The Last Straw … Nia Simone

Tags

debut novels, Goddess Fish Promotions, new releases, Nia Simone, romance, romantic suspense

This is Nia’s debut work and the book is available FREE on Amazon for the week of her tour ONLY.  Hurry and snag your copy.  You’ll be glad you did.  Details of her book tour follow in this post.    Here are teasers to whet your appetite:

BLURB:  

Ally Tobin left New York after one too many bad dates, determined to rebuild a stable life and career as a private investigator in Silicon Valley. But when the man she knew as one name walks into her office with another, will her curiosity once again lead her to risk her heart?

The last thing Special Agent Jared Green needs is “security risk” stamped on the resume of his latest undercover identity. Especially by the woman his job forced him to leave in New York without any explanation. She may threaten his cover, but it’s his heart on the line.

He’s good at playing a part. She’s good at catching a fake. Can they trust enough to give love another chance?

EXCERPT:  

He sauntered through the door, a white, button- down shirt tucked into belted khakis. When his dark gaze found her, he stopped. Stared. Her throat dried and a rustling motion stirred in her abdomen.

“Hi. I’m Darren Ray.”

Keep your cool, she commanded herself, standing and reaching across the desk. His hand was rough.

She yanked her hand back and waved at the chair. “Please, have a seat.” He waited for her to sit before settling in the visitor’s chair. “So, Darren, according to this, you’re being considered for a programmer position in the IT department. Tell me about your background.”

A professional mask settled over his features. “As you can see on my résumé, I have several years of consulting experience.”

“Tell me something about your experience as a mechanic.” Working on his prized old Mustang had been a favorite hobby.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “What do you mean? That’s not in my résumé.”

“You don’t have the hands of a programmer. More of a mechanic.” Oh, his hands.

“Okay, you got me.” He was going to confess. This should be good. “When I’m not programming computers I’m working on my car.”

“And what were you doing in New York City?”

He reached across her desk for a piece of paper, plucked a pen from its stand and scrawled something.  When she took the note their fingers brushed. Meet me for dinner at Pico’s at 7. I’ll explain everything. Can’t talk here.

NIA IS GIVING AWAY A $25 Amazon gift card to one randomly drawn commenter.

Let’s meet Nia:

Nia Simone grew up on the side of a ski slope in Squaw Valley, USA. Later, while learning the craft of story writing, she worked in nonprofit and then high-tech.

The best part of working in the computer field was meeting her husband. He took up skiing and she helped him document his computer inventions! They live in “Silicon Valley” in California where their favorite thing to do is cook together for friends. Nia’s specialties are dessert and veggies while her husband’s are entrees and sourdough bread.

Their only pet at the moment is the sourdough starter, which lives in the fridge and requires bi-weekly feeding.

​Nia blogs every day about travel, food, writing, books, skiing and photography at niasimoneauthor.com (where she won the Versatile Blogger Award and Inspiring Blogger Award).​

Buy link: The Last Straw (http://amzn.to/164srhC)

Website: niasimone.intuitwebsites.com

Facebook: facebook.com/niasimoneauthor

Twitter: @niasimone4

Follow Nia on tour–have fun and be entered more than once to win the prize!

September 17:

1 Sun Mountain Reviews
2 Reading In Twilight
3 Renee Luke
4 Sugarbeat’s Books
5 Sandra’s Blog
6 You Gotta Read Reviews
7 Words of Wisdom from The Scarf Princess
8 Musings and Ramblings
9 Sexy Adventures, Passionate Tales
10 Deal Sharing Aunt
11 Farm Girl Books
12 Bunny’s Review
13 Books and Other Spells

September 18:
1 Full Moon Dreaming
2 Simply Ali
3 Crazy Four Books
4 Travel the Ages
5 Happily Ever After
6 Rose and Beps Blog
7 Nana Prah’s Blog
8 Revampinglife
9 Harlie’s Books
10 For the Love of Bookends
11 Linda Nightingale-Wordsmith
12 Wickedly Wanton Tales
13 Straight from the Library

September 19:
1 Sarah Grimm, Author
2 All I Want and More
3 Nickie’s Views and Interviews
4 Hope Dreams. Life… Love
5 Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
6 Booklover Sue
7 Reviews by Crystal
8 fundinmental
9 Caribbean Accent Book Reviews
10 Beyond Romance
11 Snarky Mom Reads…
12 Janna Shay’s Fair Play
13 Becky Flade Author

September 20:
1 My Devotional Thoughts
2 Erzabet’s Enchantments
3 Desiree Holt
4 IndieWritersReview
5 Charlene Raddon’s Chatterblog
6 Punya Reviews…
7 Regina May Ross’s Blog
8 Tory Richards
9 Perusing Princesses
10 Mommasez…
11 Storm Goddess Book Reviews and More
12 Elle Hill
13 Book ‘Em North Carolina

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Room of Tears…

Tags

2011, 911, famous fires, firemen, historical events, independent authors, New York Firemen, pope, roman catholic church, romance, terrorism, tragedies, twin towers, Women's Fiction

The cover of Linda’s book must touch and bring tears to everyone’s eyes.  I can’t imagine what the heroine would have experienced…some of you can or might even know.  This book has to be moving and emotional.

BLURB:  

 Out of tragedies come heroes and miracles…

At 9:59 a.m. on September 11, 2001, Diane O’Connor’s life as a firefighter’s wife changes forever, shattering her faith. Four decades later, a note still hangs on her kitchen cabinet in Queens, the paper yellowed with age. Diane knows the scribbled sentences by heart; she’d left them the morning of 9/11 for her husband, Billy.

In the summer of 2041, Diane invites Friar Antonio Ortiz to her home. He is a man destined to become counsel to the first American pope—her son, Peter. Antonio asks no questions and arrives in secret, promising to wait nineteen years before passing Diane’s journal to Peter. Only then will Billy’s story be told, along with answers to Peter’s questions about his father’s last days.                      

EXCERPT:  

Chapter One –

Absorbed, Antonio neglected to notice that Diane had disappeared into the kitchen. He thought to ask her about the two men in the photographs, and when he turned in anticipation of seeing her next to him, he took a step toward where she might be standing. His right foot struck a pair of boots propped upright against the wall. He stumbled and put a hand out to that empty place where he thought she might be, but his face did not meet hers, and instead came within an inch of a firefighter’s helmet, the medallion of its FDNY ladder company polished and gleaming.

On the edge of that moment, trying to regain his balance, each breath he took tightened in his throat. Antonio began to gag. His mind raced. What could be happening? One minute he was looking at photographs and the next his throat was constricting. An acrid odor rose to his nostrils. He shook his head—the same faint smell he’d noticed from before, at the door, but stronger, sharp enough now to sear his soft membranes. My God, he thought and recoiled. Sweat sprang from his face and neck. A heart attack? He clutched his chest. No, not that. His heart was fine except for the galloping beat under his ribcage. Heat emanated from the helmet as if it had just come through an inferno. “My God,” he said aloud. Perhaps a fire burned inside the wall, hot enough to choke him.

Two commenters will receive a $25 Amazon or BN.com Gift Certificate each.

AUTHOR INFORMATION:

Linda Merlino is the author of  Room of Tears (July 23 2013), Hudson Catalina (2008-Belly of the Whale & re-release 9/14/12), Swan Boat Souvenir (self-published 2003) she began writing fiction as a young mother on the sidelines of endless soccer practices.  Linda wrote anytime any place.  A manuscript filled a carton in the back seat of her car.  Many years have passed since those early beginnings, but her work continues to be inspired by her children.

The author has a fascination with heroes and writes her fiction to honor ordinary men and women who react unselfishly in extraordinary circumstances.  She extends her gratitude to all who keep us safe and free.

Her hometown is outside of Boston.  She lived for many years in New York City and more recently calls Connecticut her home.

Linda Merlino

Gooddaysnodays on Twitter

Author Page Facebook

Hudson Catalina

 

Follow Linda’s tour for fun.  Here’s the Rafflecopter link for entering to win the prizes:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/MjhlNDM0NWY0MDRiNGZiMmYzN2M1OTZlOGQ2ZDYzOjIw/

 

The Reluctant Bride

Tags

Australian authors, Beverley Oakley, Choc Lit Search for an Australian Star competition, erotic romance, Goddess Fish Promotions, historical romance, Regency romance, romance, Romance Readers of Australia

I’m delighted to have as my guest award-winning author Beverley Eikli.  Beverley’s excerpt is very intriguing!

Winner of the Choc-Lit Australian Star competition!

BLURB:

Emily Micklen is proud, passionate – and left with no option after the death of her loving fiancé, Jack, but to marry the scarred, taciturn, soldier who needs to secure a well-connected wife.

Major Angus McCartney hopes that marriage to the unobtainable beauty whose confident gaze about the ballroom once failed to register his presence will offer both of them a chance to put the past to rest.

Emily’s determination to be faithful to Jack’s memory is matched only by Angus’s desire to win her with honour and action. Sent to France on a mission of national security, Angus discovers how deeply Emily has been duped, but the secrets he uncovers lead them both into danger. Can Angus and Emily unmask the real conspirators before they lose everything?

EXCERPT:

‘It’s not a sin, unless you get caught.’

The gentle breeze seemed to whisper Jack’s teasing challenge, its soft, silken fingers tugging at Emily’s ingrained obedience. She put down her basket and stared with longing at the waters below, sweat prickling her scalp beneath her poke bonnet as desire warred with fear of the consequences.

‘Where’s your sense of adventure, Em?’

Still resisting, Emily closed her eyes, but the wind’s wicked suggestiveness was like the caress of Jack’s breath against her heated cheek; daring Emily to shrug aside a lifetime of dutiful subservience – again – and peel off her clothes, this time to plunge into the inviting stream beneath the willows.

She imagined Jack’s warm brown eyes glinting with wickedness. Taunting her like the burr that had worked its way into the heel of her woollen stockings during her walk.

Exhaling on a sigh, Emily opened her eyes and admitted defeat as she succumbed to the pull of the reed-fringed waters.

Desire had won, justified by practicality. If she had to remove one stocking to dislodge the burr she might as well remove both.

Scrambling down the embankment, she lowered herself onto a rock by the water’s edge. Her father would never know. If he glanced from his study in the tower room, where he was doubtless gloating over his balance sheet, he’d assume she was a village lass making her way along the track. Emily had never seen him interest himself in the poor except …

Like most unpleasant memories, she tried to cast this one out with a toss of her head, still glad her father had never

discovered what she’d witnessed from her bedroom window one evening five years ago: the curious sight of Bartholomew

Micklen ushering the beggar girl who’d arrived on his doorstep into his carriage.

Then climbing in after her before it rumbled down the driveway and out of sight.

Now was just another of those moments when Emily was glad her father remained in ignorance. Her insurance, should she need it, was that she knew a few of her father’s secrets the excise men might just want to know.

By the time the first stocking had followed Emily’s boots onto the grassy bank she was bursting with anticipation for her swim.

What did one more sin matter when she’d be Mrs Jack Noble in less than a week?

Beverley will award a $20 Amazon/BN GC to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour.

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Beverley Eikli is the author of eight historical romances published by Pan Macmillan Momentum, Robert Hale, Ellora’s Cave and Total-e-Bound. Recently she won UK Women’s Fiction publisher Choc-Lit’s Search for an Australian Star competition with her suspenseful, spy-based Regency Romance The Reluctant Bride.

She’s been shortlisted twice for a Romance Readers of Australia Award in the Favourite Historical category — in 2011 for  A Little Deception, and in 2012 for her racy Regency Romp, Rake’s Honour, written under her Beverley Oakley pseudonym.

Beverley wrote her first romance when she was seventeen. However, drowning the heroine on the last page was, she discovered, not in the spirit of the genre so her romance-writing career ground to a halt and she became a journalist.

After throwing in her job on South Australia’s metropolitan daily The Advertiser to manage a luxury safari lodge in the Okavango Delta, in Botswana, Beverley discovered a new world of romance and adventure in a thatched cottage in the middle of a mopane forest with the handsome Norwegian bush pilot she met around a camp fire.

Eighteen years later, after exploring the world in the back of Cessna 404s and CASA 212s as an airborne geophysical survey operator during low-level sorties over the French Guyanese jungle and Greenland’s ice cap, Beverley is back in Australia teaching in the Department of Professional Writing & Editing at Victoria University, as well as teaching Short Courses for the Centre of Adult Education and Macedon Ranges Further Education.

She writes Regency Historical Intrigue as Beverley Eikli and erotic historicals as Beverley Oakley. 

Beverley won the Choc Lit Search for an Australian Star competition with The Reluctant Bride. 

Shortlisted for the 2012 Australian Romance Readers Award for her novel Rake’s Honour. 

Finalist in the 2011 Australian Romance Readers Awards for her novel A Little Deception. 

You can find Beverley at:

http://beverleyoakley.com/Beverley_Oakley/Welcome.html

https://www.facebook.com/beverley.eikli?ref=tn_tnmn

Amazon.com – http://www.amazon.com/The-Reluctant-Bride-Beverley-Eikli/dp/1781890862/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1372649516&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=beverley+eikli

Amazon.co.uk – http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Reluctant-Bride-Beverley-Eikli/dp/1781890862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372649607&sr=8-1&keywords=the+reluctant+bride+beverley+eikli

Barnes & Noble – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-reluctant-bride-beverley-eikli/1114869375?ean=9781781890868

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Beverley-Eikli/e/B0034Q44E0

For a chance to win the Amazon gift card and to have fun, follow Beverley’s Book Tour.  You can go back and comment on previous posts.

September 3:

1. HappilyEver After
2. Margay Leah Justice
3. Wickedly WantonTales
4. Sandra’s Blog
5. Susana’s Morning Room
6. Writer Wonderland
7. Sugarbeat’s Books
8. Welcome to My World of Dreams

September 4:

1. Room With Books
2. Author Jinni James
3. JM Stewart
4. The Crafty Cauldron
5. My Devotional Thoughts
6. Farm Girl Books
7. The Simple Things in Life
8. Straight from the Library

September 5:
1. Sue Perkins Author
2. Hope Dreams. Life… Love
3. Tina Donahue Presents
4. Andi’s Book Reviews
5. Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
6. The Outside Lane
7. Sharing Links and Wisdom
8. Long and Short Reviews

September 6:
1. Jody’s Book Reviews and Giveaways
2. Writer Wonderland
3. Novel Moments
4. Linda Nightingale-Wordsmith
5. Blue Rose Romance
6. Art of Ambrosia
7. Book2Buzz
8. It’s Raining Books
9. Melissa MacKinnon | Author
10. Stitch Read Cook

 

 

 

A Sad Decision

I’m thinking of selling the condo where I’ve lived for three years.  I really love the place.  Though it is small, it is ideal for me.  I have it decorated exactly the way I want with a brown leather sofa, an oriental china cabinet and a glass table supported by an enormous twist of wood (it takes two men to move it!).   My Mason & Hamlin parlor grand piano lives in the red piano room with a white bay window and Plantation shutters.  The entire condo is custom painted, has marble floors throughout, except in the piano room, which has a dark wood floor.  The kitchen has white cabinets and granite countertops.  The upgrades were here when I bought and were one the reasons for my choice.  So you can see, it will be hard to replace.

There are several reasons I’m thinking of selling.  One, the property values in the complex seem to have dropped.  There are other causes, one of which is that we have covered parking, and  it is increasingly getting difficult to find a spot since spaces are not assigned.  If I move, I can get a private garage, a big impetus for me since I’m a fanatic about protecting the black top on my convertible.

Decisions, decisions.  And I do hate moving.  I’m so comfortable here. Stil, sometimes one must move on.

This print is called “The Storm” by Jim Booth and portrays Charleston during Hurricane Hugo.  There is a companion print called “Storm Warning” that depicts the night before the storm.  That one hangs in my dining room.