Giveaway: Swept Away by J. Haymore

Swept Away by J. Haymore 
Publication date: October 20th 2014
Genres: New Adult, Romance, Suspense

 

 

 

Synopsis:

 

He is everywhere. He surrounds me, permeates the air, wends his way under my skin. I can’t escape his strength, his intensity, his presence.

I’m trapped.

There’s nowhere to run.

Nowhere to hide.

But even if I could escape…would I be strong enough to leave?

I needed something—something big—to get myself out of the rut I’d fallen into after the car accident that killed my sister. This sailing trip was meant only to mark a new chapter in my life. Until Ethan Williams stepped on board.

Ethan radiated confidence. His darkly handsome good looks and ocean-blue eyes mesmerized me. But it was the way he looked at me that drew me in. He wasn’t looking at my past or at my scars, but the real me behind all that baggage I was trying so hard to leave behind.

But Ethan had secrets—dark, dangerous secrets. I was trapped in the middle of the ocean in a tangle of lies, sex, and violence. The problem was, I was happy to be trapped forever…if it meant I could have him.
Warning: Swept Away is a 4-part serial. This story is messy and twisted and very, very sexy. It is not for people under 18.

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AUTHOR BIO:

 

USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Haymore is the author of sexy historical and contemporary romance.

You can find Jennifer in Southern California trying to talk her husband into yet another trip to England, helping her three children with homework while brainstorming a new five-minute dinner menu, or crouched in a corner of the local bookstore writing her next novel.

Author links:

http://www.jenniferhaymore.com/

https://www.facebook.com/JenniferHaymore.Author

https://twitter.com/jenniferhaymore

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8634517.J_Haymore

GIVEAWAY

Blitz-wide giveaway (INTL)

• A copy of Swept Away #1 (eBook or Print - winner's choice)
• An early copy of Swept Away 1-4 (complete series)
• 20$ Amazon gift card

a Rafflecopter giveaway



 

Book Blitz & Giveaway: Depths of Lake by Keary Taylor

 Title:  Depths of Lake (The McCain Saga #3)

Author:  Keary Taylor

Publication Date:  October 14, 2014

Genres:  New Adult, Romance

Synopsis:

It was another day at the ranch, training horses and working fifteen hour days. And then the last person I ever expected showed up. Lake McCain: a Marine, tall, ripped—and the best friend of my dead fiancé. Cal died to save Lake, and now Lake claims that he carries a debt to me that he can never repay.



I wanted to brush him off. But then my mom, the manager of the ranch, went and hired him. We spend hours working together with the horses. Lake doesn’t say much. He’s layered and dark and he tries to seem shallow and simple. But he isn’t. There are things under his surface that matter. He works, quiet and strong, and never once lets me down.








Until he confesses that he may be falling in love with me. I can’t deny that there is something between us. But a relationship? I just can’t. I’ve used up all my chances at love. My past relationships have ended in death or disaster, and now I have to live with all of that.



I’m Riley James, and there are depths to Lake—depths to myself—that I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand.

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The McCain Saga
EVER AFTER DRAKE
MOMENTS OF JULIAN
DEPTHS OF LAKE
PLAYING IT KALE (January 20, 2015)

Excerpt

“Lake?” I call quietly. No reply.

 I push the door open a bit more and step inside. I look back toward the bedroom. As far as I can see, it’s empty. And the door to the bathroom is open and the light off.

 “Lake?” I call once more.

 A soft snore pulls my eyes to the couch, and there I find him.

 He’s changed into a pair of dry jeans, but that’s all he’s wearing. A thickly muscled arm is lying across his eyes, his other arm hanging down toward the floor. Bare feet hang over the arm of the couch.

His perfectly sculpted chest bears seven stars tattooed over his left breast.

His brows are furrowed, his expression concerned.

He’s a soldier who’s engaged in combat and he’s seen some horrible things. He saw Cal blown to pieces. I can only imagine the hell he must be seeing behind those lids right now.

I’m torn. I want to wake him from whatever nightmare I know he’s having. But I also know about PTSD and how dangerous it can to be to wake a soldier in this state.

His left shoulder twitches violently. His face winces.

“Lake,” I say, soft and gentle.

He gives a little twitch, like me calling his name entered his dream, but he doesn’t wake.

“Lake,” I say, this time louder. I keep my distance, standing by the door.

He jerks up from the couch, half sitting up. His right hand reaches for his hip, as if he’s searching for a sidearm. His eyes sweep the room and fix on me. They’re bloodshot and wide.

“It’s okay,” I say, keeping my tone even and calm. “It’s just me.”

His breathing is hard and fast and it takes a minute for him to calm down and realize he isn’t out on the battlefield, in the middle of a warzone.

“What do you want?” he asks. His voice is hard and flat.

Soldiers don’t like admitting when they’re dealing with post-field issues. I’ve caught him in a moment of trauma, and he doesn’t like it.

“Mom’s just about got dinner ready and asked me to come get you,” I say. I’m not offended by his hard tone. I understand. “I’m sorry to wake you, but you looked like you were in a place you needed extraction from.”

He looks at me for another really long minute. Lake has the most impassive eyes. I can’t tell what’s going on behind them. Is he angry? Is he embarrassed? Indifferent? It’s impossible to tell.

“Yeah,” he finally replies. He climbs off the couch and walks to the bedroom. He looks over his shoulder at me just before he disappears behind the door. My eyes drop away from him, embarrassed to realize he’s just caught me staring and embarrassed for the fact that I was.

But who couldn’t admire a body like that?

Interview

Tell us a little bit about The McCain Saga. 

This is a family saga about three brothers and one sister. The McCains all have big personalities and crazy love stories. And they always have each others backs. Each book is told from a different woman’s point of view, Kaylee Ray, Sage McCain, Riley James, and Whitney Ford.

Describe DEPTHS OF LAKE in five words. 

America-ranch-horses-Marines-love.

Each of the McCain books is told from a different characters point of view. Which of them to you relate to the most? 





There’s certainly a little piece of me in each and every one of them. I’d say I have Kaylee’s positive outlook on life, Sage’s ambition, Riley’s independence, and Whitney’s creativity. But the one I relate to the MOST is probably Sage. We both have a bit too much pride and are always reaching for something more.

Writing adult contemporary romance is a new thing for you. What made you decide to make the jump to that genre?

I was actually working on a YA paranormal when I started feeling a bit overwhelmed and burned out. I’d just finished my sci-fi series in one year, and I needed something different. I needed something that was just FUN to write. So I sat down and started on MOMENTS OF JULIAN. It wrote it exactly how I wanted to write it with no readers in mind. It was therapy for me. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about her brothers. And that’s how The McCain Saga came to be!

So, what else have you written?

I have my most popular series, a NA paranormal romance: the Fall of Angels trilogy (BRANDED, FORSAKEN, VINDICATED, and novelette, AFTERLIFE). And then my NA post-apocalyptic romance: The Eden Trilogy (THE BANE, THE HUMAN, THE EVE, shorts THE RAID and THE ASHES). And then I have a YA contemporary standalone, WHAT I DIDN’T SAY.

Give us an insight into your main character. What does he/she do that is so special? 

Riley James is a country girl through and through. Both for the fact that she runs a ranch and trains horses, and she’s the daughter of a career Marine. She loves America, and was engaged to a Marine. And then he died. So when Lake, another soldier, comes into her life, she’s a bit broken. But she’s one of the strongest women you’ll meet.

Author Bio:

 

Keary Taylor grew up along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she started creating imaginary worlds and daring characters who always fell in love. She now resides on a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their two young children. She continues to have an overactive imagination that frequently keeps her up at night. She is the author of THE EDEN TRILOGY, the FALL OF ANGELS trilogy, and WHAT I DIDN'T SAY. To learn more about Keary and her writing process, please visit www.KearyTaylor.com.

Author links:

http://www.kearytaylor.com/

https://www.facebook.com/kearytaylor

https://twitter.com/kearytaylor

http://www.pinterest.com/kearytaylor/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3420702.Keary_Taylor

Giveaway

$25 Amazon Gift Card

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Book Blitz: Frost by Kate Avery Ellison

Frost by Kate Avery Ellison 

(The Frost Chronicles #1) 

Publication Date: March 28th 2012

Genres: Dystopia, Young Adult

Synopsis:

In the icy, monster-plagued world of the Frost, one wrong move and a person could end up dead—and Lia Weaver knows this better than anyone.

After monsters kill her parents, Lia must keep the family farm running despite the freezing cold and threat of monster attacks or risk losing her siblings to reassignment by the village Elders. With dangers on all sides and failure just one wrong step away, she can’t afford to let her emotions lead her astray. So when her sister finds a fugitive bleeding to death in the forest—a young stranger named Gabe—Lia surprises herself and does the unthinkable.

She saves his life.

Giving shelter to the fugitive could get her in trouble. The Elders have always described the advanced society of people beyond the Frost, the “Farthers,” as ruthless and cruel. But Lia is startled to find that Gabe is empathetic and intelligent…and handsome. She might even be falling in love with him.

But time is running out. The monsters from the forest circle the farm at night. The village leader is starting to ask questions. Farther soldiers are searching for Gabe. Lia must locate a secret organization called the Thorns to help Gabe escape to safety, but every move she makes puts her in more danger.

Is compassion—and love—worth the risk?





 Excerpt:

She appeared out of the shadows suddenly. Her cheeks were bitten red with cold and her long dark hair was wet with melting ice. She stumbled, grabbed my hands. Her mittens were missing. “Hurry,” she breathed, tugging at me. “Quickly.”

“Ivy Augusta Weaver,” I hissed, torn between joyful relief and flickering anger. “It’s almost night time. There is a storm coming. What were you thinking? Where have you been?”

“There is a boy,” she panted, ignoring my scolding. “In the woods.”

“What?”

But she was already plunging deeper into the forest, and I had no choice but to follow her, a new worry filling my mind and replacing the short-lived relief I’d felt. A boy in the woods? Who had gotten himself lost in the woods at a time like this? One of the farmers’ sons, perhaps?

We were the last farm in the Frost. There was nothing beyond us to the north but the Empty, and to the south there was only the Farther World. What was anybody doing at the edge of that?

Ivy and I continued into the forest. We ducked around branches and scrambled over icy roots. The shadows were thick, and they painted our cloaks a deep indigo.

Ivy reached a giant rock at the mouth of a clearing and stopped. “There,” she said, pointing with a trembling hand.

I could just make out the crumpled form. In my anxiety, I saw only isolated details. A thin, wet shirt, a pair of shoulders, a face almost hidden by the snow. I took a step forward, trying to place the face...and then I saw the sharp features, the dark hair, the slightly tanned tone of the skin. I halted as my blood turned stone-cold. Time became protracted and dense, like swimming underwater. Sound was muffled. My chest felt tight.

You must be strong, Lia. My mother’s voice rang in my head. I remembered her wind-weathered face, her chapped hands gripping mine, her earnest eyes as they scoured my face for weakness. There could be no weakness here in the Frost, where we clung to life between the mountains as desperately as a drowning man clings to a stone.

“He’s not one of ours,” I said, turning to her with sudden fierceness. “Ivy...”

“He’s hurt,” she said.

“Don’t you understand?”

She just looked at me. I drew in a deep breath.

“That is a Farther.”

Ivy’s eyes widened a fraction at my harsh words. The wind blew between us, spraying ice against our faces. She blinked. I didn’t.

“A...a Farther?”

Of course she knew what that was—every person in our village knew who the Farthers were, even those who’d never caught a glimpse of them across the river. We barely ever spoke of them, but they inhabited everyone’s nightmares all the same.

I nodded curtly.

Ivy struggled to understand what I was implying. “But he’s hurt,” she managed, as if that was the only concern. “And it’s getting dark.”

“We must protect ourselves,” I said.

Ivy swallowed hard.

I glared at her. “No.”

She looked back at the figure lying in the snow. I glanced at the sky again, trying to calculate how much time we had left before the sun sunk completely behind the trees, and we were no longer safe from the things that prowled in the darkness. The Watchers never moved across our yards or around the town perimeter during the sunlight hours, but some had reported seeing them during the narrow span of twilight that joined the day and the night, and it was rumored that they wandered freely in the deep of the forests even during the day.

The wind howled through the trees and tugged at my cloak. Snow fell sideways.

“But he’s hurt,” Ivy whispered again, breaking into my thoughts.

I closed my eyes briefly. My sister was the kind of person who brought home baby birds who’d fallen from their nests and raccoons with thorns in their paws. But we couldn’t simply take a Farther and bandage him up like a lost puppy. “The Elders say—”

“I know they’re dangerous. I know what the Elders say.” Ivy’s voice was as brittle as ice. “But are you telling me you’re going to leave him out here to die? After what happened to Ma and Da?”

I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. Ivy looked at me with her big brown eyes and the fear in my gut snarled. What would the villagers say? This is dangerous, my mind screamed at me. This will endanger the family!

The figure in the snow stirred. “Please,” he whispered, his voice just a hiss.

I stepped to his side, crouching down to touch his face. His eyes opened a crack, and then...

He looked at me.

I felt hollowed out and filled up again as our gazes collided—mine and this Farther from beyond the edge of my world—and then his eyes shut as he passed out again, and I was released from the spell of them. I stepped back quickly, but the damage was already done. There was already an ache in my chest from the knowledge of what we were about to do.

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Author Interview:

What book are you reading now?

Requiem, by Lauren Oliver. Fantastic book. Every word she writes is poetry.



Do you read a lot?

Yes! Although lately I’ve been reading more nonfiction. I try to read voraciously and widely, though—it’s important to stay exposed to lots of genres and styles as a writer.



Where do you like to write?

I usually write at my local public library, or a coffee shop near my house. I like to lose myself in the noise and atmosphere of quiet hustle and bustle—it keeps me focused and somehow filters out my own mental distractions. When I’m at home, I tend to procrastinate with Youtube or Netflix too much.



What is your writing process like?

I usually start with an outline, or something that you might call an outline if you squinted at it just right. I hate outlining, but it’s a useful way to organize preliminary thoughts and make sure you have a clear direction for the story. Then I sort of ignore the outline and just start writing. I almost always write in order from start to finish, but it depends on the book. If there’s a scene I’m itching to write and I see it all perfectly in my head, I might skip ahead and get it down on paper. When I’m done with the first draft, my editor and my beta reader get their hands on it, give me feedback, and then I revise. Rise and repeat. Most of the writing process comes down to revision and editing.



What was it like to write Frost?

When I write, I get immersed in the world of the story. Frost is set in a cold, dangerous place, so I lived in this mindset of chilly, grimness. When I’d finished the series, I started work on a new series set in about as different a place as I could imagine—warm and tropical. That became my Secrets of Itlantis series.

Author Bio:

I live in Georgia with my wonderful husband and two spoiled cats. When I'm not writing, I'm usually catching up on my extensive Netflix queue, reading a book, giggling at something funny online, or trying to convince my husband to give me just ONE bite of whatever he's eating.

Learn more about my writing and books at my blog (http://thesouthernscrawl.blogspot.com/), find teasers for upcoming works on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/kateaveryellison), and subscribe to my new releases newsletter to be notified of new novels as soon as they hit stores (https://tinyletter.com/kateaveryellison)!

 Be sure to show your love for Kate Avery Ellison!