E.G. Manetti's Blog, page 5

Indie Spotlight: Role Play Age Play

Ever since Fifty Shades of Gray made the best-seller lists, BDSM has come out of the closet and into the mainstream. The BDSM romance variants are as diverse as any other sub-genre, and the levels of heat are wide-ranging. Recently, a subset of role-play--age-play--has become popular with a slew of Daddy Dom novels.

Having met USA Bestselling author Pepper North at the recent Space Coast Book Lovers conference, I was intrigued when one of her Daddy Dom titles showed up in a bookbub deal. Curious, I checked it out.

This is the second novel I have read in this sub-genre, and while I enjoyed it, they age-play dynamic doesn't resonate for me in the smexy parts--my personal taste, the writing was well done.

However, the story was great, with lots of suspense driving the narrative, and the characters were engaging. I love that the Shadowridge Guardians MC was law-abiding (more or less) along the lines of BACA (Bikers Against Child Abuse) with a focus on community service rather than the one-percent criminality of Sons of Anarchy. I would have liked a little more character development, but overall, it is a fun read with a satisfying ending.

“Little girl, I’m only going to ask one more time…”

Things have not been going Ivy Jenkins' way recently–well, until Steele Mattson rescues her. Being thrown away like garbage does a job on a woman’s self-confidence and bravery. Add in scrambled memories from a head injury and Ivy knows she qualifies as a hot mess, even if she is the bank branch manager.

Steele’s father established the Shadowridge Guardians MC. He’s as dedicated to protecting the good citizens of his city as he is to creating the perfect weld on an old-school chopper, and he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty to take care of problems. When he finds the petite woman in a very bad situation, he dives in to help. What he doesn’t expect is to discover the rescued treasure is his.

He’ll stop at nothing to hunt down those who endangered her and make them pay.

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Indie Romance Spotlight: It's A Dangerous Galaxy

The colonization of other worlds has been a staple of science fiction. What happens when the world's rulers allow humans with grudging acceptance?

In Bella Blair's universe, unexpected romance occurs between the ruling warlords and the female human settlers.

She was given to me as a tribute, but soon she becomes the master of my heart.

ALAHNA : Many generations ago, humans fled to the planet Thyre, which is ruled by warlords. Each year, our outposts pay tribute to the Thyres for their protection and for allowing us to live on their land.
This year, we are short on horses and so I'm chosen to be part of the tribute given to the Warlord of Grymburg. I don't know what awaits me, but I wasn't prepared for the warlord to take my breath away and claim me the moment he laid eyes on me.


BROGAN : The humans, a tolerated species on Thyre, have many uses, but by far their greatest asset is their talent to breed horses.
When it's time to collect this season's tribute, I'm dismayed that they' re us ing e human kallinies to pay their debts instead of the horses I expected. At least until my eyes land on her. The most delectable kallini I have ever seen and who soon heats my cold warlord heart. Before I know it, she even brings pets into our home.

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Award-winning SFR 99c Sale! June1-30 #SFR

5 STARS!
E.G. Manetti , has taken painstaking words and pages to have the reader fall in love with this young man . . . Needless to say, I loved this book! ~ Paranormal Romance Guild, October 2023.

At the outer edge of the galaxy, on a backwater planet, to claim their future, Chrys must confront his past, and Verity overcome her fears.

CHRYS
A hero of the battle for the Thirteenth System, for over a decade, Chrys fought for a place in one of the mighty cartels. Success is within his grasp when a mysterious bequest from his home world sends him across the galaxy. Caught between his past and his duty, Chrys takes his engineering partner with him. As the voyage unfolds, he discovers a lovely woman in the place of his battle comrade.

VERITY
Verity endured over a decade of servitude for a chance at a brighter future. She has harbored a hidden crush on Chrys for years, wanting him to view her as a desirable woman and not only a battle comrade and business associate. She survived a battle with evil, and in victory, she will fight for her dreams.

When Chrys falls under suspicion of murder, it will take all their courage and wit to free him.

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WRONGFULLY IMPRISONED BY FACEBOOK

Shock and horror.

After almost eight years on Facebook without a single warning, my EG Manetti account was suspended without notice on Saturday, May 25, during the USA holiday weekend. Not because of anything I posted or commented on, but because the Facebook bots cross-wired EG Manetti with an account belonging to a musician in the UK. Someone I do not know.

The loss of a promotional channel is frustrating. Still, it is nothing compared to the heartbreak of the savagely severed connection to my friends, readers, and the author community that has supported my decade-long adventure in indie publication. From my experience this past week, I doubt Facebook will restore EG Manetti.

Railroaded into Facebook incarceration.

On Saturday, 5/25, at 8:30 a.m. (EDT), my phone and iPad exploded with a Facebook Warning notice that I had 24 hours to address a problem before being suspended.

My first reaction was, huh?

Jumping on Facebook, I found the warning and clicked the link. It looked suspicious. When I followed it to the login screen, it looked more suspicious, especially when the access code to continue did not come through to the email associated with my EG Facebook account.

By hovering over the warning link at the top, I could see the profile of the account meant for the warning. I took this screenshot showing the UK account and sent it to Facebook via the ‘something went wrong’ function. I was not optimistic, but I had 24 hours.

The warnings continued to come, and now I was panicked. I tried several more times to reach Facebook through the warning links, even though they were not for my account. The confirmation codes eventually came through, but all they did was take me to EG Manetti, where there were no issues to correct.

Suspended without notice–Saturday, May 25 ~ 1:00 pm

Increasingly frantic, I was going to try the ‘spam’ reporting feature to get Facebook’s attention, but Meta stopped me. They had suspended EG Manetti—not because of whatever was happening in the UK, but because of an Instagram account that was not my account or one I have ever seen.



After taking a long walk to calm down, I gave Facebook a day. I had managed to get several communications through before the suspension, and since it was clearly an error, Meta might correct it overnight.

Meta did not.

Which was, and is, a problem. My June Facebook-dependent activities include the run-up to the 2024 Space Coast Book Lovers convention, with dozens of posts daily in both the author and attendee groups. Several author friends are also helping me promote a 99c sale on my most recent SFR release, CHRYS. Our communications are via Facebook group posts and Instant Messenger (also suspended).

Several hours of internet research confirmed my worst fear—Facebook’s account review and reinstatement process relies on an email Meta sends to the offending account with a link for remediation. An email EG Manetti has never received. Without it, my only recourse was Facebook’s non-responsive ‘report a problem’ feature.

Since it was my only avenue for communication, I wrote a detailed message explaining the problem, including the screenshots. I submitted it through my personal Facebook account and (still) active EG Manetti Instagram account nine times between Sunday, May 26, and Thursday, May 30. I also dusted off an old author account under a different nom de plume and submitted it seven times. So far, there has been no response from Meta.

As of Friday, May 31, 2024, Meta would not accept support request submissions from my accounts.

he conclusion is inescapable. In its complacency and hubris, Meta does not want to know about or address issues with its process. It has zero interest in dealing with its failure related to one obscure author. This is not a new problem. NPR reported it back in 2017.

At this point, I doubt that EG Manetti will be returning to Facebook. To keep up with me:

Join my mailing list for my twice-monthly newsletter—Red Gems

Follow my blog— http://egmanetti.com

Follow me on X (formerly Twitter)— https://twitter.com/egmanetti

Follow me on Instagram— https://www.instagram.com/egmanetti/

Follow me on TikTok— https://www.tiktok.com/@egmanetti

I’m uncomfortable in front of a camera, but this situation forces me out of my comfort zone, so I’ve started a YouTube channel. It only has some videos built for TikTok, but more to come: https://www.youtube.com/@EGManetti.

Indie Spotlight: She Sees Dead People

Ghost whispers are a staple of urban fantasy, and Ava Alexis' contribution to the trope is a welcome addition. The narrative runs from sardonic to humorous to suspenseful to romantic in unpredictable twists and turns. Ivy could be a bit snarky for my taste, but the storyline is so riveting that it kept me turning pages.

Everybody wants a piece of Ivy, even the dead. Weird shit always happens to her. Dreams she can't explain, an obsession with not staying in one place too long. Oh, and she can talk to the dead. Think psychic medium, not grandma on a bender yelling at gramp's ashes. What? That only happens in her family? Okay sure. We'll go with that.

Ivy occasionally uses her gift to help the dead find emotional closure, but let's be real, emotional closure doesn't pay the rent. Instead, she peddles her sleuthing skills to those left behind. It's a win for everyone. The dead move on, the living find closure, and she makes bank.

That is until Evander Talia stumbles into her life and complicates EVERYTHING.

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Indie Spotlight: Magic and Mayhem

The kick-@ss heroine is a staple of urban fantasy and paranormal romance but often she is over-shadowed by a bigger-and-badder hero. Not so in Jami Gray's Shadow's Edge, where Gavin is Raine's match but by no means superior.

Their slow-burn romance adds dimension to the characters without slowing the fast-paced, suspenseful narrative.

Raine's spent a lifetime hunting monsters, but can she stop her prey from exposing the supernatural community one bloody corpse at a time?

Everyone fears the hunter in the shadows – even the monsters...

Raine McCord, forged in the brutal maelstrom of magic and science, is an elite hunter at home hunting monsters through the murky shadows of the supernatural world of the Kyn. Not an easy task when you're trying to keep the humans ignorant of the existence of creatures typically confined to campfire tales. And gets worse when a series of disappearances and deaths in the Kyn community suggests someone wants to rip the thin veil of secrecy aside and expose the horror lurking behind the curtain.

To even the odds, Raine is forced to partner with another hunter, the sexy and tantalizing Witch-Fey, Gavin Durand. Their partnership proves to be as challenging and dangerous as the prey they hunt. Especially when the trail leads back to the foundation that warped Raine's magic as a child and threatens to resurrect the nightmares of her past.

Determine to stop the threat to the Kyn, Raine and Gavin stalk their prey through a maze of lies, murder, and greed, but will the price they pay be too high?

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Indie Spotlight: Steampunk Fairytale Retelling

I love genre-blending/genre-bending fiction that includes sci-fi or fantasy. Lindsey Pogue categorizes her Ruined Lands series as dystopian science-fiction since it takes place a century or so in the future.

However, the societal behavior and technology are more consistent with Victorian-era steampunk fiction. A super intriguing spin on post-apocalyptic science fiction. Add a touch of 'earth magic', a romance that is part Beauty and the Beast and part Jane Eyre; and it is a genre-defying page-turner.

I had some trouble with the conflict between the romantic leads lasting as long as it did due to miscommunication that was obvious and easily corrected by interested characters far earlier in the story. Otherwise, it is a wonderful read.

The Collector is coming.

Centuries ago, the skies turned black. For 300 years, Londoners survived in the dank, underground tunnels of the city, until a stranger from a faraway land offered to save them. Though it wasn't without cost . . . and he has come to collect.

Travel beyond the City of Ruin, through the secret passageways and haunted woods, to a land shrouded in secrets in this atmospheric retelling of Jane Eyre and Beauty and the Beast.

This is the first book in the richly imagined Ruined Lands, a Forgotten Lands sister series and collection of dystopian fairytale retelling.

*All Forgotten Lands World novels can be read as standalones and in any order.*

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Indie Spotlight: Orc Magic

There is an increasing trend in fantasy and paranormal romance to cast orcs as the heroes. In Krista Luna's Bound to the Orc Ranger, the big green guy with tusks is a deadly warrior and cinnamon-roll by turns.

With a mix of action-adventure and rom-com, the story is engaging and creative. And who doesn't love a talking unicorn?

A wish whisks me away to Faerie, where I have magic! And a “married at first sight” orc husband.

Stuck slinging pizzas in the deadest of dead-end jobs, I make a wish. In a blink, I’m teetering on top of a standing stone in Faerie, where I have magical powers!

And monsters fighting over me!

Thank god, the orc wins. A fierce and deadly warrior, Rovann's nothing but gentle with me.

I’m stunned when he claims me as his moon bound bride, saying we’re already magically matched and married. I never imagined being wed to a stranger, even one that makes my heart flutter. When I tell him humans don’t work like that, Rovann vows to woo me.

No matter what it takes.

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Indie Spotlight: BDSM Romantic Suspense

Four retired Navy Seals start a BDSM resort but need outside expertise to make it work. Enter the first of the romantic interests, the marketing and public relations expert. Keeping everything interesting, someone with a grudge is targeting the resort, requiring the retired seals to pull out their military skills.

Although the road to the HEA is clear from the outset, the journey is entertaining, and the smexy is more kinky than BDSM.

I enjoyed the second in the series more than the first, but both are enjoyable reads.

Kendra Hall is a fixer. As far as Mark Luciano is concerned, nothing in his life needs fixing—not him, and certainly not his business.

As part owner of Club Apocalypse, a resort catering to those who share certain proclivities, he’s perfectly happy with the small, select clientele they’ve curated. He doesn’t need some fancy suit telling him how to run his business—even if the advice is coming from the most stunning woman he’s ever seen. Worse, she’s right more than she’s wrong.

When he discovers that behind closed doors Kendra enjoys taking orders rather than giving them, their relationship takes a turn he never expected.

But trouble is coming for Club Apocalypse. If Mark can’t learn that sometimes even the Master must bend, he risks losing everything he’s worked to build.

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Meet EG at the 2024 Space Coast Book Lovers Convention!

2024 Space Coast Book Lovers Agenda

4 DAYS OF BOOK-ISH EVENTS AND AUTHOR INTERACTION!
FREE ADMISSION BOOK-SIGNING EVENT SATURDAY, 6/22!

AGENDA & TICKETS

It’s my first time at this event, so the agenda and activities are new to me. I will be there all 4 days, and plan to sign-up for the author interaction events. The current agenda shows the final event the night of Saturday, 6/22, but the organizers have indicated there is a breakfast event, Sunday 6/23.

More to come as the organizers get the agenda fully squared away.

Quality paperbacks of all my titles will be available for sale and signing at the Saturday afternoon event–at a discount off regular retail.

Pre-order and get a bigger discount.







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