May and June 2016 Bewitching Book Tours Magazine

Bewitching Book Tours Magazine Issue 45 May/June 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

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Table of Contents May June 2016 Page 5 Spring-Heeled Jack with Kirsten Weiss Page 9 Inspiration for Ambushing Malachi with Electra Gajdos Page 12 Southern Eccentrics: Writing Funny When Life Isn’t with lexi George Page 18 Dark Siren by Eden Ashley Page 21 The Cowboy and the Vampire: The Last Sunset by Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall Page 25 Keep the Reader Guessing with Leonard D. Hilley II Page 31 Defeat Writer's Block with Luke Ahearn Page 37 Passion of a Scottish Warrior by Sky Purington Page 40 The Queen’s Dance by Jamie K. Schmidt Page 42 The Wedding Dress by Lisa Mondello Page 46 Inspired by Horrible Things with Neil Rochford Page 49 Top Ten Things To Do At HallowRead with Rachel Rawlings Page 52 Wolf Clan Shifters by Ann Gimpel Page 64 Quick Tips for Authors- Guide to Using a Pen Name with Roxanne Rhoads

Spring-Heeled Jack is perhaps one of the least known of the Victorian monsters. Vampires, werewolves, and mad scientists such as Dr. Jekyll and the Invisible Man have overshadowed this sinister character. But Spring-Heeled Jack was a real fear for Londoners of that era.

The monster was first sighted in Victorian London, and he makes an appearance in my latest book, A Midsummer Night’s Mechanical. Spring-heeled Jack was known both for his demonic appearance and his ability to leap high into the air and pounce on his victims.

Spring-Heeled Jack was first reported in 1837. He leapt out of an alley and molested a young servant named Mary Stevens. When she screamed, he ran away. She claimed he had claws, and was “as cold and clammy as a corpse.” The next day, he jumped in front of a moving carriage, causing the coach driver to lose control and crash. Several witnesses claimed Jack then jumped over a nine-foot wall while laughing in a sinister fashion.

The urban legend morphed. Soon, reports emerged that Spring-Heeled Jack was a cloaked demon with claws. He was able to spew “blue and white flames” from his mouth, while his eyes were “balls of fire.” He had a penchant for harassing attractive young ladies, and he became one of the most notorious characters of the early Victorian era, with reports of his activities throughout the 1840s and 1870s.

The women were certainly accosted, but were they hysterical in their descriptions of Spring-Heeled Jack, or was their attacker actually dressed as a fiend? Jack was reportedly able to scale buildings and leap walls. Was he? Or was that an exaggeration as well?

From a writerly perspective, Spring-Heeled Jack makes a wonderful monster. A fictional Jack might be skilled in one of the martial arts that uses jumping and landing on the victim as a form of attack, such as Indonesian style. In my steampunk novel, A Midsummer Night’s Mechanical, “Jack” is equipped with diabolical mechanical devices which enable him to spring large distances. (I’m fairly certain I’m not the only steampunk writer to use that idea). Or with his hideous appearance and spewing flame, the monster could be supernatural in origin. That might explain why the last reported sighting of Spring-Heeled Jack was in… the 1980s.

A Midsummer Night’s Mechanical Sensibility Grey Series of Steampunk Suspense Book 3

Kirsten Weiss Genre: Steampunk/suspense Publisher: Misterio Press Date of Publication: May 1, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-944767-00-6 ASIN: B01DOKO6CA Number of pages: 224 Word Count: 69,000 Cover Artist: Kirsten Weiss Book Description: A Midsummer Murder The California Territory, 1849 Blamed for burning down the San Francisco wharf, clockwork inventor, Sensibility Grey has spent the last three months in hiding. Now all she wants is to depart the gold-crazy boomtown for a new life in the East. So when the owner of a traveling theater offers her work embellishing his mechanical stage, she turns him down. Then he turns up dead on her doorstep along with his enigmatic stage.

An explorer of the mysteries of aether, Sensibility has her own secrets to keep, and adversaries who’ll stop at nothing to learn them. Is the mechanical stage a part of a bigger game? Or the key to unlocking her true, magical potential?

A Midsummer Night’s Mechanical is book three in the Sensibility Grey series of steampunk suspense.

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CHAPTER ONE San Francisco, California Territory, June 1849.

Sensibility sat cross-legged upon her bed and tried not to think. She tried not to think of the ache where her stays pinched her back. She tried not to think of tomorrow’s journey across the American wilderness. She tried not to think about the clamor of banging drums and tootling fifes and— “Oh, good gad!” She clenched her fist, pieces of quartz crystal biting into her flesh. Sensibility sprang from the bed and threw open the boarding house window. Oppressive heat, acrid from the nearby outhouse, rolled into the room. Wrinkling her nose, she leaned out over the fenced back yard and craned her neck. The afternoon sun streamed through the laundry, hanging limp on the line. From her position, she couldn’t see the street procession. But neither could she avoid hearing their blasted parade.

Something scuttled near her elbow, and she jerked away, slamming her head on the window frame. White pain arced through her skull.

A baby raccoon, not much larger than the palm of her hand, cowered on the other end of the narrow sill. It scrabbled, hunching into a tight ball, trapped on the high ledge.

“Ow.” She winced, rubbing her throbbing head and glad her chignon had taken the brunt of the blow. “How on earth did you get up here?”

The raccoon mewled.

“You shall have to make your own way home, for you cannot come inside. Mrs. Watson has a strict rule about animals inside her boarding house.”

Gently, so as not to disturb the creature, she shut the window. The raccoon peered over the ledge then looked at her, his expression plaintive.

Attempting to ignore the animal, she paced the denuded room, her brown skirts swishing.

They had ample space to swish. Nearly all her belongings lay compressed into a single carpetbag, set before the empty wardrobe. The bedroom had an air of abandonment.

Unsettled, Sensibility rattled the quartz crystals in her hand and glanced to the window.

The animal stared inside, forlorn.

She tugged at her collar. It was such a small thing. But rules were rules. “You found your way onto the ledge.

You can find your own way down.”

Sensibility turned to the journal open on the desk. Her sketch of an unworldly creature she’d once encountered scowl from the page. Frowning, she slammed the book shut. It had been careless of her to have left it open. Strange, she couldn’t remember examining the journal before she’d gone downstairs to retrieve her luncheon.

The crystals pressed into her palm. She was so close to a breakthrough in aether technology, but the clues remained buried. Buried in the remains of her father’s last journal. Hidden in a journal from a traveling occultist.

Scattered throughout her own notes and theories. One day soon, she would fit those pieces together. It was madness to hope she could solve that problem today.

Sensibility opened her hand and gazed at the quartz crystals. She’d mastered the use of aether to power small devices. But aether had other applications, such as distance control and distance vision. These applications eluded her.

“There has to be a way…”

She glanced at the window.

The animal raised itself on its hind legs and pressed its tiny black paws to the glass.

Sensibility groaned. “I know I’ll regret this.” Pocketing the crystals, she opened the window.

The raccoon cowered.

“You,” she said, “being a wild animal, will attempt to bite me if I rescue you. But I will have none of it. I shall pick you up, I shall take you outside, and you shall neither bite nor scratch. Do you understand?”

In a swift motion, she grasped it by the scruff of the neck and lifted it inside. It writhed, and her grasp on it loosened.

She gasped. “Don’t….”

The raccoon dropped to her desk and shook its head. Whiskers twitching, it scuttled to her abandoned luncheon tray and made free with a bit of toast.

About the Author: Kirsten Weiss worked overseas for nearly fourteen years, in the fringes of the former USSR and in South-east Asia. Her experiences abroad sparked an interest in the effects of mysticism and mythology, and how both are woven into our daily lives.

Now based in San Mateo, CA, she writes steampunk suspense and paranormal mysteries, blending her experiences and imagination to create a vivid world of magic and mayhem. Kirsten has never met a dessert she didn’t like, and her guilty pleasures are watching Ghost Whisperer re-runs and drinking red wine.

Sign up for her newsletter to get a free copy of the full fantasy novel, The Alchemical Detective, and updates on work at: http://kirstenweiss.com Blog: http://parayournormal.wordpress.com Twitter: @KirstenWeiss Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kirsten.weiss/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5346143.Kirsten_Weiss

length urban her latest

Inspiration for Ambushing Malachi I came up with the idea of Wolvens when my mind started exploring what would werewolves look like, if they walked among us all the time, never having to shift. And then, when my little brother Shawn, went into the military, I found a correlation between the military structure and a pack of wolves out in the wild. As kids, my brother and I were always fascinated with new developments in technology, some of our theories on weapons, transportation and building structure found its way into my stories. Next thing I knew, the Wolven became a combination of my favorite genres to read, Werewolves, Sci-fi and Romance.

Malachi and Jez’s story wasn’t intended to be the first book. I had already written Kiara and Blade’s story, and it was turning into a complete disaster. A friend suggested a prequel to Kiara. The idea didn’t sit well with me, so I started to think about Kiara’s brothers and the direction I had plans for each of them. Malachi was the one who stuck out to me with his inventions and not being a gamma, a soldier like his brothers or beta like his father, and was the complete opposite of an omega. From there, his and Jez’s story started to grow.

One of the things that made Malachi and Jez’s story special for me was using the name Ramrod for the living alloy. It came from my brother, Shawn’s Humvee, when he was stationed in Iraq, and it was a small way to honor him.

Ambushing Malachi Wolvens, Eastern Province Book One Electra Gajdos Genre: Paranormal Sci-Fi Romance Publisher: Electra Gajdos Date of Publication: December 29, 2015

ASIN: B019YRTR94 Number of pages: 118 pages Word Count: 35,640 words Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Book Description: An unexpected kiss starts a chain of events that will change his life…

Malachi Keen’s frustration grows as he hunts for his sister, Kiara. The search leads him to more trouble than just an irritating sibling when he finds himself in the embrace of a tantalizing stranger. What turns out to be a chance encounter will change his life forever.

Jez Baldovino owes a life debt to an influential Wolven. To pay up, she must complete what she thought would be a simple task – retrieve some stolen data. The situation quickly becomes complicated and she is forced to use a handsome, unsuspecting stranger.

Malachi realizes that not everything is what it seems; unknown enemies and a beautiful female determined to escape him was not in his plans for the day. His plans change when danger surrounds Jez. There is only one male that is allowed to hunt the woman who ambushed him with a kiss – him!

Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/dY-W2L4Vlms Amazon Amazon UK Amazon Australia iBooks

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About the Author: Electra Gajdos is from Winnemucca, Nevada and currently lives in West Michigan. She is a wife and the mother of two beautiful genius children. (Maybe not true geniuses, but a mother is always partial to her kids.) She won’t bore you with her childhood love of all things sci-fi and the game of chess. But she will let you know she once called the police to save a man from jumping off a three-story building. What she didn’t know was the man was a mannequin and part of an advertisement. No lie! Thankfully, it gave the police officer a good laugh for the night. This is just one her many good deeds gone wonky, and she looks forward to sharing more of them with you.

Chat with http://Electra at www.electragajdos.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/electra.gajdos Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14816293.Electra_Gajdos Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Electra-Gajdos/e/B01A2985CS/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElectraGajdos

Southern Eccentrics: Writing Funny When Life Isn’t Hi, I’m Lexi George, and I write funny. Or, at least, I hope I do. But, as the title of this post suggests, life isn’t always funny. So, why humor?

Because.

Because my day job involves the ugly underbelly of mankind. I’m a criminal appellate lawyer for a large state agency, a prosecutor on paper. That means I spend my days reading criminal transcripts that set out, in graphic detail, the various, inventive, and extremely rude things humans do to one another. Humor is a coping mechanism that keeps me sane.

Because my dad was a very funny guy. When a young cousin of mine died and we were left sweltering in a hot car outside the funeral home while the grieving mother said her last goodbyes over the casket, my daddy quipped, “When I die, shove a hambone up my ass and let the dogs drag me off.”

Turns out, Daddy didn’t get that funeral. We couldn’t afford it. He was a big guy, and three-dog funerals are pricey. We cremated him, instead, and threw ink pens into the hole when we buried his ashes. But, that’s another story . . .

Because I was a tall, skinny, awkward teenager with big feet and glasses. Think Olive Oyl from Popeye with pale skin and dirty blond hair. Humor was my way of fitting in. If I laughed at myself, that was okay. Far better to make the joke than be the joke.

Because Southerners are funny people and I was raised Southern. We talk funny, slow and sweet, like caramel, and we have a funny way of looking at things, and an encyclopedia of funny expressions. Southerners are highly descriptive and full of wise sayings. We can’t just say somebody’s ugly. We say, “She’s uglier ʼn a mud fence daubed with lizards.” We don’t say someone lacks intelligence. We say, “He’s dumber ʼn a bag of frog turds.” Southerners can’t get right to the

point. Language is the point, and ours is rich and colorful, and ever-changing. We don’t talk. We sing, slow and syrupy, our voices caressing each word and drawing it out, taking a one-syllable word and making it into a sonnet. “Damn,” becomes day-yumm. “Lord,” becomes Low-ward-duh, and “hell”, becomes hay-yull. And don’t even get me started on the “S” word. That one goes on for days.

I tried to write dark and angsty. I really did. When I sat down to write Demon Hunting in Dixie, the first book in the demon hunter series, I thought it was going to be a different book, brooding and dramatic. Gothic, even. Dark Encounter was the original name. Hoo boy, talk about your epic fails.

When the dog starting talking, I knew I was toast.

Humor took a backseat to life in 2013, when I went through a divorce. I had started Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb. Having worried myself to a frazzle over book three, I was excited about book four.

This one was going to be a piece of cake. Easy. Lighthearted. The words were going to flow. A few chapters in, my life imploded, and I became the poster child for the writer no one wants to be, the one who misses her deadline. By, like, a year and four months. The writing stopped and the muse went to Albuquerque. For a while there, I didn’t think she was going to come back. When she did slink home, she was bloated and sulky, and her tail feathers were dragging. To this day, I don’t know what she did in Albuquerque, but it whatever it was made her cranky as . . . well, as hay-yull. We finished the book, by the hardest, and I found my laugh track again.

If you asked me how to write funny, I couldn’t tell you. Don’t have a clue. I just write the stories and see what happens. Frequently, the characters surprise me. It’s a mystery, humor, like writing. I don’t know where it comes from, but I’m glad it’s there.

It keeps the darkness at bay.

Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb Demon Hunting Series Book Four Lexi George Genre: paranormal romance Publisher: Kensington Date of Publication: May 24, 2016 ISBN: 9781601831774 ASIN: B014NWMH0G Number of pages: 452 Word Count: 105,000 Cover Artist: Lyrical Press

Book Description: Deep South legends. Deep fried curses. Deep dish revenge . . .

This Debutante Is Having A Ball!

Way down south in the land of cotton, one belle's plans are soon forgotten--when Sassy Peterson drives her Maserati off the road to avoid a deer and lands smack-dab in the proverbial creek without a paddle. The Alabama heiress should have known something weird was going on when she saw the deer's ginormous fangs. Hello, Predator Bambi!

But nothing can prepare her for the leather-clad, muscle-bound, golden-eyed sex god who rescues her. Who wears leather in May? That's just the first of many questions Sassy has when her savior reveals he's a demon hunter named Grim. Also: Why would a troop of fairies want to give her magical powers and rainbow hair?

Why would a style-challenged beast called the Howling Hag want to hunt her down?

Most importantly, what's a nice debutante like Sassy doing in a place like this anyway? Besides feeling Grim ...

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Excerpt: “Sugar,” Sassy murmured. She laid her head on Grim’s shoulder. “Fairies.”

With a drowsy sigh, she relaxed against him and went to sleep.

Grim stilled. A surge of lust hit him, hard and fierce. Sassy smelled delightful, a dizzying combination of summer roses and female. Curling tendrils of her hair lifted to caress his jaw, like flowers reaching for the sun.

I am her sword and shield. The vow rose unbidden in his mind. Here and now I vow to protect her, from anyone or anything that threatens her.

An admirable sentiment, I am sure, the Provider said, but hardly necessary. She leaves tomorrow, and you return to the hunt. That is good, is it not?

Yes, of course.

Then why the hollow ache in his chest?

About the Author: Lexi George writes snarky, Southern-fried paranormal romance for Kensington. Her debut novel, Demon Hunting in Dixie, was released in 2011, and a novella and two more demon hunter books followed. Demon Hunting in a Dive Bar, the third book in the series, was nominated for a RITA in 2014. The fourth book, Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb, is due to be released May 24, 2016. Lexi enjoys reading and writing romance, but her first love is fantasy. A Meddle of Wizards is the story of Raine Stewart, a sheltered, sickly young woman who comes into her own when she’s transported to a magical world, discovers her burgeoning powers as an adept, and faces the evil wizard who killed her parents. Lexi’s day job as an appellate attorney requires reading transcripts filled with murder, mayhem, and worse.

Perhaps this is why she enjoys stories filled with humor, action, adventure, and magical creatures. She has a violent aversion to sad movies, having been scarred by

Old Yeller at the age of nine. She drinks tea, not coffee, and has never seen The Exorcist, because she is a world-class chicken. She is the third of four children, with all the attendant neuroses.

Website: www.lexigeorge.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexigeorge12 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lexi-George-145551795493851/

Dark Siren Book 1 Eden Ashley Genre: YA Paranormal Romance Publisher: Eden Ashley Date of Publication: July 2013 ISBN: 0989963217 ASIN: B00DSPPOX2 Number of pages: 427 Word Count: 100K Cover Artist: Victoria Faye Book Description: To survive, their bond must be unbreakable.

When the mysterious and passionate Rhane rescues Kali from an attacker in the theater parking lot, they form an immediate, smoldering connection. But Kali doesn't remember Rhane or anything from their past. As far as Kali knows, she's just a seventeen-year-old kid coping with an insatiable hunger for the “spark� or energy of others, feeding on classmates to survive.

A unique artifact—one that may hold the key to returning Kali’s memories—is uncovered by the archaeology firm where she works part-time, sending Kali and Rhane on a dangerous journey that leads them to the Forbidden City, into the unforgiving Gobi, and into the ruins of Rhane’s ancient homeland. As they fight for survival, Kali begins to discover who she really is and the true power she possesses. But Rhane still harbors a secret that could destroy Kali…unless old enemies kill her first.

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Excerpt: The sound of her screams reached him as he neared the dorm. Pausing at the threshold, the man stepped inside. Death and the wind were at his back. Dozens of hollow-eyed students turned to observe his presence. Fear had twisted their youthful faces into horrific masks. A few of them wept. Others clung together as another scream echoed into the night. The man flinched. Then he steeled himself against all emotion. His kind was supposed to feel nothing.

He made his way through the crowd, students eagerly shuffling aside to let him pass. It was as if somehow they sensed in him the power to end her suffering. When a young man dressed only in boxers and a lettered shirt stepped forward from a cluster of solemn dorm mates, the man stopped. He recognized the boy.

“You are William. You are the one who called.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man said while nodding. His eyes were wide and frightened as he pointed ahead to a closed door painted prison grey. “She’s in there, sir.”

The man looked at the door, and then back at the boy. “Is she alone?”

William’s shoulders slumped with embarrassment. “I tried to stay with her but…” his voice trailed, dropping to a hoarse whisper. “She looks bad, sir. She wouldn’t stop screaming for me to get out. I got scared. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, son. You have done well.” The man laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder with an encouraging smile that reflected none of the sadness he felt. “She’s going to be okay.”

But her cries were becoming more tormented by the second. He quickly continued down the hall to the grey door. Behind it, he found her all alone. Her thin, pale body was curled on a beaten sofa in the center of the room. She was drenched in sweat. Dark hair plastered against her face, framing a beautiful canvas contorted with anguish. He placed a hand gently on her forehead.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Daddy?”

“I’m here, sweetheart. Everything is fine now.”

Sobbing in relief even as another surge of agony ransacked her strength, she gritted her teeth. “It hurts.”

Squeezing her hand, he spoke in a voice thick with regret. “I know. I’m sorry. Letting you come here was a mistake. I’ve waited too long.”

She was lost in the pain and didn’t seem to hear him. “I see horrible things. I did horrible things. There was so much blood.”

It hurt him terribly to see her in such distress. No matter what the others said, this girl had truly been his daughter. But right now, his love for her could not matter. He had a job to do. There were things he needed to know.

There were questions he had to ask.

“What do you see?”

“Bodies, hundreds of bodies littering the ground…” The words broke off as she rolled with another wave of misery. “They’re burned…old and young, women and children.” She sobbed again. “I think I burned them.”

“I’m going to give you something to stop the pain. It will help you sleep.”

“Please hurry, Daddy. Make it stop.” Her body shuddered. “I can’t take any more of this.”

She lifted her head, giving him a good look at her face. Surging veins had crept like black spiders from the corners of her eyes, transforming the surrounding skin into dark pools. She was deteriorating rapidly. If the process wasn’t slowed, the human form would soon be lost.

About the Author: Realist, cynic, and hopeless romantic all rolled into one, Eden lives in a small, sunny town in SC where thunderstorms inspire her best ideas. When not daydreaming about her next novel, Eden can be found curled up with a musty old paperback and a cup of coffee...or mired deeply in her next plot to take over the world.

She enjoys reading or watching anything with supernatural elements, so writing paranormal and fantasy romance is a natural fit.

Blog: http://edenbynite.blogspot.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EdenAshleyAuthor Twitter: @Eden_byNite Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7150184.Eden_Ashley

The Cowboy and the Vampire: The Last Sunset The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection Book Four Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall Genre: Horror, Western, PNR Publisher: Pumpjack Press, Date of Publication: June 9, 2016 ISBN: 978-0-9974113-0-0 ASIN: B01F0MFBE2 Number of pages: 357 Word Count: 83,000 Cover Artist: Aaron Perkins Book Description: The Cowboy and the Vampire: The Last Sunset is the fourth book in award-winning The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection, a series called everything from cult classic to trailblazer in a new genre: Western Gothic.

Take one long, last look at LonePine, Wyoming, population 438. It’s been two years since the vampires quit the quirky little town and things are mostly back to normal — broken dreams and never enough whiskey. But that’s about to go to hell.

Hold on tight for a midnight showdown when a psychotic religious order takes the entire town hostage — including Tucker's long-lost brother — to lure Lizzie from her frozen exile in Russia. The mad monks know Lizzie’s murder will strand the ruling vampire elite in a disembodied afterlife so the cult can impose their twisted beliefs on the living and undead alike. It’s a rip-roarin’ stampede as a cowboy and a vampire try to round up the shattered pieces of their unusual romance.

With the fate of the world on the line yet again, can Tucker and Lizzie put aside their broken hearts to face one last sunset together?

Slap leather or reach for the sky.

This is the fourth book in The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection.

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Excerpt: The first few months were anguish. But then she threw herself into bringing order to her inherited chaos.

If she was to run this vampire shit show, she would run it right. And she had, intensely, ruthlessly, for the first year.

Now, everyone knew the rules, knew the consequences for breaking the coda, and—if grudgingly— understood the wisdom behind the annual allocation. She kept her word, showing no favoritism. Nine turns picked by the Council, followed by one pick for Lizzie, with nine nights of rest. By the end of the first year, a fragile trust in her leadership was established.

By the beginning of the second year of her self-imposed exile, as the intensity of the work began to wane, she realized something had shifted. The full weight of her future lodged permanently, sadly, in her soul.

Rurik, forever circling like a handsome vulture, sensed the change.

“Finally, you admit to yourself he is not coming for you,” Rurik said.

“I knew he wouldn’t come,” Lizzie said, more sharply than intended.

“I’m not the one who requires persuading on this point,” Rurik said. “But no matter the reason, I am pleased. Stop working so hard. Amuse yourself with the privileges and pleasures your position affords. You can have anything you want, with no punishment.”

“Punishment?”

“From the society you once valued, or from yourself,” Rurik said. “You are free from guilt, free of all constraints, free to act upon your desires and to assume the glorious existence that awaits only your assent.”

Rurik felt something akin to compassion as he watched Lizzie struggle to control her emotions, mistaking liberation for captivity. He was right in one sense, though; she was coming to the same realization all vampires faced at some point in their long, undead existence, even those whose turning was consensual: there was no going back.

Yes, Lizzie thought, defiantly, as the first year passed into the second. If she was no longer ever to be a human, she might as well have fun. Why the hell not? She submerged herself into her passions and found that although not exactly fulfilling, it was diverting, covering her nightly routines with a shroud of hedonistic numbness that prevented any feelings at all—other than immediate pleasure—from surfacing.

She would never admit it, ever, but Rurik was right on another point. She had waited. She had hoped he would come for her, but why would he? She made it clear by breaking his heart that they would never be together. That he believed her ruse broke her heart.

Such a sad and dusty little tragedy, she thought, clutching the railing. A shadow by the lake’s edge caught her eye—Rurik, out with his dogs.

He felt her gaze and looked up, taking in her nude body and letting his senses wash over it, the closest—it seemed—he would come to possessing her, at least for the time being.

She could feel his heart stuttering, but held her own body in perfect check until he averted his eyes and continued his walk.

Lizzie once again considered whether it was time to move. Rurik’s home was spacious and lonely and safe and remote, and while he had been a good host to her, he enjoyed the power of proximity over the other tribes, and she understood he was motivated by a hope of his own.

“It is inevitable that you and I come together,” he once told her. “You have known this since we first met in that godforsaken American outpost.”

“Nothing is inevitable,” she said. Thwarting his passions had become a habit.

She wondered if Rurik ever missed the man he had once been, the brilliant military strategist who helped turn back the crusaders all those many years ago in a battle for Russia’s soul. “Ironic that you lost your soul in the process,” she said aloud and in his direction.

Her private cell phone buzzed on the bedside table. Lizzie padded back into the room, the wolfhound in tow.

Elita. She picked up the phone.

“Yes?”

“My queen,” Elita said, managing to sound both sarcastic and reverential. Was there a difference, Lizzie wondered?

“My loyal subject, my lovely maid-in-waiting,” Lizzie replied. In all this madness, Elita was her only certainty.

“Whatever that means,” Elita said. “How’s the frozen tundra treating you?”

“Still frozen. Have you wrestled the American Royals and the Reptiles into peaceful coexistence?”

“We’re making progress, one corpse at a time.”

“When will you visit?” Lizzie asked.

“I’m on my way now,” Elita said.

Lizzie paused. That was not a good sign. “That’s a welcome, but unexpected surprise.”

“What I must tell you may not be so welcome.”

“Tell me now,” Lizzie said.

“I’ll save the details until I can tell you face to face, but in brief, I’ve heard rumblings, screaming really, that you have a new enemy.”

“Why would that concern me?”

“Keep your guard up until I arrive.”

“My guard is never down,” Lizzie said, breaking the connection.”

About the Authors: Between the two of them, Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall have worked in writing jobs ranging from cowboy-poet to energy journalist to restaurant reviewer to university press officer. After they met, their writing career took center stage when they wrote the first book in The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection as a test for marriage. They passed. Clark and Kathleen now live in Portland, Oregon.

Website: www.cowboyandvampire.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowboyandvampire Twitter: https://twitter.com/cowboyvamp Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cowboyvampire/

Keep the Reader Guessing I’d like to share part of the creative process for writing that a lot of suspense authors use to ‘hook’ the readers.

In 1992, when I first decided to write "seriously," I submitted a lot of short stories to science fiction/fantasy magazines. Sadly, a lot of those publications are now defunct. But, I learned a lot from various editors during that time.

Some editors were gracious enough to enclose pointers with their rejection forms. However, a few went a bit further and actually wrote comments on their forms (always a good sign). One piece of advice was to avoid using too much exposition. Basically, get to the point and don't bog down the reader with nonessential background information. Marion Zimmer Bradley put it another way, as she had been told by an editor early in her writing career, "Johnny gets his butt caught in a bear trap and spends the rest of the story trying to get out of it." Dean Koontz suggests always ‘start with the action.’

I've learned that adding the urgency and dilemmas early on—like the opening—really pulls the reader in.

After all, if readers aren't interested in what you're writing, what’s the point in them finishing a novel?

Without an audience what's the point in writing other than for one's self-amusement?

I took creative writing courses during my senior year of college. The professor kept insisting that I show the monsters of Predators of Darkness: Aftermath on page one. His advice was to put it all on page one, but page one is only so long, right?

I argued that putting the description of the monster on page one is story suicide. When he asked, "Why?" I explained. If I show the monster on page one, I have killed the suspense and mystery that attracts the readers to the main character's problem. You're more afraid of what you don't see hiding in the shadows than when you find out exactly what it is. Ask anyone who is terrified of spiders or snakes to step into a room where a spider or snake has hidden what level his/her fear is. If you know where it is, you can avoid finding it. Not knowing where it is . . . means you might accidentally walk into its path. Sometimes not seeing is MORE frightening. The possible element of surprise, so to speak.

The mystery of what’s hidden in the shadows keeps a reader’s curiosity, but only if she cares about the characters. This leads to another point. Stories need vivid 3-D characters that readers have empathy

toward. They need people they want to root for and hope survive. Most readers read to immense themselves into the lives of the characters and enter another world, so bland characters . . . don’t cut it.

Visual characters make the reader want to follow them through their ordeals until the end.

For me, as a writer, my characters are very real. I’m the note-taker. I follow and report what the characters do, say, and how they react. Since I don’t outline a novel ahead of time, I don’t have a predetermined destination. When the characters stumble upon a deadly creature or have someone trying to kill them, I find myself trapped into the suspense wondering ‘how are they getting out of this one?’ Generally, the characters resolve the dilemmas, and live to see another day . . . most of the time.

This is why I start with the action first with great characters and keep the reader guessing until the end. I hope this gives you some insight into how this writer writes.

Forrest Wollinsky: Vampire Hunter Vol. One Leonard D. Hilley II Genre: YA Friendly; Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Publisher: Nocturnal Trinity Press Date of Publication: March 13, 2016 ASIN: B01CZ4LKBQ Number of pages: 266 Word Count: ~83,000

Book Description: "Killing Vampires Since 1888."

I was born in Bucharest in 1880 in the heart of the vampire population. At eight years old, I was considered a freak of nature since I was already the size of an adult male. Other children my age, and some of my teachers, shunned me.

Being rejected by one’s peers cuts deeply. Then I met my first werewolf and discovered a master vampire was plotting to kill me because of what I am. From that moment, my destiny stole my future aspirations all men grow up wanting.

This is how my destiny begins.

Amazon

Excerpt: Chapter One The Beginning Bucharest, 1888 The wind howled like an awakening banshee as it swirled and lashed around our snow-covered cottage nestled in the barren trees at the edge of the forest. I was only eight years old, but it was the harshest winter in my one hundred and thirty-odd year memory.

My father had been gone for several days, which wasn’t unusual. Mother had said that he was hunting and should return soon, but the blizzard had set in with a fury, burying the roads, fields, and the forest floor beneath several feet of snow. Wherever he was, he’d be stuck for quite some time.

Snowdrifts lined three sides of our meager cottage and the snowstorm had barely started. The outside layers of snow helped insulate our rugged home. The warmth of the fire felt like the heat of summer, making it almost easy to forget about the freezing howling winds outside.

The hearth fire crackled softly under a black bubbling pot of rabbit stew. Garlic cloves were strung together above a basket of dried yams. We had enough food to last out the week, which made me wonder why my father had chosen to hunt during the worst of the blizzard.

My mother sat in her creaky rocker and was sewing a new coat for me from rabbit hides. Only eight, I was as husky and tall as a young man in his teens. It seemed that I outgrew my clothes about as quickly as she could make new ones.

While she sewed, I sat near the fire and sharpened a long curved dagger my father had given me. He had traded fox hides for the blade, and I expected to soon use it whenever my father returned with his kill.

A slight pause in the winds caused my mother to stop rocking. She leaned slightly forward and cocked her head to the side. The curious frown on her face caught my attention. I set down the whetstone and rose to my feet.

A gentle rapping at the door was faintly noticeable since the winds had quieted, and probably would have gone completely unnoticed had they continued to whistle. But there it was again.

Rap-rap-rap.

A bit bolder, but not overly pronounced or with desperation.

With my dagger gripped in my hand I eased toward the door. Confusion furrowed my mother’s brow.

She set her quilt aside and held her scissors to her side, ready to help fend off whatever danger awaited outside that door.

Stepping to the side of the door, I lifted the metal latch that secured the door and eased it against the door panel, careful to be silent.

Rap-rap-rap.

Without fear, I grabbed the large oval handle and yanked open the door. A whoosh of cold air sprang forward, sucking out our much-treasured heat.

On the path directly outside the door, the snow was stained crimson beneath the gray overcast sky. A trail of blood cut farther down the path into the forest. Large heavy snowflakes dropped, steadily trying to erase the blood path. No other tracks were in the snow. No bandits or attackers were visible amongst the snowy tree trunks. The bloody path ended at the door where the body lay.

A desperate weak hand shook, reaching up for me.

“John!” my mother shouted, running across the room to the door.

In terror I stared down into my father’s haunted eyes, barely recognizing him. His face was battered, and his eyes were swollen nearly shut. Blood caked in his graying beard. His useless legs twisted behind

him. How far he had crawled or how he had managed to do so with the amount of blood he had lost? It was a mystery then, and remains so even to this day. By every means he should have been dead, long before he got to the door, but his stubborn determination enabled him to ignore his pain and fight to pull himself back home.

I sheathed my dagger and grabbed his nearly frozen hand, heaving him out of the snow and across the threshold. Mother quickly closed and secured the door when we were safely inside.

My father’s cold hand fell from my grip and a huge sigh gushed from his mouth as he lost consciousness.

“Father?” I asked, dropping to my knees in front of him. Blood trickled from his nose. I glanced toward Momma. “What happened to him?”

“Get him to the bed,” she said, wiping away tears.

Placing my hands beneath his underarms, I lifted, pulling him up enough to wrap my arms around his chest until he was upright. His body was cold, but the heat of his leaking wounds stuck to me. I cringed. So much blood. I fought tears. He was dying. Had to be. Nothing lost so much blood and survived.

My father wasn’t a massive man, like he and my mother always insisted I would become. He actually weighed less than I and was several inches shorter. In spite of his stature, he was a crafty fighter, capable of defending himself against men twice his size. Stout and thinly muscular, he had incredible strength and feared no one.

For once, I was proud of my abnormally large size and his lack thereof. I hefted him and walked toward the bed, his boots scraping the wooden floor as I moved. Gurgling sounds rumbled in his throat.

“A bear?” I asked, looking at her. “Was he attacked by a bear?”

Mother brought a pail of lukewarm water and set it by the bed. She shook her head and tore strips of cloth.

I eased my father onto the bed and laid him back. He gasped and groaned in pain, but his eyes never opened.

“Strip off his coat,” she said. “His boots, too.”

I quickly obeyed.

She peeled back his shirt, revealing long gashes across his chest and abdomen. The lacerations were too narrow to be from bear claws, but the cuts were dark and deep. Older white scars were visible. On his chest above his heart was the singed outline of a cross. Two puncture marks near his shoulder were swollen, bruised. Two dark dots.

“What did this?” I asked, pointing at the wound. My fingers almost touched the marks, and she slapped my hand away.

“No!” she gasped.

“What kind of animal could do this?”

Her dark eyes were hollowed from fear. She was paler than normal and seemed more delicate.

“Mother, please tell me what did this to Father?”

She took a damp cloth and washed blood from his nose and beard. With another cloth, she washed his forehead. Tears heated her eyes. She spat out a word with complete contempt as she whispered, “Vampire.”

My chest tightened. Anger rippled inside me. “A vampire attacked him while he was hunting game?”

“No,” she replied. “He was hunting the vampire.”

“Why?” “It is his calling, his duty. Magistrates and governors seek him out to kill vampires. They pay in gold and silver coins.”

I stared at my father’s frail body. His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. “Why has he never told me?”

“To protect you.”

“From what?”

“Them.”

“Vampires?”

She nodded.

Frowning, I asked, “Why would they wish to harm me? My schoolmates tell tales that are quite scary.

I’d never venture into one of their lairs.”

“You’re like your father, but you’re too young. In time you’ll be as fearless as he.”

“Too young for what, Mother?”

“To train to hunt the vampires.”

My eyes widened and fastened upon my father’s incapacitated body. He was barely alive. The possibility that he would die during the night was greater than the chance of him surviving his injuries. I didn’t think I was foolish enough to pursue the fanged demons of the night. Trained or not, hunting vampires was destined to become a short-lived profession.

“His legs are broken,” I said.

She nodded. “I know.”

Tears streamed down my mother’s cheeks. She cried quietly without calling attention to herself. I took a damp cloth and pressed it against one of the lacerations across my father’s stomach. I hoped the pressure might stop the bleeding. Some of the cuts were scabbing, but the two puncture wounds pulsed softly, in rhythm with his faint heartbeat. It was unnerving to witness, as if the injuries were alive, feeding off of his body.

While I held the cloth, her eyes widened. She rushed from the side of the bed and ran to black water pot near the hearth. She was back in seconds.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Momma was too frantic for words. She turned my father’s head to the side, pried open his mouth, and black blood oozed out. She took the damp cloth and inserted it into his mouth with her finger. She swirled her cloth-covered finger around the inside of his mouth like one washed a dish. When she pulled out the cloth, it was saturated with more of the dark blood.

“Is he bleeding that badly?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It’s not his blood.”

“What?”

“Under the bed,” she said softly. “Get the box.”

I lowered to my knees and peered under the bed. I grabbed the handle and pulled the heavy suitcase box out, scraping the floor loudly.

I lifted the heavy box and set it on the edge of the bed.

“Open it,” she said.

I did.

Inside of the box were several sharp wooden stakes, a wooden mallet, a silver cross, glass vials filled with powder, and more glass vials filled with clear liquid. My mother took one vial of the liquid, read the label, and popped the cork. She walked around to the other side of the bed.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“The puncture marks have to be purified and cleansed. Or your father will become a vampire.”

“How?” “The bite somehow causes the victim to turn. Don’t ask me how. Your father would know but—” Her voice broke into sobs.

I wanted to tell her that he was going to be okay, but I couldn’t tell a lie that convincingly. His condition was severe. No way to deny it.

Then the revelation gripped me. I suddenly realized his injuries were intentionally far worse than I had imagined. The vampire who had inflicted the damage upon my father intended for him to die so that he, too, would become a vampire.

“What’s in the vial?” I asked.

“Holy water.”

“That will cure him?”

Mother replied, “If we can fully cleanse the wound, it’s possible that we can save him. But, it’s painful for him to endure. In his weakened condition, the cure might well kill him.”

“And if that should happen?”

“You will have to drive a stake through his heart. I can’t . . . I simply can’t do it.”

Stunned, I looked into her eyes with uncertainty, questioning. She nodded solemnly. I knew the depth of her love for my father prevented her from killing him, even if he were to turn, but I wondered if I was capable. Could I drive a stake through the heart of my father? In the matter of age, I was still a boy, struggling with a problem that only an adult should have to consider. I had to shoulder the responsibility but how?

About the Author: Leonard D. Hilley II grew up in Fort Payne, AL, where his never-ending curiosity introduced him to the world of biology and books. During his youth he was an avid insect collector and reared butterflies and moths. His love for science eventually merged with his writing. He currently resides in Marietta, Ohio, where he writes science fiction thrillers, epic high fantasy, and YA mysteries.

Education: B.S. Biology; MFA in Creative Writing Leonard D. Hilley II is the author of Predators of Darkness: Aftermath, Beyond the Darkness, The Game of Pawns, Death's Valley, Shawndirea, and Devils' Den. Leonard D. Hilley II also writes short stories for YA. Two books were inspired by his love of biology: Rearing Dragons in My Backyard and Fiddling Worms. He also writes a mystery series for YA: Dee's Mystery Solvers. @Deimosweb http://deimosweb-hilley.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Leonard-D-Hilley-IIauthor-page-157289854329916/

Defeat Writer's Block by Luke Ahearn

I don't get writer's block, ever. I see so many fellow writers struggle mightily with it so I decided to figure out why I don't struggle with it to see if I could help them. I figured it had to be the way I thought about writing and not some magical property I was imbued with or some superior ability I possessed. There's nothing special about me.

What did I figure out? It is simply the way I think about writing. The decisions I make, the questions I ask myself, and the battles I choose to fight along the way. Speaking with other writers I quickly determined that one of the biggest sources of writer's block is second-guessing yourself. I may second-guess everything else in my life, but not when I am writing. Writing is self-expression so how in the world can I get self-expression wrong? And that's the first thing I realized is that I view writing as self-expression and not a test I need to pass to prove myself. Maybe it will help you to remind yourself that when you are writing you are telling your story, not trying to guess what a million other people want to read. Guess what, they all want to read something new and unique and that's what you will create when you are simply expressing yourself. Okay, on to more practical steps.

Remember, don't get it right, get it written. Don't edit as you write. It is said that writing is rewriting but you have to get it written first in order to rewrite it. I've come up with a process that works for me. It seems a bit tight and mechanical from the outside, but it’s geared toward eradicating any chance I have of second-guessing myself or getting hung up on minutia. Each one of those two issues will paralyze my writing progress. Writing to me is like riding a bike; if I go too slowly, I fall down.

Step One – Rough I write the first draft quickly, focusing on the big picture elements of the story, the basic shapes or rough sketch of the novel. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are not important at this stage. I only rewrite at this point if it is absolutely necessary to the logic of the story. I often leave notes and marks to myself in the manuscript to develop something I know needs more work later on but I don't

want to tackle at the moment. Often it is simply to do some research on something I want to be accurate or more authentic. How much damage will a suppressed 22 pistol do to a muscular man in a thick leather jacket? What's it like to walk through a storm drain pipe underground? Those are actual notes. I found the answer to the first question online and went into a sewer pipe later on my own. But as I wrote I just made the notation to come back later when I had that information and didn't let the lack of it slow me down.

At this point I am plowing through the story and trying to keep the work pace fast so I get that first draft done. Sometimes I use the # mark before and after a chunk of text to indicate I need to give it more attention later. Sometimes it's just comments in square brackets like [big fight scene here resulting in hero losing a finger] or [don't forget to check the timeline]. The key is to use marks that are not commonly used in writing so you can search for them later. You can also use the markup feature of Word or your own invention. This allows me to jump around the manuscript and write sections I feel like writing at any given time.

Step Two – Shape I then do a shaping pass, where I tighten and smooth things out, but even then, I stop myself from hashing over the same sentence or paragraph trying to make it perfect. As long as it’s clear what I mean, it doesn't matter how rough or imperfect it is. Not only does this keep me going, but it allows my subconscious to work through any problems I leave unsolved. And I leave a lot unsolved and my unconscious always solves it.

During this phase if I get stuck I stop immediately and turn my attention to something else--anything else. This is one of the ways I think I thwart writer's block most effectively. I don't stop and stare. I'm not procrastinating either. I just don't waste time trying to write when I have nothing to write. I attack the problem in another way. Staring at the screen never gets you through the block, walking away and coming back always fixes it in my experience. I believe strongly in the power of the subconscious. I not only walk away when I need to, I walk away purposely leaving things hanging.

Even if I have a solution to a character's problem I find leaving whatever I am working on open allows my mind to roll it around. I always come back with a much better finish for whatever I was working on.

It takes less time to stop trying to solve the problem consciously and let your subconscious tackle it.

It always works, and I am often stunned by the answers that comes. I don't feel like I am the person writing the book when answers come to me that way. It’s truly a magical experience. It’s as if the characters are telling me what they came up with.

I think too many writers accept the notion of writer’s block and stop at the first sign of resistance. I say the prose is your bitch, run that shit down, and keep going. Your words aren't going anywhere.

You'll have a chance to drive by later and finish the job.

Step Three – Polish After the shaping pass, which can be the most complex to me as I am tackling timelines and world logic, etc. I start the polish pass. The goal of the polish draft is to get your manuscript readable by

beta readers. At this point everything needs to be in place and this is the time to fret over word choice and pacing, etc. This phase is the opposite of the first two in that now the goal is to polish and not make changes to the events of the story or major plots points. Of course there are exceptions and I've made those changes at this point, but you have to be tough on yourself and make sure you are not rewriting because you are indulging in self-doubt, perfectionism, or just afraid to put your work out there. It helps to discuss these decisions with another person, if possible, to keep yourself honest.

I find it helps to start feeding my beta readers the first few chapters as I finish the polish so I have a motivation to get the next few done. I can't go back to the earlier chapters and change them and I can't sit on them forever. When the readers have the first few chapters I can then discuss possible major changes with them. My readers haven't failed me yet when advising me whether I should take on the job of changing something major or leaving it be.

Step Four - Incorporating Feedback Then it’s off to the readers, and they send back insightful comments, questions, and point out flaws. I incorporate things, fix things, etc. During the wait I start on the cover art and the marketing.

Step Five – Wait Finally it’s off to the editor to fix mechanical errors. After I get it back from the editor, the book is probably as good as it will ever be. To work on it any more would either make things worse or at best, just change it into a different book.

Well, that's my process. Hope it helps you.

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.

Passion of a Scottish Warrior The MacLomain Series Later Years, Book 4 Sky Purington Genre: Time-travel Fantasy Romance Date of Publication: May 16, 2016 ASIN: B01BT0KF1S Number of pages: 290 Word Count: 93,000 Cover Artist: Tamra Westberry Book Description: Determined to protect Jackie from evil, Darach Hamilton flees MacLomain Castle without telling anyone his destination. As foretold by Celtic Goddess Brigit, that should have made the enemy pursue him.

But nothing is as it seems. When he learns the dark demi-god went after Jackie instead, he races to her side only to discover something unexpected.

Things have changed. There might be hope for them. Maybe he can finally be with her. After all, he’s been dreaming about her for years. The only problem? He already pushed her into another man’s arms.

Over a month has passed since Jackie traveled back in time from modern day New Hampshire to medieval Scotland. Since then, it’s been a non-stop adventure. Now she’s in ninth-century Scandinavia with Heidrek, a Viking set to inherit the throne. A man that Darach is determined she be with despite the unforgettable kiss they shared. Then there’s the newfound Claddagh ring on her

finger. It is foretold that its stone can only be ignited by the love of a MacLomain. Darach is by birth, the only remaining MacLomain not taken. Yet despite the power the ring’s glow could harness, she wants nothing to do with it. Not in light of her terrible secret. One she prays will keep any man from loving her because it will mean their ultimate ruin.

Many revelations come to light when Jackie, Darach, and Heidrek travel through time to keep the future King, wee Robert the Bruce safe. Determined to spare them heartbreak, Jackie refuses both men. Yet one of them ends up invoking unavoidable passion. A timeless draw. One she tries to fight.

But some things are meant to be and Fate has a plan for them all. Epic love. Ultimate war.

Inescapable death. Twists nobody saw coming. An ending that will either see Scotland through to what it is today or rewrite history altogether.

Find out how everything unfolds in Passion of a Scottish Warrior, the final installment in the MacLomain Series: Later Years.

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Excerpt: Jackie shook her head as she looked into Darach’s eyes. Being in his arms was the last place she needed to be.

Yet the crowd pushed them closer and the man she had been dancing with vanished. She swallowed hard when his arm wrapped around her waist and twirled her away from a couple that stumbled by them laughing.

The pipes trilled.

The crowd was wild.

And she was tight against Darach.

Not a good place to be. Or was it? She swallowed again and kept her arms down because if she lifted them, what would she touch? The sides of his muscled torso…his strong forearms…his wide shoulders?

“You dinnae need to keep shaking your head no,” he murmured. “I willnae…”

When he trailed off, she realized that he had no idea what he would or would not do. Besides the arm that he wrapped around her waist, his other hand didn’t touch her at all.

His head was bent near hers, his lips so close to her ear that she could feel his hot breath down the side of her neck. Chills and heat raced over her simultaneously as she tried to sift through her feelings.

Push away. Touch his chest and push away.

But again, if she touched him…what then? Would pulling away still be an option?

The pipes seemed to trill louder, and the fire in the center of the room sparked higher as the celebrations became a boisterous background to the quiet she suddenly felt on the inside. A strange silence made up of her heartbeat and the indentation where his neck met his collarbone. She inhaled deeply and turned her face inward, chasing his scent and heat.

She barely felt the slight touch of his hand on the back of her head as she nuzzled in, desperate to get closer to…something. It almost felt like a memory. One just out of reach. Lips open, she flicked her tongue, eager to sample.

Eager to capture his scent. Curious what it tasted like.

Only when he whispered, “Bloody hell, lass,” did her eyes snap open and she realized what she was doing. By that time, it was too late. He tightened his hold, dug his hand into her hair, tilted back her head and met her eyes.

Their lips were inches apart when he whispered, “What are you doing to me?”

Jackie had no idea. What was she doing to him? What was he doing to her? She’d never felt anything like it.

So much. Almost too much. Yet it felt like something not entirely real. As if she recalled snippets of a dream.

Their lips drifted closer, eager but tentative.

Wanting but unsure.

His eyelids drifted down. So did hers.

There…almost there.

About the Author: Sky Purington is the best-selling author of over twenty novels and several novellas. A New Englander born and bred, Sky was raised hearing stories of folklore, myth and legend. When combined with a love for nature, romance and time-travel, elements from the stories of her youth found release in her books.

Purington loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at Sky@SkyPurington.com. Interested in keeping up with Sky's latest news and releases?

Visit Sky's website, http://www.skypurington.com to download her free App on iTunes and Android or sign up for her quarterly newsletter. Love social networking? Find Sky on Facebook and Twitter.

Website: www.skypurington.com Blog: www.skypurington.blogspot.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/skypurington Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sky-Purington/260484263999780 Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/skypurington Newsletter: http://www.skypuringtonwrites.blogspot.com/p/newletter.html

The Queen’s Dance The Emerging Queens Series, Book Three Jamie K. Schmidt Genre: Paranormal Romance Publisher: Entangled Date of Publication: 5/23/16 Number of pages: 267 Word Count: 63,000 Cover Artist: Fiona Jayde Book Description: After newly shifted dragon Queen, Margery Cooper, is rescued from smugglers she has a choice to continue to hunt down the story that nearly killed her when she was an investigative reporter or embrace her royalty and build a court of protectors and studs. Remy “Champ” Champlain is first on the scene and assigned her protector while she sorts out her affairs.

He wants nothing more to get back to his solitude and his small town, but as an unclaimed dragon he doesn’t get a choice.

The Queen is his responsibility until her court is formalized. He wants to settle her down right away, but she has this wild hair up her Queenly butt to find out who is smuggling dangerous drugs into the country.

Sparks fly between them, but as she's a sky dragon and he's a water dragon, well she can't swim and he can't fly and those aren't the only differences they're facing.

Excerpt 1: Margery was lying out in the sun again. She felt the heat press into her bones from the hard deck under her and the rays beating into her skin.

Bliss.

Listening, she could hear the creak of the deck chair and the splash of the waves. Where was Remy?

She wanted to open her eyes and sit up, but she didn’t know where they were. Would she be flashing all of Lake Champlain? Her hands inched around on the deck hoping to find her bikini. No luck. But she did feel a sheet balled up at the very edge of her reach. Snatching it, she wrapped it around herself and sat up and wobbled—she’d had tequila hangovers that didn’t feel like this. When her eyes adjusted to the sunlight, she realized she was alone.

“Remy?” she called. She didn’t feel up to standing, so she sat there on deck and wondered why she’d passed out. It had just been starting to get good, too. Margery touched her lips where Remy’s kisses had left their brand then smiled and hoped he didn’t think he’d frightened her.

While she’d gotten really cold, and the dark did remind her briefly of being a prisoner below deck with the pirates, that’s where the similarities ended. Margery knew Remy would never hurt her. She wasn’t sure why she’d passed out, but it had nothing to do with him. Concentrating, she tried to emerge into a dragon so she could fly around the lake, but pain jackhammered into her skull until she was retching bile over the side of the deck.

“Shit,” she gurgled.

She thumped back to the deck and closed her eyes until the pain went away, which took longer than she expected. Luckily, the sun’s warmth bored into her every pore, and the headache eased to a mild throb. Margery stretched and rolled over so she wouldn’t get sunburned.

Too bad she’d passed out. She didn’t quite get the politics of the consort thing, but if it was a choice between Remy, Casimiro, and a total stranger, her best bet was Remy. It didn’t have to be love, after all. Not yet, anyway. It would have been nice to have a night of mind-blowing sex and fall asleep cuddled up in a man’s arms. Ever since Casimiro did a number on her heart, Margery wasn’t too keen on letting that organ decide her bed partners. Her libido had good taste, and right now Remy would fit the bill. If she could stay conscious for it.

A big wave lifted the boat, and she clutched at the deck as the vessel swayed nearly to tipping. Then Remy launched onto the deck. He was fully dressed and not even dripping.

She squinted up at him. “How do you do that?”

“Did you have a nice night?” he asked, turning his back on her to go to the helm and raise the anchor.

About the Author: USA Today bestselling author, Jamie K. Schmidt, writes erotic contemporary love stories and paranormal romances. Her Club Inferno series from Random House’s Loveswept line has hit both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble top one hundred lists.

She has two other series with Loveswept: Hawaii Heat, in which the first book Life’s A Beach is the perfect staycation to Maui, and The Sentinels of Babylon, about members of vigilante Motorcycle Club and their old ladies. Her dragon paranormal romance series from Entangled Publishing, has been called “fun and quirky” and “endearing.” Partnered with New York Times bestselling author and former porn actress, Jenna Jameson, Jamie’s hardcover debut, SPICE, continues Jenna’s FATE trilogy.

An avid knitter and jewelry maker, Jamie is never bored. She can often be found with a mug of tea on the computer flanked by her little dogs & fluffy white cat. You can follow her on twitter at @Jamiekswriter or on her author page on Facebook. When she's not writing or crafting, Jamie loves playing games, everything from board games to strategy card games, console and online MMORPGs.

Website http://jamiekschmidt.weebly.com/ Facebook www.facebook.com/jamie.k.schmidt.1 Twitter

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Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/jamiekswriter Blog http://jamiekswriter.livejournal.com/ Amazon Page http://www.amazon.com/Jamie-K.-Schmidt/e/B00B7CKKO6

What girl doesn’t dream about her wedding? I sure did. It doesn’t matter if it’s lavish or something small. We think about it. At the center of that wedding, aside from the man she’s going to marry, is what a girl will wear: the wedding dress.

A year ago, a group of authors and myself met at a conference and talked about ways to create a series within a series. Each of our books will be connected to one of our own series, but all of the books in the “collection” would also be part of a connective series. One of the authors thought up the idea of having a billionaire will “something” to either the hero or the heroine in our book and the story could go from there. The name of the collection is The Inheritance Collection http://www.theinheritanceseries.com.

Each of the authors thought up a story about how they encountered Harold Hopewell, a billionaire widower who had no children and was leaving random items to people who had met him and touched him in some way. As I thought about it, I instantly knew that I wanted my story to revolve around a vintage wedding dress being willed to my heroine Hannah Ward in The Wedding Dress, book 7 of my Texas Hearts series. The wedding dress was the dress Harold’s wife had worn when they’d gotten married, but that she’d sold very early on to gift her new husband with money that helped him make his fortune.

Sounds romantic, huh? I thought so too. But I had to figure out how Hannah Ward, a young Texas woman and former Army mechanic, became the benefactor of the dress. Since it was around the time of wedding season, I’d found a lot of catalogs at the supermarket and restaurants announcing wedding shows. One in particular talked about vintage dresses that were available at a consignment shop. So I wondered, what if it wasn’t a shop but it was an actual auction where the dress was being sold? And what if Harold Hopewell, now elderly and still mourning the passing of his wife after decades went to the same auction that a very young Hannah Ward goes to

in order to find the perfect dress to wear when she elopes with her childhood sweetheart, Dane Bancroft? The only problem is, Hannah is practically broke and Harold is a billionaire who easily outbids her, leaving her devastated.

Fast forward ten years. Hannah is now out of the Army and she receives this wedding dress in the mail from a lawyer who is charged with dispersing items in Harold Hopewell’s will. In the letter, Harold apologizes for outbidding her on the dress and says that while it might be too late for Hannah to wear the dress, he wants her to give it to her daughter in the hopes that she can be as happy as he was with his wife. The only wrinkle is, Hannah doesn’t have a daughter because Hannah never ended up marrying Dane. The dress opens up old wounds for Hannah and Dane and makes them examine why they parted in the first place. Young love becomes new love that is much deeper and magical in ways they’d never expected.

I love The Wedding Dress because I love reunion and second chance stories. There’s so much history there and so many things the hero and heroine need to resolve before they can move forward. In the end, it’s never about the perfect dress. That’s just fabric. It’s about the love that weaves two special people together to want to spend a lifetime as husband and wife.

The Wedding Dress Texas Hearts Book Seven The Inheritance Collection Lisa Mondello Genre: contemporary romance Publisher: Lisa Mondello Date of Publication: 5/17/2016 ISBN: 9781940512228 ASIN: B017I5IAGK Number of pages: 200 Word Count: 40,000 Cover Artist: Purple Girl Design

Book Description: Ten years ago, Hannah Ward thought she’d found the perfect wedding dress to wear when she and her childhood sweetheart, Dane Bancroft, decided to elope right after graduation.

But instead of walking down the aisle like she dreamed of, she was not only outbid on the wedding dress at the auction by an old billionaire who didn’t need the wedding dress like she did, but she never ended up getting married. Needing to escape Dane after the break-up, she enlisted in the military and left Liberty, Texas behind.

But now she’s back, and not only does she have to face Dane, the deputy sheriff in town, but she’s just been willed the very wedding dress that was supposed to be the beginning of her and Dane’s happy life together.

Can they both get a second chance so she can finally wear the wedding dress of her dreams and marry the only man she’s ever really loved?

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Excerpt: It was just a box with fabric inside.

Hannah gazed at the white box that had come with the letter with longing for time that has long since passed her by. Although she’d stared at the dress in the auction catalogue for hours before deciding to drive to San Antonio more than ten years ago, she’d only seen that wedding dress up close for just a few minutes before it had been snatched away from her by the higher bidder.

She was a smart women. She didn’t need the dress. Or the memories that were now tumbling through her mind. Good and bad, they were all there together. The wedding dress had been the start of it all. And the end.

Sighing, she got up from the bed and walked over to the box that sat like a tangled blanket at the foot of the bed after a rough night of sleep. The wide white organza ribbon was tied tightly around the box to keep it secure and then knotted into a pretty bow on top. With a quick tug of the organza, the ribbon untied and fell to each side of the box.

Her heart pounded as her fingers felt for the edges of the box. She didn’t want to see the dress. Not really.

Why was she doing this? She should just put it in her car and drive right over to the consignment shop in the next town and let someone else buy the dress for their wedding. Get rid of it. Get rid of the memory.

She lifted the top of the box off and placed it carefully on the bed next to the box. Pink and white tissue paper covered the contents, keeping her from seeing inside.

“Ugh. For an army soldier who has spent the last eight years in combat boots and fatigues, you’re being a wimp, Hannah.”

She reached for the tissue paper, then quickly stopped and looked at her hands, turning them over. Most days her hands were covered with grease and oil from working on a plane engine. Today her hands were clean. Even her fingernails showed the white half-moon nails that were clean.

Hannah held her breath as she pushed aside the tissue paper and had her first glimpse of the dress. A lump lodged in her throat as she thought of the day of the auction. This was supposed to be her wedding dress. If she’d married Dane all those years ago, she would have worn this dress. Who knew what their lives would be like now.

Taking a deep breath, she slipped out of her T-shirt, unbuttoned her cut off shorts and let them drop to the floor. She carefully lifted the sleeveless dress out of the box, holding it by the shoulders and let the fabric drop to the floor. There were a million buttons in the back and she knew she’d have a hard time fastening them all. But she had to see what she looked like in the dress. It took a while, but when the last button was fastened, she walked across the room to the mirror and looked at her reflection.

“This never would have fit me like this ten years ago,” Hannah said, staring at herself in the standing mirror.

But now, it fit perfect. It was as if she needed to grow out of the young girl’s body and become the woman she was now in order for it to fit.

Tears filled her eyes but she refused to let them fall. Reaching behind her to undo the first button, she muttered, “It would have been nice.”

A gust of breeze came in through the open window. Along with it, Hannah heard the sound of male voices talking. Jackson had gone out for a ride earlier with Cole. There were other ranch hands here now.

Her stomach dropped. It wasn’t just Cole or Jackson. If she lived a thousand years, Hannah would always recognize the deep timber of Dane Bancroft’s voice.

Still wearing the dress, Hannah rushed to the window and pulled back the curtain just enough to see outside.

She groaned.

“You would have to show up today. Of all days,” Hannah muttered to herself as her heart pounded in her chest. She gazed down from the window to the dirt driveway below. Dane Bancroft stood next to Jackson, talking about something interesting that made them both laugh.

He was as tall as Jackson, but he wasn’t the straight up and down young man she remembered. His police uniform did little to show off the muscles she knew were under his shirt.

Just when she thought she couldn’t take anymore, Dane lifted his face up in the direction of the window.

Their eyes locked for a brief moment. It took a few seconds, but then he smiled, making Hannah’s heart remember what it was like to be close to him. She actually sighed.

Damn him.

About the Author: New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author, Lisa Mondello, has held many jobs in her life but being a published author is the last job she'll ever have. She's not retiring! She blames the creation of the personal computer for her leap into writing novels.

Otherwise, she'd still be penning stories with paper and pen. Her book The Knight and Maggie's Baby is a New York Times Bestseller. Her popular series includes TEXAS HEARTS, DAKOTA HEARTS, Fate with a Helping Hand and the new SUMMER HOUSE series. Writing as LA Mondello, her romantic suspense, MATERIAL WITNESS, book 1 of her Heroes of Providence series made the USA TODAY Bestsellers List and was named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2012. You can find more information about Lisa Mondello at lisamondello.blogspot.com and sign up for her newsletter to receive new release information at http://eepurl.com/xhxO5 Web: http://www.lisamondello.com Blog: http://texasheartsromance.blogspot.com Twitter: @LisaMondello Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lisamondello.author

INSPIRED BY HORRIBLE THINGS Hello out there! I'm Neil Rochford, author of The Blue Ridge Project and staff writer over at ThoseConspiracyGuys.com. Like a lot of people, I love stories where bad things happen to all kinds of people, and I'd like to share with you a little personal insight into why that is.

Most people you walk past while you're out on the street or bump into on a packed bus fall within a subset of what you would call normal. Sure, there are some obvious fringe exceptions. Like the multi-colored fleece-wearing person keeping eye contact with you while they do things to themselves that become very difficult to unsee. The people who scream in argument with the unseen voices that plague them. More extreme, real life horror shows like Ed Geins and his belt made out of nipples.

These are the outliers however, and are notable because of how far they exist outside of the spectrum of normality.

If we really want to be honest with ourselves though, there exists another less obviously strange group that makes up a decent chunk of the population. The members have a fascination with seeing harm come to others, albeit fictional characters, that might seem abnormal if we talked about it with certain people. We clamor for tales where our protagonists suffer almost as much as their enemies, emotionally and/or physically.

I'm sure part of it comes down to our need for catharsis, for the hero or heroes of the story to overcome the worst and succeed despite the odds being stacked against them. We can celebrate and breathe a sigh of relief when they stumble out of the dark cave of horrors and into the dawn, beaten, bloodied, but victorious. Nevertheless, that doesn't account for the amount of fiction where the “good” guys don't win, when there is no happy ending and the suffering continues after “The End” appears.

For me, I think that type of story is a better reflection of the world and the very real and awful things that take place hourly around the globe. I may not feel as good or as vindicated after finishing a book or movie like that, but I will come away with something to think about at least, if not a new perspective. This is coupled with a healthy respect for the creator who saw it through after crafting and shaping the horror and misery in their minds and yanking it out of the darkness for us to look at.

I often think of Stephen King's bit about the writer's imagination, which I'll paraphrase: people must think it's great to be able just sit back and play a little mind movie in your head, which it is, but sometimes that imagination can turn around and bite you with long sharp teeth.

Granted, sometimes it might go beyond merely disturbing — reading American Psycho, there were a few spots where I had to put the book down and take a break from what was happening on the page, the first and only book where that happened to me and I'm sure that there is more disturbing stuff out there — but so are large portions of history and the news. Genocide. Torture. Mass rapes. Child abuse. Sometimes these were even sanctioned and carried out by the authorities, those with positions of trust who have power over us. Think about it for too long and you might end up freaking out over the ramifications. Is it any wonder that people turn to fiction for escape, even if what's on the page or on the screen is horrifying or distressing?

Dark stories, in my opinion, exist and are popular for the same reason as any other type of story is.

Love stories are told to reflect the love and romance that is in the world. Comedy lets us laugh at the ridiculous things and situations that imitate and exaggerate what we find in real life. Dark and disturbing tales shine a light on the scary part of ourselves. The piece we see in the mirror when the lights are off that spooks us, even if it's just for a second. The same one we see in the history books or on the nightly news, or in the face of the friendly old man down the street who had all those bodies buried underneath his house.

In The Blue Ridge Project, I took inspiration from various real life things. Police corruption, governments experimenting on and torturing their citizens, people in power abusing their positions to further their own ends while committing heinous crimes, and I added some fictional technology.

What might actually be the most disturbing part is that if this technology existed, it isn't too far-fetched to imagine the things that happen in this novel taking place. I just hope that while some of the story and its implications might be a tad unpleasant, it will still entertain that dark part of your mind.

You know, that part you might keep hidden from everyone until you're alone. I know it's there...

The Blue Ridge Project The Project Book One Neil Rochford Genre: Dark Suspense/Paranormal Date of Publication: May 6 2016 Number of pages: 260 Word Count: 65,500 Cover Artist: ebooklaunch.com

Book Description:

Conspiracy. Murder. Secret experiments. Mind control. A detective, a journalist and a rich deviant struggle with their pasts as their actions set them on a collision course with each other and The Project.

Detective Andrea Nox has been asked to quietly investigate a bizarre and violent murder-suicide that could have consequences for Beacon City and the people in charge. Dead ends and odd clues are hindering her efforts, and when another similar murder occurs, she has to juggle the investigation and her own troubled past with the Beacon City Police Department.

Journalist Robert Duncan is visiting home after a personal crisis when the unthinkable happens, and secrets are unearthed about his family and his place in it. His involvement in a dangerous and far-reaching conspiracy grows as he uncovers information that implicates powerful people in horrible crimes.

Frank Mortimer, disturbed son of a wealthy and influential family, is taking part in an experimental program that has promised to make him better. However, with the shadowy and powerful group known only as The Project behind the program, what he is getting better at could prove disastrous for everyone else, as a dangerous power is unlocked inside him...

Their paths will converge in a shocking story of murder, conspiracy and clandestine experiments taking place that could change the world.

Excerpt: The car that had followed Frank’s van out of the city rolled down the same route Frank had taken, belching exhaust occasionally. It was a gray sedan, with a bumper sticker that said 'If You’re Reading This, You’re Too Close!'

As with Frank’s van, the driver had chosen a car that wouldn’t draw attention or stick in a memory. It was as if the owner had used the word “nondescript” when the salesperson asked what type of car he wanted.

Said owner was Graham Turner, a self-made journalist according to him, a bottom-feeding paparazzo according to almost everybody else. His purview was the lifestyles of the rich, the famous, and the mentionables, especially their bad habits and indiscretions. The most money was to be made in the latter and Turner had made his meager living through catching people of note with their pants down, figuratively or otherwise.

His mission today was to catch a Mortimer doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. A picture of the son, Frank, doing something untoward could pay out massively. Turner didn’t care if it was through sale of the picture or blackmail, just as long as he got his payday.

He was sure the squeaky-clean bachelor was up to no good, driving out here in the middle of nowhere in a busted-up van when his family was rich enough to have a foundation in their name. Turner parked a good distance from the van, reached around to the back seat to grab his camera with the long-distance lens, and stepped out onto the tarmac.

He began to feel ill immediately. He broke out in a sweat and his stomach churned like a washing machine at the start of a spin cycle. He stood leaning against the front of the car for a second, a headache thumping behind his eyeballs, and a loud ringing in his ears. He wiped his soaked forehead with the sleeve of his shirt and started to make his way through the grass, searching for a decent vantage point.

Around forty paces in, close to the warehouse, his headache intensified massively. The pain shot up and down his body, and he felt a pop inside his skull. His left leg went dead and useless beneath him, and he groaned as he fell to his knees. The camera fell and smashed apart on the ground. He heard another pop, like a tiny balloon being pricked with a needle inside his ears, then he fell forward onto the remains of his equipment.

The man with 'SECURITY' written across his cap came sauntering over the grass toward Turner’s body. He rolled it over with one boot-clad foot and saw the burst capillaries in Turner’s eyes: They were as red as the eyes of a B-movie vampire, and just as dead.

Hell of a tune they play, the man thought as he went through Turner’s pockets for the keys to the gray sedan.

As he stood up, he double-checked his earplugs, as he often did after finding someone who had come too close, and strolled over to the car to put it out of sight. The body could wait. He couldn’t even see it from the car, the grass deep

enough to hide it. He saw a small flock of birds flying overhead, wheeling to make a wide detour around the building nearby.

Birds are smarter than people. He chuckled, proud of his philosophical revelation, and got into the driver’s seat of the almost unnoticeable car.

About the Author: Neil Rochford is a freelance writer who loves fiction where bad things happen. After more than five years traveling from continent to continent and a few short stories, he finally got to work on his first book, and hopes to continue writing as many as he can. Originally from Ireland, he speaks three languages and has lived in Estonia, Brazil, France and Spain. He is a staff writer for the popular Irish podcast and website Those Conspiracy Guys. http://neiltr.com http://twitter.com/NeilRochford http://facebook.com/neiltrwriting https://www.goodreads.com/NeilTR

Top Ten Things To Do At HallowRead 10. Become a supporter of the local library and literacy programs with your ticket purchase 9. Wine, dine and shop in the historic waterfront town proper of Havre de Grace 8. See the sights, like the light house and promenade 7. Get your swag bag and a chance at some awesome door prizes

6. Ghost tours and palm readings- one interactive investigation style tour and one perfect mix of haunted history.

5. Attend writing workshops hosted by the amazing featured authors- something for every level 4. Listen to authors talk about their books, the characters, the process, in an interactive Q&A session 3. Discover new books and authors 2. Fill your swag bag with lots of fun goodies during the signing, get new books, get signatures and take pics 1. Make lasting connections- reader and author alike, HallowRead has something for everyone, memories and lifelong friendships are easily made over books and cool reader activities!

Payable On Death The Jax Rhodes Series Book One Rachel Rawlings Print Length: 207 pages Publication Date: April 5, 2016 ASIN: B01C1U2TZ0 Genre: Urban Fantasy Publisher: R Squared Publishing Cover Artist: Najla Qamber Designs Book Description: A deal with the Devil. Demons haunting your every step.

When an Angel offers you the chance to redeem yourself, you take it. Because eternal damnation isn't all it's cracked up to be.

But the Devil always gets his due.

On the streets of Baltimore redemption is..... Payable On Death.

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About the Author: Rachel Rawlings was born and raised in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. Her family, originally from Rhode Island, spent summers in New England sparking her fascination with Salem, MA. She has been writing fictional stories and poems since middle school, but it wasn't until 2009 that she found the inspiration to create her heroine Maurin Kincaide and complete her first full length novel, The Morrigna.

When she isn't writing, Rachel can often be found with her nose buried in a good book. An avid reader of Paranormal/Urban Fantasy, Horror and Steampunk herself, Rachel founded Hallowread- an interactive convention for both authors and fans of those genres.

More information on Hallowread, its schedule of events and participating authors can be found at www.hallowread.blogspot.com and www.facebook.com/Hallowread .

She still lives in Maryland with her husband and three children. www.rachelrawlings.com www.authorrachelrawlings.com www.twitter.com/@rachelsbooks www.facebook.com/themaurinkincaideseries www.facebook.com/hallowread www.tsu.co/@rachelsbooks www.hallowread.com Goodreads Author Page http://goo.gl/FZW0RN Amazon Author Page http://goo.gl/Q6Ubn1

Alice’s Alphas Wolf Clan Shifters Book One Ann Gimpel Dream Shadow Press Release Date: 3/29/16 41K words Genre: Shifter Ménage Romance One virgin + three wolf shifters = e-reader ecstasy.

Book Description: It’s 1936. Thirty-year-old Alice has given up on finding a husband. Between civil engineering and mountain climbing, her interests are so masculine, she scares men away. A poor route choice strands her—lost, hungry, and scared—next to Lon Chaney’s cabin deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Jed senses a woman stumbling down the steep, inhospitable mountain behind his borrowed cabin.

Her scent tantalizes and excites him. Mates are scarce these days, and if his nose is right, she’s his fated one. His and his two pack mates, that is, who are mercifully gone at the moment. Jed crafts a careful strategy, knowing the mate bond might not be enough to convince her to stay once she finds out it will link her to all three of them—forever.

Alice adds Jed to her list of problems when he melts out of the shadowed darkness. At first she declines his offer of help, but he keeps talking until she ends up inside the cozy log cabin in front of

a roaring fire. His skilled hands and a shot of whiskey heat her blood to molten, and her carefully tended world explodes into desperate hunger to make love with the man rubbing her weary feet.

As caught up in lust as Alice, Jed takes a chance. A big one. Will mating with her before disclosing everything turn out to be a huge mistake?

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Excerpt from Alice’s Alphas: Her breath whistled loud in her ears. Brent had told her to hightail it for the car, but she had a feeling something bad had happened to him. No matter how she felt about him running off, it wasn’t right to just leave him. It had been dark for hours, and she wondered how late it was. Even if she stumbled the few miles to her car waiting next to Glacier Lodge, she was too tired to drive anywhere. The lodge wasn’t any help. It wouldn’t open for the season for another couple of months. There might be a phone inside, but she’d have to break in.

Alice considered her options. If she made the lodge, she’d crawl into her car and fall on her face from exhaustion. It would easily be mid-morning before she got back up here to even begin searching for Brent. Survival in the mountains often hung by a thread. She was the only one who knew where he was.

He may have abandoned her, but she couldn’t do the same and desert him. Not and live with herself afterward.

Alice moved toward where she thought the trail was, intent on setting up a fireless camp to wait out the night.

She had enough food and a full water bottle. No tent or sleeping bag, but she’d survived worse conditions. A fire would’ve been welcome, but she couldn’t risk— “Hey there. You. Show yourself, man,” a deep voice called from behind her. Light flared, illuminating the forest. Footsteps crunched over rocks and twigs as the person approached.

Alice stiffened. People looked at her build and assumed she was male. It had happened to her before—and more than once. She considered running, but burdened with her heavy boots, climbing hardware, and the moonless night, she didn’t want to chance a headlong flight. Besides, the man might have a gun.

“Why should I?” She spun to face him, ready for almost anything.

“What? You’re a woman?”

Alice grasped her ice axe in both hands. “Leave me alone,” she grunted through clenched teeth. “I’m tired and my friend is...lost.”

“Whoa.” The man held up both hands, one of which gripped a flashlight. “Put your axe down, sweetheart. I’m not going to hurt you.” He was tall, maybe six-feet-four, with straight, red-blonde hair. Despite his height, he had a slender build. A well-defined jaw and sharp cheekbones suggested Nordic blood. It was tough to tell in the reflected light, but his eyes looked blue.

“Go back inside. You can see I’m not any kind of threat. I’d head down, but I need to be moving at first light to hunt for my friend.”

The man cocked his head to one side. “Big guy with red hair?”

Terror gripped her. Her throat narrowed. Breathing became a struggle. Since she couldn’t manage words, she nodded and steeled herself to hear the words, he’s dead. Alice bit her lower lip and gazed mutely at the stranger.

“Look, I think he’ll be okay. We were out hunting and heard something big falling. Thought it was the deer we’d shot at. Turned out to be your friend—” “Awk! You shot Brent!”

The man waved his hands in front of him. “Calm down, woman. Christ, you’re strung tighter than a fiddle.

Take a couple of deep breaths. No, we didn’t shoot him. Your friend was unconscious because he hit his head on a rock, so we carried him back here. My two buddies took the horses and hauled him down to the lodge. We only had three horses which is why I’m still here. Anyway, they were planning to drive him to the hospital in Bishop. I don’t expect they’ll be back much before the middle of tomorrow.”

At least that explains why there’re no horses here.

Alice shook her head, digesting the information. “I need to get moving, then. I can drive to the hospital and meet them.”

The man held out a hand. “I’m Jed. Jed Starnes. You look beat. There’re mountain cats on the prowl. Shot one a few hours ago. They get worse at night. More aggressive. You got a gun?”

She shook her head and ignored his outstretched hand. He looked chagrined and dropped it to his side. “Well, then, handshake or no, you need to come with me. Got a nice warm fire going inside. You look wet clear through.

Nothing you can do tonight, anyway. Get a few shots of Irish whiskey in you, a little soup, and some sleep. Come morning, you can go after your friend.”

It sounded good. Too good. She kept her ice axe poised. “How’d you get access to Lon Chaney’s cabin?”

Jed threw back his head and laughed. “That’s easy. Ever since Chaney senior died in nineteen-thirty, his son’s been letting some of us who work with him have the keys. All we have to do is ask. Damn shame the old man died right after he got this place built. It’s a beauty. You really should take a look inside.”

She blew out a breath. “What is it you do?”

“I’m a production manager for Paramount.”

“I thought they were in receivership.”

He laughed again. “We are. But we’re still making movies.”

Something about Jed put her at ease. Or maybe she was just too weary to think straight. She slowly dropped her hands. Tethered to her wrist, the ice axe dangled, not quite hitting the ground.

“That’s better, sweetheart,” he crooned. “Follow me. I promise I don’t bite.”

She trailed after him and climbed the broad steps leading to the cabin’s heavy wooden door. He unlatched it, took the lantern from its hook, and motioned her through ahead of him. Alice scanned the large room. One end was an enormous stone fireplace. The other held a kitchen of sorts with a pump mounted next to a sink. A curtained alcove probably contained a bedroom. The lower walls were the same large, flat fieldstones mortared together she’d seen on the outside. The upper walls were wooden planks. Alice sighed. It was warm. Truly warm. She didn’t realize how chilled she was. Her face stung from the sudden temperature shift.

She took off her headlamp and set it on a table. Next she unbuckled her waist belt and dropped her pack in a corner, followed by her axe. The click of a deadbolt falling into its metal hole snapped her to attention. She made a grab for her axe, but Jed beat her to it. “Don’t know about you,” he said, hefting the axe over a shoulder, “but I’m not fond of weapons inside.”

She’d been right about his eyes. They were a rich midnight blue. Something about them made her tingle deep inside. Alice pushed the thought away. She was still a virgin at nearly thirty, and likely to stay that way at the rate things were going in her life. Almost as if they’d been listening in on her thoughts, her nipples pebbled into points of awareness.

What am I doing?

She shook herself back to reality. A stranger she’d just met had locked her into this cabin and taken her only means of defense. Trepidation trumped lust. “Why’d you lock us in?” Because she tried hard, her voice only shook a little.

He flashed the key in front of her and dropped it into his pants pocket. “Never know who might wander by. I wanted to make certain we’re safe is all.” He made a huffing sound. “Most women appreciate that sort of thing.”

“No one would come up this trail in the middle of the night.”

“Hey, I’m sort of a city boy. We believe in locking the bad guys out.” He shrugged. “If you want to hang your jacket, there’re hooks by the fire. It looks pretty wet to me.”

Alice crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Jed. He stared back. Tension sizzled in the air between them. She held out a hand. “My axe.” She gestured to guns on racks along the walls. “Looks as if there are plenty of weapons in here. Besides, my ice axe isn’t a weapon, it’s a climbing aid.”

“Let’s just say I’m not enamored of watching my back. Look—” he balanced her ice axe against a wall, stepped away from it, and spread his hands in front of him “—you’re apprehensive because you don’t know me. How about if I’m feeling the same way?”

She sidled past him and tucked her axe behind her pack where it had been before. “I have no idea how I’m feeling,” she muttered, “other than tired.”

Jed moved past her to the sink and pumped water into a glass. Crossing the cabin, he handed it to her. “Drink this,” he suggested. “Once you’re done, let me hang your jacket near the fire where it can dry a little. It’s so wet, steam’s rising from it.”…

Megan’s Mates Wolf Clan Shifters Book Two Ann Gimpel Dream Shadow Press 55K words Release Date: 4/18/16 Genre: Shifter Ménage Romance One virgin + two wolf shifters = e-reader ecstasy.

Book Description: Calgary, Alberta 1936 After witnessing what might’ve been a murder, Megan is frantic to escape the Garden of Eden cult, so she catches the night train north out of town. Her lifetime commitment to the cult may well be her death sentence, but she’s not sticking around to let them frame her.

Wolf shifters, Les and Karl, eke out a primitive existence on the flanks of the Canadian Rockies.

Between Hunters who want to kill them and a wildfire raging out of control, they’re glad when Jed, their clan leader, shows up. And even more delighted when they see who’s in his car.

Jed’s mate, Alice, spied Megan by the side of the road looking lost and desperate and offered her a ride. Before Jed’s car even stops rolling, Les and Karl know she’s their mate. So skittish she’s barely willing to exit the car, Megan busies herself helping Jed and his pack mates unload supplies. Can Les and Karl convince her to join her life to theirs? If she does, will the risks she faced as a cult member pale in comparison to being mated to shifters?

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Excerpt from Megan’s Mates: The phone jangled again. Loud and strident, it made Les’ sensitive lupine hearing ache. It took him a moment to realize he needed his human form to make the noise go away. He’d tried to ignore the damned thing, but whoever was calling wouldn’t give up. Every time he ventured near the house, it was ringing. With an aggravated growl, he commanded his body to shift.

As soon as he had feet rather than paws, he strode through the door of his cabin deep in the woods, jaw tight with annoyance. The remote location a few miles outside Rocky Mountain House often lost phone service for long periods of time.

“Yes and too bad this isn’t one of them,” he muttered, snatched up the receiver, and barked, “Yes, I’m here.”

“It’s about damned time. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days.”

Les’ eyes widened. “Jed?” “Who the hell else?”

Les brayed laughter. “Good point. It’s not as if very many people have this number. What’s up, boss? I thought you were coming my way months ago. The boys and I wondered what happened.”

“Now that I have your attention, hang up.” Jed’s voice held a sharp edge that Les remembered all too well.

“We’ll do this a more private way.”

“You got it.” Les dropped the black receiver back into place. He kicked the door shut to keep the cold breeze out. It didn’t bother him as a wolf, but he was naked, and the air had a chill edge to it. He trotted into the bedroom and had begun to dress when Jed’s voice sounded in his mind.

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for a week.”

Les sank onto the bed and pulled a quilt over his still-bare legs as he considered where to start. Jed was clan leader for wolf shifters. He needed all the information Les could provide. “First off, we’re all still okay.”

“That’s a relief. When I couldn’t raise you, I was afraid Hunters had killed everyone. Made me half-crazy not to know anything. Anyway, we pulled into Calgary last night, so I’m finally close enough to use telepathy.”

“Is your new mate with you?”

“Affirmative. Bron, Terin, and Alice are with me.” Jed blew out a breath. “You may have heard through the grapevine, we’d originally decided to come north as part of our wedding trip, but Hunters nabbed half a dozen of us in northern California. It took a major offensive to free our people. Even so, we lost a couple.”

Les nodded, and then realized Jed couldn’t see him. “Yes, I know. We’ve had problems of our own. Hunters almost got your cousins, Ron and Chris. We killed them, and I’m still waiting for the fallout on that one since we also killed the whole posse that came afterward, hunting for their fallen companions. All five of them.”

“How many total? Was there any choice?” Jed’s voice was stern as he peppered Les with questions.

“Seven. No, no choice.” Anger tightened Les’ muscles. He’d like to kill every goddamned Hunter in the universe, but he wasn’t about to tell Jed that. And there hadn’t been any choice, not really. They’d been surrounded.

The only thing that saved them was taking a firm offensive position.

Jed broke into Les’ thoughts. “What’d you do with the bodies?”

“Don’t worry, boss. No one will ever find them. We dragged them to the very bottom of a cave system where there’s a vent to an upper cave and burned them.”

“How long ago?”

Les thought about it. He’d spent much of the last month as a wolf, which skewed his time sense. “Maybe a week.”

“You still haven’t told me why you weren’t answering your phone.”

“We’ve all been in our wolf forms. There’s a fire burning out of control between our pack and the crest of the Rockies. A couple of the cabins farther west incinerated—” “Humph,” Jed interrupted, obviously not concerned about an out-of-control wildfire. “Any of you find mates yet?”

“What do you think? It’s not as if the odds are in our favor.”

“Maybe Alice can change that. Women trust her. She’s actually scared up three mates since she joined Bron, Terin, and me.” A hesitation. “How close did you say that fire was?”

“My cabin’s not in any immediate danger. It’s fall and I’m expecting it to rain soon.” Les scratched at monthold beard growth on his chin. “It’s pretty primitive here, boss. Nothing like your digs in Hollywood.”

A different voice sounded in his head, rich, vibrant, and definitely female. “I’ve been listening in. Shameless of me not to have said something earlier. Don’t worry about me. My life was a whole lot simpler before I met up with Jed and my other two mates. Besides, I’m looking forward to meeting the clan members here in Alberta.”

Les’ mouth twitched into half a smile. “You must be Alice. We’ve heard a lot about you. Are you really six feet tall?”

Alice snorted, making Les wish he’d kept his mouth shut. After all, Alice was mated to his clan leader. “How about if we leave the details open, and you can see for yourself when we get there? Jed says it’s a four or five hour drive, and we should arrive sometime tomorrow. Is there anything we need to bring from the big city?”

Les gazed around his one-bedroom cabin as if he expected a grocery list to materialize. He cleared his throat before remembering he didn’t need his actual voice. “Um, we’ve been pretty much living off the land this past month, so anything you bring would be welcome.”

“I get the picture.” Jed broke in with a laugh. “We’ll fill up the trunk and the rest of the back seat.”

Les couldn’t help himself. “Who gets to sit next to Alice?”

Female chuckling made his heart lighter than it had been in a long time.

“Oh, they fuss and snarl a bit, but they sort of take turns. It’s nice actually, to have three doting mates.”

“I’m sure it is.” Les brushed a wave of sadness aside. He’d love to have a woman to fuss over, alongside Karl, his pack mate. They’d hunted for years for a female to grace their lives without success after their first mate died in childbirth in the 1600s. A few promising candidates crossed their path when they’d lived in Edmonton, but Hunters had driven them out of the city fifty years before.

“We’ll be there by tomorrow afternoon.” Jed’s voice was gruff, and Les figured his clan leader could read his mind.

“I’ll alert the troops, boss. Everyone will be really glad to see all of you. And to meet your mate.”

Les waited, but a certain emptiness told him Jed had signed off. He shoved the quilt aside, finished dressing, and called Karl through their telepathic link. It didn’t take long before paws scrabbled against the door, and Les remembered he’d shut it. By the time he crossed the small space and pulled the door open, Karl had found his human form and stood shivering, arms wrapped around his tall, spare frame. Black hair hung to his waist in tangles.

“Thanks. Damned cold out here.” The wolf shifter bounded into the room, giving the door a shove as he passed through it. “What’s up?”

“Jed’s here.” Les spread his arms wide and rolled his eyes. “Along with his lieutenants and their new mate.

We’ve got to clean this place up.”

“Why? It’s always been good enough for us.”

Les slugged him in the arm. “You weren’t listening. Jed’s mate will be here.”

“Oh, I get it.” Karl chortled, his dark eyes gleaming with glee. “Maybe if we didn’t do anything, she’d take pity on us and—” “Right. Find some clothes, and we’ll get to work. I don’t think Jed, Terin, or Bron will want their new mate waiting on the likes of us.”

Karl sprinted for his sleeping alcove toward the rear of the log cabin’s main room. Drawers banged open.

“Fire’s getting closer,” he called over one shoulder. “Maybe it would be better for all of us to get together in Red Deer.”

Les considered it. “Nope. Too soon since we axed those Hunters. That’s where they were from—there and Edmonton. I don’t want any friendly sheriff asking questions if they discover we live out here. Are you sure the fire’s closer? Maybe the wind just shifted direction.”

“It’s definitely closer. The smoke’s thicker, and I can actually hear it burning from the rise a couple miles west of here. At least my wolf can.” Karl slid his legs into trousers and pulled a sweater over his head before shoving his feet into an ancient pair of sheepskin slippers. He turned to Les. “Where do you think we should start? Come to think of it, when do you want to alert the rest of the clan, or should I do that?”

“We can take care of that later tonight. How about if you work on the dishes? I’ll sweep and get the kettle going for laundry.”

Karl strode to the sink and pumped the handle for water. “Eww.” He wrinkled his nose. “How long have these plates been here?”

“Does it matter?” Les lugged a large, cast iron kettle in through the back door and hefted it onto a woodburning stove. He opened the firebox door, levered a pocket knife out of his pants, and started shaving tinder. “Let’s warm some water. That should help.” As he worked, Les dialed in his lupine senses and scented fresh air coming through the back door. It was indeed tinged with smoke. What bad timing for a major fire. If it drove them into one of the nearby towns, they’d risk discovery because Hunters could scent them.

“Les?” He looked up from his half-built fire. “Um-hum.”

“Maybe it’s time to move on.”

“No!” Les banged a fist down on his thigh. “I’m sick of running. If the fire gets this far, we’ll come back when it’s over and rebuild.”

“But we’ll never find a mate out here.”

“Just do the damned dishes. We’ve got enough problems without adding to them.”…

Sophie’s Shifters Wolf Clan Shifters Book Three Ann Gimpel Dream Shadow Press 66K words Release Date: 5/2/16 Genre: Shifter Ménage Romance One spirited woman + three coyote shifters = e-reader ecstasy.

Book Description: Late 1930s, California.

The winds of change are blowing hard as shifters gather deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for a war powwow.

Tempers run high as they argue their next move.

An unexpected attack from more Hunters than they’ve ever seen forces their hand, and Blake, alpha for the coyote clan, fights alongside his brothers. He’s grimly pleased when every single one of their enemies is finally dead, the bodies chucked into glacial crevasses.

Sophie Laughing Wolf tracked her hated brother into the mountains. Gifted with foreseeing, she wants to make certain he ends up just as dead as he was in her vision. When the large group of men he’s with are set upon by shifters, mythical dual-natured beings who can take animal forms, she hides, calling on earth power to shield her.

It doesn’t work. Two shifters, back in their men’s bodies, haul her from her hiding place once the battle ends and drag her before their chief. He spares her life—for now—but she senses the animosity the others have for her. They see her as a threat, a witness to multiple murders.

When the mate bond strikes, she fights its pull. So does Blake. He can’t believe the gods would be so cruel as to bind him and his lieutenants to a woman with blood ties to Hunters—their ancient enemy.

She runs from her fate. So does he, but the bond burns bright, transcending everything.

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Excerpt from Sophie’s Shifters: Jed slipped and slid down the glacier, grateful his mate Alice wasn’t there to read him the riot act. An accomplished mountaineer, she’d have laughed herself sick after the second time he fell on his ass and slid twenty feet.

“Goddammit!” Terin screeched from behind him and went flying past on his stomach. He shifted mid-slide and dug his claws into the icy surface to stop his suicidal descent. Once he’d stopped on the uphill side of a boulder, he shifted back.

Jed drew to a halt next to him. “Good thing you didn’t bother getting dressed. Your clothes would be strewn over the last fifty feet of ice in shreds.”

“Yes and no,” Terin muttered, glancing pointedly at Jed’s shoes. “My boot soles would have helped—a lot.

Jesus but I’m glad Alice isn’t here to see this.”

“Keir’s doing okay in bare feet,” Bron noted, catching them up. “And I’m not doing that bad, but the soles of my feet hurt like hell—and I miss my claws.”

Jed eyed the edge of the glacier. Patches of rocks and dirt, interspersed with ice, began a couple hundred feet below them. Walking would get much easier then. He grabbed one of Terin’s arms. Bron seized the other one, and together they lurched over the remaining rock-studded ice.

“We have a problem,” he said without preamble.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Bron muttered.

“We have to get home and make sure Alice is okay,” Terin added.

Jed winced. He’d wanted to leave someone home with the women, but neither Alice, nor Megan—Les and Karl’s mate—would have any part of that. He reached for Alice through the mate bond, but she was too far away for him to sense anything.

“Which particular problem were you alluding to?” Bron asked. “Somehow it seems like more than getting out of these mountains with our hides intact.”

“It is,” Jed said tersely. “Les and Karl found a woman. They’re holding her back in the cave.”

Terin stopped dead. “What? Is she a climber like Alice, who got stranded up here?”

“Somehow, I don’t think that’s it,” Jed muttered.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Bron broke in. “Shit! If she came with the Hunters, we’ll have to kill her.”

“That already occurred to me.” Jed shot a pointed look at his lieutenant. “Keir said the same. He was standing close enough to hear when Les gave me the bad news.”

“Damned shame.” Terin shook loose from them. “I’m good. I don’t need you two to nursemaid me anymore.”

They covered the remaining half mile to the cave in silence. Terin and Bron went to collect their clothes, and Jed strode briskly to a back corner where he sensed Les and Karl. Crouched behind them in a quivering mass was a woman with her head buried in her crossed arms. Long black hair shot with thick silver streaks spilled around her onto the dirt floor. She was swathed in dark colored wool and flinched away when Jed hunkered next to her.

He probed her mind and found terror so gripping, it obliterated everything else. He started to tell her not to be afraid, but the words died on his tongue. He couldn’t give her any guarantees, and he wouldn’t lie to her.

“Who are you?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle.

“We tried that, boss,” Les said.

“At first, all she did was moan,” Karl added. “She got quieter after a while, but she hasn’t answered any of our questions.”

“Where’d you find her?” Jed asked.

“After we lifted the last of the bodies in our sector out of the moraine, so others could move them up the mountain, Les and I sensed something living. It wasn’t a Hunter, but it was human, so we dug a little.”

“Didn’t have to go far,” Les cut in, “before we found her hiding between a huge piece of deadfall and a big rock.” He shrugged. “Without our wolf senses, we’d never have discovered her.”

A low whimper escaped from the woman, and Jed laid a hand on her arm. “What’s your name?” he repeated.

“Just get it over with.” Her low, musical voice was strained. Hysteria trod near the surface.

“Get what over with?” Jed probed. Maybe if he could get her talking, he could learn something.

The woman lifted her head from her crossed arms and Jed’s eyes widened. She was absolutely stunning with huge midnight blue eyes. Pronounced bone structure and copper skin suggested Native American blood flowed through her veins. Sharp cheekbones, a hawk-bridged nose, and a squared-off chin lent her an exotic cast.

She tilted her chin at a defiant angle. “You have to kill me. I know too much. Get it over with. The others—” she cast a spurious glance Les and Karl’s way “—they were waiting for you to make the decision.” Her mouth worked as if she’d tasted something bitter. “Anyway, get it over with. I took my chances when I tracked my brother today. If he’d known, he’d have forbidden me to come.”

Jed frowned. “One of the Hunters was your brother?”

The woman nodded mutely. “Yeah, that’s what I just said, isn’t it? Get it over with, white man. If you’re going to kill me, do it. If not, let me go.”

Bron and Terin had joined them once they’d dressed. Bron passed a hand over the woman’s head, and Jed felt him probing with shifter magic. “You have white man’s blood too,” Bron murmured.

The woman shot him a scathing look. “Not much. What of it?”

“Where we come from in Canada,” Les said, “Indians are friends to those like us.”

She curled her upper lip in withering scorn. “We have enough problems without associating with shifters.

You’re nothing but trouble. Bad enough we got stuffed onto reservations, land no one else wanted.”

Jed tried a different tack. “Why’d you track your brother today?”

She buried her head in her arms again, refusing to look at him.

“Please.” He gentled his voice. “Give us something to work with. Les and Karl, my brothers who found you, didn’t harm you.”

“Only because they were waiting for you, their chief.” Her voice was muffled.

“Goddammit!” Les squatted in front of her and yanked her head upward. “Karl and I could’ve killed you. We didn’t. We were not waiting for Jed to make that call. Tell us why you were tracking your brother.”

Jed heard compulsion flow beneath the other shifter’s words.

The woman drew back. She tried to combat Les’ spell, but the contest was laughable. “To stop him,” she said.

The words were clearly dredged from her, but they held the ring of truth.

“Good. He needed to be stopped,” Les said. “Why’d you think he’d listen to you?”

The woman’s face crumpled and she started to cry, big noisy gulping sobs that ripped through her. “It’s not what you think. I didn’t try to make him listen to me,” she managed between ragged breaths. “I have the gift of prophecy—farseeing—and I knew things would go to hell for all of them today.”

“Do your visions always come true?” Jed probed. Despite the problems the woman presented, her story fascinated him.

She nodded, but didn’t say anything further.

“Did your brother know you followed the Hunter group?” Jed asked.

She shook her head. “No. He doesn’t share my gift. His magic came mostly from the goddamned white man’s Church.”

“Odd none of the rest of them sensed you behind them,” Karl muttered.

“Not odd at all,” she shot back, choking a little on snot running down her face. “I can blend my energy into the rocks, the dirt.”

“We found you,” Karl pointed out.

“Because you were in your natural form, and wolves sense such things far more acutely than men.”

Jed waved Karl to silence. This was going nowhere fast. Returning his attention to the woman, he said, “So you came along, but didn’t talk with him. Didn’t try to warn him. Help me understand why.” Jed hoped things might get clearer, but so far they were just becoming more confusing.

“Let me get this straight.” Bron hunkered next to Les and caught the woman’s gaze with his dark one. “You saw in a vision that your brother would die, and you came along anyway but didn’t try to warn him. Did you want to make certain he was dead?”

Jed silently offered his lieutenant credit for shrewdness. If the woman knew today would end in a bloodbath because she’d seen it—and she made no attempt to warn her brother—what other reason would she have had for trailing after him.

The woman’s sobbing escalated. She tried to jerk her chin out of Les’ grip, but he held fast. “Yes,” she gasped out. “Yes. I hated that bastard. He…used me, hurt me the way men hurt women, when I was only ten years old and never stopped until I ran away when I was sixteen. No one believed me. No one c-cared.” Her last words were almost obliterated by sobs.

Suddenly her phrase to stop him took on a whole new meaning. Jed just stared at her. “So it’s not that you didn’t say anything today. You never told him anything.”

She did yank her chin away then and spat on the dirt floor. “Hell no. I haven’t spoken to him in ten years, but he’s blood and he shows up in my visions.”

Running on instincts that had rarely failed him, Jed glanced at the four wolf shifters ranged around him. They didn’t need to talk. After hundreds of years of working together, they understood one another.

“Stand up.” Jed told the woman.

“Why?” “Did you see your own death in your vision?”

An odd look washed over her face before she shook her head and pushed herself upright. Standing she was of a height with Jed, and her hair reached past her ass. She squared slender shoulders. “Is that a backhanded way of saying I can leave?”

Jed shook his head and hurried to add words before she sank into a puddle of terror again. “You’re right that we can’t allow you to return to your life. We have no idea who you are, who you’d tell. We could wipe your memory of us, but you’d still recall the death that happened in this canyon.”

“What are you going to do with me?” Her voice shrilled and she jerked her chin upward. “If you think you’re going to abuse me like my brother, think again, white man. I’d rather be dead.”

“We don’t do that to women.” Terin pushed into her line of vision so she had to look at him.

“Not what I’ve heard,” she retorted. “My brother said he learned it from you.”

“Bull crap!” Jed said succinctly. “I’ve never known a shifter to take a woman against her will. Not on my watch, and not in my clan.”

“You planning to bring her home with us?” Bron quirked a dark brow.

Jed nodded. “The only question—” he focused on the woman “—is whether you come willingly, or we knock you out and carry you down the mountain.”

“Home as in staying under the same roof with five men?” Her face twisted into a grimace. “No. Not happening. Just kill me here and get it over with.”

“We’re mated,” Karl informed her. “Les and I have a mate. Her name is Megan. And Jed, Bron, and Terin are mated to Alice.”

The woman tossed her head. “Fine. Just because you located some sluts who—” Jed snaked out a hand and slapped her hard across the face. He grabbed her head between his hands and forced her to look at him. “Never say one bad word about my mate. I love her. So do Bron and Terin. Don’t disparage what you don’t understand.”

A shocked look blossomed on her face and she muttered, “Sorry,” before looking at her feet.

“Let go of her, boss.” Bron pulled Jed’s hands away. “She only understands what she’s lived. And it hasn’t been pretty.”…

About the Author: I'm basically a mountaineer at heart. I remember many hours at my desk where my body may have been stuck inside four walls, but my soul was planning yet one more trip to the backcountry.

Around the turn of the last century (that would be 2000, not 1900!), I finagled a move to the Eastern Sierra, a mecca for those in love with the mountains. Stories always ran around in my head on backcountry trips, sometimes as a hedge against abject terror when challenging conditions made me fear for my life, sometimes for company.

Eventually, the inevitable happened. I returned from a trip and sat down at the computer. Three months later, a five hundred page novel emerged. It wasn’t very good, but it was a beginning. I learned a lot between writing that novel and its sequel, and I've been writing ever since.

In addition to turning out books, I enjoy wilderness photography. A standing joke is that over ten percent of my pack weight is camera gear, which means my

very tolerant husband has to carry the food -- and everything else too.

Find Ann At: www.anngimpel.com http://anngimpel.blogspot.com http://www.amazon.com/author/anngimpel http://www.facebook.com/anngimpel.author @AnnGimpel (for Twitter)

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.

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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

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.