Friday, April 29, 2016

Everlasting by Annette Blair

A Humorous Contemporary Romantic Fantasy
Some people call it Heaven. The residents know it as Everlasting. When you arrive, adjustments have to be made, especially if you were meant to live and the person you saved . . . slated to die.
...What kind of guardian angel gets knocked back to earth? The kind who falls in love with one of his wards.
Chance Godricson is heaven-sent. He's Kenya Kilmartin’s guardian, and when, on arrival, he's hired to get her through a difficult time in her life, he just might fall prey to earthly temptation.

Excerpt 


Chance Godricson did not understand why he survived. If he survived. 
The next tremor or aftershock might give him his answer.
After walking the mall, searching the rubble, and shouting for anyone to answer, he faced facts. Some kind of structural collapse above the exclusive underground shopping center blocked all exits, paralyzed elevators, and cut the lights. 
While lingering in the Yellow Brick Mall shortly after the stores closed, to await his appointment in the office building above, he had, for all intents and purposes, been buried alive. But not for long. He would find a way out or die trying. 
A gold and yellow scarf floated across the mall floor like tumbleweed to land at his feet. He grabbed it to bandage the gash in his right hand while seeking the airflow that propelled it. 
Ah. A hole in the ceiling near a wall. A structurally sound place to end up.
He began gathering and rolling heavy chunks of broken concrete to build a makeshift stairway. Good enough, he hoped, for one risky climb. Hours later, he thought—examining his work and flexing his aching hand—the unwieldy monster just might get him out.
Yes, those steps could collapse . . . hopefully behind him . . . if he moved fast enough.
“Are you lost, too?” The voice shocked him. Chance shouted as he faced it. 
Not a ghost. An angel. Small, breakable looking, but evidently not.
He had not heard her approach. The young woman appeared to have been dipped in honey, and rolled in a thick layer of concrete dust. He probably looked the same. Tear trails marked her cheeks that bore a few small cuts, and still she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “What have you been doing all this time?” he asked.
“Hiding. Expecting another explosion? Waiting to die?” She shrugged. “Except, I didn’t.” 
“Why didn’t you answer when I called?” he asked.
“Hands over my ears.” She shuddered and eyed his creation. “Is that supposed to be a stairway?”
“Yes.” It gave him hope, her recognizing it.
She tilted her head. “Why?”
“For our escape.”
She moved the dirt on her face as she swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “From now on, I’m only shopping online.”
“Well, let’s get you home so you can,” he said. “The ‘stairs’ can only take one of us at a time. No hesitating, no looking down or back. Once you take that first step, it’s a sprint. Pretend you have wings and can’t stop. Promise.”
She threw her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist. “I’m not good at leading the way. Not at all good. You go first.”
“I can’t. I’m heavier. I might wreck it. You’re light as a cloud. You go.” With difficulty, he pried her off him. “Go. Now.”
She hesitated, shuddered, and swallowed hard three times. “Once I get there, you’ll follow?”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Kenya,” she said.
“So are you ready to live, Kenya?”
“Now, there’s a question.” She kissed his filthy cheek. 
He didn’t remember ever feeling both honored and unworthy.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Nobody,” he said. “Just an unremarkable lawyer.”
“See you at the top, Mr. Nobody.” 
“Go.”
She whined as she started but followed his instructions to the letter, a sprint like no other . . . and still, she proved the weakness in his creation. Her inner strength put him to shame as he held the beam nearest the wall, below the highest point of the makeshift stairs. He couldn’t let go until she made it. 
“Please let her make it,” he whispered.
He borrowed some of her strength when the beam beneath his hands began to shudder.
 
As Kenya left the stairs behind her, the last one seeming to disappear from beneath her shoe, she crouched, cradled by crossed steel beams in the darkness between floors, her heart racing as another tremor seemed to wreak havoc in the mall below.
Panic filled her with worry for the man who shared his stairs, until a hand wrapped in a yellow and gold scarf reached for her.
“Hey?” she called, taking that hand with both of hers. “How did you get here before me?”
He pulled her through the darkness to the safety of the outdoors and the dim light of dusk, somehow telling her to live for both of them.
When she thanked him, he was gone.
People surrounded her and wrapped her in blankets, gave her a bottle of water, brought her to the medics.
She never spotted her rescuer among them.
 
Some people called it Heaven.
The residents knew it as Everlasting.
When you arrived, adjustments needed to be made; it’s not always an easy task, especially when you were meant to live and the person you saved . . . slated to die.
Chance became Kenya’s guardian angel. 
A reward? 
Or a punishment?

Purchase Links 
Kindle myBook.to/Everlast
iBooks http://apple.co/22s139f...
Kobo Link soon
About The Author

Annette Blair, NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
***LOVE, LAUGHTER & HAPPILY EVER AFTER***
Three Days on a Train, Contemporary Romantic Comedy
Everlasting, Paranormal Contemporary Romantic Comedy
Rogues & Scoundrels, Eight Regency Historicals
Jacob's Return & Butterfly Garden, Sensual Amish Historicals
Scandalous Brides, Historical Box Set
Fabulous Firsts, Historical Box Set
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/annetteblairfans/?fref=ts

Website:http://www.annetteblair.com
Bio:

An adventurer and storyteller at heart, Annette Blair has explored nineteenth-century Amish America and Regency England. She's fallen for madcap, modern Salem Mass, where bold women follow the Celtic faith with heart. There, she fought dragons, and fell in love with an angel. More recently, she’s taken to solving mysteries beside Connecticut’s Mystic River. And with her newest series, she's be revisiting her "roots" in Salem in a small town north of the Witch City that you won't find on any map. Welcome to Wishing Well, where there's something Magic in the water... 

She topped the NY Times and USA Today Bestseller Lists concurrently last month (ranking at #4 & #12 respectively) with Scandalous Brides, a joint venture box set of four full-length Regency Historicals by Annette, Lucinda Brant, Brenda Hiatt & Cheryl Bolen. Annette is honored to have shared the career-changing event with such amazing and multi-talented writers. The four are all members of the Jewels of Historical Romance, a group of 12 top flight authors who have banded together to better serve their careers, their readers, and each other through this new publishing paradigm.

Earlier in her career, Annette's work garnered multiple Romantic Times TOP PICKS, Reviewers’ Choice Awards, and HOLT Medallion nominations. A triple Golden Heart Finalist, she's also finaled in the Golden Leaf, the Lauries, the Golden Quill, and National Readers' Choice Awards. She’s won multiple Booksellers Best Awards, LORIES Awards, Laurel Wreath, Blue Boa, Aspen Gold, RIO, Southern Magic, More than Magic, Orange Rose, Winter Rose, PRISM, Beacon, Colorado Awards of Excellence, Write Touch Readers' Choice Awards and an Orange County Book Buyer's Best Award. With Sex and the Psychic Witch, Annette took home three Anne-Bonney Readers’ Choice Awards out of four. Cloaked in Malice her 5th Vintage Magic Mystery, became her first NY Times Bestseller. Jacob's Return, a rule-breaking Amish Historical became her first USA Today Bestseller. 

Her E-books include The Rogues Club & Scoundrels Series, four full Regency Historicals each. Her Sexy Amish Historical E-books are Jacob's Return, Butterfly Garden, and A Winter Heart. Anthologies include Sisters of Spirit, the Jewels of Historical Romance, Fabulous Firsts, and Scandalous Brides NY Times #4 & USA Today #12.





Her websites is very detailed. The only thing I need to get from her is a blurb/excerpt.
Let me know if there is anything else.
Author Note 

Dear Reader:
A Romantic Times TOP PICK [as Bedeviled Angel] EVERLASTING has a first ever prologue, new scenes and characters, and I took your reviews to heart to make the story even better.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Possessed by a Dark Warrior by Felicity Heaton

Possessed by a Dark Warrior by Felicity Heaton

Possessed by a Dark Warrior, the ninth book in New York Times best-seller Felicity Heaton’s hot paranormal romance series, Eternal Mates, is now available in ebook and paperback. To celebrate the release of Bleu and Taryn’s long romance novel, she’s holding a FANTASTIC GIVEAWAY and sharing sneak peeks of the book.

Enter the Possessed by a Dark Warrior international giveaway (ends April 24th) and be in with a shot of winning a $75, $50 or $25 gift certificate by using the Rafflecopter form at the end of this post or at her website, where you can also download a 4 chapter sample of the novel: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/possessed-by-a-dark-warrior-paranormal-romance-novel.php

Here’s more about Possessed by a Dark Warrior, including an excerpt from this paranormal romance novel.

Possessed by a Dark Warrior

A powerful warrior and commander of the dark elf legions, Bleu is a loyal and devoted male, and one who has never failed in anything—except one thing. Love. When an elusive female dragon shifter surfaces in Hell again, giving him a mission to hurl himself into, he gladly returns to his hunt for her and the deadly blade she stole from his prince seven centuries ago, but as he closes in on his prey, fate reveals she is far more than his enemy?


Having escaped from the black market arena and her life as a slave, Taryn sets her sights back on the task she began seven hundred years ago when her brother stole a precious sword, but in the three centuries she’s been a captive, everything has changed. Corrupted by a craving for power, her brother has become dangerously obsessed with finding the blade and using it to claim the ultimate treasure—the position of King of Hell.


Faced with having to end her beloved twin to stop him from bringing all of Hell to its knees before him, will Taryn be strong enough to use the very blade he seeks against him? And when Bleu finally catches his elusive prey, will he listen to his head as it demands he complete his mission or his heart as it demands he claim his eternal mate?

Possessed by a Dark Warrior is available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iBooks stores and other retailers. Also available in paperback. Find the links to your preferred retailer at: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/possessed-by-a-dark-warrior-paranormal-romance-novel.php

Excerpt

Bleu landed without a sound in the middle of the dense crowd, the vapours from the short teleport shimmering around him for a second before he kicked off, leaving them in his wake as he broke through the throng. His steady gaze locked on his target, focused there even as he felt his six men appear a short distance behind him and begin to pursue him. Two came to flank him, the remaining four spreading out through the disgusting gathering of creatures like black tendrils, taking down any who dared to stand in their way.

He would have killed them all if he had the choice, but his mission was clear—retrieve the two elf females with minimal fuss.

Gods, he would give anything to sink his fangs and his blade into many of the wretched bastards present at the black market auction, a suitable punishment for their despicable behaviour, trading in flesh and lives.

He snarled, baring his fangs at a fool who rushed into his path in his blind panic, and swept his hand over the length of his black sword, commanding it to transform into his preferred double-ended spear. He swept the curved blade at the end before him upwards, slicing across the side of the male as he turned red eyes on him. Vampire.

Bleu bit out a nasty curse and gave himself a split-second off the mission that had been his sole focus for the past three weeks, all the time it took to spin on his heel, bringing his spear around in a deadly black arc to relieve the vampire of his head. The male toppled onto the black ground, some members of the crowd shrieking as they leaped away from the pool of blood cascading from his neck. Bleu would have paused to spit on the foul abomination, a disgusting shadow of his own noble species, had his second in command not taken the lead at that moment, shouting orders at the other elves and propelling him back into action.

Darkness dropped like a veil, and the panic in the arena increased, the crowd growing frenzied as they tried to make off with their sick prizes, scurrying away from the scene of their crimes. A chill swept through the oval canyon and Bleu sensed magic, a powerful enchantment that warned he wasn’t alone in desiring to rescue one of the poor souls being thrown onto the slab and sold as meat by the ringmaster of this terrible circus.

He threw a glance off to his right, to the black stage, easily able to see it using his heightened vision. A male. Bleu paid him no heed as he raced onto the stage, to a shifter female. A Hellcat. No wonder there was such a large crowd.

The other female on the stage moved so swiftly he couldn’t make out anything about her, leaping onto the back of the fallen angel who was responsible for the auction. His heart gave a painful beat as she roared and attacked, a sharp sensation that went through him and gave him pause, causing his step to falter and his breath to still.

He swallowed hard and frowned at the odd sensation, hazily aware that he should recognise it but unable to comprehend why.

A male swung into his path, stealing his focus away from the stage, and Bleu cut him down with his spear, shoved him aside and sprinted harder, catching up with the rest of his team.

The damned bastards who had purchased the elf females as if they were animals had backed them into a corner, tucked against the black rock and the dark wooden stage.

If they thought that would stop him from slicing them open from balls to brains, they were fucking wrong.

His mood degenerated as he reached them, a darkness as thick as the one that had veiled the world in black descending over him, and he slowed his step until he was stalking towards them, the crowd parting to allow him through, as if all present could sense the dark intent rolling off him.

The hunger to deal justice with his blade.

Light from the torches around the canyon and on the stage flickered back into life, the sensation of magic weakening as the darkness lifted.

His vision responded in an instant, adjusting to the bright light and dulling.

He flexed his fingers around the black engraved shaft of his spear and sent a mental command to his skin-tight armour, ordering the small obsidian metal scales to flow over his hands and form his claws over his fingers.

His violet eyes locked on the male stood slightly forward from the other two. The elf females huddled naked behind them, clinging to each other, their fear a palpable thing that drummed in Bleu’s blood, blackening his mood.

Bleu signalled with his free hand, slowly raising it, and his six elf warriors spread out, encircling the men, giving them nowhere to go.

He snarled at them, flashing his fangs. He would deal with them first and then he would deal with the fallen angel who had orchestrated this market, daring to take two of his kind from their kingdom.

The leader foolishly lashed out at one of the warriors on his left, brandishing a sword made of steel. Steel. A pathetic mortal made weapon for a weak creature.

Bleu drew down a deep breath, catching the scent of their blood, and wasn’t surprised that it matched their weapon. Mortal made. These three were from that realm, but in their blood was a hint of fae, an ancestor that had given them access to this realm.

Hell.

He curled his lip at the three men and dropped his hand.

Six elf warriors launched at the men, easily overpowering them, and Bleu wished he had orders to kill not contain the fiends.

“Thank you, but I have to go.” A soft female voice rose above the din and Bleu stilled. “I have to fly.”

A chill skated over his skin beneath his armour, his eyes slowly widening as he finally comprehended why he had felt such a strange yet familiar sensation on seeing the female on stage attacking the fallen angel.

Fly.

He spun on his heel to face the stage.

A heartbeat of time passed, a split-second that felt like an eternity as he stared up at the female on the stage, taking in the striking violet-to-white eyes that he would never forget as they locked on him. Her lips parted, long lashes falling to shutter those incredible eyes, and his pulse hammered into overdrive as the three long scars on the left side of his neck tingled. He slowly raised his hand to rest his fingers on his armour over them.

He inched his right foot forwards.

Towards her.

She turned in an instant and he could only watch as she transformed into an enormous violet dragon, tearing stunned gasps from the remaining few people in the arena. She reared onto her hind legs, flashing the white stripe that ran from beneath her jaw, down her throat, and under her ribs, and beat her wings, the white membrane between her purple wing bones stark against the dark sky of Hell.

His breath left him in a rush as she threw her head back, her long white horns almost touching her neck, and roared, the sound deafening as it echoed across the land.

“Wait!” He launched onto the stage in a single leap, unwilling to let her escape him again.

She snarled through gleaming white fangs each as long as his arm and swept her left paw downwards, delivering a devastating backhand that hit him square in the chest, knocking the air from his lungs and sending him flying across the arena so fast that he didn’t have a chance to teleport.

His back slammed into the rough black rock, fire searing his bones as his mind scrambled, the pain so intense that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think or feel anything for a second.

All the time it took for the dragon to launch into the air, her enormous wings sending gusts of wind at those remaining on the stage, almost knocking them over.

He couldn’t let her escape him again.

He wheezed as he pushed onto his feet and staggered towards her, his ears ringing and vision wobbling.

He growled as she took flight and used the last of his strength to call a portal. Green-purple light shimmered over his black armour and he dropped into the darkness. It dissipated a second later as he landed on the stage where the dragon had been.

Bleu bit out every curse available to him in his native tongue, his legs wobbling beneath him, barely strong enough to support his weight as pain wracked him.

He stared at the dragon as she flew into the distance, unable to pursue her in his current condition, forced to watch her as she disappeared into the gloom.

Slipping through his grasp once more.

Possessed by a Dark Warrior is available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iBooks stores and other retailers. Also available in paperback.

Find all the links, a fantastic 4 chapter downloadable sample of the book, and also enter the giveaway and be in with a shot of winning a $75, $50 or $25 gift certificate at her website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/possessed-by-a-dark-warrior-paranormal-romance-novel.php


Books in the Eternal Mates paranormal romance series:

Author Bio
Felicity Heaton

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:


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