Visitors

Monday, November 10, 2014

FB Party time! #SWAG #fun w Desiree Holt, Brenna Zinn and Cerise DeLand tomorrow Nov. 11 at 12 EST! Be there!


BURNING's BandN, Kobo cover!
We're celebrating HEROES November 11 on FB! Join Desiree Holt, Brenna Zinn and me as we talk what makes a hero.
 
Male and female heroes are on tap for discussion.  Bring yourselves, your criteria for heroism and your laughter gauge as we gear up with lots of SWAG to reward you with, too!
BURNING's AMAZON COVER! 
http://amzn.to/1leONH
 
   On tap for me are the 4 brothers in my STANHOPE CHALLENGE box set, newly expanded and newly released at a very special price!
 
   Contemporary heroes are on tap too!
 
   With Navy SEALs as the stars of Des's, Brenna's and my SEALs GOING HOT series, we're happy to talk about our real life heroes who protect us every day. My BURNING FOR NERO, shown here with the 2 covers he sports (because Amazon thought my heroine was toooooo sexy and banned my novel), is one of the prizes on the party list, too! I've also got a giveaway of LADY VARNEY or RENDEZVOUS on offer to two other winners!
 
   Do join us at 12 EST, 11 CENTRAL, 9 PACIFIC November 11 and celebrate all our heroes: https://www.facebook.com/events/602104836561316/




Intrigued to learn how many of you prefer contemporary heroes to historical ones, I am offering a selection of prizes with both types of men up for prizes!

Three winners will choose from the heroes in NERO, RENDEZVOUS or LADY VARNEY.

And is a Grand prize offered?

You bet!
A $25.00 Amazon Gift Card!

Be there for the fun November 11 at FB at high noon!


Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Make an Appointment at Liz Crowe's Love Garage


Love Garage
Book 1
January 5, 2015 (ebook)
March 14, 2015 (Print)
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22294474-love-garage
Blurb

Antony Love is the quintessential responsible oldest brother of a boisterous, Italian/Irish family, placed in charge at a young age by his parents who are busy running the family business. He manages his siblings with a fair but iron hand, until his life is shattered by personal tragedy leaving him the shell of the man he once was.

When outspoken matriarch Lindsay Halloran Love becomes ill, the youngest brother Aiden shows up at Antony's garage, having dropped out of school (again), needing work and a place to crash. Antony provides both, with three caveats: "Don't smoke in my truck, don't be late for work, and don't mess with my girlfriend."

But Aiden Love, budding novelist, gets one glimpse of Rosalee Norris, young widow of Antony's lifelong best friend and all bets are off.

Set in horse country near Lexington, Kentucky, The Love Brothers Series is a saga of family devotion that runs as wide and deep as the Ohio River--except on Sundays when brothers Antony, Kieran, Dominic and Aiden work out their frustrations on the basketball court, Love brother style.

The Love Brothers: A family saga with humor, heat and heart—not to mention beer, bourbon and basketball.

Love Garage Excerpt:

Love Garage opened bright and early the next morning, a Saturday, a day Aiden had hoped to spend recovering.

“I get so many oil changes and random small jobs on Saturdays, it doesn’t make sense to be closed and let the jackasses with the Quickilube at Walmart get the business,” Antony insisted when Aiden groaned with dismay upon being awakened after two hours of drunken sleep. It didn’t help that the awakening occurred at the business end of a thrown pillow. “Get up, Romeo. You owe me rent money.”
He did, slowly, queasily hitting a shower, sore all over, his skin mottled from bug bites. But nothing topped the glorious agony of a bourbon hangover like the one that had him firmly in its evil grasp.
He slouched out the door, cursing Antony, cursing Tricia, cursing her ex-husband for throwing her in his path last night. But mostly cursing his own weak-ass uselessness. He rested his head against the cool comfort of the truck window until Antony hit a bump or two, which sent extra pain jolting down his spine.
“Sorry,” his brother muttered, glancing over at him.
“No, you’re not.”
“Got me there. And you’d better warn me if you’re about to toss your cookies. I won’t have that in my vehicle, got me?”
Aiden rubbed his neck and nodded, swallowing the urge to throw up all over the pristine interior on principal. “Why d’you hate me so much? You used to like me.” He stared over at his brother, heart thumping, ears humming, throat closing up with nausea. He despised waking up still drunk.
“I don’t hate you.” Antony turned onto the main road headed into town.
“Could’ve fooled me. You’re a real asshole anymore. Worse than Dom.”
Antony merely shrugged, not rising to that tried-and-true bait. So they spent the rest of the ride to the garage in silence. Once there, Antony sat gripping the wheel. Aiden waited, hoping he’d get something out of him—something he would assure him that the man he thought he remembered as the protective, funny, and loving guy he’d grown up with still existed inside the guy walking around wearing Antony’s skin.
Finally, he let go of the wheel, exhaled, and squared his shoulders as if prepping for battle. Aiden made a mental note to talk to Kieran about how badly Antony had descended into his life of non-stop mourning and jerk-hood.
“So, Rosalee, not putting out for you or what? You need to get laid maybe? Knock the edge off?”
The glare Aiden got for saying those particular words did make him worry Antony might punch his aching head through the passenger-side window.
He clenched his jaw in the way Aiden remembered from their childhood. “That is so far outside the realm of your business as to be in another galaxy. Get to work and don’t say her name to me again.”
And with that, Aiden was left with the fleeting thought that mentioning Rosalee directly was probably not a good idea. He surely didn’t need Antony to guess that her name was on his lips, or front and center of his mind.
He shook his head—a Bad Plan because it summoned the pounding agony back with a vengeance. Groaning, he climbed out and shuffled over to the door.
A new day began at Love Garage.


Pre order link available Dec. 15, 2014.

Coming Soon... Coach Love



Enter to win!
As part of this cover/trailer/blurb/excerpt reveal there is a massive, 3-prize pack, multi-author giveaway. Here is the Rafflecopter embed link:





Liz Crowe bio
                                                **************
Amazon best-selling author, beer blogger, brewery marketing expert, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz Crowe is a Kentucky native and graduate of the University of Louisville currently living in Ann Arbor. She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse.
Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”). More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very much “real life.”
With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and at times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.
Don’t ever ask her for anything “like a Budweiser” or risk bodily injury.
Beer, Books & More Blog

Saturday, November 1, 2014

October...November...December...

The end of year holidays are underway...

And I have to admit that it's my favorite time of year...

I'm not big on heat...tons of sunshine...or fireworks. I love the cooler months of the year. I can always add layers of clothing...wear a heavy coat...dig out the galoshes and the earmuffs to get warm. But I get sunburned walking into the store from the parking lot. And I hate sweating in my fresh clean clothes. And it isn't easy to get cool when the temps are in the 90's and 100's.

Of course, I grew up in a high mountain valley where summer is summer and winter is snowy...and I love to look at the mountains and see the change of the oak brush and aspen colors in the fall. I love snow.  It would be nicer of course if the stuff fell, then instantly melted off the roads so people wouldn't slip and slide and crash into other people as they drove.

I wrote some holiday tales a long time back...just short stories, but fun, erotic ones. I didn't really expect to see them sell well on Amazon, with all those fabulous 99¢ box sets to compete with, but people seem to enjoy them.

My timing is terrible for holiday stories, though. In 2010, I wrote a book about the Halloween full moons, but had to wait to publish it this September. It started out as a spooky tale, and of course, it ended up as an erotic paranormal. I released my Valentine's Day short story in June. Maybe sometime in the future, I will actually plan ahead?


Basically, it's all been practice. But I have been asked if I plan to write more in the worlds that I created for Their Alpha Bitch and Ride the Night Winds. I decided to give it a go.

I have a number of characters who can use a book of their own.  If anyone has read either of my latest two books, let me know which characters you think would be good in their own story?
Let me know...

Fran Lee

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Just wrote "The End"



Here's my inspiration picture for my latest WIP. This is Irish vampire and sometime Lord of the Rings dwarf, Aidan Turner. But in my mind he's also a handsome (And yes furry) Irish wolf-shifter who wakes up in Vegas to a big surprise... I really enjoyed writing this one.

Don't you love completing a task and having the satisfaction of standing back and saying, "I love what I just did."

A sense of completion is one of the best feelings in the world. A few minutes before I posted this blog I finished a short wolf-shifter romp set in Vegas. Instead of my usual anguished, doubt-ridden dash to the finish line, I slowed down and enjoyed the writing. I fell in love with the characters and walked into their world with my heart and imagination wide open.

This is something new to me and something I promised myself I would start doing. I want to enjoy everything important that I do and writing is very important to me.

As most of you who check in with Seven Sexy Scribes already know, I was my late sister's caregiver. In her last days, we shared a lot. I encouraged her to talk and unburden herself. It was hard to listen to some of her regrets. One of her biggest regrets was that she never allowed herself the pleasure of writing without dumping so much self-criticism into the mix that she rarely wrote more than a few pages before abandoning an idea. This was a woman who was a great lover of words and voracious reader. She had a huge collection of antique fountain pens, ink wells, and elegant handmade journals with nothing written in them. Beautiful sacred tools too precious to use. Christy was convinced writing had to be painful and self-destruction. Someone told her that all writers must sacrifice themselves to what she referred to as "The Cult of Cruelty" and she believed it.

"The Cult of Cruelty" doesn't sound like much fun does it? Christy didn't know if the cult even existed, who was in it, or what they might do to a novice author once they were identified, yet the concept was more effective than any boogeyman could ever be in frightening her into giving up before she even started.

In the end, when she was high as a kite on morphine, she blurted, "Why didn't I just enjoy writing? What the hell was I thinking?" I held her hand and cried. I told her, "Grow thicker skin. Come back and try again." We both laughed with relief when I said. "Maybe writing is meant to be fun."

This was one of Christy greatest gifts to me. She made me realize how important my writing was to my mental health and sense of purpose. Writing is my fun time and safe retreat into my cosmic treehouse. I refuse to ruin or pollute the experience with over-critical drama and crappola.

This autumn has been all about playing catch up on months of lost work. I'll start the self-edits of my latest WIP next week. Meanwhile, I have two more manuscripts to finish before December and I'm going to love every day of writing. 

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Please Welcome Christine Allen-Riley

We have a very special treat today!! Christine Allen-Riley is here to chat about her new Young Adult release, Eventide!

Finding the Right Setting for Eventide

I’ve lived in Michigan all my life, and there’s no shortage of natural beauty here – rolling hills, endless forests, ridiculous numbers of inland lakes, and we’re surrounded by the Great Lakes which are huge and unpredictable with their rip currents and freak weather patterns. They’re basically freshwater seas and at times, just as dangerous as the oceans – especially Lake Superior. 

It can go from a serene glass-like surface to twenty-three foot waves in virtually no time at all. Once, while driving around the lake, I found myself caught in the midst of an autumn storm on my way to see my boyfriend. The waves were so insane; they were washing over the road and had already pulled someone’s car into the lake. I had to time it just right to pass through that stretch of road without getting sucked into the water. Shortly after I made it through, the road was shut down and declared impassible. Definitely not my smartest move to keep driving, but I did. Because boyfriend.

I set Eventide on the shores of my favorite lake, in the nearly-fictional town of Iron Falls, Michigan. I use the term “nearly-fictional” because it’s based on one of my favorite small towns – Munising, Michigan. I don’t live there, but I’ve visited there nearly every year since I was a kid. If you’ve ever been there, you might recognize the high school on the shores of the lake, or the glass-bottom boat shipwreck tour, or the sudden fogs and brutal storms. 

I did make some changes. For instance, Iron Falls has a lighthouse where Munising doesn’t. Iron Falls also has a host of soul-sucking homicidal faeries that haunt the surrounding woods looking for hapless humans, and, as far as I’m aware, Munising does not. 

One of the reasons I decided to set Iron Falls on Superior is because the lake is almost a character on its own. It can go from calm to deadly in a matter of minutes and no two days on the shore are ever the same. Even different parts of the lake on the same day are wildly different.  Its erratic nature makes it the perfect backdrop for Devon as her life spirals out of control. 

I’d like to share a few photos of the lake to show you what I mean about it having it a different personality depending on the day. Unfortunately, I can’t find my stormy lake pictures, but, amazing nature photographer, Steve Brimm, agreed to share one of his photos for this blog tour.  I think you’ll see what I mean about the lake being completely different on any given day. And I’d like to think you’ll get a feel for the lake within the pages of Eventide.

Below the photos, you'll find a little more about Eventide as well as links.

 
 




Blurb: 
The driver in a tragic car accident that killed her best friend, Devon Greer is consumed by guilt. When powerful hallucinations convince her that she’s seeing Rachael everywhere, Devon thinks she’s going crazy. But her friend isn’t truly gone.

To save Rachael from the faeries who stole her, Devon must pit herself against the Court of the Sidhe. Once she witnesses the true form of the fey, Devon’s life is in danger—and so are the lives of everyone she loves. 

Now, Devon must not only protect herself, but also Jonah Seafort, Rachael’s cousin and the only person Devon can trust to help her. While the Sidhe walk among them, no one is safe…

Buy Links:

And here are some other links if you fancy connecting on social media.
Thanks so much for being here today, Chris. Congrats on your new release!!