Adriana Kraft

When it's time to heat things up...

romance

New Release Blitz: Stolen from Tomorrow by Fox Beckman @foxbeckman #Paranormal #Romance #Giveaway

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Title: Stolen From Tomorrow

Series: Trust Trilogy, Book One

Author: Fox Beckman

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 04/25/2023

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: M/NB

Length: 64600

Genre: Paranormal, Romance, urban fantasy, interracial, gay, nonbinary, time travel, monsters, witch

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Description

Ravi Abhiramnew’s job is simple: hunt down and neutralize supernatural threats. That is until he meets Cayenne, a charismatic time traveler who claims to know everything about him—even his most closely guarded secrets.

Going to dinner with Cayenne is probably a bad idea, and a romantic island getaway definitely is.

When a monster picks their resort as its hunting ground, Ravi’s combat skills and Cayenne’s time magic should make it a breeze to kill the monster and get their vacation back on track. But it turns out the real danger lurks much, much closer…

Excerpt

Stolen from Tomorrow
Fox Beckman © 2023
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One
Carefully peering down the sights of his 9mm, Ravi squeezes off a shot. It strikes true, lodging deep into the monster’s exposed heart. The creature doesn’t falter in the slightest, snarling in his direction as if he were a particularly irritating gnat. A perfect shot, and it isn’t good enough. Typical, really.

In all his years hunting monsters, Ravi has never seen anything quite like this before. Strips of flesh hang off grayed bones between swathes of icy-white fur, a looming eight-foot-tall humanoid crowned with twisted icicle horns, baring a mouthful of jagged fangs while the freezing air steams with its breath. The heart seems to be the obvious target, a stark knot of dark ice threading around exposed ribs into the monster’s chest, but nothing the team has thrown at it has had any effect. Val’s giant double-handed maul would surely put a crack in it, if they can get her close enough for a hit, but any time they try, the giant beast summons up a swarm of ice serpents from the surrounding snow, keeping the hunters at bay. Because being a giant, slavering behemoth with no obvious weaknesses wasn’t enough; it’s got magic too. Again, typical.

Ravi curses and ducks back to rejoin the rest of the group as the monster lets loose another bellowing roar, snaking out a many-jointed arm to rip up a huge chunk of earth and fling it at Ravi and his team. Val, eyes burning blue-white behind mirrored sunglasses, calmly steps forward and deflects the projectile with a blow of her maul. It shatters into a shower of snow and icy dirt.

“Little cover, Constance?” Harry suggests. She lowers her gun after Ravi’s shot hit dead center to zero effect, looking supremely annoyed. “Also, if you’ve got any idea what this thing is, that would be really useful.”

Constance steps forward, hands working feverishly as she pulls a tangle of thorns from her satchel and slaps it together with a handful of hastily procured dust from another pocket. A thick wall of thorns rises from the ground, cutting them off from the monster and granting a momentary reprieve. “I hast ne’er beheld such a beast ’ere, mine niece.”

“Getting a little ye olde there, Constance,” Harry tells her ancestress.

Dropping her hands, Constance turns toward the rest contritely. “Ah, yes, my apologies. I have no knowledge of this creature. Hey, nonny-nonny,” she adds with a flash of mischief.

“I think it’s a chenoo?” Nate pokes his head out from behind one of the torn-up tree trunks, still intrepidly wielding his hockey stick. He slaps one of the ice serpents away as it gets too close. “Fuck! These things are quick.”

“What’s a chenoo?” Ravi asks, eyes darting from the thorn wall and scanning the snow for more serpents. “How do we kill it?”

Nate winces. “I’m pretty sure it’s like an Algonquian version of a wendigo.”

Everyone groans. Wendigos are the worst. Harry shakes her dark hair, gun hand gesturing to the chenoo. “Okay, Professor, so how do we take it down?”

“Is it not the heart?” Val asks, peering up on her toes over the thorn wall. She’s so tall she barely needs to stretch. “It is on the outside of its body.” She ducks back down as the chenoo tears another skeletal tree right up by the roots and sends it crashing against the thorn wall.

Constance grimaces, rocking on her heels as if she’d been dealt the blow. “I cannot keep this wall up for much longer, my comrades.”

“Noted,” says Harry, forehead furrowed.

“A direct hit to the heart did nothing,” Ravi reminds her. “You’d think fire would do it, but Constance’s first spell did nothing except melt some snakes.”

Nate shakes his head. “I’m not sure what will kill it. Usually, you get the Ojibwe version of these things here in the Midwest, and the heart shot would have killed one of those. I’d have to do some research. Would have been nice if the client gave us this info before sending us here, don’t you think?”

“Take cover!” Val bellows as a massive tree trunk flies their way. Ravi grabs the person closest to him. He drags Harry out of the way while Val snatches up Nate and Constance and teleports them out of sight just as earth and bark crash down through the thorn wall onto the churned-up snow where they had all been standing.

Ravi helps Harry to her feet as they take cover behind a tangle of fallen oaks. “I guess it would have been too easy if this ice monster was vulnerable to fire, huh,” she says wryly, kicking at an errant ice snake. “If I could talk to it, I might be able to figure out what it wants. We’ve talked down monsters from a fight once or twice before.”

“If it’s like a wendigo, it just wants to eat people. I could set up a sniper nest,” Ravi offers. “There are decent vantage points there”—he points up at a pair of snowy hills—“and there.”

Harry gives him an incredulous look. “Is that what you have in that big bag, a friggin’ sniper rifle? Where’d you learn to snipe?”

“Israel,” he answers shortly.

Her eyebrows lift. “What were you doing in Israel?”

Mourning. “Training,” he says. “The Trust has a few consultants in Mossad.”

Harry rolls her eyes. “Of course you do. I bet all you covert agent types get together for regular potlucks and barbeques.” She scans their surroundings. “No rifles. Let’s try to keep any more gunplay to a minimum,” she says with regret. Ravi knows how she feels. The two of them are the marksmen of the group, and sometimes it’s not easy being overshadowed by an Amazonian angel warrior with a big magic hammer and a spell-slinging sorceress. At least the new guy just has a hockey stick.

Ravi watches her face, sees where she’s looking, thinks he can intuit her plan. “You want to give Val an opening?” It’s standard ops to get a team’s main damage dealer where they’ll do the most harm, and Harry has surprisingly good instincts for team dynamics, considering she operated as a lone PI before all this supernatural shit entered her life. She nods decisively, and he holsters his gun. “Good plan. I’ll back your play.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.” She breathes out, then they both burst into motion. Harry grabs a couple of branches, hands one to Ravi, and, wielding them like clubs, they wade out into the open. The ice snakes are quick and agile, but only take a hit or two before they shatter. The pair fan out in different directions, smashing and stomping, creating a pie slice toward the others. “Constance!” Harry cries out. “Distract it!”

Constance runs forward into the cleared space, bright energy already swirling around her hands. While she gathers up her magic, Harry nods at Ravi. He nods back and moves to cover their witch, stomping an approaching ice snake’s head under his oxfords before it can get too close to her. “Where’s Nate?”

“He went down the embankment,” Val intones. “He claimed he had an idea.”

Constance finishes her spell, speaking an unfamiliar word and pulling her hands up into twin claws. Fire spreads up from cracks in the ground in front of the chenoo. It reels back, roaring with fury, and turns toward the fire, leaving its back open and unguarded.

“Let’s hope the Professor is right,” Harry mutters, thwacking a pair of ice snakes. “Val, got your wings on?”

“Always.” Val’s sunglasses reflect the blaze, and white, feathered wings appear from nowhere, unfurling behind her. With a flash, she teleports behind the creature, raises her war hammer, and slams it down onto the monster. A solid hit. The pained screech of the thing is so piercing and terrible it raises the hairs on everybody’s arms. All the ice snakes stop their advance and writhe in place.

Ravi takes the opportunity to stomp a few more of the snakes before they recover as Constance throws open her satchel. “To battle, my familiar!” Her cat, Griswold, leaps from the bag and pounces on the nearest ice snake with a bold, strident battle cry.

“Take that, loathsome serpent! Have at thee, villains!”

The cat sinks his fangs into the back of the snake’s head and shakes fiercely.

It’s a weird team, Ravi admits, but it works.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Books2Read

Meet the Author

Prone to diving way too deep down research rabbit-holes and absolutely incapable of working without a curated playlist in the background, Fox Beckman lives in the Twin Cities and has far too many irons in the fire. Fox is writer, an artist, an occasional wrangler of kangaroos, a longsword fencer, an archer, a roller of dice, and a forager of mushrooms that aren’t deadly (probably).

Website | Twitter

Giveaway

One lucky winner will receive a $50.00 NineStar Press Gift Code!

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“Nice lookin’ filly…” #SundaySnippet #SnipSun #Steamy #RomanticSuspense #Sale #KentuckyDerby

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It’s less than two weeks to the Kentucky Derby!

…so my Sunday Snippet is switching gears to prep for Triple Crown Fever. Do you love horses? I was a horse-crazy kid, and as fate would have it, so was my husband. We poured our love of horses and the experience gleaned from our brief foray into horse racing to pen a four-book steamy romantic suspense series set in the world of thoroughbred horse racing.

To celebrate the upcoming Triple Crown, all four books are on sale for just 99¢ from now through the Belmont Stakes in mid-June.

Here’s our Sunday Snippet from Riders Up: Book One, Cassie’s Hope

EXCERPT

Set up: Cassie has trailered her dad’s prize thoroughbred filly from Illinois to Wyoming to try to get her first stakes win and is just getting Hope settled into her stall…

Shaking her head, Cassie grabbed a hoof pick from her back pocket, lifted one of Hope’s front hooves, and began extracting dirt and pebbles.

“Nice lookin’ filly.”

Cassie groaned at the strange deep voice and the too-familiar line. Couldn’t men anywhere be a little more original?

Dropping the hoof, Cassie glanced across Hope’s back and gasped. The deeply tanned hunk behind the voice had shoulders that stretched taut a pale yellow polo shirt covered, in part, with a thin buckskin vest. The wide cowboy buckle appeared unnecessary to hold up well contoured Levi’s. A sweat-stained brown Stetson, tipped low, cast a light shadow across his facial features. His worn boots were those of a working man. This was no drugstore cowboy.

REVIEWS

An emotional roller-coaster, with twists and turns you never see coming! …I feel I know them, I took their journey with them. I felt their pain, their sadness, their struggles, and most of all their love. And that is the mark of a truly good book. Faith, Goodreads

Just downloaded this book yesterday and didn’t set it down until I was finished. Great story! Great characters with steamy love scenes. Will look for more suspense written by this author. Would recommend this book to all romantic suspense readers. Billie D.

BUY LINK

Amazon

BLURB

What happens when a fiercely loyal widowed half-Ute cowboy meets a fiery redhead with an Irish temper to match? Cassidy O’Hanlon – Cassie, to her friends – has set aside her Chicago career for six months to train racehorses for her dad after his stroke.

Furious the interloper has shipped in a ringer from the Chicago circuit to his Wyoming turf, Rancher/trainer Clint Travers sets out to put her in her place. Sparks fly immediately, but after their rocky start, the two quickly forge a passionate relationship, and he follows her to Chicago.

When it becomes clear someone is drugging Cassie’s horse, Clint sets out to solve the mystery, but storms off in a cloud of wounded pride when suspicions turn to him.

Can love trump pride?

Release Blitz! Over Exposed, by Alexa Piper @prowlingpiper #Giveaway #Romance #LGBTQ #Thriller #ActionAdventure

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Title: Overexposed

Series: Vampire Tales 2

Author: Alexa Piper

Publisher: Changeling Press LLC

Release Date: April 14 2023

Heat Level: 4 – Lots of Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 119 pages

Genre: Romance, Thriller/Suspense, Action Adventure, Dark Fantasy, Paranormal, Bisexual/Pansexual/Multisexual, Gay, Sorcery & Witchcraft

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Synopsis

After the events that drew them together, Ethan and Auris have grown into their feelings for one another. On their quest to discover other supernatural beings, Ethan will have to do some healing after the violence he experienced, and Auris, in order to help the man he loves do so, will share his past with Ethan.

While their relationship deepens, the pair finds something in Prague that they had hoped for but not expected: traces of another vampire. But that discovery brings with it a greater threat and more things between light and shadow they will have to deal with.

Content warning: Overexposed contains brief mention of self-harm and suicide.

Excerpt

All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2023 Alexa Piper

Auris had not planned a direct flight to Prague. A precaution against any pursuing priests, he’d said. We had landed in Dresden. I’d been in that unhappy state of surviving a transatlantic flight, but since it had been just barely night still, Auris had made sure to get me to the front of the line for my rapid test before his eyes turned daylight silver.

And now, there was a city waking to cold November air, and we were leaving the roofs and tall buildings behind to cross the border into the Czech Republic.

The hum and rattle of the train finally pulling out of the station was a relief after the flight, dry air, and my ears popping, and I appreciated that we had a compartment to ourselves. First class, of course, and we were both masked, Auris because it was now fully daytime and he couldn’t control minds as easily, me because I didn’t have a vampiric immune system.

Auris had left the window seat to me and sat on my right instead of across from me. “You know, Ethan, it harms my self-confidence, this preference of yours to gaze at the outside when you have a perfectly dressed vampire right next to you,” he had told me with exaggerated drama.

“This was… all really easy,” I said after a while. I was watching a bank of fog cling to bony tree branches against the backdrop of a milky pale sky.

Auris put a hand on my knee, squeezed lightly. “I told you it would be. A lesser man might take your surprise as a blow to his confidence. Another blow to his confidence.”

I turned and looked at him, his daylight-silvered eyes and faerie prince features a different sight than the wintry landscape outside. “You mean a lesser vampire. And with the pandemic, I just thought getting a flight would be harder. I thought you’d have to use your vampire entrancement thing to get some Gen Z influencers to give us their tickets. The private plane simply threw me. Also, you’re pretty. I look at you. I’m doing it now.” I pointed at my eyes.

“It helped that you had your passport on you,” he said. “Especially since modern technology is ever encroaching on travel, especially with so many travel restrictions still in place. You should try to sleep a little. You look tired after the flight. I’ll let you look at me to excess once we arrive in Prague.”

I sighed. “Just jetlag. How long until we get there?”

“A little bit over two hours.”

“And is there, I mean, are we crossing another border? And it’s daytime? Is that going to be a problem?”

He smiled at me, folded up the armrest that separated our seats, hooked his arm around me, and then drew me close to him. “It won’t be. We’re in Europe. There’s a very good chance no one will even want to see our passports. You can rest your eyes for a little while, my sweet.”

I sighed and relaxed into him, but I couldn’t quite let go of the day. “Where are we staying? Once we get to Prague, I mean?”

“I own a building in the Old Town, and I keep an apartment in it ready for personal use.”

I smiled, his black suit soft against my cheek. “Of course you do.”

Auris ran a finger through my hair. “I hope you’ll like it. It’s been a while since I visited. You’ll definitely like the Old Town. There are no abandoned places in that city, but I can find you lonely places and places that aren’t lonely but beautiful. The age of the city might lure you better than even I could.”

I craned my neck so I could look up at him. “You really thought about that, huh?”

“Of course.” Something passed over his face, but he smoothed his expression out quickly. But I’d seen it.

“What?” I asked.

His eyes narrowed on me. I wondered whether people could read him or whether his vampire don’t-notice-me magic made that difficult. Then I wondered whether he was just unguarded around me or whether I truly had a knack for interpreting his features, and if the latter, was that because of this love prophecy I still couldn’t bring myself to fully believe in?

“Little worries, Ethan.”

“Tell me?”

“I took you away. From home, your family, your life. And I care about you greatly, so I worry about whether you’ll thank me for that, down the line. Leaving a life behind like you did, that isn’t a small thing.”

I didn’t respond. Auris hadn’t been fishing for a response, for absolution, he’d just been frank with me.

Instead, I moved until I was comfortable but also able to see some of the landscape outside the window, my back against Auris’s chest, and his slowly beating heart echoing along my ribs and spine.

In my apartment, I kept several collages. Photos of my dad and Ben, his now fiancé, photos of my mom. I had my friends and my life on there, in no order that made sense to anyone but me. In a kitchen cabinet, there was a mug I loved. It had sat on my desk next to me for uncounted hours while I worked. It was black on the outside with white yellow cat eyes and whiskers, white on the inside. It had been so well used that the glaze was beginning to show spiderweb cracks now.

As I sat there in the first-class seat next to the vampire I’d saved from certain death, I slowly, slowly realized that these things were… if not gone, then not the steady mooring that they had been. I was not going back to that apartment or to my studio with the exposed brick and threadbare carpet anytime soon. Likely never. The things that had surrounded me — some of them to my chagrin during lockdown — were gone from my future now. There was a slice of blue cutting through the shroud-gray morning sky. I felt like a kite released to the wind.

Purchase

Changeling Press LLC | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iTunes

Meet the Author

Alexa (she/her) has a lot of characters living in her head and wanting their stories told. Many of these people get snarky and won’t stop complaining if Alexa is too slow writing them, which means that for this author, sleep is a luxury. Consequently, Alexa is a coffee addict, but she is sure she has it under control (six cups of coffee are normal in a morning, right? Right!?)

Website | Facebook | Twitter |Instagram

Giveaway

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“Now I’m ready for you…” #NewRelease #EroticRomance #MFRWSteam

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Welcome to the MFRW Steam Hop,
where the authors of Marketing for Romance Writers
entice you with steamy excerpts from their erotic romance stories.

Scroll to the end for more of this week’s tempting excerpts

EXCERPT

Set Up By now, Melissa’s quite comfortable on camera, and Harry has been coaching her for a video on anal sex, which is new for her.  This scene takes place the evening after Melissa was quite certain she’d seen Harry spying on her in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which you can read here: https://wp.me/p9O7pv-3dF.

Melissa picked up her cell phone for the sixth time and set it down beside her. She stretched her nude frame taut and wiggled her bottom, letting the butt plug tease her. She smiled. Could she become addicted to her plug? She’d jumped two sizes since Harry had worked with her.

Harry. She stared at her phone. He’d be pleased with her progress.

Had the sunlight and shadows been playing tricks in the gardens? She’d swear that was Harry on the hill in the gardens.

Would he be angry if she called him? She’d never done that.

Nor had he phoned her.

Which was more of a taboo—having a plug in her ass, or calling Harry?

She picked up the phone and punched in the number she’d memorized.

He answered on the fifth ring. “Hello.”

His voice sounded more throaty than usual. Had he been drinking? Perhaps remembering a lost love—or a woman he’d fled earlier in the day.

“Hello, Harry.”

“Oh, it’s you.”

It pleased her immensely that he recognized her voice and didn’t seem at all surprised she’d tracked him down in his lair. He didn’t sound overjoyed, but then she hadn’t expected he would.

“Aren’t you curious why I called?”

“I figured you’d get around to telling me.”

“I just wanted you to know that I’m lying here in bed with a sizeable butt plug buried in my ass.”

“Jesus. Damn it!”

She smiled at the sounds of papers rustling. “Did you spill something? Sorry if I startled you.”

“Don’t be. So it’s a sizeable plug?”

“Uh, huh. Probably bigger than Brad’s cock.”

“Bastard.” He hissed under his breath. “Sounds like you’re managing okay.”

“Oh, yeah. Though it was better when you were reassuring me. You were so sweet.”

“Sweet? Me? You must’ve been smoking something before that shoot.”

“I don’t do any of that stuff,” she huffed.

“I know. I’m sorry. So do you want to be reassured?”

She grinned at her mirror. “Uh huh.”

“How do I do that? You already have the plug in.”

“You’re right. What if I go one size larger? More the size of your cock.”

“Oh, baby, you do know how to get a guy’s attention.”

“Hold on, don’t go anywhere. I’ll remove this one.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not gonna run a marathon in the next few minutes.”

“There.” She sighed. “Now I’m ready for you. I mean the larger one. Are you ready to help me?”

“Yes, what do you want?”

“Well for starters, you could play with your cock for me.”

“You want phone sex?” he squeaked. “Isn’t that rather juvenile?”

“You’ve never had phone sex?”

“Never.”

“Then I definitely want to be your first. Hurry, Harry. I’m feeling empty. I need you filling my ass.”

BOOK INFO

Smoldering Passion (Passion Series Book One
By Adriana Kraft
Release Date: April 7, 2023
Length: 69,000 words
Pairings FM, FF, FFM, FMF, MFM
Tags: Erotic Romance, LGBTQ, Steamy, Menage, New York City

BLURB

Her passion smolders. Will it ignite?

When art student Melissa Hopkins finally unpacks the two boxes her Aunt Phoebe left for her and sees Phoebe’s black and white photos, it’s like opening Pandora’s Box. A simple quest to find a new job morphs into an about face—not just in her art, but in her career and personal life. Short on funds now that her graduate stipend is ending, she applies to work where Aunt Phoebe once worked: a center for sexuality and sex studies.

Sworn off women after a disastrous relationship, Center Director Harry Gage ignores the danger signals and hires the striking young woman who reminds him of his former lover. Her air of innocence will captivate center viewers, so he’s sure she’ll be a hit on camera. What he’s not prepared for is how she pierces his heart.

When the sparks flare up, is it love or just sex—and what must each of them risk to find out?

Blog Guest Daryl Devoré ~ Meet Ewen, hero of A Voice in the Air

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Let’s chat about Ewen, Cadi’s love interest in the medieval fantasy romance – A Voice in the Air.

He’s a good-hearted lad, unhappy with his future as an assistant to his father – the village baker. A life of watching bread bake was not what he dreamed of.

He longed for adventure – fighting dragons, saving damsels, and drinking ale in the local pub with the knights.

Hoping to live his dream, he follows his liege to fight the trolls. The horror of the battle shattered his dreams. Captured and thrown into a deep dark cave, he awaits a hideous death. He thinks of Cadi – the beautiful barmaid who smiled at him when she served him an ale.

He wonders if she thinks about him as he does her. He often hid beneath the bridge and listened to her sing. He wanted to tell her that he liked her, but a squire has nothing to offer.

After nearly – accidentally – killing himself – he is rather accident prone- he is overjoyed to find Cadi, but horrified to learn she – a mere lass – was sent to rescue him.

When given the option to return home with Cadi or continue on with the knights – of course – he goes with the knights. Hs been given a new sword and horse – of course he must go off and face his destiny.

Shortly he realizes his mistake. He abandoned the lass who has his heart.

He turns back to find her and escort her safely home.

And that’s where the chaos begins. He is tricked by a witch, fooled by a beautiful vixen, imprisoned by a tree, nearly freezes to death and… is condemned to death.

Can Ewen outgrow his youthful foibles, save the day and declare his love to Cadi or is he forever condemned to be just a bumbling lad named Ewen?

Little excerpt

He felt the tremble of the ground as the darkness seemed to deepen. A loud grunt filled the cave with the lone word, “Fud.” It was the troll’s attempt to tell him his daily meal had arrived.

Sweeping up a handful of stones, he limped forward through the darkness to the place where the bread was tossed. A feeble bit of light made shapes just visible. Not seeing anything scurry about, he grabbed his meal, then edged back into the darkness.

As he ripped chunks off the loaf, Ewen let his mind wander. It always returned to one topic — Cadi. Did she know he loved her? He wanted to be near her. Being a squire to a knight kept him busy, and often as not, eventide found him asleep on a pile of hay in the stable.

On one joyous day, as he returned from an errand along the path over the river’s bridge, he heard her voice long before he found her hidden beneath the arch near the water. He’d almost jumped down to speak with her, but something inside warned him she wished to be alone. Was it the way she stood? Or her hood covering her face? Or simply because he was too… nervous… unsure? He’d stilled his urge to interrupt her and sat on the low stone edge of the bridge to listen.

Her voice filled him with a sense of peace. He relaxed so much he almost fell back off the bridge.

Blurb and Links

Leading an army of faeries and pixies into battle against mountain trolls was not what Cadi expected when she accepted the task of rescuing Ewen – the son of the Overseer of the Faeries.

Squire Ewen followed his liege into battle with a head full of romantic notions of knights, heroics, and damsels in distress. Being captured by a troll, thrown into a cave, and awaiting a hideous death was not how he had foreseen his adventure to play out.

Can Ewen stay out of trouble long enough for Cadi to rescue him? Will Cadi overcome her doubts and fears and bring her beloved Ewen home to Plucks Ridge?

Or will the petty evilness of The Scorned One defeat all and destroy the magickal realm?

If you love action, humour, quirky characters, and romance, then Daryl Devoré’s latest medieval fantasy romance – A Voice in the Air – is a must read.

UBL

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Pinterest – A Voice in the Air 

Good Reads

Available Now! Hiding Place, by Jackie Keswick @JackieKeswick #ContemproaryMM #Mystery #Romance

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RELEASE BLITZ

Book Title: Hiding Place

Author and Publisher: Jackie Keswick

Cover Artist: Avery Daisy Book Design

Release Date: March 31, 2023

Genre: Contemporary M/M Mystery Romance

Tropes: Opposites attract, hurt/comfort, murder mystery

Themes: grief recovery, letting go and starting over

Heat Rating: 3 flames

Length: 43 000 words

It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

 

Buy Links

Universal Link | Author’s Website

 

Can a house with a secret bring two grieving men together?

 

Blurb

Can a house with a secret bring two grieving men together?

After losing his bandmates in an accident, songwriter Zach Hellig looks for a place to hide and a distraction from his grief. He finds both in a dilapidated Pele tower in a corner of Northumberland and in a sexy neighbour, whose smooth facade hides an old, painful secret that appears to be tied to Zach’s new home.

Are the rumours of an unsolved murder the reason for Robert Ludlow’s reluctance to sell Charnbarrow Pele?

Should Zach try to find answers to a thirty-seven-year-old mystery?

And having just experienced the pain of loss, should he risk his heart for a man who struggles to come to terms with his past?

A 43k m/m mystery romance, featuring a neglected old house in need of TLC, an unsolved murder, a grieving musician looking for a distraction, and his stern, intense neighbour who really should smile more.

 

Excerpt

“Whoever said that house hunting was fun can’t have done that much of it,” I muttered as another stack of envelopes from my property search agent flopped onto my doormat. Paper slid over paper with a soft whoosh like messages skating in freeform. “Unless it’s the hunting they enjoy, and never mind if they find a house or not.” That’s where we differed, I supposed. I wanted to find a house, not spend my time hunting for one.

Cradling the stack of clammy envelopes I returned to the living room, where property particulars covered the surface of my dining table, neatly sorted into ‘absolutely-not’, ‘no’, and ‘maybe’ stacks. An empty space, the space for the ‘yes’ pile of particulars, glared accusingly from the centre of the table.

Maybe the house I was looking for didn’t exist.

Or it existed only in my mind.

Ever since the night the police had knocked on my door, I’d yearned for a hiding place. Somewhere nobody offered sympathy or told me what I should do next. Where I didn’t have to put on a brave face and be Halcyon songwriter and keyboard player Zach Hellig.

I yearned for a place where I could grieve in private.

There was no such place, of course.

The paparazzi found me sooner or later. As did the fans, though—to my surprise—they’d proved unexpectedly compassionate after that first insane outpouring of grief.

Many expressed the wish I would continue writing the music they had loved us for. Or that I’d start over with a new band. I had no answers to give them, but as I started to process the aftermath of the accident, my need for a place to grieve had turned into a wish to rebuild my life in a shape and form it hadn’t had before.

I’d dissolved my contract and had set about finding a house for myself.

My requirements had seemed simple: a house with a largish garden in a remote location, maybe in need of renovation. I hadn’t expected this to be a challenging brief for any self-respecting property search agent.

Apparently, it was.

In the last four months, I’d seen a score of houses all over the country. On the surface, they all fulfilled my requirements. I just couldn’t imagine myself living in any of them.

“This lot won’t make a difference either.” I settled in the armchair under the window, envelopes in my lap. The agent could have emailed me the particulars, just as I could have spent my days on the various property sites, hunting for suitable houses myself.

It wasn’t how my mind worked, though. I wanted the madness in my life to slow down and I was hoping that doing things the old-fashioned way—hiring an agent to help me find a suitable house and scrutinising potential homes on paper—would help me do that.

Or, as my counsellor had suggested, I was avoiding both people and the internet.

I picked up the first envelope and felt a tiny spark of something bright in the back of my mind. A promise? A touch of hope?

One after the other, I opened the envelopes and scrutinised the contents. One after the other, the sheets fluttered to the floor.

Until the last of the offered properties had me sitting up in my chair.

The brochure described the house—Charnbarrow Pele—as a 17th century farmhouse with courtyard, stables, and walled garden, attached to a 14th century fortified tower.

It fit the list I’d given the agent, but what gave me the fluttery feeling was the photo on the front of the brochure: A house sitting lost and lonely, waiting for an injection of life.

No doubt I was being fanciful. I’d also seen what could be achieved with a few photoshop skills.

None of that mattered. Hopeful for the first time in months, I placed the brochure in the empty space on my dining table.

Then I reached for the phone to call the agent.

 

 

About the Author

Jackie Keswick was born behind the Iron Curtain with itchy feet, a bent for rocks and a recurring dream of stepping off a bus in the middle of nowhere to go home. She’s worked in a hospital and as the only girl with 52 men on an oil rig, spent a winter in Moscow and a summer in Iceland and finally settled in the country of her dreams with her dream team: a husband, a cat, a tandem, a hammer and a laptop.

Jackie loves unexpected reunions and second chances, and men who write their own rules. She blogs about English history and food, has a thing for green eyes, and is a great believer in making up soundtracks for everything, including her characters and the cat.

And she still hasn’t found the place where the bus stops.

For questions and comments, not restricted to green eyes, bus stops or recipes for traditional English food, you can find Jackie Keswick in all the usual places.

 

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