Blog Tour: Blind Confession by @violettarand #review

Historical Romance

Date Published: February 25, 2015

A heart closed to love ...

Abandoned by the woman he loved, Captain Marteinn wants to escape his misery by winning the summer games in Lagenheim. The champion is entitled to ask one favor from the jarl and he’s prepared to request his freedom.

A woman desperate for passion ...

Taken to Scandinavia after the Normans invaded England, Mercia works hard to prove her loyalty to the Vikings. Despite multiple offers of marriage, she fears she’ll never find true love. Until she meets a brooding warrior, who ignites a hidden passion she can’t ignore.

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Another wonderful trip into the past with Violetta Rand. I adore her novels and she has a way of creating captivating characters while immersing the reader in the time period. 

Raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, Violetta Rand spent her childhood reading, writing, and playing soccer. After meeting her husband in New England, they moved to Alaska where she studied environmental science and policy as an undergraduate before attending graduate school. Violetta then spent nearly a decade working as an environmental scientist, specializing in soil and water contamination and environmental assessments.

Violetta still lives in Anchorage, Alaska and spends her days writing evocative New Adult romance and historical romance. When she’s not reading, writing, or editing, she enjoys time with her husband, pets, and friends. In her free time, she loves to hike, fish, and ride motorcycles and 4-wheelers.

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Release Day: A Simple Change by J.L. Ostle #giveaway

Contemporary Romance

Date Published: March 9, 2015

My name is Alisha, I am a goody, goody. I follow the rules, I work hard and study while everyone else parties and hooks up. I'm ok with that, I'm use to it. My life isn't simple though, I have a secret-I'm in love with my next door neighbour, my best friend Kyle Jacobs.

 Kyle Jacobs is popular, hot, wanted by every girl in school. I am the exact opposite, I'm invisible, unnoticed, I haven't even kissed a boy.

 One girly weekend to a spa for a makeover changes everything. I start getting noticed, even Kyle is starting to act differently around me.

 Somebody though doesn't like this new change, doesn't like how Kyle and I are blurring the lines from friendship to something more.

New adult contemporary romance with mature content. Recommended for 17+ due to mature language and adult situations

About the Author 

J.L. Ostle was born in Antrim, Northern Ireland, now living in Carlisle, England. J.L. Ostle is a full time mother looking after her cute, active little boy.

When she she hasn't got her head stuck in a book or writing, she's watching movies, or doing activities with her friends and their children

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Blog Tour: Middle Eight by Audra Middleton #giveaway

Romantic Comedy

Date Published: February 1, 2015

When the normal life Ray has always dreamed of unravels, she falls for a drummer, comes to terms with her unconventional childhood, and inevitably discovers that normal was never really in her best interest.

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EXCERPT

The loud clanking of a spoon against a cereal bowl roused Ray from her second slumber. Her nausea was completely gone, but it felt like somebody shoved a few dozen hat pins into her skull. She opened one eye, and found herself staring at someone’s bare feet.

Ray had a thing about feet. Feet were disgusting appendages. Especially hairy guy feet. The Birkenstock trend nearly made her mental. She never even let her husband touch her with his feet. But these feet were different. They weren’t hairy or calloused, for one thing. They were clean, for another, and the right one had a dragon tattooed along the side of it.

“Did you clean my kitchen?”

Ray sat up, squinting with the pain of bright lights and hat pins stirring in her cerebrum. She dug into her purse for the ridiculous aviator shades she’d bought at the last gas station and put them on. Looking up, she saw that the feet were attached to the drummer boy from the band in the bar. Wavy brown hair tucked behind his ear, cobra tattoo hissing on his chest, he wore nothing but a pair of faded jeans. Funny, had she seen this guy in the supermarket last week, she’d have crossed the aisle to avoid him. This morning she couldn’t take her bloodshot eyes off of him.

“Sorry about that. I’m psychotic.” She rubbed her temples, the effort of speaking causing more hat pin sticks. “It’s just, I got up to take some Advil, and I stepped on some Cheerios and so I tried to sweep up the crumbs, but the crumbs were stuck because the floor was sticky…next thing you know I’m scrubbing your floor. It just snowballed. It snowballed and thank God I started to feel sick or I would have moved on to the bathroom, started changing sheets while you were still sleeping in them, who knows. I clean when I’m stressed. It’s my process.”

He smiled and shook his head, shoveling another spoonful of Cheerios into his mouth.

“I’m Ray, by the way,” she said, removing a bobby pin that was poking at her scalp near her temple. Holy crap, maybe those aren’t imaginary hat pins in my head.

“Were your parents hoping for a boy or something?”

“Not exactly.”

“I’m Van,” he said, in between bites.

Van. A flicker of excitement stirred in Ray’s stomach. Might she have stumbled upon somebody else whose parents were too high in the seventies to properly name their child?

“Were you conceived in a van or something?”

He did a combination laugh-choke. “Uh, I have no idea. My first name is Jeff, last name Vandermark. Van’s just a nickname. It’s easier since there always seems to be at least three other Jeffs in any given room.”

Ray sighed. A fun nickname given by friends. She couldn’t relate to that.

“You hungry?” he asked, pointing his spoon at his bowl of Cheerios.

“A few hours ago I swore I’d never eat again. Think I’d better hold off.”

He smiled slightly, and got up to pour himself another bowl. Ray sucked in a breath. When he passed by she got an eyeful of chiseled obliques, angled perfectly, pointing toward the Promised Land. What is wrong with me? Escaping lunatic husband, thirty bucks to my name, dead car, remember? Not the time to drool over drummer boys.

“Thanks for letting me crash here last night. I’d get out of your hair, but I have no idea where my car is. I mean, I know it’s at a bar somewhere in Portland…”

He laughed into his spoonful of cereal and nodded as he struggled with a swallow. “Right. Let me finish eating and we can go see about your car.”

Audra Middleton was born and raised in Washington State where she lives with her husband and their three boys. She gave up her teaching career to raise her children, and in between diaper changes and baseball games, she began writing books. Once she started, she couldn’t stop, even after she went back to teaching. Check her website to find out more about her writing projects.

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Blog Tour: A Flower in the Snow by Marc Cosman #excerpt

Non-Fiction / Memoir

Date Published: July 2014

"Mark Cosman’s message speaks to mothers and fathers everywhere; this is a beautiful and sensitive book." Mrs. Nancy Reagan 


My daughter. Berlyn, was asleep on a fold-out couch at her high school prom party when a former classmate and high school dropout shot her in the head for no apparent reason. Her murder prompted me to leave the rubble of my beliefs and assumptions to go in search of answers to the most profound questions we ask ourselves. “A Flower in the Snow” is the result of that odyssey.

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Excerpt

It was prom night. Berlyn, an honor student, was the recipient of a basketball scholarship. The moment was at hand to release her grip, just a little, to leave the rigors of basketball and her studies for a refreshing interval of fun. It was time to waste time, to test the budding independence she would need in college. At last, she earned the right to make fun of it all, to laugh at what had been so serious for so long.

Mark Cosman’s writing began when his daughter, Berlyn, was murdered following her high school prom. It was when Mark left the rubble of his beliefs and assumptions to go in search of answers to the most profound questions we ask ourselves. “A Flower in the Snow” is a result of that odyssey.

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Blog Tour: Slice of Life by @elliesoderstrom #review

6 Chapter Novella

Fantasy

Date Published: January 12, 2015

"This was no longer her world against the queen. It was the queen's world against her."

The Queen wants to destroy the life force of earth and has destroyed the last being that can stop her. Or so she thinks . . .
The last powerful mage in the world, Princess Aura, is the sole witness to the nefarious plot. The good news is she knows how to stop it. The bad news? She can't do it alone.
Aura must summon someone she hoped never to see again. Saint George, her lover who left five years ago for another woman. And another. And another. 
Can they work together long enough to defeat the queen and save the world? 

Told collectively by a troupe of digital artists, Slice of Life employs every medium available: prose, pictures, poetry, illustration, audio scenes, and music, to provide an immersive and exciting reading experience. 

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Review

Fantasy is definitely a good word to describe this novella. Ellie Ann has created a world with so many elements that show the level of imagination she has. The thing that is so interesting about this novella is that it is full of wonderful illustrations that highlight the story perfectly. A wonderful quick fantasy read. 

Ellie Ann is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller of thrillers, science fiction, and comics. She was born in Thailand, raised in a small farming village in Iowa, resided in the Texan Desert, and now lives in the Ozark Mountains. 

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Blog Tour: Sex. Coffee. Time Travel by @tymslyder #review #giveaway

Romance / Adventure / Suspense

Date Published: Jan 20, 2015

(Time Frame Series Book Two) 

In Book Two, Adventure-Romance author Lesley Meryn has her 'second date', a little bit of Time Travel, with the volatile yet seductive scientist Miles Sherwood. She wakes up to a spring day in 1765 Yorkshire. Miles should be there, waiting for her, but he's nowhere to be found.
Circumstances spin rapidly out of control. Someone keeps trying to kill her new Eighteenth Century companion and self-appointed protector, Mick Kenning, a handsome and hunky stableman at the New Inn. Lesley helps him to foil these clumsy, but persistent and mysterious attempts on his life.   
As the days pass, Miles remains missing. The clock is literally ticking down the days. She has less than two weeks to find him or she may be trapped in the past. Has Miles fallen victim to the very real dangers of an earlier time?
Complications multiply with the appearance of an elusive, badass, Highwayman. With a hefty price on his head, agents of the Crown have arrived at the New Inn to track him down. For Mick it's personal, he despises the Highwayman. The Highwayman, not satisfied with jewelry, and coins, stole away the woman Mick once loved.
Will Lesley find Miles in time? What has happened to him? Will Mick ever find out who wants him dead? Will he ever find outwhy?
Balancing between high adventure, sword fighting, fisticuffs, pistols, and daggers, Lesley must use her wits, imagination, and every trick from her own books to find Miles, survive the Eighteenth Century, and return to her own time. 

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Time travel books can be a bit hard to follow and take a lot of work for an author to make sure that everything matches up. Elle Brookes has done a great job for setting both time periods.

I especially enjoyed the surprising adventure and suspense that was woven in between witty dialogue and laugh out loud moments.

Definitely worth the read! 

Elle Brookes grew up in Los Angeles, California, but lived in Jamaica for three years when she was a Peace Corps Volunteer. She moved to San Francisco and studied at the California Culinary Academy, and went on to become a private chef to a well-known L.A. based television production company.

From an early age Elle was a voracious reader of adventure stories and from elementary school through high school, she started writing her own stories of places foreign and exotic.  She studied Art History and continued writing in college, focusing on short stories. 

A dedicated and passionate traveler, Elle has explored river caves in Jamaica and Costa Rica, hiked glaciers in New Zealand and Iceland, and done dogsledding in Greenland and Iceland. She's danced a fa'a Samoan haka and slept in a fale on the island of Savai'i in Samoa, hiked in the northern mountains of Thailand along the border with Myanmar in the Golden Triangle, and in Haiti, she witnessed a white goat ceremonially sacrificed to Erzuli Freda by a powerful Houngan. For a time she did Performance Driving in Southern California, and has years of study and experience dedicated to fencing, theatrical combat, archery, and horsemanship.

Elle currently lives in the central highlands of Costa Rica with her dog Pixie, and her hedgehog, Quiller.Website:  www.tymslyder.com

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Blog Tour: The Stone Guardian by @PaulinaShelf #review

Fantasy Romance

Date Published: November 18, 2014

Element – Fire (Healer/Destroyer)
Royal House – Purple

Milcah was born to rule along side an evil mother. Milcah's father was taken against his will and forced to give up his seed to produce a child with unimaginable powers. At a young age she was taken away from the only home she knows and forced to forget, again and again.Raised by a detached stepmother, Milcah learned to depend on herself and her best friend, Mary for support. When Mary suggest a vacation, with a scenic route, to the Grand Canyon Milcah believes she is finally getting the chance to see outside her small town. Packing a few things and climbing into her old beat up car, she never imagined she would find a new side of herself.

Lost on a back road, Milcah meets her destiny in a small town named Beacon. When her mind is unlocked, she finds she has a past that will lead to the salvation or damnation of the world.

This is book one in The Witches Amulet series.

Review 

A lot of the key elements for this novel were there. It was a great premise for a novel and had some great twists and entertaining moment. A wonderful fantasy journey for Milcah. I wish I could have connected with her on a deeper level as a reader, it would have made me more invested in her journey. If Paulina can draw more of a compassion between the reader and characters in future novels, I see great things for this series.

Paulina is a small town girl with big dreams. She is the second oldest of three talented siblings.

As early as three she was directing her family around acting out whatever current story was in her head. At four between her older brother and her, a whole universe was created which the younger siblings were introduced into as they were born.

Her natural ability to tell a story took her down many paths. She wrote plays, poems, small children books and short stories all before she entered high school.

When picking a career her councilor told her writing was a dying art and so she went to school for veterinarian science. Three years later she dropped out of university and enrolled in the local community college with a major in journalism

In 2008 she graduated with her BA in Communication/Journalism from Cal State Fullerton.

Life happened and her dreams were put on hold until 2013 when she started a review blog. This year her first book in her Witches Amulet series will be released. 

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