Wednesday 30 November 2016

His Montana Rescue by Vella Munn contemporary romance

 
Vella Munn will be awarding a several photographs of Montana's wilderness sent via email (international and U.S. giveaway) to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.



Even though I wrote every one of the four books and novella in the Montana Lakeside series, I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around what I’ve done. For most of my writing career, I’ve been content writing stand-alone stories, but that was before a girlfriend and I were enjoying some quiet time in a small mountain town following a writers’ conference. 

The conference had been a blast but exhausting, and there wasn’t much left of our brains. All I wanted was to relax and for her to give me a taste of the Rocky Mountains over the next couple of days. We’d settled into our rustic cabin and had stepped onto the deck overlooking a swift-running creek, glasses of wine in hand. I don’t remember what we were talking about, probably weighty things like where we were going to go for dinner and how much snow was already at the highest peaks. 

A storm started moving in complete with blue/black clouds and a wind that made a delightful mess of our hair. Instead of retreating indoors, we wrapped our coats around us and turned our faces into the wind. At least I did. (A part of me wants to admit my friend thought I’d lost my mind but I’m nog going to.) 

I’m a wilderness gal. I was born and raised in the mountains with nature in my DNA. I’d spent the past five days in a Denver hotel surrounded by people. This afternoon was my reward for pretending to be the extravert I’m not. As I sipped on my wine and waited for the rain to start, my mind went to thoughts of how much the out-of-doors means to me. How it defines me. How deeply I need it.

Suddenly I was wide awake, my mind churning in the delicious way that happens to writers when they get an idea. Excitement gripped me as my imagination charged into high gear. I vowed to explore and examine what nature means to me via romance fiction. I could hardly wait to share with readers what nature can offer to those who embrace it.

In a matter of minutes, a glass of wine, a receptive listener, and rain now pelting my face, I knew what I was going to do—write a contemporary series with each book taking place during a different season so my characters and readers could fully experience everything from spring warmth to winter snow. I’d also write a novella that takes place in a single day but carries the same message.

The message? Nature heals. Being surrounded by nature leads to self-understanding. Nature makes second chances possible.

His Montana Rescue is the summer story. I had no trouble deciding on Echo Rose’s career and back story. My family owns a cabin in southern Oregon’s mountains within an hour’s drive of Crater Lake. Summer means long days spend outdoors and constant awareness of fire conditions. Echo is a forest ranger. The year before her story begins, she was nearly killed while fighting an out-of-control forest fire. She has scars and PTSD from the experience. Hero Ray Bowen is at the Lake Serene resort to oversee its restoration and to do all he can to salvage his reputation and put his life back together following a betrayal that cost him his business.

So there you have it. Two scarred people in a remote setting trapped by their pasts but needing to embrace the present and look forward to the future. Needing love. 


Former firefighter Echo Rose may have recovered from the injuries that nearly ended her life but the emotional scars still linger. She now devotes herself to protecting wildlife and sheltering her heart until local contractor Rey Bowen reminds Echo that life can offer so much more.

Rey Bowen is not the only one at Lake Serene with secrets and a desire to reboot his seriously derailed life. Meeting Echo reminds him that life can sparkle with joy and laughter and passion, but can he show the cautious Echo how to love again even as he struggles to trust his own heart?

 Excerpt
“Ranger Echo Rose,” a rumbling voice said.

Taking it slow, she turned in the direction the words came from.

Rey Bowen was looking at her, or rather looking down at her. He wasn’t a giant of a man, just a shade over six feet, but that didn’t stop her from remembering she was at least seven inches shorter and only one hundred twenty pounds. For reasons she was careful not to examine too closely, she’d told herself the breadth of his chest and width of his shoulders were responsible for her unsettling reaction to him.

What was she thinking? Hadn’t she learned, painfully, to keep emotional distance between herself and men? She had, darn it. She’d never drop her guard.

Until she’d done in her ankle, she’d spent much of her time around physical people, most of them men. She still was around more men than women, but in recent months she'd mostly rubbed shoulders with people who spent their days behind desks.

Despite how she'd been forced to earn her living since last summer, she believed she still understood the physical male. When he was around women he was trying to impress, the breed carried himself as if he was a bull elk, strutting a bit, hard muscles pushing against too-tight T-shirts, and gazes giving out bedroom vibes.

Rey did none of those things. Instead, it was as if he’d built an emotional wall around himself. The reason was none of her business, darn it. She had enough to do dealing with her own life.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Vella Munn freely admits to being a dedicated and sometimes demented fiction writer. She has always been drawn to nature and those who feel at home in it. A career writer, she has had way over 60 books published, most of them romances both past and present. As far as personal statistics go, she has one husband, two sons, four grandchildren, and is owned by two rescue dogs. Home is southern Oregon within a two hour drive of Crater Lake. She frequently visits Montana in her mind and heart.





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Tuesday 29 November 2016

Reawakened by Carrie Pulkinen #Paranormal #Romance



Carrie Pulkinen will be awarding $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.



Blurb
Jules Hume lives in a world where magic is a myth and supernatural creatures are fiction—or so she thinks. As a strong, independent woman, a relationship is the last thing she needs. Then she meets Ian Kincaid, a mysteriously sexy bachelor with otherworldly charm. She's instantly enamored of him, drawn by an inexplicable magnetism. Ian awakens something magical inside her, opening her mind to things she never thought possible. Things that shouldn't be possible. But Ian has secrets Jules is better off not knowing. The truth will tear her world apart, making her question everything she once knew to be real.

Excerpt
And then it happened. Ian looked right at me. Our eyes met, and something inside me burned. It started in my core, and a heat pulsed out through me. My body ached to be close to him. I shivered, and he smiled. I smiled back, then looked away; the intensity of the eye contact was too much for me. If I believed in love at first sight, I would have said this was it. But I didn’t…believe in love at first sight, that is.

“He’s coming over here,” I whispered to Beth.

“Uh-oh.” She looked at Cameron.

“Beth, Cameron, it is so good to see you,” Ian said. He looked at each of them, and then his eyes focused on me as he spoke. “You must introduce me to your friend, Beth.”

I felt electricity prickling my skin, and it gave me goose bumps. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Even under the dress shirt and tie, I could tell his body was exquisite. My fingers twitched with the urge to touch him.

“This is my mom, Jules. Mom, this is Ian.” She looked at him incredulously; then she looked at me and back at Ian again.

“May I join you?” Ian asked as he pulled out the empty chair. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Is Jules short for another name?”

“It’s Juliann, but everyone calls me Jules.”

“Juliann.” The syllables rolled off his tongue like music. My heart melted when he said my name.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Carrie Pulkinen has always been fascinated with the paranormal. Of course, when you grow up next door to a cemetery, the dead (and the undead) are hard to ignore. Pair that with her passion for writing, and you've got the perfect recipe for an exciting storyteller.

Carrie spent the first part of her professional life as a high school journalism and yearbook teacher. She loves red wine and chocolate, and in her free time, she likes to read, take pictures, and play with her kids.



Buy Links:




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Monday 28 November 2016

Scattered Ashes by Dona Sarkar Unraveling the Pieces by Terri DuLong

The authors will be awarding digital copies of the books on tour to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.


Sometimes facing the future means saying goodbye to the past.

A remarkable story of love and loss, Dona Sarkar’s latest novel explores the timely subject of cultural diversity and the timeless matters of trust, faith, and grief through the eyes of one extraordinary young woman.

Mars Alexander is the girl who has everything—the right clothes, the perfect boyfriend, the best grades. But when her military father is declared dead, Mars refuses to believe it—and refuses to say goodbye. With no body to bury, she’s convinced her father will return from Afghanistan, and she’s determined to make him proud. But when she meets the young Middle Eastern instructor of her essay prep class, a door to a whole new world opens.

Zayed Anwar has lived a life Mars can barely imagine, or understand. But as he challenges both her intellect and her emotions, she finds herself making bold new choices, and looking at everything through a new lens. Falling in love is as frightening as it is exciting, until she realizes that Zayed is keeping painful secrets from her—secrets that could shatter her all over again.


New York Times bestselling author Terri DuLong casts on her newest tale of heartbreak and hope in Ormond Beach, Florida, a sun-dappled haven where one woman finds the comfort she’s always needed…

Petra Garfield has no real attachments tying her down to one place. She’s ready for an adventure, so what could be better than an extended stay at Koi House with new friends and old in enchanting Ormond Beach. Having recently lost her mother, Petra is riddled with questions about the father she never knew. She certainly never thought she’d begin to find the answers in a tiny town in Florida…

As much as she wants to search for the truth, Petra knows she can’t spend all her time wallowing in the past, and her friends at the Dreamweaver yarn shop aren’t about to let her. The ladies encourage her to volunteer at a local animal shelter, where she hits it off with a young boy—and his handsome father. Tangled in secrets she didn’t even know she had, Petra must learn to stitch her life back together even as she unravels lifelong mysteries—and perhaps she’ll find unexpected happiness along the way…

Excerpt - Scattered Ashes
“What’s happened out there?” I asked. “There’s so much chaos.” The woman did an eye-roll. “Some war protesters. They set fire to a garbage can or something around the corner.”

“Thanks.”

As I ran across the street to avoid the smoky air, I saw a slight movement, like the fluttering of a giant bird’s wing, in the window alcove of my favorite coffee shop.

I stopped. It wasn’t a bird. There was a guy sitting in my usual spot, flipping rapidly through the pages of a book.

The guy in the window seemed completely unaffected by everything going on outside. He was nineteen, twenty at the most, with hurricane-colored eyes, the most incredible I had ever seen. His knife-like cheekbone ridges were even more distinct.

He was a stranger to me, yet I couldn’t stop staring at him. I stood paralyzed on the sidewalk. The crossing signal flickered, and I couldn’t persuade my feet to move.

He was reading a book with a familiar-looking burgundy cover but must have sensed someone staring and looked up. Saying that our gazes met was an understatement. In one incredible, heart-stopping second, he seemed to commit to memory every aspect of my face. His abundantly large eyes, too wide-set, seemed out of place in his sharp, tawny-colored features.

The sidewalk activity seemed to dull into the background as we stared at each other. Without a smile or any other expression, he returned to his book, as if the exchange had taken place only in my mind.

I felt the ridiculous desire to knock on the window to get his attention. I wanted to see the color of those eyes again.
This was insane. Snapping to my senses, I crossed 45th Street and headed to my car, not daring to look back at the coffee shop. . . .

AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Dona Sarkar wishes she’d been born as a cat so she could have had 9 lives. Since that didn’t work out, she decided to live 9 lives in this one. She spends her days making holograms at Microsoft, celebrates diversity in STEM fields as a fashion blogger at Fibonacci Sequins and is launching her first fashion line called Prima Dona Style this year.
She is also the published author of three novels and one non-fiction book.

Dona lives in Seattle with her really patient husband and her muse, a very bossy tabby cat named Ash. She can be reached at: donasarkar.com; twitter.com/donasarkar; and facebook.com/donasarkarbooks.

Buy links:
Buying options at: http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/book.aspx/33982

Terri DuLong
Born and raised north of Boston, Terri DuLong was a previous resident of Cedar Key, Florida. She now resides on the east coast of the state in Ormond Beach with her husband, three dogs and two cats. A retired Registered Nurse, she began her writing career as a contributing writer for Bonjour Paris, where she shared her travel experiences to France in over forty articles with a fictional canine narrator. Terri’s love of knitting provides quiet time to develop her characters and plots as she works on her new Ormond Beach novels. You can visit her website at terridulong.com or at her Facebook fan page, facebook.com/TerriDuLongAuthor

Buy links:

Buying options at: http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/book.aspx/34005 

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Friday 25 November 2016

Wind River Wrangler by Lindsay McKenna Contemporary Romance



 

Lindsay will be awarding a digital copy of Wind River Wrangler to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

From the moment Roan Taggart picked up the pretty redhead at the Jackson Hole airport, his training and experience told him she was spooked. She’s left New York City to visit the Wind River Ranch, where Roan is a wrangler, and just as he can pick up a horse’s mood, he can feel the tension coming off her body. And that vulnerability is triggering all his protective instincts . . .

Shiloh Gallagher likes the gray-eyed cowboy’s dry humor—and the Special Forces background that lends him a stoic, powerful presence. But she’s been scarred by trauma and her mother’s murder . . . and knows a strong man can be dangerous. She came to wide-open Wyoming to flee a threat that’s left her unable to write her novels. Now, as she rides horses with Roan and helps him build an isolated cabin, she’s slowly letting down her guard. But danger has followed her west, and they won’t have a future together unless they defeat a killer from her past . . .


Excerpt
“You’re afraid.”

Roan’s low deep voice flowed through her wall of fear. She saw questions in his eyes. What was she afraid of? “Not of you.”

Nodding, Roan cupped her hands within his spare ones, studying them. “The fear you have is deep, Shiloh.”

“It has nothing to do with you.” She saw that hooked, one-cornered smile tug at his mouth. His eyes never left hers; as if he were memorizing her, burning her into his mind, his heart. His soul? She didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to think beyond tonight.

“I think it does.”

Her lips thinned and she looked away, feeling the roughness of his fingers upon hers. Her flesh was starving for his touch, tiny jolts of heat flying continuously up her hand and into her wrist as he gently moved them within his fingers. He handled her as if she were a priceless, fragile being who might shatter if touched wrongly. Forcing herself to look up at Roan, she saw his eyes had grown gentle with questions once more. The man inspired trust. Now she was getting a taste of what he’d said earlier about villagers trusting the A-team members. Roan cultivated it like breathing.

“I—” she stumbled, frowning. Shiloh felt ashamed in even admitting it to Roan, but she pushed herself because he was a man of honor. He presented himself exactly as he was. No games. No mask. No charade. Roan deserved her honesty. “I don’t have a good track record with men,” she began in a halting voice. “At a certain point, I break it off...” Shame swallowed her whole and she couldn’t hold the sympathetic look that she saw come to Roan’s gray eyes.

“Is that a promise? Or is it a warning, Darlin’?”

AUTHOR Bio and Links:
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lindsay McKenna is the pseudonym of award-winning author Eileen Nauman. With more than 135 titles to her credit and approximately 23 million books sold in 33 countries worldwide, Lindsay is one of the most distinguished authors in the women's fiction genre. She is the recipient of many awards, including six RT Book Reviews awards (including best military romance author) and an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. In 1999, foreseeing the emergence of ebooks, she became the first bestselling women's fiction author to exclusively release a new title digitally. In recognition of her status as one of the originators of the military adventure/romance genre, Lindsay is affectionately known as “The Top Gun of Women's Military Fiction.” Lindsay comes by her military knowledge and interest honestly—by continuing a family tradition of serving in the U.S. Navy. Her father, who served on a destroyer in the Pacific theater during World War II, instilled a strong sense of patriotism and duty in his daughter.

Author’s Website: http://lindsaymckenna.com/
Author’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLindsayMcKenna
Author’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/LindsayMcKenna
Buy Link: http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/book.aspx/32990
  
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