the reader (and the writer, for that matter) to the souls of the characters, and bring meaning to the pain and darkness. In the end, for better or worse, we are humans, not aberrant fantasy monsters. And the genre is about us, not them.

The Part That Doesn’t Burn Goetia Series Book One Sam Poling Genre: Dark Fantasy Publisher: Tirgearr Publishing Date of Publication: March 23rd, 2016 ISBN: 9781310401916 ASIN: B01BW0Q2Y4 Number of pages: 319 Word Count: 97,000 Cover Artist: Cora Graphics Book Description: In an overpopulated city-state where technology and magic are forbidden by the corrupt church, young witch, Mirabel Fairfax, plots the creation of a deadly plague to cull the burdensome rabble.

That is, until she falls in love with the very alchemist she has been deceiving.

Now, with soul-hungry geists flooding the city, the church scrambling for their prey, and her own mind at war with itself, Mirabel must decide what she's fighting for before she loses everything to the evils of Autumnfall.

Amazon Tirgearr Publishing

Excerpt: Mirabel waited in the darkness. Each passing second made it exponentially less likely the power would return.

“Mirabel? Did we lose power?” Felix’s voice quivered in the darkness.

“It should return momentarily.”

They waited. Mirabel could practically feel Felix’s demeanor evaporating.

“M-Mirabel?”

“Unbelievable, the singular time I am protecting company on the geistlines, a train dies. We are not coal powered. We are coming to a stop. Perhaps your pessimism rang true. Sour fortune must have followed you from Haugen. We need to leave.”

“L-leave? As in, leave the train, and go out there?”

“Felix, without power the only thing stopping a geist from swooping in here and taking your face off is nothing. One hundred percent nothing. Essentially, we already have the cons of being outside, along with the narrow space of being inside. Not a survivable combination.”

Without hesitation Felix took to gathering his tools, and corralling them into his bags.

“No time for that.”

She tugged him out of their room and through the train car. One side of the car featured the cabins. Asleep and unaware, no one else left their rooms. Windows with their blinds drawn and a faint cyan shimmering through adorned the other side.

“They’re lining both sides of the tracks. How long do we have?” said Felix.

“Geist behavior is a constant mystery, even to me, but eventually some will strike. Even those with eternity run out of patience.”

They reached the door to the next car and Mirabel mashed on the panel. Nothing. No power, no doors. She tried the manual handle, but it wouldn’t budge. If only Miss Perfect-Priestess were here, then the door wouldn’t be able to fly open fast enough.

“Oh bother,” she said.

“Door haunted too?”

“Handle denies me. Seems rusted, and I wonder if they automatically power lock.”

She could barely make out Felix’s nervous wince. “I wouldn’t expect that, Mirabel.

Emergency situations would turn fatalities.”

“That is not happening with us.” She put her weight on the lever. It didn’t amount to much, and the lever knew it.

“Let me try.”

Felix consisted of average build and height, if not a tad lanky. Certainly not the strong type.

Petite Mirabel stood quite small, a whole head shorter, also not the strong type, but she expected she could generate more strength. The alchemist didn’t have the mind for it.

“Felix, darling, put your hands here.” She directed his hands next to hers. “Press down on three, yes?”

Violet light washed over the handle they gripped before she got to “one.” She didn’t have to turn around to know its source. It traveled up her arms and across the door. If another passenger had opened a blind, the light source wouldn’t be nearing them.

“Three-three-three,” she shouted.

Felix threw down on the handle alongside her. Perhaps he did have the mind for it when terrified. With a shriek the lever punched into the open position, and the partners threw their hands into the crevice at the door’s left.

“Get the blasted thing open. Pull, Felix, do not look back.”

She made a mistake. Everyone looks back when instructed not to. He turned his neck and got an eyeful of something that forced a spate foul language. Such words didn’t suit him. Pulling with whatever force her slender arms could muster, she joined his blunder and looked over her shoulder.

A geist, two-thirds down the corridor, drifted closer. Its face partially lifted from its head, hanging a few inches from where it belonged. The glowing wisp mimicked the body it used to have, but poorly. The translucent skin melted and slid ever downward. She knew the face would contort any moment: the precursor to assault. And it had the gut-wrenching violet hue. Of all the geists to enter first, it had to be a damned giftgeist. She had no hope of generating enough magic to destroy it before it reached them.

The broken door started to grind open. She fit her thin body part way into the opening. Her heels dug into the carpet and her back braced against the door’s narrow edge, with her hands pressing against the wall. “Felix, pull.”

The geist twisted into a monster far fiercer than before; its face warped into elongated grief and its jaw stretched to the side to give a dry, raspy howl. Passengers meandering into the hall heard it. They slung their own screams and ran the opposite way. The worst decision during a geistline incident: running toward the rear of the train. They wouldn’t live long.

She reached above her head and flicked her fingers. “You want electricity, you fromping door?

H-have some.” More white flashes fluttered between her fingers with each flick. “Come on, I had this spell mastered yesterday.”

“Mirabel? Mirabel,” yelped Felix. “It’s-it’s coming.”

“Simmer. I am focusing.”

“Focus faster!”

With a final flick, current rushed from the witch’s fingertips up into the door mechanisms. She had no idea what it accomplished, but the lights around the immediate vicinity flashed, including the door panel. Her left hand dropped and swatted it. The door grinded opened halfway before its lights died again. Halfway gave them more than enough space. The partners darted through into the next car. Glancing back, Mirabel saw the geist stop and turn to its side. Another passenger had peeked out of their cabin an arm’s length from the specter. It shot from Mirabel’s view before the rattled cries of a man and woman reached her ears.

Felix stopped as abruptly as the geist had. “It’s attacking someone.”

“Keep moving.”

“Mirabel, you’ve got to do something, there are three cars full of people back there.”

“And we are the only valuable ones.”

About the Author: Sam Poling has been writing fantasy and science fiction for the thrill of it his entire life, from short stories to screenplays. His love for each of the subgenres led to dedication to writing genre-skirting fiction with all the elements that make up the human condition. He

holds a strong enthusiasm for medical studies and currently works as a medical assistant in a large clinic while taking classing for nursing. He also serves on a health and safety committee, including disaster preparedness and infection control. His interest in epidemiology and medical science tends to spill over into his writing endeavors.

Author’s site: www.samuelpoling.com Author’s Page http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Poling_Sam/index.htm Twitter: @SamuelPoling Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Samuel.T.Poling Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15010988.Sam_Poling

Witch’s Cursed Cabin Coon Hollow Coven Tales Book Two Marsha A. Moore Genre: Paranormal romance Date of Publication: 4-27-16 Number of pages: 380 Word Count: 111,000 Cover Artist: Marsha A. Moore Book Description: Eager to be on her own away from home, twenty-year-old Aggie Anders accepts a relative’s invitation to live in Coon Hollow Coven. Although she’s a witch from a different coven, what locals say about the Hollow confuses her.

How can witchcraft there live and breathe through souls of the dead?

Aggie’s new residence in this strange southern Indiana world is a deserted homestead cabin. The property’s carriage house serves as the coven’s haunted Halloween fundraiser. It’s a great opportunity for her to make new friends, especially with the coven’s sexy new High Priest Logan.

But living in the homestead also brings Aggie enemies. Outsiders aren’t welcome. A cantankerous, old neighbor tries to frighten her off by warning her that the homestead is cursed. Local witches who practice black magic attempt to use their evil to drive Aggie away and rid their coven of her unusual powers as a sun witch.

Determined to stay and fit in, Aggie discovers not only that the cabin is cursed, but she alone is destined to break the curse before moonrise on Samhain. If she fails, neither the living nor the dead will be safe.

Goodreads About the Coon Hollow Coven Tales Series The series is about a coven of witches in a fictitious southern Indiana community, south of Bloomington, the neck of the woods where I spent my favorite childhood years surrounded by the love of a big family. The books are rich with a warm Hoosier down-home feel. There are interesting interactions between coven members and locals from the nearby small town of Bentbone. If magic wasn’t enough of a difference between the two groups, the coven folk adhere to the 1930s lifestyle that existed when the coven formed.

Book One

Excerpt from Chapter One: The Homestead A shove of my shoulder pried the rusty hinges on the heavy log cabin door loose. I flung my blond braid to my back and peered inside. Beings and critters, alive and furry as well as undead and translucent, flew, crawled, or slithered across dark recesses of the hallway, sitting room, and stairwell.

“You weren’t kidding. This place is haunted.” I shuddered and looked over my shoulder at Cerise.

She looked perky as always with her dark bobbed hair and lively brown eyes beneath horn-rimmed eyeglasses. “Were those things relations or varmints?” I took a cautious step over the threshold to escape the blustery weather and unbuttoned my corduroy jacket.

“Oh, both, Aggie. Ghosts of witch kin and their talking animal familiars,” she said and moved past me to lift sheets off the sitting room furniture.

I raised a brow, curious about what talking familiars were but was too afraid to ask. She didn’t seem to think they were bad, and I needed a place to stay.

Cerise dropped the sheets in a pile and wiped her dusty hands on her skirt. “Those sorts of ghosts are in all the homes here in Coon Hollow Coven. Maybe some animal spirits, too, from the surrounding woods.

This property has at least fifty acres of forest. The ghosts are harmless, part of the family. At least no neighbors have complained, that I’ve heard.”

Eyeing corners of the parlor and the length of the hall, I wondered if I could ever get used to living with ghosts of people who’d lived here before. In New Wish, Indiana, where I’d spent my entire twenty years, we only had an occasional ghost. Usually lost souls who, for some reason, hadn’t found their peace before death took them. Most times, those folks had been tormented by darkness and experimented with black magic while they’d lived. Or so Mom told me, but I always thought that was just her way of keeping me in line.

I pushed those thoughts out of my head. I wanted a place of my own more than anything else, and not in the tiny town of New Wish where everyone knew me…or thought they did. They all said I was the spitting image of my Aunt Faye, with the same light blond straight hair, deep blue eyes, dark brows, and quiet personality. Everyone thought I’d grow up to be like her with a houseful of kids, seven or more. Fact was, they didn’t know me. I wasn’t sure I even knew myself. There was so much I wanted to learn and do that wouldn’t happen if I stayed at my parents’ home.

Cerise struggled to open the stuck window. “Aggie, can you help me here? Some fresh air might tempt a few spirits outside. This place has been vacant since my mother passed in 2009. We might find just about anything in here after five years.”

About the Author: Marsha A. Moore loves to write fantasy and paranormal romance.

Much of her life feeds the creative flow she uses to weave highly imaginative tales.

The magic of art and nature spark life into her writing, as well as other pursuits of watercolor painting and drawing. She’s been a yoga enthusiast for over a decade and is a registered yoga teacher.

Her practice helps weave the mystical into her writing. After a move from Toledo to Tampa in 2008, she’s happily transformed into a Floridian, in love with the outdoors where she’s always on the lookout for portals to other worlds. Marsha is crazy about cycling. She lives with her husband on a large saltwater lagoon, where taking her kayak out is a real treat. She never has enough days spent at the beach, usually scribbling away at stories with toes wiggling in the sand. Every day at the beach is magical!

Website: http://MarshaAMoore.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marshaamooreauthorpage

Twitter: http://twitter.com/MarshaAMoore Google +: http://google.com/+MarshaAMoore Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/marshaamoore/ Amazon author page: www.amazon.com/author/marshaamoore Goodreads author page http://www.goodreads.com/marshaamoore

Tempting The Light L.A.M.P.S. Book One Bonnie Gill Genre: Humorous Paranormal Romance Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing Date of Publication: April 20, 2016 Word Count: 75,000 Cover Artist:Fiona Jayde

Book Description Bad luck magnet Abby Fitzpatrick gets fired, catches her boyfriend cheating with a mime, and is cursed by an evil genie who pops out of a tampon box. She’s bound and determined to remove the spell, and as fate would have it, the hottest guy she’s ever met is out to kill her.

River Stone, a Cryptid hunter for Legends and Myths Police Squad (L.A.M.P.S.), poses as a sheriff for Abby’s hometown of Haber Cove, New Jersey. He’s out to find and capture a man-eating gnome and bag the legendary Jersey Devil monster. Little does he realize, the woman who catches his heart is the same creature that he was sent to destroy.

Tempting the Light is the first novel in the L.A.M.P.S. series that features hunky secret agents who find true love while hunting and slaying dangerous Cryptids.

Book One: Legends and Myth Police Squad Series (L.A.M.P.S.) Excerpt: Abby Fitzgerald didn’t expect a surprise birthday party when she got home today. She didn’t expect bold colored daisies or pretty wrapped gifts. But most of all she didn’t expect to find her live-in boyfriend Burt, engaged in a spooge-a-paloosa fest with a chick dressed as a mime. Her crazy old grandmother warned her she would be cursed on her twenty-fifth birthday, but who would have believed it?

Burt slapped his body up against the mime from behind in a vigorous frenzy on the sleigh styled queensized bed. The woman’s hands and painted white face pressed up against an invisible window with his arm wrapped around her waist to keep her vertical.

Seeing Abby, the mime's lips parted into an "O" breaking the sex-me-up red heart painted across them.

She covered her mouth with her gloved hands.

Abby stared in horror at Burt with his mouth open and eyes closed, savoring the sheer ecstasy of screwing the mime. Her heart shattered shooting pulmonary shrapnel up her throat. He never looked like that when they were together.

"You’re freaking cheating on me?"

Burt’s eyes popped open, before he leaped from the bed. "Son of a . . ."

Abby dashed into the hallway bathroom, and rummaged in the crowded cabinet under the sink. "Where’s the damn Scrubbing Bubbles? Or better yet, the Borax?" She tossed a mildewed loofa and a half used bottle of honeysuckle hand lotion over her shoulder. They landed not far from Burt’s bare feet.

"Abby, I’m sorry. I was going to wait until after your birthday to tell you." He placed his hands on both sides of the bathroom door trim and leaned into the room. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I’m trying to find something to scour the sick image of you and your mime girlfriend from my eyes.

Better yet, I’ll get the melon ball scooper." Unable to contain herself, she whipped a can of lemon scented shaving cream at his head.

He ducked but the foaming missile bounced off his hair-sprayed-until-bullet-proof hair. His nostrils flared like an enraged bull. Too bad that was all he had in common with the animal. "You’re acting irrational. Stop it."

True. Right now she couldn’t even think straight. "Get away from me."

"It doesn’t have to be like this," he said under his breath.

She ignored his statement and shoved his skinny five-foot-four-inch unclothed body aside and marched back into the bedroom.

The mime perched on the edge of the bed with a sheet wrapped around her naked body. She held up both hands in a stop gesture and waved them back and forth.

"Abby. Please settle down." Burt trailed behind her.

"Settle down? Do you know why I came home early?"

"No." He glanced at his watch then looked absolutely baffled.

"Because I got fired today, Burt."

He tilted his head to the side and wrinkled his rather large forehead. "Oh. Well, how were you planning to help me pay the rent then?"

She wished she had a gun to shoot the stupid out of him.

"Get out of my house." She jerked on the mime’s cover-up sheet. The mime pulled back. Abby yanked again but then let go, the mime did a back-flip somersault off the bed. Her pasty white face popped up on the other side of the mattress like a demented rodent in a whack-a-mole game.

"This is my apartment," Burt raised his voice louder and pointed at the mime. "You don’t have to go anywhere."

The mime amplified her smile by pointing to the corners of her lips and twisting her fingers in her imaginary dimples, then she proceeded to skip and do a naked happy dance in circles around Abby.

Abby gave her a shove out of her way. "What the heck is her problem? Doesn’t she talk?"

Burt shrugged. "I don’t know. She hasn’t said a word since we met. It’s one of her perks."

Abby slammed her fist into the side of her leg to keep from punching the detestable smart-ass smirk that spread across his face. Her fantasy of a blissful marriage and white picket fence shattered in one measly, heinous moment.

"How long has this been going on? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know." She marched over to the closet, grabbed her blue duffle bag, and stuffed a few pairs of her size two jeans into it. She then looked down at his exposed mini-manly parts and raised a questioning brow.

Burt’s eyes widened to a bug-eyed look and then he scattered to pull on a pair of whity-tighties.

She stalked over to her dresser, pulled out different colored T-shirts, and a stack of clean underwear to shove in her bag. She hesitated for a moment. "The other day, I saw you in the jewelry store buying something.

I—I thought you might."

Before she could finish, the mime flashed the back of her hand at Abby. A pink princess cut rock set in a platinum setting adorned the ring finger of her left hand.

Burt sent a reprimanding scowl in the mime’s direction. "It just happened."

Her heart went numb first, before the shredding feeling of a weed-whacker tore through it.

"Wonderful." She stormed out of the room and into the kitchen, pulling worthless knick-knacks from their displayed posts and cramming them in her bag. A satisfied smile lifted her cheeks when she held up Burt’s prized Fifty States Commemorative Quarter collection for him to see.

"You wouldn’t dare. Put that back." He swiped at the coins but missed.

"Yes, I would and I’m leaving you." She jammed the cardboard display in the duffle, and swung her bag of belongings over her shoulder. "I hope you have many ugly clown babies." She slammed the apartment door behind her.

While trudging to her car the whooshing blood of each heart beat thumped like sonic booms in Abby’s ears. She tossed her bag into the trunk and marched over to Burt’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle. She pulled back her foot and gave it a hard kick in the tire. I wonder how many girlfriends he can cram into that thing at one time?

She sat behind her steering wheel in silence. Too bad she couldn’t pull a do-over for the day. Her grandmother must have been psychic.

About the Author: Bonnie Gill grew up in the suburbs right outside Chicago. As a child she loved making up ghost stories at night to scare her sisters and friends.

She writes Paranormal Romance with a twist of humor. When she isn’t writing you can find her on a haunted tour, volunteering at pet rescues, or digging around in her fairy garden waiting for fairies to show. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America, the Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal chapter and the Windy City chapter.

She lives in Northern Illinois with her four rescue dogs, a big fat cat, and her ever patient boyfriend who laughs at all her goofy jokes.

She loves to hear from her readers.

Website http://www.bonniegill.com/ Blog http://www.bonniegillsblog.blogspot.com/ Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Bonnie-Gill-340592565963637/ Twitter https://twitter.com/authorbonniegil Wattpad http://wattpad.com/BonnieGill

Bewitching Book Tour Packages and Pricing Book sales will magically soar during one of our spellbinding virtual book tours Bewitching Book Tours specialize in tours for paranormal, urban fantasy, and paranormal erotica books with prices just right for any author's budget

Every tour package includes:  a custom media kit  custom tour button and banners including a facebook header banner  the option to offer review copies to bloggers- the number of reviews actually received during a tour are not guaranteed- they depend on blogger participation  two tour pages at Bewitching Book Tours (one invitation tour page announcing the upcoming tour and one final tour page with schedule)  distribution to our mailing list of over 600 tour hosts  Daily promotion throughout the Bewitching social media outlets including multiple facebook pages and accounts, twitter, and google plus Giveaways are not necessary during tours but they are highly encouraged. Giveaways draw many more readers and viewers to tour stops plus they help increase your social media followers.

We utilize Rafflecopter entry forms so you can offer one prize package or several throughout your tourwinners are chosen at the end of the tour. $47.50 will get you the Release Day Blitz One day book release blitz includes  Posting on up to 20 blogs which will include- tour banner, your book info, excerpts, and fun tidbits (character profiles, music playlists, etc or whatever other materials you would like to provide)  a custom media kit  custom tour button and banners including a facebook header banner  the option to offer review copies to bloggers- the number of reviews actually received during a tour are not guaranteed- they depend on blogger participation  two tour pages at Bewitching Book Tours (one invitation tour page announcing the upcoming tour and one final tour page with schedule)  distribution to our mailing list of over 600 tour hosts  Daily promotion throughout the Bewitching social media outlets including multiple facebook pages and accounts, twitter, and google plus The release day blitz can be purchased alone or added to another tour package

$50.00 will get you the week long Bewitched Book Blitz Tour Your will receive 1 week of tour stops  Posting on approximately 5-7 stops which will include- tour banner, your book info, guest blogs, interviews, excerpts, and fun tidbits (character profiles, music playlists, etc or whatever other materials you would like to provide)  a custom media kit  custom tour button and banners including a facebook header banner  the option to offer review copies to bloggers- the number of reviews actually received during a tour are not guaranteed- they depend on blogger participation  two tour pages at Bewitching Book Tours (one invitation tour page announcing the upcoming tour and one final tour page with schedule)  distribution to our mailing list of over 600 tour hosts  Daily promotion throughout the Bewitching social media outlets including multiple facebook pages and accounts, twitter, and google plus This tour is perfect for an author to get a taste of how a book tour works Great for new releases or for the backlist book that could use a sales boost $85 will get you the 2 week Cast a Magic Spell Tour 2 weeks of tour stops

 Posting on approximately 10-14 stops which will include- tour banner, your book info, guest blogs, interviews, excerpts, and fun tidbits (character profiles, music playlists, etc or whatever other materials you would like to provide)  a custom media kit  custom tour button and banners including a facebook header banner  the option to offer review copies to bloggers- the number of reviews actually received during a tour are not guaranteed- they depend on blogger participation  two tour pages at Bewitching Book Tours (one invitation tour page announcing the upcoming tour and one final tour page with schedule)  distribution to our mailing list of over 600 tour hosts  Daily promotion throughout the Bewitching social media outlets including multiple facebook pages and accounts, twitter, and google plus

$140 will get you The Spellbinding Special 1 Month Tour This is our most popular so far- with it you'll receive one month of tour stops  Posting on approximately 20 stops which will include- tour banner, your book info, guest blogs, interviews, excerpts, and fun tidbits (character profiles, music playlists, etc or whatever other materials you would like to provide)  a custom media kit  custom tour button and banners including a facebook header banner  the option to offer review copies to bloggers- the number of reviews actually received during a tour are not guaranteed- they depend on blogger participation  two tour pages at Bewitching Book Tours (one invitation tour page announcing the upcoming tour and one final tour page with schedule)  distribution to our mailing list of over 600 tour hosts  Daily promotion throughout the Bewitching social media outlets including multiple facebook pages and accounts, twitter, and google plus

Kindle Free Book Blitz $50

Is your book going free on Kindle?

Get the most out of your Kindle free days with Bewitching Book Tours We are now offering a Kindle Free Book Blitz Tour- Up to 5 days of promotion just $50- this includes:  Posting on numerous blogs that will announce that your book is free is Amazon  a custom media kit  custom tour button and banners including a facebook header banner  the option to offer review copies to bloggers- the number of reviews actually received during a tour are not guaranteed- they depend on blogger participation

 two tour pages at Bewitching Book Tours (one invitation tour page announcing the upcoming tour and one final tour page with schedule)  Daily promotion throughout the Bewitching social media outlets including multiple facebook pages and accounts, twitter, and google plus

Cover Reveals are $45 Add a live Facebook party to any package for $100 A Facebook Party includes the coordination, set up and moderation of a live Facebook party (event) page.

The party will last for about two hours.

A party page will be created and moderated by Bewitching Book Tours.

This is a great way to interact with readers. They can post questions and the author can answer in real time.

The author will be responsible for providing party content (book/author facts and links, quizzes, games, and prizes). Bewitching Book Tours can help with brainstorming ideas for content and prizes.

The Facebook party can be purchased by itself or added to a tour package.

Please understand Bewitching Book Tours is not responsible for missed your stops on your tour. After the tour is scheduled and all of the tour materials have been sent out, it is the responsibility of the Blogger who signed up for the tour to post materials on their designated day.

Bewitching Book Swag Bewitching Book Tours offers custom book swag creations that can be added on to tour packages or ordered separately.

We offer high quality, hand crafted, one of a kind items made to match your book. Currently we are offering beaded bookmarks, beaded keychains, purse charms, belt loop charms, wine glass charms, and earrings.

These items can be created with colored beads to match the colors in your book cover.

We can also add small charms to coordinate with book content- we have a wide variety of charms to choose from and if we don't have something that matches your book we can get it.

Some of the silver charms available are: vampire fangs, wolves, witch hats, keys and locks, books, hearts, haunted houses, bats, foxes, hamsas, dragons, sugar skulls, rhinestone skull and crossbones, high heeled shoes, Fleur de lis, masquerade masks, owls and many more.

You can also opt to have the items completely customized by adding your book cover to a metal charm.

The book covers are encased in small metal photo frame charms and sealed in resin for a high quality charm that looks fabulous and is very durable.

Our goal is to create custom book swag that represents your book.

Whereafter Afterlife Book 3 Terri Bruce Genre: Contemporary fantasy/paranormal Publisher: Mictlan Press Date of Publication: March 15, 2016 ISBN: 9780991303649 Number of pages: 345 Word Count: 100,000 Formats available: Paperback and all ebook formats Cover Artist: Shelby Robinson – artwork Jennifer Stolzer – layout and design

Book Description: How Far Would You Go To Get Your Life Back?

Stuck in the afterlife on an island encircled by fire and hunted by shadows bent on trapping them there forever, Irene and Andras struggle to hold onto the last vestiges of their physical selves, without which they can never return to the land of the living. But it’s not just external forces they’ll have to fight as the pair grow to realize they have different goals. Irene still clings to the hope that she can somehow return to her old life—the one she had before she died—while Andras would be only too glad to embrace oblivion.

Meanwhile, Jonah desperately searches for a way to cross over to the other side, even if doing so means his death. His crossing over, however, is the one thing that could destroy Irene’s chances of returning home.

Too many obstacles, too many people to save, and the thing Irene most desperately wants—to return to her old life—seems farther away than ever. Only one thing is clear: moving on will require making a terrible sacrifice.

Excerpt: Andras grunted, the sound filled with suspicion. Irene bent down to tie her shoelace, as much to avoid eye contact as anything. When she straightened up, something in the distance caught her eye, shimmering like a mirage. She squinted, not sure she was really seeing what she thought she saw.

“You know, now might be a good time for you to tell me what it was like to live in a castle,” she said.

Andras shook his head, sadly, as if Irene had disappointed him. “You cling too much to the past.

Forget the trappings of life. Free your mind from these longings, and so, free your soul. Only then will we be able to escape these shackles and enter Heaven to rest at the side of God.” Why did he always have to argue about everything? “For God’s sake,” she said, exasperated, “just answer the question!”

“Wherefore?”

Irene pointed to the hulking structure in the distance. “Because,” she said as Andras whirled around to see what she was pointing at, “correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks like a castle.”

“Wow!” Irene said, her eyes roving over the dark, crenellated structure hulking in the far distance. It gleamed dully, the color of burnt blood in a fading afternoon sun. “What the hell do you think that is?”

Andras grunted. “As you said—Hell.”

Irene frowned at him, but her lips quirked in amusement. “Why do you have to be so negative? It could just as easily be Heaven. God is supposed to live in a palace, right—the whole ‘my father’s house has many rooms’ thing? A castle is just a type of palace.”

Andras gave her a dry look. “Does that look like Heaven?”

Irene was on the verge of agreeing that the castle did not in any way look how she imagined Heaven when it shimmered, as if the fading sunlight had been redirected by mirrors. Light rippled across the castle’s surface and the dull, dark, burnt-blood color transformed into gleaming, bright, silver-white. Crisp white pennants flapped from the corners as if whipped by wind. Irene thought she could hear them snapping crisply.

Irene looked at Andras, and he looked at her. His expression made it clear that he had seen the same transformation she had. It was as if the building was trying to trick them into coming closer.

About the Author: Terri Bruce has been making up adventure stories for as long as she can remember and won her first writing award when she was twelve.

Like Anne Shirley, she prefers to make people cry rather than laugh, but is happy if she can do either. She produces fantasy and adventure stories from a haunted house in New England where she lives with her husband and three cats. She is the author of the Afterlife Series, which includes Hereafter (Afterlife #1) and Thereafter (Afterlife #2) and several short stories including “Welcome to OASIS” (“Dear Robot” anthology, Kelly Jacobson publisher) and “The Well” (“Scratching the Surface” anthology, Third Flatiron Press).

Dishing with Chef Yon Yurdlemon

By D.S. AUFFENORDE Exclusive to the Kensington City Examiner

The pieces to figuring out who this illusive Electromancer superhero was were beginning to fall into place, slowly but surely. That’s how it goes with investigatory reporting. Late last night, I got some inside gossip from an unsuspecting patron at the Kensington City Gourmet Grocers. A fellow who goes by the name of Yon Yurdlemon was out shopping for olive oil. He said he was out of his special brand that he imports from Italia, that his batch had become contaminated through no fault of his own. I would’ve overlooked the racket he was making about the store not carrying brands acceptable to his palate until I heard him mention the name Alexa Manchester. She’s the heiress to the Manchester estate and holdings—we’re talking the world’s energy heiress. Yurdlemon let slip that she was hosting a dinner party with exclusive guests, that his reputation was on the line, that he needed his olive oil, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if wizards, warlocks, and superheroes showed up as uninvited guests with the way things were going around the Manchester mansion. I couldn’t resist imposing upon the chef.

DA: You’re that world renowned chef, Yon Yurdlemon. Three-star Michelin??

YY: Three star, bah! There are not enough stars for Chef Yurdlemon. Now if you wouldn’t mind, Chef Yurdlemon is on a quest for olive oil. Chef does not chitchat with the local bourgeoisie.

DA: How I’ve longed to have the privilege of tasting one of your creations. I’d even be satisfied with just one meager teaspoonful of your porridge.

YY: Of course you would, everyone would. But not everyone lives a privileged life. Now, I really must get back to reaming out this bumbling fool who calls himself a gourmet grocer. Sir … sir, a moment more … [The grocer disappeared behind a counter.]

DA: [I grasped the chef’s arm before he could get away.] I may be able to direct you to a back-alley salesman for some of this olive oil you’re seeking.

YY: How dare you, madam! [Chef Yurdlemon shook his arm off but then slyly glanced furtively in both directions.] Where might I find this black marketer?

DA: First, it’s going to require a little tit-for-tat.

YY: [Chef Yurdlemon appeared flustered, perplexed, perhaps even discombobulated.] I never gossip, especially when it comes to Alexa Manchester and her misguided infatuations with butlers, mayors, or blue-archer clouds. An heiress and a cloud. I haven’t the foggiest notion of what she sees in him. The utter insanity of it all. [Chef Yurdlemon grasped the sides of his head.] To work for a family that exhibits such frivolity. I must be decidedly mad. Still, they are the only ones in all of Britannia capable of appreciating my supreme talents.

DA: So, are you saying that the innocent Ms. Manchester is really a player? Likes the guys, does she?

YY: I never speak of a lady in those terms. Far be it from me to call anyone a tart. Ms. Manchester is lovely. She defines lovely. It’s not her fault that The Mayor calls upon her repeatedly.

A stalker, that Mayor Baumgartner. She should take out a restraining order.

DA: What’s Alexa Manchester’s relationship with Electromancer?

YY: I know nothing about that. I am a chef, not a psychic!

DA: You mentioned that strange things were happening at the Manchester estate?

YY: Yes, yes. It all started with that ungodly rock the late Mickey Manchester—God rest his gentle soul—brought home one night. Electromite, he called it. Tried laying the thing on my counters and it fried two dozen eggs and sautéed a filet mignon. I adamantly refuse to have anything to do with it. And under no circumstances will I allow it in my kitchen. No indeed, no Electromite. It’s only a dirty, filthy rock, if you ask me. A piece of coal for barbecue. Chef Yurdlemon does not do barbecue. It’s bad enough that the butler, Sigfred Sawyer, rumbles around in my pantry. He’s a latenight thief. Takes the morning scones, I’ll have you know.

DA: Have you met Electromancer?

YY: I can’t say another word. No, I refuse. Second grade quality olive oil will have to do, as dreadful as the thought is. Oh, I’m ruined! [Chef Yurdlemon scuttles away.]

I thought of following but decided not to. Chef Yon Yurdlemon had spilled the expensive gourmet beans as much as he was going to. Reading between the lines of his spilled speech, it appears that Alexa Manchester is a bit of a player, respectable reputation or not. Men flock to her and throw themselves at her feet. She probably has a different date every night of the week. And to think, she’s supposed to be engaged to Mayor Bobby Baumgartner. Tomorrow is a new day, and I’ll just keep plugging along trying to get to know more about these evasive citizens of Kensington City.

Something is bound to spring up.

Follow along as my investigatory column continues to provide more and more facts about Electromancer and the citizens of her community. In the meantime, you can also learn more about Electromancer and others in the romantic, thrilling, superhero novel, Electromancer.

Electromancer Daco Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Superhero, Paranormal, Thriller/Suspense Publisher: Crimson Romance Date of Publication: 2-1-16 ISBN 10: 1-4405-9687-5 ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9687-2 eISBN 10: 1-4405-9688-3 eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9688-9 ASIN: B01AOH7BFA Number of pages: 234 Word Count: 70,000 Cover design by Fred Machuca, Illustration by Ricky Ostendi

Book Description: With a heart as pure as platinum and electricity at her fingertips!

She soars like a falcon and travels at the speed of light!

She’s … ELECTROMANCER! When arch villain Momo threatens to destroy the world with The Big Zapper—a weapon of mass destruction the likes of which has never been seen before—it’s up to Alexa Manchester and her new electricity-harnessing superpowers to stop him.

With a little help from her sexy chauffeur, Sigfred Sawyer, and some exciting encounters with the mysterious and handsome Blue Arrow, soon Alexa’s love life is charged up, too. And to defeat the seemingly invincible Momo, it might just take the naturally super power of love to save the day.

Offering all the Kabam! Pow! Zap! of beloved comic book sagas with the beating heart of a love story, this over-the-top, genre-blending send-up is sure to delight superhero fans and romance readers alike.

Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/5GE2uOWM_3M Amazon Indigo

BN

Googleplay

Kobo iTunes

Readers of both comic book sagas and romance novels will find the sparks that fly between Alexa and Sigfred very electrifying indeed. ~ Colleen Sargent Library Journal Excerpt from Chapter 6 Sigfred couldn’t be sure whether the mayor’s proposal pleased or displeased her, but it wasn’t his place to ask. He could do one thing—help her get that blasted ring off her finger. He went to the pantry and retrieved a bottle of olive oil—cold pressed extra virgin, of course, because this was Yurdlemon’s kitchen.

“Let me help you get that off,” he said.

“No, I’ll do it myself.” She paused suddenly, staring at the big green stone as if transfixed.

“Maybe I’m not sure I want it off.” She shook her head. “But I do, I do. Oh, I don’t know what I want.” She sighed. “Wait! Yes, I do. I want to talk about last night.”

“Of course, if you wish.” He waited for her to speak, but she seemed stumped.

Then she said, “What did you think about last night?”

He cleared his throat and said, “Yes, right. It was quite—” “Sigfred!” She slapped her hands down on the sink and looked back at him. “It was nothing like quite, it was more like Oh-My-God in the highest order. No offense.”

“Yes, quite.”

“Don’t keep saying quite! You could say yes, shocking or even jiminy crickets or holy ‘expletive omitted,’ but there was nothing quite about last night. I mean you were there, you saw everything.”

He couldn’t think of an appropriate response—at least, not one that he could articulate to his employer.

“Am I right, you did see everything?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It was unintentional, of course, Ms. Manchester. I found you lying on the floor next to The Magpie.”

Her eyes widened, and her eyebrows arched upward in disapproval. “I didn’t mean that, Sigfred. I’m talking about my hands shooting those bolts of lightning from my fingertips—pure electricity!”

He cleared his throat again. “Ah, yes. And there was that.”

“It’s ridiculous. Absurd. People don’t emit electricity. Gladys says I should see a doctor. That I must have been exposed to the Electromite. Am I cursed?”

“It doesn’t seem to be life-threatening. On the contrary, you’ve become stronger by it, or so it seems. If I’m not mistaken, you saved the child from drowning because of it. Perhaps it’s not a curse, but a gift.”

She seemed to consider this, absentmindedly pulling at the mayor’s ring.

“Just a moment,” he said. “I think I can assist you with that little problem you’re having.” He opened the bottle of olive oil and drizzled some over her ring finger. Then, very gently, he began working the ring back and forth. He thrilled when he touched her, but she didn’t seem to react.

“I can fly, you know,” she said, her tone surprisingly casual.

“Yes, madame. I suspected that’s how you saved the boy.”

“What happens if I try to fly, and then these magical abilities suddenly vanish?”

“Perhaps they won’t ever vanish.”

“Yes, perhaps you’re right,” she said in a quiet, serious voice. “And that would mean I haven’t been infected at all. Instead, I’ve been inalterably changed. It would mean that there’s no cure. It means my body and spirit have been transformed into something ... alien. It means I’m not Alexa anymore.”

“You’ll always be Alexa,” he said, reaching up and tipping her chin toward him with slippery fingers. His eyes locked on hers, and he spoke with hushed solemnity. “Nothing can ever change that.” He wanted to call her lovely Alexa, kind Alexa, beautiful Alexa, but of course, that was impossible.

“When I was inside The Magpie, I heard my father’s voice. Is that crazy?”

“Not at all, Ms. Manchester.”

She studied his face. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Not at all.” And he meant it. Things went silent as they looked into each other’s eyes. Sigfred had just swayed imperceptibly closer to her when a sudden dull thunk interrupted them. The ring had finally fallen off, clattering into the sink. The moment was lost. He realized, with some awkwardness, that he was still touching her face and dropped his hand.

She colored and looked away, speaking a bit brusquely. “My father called me Electromancer. I get the ‘electro’ part of it, but what’s a ‘mancer’? Have you any clue?”

“You’ve got me there, madame.”

“Mancer? It must mean something.”

“Almost like Romancer.”

Her jaw dropped. “Oh, Sigfred. Not you, too.”

He stiffened. He wasn’t about to explore his feelings with her or to take the liberty of allowing his romantic thoughts about Alexa to go unrestrained. It was his utmost duty to remain her servant and protector, always physically near but emotionally distant. But when she’d transformed into this

Electromancer, he had to admit to himself that she was absolutely and without a doubt the sexiest woman alive. Any red-blooded male would be hard pressed to deny that fact.

“What are you going to do about the mayor’s proposal?” he blurted out. So much for knowing his place. “He’s not worthy of you.”

“Bobby Baumgartner is the mayor of Kensington City. He might be prime minister one day.”

“I don’t care if he’s prime minister, king, and president of the Americanas combined. He’s beneath you.”

“And just who are you to talk about rank?”

Her words stung, the pain more intense than the damage those thugs had inflicted the previous night. “Quite right, madame,” he said. “My station is lowly. But I’m one thing the mayor isn’t. I’m a man of integrity.”

“I saw the way you looked at me last night. I may have been Electromancer, but I know when a man is gawking at me.”

“I wasn’t gawking. I was appreciating the qualities of ... You’re a beautiful woman, madame.”

“You mean, Electromancer is beautiful.”

“No, madame. I mean you. Alexa Manchester.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Chef Yurdlemon bellowed from across the room. “Who is invading my kitchen? You are trespassers.” He pointed at Sigfred. “Especially you, Sigfred Sawyer.”

Sigfred nodded slowly. He was trespassing, though not in the way Yurdlemon meant.

“This mess with the olive oil is all my fault,” Alexa said. “I was using it to try to get this ring off. It was stuck on my finger. Sigfred was just trying to help me.”

“You used my cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil to remove a ring?” Yurdlemon cried. “Such olive oil is not for ring removal. Such olive oil is to make a divine dinner as only I can make it. The olives for that oil come from a small orchard in Sicily that produces only two hundred cases a year!

Do you know what that costs? More than a Chateau Latour Bordeaux. More than a fine Sauternes. I need it for my dinner preparations. Oh, everything is ruined now. Each and every minute of preparation is accounted for. There won’t be time enough left in the day, not now. Not when I’m forced to return to the market, where I can only get inferior olive oil.” Chef Yurdlemon grabbed the sides of his head and looked as if he were about to sob. It wouldn’t have been the first time. …

About the Author: Daco is an award-winning author of the espionage-thriller series featuring CIA operative Jordan Jakes. Her debut novel, The Libra Affair, was a 2013 #1 best seller. Of The Libra Affair, Publishers Weekly said, “The keenly sharp intelligent female characters soar in this edge-of-your-seat adventure...”

Her short story The Pisces Affair was a 2015 Global Ebook Awards double gold medalist (Best Thriller Fiction and Best Science Fiction), a 2015 Shelf Unbound Notable 100, a 2015 Royal Palm Literary Award winner, and a Publishers Weekly “PW Pick”.” In its review of The Pisces Affair, Publishers Weekly wrote, “Jakes is a lively and witty narrator with the wits and skills of James Bond, and readers will savor her fresh perspective on being a woman in the male-dominated spy world.”

Her story The Virgo Affair is part of Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded (Diversion Press, October 2015), an anthology, including numerous best-selling authors.

Electromancer (F+W Media, Inc./Crimson Romance, February 2016), is her first superhero novel, featuring Electromancer and Blue Arrow.

Upcoming works include The Scorpio Affair, a Jordan Jakes novel, and The Ophiuchus Affair, another Jordan Jakes short story.

Daco holds a B.A. and M.A.S. from The University of Alabama in Huntsville and a J.D. from the Cumberland School of Law. She is a member of the International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Authors Guild, Alabama Writers Forum, Florida Writers, and Alabama State Bar. Website: http://www.authordaco.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuthorDaco Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Daco.Author/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/ Google+: https://plus.google.com/111619918307592399080 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daco-s-auffenorde-64619039