Alison Kent's Blog, page 14

Culling my bookshelves: the Shannon McKenna edition (lucky you)!

As with yesterday's giveaway post, this one is generated by my overabundance of Shannon McKenna books. I just sent most of my duplicates to a friend, but then I found these two triplicates I need to unload. Here are the trade paperback titles I have of Shannon's (and if you haven't read her, boy are you in for a treat):

Standing in the Shadows, Out of Control

If you'd like a book, comment with the title (or if you'll take anything let me know) and I'll randomly select winners from all requests left by Friday, 8/26/11 at noon CDT.

Culling my bookshelves: the @EmmaHolly1 edition (lucky you)!

I'm doing some furniture rearranging and bookshelf culling, replacing my print copies with digital – meaning these authors have received double royalties for me, so yay! So, today I have the following yummy Emma Holly titles up for grabs, three hardcovers, one trade paperback (Cooking Up A Storm). Here are the titles I have with info links:

Personal Assets, Strange Attractions, All U Can Eat, Cooking Up A Storm

If you'd like a book, comment with the title (or if you'll take anything let me know) and I'll randomly select winners from all requests left by Friday, 8/26/11 at noon CDT.

Get My Red Hot Temptations Right Here!

As part of Harlequin's 1990s Treasury program, all five of my Temptation novels are now available digitally. THE HEARTBREAK KID actually released on July 15. The other four, CALL ME, THE GRINCH MAKES GOOD, THE BADGE AND THE BABY, FOUR MEN AND A LADY, all release today. All are available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, some at Sony, some at Kobo, only one at the eHarlequin website. Go figure, eh? Links below!

CALL ME – Kindle :: Nook :: Sony :: Kobo

THE HEARTBREAK KID – Kindle :: Nook :: eHarlequin :: Sony

THE GRINCH MAKES GOOD – Kindle :: Nook :: Kobo

THE BADGE AND THE BABY – Kindle :: Nook :: Sony :: Kobo

FOUR MEN AND A LADY – Kindle :: Nook :: Kobo

Snippet Saturday – Magical

I'm pretty sure the cover for GOES DOWN EASY is my favorite Blaze cover ever!

What Perry wanted most of all was for Jack to go away. He disturbed her, and she did not like being disturbed. Especially when, after living a rather disturbing life, she was finally feeling the calm of things going her way.

She stood at the register in Sugar Blues, having just rung up a customer. It seemed a good place to stay, what with the long, glass-topped counter between her and Jack. Because now that the two of them were alone, her senses were ringing high and loud.

He closed the book on Reiki training through which he'd been leafing and made his way to the rear of the shop. Of course she had to notice his walk, how he moved, all lanky and long and loose. She wasn't supposed to notice that about him, and she sure wasn't supposed to like it.

She sighed, obviously having listened too much to Sugar singing the blues, waxing eloquent about the beautiful men who'd broken her heart. Jack stopped at the counter, picked up a tiny gold incense burner. Funny how he always had to have his hands on something, stroking, fondling.

Perry groaned, catching the forward progression of her thoughts one stroke too late. "If you break it, you've bought it."

"Yeah," he said, running his thumb over the Buddha's belly. "I saw the sign on the door. Do you really sell enough of this crap to stay in business?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Do you insult everyone you meet or is this special treatment only for me?"

"I just say what comes to me."

"Open mouth, insert foot?"

He shrugged. "Guess that's one way of looking at it."

She barely managed to keep herself from rolling her eyes. "But not your way."

"Sorry, no," he said, returning the burner to the counter and reaching for her blue-plumed pen.

She moved it out of his reach before he grabbed it. "Do you think you could limit your touchy-feely habit to items you're going to buy?"

He laughed then, the sound deep and resonant like that of bass guitar, one that vibrated through her, tickling, taunting, one she knew she was going to have a problem with if he stayed around for long.

Or not, she amended moments later when he said, "There's nothing about this place that I buy. Horoscopes and healings and protection charms? What a bunch of—"

"—a bunch of what?" She bristled further, not quite sure why she was letting him get to her when his opinion was one she'd run up against too many times to count. "A bunch of crap? A bunch of, what did you call it earlier, hocus-pocus?"

"You're going to tell me it's not? That you believe—" he glanced at the cover of the book and read the copy "—I can learn how to create an electro-magnetic balance all the way to the cellular level in the physical body? Just by taking a couple of classes?"

She pruned her lips, forced them to relax. "I believe there are many things not easily unexplained by conventional reasoning."

"Let me guess. You're a big X-Files fan."

This time she gave in, rolling her eyes. "Just my luck, stuck entertaining a smart ass."

"Smart enough to know the difference between what's real and what isn't," he said, a brow going up and drawing her gaze to his lashes again.

"You think Detective Franklin would be here if Della's visions were fabricated? If he didn't have proof that what she sees is real?" Gah, but she hated finding intelligent minds closed.

"You tell me."

"What, and waste my breath? I think I'd rather show you," she said, having heard the faint croon of a female voice drifting down the stairs behind her.

He snorted. "I've been around the block, sister. I've pretty much seen it all."

"Ah, but have you listened to it?"

"Listened to what?"

She narrowed her gaze. "If I let you come around here, do you think you can keep your hands to yourself?"

The words left her mouth before she could stop them, swirling through the air in an ever tightening loop, settling around her neck like a noose to choke her.

His eyes flashed, specks of silver bright in the deep dark gray. He let his gaze drop from her face to her shoulders before she glared and moved behind the cash register to hide.

He laughed again, shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and walked his lazy and loose lanky way around to where she stood.

"Better?" he asked once he was close enough to touch . . . if only she had the guts to reach out.

What would be better would be to start this day over and not have him show up to disturb her. "Yes. Now listen."

She backed toward the staircase and motioned him forward. Wariness in his expression, he did as she asked, stopping when she held up one hand.

"Listen," she whispered, standing on one side of the stairwell opening as he stood on the other. "Tell me what you hear."

He propped a shoulder against the wall and hung his head; she leaned into the corner, her hands stacked behind her.



The days just ain't the same . . .

The walls of the stairwell that rose to the second floor were brick and hung with framed photos of Sugar. At clubs in the old Storyville district, performing with Jelly Roll Morton and Johnny Dodds.

The sun hangs low and hangs dark . . .

More Sugar Babin memorabilia remained stored in the attic. LP's and costumes. Even her famous gold cigarette case and gnarled walking stick.

The nights never end, never fade . . .

Perry didn't know how Jack—how anyone—could deny the interaction between this world and those that lay beyond when hearing Sugar sing.

Black is the color of my heart . . .

Neither did she understand why he wasn't saying anything. "Well?"

Still staring down at the floor, he shrugged. "Your aunt left a radio playing?"

"No." Perry shook her head. "That's Sugar."

"Another aunt?"

"This used to be where she lived. This building. She was a famous blues singer."

"So you pipe the music into the shop for old times' sake."

"No. That's Sugar singing." She waited and waited, but his expression never changed. "She died after a suspicious fall down the stairs. These stairs," she added, pointing.

"Then the piping's about exploiting the legend?"

It took all her control not to stomp her foot. "Jack, there is no piping. That singing you hear is Sugar's ghost."

For more Snippet Saturday excerpts:

McKenna Jeffries

Taige Crenshaw

Lacey Savage

Sasha White

Jody Wallace

Lauren Dane

Beth-Ann Mason

Shiloh Walker

Eliza Gayle

Myla Jackson

Play For Today by Saskia Walker – a WotWS Release

Acting out their parts has never been so sexy…

Two upcoming British actors—Toni and Max—choose to take the slow boat to New York so they can learn their lines along the way. In the midst of a stormy sea, Max suggests they pass the time with a bit of sexy role play. As the rough seas take most of the passengers to their cabins, Toni and Max get into character for some erotic acting of the intimate kind. Soon their mutual desire collides with the forbidden affair of their characters—an inexperienced young woman and a wily seducer—with scintillating results.

10,000 words in length, contemporary erotic romance.

Check it out at Walk on the Wild Side Books, and leave a comment if you'd like a Kindle copy (sorry, I'm only doing a Kindle giveaway on this one because it's easy and I'm lazy *g*). I'll draw three names at noon tomorrow, August 16, 2011.

Snippet Saturday – A Public Scene

I just signed on with the fab group of authors who post Saturday Snippets, so today here's an oldie but goodie from MAXIMUM EXPOSURE.

"Tell me what you're hoping to find, and I'll tell you everything that I know."

Finn McLain lowered his digital Rebel with telephoto lens and glanced at the woman who'd joined him at the bistro's very small table for two – the table where he'd been working his coffee more than his camera since setting up shop at nine.

She was hot, Miami hot, Latina hot, hot like chilies beneath the Florida sun. Exotic. That was the word. No. Sizzle. She sizzled. Was sizzling. Water droplets on an iron skillet. Empanadas scorching his tongue.

He set the camera on the scrollwork tabletop, stretched out his legs and wishing for a glass of water, laced his hands low on his belly. Outwardly, he was cool, a pro. He knew his business.

It was his insides that were scrambling to figure out how badly he'd fucked up. If she'd pegged him as more than a tourist, how large was the chance that he'd also been made by his mark?

His dark lenses hiding anything she might see in his eyes, he finally came back with, "Guess you won't buy it if I say I'm just taking in the sights?"

She shook her head, her hair a colored mix of brown sugar and honey. "You want to sell me on anything, sweetheart, you'll have to do a better job than that."

"What gave me away?" he asked, still not admitting to any particulars.

She settled into the chair that looked like it was fashioned from licorice strings, crossing her legs and revealing a whole lot of thigh where her skirt fell open at the side. And not just thigh, he quickly came to realize, just as quickly tugging his gaze from all that bare skin back to hers.

"This is the second time this week I've seen you and your phallic equipment in front of my store."

"You don't say."

She inclined her head, indicating the designer boutique across the way. "Either you're a competitor looking to see what's selling, or you're keeping tabs on someone who frequents the area." The area being a ritzy and exclusive shopping spot near Miami Beach. "Which is it?"

He reached up, hooked his sunglasses a half inch down his nose, glanced over and winked. "I just like taking pretty pictures."

She narrowed her eyes, her long dark lashes as thick as the bristles on an artist's brush. "More like you don't surveil and tell."

He shrugged lazily. He wasn't one to commit. "You mentioned telling me everything you know? Whenever you're ready . . . I'm all ears."

She looked off, across the street where cars no longer drove, where trees now grew in beds lush with shrubs and tropical flowers, her mouth twisted up as if she wasn't sure she wanted to say anything at all.

He studied her while her attention was elsewhere, certain she knew exactly what he was doing while not the least bit bothered by the invasion of her privacy.

It was ten a.m. It was early October. Meaning it wasn't hot enough or far enough into the day for her to look as disheveled as she did.

She'd said the store across the street, Splash & Flambé, was hers, and that led him to believe that she had an intentional reason for looking like she'd just tumbled out of bed, her caramel hair swirling this way and that where it fell free from the clip holding it.

She leaned forward then, propping an elbow on the table's edge and resting her chin in her hand as she met his gaze, daring his to keep from drifting into her cleavage.

But he was a guy, and it was there in the deep V of her neckline where the lapels of her jacket gaped over her blouse, and he wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

He managed not to swallow his tongue, and didn't even bite it when she used the tip of one slender finger to stroke his big lens.

"What would it cost to hire you?" she asked, and he started to tell her she could have him for the price of a post-coital cigarette.

But he didn't smoke, and because he still wasn't sure if she knew he was a p.i. rather than spying for a competitor, he asked, "Hire me for what?"

She inclined her head, her long gold earrings dangling against her neck. "You do this professionally?"

He nodded, still avoiding commitment.

"I need to have some portraits done."

"W w w dot yellow pages dot com."

"Cute," she said with a smirk. "I don't want a random photographer. I want you."

She thought he was a photographer . . . or was this some sneaky female test to trap him into admitting otherwise? "You don't know me. You haven't seen my work. You're picking me up on the street. How is that not random?"

"I've seen you. You've seen me."

Oh, yeah. Understatement.

"I'd say that qualifies as the start of a beautiful friendship."

He sat straighter, cupped his hands around the metal seat and lifted the chair, turning it so he could better face her. The legs scraped against the concrete of the sidewalk as he sat, scraped again as he scooted closer, conducting a sneaky man test of his own.

"Is that what we're doing here? Becoming friends? You, me and my camera?" Something was going on here. He needed to know what the mystery was.

She uncrossed her legs, crossed them the other direction, her foot swinging in the space between his calves, her skirt leaving nothing to the imagination where the side slit opened. Her thigh was bare long past the spot where it became her hip, and her skin was bronzed and sleek.

"I have a friend," she began, back to toying with his lens, her nails long and painted with a coat of clear shine. "He owns an art gallery. He's been after me for awhile to hire a photographer before he hires one for me."

Like he'd thought. A mystery. "Why haven't you let him? Save yourself the cost and the hassle."

"True," she said, her head still inclined, her fingers now fondling the charms on her earring. "It's just the nature of the pictures he wants. The nature of his gallery. I don't do what I do for just anyone, and so only the right photographer will work."

His antennae twitched. He wasn't sure this was anything he wanted to know. But he had to ask. "What do you do?"

She cut her eyes to his. "I let people look."

Uh, whoa. Just whoa. Finn found his head nodding, like he couldn't keep it still with that picture bouncing around inside.

She let people look.

The next question should probably have been, "At what?" But the way she'd said it, he didn't need to ask.

He knew.

The wind whipped down the street, rattling palm fronds overhead and sending litter racing, blowing dust up in clouds that settled to coat the plants that grew thick in the median edging the sidewalks.

Finn had long ago drained his coffee, but he reached for the huge latte mug anyway to have something to do with his hands. He could honestly say he'd never in his life been involved in such a bizarre conversation with someone he didn't even know.

Yes, he had taken on a lot of strange cases. A man wanting to know if a neighbor was the one dumping coffee grounds into his mailbox.

A woman hoping to find the culprit responsible for the puddles of urine left on the trunk of her car when she went clubbing on Saturday nights.

And then there was the bulk of his business, suspected cheaters, and all the resulting – and truly freaky – human behavior.

But a woman who let people look wanting pictures of what she did?

"And you think I'm the right photographer?" Never mind that he wasn't a photographer at all.

"I do."

He waited . . . "That's all I'm going to get?"

"For now? I think so." She reached into the small purse on her lap and handed him a business card. "Tomorrow night. Drinks are on me. I'll give you the rest then."

He took the card, a slick colored number as flashy as the logo of Splash & Flambé. Olivia Hammond.

He didn't tell Olivia Hammond that he didn't live in Miami, that he was only here for a few days, that he didn't have anything with him but blue jeans.

His client had called his Key Largo office and hired him over the phone – something about keeping a low profile and his name out of the news. Surveilling was Finn's business. Lovers' quarrels paid his bills.

"Where?" was what he finally asked.

"Call me," she answered, unfolding her long body from the chair, tossing over her shoulder as she turned, "I'll tell you then."

For more Snippet Saturday excerpts:

Mari Carr

McKenna Jeffries

Taige Crenshaw

Lacey Savage

Sasha White

Jody Wallace

Leah Braemel

Lauren Dane

Beth-Ann Mason

Shiloh Walker

Denise A. Agnew

Eliza Gayle

We start reading early around here …

Fighting Fair by Anne Calhoun – a WotWS Release

With a marriage in trouble, there's no such thing as fighting fair…

Jersey girl Natalie Copeland is ready to give up on a decade of marriage. Her husband Shane disappeared into the long, stressful hours necessary to make partner at his investment firm, and now their once-hot sex life has gone ice cold. She knows fighting for the man she loves against the adrenaline rush of deals and dollars is a fight she can't win.

The fast-track to partner came a high price, but Shane's not going to lose Natalie over his work. He knows winning back his headstrong, passionate wife won't be easy. Proving he's in their marriage forever will take everything he's got…and on Wall Street and in love, there's no such thing as a fair fight.

12,000 words in length, contemporary erotic romance.

Check it out at Walk on the Wild Side Books!

Winners of L.A. Banks giveaway

Here are the winners from the Leslie Esdaile Banks giveaway:

Surrender The Dark:

Lateefa (Kindle copy)

Darcy

Barbara (Kindle copy)

Betsy McAvoy

Colleen

Sizzle And Burn:

Karen C

Liza

Amanda

Michelle

Debra G

Winners: Email me your mailing address for a print copy (or mention if you want a Kindle copy) and the title of the book you've won to ak@alisonkent.com

Congratulations!

Celebrating the work of Leslie Esdaile Banks – a giveaway

Earlier today, author Leslie Esdaile Banks passed away after a brief battle with adrenal cancer. I got to know Leslie when my husband took over as her webmaster several years ago. He often talked with her via Skype while doing updates, and their conversations would last for hours. She and I talked a few times, usually when I had more details on something he was telling her. ;) He got to meet her when she came here to Houston to sign at a MacMillan function. It was the cutest IRL meet ever. ;)

Leslie's most recognized series is probably Vampire Huntress, but she also wrote the Crimson Moon novels, and had recently begun self-publishing the Neteru Academy YA books. She had also taken the pen name of Alexis Grant and launched a new military hero romance series, and had a paranormal angel series underway. Leslie was one busy woman, and I thought amidst the sadness it would be great to honor her work. I've randomly chosen two of her books, and will give away five copies of each.

To be eligible, leave a comment with the title you'd like to read, and I'll randomly draw winners from comments left by Monday, August 8, 2011. I'll send you a paperback or a Kindle copy, so let me know that in the comments as well. Leslie will be missed.

Celeste Jackson has fought all her life against a fog of hallucination and substance abuse, but it's not until she meets her protector, Azrael, an angel who has left the safety of the Light, that she learns of the evil forces that have been trying to ruin her, and why.

A fierce battle for control of the mortal realm is brewing, and only Celeste – with the help of the Remnant, her half-human, half-angel brethren – can stand in the way. Together, Celeste and Azrael must gather an army of sensitives to defeat the dark powers that have ruled humanity for centuries, but time is running out.

If Azrael surrenders to his growing desire for Celeste, he risks being trapped among humanity forever. But the longer he stays, the harder she is to resist. To save the world, Celeste must draw on her own dark experiences with addiction to help Azrael overcome the one temptation that could possibly make him an eternal prisoner – his obsession with her.

Mia Santiago has fought long and hard to become an expert in weapons technology. But her successful career didn't come without sacrifices, namely Ryan Mason, the only man she's ever loved. When she and Ryan chose their careers over a relationship together, she thought their goodbye was for forever. So running into him at a conference is both a dream come true and a disturbing distraction—how can she focus on presenting her research when the man who's haunted her dreams for years is suddenly close enough to touch?

Losing Mia is Ryan's one regret in a lifetime of dangerous risks, even if he knows the work he's done around the world as a member of the military's elite fighting unit, Delta Force, has saved countless lives. Now he has to keep Mia from the terrorists bent on using her research for catastrophic violence—and bent of kidnapping her and inflicting unspeakable harm upon the one woman he's never been able to let go. But outrunning danger isn't easy when the fire between them can't be put out. And this time, their future together is a matter of life and death…