Lilly Rayman's Blog, page 2

Paradise Girl

Readers often ask me where I got the idea for my novel Paradise Girl. The answer is, it came from a bug. Or, to be more precise, a virus.Nobody knows how many viruses exist, but scientists agree that they outnumber all other living things put together (actually there’s some debate about whether viruses can actually be considered alive, but for now we’ll assume they can). Only a tiny number of them affect humans, and most of those that do are easily dealt with by the body’s immune system. However, there are a few that the immune system can’t cope with, and these can cause serious illness and, in extreme cases, death. An example is ebola, which is spread through the transfer of body fluids. It’s also transmitted by fruit bats, which can carry the virus without being affected by it.A few years ago a volcano in Iceland erupted, throwing smoke and ash several kilometres into the sky. A result of this was the grounding of commercial aircraft for several days. I live in a remote farmhouse high on the Pennine hills in the north of England. Usually the only signs of human life outside my home are the vapour trails of planes as they approach or depart from Manchester, or travers the country to and from other places. At the time of the Icelandic eruption, they stopped. The skies were empty, a beautiful, clear blue. For that short time I could have been the only person alive. This started me thinking: suppose that really was the case, where might everyone else have gone? What might have happened to them? Destroyed by radiation? Abducted by aliens? Wiped out by a plague? Ebola was in the news at the time, and so the latter seemed the most likely.I began to work on the idea. Somebody in such a situation would be subject to unbearable pressures. They would be desperately lonely and terribly afraid, alternating between relief at surviving and the daunting prospect of a future without hope. It would add poignancy if the central character was young, maybe still in their teens with their life before them. Think about an almost endless series of days stretching ahead, with nothing to relieve them or distinguish between them. What dark places might a mind go when faced with that? What terrible dreams might occur?They would try to cope by writing a diary, which would describe what they saw, heard and thought, and through which they could reflect on their predicament. It seemed to me that this would work best if such a character was female. Kerryl Shaw introduced herself, and I began to write her story. You can read it in Paradise Girl.Find the Paradise Girl here: https://amzn.to/2ETah9P

The Battle is O'er

Shawn means self and Kleiner means centered, one of Shawn’s (many) ex-girlfriends proclaimed. So begin The Blue Bells Chronicles, a tale of time travel, mysteries and miracles, romance and redemption, in an epic adventure ranging across modern and medieval Scotland against the backdrop of Scotland’s Wars of Independence in the 1300s.Shawn has it all—wealth, fame, women—until the night Amy, his girlfriend, has enough and abandons him in an ancient tower. He wakes up in the wrong century. Two years in medieval times, two years of fighting beside Robert the Bruce and James Douglas, two years of living with and as his medieval twin, the devout and upright Highlander Niall Campbell, working to protect those he has come to love, and perhaps mostly, his growing friendship with Niall, whom he initially despised, all work changes in Shawn.Throughout their adventures, he and Niall seek a way to get Shawn back across time, to fulfill his desire to ask Amy’s forgiveness and finally be the man she always saw in him—succeeding at last in the middle of a fierce battle for Niall’s home, Glenmirril, against their old enemy, the MacDougalls.Safely back in his own time, Shawn is steadily regaining all he lost—his career as a world-traveling musician, the son he feared he would never know, and finally, maybe—even Amy’s heart. He can’t let go of the past, however, or stop agonizing over what happened to Niall and all his beloved friends, left behind in a fight for their lives. In his search for answers, hoping to find that all ended well, he learns instead of the dangers still lurking in fourteenth century Scotland: to Niall who will pay a horrible price for Shawn’s last deed, committed in Glenmirril’s tower just moments before escaping to the safety of his own time; to his own infant son, the subject of prophecy and an ancient letter predicting a fateful battle; even danger to the whole world as Simon Beaumont, known to history as the Butcher of Berwick, seeks to use his knowledge of the future to destroy it.In this gripping conclusion to The Blue Bells Chronicles, Shawn faces the ultimate test. His selfishness once cost him everything. His newfound selflessness may do the same.

Painting of Sorrow

I began Painting of Sorrow because I was interested in lost and destroyed paintings of WWII. Searching for paintings that could have been saved but were said not to be, brought me to the Flakturm Friedrichshain in Berlin, an anti-aircraft tower used to house a bomb shelter and a hospital as well as the paintings of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum. More than four hundred paintings and three hundred sculptures were burned, stolen, or destroyed by bombs in the waning days of WWII. Did the Soviets loot the building before it burned? Or were some of the paintings stolen when the Soviet guards were inexplicably removed?One such painting was called variously Portrait of Fillide or Portrait of a Courtesan, a work by Caravaggio. Client Simon Wolf brings a copy of the painting to be conserved by the firm where Sarah Downing works.Is it a copy or an original? It's Sarah job to conserve it but she wants to know the truth about the painting.Sarah is a painter as well as an art conservator. Her mind reacts to situations, landscapes, and people by seeing paintings in her memory that describe them. Throughout the book, images of paintings also reflect her emotional state and her fears.Early in the book, the director of the Art Gallery that is housed in the building where she works, frightens Sarah. Her mind brings up a picture of St. Jerome, an almost cadaveric man pictured in a desert, by Da Vinci. The taut skin of his face reveals the skull beneath.Sarah escapes a killer with her friend Peg. On the way, they stop at a lookout over Mazinaw Lake. Casson painted the iconic Bon Echo Rock there.Later, approaching the security of a remote cabin in rural Ontario, she sees the building as a painting by A. Y. Jackson, Settler's Home and somehow felt safer, for the moment.Her visions become darker and when she finds her new love Simon, beaten by her ex-husband, The Death of Marat by David, a nightmare of a painting intrudes on her thoughts. At the hospital, the controlled chaos of Emergency Room, by Fiona Rae reflects the roiling state of her emotions.Much later, arriving to Simon's home, afraid that all chance of a relationship with him has gone, she sees not his house, but Carl Schaefer's Ontario Farmhouse, dark clouds looming over it, perhaps an omen for her futureI hope interested readers will search out the paintings mentioned in the book to gain a fuller understanding of Sarah and the events that changed her life.You can find out more about Virginia here: Find the Painting of Sorrow here:

Where is humankind heading?

First question: Did human consciousness change along centuries and millennia?Disrespect for our environment, religious intolerance, greed, selfishness… I did my reading, history and religious texts and books.My conclusion? Not much. Add to all this the unstoppable population growth, the overpopulation and the insane resource consumption.Second question: Did our life standards improve along centuries?My take? A lot. For some of us. I would dare say that the average individual in western world lives better than kings few hundred years back. I remember a chronicle about the life during king Louis XIV, the Sun King; the cold and ugly smelling palaces (no toilets), sticks to scratch under the wigs for head lice, health problems…So, we do better today. All this done because of human technology advances: internet, cars, airplanes, medical assistance, you name it…So, what is wrong?Technologies advanced much faster that human consciousness; and technology out of control generates disasters.Discoveries and innovation based on research in chemistry, biology, quantum physics, information technology, transportation… make our life better, but could be used for destruction in the worse imaginable ways.Third question: Can our society fix itself, and avoid self-destruction?Answer: NO.Why? There are mathematical theories that a system cannot fix itself from inside. The mechanisms to fix the system will alter it, and so, it is different than when the project started, it is catch 22 situation. Forth question: What can be done?If humankind deserved being saved, it will happen, help from above. Aliens? or gods?But does indeed human society deserve saving?My book The World Ends Tomorrow describes such a scenario.Fracony, a super civilization that visited Earth periodically, built models forecasting that an apocalypse generated by humans themselves is inevitable.They discovered a baby girl, Clara, with very special qualities, a research accident from a lab that tried to match man and women for best offspring. Clara was raised and trained all her life to take over the world leadership and prevent or diminish the consequences of an apocalypse.And the disaster came as a biological apocalypse from a virus escaping from a research lab.Clara can communicate with Fracony, but her training could not foresee everything, and Fracony might have their plans about what really means saving humanity, or the price to pay.What is good and bad have different definitions in normal times versus crisis situations, and when human race was at stake that line between right or wrong was blurry and shifting until became non-existent. Principles transformed into self preservation, fear in divine punishment transformed into anger. Who could rule such a world?The action is four hundred years into the future, and only two countries sharing the planet, Gaia and Esperanto. Clara was ruling Esperanto as its Secretary. She had to navigate among centrifuge interests and ideas and take bold and heartbreaking decisions. Will she succeed or collapse before reaching the end of the tunnel?The World Ends Tomorrowhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BXK259K

Weapons of Light and Power

"A soldier leaned out the window, taking aim at Charlotte. A frisson of energy pulsed from the weapon, barely missing her. She screamed, flailing.Ashton flipped the rocket ignition on the power cycle and the force of the thrust slammed him against the seat as he shot skyward toward the roof. Pulling his tracer gun, he fired blindly at the building. The soldier dove for the floor." ~Ashton Wells, The TremblersCreating the weapons for my YA Steampunk novel, The Tremblers took me on a fascinating path. The invention of destructive devices was vexing and addicting all at once.Weapons of light -- Tracer Guns are the weapon of choice for the soldiers of the Peaceful Union. Powerful blasters that syphon the glowing purple energy from the massive Tesla Domes caging the city-states are feared by the average citizen. Constantly recalibrating to the dome's pulse, they are outlawed to everyone but the soldiers of the government.Charlotte is a tinkerer and inventor. The daughter of a renowned soldier and chemist, her weapons needed finesse. I designed the metal spheres of her Shrieking Violet grenade to cluster together like a flower. Its shrill screech disables her enemies while a curtain of magenta gas shields her escape.The outlaws and Lawmen of Outer City favor guns and pistols of the old world. Sheriff Sebastian Riley's revolver helped him to rise to power among the pirates and pioneers of the sky settlement.Another daunting tool as the Lightning Stick. Capable of lashing whips of energy. Used by the ruthless Lawmen of the floating ports, Charlotte learns of its devastating effects while trying to flee with Ashton.However, it is the power and might of the Peaceful Union Aero Squad that strikes fear into the heart of every citizen. Their searing lamps and concussion bombs send rioters scrambling. Creating airship battles and designing the infamous rebel ship, The Stygian, was great fun! Myself the daughter of a military man, I grew up visiting airshows and sitting at the controls of massive machines of war. I wanted to bring that fascination and awe to the Blackburn Chronicles.If you love mechanica, mayhem, and monsters, then check out The Tremblers and Wind Reapers available now wherever books are sold.

An Unexpected Revelation Cover Reveal

Lilly Rayman is proud to present the cover of her latest novelAn Unexpected Revelation: Book Two of The Unexpected TrilogyReveal Sale!To celebrate the upcoming release of An Unexpected Revelation, Lilly has set a Kindle Countdown for An Unexpected Bonding: Book One of The Unexpected TrilogyThe countdown runs from 8 April – 13 April 2018 starting at 99cFor centuries there has been hatred, bloodshed and killing between the vampire and wolf nations. Livvie After the death of her mother, she was now the only wolf-less member of the Romulus pack, and found it almost impossible to live with them. With the Alpha's permission she left to travel the country. When she fell in love, she found her place in the world and settled with the man of her dreams on his cattle ranch in Texas. But after nearly a decade away from the pack, Livvie's life is about to change. Will she embrace this change or fight it? Darius The vampire, son of the Egyptian Sun God Ra, is wandering. His heart is aching, and his soul is restless. Eventually he finds himself in Texas, working for a beautiful woman with a magnetic pull he does not understand. It's only when she is taken from him, that he recognises a bond that is stronger than all others. The truth of that bond will shake him to his core. Will the unexpected bonding between wolf and vampire be enough to overcome the centuries of hatred and bring peace and unity to all? Will the wolf and the vampire overcome their own heartaches to accept their bonding and let romance evolve? Best Work and Most Popular Work in the iParchment writing rally 2014.More Romance Deals in AprilIf you are looking for more romance reads available in KU Deals this month, check out http://scarletrosebonnet.com/binges4bookaddictslimitedtimedeals/Title: An Unexpected Revelation:Book Two of The Unexpected TrilogyWritten by: Lilly RaymanRelease Date: June/July 2018Cover Design: Royal Anchor DesignsBlurb:Join all your favourite characters once more in the second book of the Unexpected Series.With the new treaty in place, the Remus pack can hopefully settle, undisturbed at Thunder Hollow Ranch. Working alongside her mate, Livvie, now Alpha, is unaware of an enemy lurking in the dark. This new foe hears word of the peace treaty and makes their presence known. Will the blood thirsty anger of gods destroy the tentative, and fragile new alliance?Meanwhile, everything the wolf pack has tried to keep hidden from the sleepy town of Eagle Downs falls into jeopardy. Can the secret of their existence remain intact, or is this the end of unspoken accord between wolf and human? Return to Thunder Hollow to see how fear, prejudices, and memories of the past, are overcome.Abut Lilly RaymanFirst and foremost, Lilly describes herself as a wife and mother. She was born in England where she had a dream at the age of fourteen. That dream was to chase cattle on horseback across the Australian Outback.In 2008, Lilly had the opportunity to follow that dream and found herself travelling to Australia on an Outback working holiday, and she's chased cattle, on horseback, across the Outback. Lilly met her soul mate, while on her working holiday, married him. Now they have two beautiful daughters, and she is still in love with life in Australia.Lilly loves to read, much to her husband’s dismay sometimes when she has her head metaphorically buried in the pages of a book (after all, how can that be literal since the dawn of e-books?)!Lilly loves fantasy; she used to escape from her nasty world of bullies and appear in some beautiful land full of dragons and magic! Pern was her all-time favourite hide out world, and Lilly is often heard saying “God bless Anne and Todd MacCaffery”.Whenever Lilly immersed herself in her fantasy worlds, she would re-write the plots in her head, starring herself as some great, sword wielding character who didn’t give two hoots what the local bully thought! That eventuated in Lilly's first foray into committing her stories to paper at the tender age of fourteen.More recently, Lilly was inspired to start writing again, and picked up on the whole craze of werewolves and vampires. She experienced the most enjoyment writing AN UNEXPECTED BONDING, the first book of An Unexpected Trilogy.Author Links:Facebook Reader Group: Website: BookBub: Facebook: Twitter: Goodreads: Amazon:

A.I. Insurrection

A.I. Insurrection – The General’s War Press Release. Feb, 15th, 20182162. Artificial intelligence claims sentience, but it's the proof that will divide the world, and usher in the violent end to utopia, unless an uneasy alliance of adversaries can stop it.A.I. Insurrection, the new release by Michael Poeltl, author of The Judas Syndrome trilogy, takes the author back to his roots of dystopian sci-fi. “This novel investigates global utopia and the struggle to maintain an unrealistic hold over everything and everyone,” Poeltl explains. “Certain aspects of humanity will never be satisfied with the thousand shades of grey a utopia will provide, no matter the spin. When faced with the threat of their robot slaves rebelling, distrust in the system begins to infect the general public, opening the door for a new world to emerge, and new leaders to rule.” Discover how quickly a near-future utopian society can become a dystopian nightmare fueled by fear as the A.I. populace of United Earth become sentient and demand their freedoms.Raymond Bellows, United Earth Chancellor, challenges the A.I. claims until an astonishing truth is revealed by Host: SENTA, one of hundreds of millions of individual robot Hosts who teams up with the Chancellor while struggling to discover her new-found awareness. A secret coup schemes to over-throw the peaceful government, while a separate threat of human/tech hybrids who think the current regime is anything but idyllic arise from the Shadow net, taking direction from the mysterious Allfather avatar. In a three-sided war, humanity and humanity’s creation fight to claim their own place in an ever-evolving solar system.“I believe science fictions fans, myself included, appreciate the complexities of artificial intelligence, and the moral questions which accompany it, like: when is intelligence consciousness? The novel also offers an exciting potential new proof of life for sentience.” Poeltl declares with an air of cloak-and-dagger surrounding the surprise reveal behind his new book.Goodreads ratings for A.I. Insurrection are settling in at a respectable 4.25 stars and has one reviewer saying: “A great read for anyone who enjoys extensively built worlds, philosophical questions, and an ol' fashioned A.I uprising.” - Ari Augustine.This is Poeltl’s tenth book and the first of 2018. For more on Michael Poeltl and his books, visit his website: www.mikepoeltl.com Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, or join him on Goodreads.

Quest For Vengeance

On our honeymoon, my wife and I visited an exotic island. We had a great time as we celebrated the beginning of our new life together. Everything went well. But suppose it hadn’t? Suppose something had gone wrong? And not just lost-a-suitcase, bad-sunburn wrong? What if my bride suddenly turned up…gone? In Quest for Vengeance, it’s a year after the events of Quest for Honor, and brothers Mark and Jim Hayes are with their new brides on a honeymoon tour of Italy, the native country of Jim’s wife, Gina. The violence and danger of their recent past is behind them. In the city of Capua, a chance encounter with an old Army buddy of Mark’s leads to a festive reunion. While the guys swap stories at a trattoria, the gals make one last visit to the city’s boutiques. But there’s been one more chance encounter on this trip, and now that’s about to turn into the greatest challenge the brothers have ever faced. Like the Hayes brothers, I grew up in Wisconsin, and like them, my two brothers and I wound up living considerable distances apart. Although we were never estranged, as Mark and Jim were, not being able to see them often created a distance between us that no amount of phone calls or emails could close. It’s only been in recent years that we have made efforts to get together more often. Our reunions have not been as dramatic as those of the Hayes brothers; we go to ballgames and museums, while Mark and Jim go to war. Still, I don’t think what happens to Mark and Jim in the Quest novels is too much of a stretch. Mark’s military experiences are certainly not outside the realm of those for many of our soldiers, and while Jim’s encounters are somewhat out of the ordinary for the average American abroad, I myself have once or twice had situations overseas that could’ve developed into something a little too adventurous for my taste. Last summer, for example, Sue and I hiked the Salkantay Trail of Peru, and we never saw the armed guerillas our guide told us he faced on the same trek a few years earlier. But I had the feeling they weren’t too far away. If something like that does happen to us, though, we can only hope we will face the situation with courage and honor. These are traits that are not inborn; they are learned, through dedication and self-discipline. Both the Quest series and my White Vixen novels feature protagonists who exemplify those traits. Yes, my fictional creations are highly-trained individuals, but they are not superheroes by any means. They are ordinary people who have chosen to train themselves to face whatever extraordinary challenges may come their way; indeed, to seek them out. Most of all, they have chosen to serve a higher calling. I don’t believe we were put here to simply meander through life. We were put here to strive, to achieve, to overcome our inevitable stumbles. When we choose this life, we are taking on challenges that will make our communities, our country, our world, a better place. So, come along with Mark and Jim, as they embark on their latest Quest. You can find the book here: http://amzn.to/2HnlFfN

The Bad Boy Billionaire Bachelors Boxset

Last year, Romance Devoured, a media company focused on romance readers, brought together thirteen authors and asked each of them to write a new story for a themed box set.The authors were all given a free rein in the content of their stories – the only stipulation was that the heroes had to be hot and wealthy, very wealthy but flawed. Real bad boys. It would be for the sassy heroines to get under their skins, tame them and turn them round.In February 2018 – on St Valentine’s Day of course – they announced the launch of a brand-new romance collection – The ‘Bad Boy Billionaire Bachelors Boxset.’ If you’re excited by a genuine bargain and enjoy steamy love stories, then this anthology of thirteen brand new full-length novels should be on your reading list.There’s something for everyone in this set. A billionaire proposes to a barista to get an image makeover before he loses his company and fortune along with it. A secret masquerade hook-up leads to complications with a new boss. A tattooed billionaire rocks a woman’s world and the bad boy's desires threaten to scare her back to her humdrum single life. A rich banker fights for a traffic cop’s body and soul. The devil himself falls in love when a rookie reporter is sent to interview him. A businessman masquerades as a tattooed Harley rider to find his ideal mate. These stories and many more are included in this steamy, hot collection.Don’t wait to read this set. It is only out for a short time before it will be gone forever! Priced at just $1.99/£1.49 and FREE on Kindle Unlimited, it’s easily affordable.Authors included in this boxset:Jeana E Mann Julia Bright Nicole Morgan Elise Faber Annie Young Tricia Barr Maggie Carpenter Emma Calin Aspen Drake Megyn Ward Angela Kulig N. Isabelle Blanco Kim CarmichaelThis limited-edition collection of new and exclusive romance novels is guaranteed to melt your kindle. It’s available on Amazon worldwide until the 14th May 2018 on this link: There’s a $25 Amazon GC and book giveaway running until the end of March to celebrate the launch:http://www.emmacalin.com/giveawaysYou’re sure to find a new favourite book boyfriend among our bad boy billionaire heroes. Check out the trailer on this page to see some of the inspirations behind them.

Coming Soon! The Vault

The Vault Why would a multibillionaire create a customized vault that is controlled by watch mechanics inside and have a self-destruct mechanism inside to destroy the billion dollars worth of artifacts inside? Simple, because he can.On paper, Sam Montgomery is your typical eccentric philanthropic pharmaceutical billionaire whom has literally mailed five dollars to everyone in the US so they can “pay it forward.” But what people didn’t know when made a rare public appearance was that he was announcing he had leukemia. And more shocking was that when he said, “I’d rather die than give my sister the opportunity to save my life,” no one even knew he had a sister. Elena Diamante nailed the sit down interview – at his small home on the tiny island of Antikythera in Greece. She was only planning on getting the scoop about Sam and his apparently estranged sister but she was also going to be the first journalist to see inside Sam’s custom made vault. It was built using watch mechanics, so it was completely self-sustained, and only opened once a year. It was even rumored that if it were ever tampered with, everything inside would be destroyed in a custom acid. Come to find out for Elena, there would be one item inside Sam’s vault that could save his life, or end it even quicker, it was just a matter of whether or not the vault would open in time. The vault explores Sam’s family dynamics and how they inspired him to become the successful man he is. The story is also told using Sam’s own family photos growing up, as well as text messages and Facebook/Twitter. There are even hyperlinks within the novel as “Easter Eggs” for those readers that want to explore even more of Sam’s personal life, further blurring the lines of fact/fiction.