Roxanne Rhoads's Blog, page 571

Summer Reading Book Giveaway

I have a great summer reading giveaway- 5 varied books- some supernatural some not- all for one reader's summer reading enjoyment.

Here's what's in the giveaway:

Product DescriptionA DEADLY CULT. AN UNBREAKABLE CURSE. THE RULES ARE SIMPLE: LEARN TO KILL . . . OR DIE.

Luck has never been on Gavyn Donatti's side. Anyone else with magic abilities inherited from a distant genie relative would have it made, but not Donatti, descendant of a cranky, shape-shifting genie named Ian. The prince of a murdered kingdom, consumed with revenge and driven by an unbreakable curse, Ian is determined to hunt down and destroy every last one of his enemies in the power-hungry snake clan—at any cost, including his life. Or Donatti's.

Obsessed by his own rage, Ian has never really taught Donatti how to use his abilities. So when a powerful cult of magic-users captures Ian's wife, the princess Akila, and then Ian himself, Donatti is left alone to take on dozens of half-djinn and their mysterious leader with designs on world domination.

Facing an impossible mission, Donatti is forced to turn to an enemy for help—one who claims to know how to unlock his true potential. Trusting a snake might be the last mistake Donatti ever makes—but if he doesn't learn to wield the power inside him, everyone will pay the ultimate price

Product DescriptionTwenty-three years ago Anna North survived a living nightmare. A madman kidnapped her, cut off her pinkie, then vanished. Today Anna lives in New Orleans, writing dark thrillers under another name. She finally feels safe.

Suddenly Anna's quiet life takes a frightening turn. Letters start to arrive from a disturbed fan. Anna is followed, her apartment broken into. Then a close friend disappears.

Anna turns to homicide detective Quentin Malone, but Malone's more concerned with the recent murders of two women in the French Quarter. But after a third victim is found—a redhead like Anna, her pinkie severed—Malone is forced to acknowledge that Anna is his link to the killer…and could be the next target.

Now Anna must face the horrifying truth—her past has caught up with her. The nightmare has begun again.

Product DescriptionPrivate investigator Vivi Angelino loves living life on the edge, but stepping into the shoes of a movie starlet to bait a serial killer isn't just a thrill . . . it's a ticket to the big time for her fledgling security firm. That is, as long as a certain risk-averse FBI agent stays out of her way-and out of her fantasies.

Assistant Special Agent in Charge Colton Lang isn't above using his well-worn rulebook to stop Vivi's latest walk on the wild side. But when they learn her client is involved in something far more insidious than bad acting, Vivi and Colt must work together despite the electrifying attraction arcing between them. For each new clue is bringing them closer to a high-profile crime with a dark and deadly truth at its core . . . and a cold, calculating murderer with nothing left to lose.

Product Description The legacy that haunts her . . .

The mystery she must solve . . .

A man who threatens to reveal her secrets . . .

and break her heart.

Burned by a failed marriage, former FBI agent Marc Rossi wants back in the investigation game with no emotional strings attached. Taking an assignment for his enterprising Angelino cousins, he heads to Northern Ireland to pry a key piece of evidence from a missing socialite-any way he can. But when the ice queen turns out to be warm, beautiful, and on a secret mission of her own, the job becomes a passionate reminder of what happens when duty and desire mix. The daughter of an infamous fugitive, Devyn Sterling has survived betrayal only to find that her mother has mysteriously disappeared. When her search uncovers secrets, lies, and threats, Devyn and Marc must trust each other when every instinct says they can't . . . and a terrorist wants to make sure they won't live to try.

Book Description:
Aleksandr made a silent promise to the Lord. God would deliver him – would deliver Russia – and he would make Russia into the country that the Almighty wanted it to be. He would be delivered from "the pestilence that walketh in darkness ... " and "the destruction that wasteth at noonday ... the terror by night..."

1825, Europe – and Russia – have been at peace for ten years. Bonaparte is long dead and the threat of invasion is no more. For Colonel Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, life is peaceful. Not only have the French been defeated but so have the twelve monstrous creatures he once fought alongside, and then against, ten or more years ago. His duty is still to serve and to protect his tsar, Aleksandr the First, but now the enemy is human.

However the Tsar knows that he can never be at peace. Of course, he is aware of the uprising fermenting within the Russian army – among his supposedly loyal officers. No, what troubles him is something that threatens to bring damnation down upon him, his family, and his country. The Tsar has been reminded of a promise: a promise born of blood, a promise that was broken a hundred years before.

Now the one who was betrayed by the Romanovs has returned to exact revenge for what has been denied him. And for Aleksei, knowing this chills his very soul. For it seems the vile pestilence that once threatened all he believed in and all he held dear has returned, thirteen years later…

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Published on May 20, 2011 02:01

Paranormal Pleasures Giveaway at Goodreads

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Paranormal Pleasures

by Roxanne Rhoads

Giveaway ends May 31, 2011.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

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Published on May 19, 2011 21:01

Demons With A Difference Guest Blog with Felicity Heaton

Demons with a difference

Hello everyone, my name is Felicity Heaton and I'm a paranormal romance writer and author of several series including Vampires Realm (written as F E Heaton), Vampire Venators, and the Her Angel series. I also write the Shadow and Light Trilogy and I'm here today to talk about the first book in that series.

Ascension is the story of Lealandra, a witch on the verge of her ascension, a time when her magic will mature, gaining her incredible power if she can survive the process and the dark force that is out to kill her. Her only hope is to turn to Taig, her half-demon ex-lover, for assistance in defeating the man after her and surviving her ascension, but Taig isn't about to offer up his services as a demon hunter without her paying a price she isn't sure she can afford. Taig wants one thing in exchange—he wants her.

Taig is a half-demon with some serious issues about his lineage, but that isn't why he's a demon with a difference. There's a trend at the moment for demons of all shapes and sizes to be rather handsome even when they're showing their dark side. I'm talking about vampires who don't kill or drink blood, werewolves that are cute enough to pet in their animal form, and demons who don't really get ugly in the way we were always told demons are.

I always like to write demons with a difference, and with a lot of darkness in them. It's part of their appeal if you ask me and I don't think it's something an author should shy away from. Readers and reviewers often hone in on how I can make a vampire utterly evil, a merciless killer, and yet still make them fall in love with him, or how my werewolves are vicious and beastly, yet they're so full of feeling and are beautiful creatures.

With Ascension and the Shadow and Light Trilogy, I wanted to do the same thing with demons. Taig is as handsome as they come when he's in human form, but he has good reason for wanting to keep his demonic appearance a secret from Lealandra. He's not gorgeous as a demon. He's dark, scaly, has wings like a dragon, and horns. He's so far from the pretty human skin he normally wears that he fears Lealandra could never love a monster like him. While his appearance is one hundred percent demonic, complete with sharp teeth and claws, I never let his personality wander too far away. Even when he's in demon form, you can still see traits of his human side in him—the way he protects Lealandra, how he fights for her, his tenderness towards her—it's all there even when he's scaly and scary. I think it's important that demons look like demons when they go bad-ass and that vampires bite people without remorse and act true to the myths we know about them. In capturing this darkness and bringing it to light in the story, readers can see just how dark and deadly these creatures are, and that adds a new level to them, another dimension about them that fascinates. It's equally as important to balance the darkness though and I tend to do that through the depth of emotion in the character, a very human side that has fears and doubts, and is just as vulnerable as a mortal in affairs of the heart. It's this side that I term the light in them that readers connect to most but without their struggle against their darkness, or their acceptance of what they are and their nature, I think they would be less appealing and less interesting.

Some of the best stories I've read have had true darkness in their heroes, a sense that they might turn at any moment and that they're extremely powerful men, but also a sense that they have one weakness—their heroines—and that they'll do anything for the women in their black hearts.

I believe that it's the sense of danger, the darkness, and how powerful they are in combination with the idea that for all their growl and bite there's one person who has absolute power over them and for whom they would do anything, would turn themselves inside out and expose all their vulnerabilities, one person who could halt their darkest rage with only a light caress, that makes this sort of hero appeal to women everywhere.

And makes us all wish we were that heroine in that novel, commanding that dark hero with nothing more than a glance or a brush of our fingers across their cheek.

Taig is that sort of man, a beast who thirsts for violence, and who has this dark side that is deadly, but who Lealandra can soothe with only a smile. In fact, all of my heroes are like that, dark gorgeous men who live for their heroine and would die for her.

So if you're looking for a little monster in your man, then look no further. Head on over to my website and check out the excerpt of Ascension, or some of my other 30 stories: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk

Ascension is available now in e-book format direct from my site, on Amazon Kindle, and other retailers, and is available in paperback from Amazon.com

Ascension

Felicity Heaton

A witch on the verge of achieving phenomenal power, Lealandra must turn to her half-breed demon ex-lover Taig for protection from the dark force that is after her and also from her own magic.

With her Counter-Balance dead and her coven against her, Taig's blood and power is the only thing that can help her control her magic and survive the ascension and gain the strength to defeat her enemy.

Old feelings come flooding back as Taig allows her into his world and Lealandra finds herself fighting not only for survival but to win his broken heart again and heal the pain in their past. Can he forgive her for walking out on him all those years ago and will he ever believe her when she tells him that he's not a monster but the man that she loves?

Read the excerpt or find out where to buy: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/

Biography:

Felicity Heaton is a romance author writing as both Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton. She is passionate about penning paranormal tales full of vampires, witches, werewolves, angels and shape-shifters, and has been interested in all things preternatural and fantastical since she was just a child. Her other passion is science-fiction and she likes nothing more than to immerse herself in a whole new universe and the amazing species therein. She used to while away days at school and college dreaming of vampires, werewolves and witches, or being lost in space, and used to while away evenings watching movies about them or reading gothic horror stories, science-fiction and romances.

Having tried her hand at various romance genres, it was only natural for her to turn her focus back to the paranormal, fantasy and science-fiction worlds she enjoys so much. She loves to write seductive, sexy and strong vampires, werewolves, witches, angels and alien species. The worlds she often dreams up for them are vicious, dark and dangerous, reflecting aspects of the heroines and heroes, but her characters also love deeply, laugh, cry and feel every emotion as keenly as anyone does. She makes no excuses for the darkness surrounding them, especially the paranormal creatures, and says that this is their world. She's just honoured to write down their adventures.

If you want to know more about me, or want to get in touch, you can find me at the following places:

My website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk

My blog: http://www.indieparanormalromancebooks.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/feheaton

Twitter: http://twitter.com/felicityheaton

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/felicityheaton

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Published on May 18, 2011 23:53

Winner Wednesday

the Once Bitten Forever Burned winner is meggerfly
the Last Minion Standing winner is booklover0226
the winner of Fearless Desires is Sweet Vernal Zephyr

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Published on May 18, 2011 08:36

When The Real World Seeps Into Your Paranormal with Kiki Howell

In the real world, I've always been a champion for the underdogs.

In the real world, I guess it is not surprise that I married a man who now teaches a class he created called, Crossroads – a class designed to help students understands differences in others, specifically differences of race, religion and sexual orientation.

So, in the real world, in my house, we discuss injustices and prejudices such as racism, weightism, etc. a lot.

In the real world, the idea of stereotypes gets under my skin, and I have a real problem with uninformed people who would rather remain ignorant and judge others than to learn about or exercise an ounce of compassion toward a fellow human being who doesn't look, think or act as they do. Let me also proudly mention that my husband just earned his doctoral degree, writing a dissertation that in part investigated how compassion could be taught in a classroom. It is possible if people would just listen. I mean *sighs* can't we all just get along?

Stepping down off my soapbox, these 'real world' (are you sick of hearing that word yet? LOL) ideals and feelings often make brief appearances in my writing, but in my latest novel, the plot idea gave them more of a showing. Getting inspiration from an online computer game I heard a wife complaining that her husband played, I came up with a combined paranormal/fantasy world where sorcerer's and wizards didn't get along due to the differences in their magic.

In a world like this, I was able to show the evolution of a hero and heroine, ones who could, when forced to work together, try to find a way to overcome their stereotypes to make way for attraction. Although, as we know from said real world, the romance of such individuals is not easy when family and friends, their prejudices, continue to get in the way.

So you see how my real world ideals creped into my paranormal one, how, dare I say, some of my own thoughts were easier to spout off given my main characters were all paranormal :) No, the story isn't all doom and gloom or even preaching, but a lot of action and magic, sexual tension and family quarrels, spells and even sexual magick – the real world just seeps through in a couple of poignant lines. *giggles* Was bound to happen, right?

Irreconcilable Differences , a novel

Blurb:

In a world where wizards and sorcerers do not get along due to differences in their magic, sorcerer, Aaron is hired to guard the wizard, Myleana. However, the attraction between them once locked in an unusual lab under his own wall of protection ignites in otherworldly ways.

When they come under attack and all they believed in becomes questionable, will these two remain separated by their world's prejudices? Will the lies, betrayals and opinions of even their own families stand in the way of the alchemy of sex, especially when sorcery and wizardry come into play?

Genres: Contemporary, Paranormal/Fantasy (wizard and sorcerer), Erotic, Romantic Suspense

Adult Content Warnings: Explicit Graphic Language and Sexual Magic

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE AT AMAZON: Print $9.99 & Kindle $2.99

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE AT BARNES & NOBLE: Print $9.99 & Nookbook $2.99

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Irreconcilable Differences?

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Published on May 17, 2011 05:08

First Day of The Shattered Glass Tour and Giveaway

Today is the first day of Elaine Bergstrom's Shattered Glass tour, please welcome her for a guest post and giveaway!

Why A Good Sexy Novel Is Better Than Men … or, Could you go to sleep, sweetie, so I can write something better?

It has come to me rather late in life that I am bored with ordinary men. When I was in college, future engineers, executives and army officers pursued me (I follow their careers in the alumni magazine, so I know what I passed up and I am still thankful) and I spurned them. I needed something more interesting, less boring. I pursued someone because it was more fun than being pursued, and he spurned me. Then, one night while I was discussing my intended's many shortcomings with a girlfriend, a man – a boy actually, since he was just 18 to my then 21 – crawled out from under her dining room table where he happened to have been living for awhile (it was the late '60s, so anything went) and said, "You are really full of yourself, aren't you?" He had a broken arm and his black-rimmed glasses were held together in the center with electrical tape. He rode a motorcycle. He had three cars and one set of license plates to pop on whichever one started in the morning. I was hooked.

And yes, life was interesting for a time. But 25 years and two kids later, we divorced. Long before we legally called it quits, I'd retreated into a world I still find far more comfortable – the one in my head. And I suspect a lot of women – and men – are happier there, too, even if they aren't writers.

I was a voracious reader of romances in the early years of my marriage. They fueled passion when it was running low on octane. And is there anyone who does not close their eyes sometimes and think of the perfect man? I didn't do it often, but when I did, no one satisfied. So I made him, the immortal Stephen Austra, in Shattered Glass…

Helen was lost in his eyes—eyes so perfectly black that the pupils were distinguishable from the irises only by their greater depth. She found herself looking for her reflection there, certain that, like Alice at the mirror, she could break through into another dimension. She knew in that moment not love, not passion, but rather obsession. She would go where he asked, do anything he asked, and gladly. And she waited.

But he made no requests. Instead he smiled—somewhat shyly, it seemed—and held out his hand. "How do you do. My name is Austra. Stephen Austra."

His English had a too-perfect enunciation, as if he had learned it as a second language. His voice was musically inflected, with an odd, lilting cadence.

Helen's arm felt heavy but she found the will to raise it. "I'm so pleased you came. I'm Helen Wells." As she took his hand she panicked, as if in reaching for a familiar item she had touched instead something unknown and exotic. The feeling was too fleeting to analyze, but having grasped even this small part of him, she was oddly reluctant to let go. She saw a frown cross his face, as if he had felt it, too.

He did, and it isn't long before he becomes a necessary part of her life, helping in her work, in her recovery from an illness, in awakening in her passion she did not know she possessed. He can read minds, so he knows what this woman wants without her asking, and he is smart enough to listen to her internal voice. Their love is wild and it changes her, in more ways than emotional. Though he is not a vampire in the traditional sense, he can make her immortal, too. But love has to be tested to endure, and that requires some darkness to balance all their light. Enter my favorite character, Charles Austra.

When she had finished undressing, he gripped her bare shoulders and swung her around so her body faced the light. "Beautiful." he murmured. "I knew you would be. I have listened to your desires. You are the one. We escape this world together."

She opened her mouth to make one final protest.

"Silence!" he ordered. His hands stroked her shoulders as his lips closed around one nipple, his tongue brushing until it hardened. He moved to the other, then back to the first, the sucking now followed by a light nip. It was no more than so many had done, yet her stomach fluttered in unfamiliar arousal, and a passion such as she had never known began to build in her, hungry and demanding. With one hand he grabbed her hair and pulled her face up to his while he forced the other between her thighs, seeking, then stroking, as perfectly as she would herself. He kissed her temples, her eyes, her mouth, first lightly then fiercely, and moved his lips to her outstretched neck. Her fears, her needs, her life were forgotten as she shuddered in a fulfillment of glorious intensity.

Charles carelessly leaves bodies in his passing, corpses of women who die smiling. He is tempting fate and when he learns his brother Stephen is living nearby, the danger begins to grow – one that threatens Helen and everyone she holds dear. But, God, I loved Charles. I cried when Glass was finished – out of joy for what I had created and also sadness that the novel had ended. So of course, I wrote five more. Charles, still filled with that same terrible darkness, appears in two of them and will show up in future books.

I tended to write my first novels at night, slipping into bed far too late to function at my day job the following morning. And it wasn't long before my husband noticed something, a comment I gave to Patrick Austra's lover in my latest novel, Beyond Sundown:

I move around the sofa, crouch in front of him and kiss him. He opens his mouth to say something and I kiss him again, much harder, then pull him to his feet, and though he likely outweighs me by a good ten kilos, I toss him over my shoulder.

"Patrick, damn it! I'm getting much too old for this!"

−Not tonight!− I tell him and carry him upstairs as if he were a child and dump him on the bed, hard enough that the frame shakes and the springs squawk in protest. "Take off your pants!" I order.

He looks at me with surprise and, for a moment, anger, then the truth of what I am doing comes to him and he laughs. "So is that damned Catherine killing someone again and you've gone feral? It that what this predator and prey game is all about?"

He knows me too well. Fortunately, he takes my nature with a certain tolerance.

I suspect there will be more darkness to come. I love the power writing gives me over my characters. I love their passion, I love their twisted romance. And my fans validate my own desires – they love them, too.

But when I see couples in their '80s walking hand-in-hand. I think how lovely. And it is, but how often does love last? People grow old. Fire and passion may fade to a slow steady warmth. But I want more. I am an optimist. If I could live forever as my characters do, I would. As Helen says at the end of Blood Rites:

I no longer feel the nagging constraints of a human body. It is in harmony now with my mind and my soul. I think that if I had not been prepared for the sudden physical changes, I would have thought I died. Then, as now, my body hardly seems to surround my soul at all.

My skin is paler and smoother. And when the winter winds are silent, I climb to the open ridge above the cabin where I can look down on it and up to the stars. I sense Stephen moving silently up the ridge looking for me. I open my mind and call him to me. The shadows of the moon turn my hair silver and our naked bodies to liquid marble. I need not will my body to feel for it feels so perfectly-- his hands, his lips.

I no longer regret the human life I have lost.

I would take it from everyone I love.

PS – since I have been so forthcoming about my personal life, I need a disclaimer. In the past few years my ex and I have shared a house where we co-parent our handicapped daughter. We are the best of friends, and I cherish that.

About Shattered Glass

Paperback: 386 pages

Publisher: Elaine Bergstrom (January 24, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0982970609

ISBN-13: 978-0982970607

Book Description:

Helen Wells, 19, is a gifted painter, struggling to create a legacy before the illness that left her crippled claims her life. Stephen Austra is a brilliant glass artist, and an immortal. When they meet, their passion is immediate and intense. But as their love grows, Dick Wells, Helen's uncle and a homicide expert on the local police department, begins investigating a series of savage murders committed, he is forced to believe, by something not human. Soon all three will be drawn into a struggle with a dark presence from Stephen's past, one that lays claim to the life of the woman he loves and one that, for all his power, he is helpless to control. This novel, first published in 1989 to critical acclain is being reissued in a special updated -- and uncut -- version, and includes 12,000 words not found in the original edition. It is the first of 6 books in the Austra series.

To see more books in the Austra series visit: http://www.elainebergstrom.com/Ordering-Books.html

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Published on May 15, 2011 23:41

First Day of The Shattered Glass Tour