Fierce Dolan's Blog: Writing Utopia, One Word at a Time, page 9

A Sexy Primer on Using Blog Post Tags

OK, so it’s not very sexy, unless of course you’re an SEO fetishist like myself, or you find the ability to retrieve information in a quick and efficient manner arousing. Don’t lie. I know that most of my readers are geeky brainiacs, and they get hot when technology is involved–especially if it improves their ability to read, write, or otherwise purvey smut.

On my recent blog tour for The Fangirl’s Dream, I’m seeing that a lot of bloggers either do not use, or don’t know how to use keywords, ie tags, in their posts.  This is a pretty significant oversight, in terms of making information in your blog easier to archive, retrieve, and possibly re-use.

 In the capacity of blogging, tags don’t necessarily impact where your post ranks in search engine results, or SEO (Search Engine Optimization).Yes, there are meta tags and keywords for SEO, but that’s a whole other topic, ripe for techgeek debate (Any takers? *swoon).  Tags on blog posts do, however, make finding posts of the same topic easier for you as the blogger, for readers, for future readers, and for general net searches.

When you enter tags on a post, they appear somewhere near the context of the post. They appear as links, and where they display depends on your blogging platform and theme. When you click on a tag, you are taken to a list including every post on your blog that is similarly tagged. In essence they create a breadcrumb trail for your readers to stay engaged with your blog.

The last thing you want is to shake that ass and get readers hot for your blog, then they read one item and leave. Interuptus. In this situation, you do not want a one night stand. You want the lovin’ to go all night, and by adding tags to posts, you give them an opportunity to keep reading along the theme that brought them to your bangin’ site to begin with. You want to keep readers engaged with your site as long as possible, leading them through as many pages of your site as possible. Adding tags is a pretty easy thing to do if you want to hold your readers’ attention.

Likewise, we all like to think everyone’s hot for us, though there are a few innocents that haven’t stumbled upon your sexy brilliance, yet. If you snag a virgin reader with that steamy post announcing your new anal anthology, proper tagging gives them the availability to trace back through your catalog of a similar theme.

In short, not tagging leaves a gaping hole in your ability to sustain readers’ interest. Tagging lets you lead them everywhere you want them to learn more about your interests and publications on your website.

Do yourself, your readers, and future readers a favor by entering tags for every post that you write.  Likewise, ask your guest bloggers to submit them with post proposals. They know best what words describe their work, and if they haven’t thought about it… well. Tell them the part about shaking their ass and getting readers to stay at their site.   In all of my publicity mailers for releases I always include keywords for bloggers, and the majority of them just copy and paste them into the blog post, itself.  That’s not the sweet spot.  Just as you include buy links, links to trailers, bio, blurb, and all other book-relevant info, so should you include tags, using the tagging function of your blogging platform.  I also host for several blog tour companies, and after bringing this to their attention, they now require touring authors to supply tags as part of their promotion material.

So, if you haven’t been thinking about how to lead readers through your site, it’s time. Tagging is just the foreplay to get things started.

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New Release! The Fangirl’s Dream!!

Yay!  It’s finally here! Today The Fangirl’s Dream is available for purchase from Decadent Publishing, and I’m so excited. First off, I finally have a 1NS story, and second, I get to bring cred to geeky fangirls everywhere, squeeworthy-style!

Watch the trailer, check out some of the book’s locations on my Fangirl Pinterest board, and let me know what you think of my character choices for Siler and Farraj, on my Won’t You Be My Character board. Most of all, tell me: who do you fangirl for? If you could concoct a fantasy to meet your TV boyfriend, what would it be? Details please…

About The Fangirl’s Dream

Siler Dunham would do anything to have Farraj Reza, hero of the smash network TV drama, Endangered. Every week she tunes in to watch him calculate the rescue of fellow bus crash survivors trapped deep in the jungle by a ruthless drug lord. A federal public defender with a penchant for saving the unsavable, she can’t resist his sad story, or his badass charm. When she seeks a matchmaking service to meet him, their one night stand isn’t what she expected. Forced to choose between unbridled lust and compassion, Siler must forgo her fantasy… or mustn’t she?

From The Fangirl’s Dream

His lashes fluttered, then his eyes widened. The gun didn’t waver. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

“I’m here for you, Farraj, or whatever your name is. I came to meet you. You know—”

He pressed the gun into her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Hawa’a. That’s it right, what I’m supposed to say—some kind of watch word?”

Jaw clenched, his cheek twitched and she imagined feeling it under her lips. “Who told you that word?”

Balancing on her knees with her arms raised in surrender, she toppled onto her bottom. Grit clung to the back of her legs. Something’s not right. “Madame Eve, the woman who arranged our meeting. She told me to say Hawa’a, first thing.”

As much as her restricted movement allowed, she looked around. Tiny beach. Palm trees. Crystal clear water. The cove….

Annoyed, Siler nudged the gun back with her elbow and stood, brushing sand from her bottom and smoothing her wilting skirt. Sweat beaded her brow, and her carefully disheveled tresses cascaded in limp curls over her shoulders.

“What is this?” Knuckles bracing her hips, she glared down the lowered barrel. “This is not what I asked for. What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke?”

Disappointment rolled in her stomach and tears stung her eyes. I’m such an idiot. “You know what? Let’s just forget this whole ‘one-night’ thing, and I’ll go home.” Palms up, she took a step to one side then the other. The only evident path lay behind him. She would have to pass him, and the shotgun.

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Guest Post Taryn Kincaid

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Book Trailer for “The Fangirl’s Dream”

Yay! It will be out at the end of the week, from Decadent Publishing‘s 1Night Stand series!

About The Fangirl’s Dream

Siler Dunham would do anything to have Farraj Reza, hero of the smash network TV drama, Endangered. Every week she tunes in to watch him calculate the rescue of fellow bus crash survivors trapped deep in the jungle by a ruthless drug lord. A federal public defender with a penchant for saving the unsavable, she can’t resist his sad story, or his badass charm. When she seeks a matchmaking service to meet him, their one night stand isn’t what she expected. Forced to choose between unbridled lust and compassion, Siler must forgo her fantasy… or mustn’t she?

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Meet David Niall Wilson!

 

I’d like you guys to meet David, who is introducing a fascinating new title, Nevermore – A Novel of Love, Loss & Edgar Allan Poe. It’s win-win, as I’m in love with all things Poe, and David hails not too far down the road from me. And, just for the duration of this tour, you can purchase the ebook on Amazon for only $2.99!  Sweet!

Sometimes romance in fiction is so fiery hot that you get drawn into the moment, catch your breath, glance around to see if anyone is watching, or knows what you’re reading. Sometimes you can smell the sweat and feel the heat and slip right out of your reality into the author’s erotic fantasy so completely that if someone walked up and touched you, you might…

That’s one way it can be. I’m no stranger to erotic fiction. I’ve written my share of it, including a particularly warm scene between Lilith and Mary Magdalene, sharing a vision of Lilith’s first meeting with Adam before Eve came along, and my story “No Strings Attached,” published in Poppy Z. Brite’s Love in Vein II. The thing is, that is only one aspect of romance, and should only be the most important aspect if that overprimed sensuality is the message you are trying to impart.

In my latest novel, Nevermore, a Novel of Love, Loss & Edgar Allan Poe, I approach the romantic attraction in an entirely different manner. It is subtle. It runs deep, and in this case to tragic levels of frustration.

Nevermore is by no means an erotic novel. It is a dark fantasy, built on the foundation of the relationship between two strangers who meet at a Hotel on the banks of the Intercoastal Waterway, a man-made canal that runs from Florida all the way up to Vriginia. It was used for moving lumber, troops during the Civil War, outlaws, good, and all manner of travelers. The Lake Drummond Motel stood for only about ten or twelve years.

That was a rough place. It had rooms in Virginia, and rooms in North Carolina, and right on the border, there was a tavern. Talk about a place to lure the romantics. You could fight a duel across the border of two states, and confound local lawmen on either side. Creepy old southern gentlemen from Virginia could bring their underage lovers to the North Carolina side, where laws were different, and marry them. Those escaping in either direction stopped for the night, or a drink.

At one point a young poet, author, and critic named Edgar Allan Poe passed through those doors. There is little known of The Lake Drummond Hotel, and even less known of Poe’s visit. Rumor has it that he wrote an early version of The Raven during that stay.

There are a lot of questions about that poem. Who is Lenore? What’s up with the bird? Ravens are cool, but even in Edgar’s day, they were a symbol of spirits passing away. A lot of the women in Poe’s life died. From an early age, he lost his mother, he lost his first love in school (That’s recorded because he wrote a poem for her that survived). Others that he courted died, and at the time of his stay at The Lake Drummond, his wife Virginia lay dying in Richmond.

Nevermore is a novel of magic. It’s a novel that explores both the love a man has for a dying bride, and the powerful attraction of someone new – someone more in line with his own mind and abilities. In Nevermore Edgar meets Eleanor MacReady – Lenore to her friends. She is a traveling artist, making her way doing portraits and landscapes – but all the while with a deeper secret. She sees souls trapped in inanimate objects. Trees, bushes, grass, water and clouds. When she sees them, she is compelled to draw them, and then remove the faces, setting them free.

Edgar has secrets of his own. He’s tried repeatedly to get Virginia to allow him to try more arcane methods of curing her illness, but she refuses. She considers the dark things he studies sinful. What she does not know is that the stories – the poems – the very things that make her husband special come to him in dreams – dark visions he lives through in his mind and excises with his pen. He has a companion – an old crow named Grimm – who shares those visions. When he comes to The Lake Drummon Hotel, he is returning from visits with specialists in North Carolina who have offered him no new hope for Virginia’s health, and in a dark mood.

Both get swept up into a bigger story, a story that requires both of their minds, hearts, and abilities. A story that leads into the depths of The Great Dismal Swamp, and to the shores of Lake Drummond.

I am glad Fierce Dolan has offered his blog space to me to talk about my book, and I hope you will read, and enjoy, and share my words. Like Edgar, I am a storyteller. I am also a lover of crows, darkness, and magic. Come share my world, for a little while.

Nevermore, a Novel of Love Loss & Edgar Allan Poe is one of thirty or so books of mine to be published, including a Star Trek novel, a Stargate novel, and a small pile of books I wrote for White Wolf’s World of Darkness back in the day. It’s my newest, and one of my best.

Welcome to Nevermore…

About David

David Niall Wilson has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction since the mid-eighties. An ordained minister, once President of the Horror Writer’s Association and multiple recipient of the Bram Stoker Award, his novels include Maelstrom, The Mote in Andrea’s Eye, Deep Blue, the Grails Covenant Trilogy, Star Trek Voyager: Chrysalis, Except You Go Through Shadow, This is My Blood, Ancient Eyes, On the Third Day, The Orffyreus Wheel, and Vintage Soul – Book One of the DeChance Chronicles. The Stargate Atlantis novel “Brimstone,” written with Patricia Lee Macomber is his most recent. He has over 150 short stories published in anthologies, magazines, and five collections, the most recent of which were “Defining Moments,” published in 2007 by WFC Award winning Sarob Press, and the currently available “Ennui & Other States of Madness,” from Dark Regions Press. His work has appeared in and is due out in various anthologies and magazines. David lives and loves with Patricia Lee Macomber in the historic William R. White House in Hertford, NC with their children, Billy, Zach, Zane, and Katie, and occasionally their genius college daughter Stephanie.

David’s Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Nevermore – A Novel of Love, Loss & Edgar Allan Poe on Amazon | Audible.com | Barnes & Noble | Crossroad Press
Publication Date: March 19, 2013
Published by Crossroad Press








About Nevermore – A Novel of Love, Loss & Edgar Allan Poe

On the banks of Lake Drummond, on the edge of The Great Dismal Swamp, there is a tree in the shape of a woman.

One dark, moonlit night, two artists met at The Lake Drummond Hotel, built directly on the borderline of North Carolina and Virginia. One was a young woman with the ability to see spirits trapped in trees and stone, anchored to the earth beyond their years. Her gift was to draw them, and then to set them free. The other was a dark man, haunted by dreams and visions that brought him stories of sadness and pain, and trapped in a life between the powers he sensed all around him, and a mundane existence attended by failure. They were Eleanore MacReady, Lenore, to her friends, and a young poet named Edgar Allan Poe, who traveled with a crow that was his secret, and almost constant companion, a bird named Grimm for the talented brothers of fairy-tale fame.

Their meeting drew them together in vision, and legend, and pitted their strange powers and quick minds against the depths of the Dismal Swamp itself, ancient legends, and time.

Once, upon a shoreline dreary, there was a tree. This is her story.

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Summer Seduction Blog Hop

 

Summer’s upon us again, and I’m excited to be part of Silken Sheets’ Summer Seduction Blog Hop! This great group of authors has gotten together to give away prizes and lots of ebooks, so do check out each stop along the tour, between 14-21 August. The Grand Prize is A $75 Gift Card + a 7 ebook bundle or a 10 ebook bundle. You know that’s gonna be a scorcher!

Is it hot enough for you? No seriously, I want to know the steamiest, most intense, turn-you-out book you’ve read so far this summer. I want some hot new reads, and I know you guys will splash out the most exquisite sex on the page.  So tell me–what are your new faves?

Win a copy of your choice from my back catalog by commenting below and telling me what you find sexy about summer.

Don’t forget to stop by the Rafflecopter to enter the big giveaway!

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Dirty Love? I Thought You’d Want Some

Meet Olivia Starke, and her 1Night Stand story, DIRTY LOVE

Buy Links

I’ve thrown in a few twists, along with some vampire and werewolf fun in Dirty Love. Though I don’t tell you who is what in the beginning, I let the reader find out as they read. And that isn’t the only surprise. I honestly had a lot of fun writing this, and thinking up ways to make my readers go “Oh wow, I didn’t see that coming.” Expect a fast paced and spicy good time as you go on the adventure with my hero and heroine. And I hope you’re thrilled in more ways than one!

With Decadent Publishing’s popular 1Night Stand series, the most unlikely pairings are put together by Madame Evangeline, 1NS owner. Though her clients originally plan one hot night of passion, she has other ideas for a happily ever after.

So I’d like to ask this, what makes for a hot night for you? Flowers? Candlelight? Flavored massage oil and toys? Do you like to be wooed or ravaged?

I personally lean toward the naughty and creative. Perhaps it’s the writer in me that likes to push the envelope and see what I can get away with. Sure, I love snuggling, but let’s whip out the handcuffs first. That’s probably why I love writing erotic romance and erotica, partly I have too little shame and partly it’s fun to explore boundaries.

BLURB

Kat goes on the prowl looking for a one night stand to rile up her new friends. A little shock and awe to keep her sane in a life no longer hers. When she’s matched with Jared through 1Night Stand, he seems perfect for her plans. Conservative, sweet, and sexy as sin, she’s ready for one hell of a ride.

But Jared is more than she bargained for—much more. And when her plans for amusement turn dangerous will the two find a way to stay alive?

 EXCERPT

“Come on.” She winked. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I thought these things were urban legend. I never imagined I’d see one in real life.”

His date’s gaze glimmered with mischief. “There are lots of big hairy surprises out there for those brave enough to search for them.”

“Like you, for one.” He cleared his throat. “Except for the hairy part. I hope, anyway.”

A slight blush colored her cheeks, and he brushed his knuckles over the soft skin there. Shadows marred the smoothness beneath her eyes. Had she been sick? Or maybe her party girl lifestyle drew out too much. She stepped back.

“Cowboy up, sugar.” She grasped his hand and pulled him forward, again surprising him with her power. Under the softness of her curves lay a fair amount of muscle. He swallowed. She could ride him without tiring, take his maddened pounding for hours. It’d take all night to spend the pent up energy boiling in his veins. He’d passed the point of return; jerking off wouldn’t satiate his needs. Without sex, and soon, he’d run howling through the streets, a crazed animal.

After taking an elevator to the basement level of the parking garage, she led him to a red door and rapped on its freshly painted surface. Dark corners closed in on them. The hairs on his arms and neck rose. He sensed being watched. More cameras. Were as many inside? And maybe a live Internet feed his family could run across in some improbable way?

Don’t create imaginary monsters. He squared his shoulders.

A partition slid open. Dark eyes narrowed, focusing on Kat who lifted a pale brow. The panel slammed closed, and Jared let a small sigh slip. Could he be off the hook? This night had turned out to be more than he’d bargained for, leaving him ready to tuck tail and run. Find somewhere else to indulge his feral wants with his date. The door swung open, and the odor of incense assaulted him. His escape option evaporated.

BIO

Olivia Starke calls the Ozarks home. One of the most beautiful areas in the country, she loves hiking trails with her dogs, kayaking on the numerous waterways, and enjoying southern Missouri’s fresh air and sunshine.

She’s also ‘Mom’ to four dogs, a growing number of kitties that show up at her door, and four VERY spoiled horses that do little to earn their keep. Not that she’d ever hold that against them.

She’s a HUGE fangirl of Doctor Who and to a lesser extent Supernatural, and has a pretty interesting love triangle (or square?) going on in her head between the Doctor and the Winchesters.

Find Olivia on:

Website
Twitter
Blog
Facebook

 

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The Other Side by Zee Monodee

Check out Zee Monodee’s latest release in Decadent Publishing’s Ubuntu line, The Other Side, the first installment in the Island Girls Trilogy.

From The Other Side

Divorce paints a scarlet letter on her back when she returns to the culture-driven society of Mauritius. This same spotlight shines as a beacon of hope for the man who never stopped loving her. Can the second time around be the right one for these former teenage sweethearts?

Indian-origin Lara Reddy left London after her husband dumps her for a more accommodating uterus—at least, that’s what his desertion feels like. Bumping into him and his pregnant new missus doesn’t help matters any, and she thus jumps on a prestigious job offer. The kicker? The job is in Mauritius, the homeland of her parents, and a society she ran away from over a decade earlier.

But once there, Lara has no escape. Not from the gossip, the contempt, the harassing matchmaking…and certainly not from the man she hoped never to meet again. The boy she’d loved and lost—white Mauritian native, Eric Marivaux.

Back when they were teens, Eric left her, and Lara vowed she’d never let herself be hurt again. Today, they are both adults, and facing the same crossroads they’d stood at so many years earlier.

Lara now stands on the other side of Mauritian society. Will this be the impetus she needs to take a chance on Eric and love again?

From The Other Side

She shouldn’t have come. The sound of her mother’s high-pitched voice crept over the din, asking if someone had heard a car stop in the driveway. They’d come out in the next minute.

Picking up her courage, and wishing it were Dutch courage despite her not being a drinker, she tore her fingers and head from the wheel and threw the door open. Lara peeled herself out of the vehicle at the same time a chorus of gasps resounded in the garden.

All three older women were over her like a bad rash. Hugging and kissing her cheeks, holding her face in their hands while they exclaimed how beautiful she had become. All of which were simply tactics to lull her into complacency for when they’d really pounce on the meaty topic—her divorce.

With their deceptively frail-looking hands on her shoulders, they pushed her toward the back door to the kitchen. A memory of being pushed around in the same way toward the altar on her wedding day, the glittery gold and red veil over her eyes, assaulted her. She stopped in her tracks, the pain coming in from nowhere to slice through her heart. The biddies must not have noticed her stilling; they simply continued to steer her inside until she was seated at the table. A plate of towering hot bhadias appeared in front her, along with a bowl of satini cotomili, the coriander, tomato, and chili paste-like dip Mauritians ate with all their fried foods.

Auntie Ruby, resident gossipmonger, lived up to her reputation. She had been the first to mention Lara’s failed marriage before they made it back into the house.

The sound of the grating voice droned on, Lara choosing to ignore it, before her mother gave her a small slap on her shoulder.

“You wicked girl. You said you were coming on Monday, and here you are surprising us now.”

She sighed. This was code for “how could you have kept this a secret and made me lose face in front of everyone, when I’ve been telling them you are coming on Monday?” Her mother lived for hearsay and the general idea of “what will people say.” In fact, most people in Mauritius lived by the standard. Whoever said the ton and all its silly rules had died in the Regency era had not taken a trip to Mauritius, in eighteen-ten or the year two thousand.

“But my poor little girl,” Auntie Ruby said in a cajoling tone bringing nothing but danger to mind. “Of course you wanted to come home earlier. Who wouldn’t? Look what that awful, awful man has done to you.”

Translation: “And here’s your cue to air out the laundry, from the sheets to the knickers, you silly goose.”

“Our hearts went out to you, dearest girl, you who are like a daughter to us,” Auntie Zubeida chimed in. “We never saw this coming. How could you not have told a soul you and that scoundrel were having problems? We would’ve spoken to him, set him right, showed him this is not how he is supposed to treat our daughter.”

“Tsk-tsk. And what a beautiful couple you two made. How could anyone have thought you would break up?” Auntie Ruby added.

Lara forced a small smile. Damn, how she wanted to be out of here. She had a duty to do, though—the sooner she was done, the better, so she could run back to Grand Baie and leave those old cows behind. And yes, in that lot, she included her mother, who had yet to speak out. Bad vibe.

“I’m doing fine, Auntie,” she said. “That’s what matters.”

All three women watched her with narrowed eyes. No way was she doing away with the Inquisition.

“How can you be fine?” Auntie Ruby asked. “We have been so preoccupied with your plight. How on earth are you going to get along? How will your parents bear all this? To think they still have an unmarried daughter on their hands, now they are ending up with two daughters. Oh what fate God has dealt them.”

Lara bit her lip to keep from answering back. Right, the ton must’ve been more solicitous than this. The aunts were simply nosing for gossip. But then, that’s what Jane Austen wrote in her subtext, too. The concern was merely the polite way of enquiring about gossip in their society.

About Zee

Stories about love, life, relationships… in a melting-pot of culture

Zee is an author who grew up on a fence – on one side there was modernity and the global world, on the other there was culture and traditions. Putting up with the culture for half of her life, one day she decided she’d stand tall on her wall and dip toes every now and then into both sides of her non-conventional upbringing.

From this resolution spanned a world of adaptation and learning to live on said wall. The realization also came that many other young women of the world were on their own fence.

This particular position became her favorite when she decided to pursue her lifelong dream of writing – her heroines all sit ‘on a fence’, whether cultural or societal, in today’s world or in times past, and face dilemmas about life and love.

Hailing from the multicultural island of Mauritius, Zee is a degree holder in Communications Science. She is a head-over-heels wife, in-over-her-head mum to a tween son, best-buddy-stepmum to a teenage lad, an incompetent domestic goddess, eternal dreamer, and an absolute, shameless bookholic. When she isn’t penning more stories and/or managing the Ubuntu line at Decadent Publishing, you can bet you’ll find her with her nose in her tablet, ‘drinking in’ a good book.

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Much Ado about the Big O

I want to open a dialogue on the mind of many, and all over the lips of some.

Orgasm is one topic I think the wonderful world of literary erotica handles well. Why? Because in most written pursuits of pleasure, it’s not the total emphasis of sexual engagement.

Let me back up a sec. Not that our ultra cool community is insensitive to climax; rather, the ends justify the means. We’re more concerned with how we get there, because ultimately we know, we will get there. And if we don’t, well, we can take care of that ourselves, can’t we?

But that’s not the case for media coverage of come. In fact, there’s pressure galore not just that we gaz, but to come the right way, and produce the optimal off for lover(s).  Men are pressured to edge, not to shoot to soon, all the while producing exquisite pleasure for lovers. Women are pressured to come at all costs, and now they have to squirt, too.

Which by the way, according to  Oprah’s resident cooch doc, Dr. Laura all orgasming women squirt, it’s a master of whether they squirt up into their bladder, of out the urethra. And the best How-to video ever.

On a drier note, what drives the cultural fascination with upgrading orgasm? I understand the drive for better, more powerful, mind blowinger. What I don’t understand is the judgement that comes along with how it happens, if it happens, when it happens, why it happens, and the fact that we set cultural standards for it at all.

What say ye on this one, lads and lasses? How does stigma affect how you write about orgasm? How do you think it shapes the way erotica is received by readers? Culturally?

And yes, it’s a real place. A free ebook of your back catalogue choice to the first three commenters who can tell me where, without cheating! Sluts honor!

 

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Meet Clare Dargin, author of Ice & Peace

Meet Clare Dargin, author of Ice & Peace!

A Love So Close You Can Feel It…

There’s something about a hot guy in uniform who’s touchable but at the same time out of reach.  That kind of man was on my mind when I wrote Colonel Medoro Keegan in Cold Warriors.  A man who has chosen to be an island onto himself, he is in a sea of humanity yet is alone. 

Unlike some heroes of this sort, they have no friends and live on the fringes of society.  Keegan is anything but that.  He has two very good friends whom he trusts, he is respected by his colleagues and his considered to be on the career fast track but on the inside, he feels like a hamster on a wheel.  He’s going through the motions but he ain’t going any where.

All that changes when Caitlin Driskoll enters his life.  In the beginning just a ‘passenger’ in a cargo manifest, she is but one of many who are to be sent out as cannon fodder for a military with dwindling numbers.  In a frozen stasis for nearly a hundred years, because of a long gone medical fad, she awakens to find she has been recruited to fight in a war she knows nothing about.

From day one, her strength and her annoyance has been one the light that shone in an other wise darkened existence.  Attracted to her, he fights between the rules of his job and society which says they can’t speak much less touch, they both struggle to not only survive but to explore the attraction they feel for each other.

In the second book, Ice and Peace:

A New Threat? After a long and vicious war, peace is on the horizon for Earth and its allies. However, a series of mysterious attacks on several secret military installations causes hostilities to rise once again.

Redemption. Having left under a cloud of disgrace, retired Marine Colonel Medoro Keegan is called back to duty.

Bound. His wife Caitlin, the only surviving member of her team, chooses to embrace life, albeit grudgingly, as a cryo soldier. Seen as sub-human, she is forced to serve a planet that denies her rights as a person.

Driven. Guided by their sense of duty and belief that some things are bigger than them, they are determined to risk it all.

Hope. The cost of war is high. Can their love and marriage survive? Or will it be killed off by the very same mission that brought them together?

 Excerpt from Ice and Peace

“Sir,” a soft voice, feminine and sweet, beckoned his attention. He knew the voice, like he knew himself. His heart skipped a beat.

Rising slowly from his chair, Keegan cleared his throat and straightened his uniform. Suddenly, the room seemed unbearably long as he walked the three feet or so to be near her.

As he took in every detail of her, he was stunned silent. She wore a Marine Corps uniform with Navy insignia, with her hair neatly pinned off her neck and shoulders. Her clothes were pressed with a crease that could cut a major artery and her demeanor was impeccable. Something was not right.

Still, Caitlin was a sight for sore eyes. She was beautiful. Her petite frame was perfectly accented by the curves of her figure. And her brown eyes and coffee-brown skin was smooth, creamy.

Standing at attention, she did not meet his gaze. Though it was customary not to do as a sign of military courtesy, he could tell she was not doing it for that reason. Her gaze was different. Circling her, he tried to see if he could catch her watching him out of the corner of her eye.  In fact, she appeared to be staring blankly ahead.

Peering directly at her, he spoke in a soft tone. “At ease.”

She relaxed.

“Cate. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” she responded mechanically.

Pain pierced his insides. She was definitely not there. Keegan placed his hands on his hips and hung his head in defeat. The one thing that was supposed to go right did not. For whatever reason, they had placed her in a deeper state of mental control than she’d ever been in. He controlled the hostile emotions brewing with him. Touching her face gently, he felt her icy skin.

This is unacceptable! Not here. I will not let this happen here. Not under my command.

“Chief, listen up,” he said in an authoritative tone. He knew in this state, it was the only way he could speak to her and still have her respond.

“Yes, sir.” Her gaze became even more distant.

Her response fueled his anger. “You are going to hightail it down to the doc and receive a full examination. Tell him it is based on my orders. He will know what to do. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Knowing that she was under the influence of cryo neurotransmitters, Keegan figured the only way to combat it was to get someone to reverse it. They usually wore off once she was away from the stimulus triggers for a long period of time. But considering her stimulus triggers were high-ranking officers in uniform and combat situations, being around here meant she was going to be in a drone zone for a very long time. The last thing he needed was a zombie on board, especially one in charge of the lives others.

Only the jerks in psyche warfare thought doing this to someone would be a good idea. As long as he was running the ship, none of that would be allowed. There weren’t going to be any super zombies soldiers on board his ship. And he’d rollover in his grave before he let them do it to his wife.

“After you come back from the doc, you will report to me, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are there any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

She did an about face before leaving the room. Keegan clasped his hands behind his back. In the blink of an eye, his joy had turned to sorrow. Now faced with the responsibility of looking after his wife, he wondered how could he handle the burden of command and still protect the woman he loved.

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