Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Lady of the Two Lands by @Delisi #RomanticIdea #Romance #Excerpt


Romantic idea to enjoy this summer: Go to the beach on a cloudy day. Walk the shoreline, picking up shells. Have a picnic while watching the waves.




Blurb: One minute, Hattie Williams is in a museum, sketching a gold necklace that belonged to Hatshepsut, first female Pharaoh of Egypt; and the next, she's lying in a room too archaic to be the museum, with a breathtakingly handsome, half-naked man named Senemut bending over her.
 
Hattie soon discovers she's been thrust into the body and life of Hatshepsut, with no way back to her own time. Tuthmosis, the heir to the throne, hates her; the High Priest of Amun and the commander of the army want to kill her and Tuthmosis; and the best bathroom facilities in the country are the equivalent of a cat-box.
 
To make matters more difficult, she's falling helplessly in love with Senemut, and soon, she's not sure she even wants to return home. To protect Tuthmosis from assassination, the lovers arrange to put Hattie on the throne. But, what should she do when she suddenly finds herself, an obscure artist from Chicago, crowned ruler of all Egypt?
 
Excerpt: Hattie banged on the door. “Is anyone there? Let me out!” She shouted and beat on the door with her palms, but all was ominously silent. If someone had been watching her, they had no intention of helping her out of her dilemma.
 
At last, resigned to her fate, she returned to her sketchpad. “If I’m going to be stuck in here, I might as well finish my work,” she murmured. “Tom’s bound to come back—I’m sure he will.” Her voice echoed unconvincingly in the dusty, claustrophobic room.
 
Picking up her pencil, she focused deliberately on copying the tiny hieroglyphics with extreme precision. Gradually, she became absorbed in her work and forgot her predicament. Minutes flowed by with the only sound in the room the scratching of her pencil on the paper.
 
At last, she completed the final symbol on her detailed drawing and set down her pencil with a twinge of disappointment. She was curiously drawn to the glittering possession of the ancient, yet strangely modern woman. Hatshepsut had ruled Egypt fifteen hundred years before Christ, at a time when women were considered no more important than servants or dogs. How had she managed it?
 
The vagrant breeze whispered past her face again, leaving a whiff of exquisite perfume in its wake. A rustle, like the caress of costly linen against bare skin, drew her attention. She felt a strong presence, though she knew she was alone in the tiny room.
 
“Touch it.”
 
The words were so faint, Hattie wasn’t sure she’d actually heard them.
 
“Who’s there?” she asked, though she didn’t expect to get a response. The room was too small to hide anyone.
 
“Touch the necklace.”
 
Hattie spun around, searching for the source of the barely audible words. “Tom, is that you? If it’s you, I don’t think this is funny! Open the door right now.” She thumped it with her fist for emphasis.
 
There was no response.
 
Hattie turned back to the exquisitely fashioned falcon. Maybe it was her overworked imagination playing a trick on her, but the advice seemed sound. Perhaps if she touched the necklace, she could make a connection—psychic, empathic?—with the long-dead monarch. The necklace was strangely compelling, like a long forgotten yet treasured memory.
 
She reached out slowly, cautiously. As her fingertips gently grazed the golden bird, an electric shock pulsed through her and a sudden wave of dizziness sapped her strength.
 
“Come to me,” the ghostly voice whispered, stronger now. “Come to me. I have need of you.”
 
The sweet, cloying scent of incense filled Hattie’s nostrils, and flashes of light exploded behind her eyes. Her vision blurred; she felt as if she were reeling, falling down a long, dark tunnel. Gasping, she reached out blindly for something, anything, to steady herself.
 
Her fingers skimmed across the surface of the table and fastened around the necklace. Clutching it, she fell heavily to the floor as everything went black.
 
 
 
 
Short bio: Elizabeth Delisi is an award-winning author of romance, mystery & suspense. Her books include an ancient Egyptian time-travel romance, LADY OF THE TWO LANDS; and a romantic suspense, SINCE ALL IS PASSING. FATAL FORTUNE is a paranormal mystery, and MISTLETOE MEDIUM and OBSERVANT ORACLE are sequels. Three of her romance novellas are combined in HEART SPELL. She also has a short story collection, THE MIDNIGHT ZONE.
 
Elizabeth teaches for Writer’s Digest University. She has also edited for several small publishers, and has been a newspaper reporter and columnist. Visit her at her web page: www.elizabethdelisi.com and her blog: http://elizabethdelisi.blogspot.com/
 
 


 

Friday, June 24, 2016

Sean Wesley Interview from The Thin Person Inside by @RochelleWeber #Excerpt #Romance


Character Interview Sean Wesley

 



Q:              What's your story/back story? Why would someone come up with a story about YOU?

Sean:       As one of the lead singers of The Haystack, I have press and paparazzi after me all the time.

 

Q:              Can you tell us about your hero/ine?

Sean:       Kristen is one of the loveliest, bravest, most honest people I’ve ever met. She shared stuff in a room fulla men… Well, they say, “You’re only as sick as yer secrets,” and Kristen don’t hold back.

 

                  Most o’ the women I meet are out for what they can get, whether it’s publicity, or fame or money. Kristen didn’t recognize me when we met. When we went out, she wouldn’t even let me pay for her dinner because “it wasn’t a date.” When I tried to buy her a TV for Christmas, she said all she wanted was a CD. Can you believe that? A fu- a CD! Her TV was a piece o’ crap and a new one woulda been chump change to me, but she said it “wasn’t appropriate” from a friend. Ladies like her only come around once in a lifetime if yer real lucky.

 

Q:              What problems do you have to face and overcome in your life?

Sean:       Well, it’s tough staying clean, and it’s fu-pretty hard to play piano with only one hand. I think I’da offed myself without Kristen.

 

Q:              Do you expect your hero/ine to help or is s/he the problem?

Sean:       Like I said, I don’t think I’d even be here if it wasn’t for Kristen.

 

Q:              Where do you live?

Sean:       I got a mansion in Malibu, on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  That’s another thing. After the accident, when Kristen was helping take care o’ me, she insisted on payin’ rent! Who does that?

 

Q:              During what time period does your story take place?

Sean:       Time period? Whadya mean? It’s now!

 

Q:              How are you coping with the conflict in your life?

Sean:       For a while there, Kristen kicked me outa her life. I overstepped her boundaries in a family matter. [Sean holds up his hand in a stopping gesture.] That’s a private story for Kristen to tell or not. I couldn’t drink or use, and I was hurtin’, so my sponsor told me to run. I was doin’ a lot a running, till I got hit by a car. Kristen came back that night, when I was in the hospital. Now I got her to help me stay sane.

 

Q:              That’s all the questions we have for you. Thank you for speaking to us.

Sean:       Yer welcome. Ya know, I think this is my first actual sit-down interview since I got clean!

 

Q:              And you talked more about Kristen than you did about yourself. Is something going on there?

Sean:       I guess you’ll have to read the book to find out.

 


 



 

Blurb:

 

Kristen Jensen, a Navy veteran, tips the scale at a crippling three hundred pounds. In desperation she asks her VA therapist if she can go into addictions treatment with the guys where she meets Sean. With black hair, blue eyes, and a perfect body she figures the reason he’s speaking to her is that she’s the only other person in the room.

 

The Haystack told their lead singer, Sean Wesley, to get clean or get out. But none of the big-name clinics worked. Sean’s a Desert Storm vet, so they send him to a VA in the middle of nowhere. When he meets Kristen the first day, he thinks it’s tragic such a pretty girl’s trapped in a huge body. And her honesty, intelligence, and bravery are even more impressing. Sean’s drawn to Kristen, but she’s had decades to build layers of defense.

 


 

Excerpt:  They Meet

 

 

Sean Wesley went into the snack room to help himself to coffee and a roll. He’d probably gain weight while he was here without his personal trainer and weight room. He’d been a fat kid—always the last to be chosen for games, and stuck in right field when he did play. He’d been saved from a life of obesity by a growth spurt in his late teens, a judge who gave him a choice between jail and the Marines, and switching addictions from food to booze and then cocaine.

 

By rights, Sean shouldn’t be at a VA facility. Celebrities like him usually got sober at places like the Betty Ford clinic or Hazelden. Actually, he’d come from Betty Ford, but he’d still felt shaky so his manager, Don Nelson, had done his homework. Danville, Illinois, was in the middle of nowhere. The program was different, based on Rational Emotive Therapy, and Sean was a veteran. While he made too much money to be treated at the VA, there’s money and then there’s money. Sean had money—the kind that opens doors and breaks down barriers. The kind that makes even the Federal Government say, “We’ll see what we can do,” and then do it.

 

So here he was in the middle of a cornfield in bum-f*** Illinois at a shabby old VA hospital. An enormously obese woman came into the snack room interrupting his reverie, and Sean thought, That could’ve been me. What a shame—she’s so pretty.”

 

* * * *

 

Kristen noticed the table of goodies and the drop-dead-gorgeous man perusing them in the break room when she went in there to put her lunch in the refrigerator.

 

“Want one? I heard they send ’em over every morning. I guess they’re yesterday’s leftovers.”

 

That’s right. Offer sweets to the fat lady. She managed a tight grimace. “Thanks, but I’m here because I’m a food addict.” She held up her orange.

 

“I’m Sean.”

 

He prob’ly wouldn’t give a fat chick like me a second look anywhere else. Still, what is it about men with black hair and blue eyes that makes me go all mushy? “Hi.”

 

“I’ve heard of food addicts, but what makes ya call yourself that?”

 

“When my kids were little, I left them without a babysitter while I went to the store and wrote a rubber check for ice cream and M&Ms. I’d say I’ve been about as desperate for my fix as any addict or alcoholic.”

 

“Wow! Yeah, I guess so.” He held the door for her as they exited and then followed her into the Day Room.

 

Kristen sat on a love seat, taking up the whole thing, while Sean sat in the chair on the other side of the end table next to her. They were the only two people in there since there were classes going on. She was sure the minute other people came out he’d find someone else to talk to. She pulled out her crocheting. She was fairly certain Eric would propose to Viki at Christmas and had already begun work on a tablecloth for them. She worked on it a minute and then decided to be polite. “So, what’s your drug of choice?”

 

“Cocaine. I’ve been clean a coupla months, but it’s hard ta stay clean.”

 

“I’ve heard that. I was at a halfway house fundraiser and they said it takes something like over a year for cocaine to completely leave the body, and during that time a person can still have random cravings. They were raising money for an extended treatment program.”

 

“That explains why I’ve been having such a hard time. I hope this treatment helps.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

People started coming into the Day Room from classrooms just down the hallways. Several of them gave Sean and Kristen curious looks. Yeah, what’s such a great looking guy doing sitting with a fat chick?

 


 

Bio

 

Rochelle Weber is a Navy veteran with a BA in Writing from Columbia College in Chicago. Her novels Rock Bound and Rock Crazy are available in both e-book and print. Her third book, The Thin Person Inside, is available at MuseItUp Publishing, Inc. Ms. Weber edits for Jupiter Gardens Press, The Author’s Secret, and publishes the Marketing for Romance Writers Newsletter, winner of the 2013 Preditors & Editors Readers’ Poll for Best Writers’ Resource. She also started Roses & Thorns Reviews and currently has two partners.

 

Ms. Weber battles bi-polar disorder, quipping, “You haven’t lived until you’ve been the only woman on the locked ward at the VA.” Her song, “It’s Not My Fault,” won a gold medal in the National Veterans Creative Arts Competition. She has lost over a hundred pounds and kept it off for over three years. She lives in Round Lake Beach, Illinois.

 

 

Links:

 

Buy Links:

 

MuseItUp Publishing, Inc.:  http://tinyurl.com/rwmusettpi



 




 

 

Author Links:

 








 

Key Words:  Addictions Recovery, Cinderella Story, Cocaine Addiction, Compulsive Eating, Contemporary Romance, Danville IL VAMC, Disability, Eating Disorders, Food Addict, Morbid Obesity, Smart Recovery, Rational Emotive Therapy, Rock Star, Veterans

 
Thanks for sharing,

Tina

 

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Little Beginnings by @_Iris_b Plus a #RomanticIdea, #Excerpt


 


 

 

My #RomanticIdea for this summer

I love the beach and for me there’s nothing nicer than walk along the beach with my feet in the water, listening to the sound of the waves crushing along the shore, and my loved one by my side – hoping to spot a dolphin.

 

~~  Little Beginnings ~~

by Iris Blobel

 

“I suppose it doesn’t hurt to dream sometimes.”





♥♦♥ BLURB ♥♦♥

 

 

A blind date that doesn't happen might lead to love.




After her divorce, Jeri Belmont moved to Hobart and now runs a successful art gallery. When her niece sets her up with a neighbour, Jeri expects a blind date like the many she’s had. But she never expected her date wouldn’t even show up because of her age. Despite feeling unjustly judged, when she unexpectedly runs into him again, she finds it hard to ignore Ely’s charm.


 

Ely Lennox knows he shouldn’t have skipped the blind date because of the lady’s age. After all, it had only been a date, not a lifetime commitment. When his carpentry business takes him right to the woman he bailed out on, his guilt turns into regret when he finds out she’s everything a man could hope for. How can he convince Jeri that he knows acting so immaturely was a big mistake? Will she ever forgive him? Or is she hiding behind something else?

 

 

♥♦♥   LINKS   ♥♦♥

 

AMAZON US: http://amzn.to/1SXs5ES

AMAZON UK: http://amzn.to/1psbjSs

AMAZON AU: http://bit.ly/1R2vjWd

 

 

♥♦♥ MEET THE AUTHOR ♥♦♥

IRIS BLOBEL

 

Iris Blobel was born and raised in Germany and only immigrated to Australia in the late 1990s. Having had the travel bug most of her life, Iris spent quite some time living in Scotland, London as well as Canada where she her husband. Her love for putting her stories onto paper has only emerged recently, but now her laptop is a constant companion.

 

Iris resides west of Melbourne with her husband and her two beautiful daughters.

 

Next to her job at a private school, she also presents a German Program at the local Community Radio.

 

 

Social Media Links:






 

 

♥♦♥  EXCERPT  ♥♦♥

 

Jeri Belmont checked the time on her watch. It was twenty past six, and they’d

agreed to meet at six.

He was late!

Steaming inside, and less than impressed by her blind date, she took another sip of the Chardonnay as she gazed around the restaurant. Everyone was engulfed in their conversations, but occasionally one of the patrons glanced at her. She shrugged it off, confident in sitting on her own in the town’s most elegant restaurant. What she couldn’t shrug off, though, was her date being late.

She drank the last little bit of her wine, paid, and left. A deep disappointment settled in the pit of her stomach, surprising her, because it hadn’t been the first time she’d been on a blind date that ended with the guy not showing up.

She suppressed a groan as she thought of the man she’d met only a few weeks earlier. Admittedly, he’d been nice, but not at all what he’d pretended to be in the details she received from the “Your Future Heart” agency.

Yet, this rejection hurt inside. Olivia had told her so much about her neighbour, and she’d trusted her niece when she’d assured he’d be there.

Olivia was Georgia’s daughter. Georgia was Jeri’s cousin, but to avoid confusion they all agreed on Olivia being her niece. Jeri loved Olivia like her own daughter and had often babysat her when she’d been younger. They’d been to movies, concerts, and Jeri had even been along to one of her niece’s trips to Melbourne to visit Olivia’s best friend Mia, who had moved across the Bass Strait.

As Jeri walked down the streets to her car, she replayed her conversation with her niece in her mind.

“How are your blind dates going?” her niece had asked as she came into Jeri’s gallery a couple of days ago.

She’d shrugged. “I have a winner’s luck getting hooked up with all the duds in town.” Jeri remembered hesitating, contemplating whether to speak the words in her head. Was she destined to live alone after her divorce? She wasn’t looking for the man of her dreams, just companionship. Someone to go out with once in a while.

Someone to share her day’s highlights or nightmares with.

“You should meet the guy from next door,” Olivia said. “He’s like sex on legs.

Honestly.”

Jeri let out a stifled laugh. “Listen, sweetie. I’m in my late thirties, good looking for that age, but sex on legs?”

“You just wait and see,” Olivia said as she looked at her watch. “Anyway, I’d better go. I’ll give you a call tonight. Prepare yourself for a nice night out with my neighbour!”

That had basically been it — she’d been set up on a blind date without actually agreeing to it. In hindsight, she knew she should’ve called it off, but deep inside, she’d hoped for a nice evening. She’d been most certain that none of Olivia’s friends were what she was looking for, but then again, she didn’t even know herself what she was looking for.

Thanks for sharing,

Tina

Monday, June 20, 2016

The Guardian by @jacqbiggar #RomanceNovel, #Excerpt




The Guardian

Restitution begins with the truth 

Lucas Carmichael and Scott Anderson had it all, money, fame, and fortune. But one night’s stupid mistake takes everything they thought they cherished and dumps it upside down.  

A car accident ends Lucas’ life and leaves Scott injured and bitter.  

As the local ME, Tracy York, investigates the case, discrepancies begin to point to more than a simple drunk driving incident. 

When threats are made to Tracy’s life can Scott and his guardian angel, Lucas, protect her, or will she become another casualty? 



 

Excerpt:

“Look, Trace…”

“Don’t you ‘look, Trace’, me.” She sighed, and moved to his side. Her fingers sent tingles upward from where they rested on his arm. “You may be used to playing the hero for damsels in distress, but that’s not me, okay?” Her eyes were emerald green, mesmerizing in their brilliance. “I’m used to taking care of myself. I don’t need coddling.”

No, maybe she didn’t. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use someone to take the burden away. He wanted to be that someone.

He raised a hand and brushed a velvety soft cheek, reveling in her body’s response. Eyelids fluttered and lips parted as though waiting for a kiss. Maybe she didn’t want the fairy tale, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be her prince.

He leaned down and accepted her invitation.

Heaven.

Her taste reminded him of blue skies and endless meadows. Of songbirds and bubbling brooks. She was his fire when he got cold and food when he was hungry. She made him weak, yet superhero strong, all with a look or a touch. And he couldn’t get enough.

“Take me home with you,” he whispered.

Tracy gazed at him, her eyes conflicted. “We should…”

“What? Slow down? Deny what’s happening between us?” He tunneled his hand into her hair and cupped the side of her head, relieved when she leaned into the touch. “I can’t. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past couple of weeks, it’s that there are no guarantees.”

He leaned forward until their foreheads touched. Until every breath was shared. Until there was no room for misunderstandings.

“I want you.”

 



 

Author Bio:

 Jacquie writes Romantic Suspense with tough, alpha males who know what they want, until they're gob-smacked by heroines who are strong, contemporary women willing to show them that what they really need is love.

Jacquie has been blessed with a long, happy marriage and enjoys writing romance novels that end with happy-ever-afters.

 She lives in paradise along the west coast of Canada with her family and loves reading, writing, and flower gardening. Jacquie swears she can't function without coffee, preferably at the beach with her sweetheart. :)

 

Follow Jacquie's website below - if you check out her giveaways page you'll find tons of great prizes every month!

 




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