Tuesday 30 April 2019

#TuesdayTakeover by Erika Reed Burning up the Sheets


It's Tuesday and time for me to hand over  my blog to a guest.

Today, Erika Reed is my guest and she's here and telling us all about Men of Inferno



Kasey Mcintyre, her cousin, and her best friend are visiting the town of Inferno, California. They’re just there to watch Kasey’s dads recognition ceremony at the local firehall, but there’s trouble kindling for the three of them and it’s going to stop them from enjoying their visit.

Brothers Zach, Jake, and Cody Kelly feel their libidos ignite when Kasey’s car almost collides with their fire engine. The three brothers always knew they’d find the right woman to share, just as they always knew that they’d be raising their future family here in Inferno, where their chosen lifestyle would be accepted and respected.

The Kelly boys believe that Kasey is the woman for them, so when the situation heats up and burns out of control, they’ll stop at nothing to protect the woman they have all come to love. It’s going to take love, trust, and courage for the four new lovers to discover the truth and find out who is after Kasey...and why.

Warning: Burning up the Sheets was previously published under the title “Blazing Inferno”. It has since been revised and re-edited with new bonus material added to the story.




Weblink:  Erika Reed


Ohhh, happy reading, and added to my TBR list. sounds great.

love Raven xx


Sunday 28 April 2019

#SundaySnippet with a man she'd rather forget

Hi all, welcome to this week's #SundaySnippet.


It's from a WIP that I'm playing with, about a couple who are perhaps, only perhaps getting back together again. Not for love, though they both admit they fancy the pants of each other, but because he says he needs her to help him...
Why?
Ah that would be telling.

~~Noah Jackson's grinning face stared down at me, his baby blues taunting, teasing and making me squirm. Not all bad mind you, but not what I needed right now. The open shirt, arrow of chest hair that enticed your eyes lower, the dark jeans unsnapped and…
Do not go there.
The poster was an advertisement for testosterone.
Sod it.
'Premier tonight…'
Damn it.
Enough already, build a bridge get over it, move on, enough already.

He’s in a past lifetime. Got to be for my sanity.~~

Happy reading,

love Raven xx

Friday 26 April 2019

#NineForTheWeekend with Jennifer Macaire who says... Welcome to Paradise


And what a great nine we have.

Over to you, Jenn...

Hi Raven and thank you so much for this opportunity! 

9 interesting things about my heroine Sugar, in "Welcome to Paradise"

1) Sugar would think she was too boring to write about - she would be embarrassed with all this attention. You see, she's super shy. She grew up with a huge scar that cut her face nearly in two. A wave dashed her into the rocks at the foot of cliffs and cut her face. In St Thomas, the rocks are volcanic and can be as sharp as glass. She had to wait until she'd stopped growing to get the scar fixed. 

2) I wrote the whole book without mentioning her name once. When it was done, my editor said, "But what is the heroine's name?"  Once, in the book, someone called her "Sugar". It was a term of endearment, but it became her name. 

3) I based a lot of Sugar's story on my own childhood, because I grew up in the Virgin Islands. The people, the birds, the insects (& the tarantulas!), and the beaches are all part of my life.

4) The house Sugar lives in is the replica of a house I used to live in. It had a balcony that overlooked the ocean, a hibiscus garden, and a path that led down the cliffs to the sea. 

5) Sugar speaks fluent Spanish, because her grandparents are from Puerto Rico. She loves to go to Puerto Rico to visit them - they let her watch TV - (something her parent on't have in their house!)

6) What happens to Sugar in Germany was the hardest part of the book for me. Abuse is a sensitive subject, and it was incredibly difficult to write about it. After, I had to address the story of her father's abuse, and that was hard too. 

7) Sugar's fiancé, Reliance, is named after a boat I fell in love with.

8) Sugar and Reliance make love in a secluded bay that is a copy of the one I used to swim in when I was living in St. Thomas. Sometimes at night, during the hottest part of the year, phosphorescence glows in the shallows. It's incredibly beautiful, (and very romantic!) 

9) Sugar becomes a model, and I used my experience to describe her work, which was a lot of fun!



Blurb:  Growing up on an island paradise isn’t as easy as one might think. Sugar is infatuated with the boy next door, worried she won't make the cheerleading squad, and even more worried that she will. She is paranoid that because of the horrendous scar on her face, no one really expects her to succeed at anything. Her sister is smart, her mother is a legendary model, and her father is a famous artist. Her family’s success sets a high bar for her to live up to.

Everything changes for Sugar when a plastic surgeon removes her scar. The surgery makes her beautiful, but she makes the shocking discovery that being beautiful can be awful. When she finally discovers who she is, and what she wants from life, it nearly destroys her tightly knit family. She must confront abuse, an elopement, loss, and a secret her father has kept from her all her life. Sugar is struggling to pull everything together and find her own version of 'Happily Ever After'.

Tuesday 23 April 2019

#TuesdayTakeover with Peri Elizabeth Scott... where... Nothing Else Matters



Welcome to this week's #TuesdayTakeover...

Over to you Peri Elizabeth...





Blurb:
Claire and Liam had a good thing going until he walks out of her life. Being dumped without warning is devastating enough, discovering she isn’t pregnant leaves her without even a part of him.
Withdrawing from everyone, she moves to another city and immerses herself in work, the better to forget Liam. Not that it’s working. Claire is a one-woman man, to her despair.
Back stateside after an unexpectedly long deployment, security contractor Liam Cafferty has accepted the truth: walking out on Claire makes him a coward. Thinking it for the best, given his dangerous profession, doesn’t cut it. She should have been given the choice.
With the biggest heart of any woman he’s known, he’s hopeful she might take him back and makes it his new mission to convince her.
Claire must decide what matters: her pride or taking another chance on Liam—and love.

Buy Links:
Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/y33va2hf

Excerpt:
The streets were full of people as she used her phone to arrange an Uber. Small groups with youthful faces, couples, and the occasional single individual moved along, their destinations unknown but likely the restaurants that crowded downtown, or maybe a club later on after dusk fell. The camaraderie left her cold, and with some desperation to escape, she scanned the curb for her lift.
Maybe she was indeed crazy, choosing to cut herself off from everyone, cutting ties with her old life, all to forget Liam. Because, newsflash, it wasn’t working. She was like one of those historical romance novel heroines who languished and withered into old age after losing a beau. Whatever empty spaces that opened up in her head, past all her attempts to fill them, Liam snuck in.
While she waited, she opened her messages, trying to shut out the people and noise around her that were reminders of a different life. There weren’t many on the phone. She had no one local to give the number to, outside of work, sad commentary. She was more like one half of those werewolf or vampire couples who wasted away without their mate.
Joanne’s number came up several times, and there was also a text. Hoping nothing was wrong, she opened it.
Haven’t been able to reach u b/phone and u haven’t responded to vms. Assuming u r busy but u should know Liam is looking for u. Call me!
Suddenly lax fingers nearly let the device slip to the pavement, and she tightened her grip. Rereading the text, she remembered to breathe and swayed on her feet.
“Claire?” His familiar voice, hard on the heels of Jo’s text, was surreal. Had she conjured him?
She resisted the urge to spin wildly and shriek at the top of her lungs. It couldn’t be. She wasn’t prepared. How was this happening?
His SUV was nose-in to the curb, the back end blocking traffic and already, impatient drivers were honking. But her attention was on the tall, broad-shouldered man rounding the hood.
“Claire.”
He hadn’t changed at all. Unless one considered the burnished skin and a leaner look. Her stare took in his appearance in minute detail, and something in her chest lurched his way, even as her feet tried to carry her in the other direction.
Hand shaking, she held it up as if to ward off an advancing horde and shook her head. “Go away!”

About the author:
Peri Elizabeth Scott aka Allyson Young lives in cottage country, Manitoba, Canada where she and her husband pretend to work well together in their seasonal business.
She has always enjoyed the written word, and after reading an erotic romance, quite by mistake, decided to try her hand at penning one. That was followed by a mix of spicy (Ally) and sweet (Peribeth) romances in various genres as well as a post-apocalyptic adventure without a lick of romance by Peribeth.
A bestselling Amazon author, a hybrid, and a coauthor, as of April 2019 she has published eight series and several standalones, with others in the works. 


(On my TBR list now—Raven)
Happy reading,
love Raven xx

Monday 22 April 2019

The Gluten free authors guide to goodies—or not. Where I talk about toiletries.

Or shampoo.

(Pic Pinterest)

Now I honestly never thought about hair shampoo and gluten. Daft? Maybe but it didn't enter my head, until it did so to speak.

Until I glutenised myself with hair shampoo. It hurt. A lot.

We were on holiday, and the lovely hubby commented he'd seen an advert saying a certain hair shampoo was gluten free. I nodded said oh really, and thought no more about it. Until I washed and conditioned my hair with the very expensive toiletries provided in the accommodation. And ouch.

My scalp stung, my face went blotchy, I itched. The dreaded spots appeared.

I have never put so much lukewarm water over my head and the rest of me so fast. It was not nice!

After I towelled myself off, I remembered lovely hubby's comment. Checked the bottles and there in the bold list of allergens was the dreaded gluten.

I was gobsmacked. It wasn't cheapie stuff where you'd imagine gluten in (or well, no actually I can't but you know what I mean) This was top of the range lusted after stuff that I had been so excited to see. And it contained gluten.

I had to find a chemist and buy some more down to earth toiletries. And suffer looking blotchy for four days. (Not a good look when you're out for posh nosh)

The moral of this is... always check the ingredients of everything. 

(And don't get me started on toothpaste!)

Happy hairwashing,

love, Raven xx

Sunday 21 April 2019

#SundaySnippet with a bear and a problem


Hi all,

It's a short snippet today from a story the lovely Doris O'Connor and I started when she went into hospital, to as she said when I reminded her we'd got an idea for a shifter...'take her mind off things'.

Sadly Doris passed away before we finished it, but hopefully I've done us both proud, by getting to the end, and submitting it. Just hope now it's accepted.

Bare Alley Ink

The Tattoo Artist's Mate

~The door to the shop blew open with a bang that rattled the windows nearby as a sudden gust of wind blew through the aperture and lifted a sheaf of drawings from the desk. They fluttered around like overlarge confetti and landed in a haphazard heap on the floor.
“Dammit, I should have shut that back door earlier,” Gaspar said with a growl that would put the fear of god into anyone who wasn’t on his side. “Sodding through draft, especially when the back alley’s like a wind tunnel. You could test a jumbo jet in there and…. what the fuck.”
Gaspar couldn’t have stopped the animalistic growl that rumbled out from his chest if his life depended on it, and he wasn’t sure he hadn’t grown a few inches too, because the scent on that breeze….
It couldn’t be, yet his bear responded to the call in the wind with another deep, menacing growl, which shook the floorboards and made the bell above his shop door go into spasms.
It was her, the woman he’d been with in her sleep. The woman he yearned for had wet dreams about and knew was his. She’d come to him.~

happy reading,
love Raven xx


Friday 19 April 2019

#NineForTheWeekend with Laura Baird. Did you know...?

It's almost the weekend, time for Nine for The Weekend

Nine facts you might not know but really should

Today, It's Laura Baird and boy are these amazing facts.


Nine Facts from Laura M. Baird:
1 – After trying a semester of college and having no direction in life, I decided to join the U. S. Army. I thought, if my brother could do it, why not me?! J One week into basic training, I seriously began to rethink my decision. But with the help of a terrific friend who took me under her wing, I gave it my all. While I only did 5 years, I’ll never regret it. I met my husband who was also serving, and we’ve been married over twenty-eight years!
2 – I became a dental hygienist at the age of thirty-three (being 3rd oldest in my graduating class). While still working hygiene, I became a published romance author at the age of fifty!
3 – I like to bring in local (or even national issues/events) to add a realistic element to my writing. I like bringing to light, something others may not be aware of, and may even want to lend their support to.  My hero, Carson, from “In a Flash”, was a foster kid who became a mentor and supporter of Treehouse for kids. It’s an organization in Washington State (where I live) with the goal to help kids in foster care do better in school and increase their graduation rate, giving them a much better chance at success later in life. https://www.treehouseforkids.org/
4 – Both my hero and heroine from “In a Flash” have body art – tattoos – more so my heroine, Audri. I fell in love with tattoos at a young age when I remember seeing a woman walking the market where mom and I would go. I continue to surprise people with my own body art – a full sleeve honoring my family; a partial sleeve honoring my Scottish heritage; fantasy figures on my leg (fairy, unicorn).
5 – Audri, my heroine, also deals with epilepsy, a condition my grandfather dealt with and a cousin currently deals with. In my story, Audri had wonderful support from her adoptive parents, and she enjoys doing portraits for epileptic children at the Seattle Children’s Hospital, as their favorite superhero or movie character. Having a condition, a disease, or something “out of the norm” shouldn’t be a stigma; it shouldn’t set you apart from others. But unfortunately, it often does. I think society is getting better at dealing with the situation, but it can still do better.
6 – As a dental hygienist, I work with a variety of patients – young to elderly – and my practice treats many in the autistic scope. It’s always a pleasure to provide care for every single one of my patients, but especially for those who don’t have complete control over their own care. And teaching care givers is a huge, important factor as well. It’s very rewarding when they thank me for their care and the wonderful visit they had… especially since many don’t want to be in the dental office to begin with. ;)
7 – The opening for “In a Flash” takes place at a writer’s conference, with Audri, a cover model photographer’s assistant, and Carson, one of the sexy models she secretly crushes on. The story was inspired by my first attendance to a conference, the Emerald City Writer’s Conference, set in Bellevue, WA. I witnessed the work of cover model photographer, Wander Aguiar, and his models, and a story idea instantly came to mind. I now have 2 books out in the series, with 2 more loosely outlined. Jesse Steed is my cover model photographer in the story, definitely ‘modeled’ after Wander, and I would love to have a picture of him on my cover when his story is released. You can follow his work here: https://www.facebook.com/WANDERBOOKCLUB/

(I'm drooling-Raven)

8 – Over the years, I wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – where writers are encouraged to write a novel of at least 50K words in the month of November. “In a Flash” was my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in 2016, and a success! I wrote 51K in 26 days; set it aside, revised, submitted, revised again, and now it’s out in the world! I have yet to complete another attempt, but will continue to try.
9 – And in trying to think of one final fact… I share a birth day with other creatives… Quentin Tarantino, Fergie, Mariah Carey, and Nathan Fillion (Firefly & Castle), to name a few.


“In a Flash” blurb:
Cover model photographer’s assistant, Audri, crushes on sexy Carson, never knowing he feels the same way. Until an impromptu photo shoot puts them in each other’s arms and secret desires are revealed. But with obstacles between them, can they break down their walls and find love with one another?

and here's your lovely Laura links...

 

Laura M Baird, Romance Author
https://www.laurambairdauthor.com  

https://www.facebook.com/LauraMBairdauthor/ 


Happy reading,

love Raven xx