Masters of the Hunt Box Set Release! 15 Exciting Full Length Novels!

Today, I'm super excited to share the release of the Masters of the Hunt Box Set with you, which includes 15 full length novels. And I'm especially excited that one of those novels, called Code Black, is by my very own dear friend and writing partner Tina Moss! Code Black is a Paranormal Romantic Suspense that will hold you on the edge of your seat from start to finish!

Kneel before the Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden, a boxed set collection of Fantasy, Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Tales of Hunters, Assassins, Guardians, Slayers, Bodyguards, and more, featuring New York Times, USA Today, and National Bestselling Authors!

Elianne Adams- Call of the Dragon
Sarra Cannon- Sacrifice Me, Season One
Nicole Ciacchella- A House Divided
Hailey Edwards- Heir of the Dog
Ann Gimpel- Earth's Requiem
Ramona Gray- The Vampire's Kiss & The Vampire's Love
Charlene Hartnady- Skin
Ellis Leigh- Savage Surrender
Anna Lowe- Desert Hunt
Anne Marsh- Pleasured by the Pack
Crista McHugh- Poisoned Web
Amber Ella Monroe- Donor
Tina Moss- Code Black
Annie Nicholas- Bait
Diana St.Gabriel- Escaping Forever
Holley Trent- Prince in Leather

Get this amazing collection for only $1.99 right now! Click on the picture below.

Also, join the Masters of the Hunt Release Party on June 11th! Click Here.

Author Interview - Brenda Corey Dunne, author of Dependent - and Giveaway

I'm so happy to have my writer friend Brenda Corey Dunne stop by today on her Blog Tour for the release of her new novel, Dependent.

When 45-year-old Ellen Michaels loses her husband to a tragic military
accident, she is left in a world of gray. For 25 years her life has been
dictated by the ubiquitous “They”—the military establishment that has
included her like chattel with John’s worldly goods—his dependents,
furniture, and effects. They—who have stolen her hopes, her dreams
and her innocence, and now in mere months will take away the roof
over her head. Ellen is left with nothing to hold on to but memories and
guilt, and an awful secret that has held her in its grip since she was 19.
John’s untimely death takes away her anchor, and now, without the
military, there is no one to tell her where to go, what to do—no one to
dictate who she is. Dependent deals with issues ever-present in today’s
service families—early marriage, frequent long absences, the culture of
rank, and post-traumatic stress, as well as harassment and abuse of
power by higher-ranking officials. It presents a raw and realistic view of
life for the lives of the invisible support behind the uniform!

Inspiration and Stumbling Blocks for DEPENDENT

By Brenda Corey Dunne

About ten years ago, I was an unemployed, stay-at-home mom and military spouse. I was happy, my kids were bright, my husband had a great job, and we were building a custom home in a lovely community just off of the base. 

I’m not sure what it was that made me step back and think about it, maybe it was a speech I did for our local health authority, maybe it was something I heard on the news, or maybe it was just a bad dream, but somehow around that time I realized that I had let everything that made me unique slide. I was no longer a physiotherapist, I no longer wore an Air Force uniform, my kids were growing and soon would be off to their own adventures, and where would that leave me?

At home supporting my husband and his career.

Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly supportive of my husband’s Air Force career. I’m so proud of everything he does and would do anything to help him toward success. The same goes for my kids. But that day ten years ago I realized that the girl who graduated at the top of her high school class—that girl who had dreams and goals and so much potential—had somehow hidden herself behind the other things.  Behind the uniform. And happy as I was to be there at the time, I knew that it was a temporary emotion. Sooner or later my kids would move on. What if something happened to my husband?

It terrified me. It’s not something military spouses—or any spouse for that matter—want to think about. And that fear inspired me, for some crazy reason, to write down forty pages of a similar story, with no expectations of what it would become. It was like an exercise, a catharsis for me. Realizing that I needed to work to not only support the ones I love, but I needed to support myself.

The story I wrote was difficult, sad, disturbing. And I put it down many, many times because I simply couldn’t allow myself to go there, especially when I saw other friends and neighbours going through similar experiences after I had written them down. There were times when I’d sit and re-read the manuscript and burst into tears. But I kept picking away at it until 2012, when I forced myself—at the encouragement of a writing and military friend and with the help of NaNoWriMo—to finish writing it.

And now the little story that started out as a way to work through my own,  deeply personal fear will be my first traditionally published book. I hope other women read it and it inspires them to take their own steps toward supporting their own dreams.

Brenda

Dependent releases on July 29th. Find it here:

Amazon

B&N

Goodreads

BRENDA COREY DUNNE, trained as a physiotherapist, worked several

years as a Physiotherapy Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force before
meeting the love of her life, RCAF Colonel Tom Dunne, and becoming a
military dependent herself. Brenda currently resides on a small hobby
farm in Eastern Ontario, Canada, with her husband and three children.

Connect with Brenda online:

Facebook

Twitter
Blog

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Announcing the Editing and Proofreading Services

Today, I would like to announce my new Editing and Proofreading Services for fiction and non-fiction writers.

For detailed information on the services offered, as well as the pricing, please look at my 

Editing and Proofreading Services page.

Please spread the word and do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance Book Blitz & Giveaway

Book & Author Details:

Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance
Authors: Alyssa Day, Bonnie Vanak, Caris Roane, Erin Kellison, Erin Quinn, Felicity E. Heaton, Jennifer Ashley, Laurie London
Publication date: April 14th 2014
Genres: Adult, Paranormal Romance

Synopsis:

Eight hot paranormal romances by New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors. Alpha-male bad boys will fulfill your darkest, most deadliest desires in these stories about shifters, werewolves, vampires, magic, special powers and other realms. But only if you dare…

Featuring the bad boy heroes of:
BODYGUARD by Jennifer Ashley
ALEJANDRO’S SORCERESS by Alyssa Day
BEWITCH by Felicity Heaton
DARKNESS FALLS by Erin Kellison
ROGUE’S PASSION by Laurie London
THE FORBIDDEN LIFE OF ALEX MOORE by Erin Quinn
THE MATING HEAT by Bonnie Vanak
TRAPPED by Caris Roane

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21544659-dark-and-deadly?ac=1

Purchase:

-Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Deadly-Eight-Paranormal-Romance-ebook/dp/B00JNSN3RM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397489848&sr=8-1&keywords=Dark+and+Deadly%3A+Eight+Bad+Boys+of+Paranormal+Romance
-Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-and-deadly-jennifer-ashley/1119209437?ean=2940149546312

 

 

Excerpt from ALEJANDRO’S SORCERESS by Alyssa Day

Poe’s Avenue, Virginia, FBI Paranormal Operations Division HQ

Alejandro cocked the shotgun they hadn’t been able to force him to give up and followed his teammate into the burnt and jagged opening in the side of the building, hoping that—for once—there weren’t any trolls.

He hated trolls.

“Clear,” Mac, already moving through the narrow hallway, called back to him. It was Mac’s turn to go first. They kept score.

Lately he’d been keeping score on a lot of things. Like time. The year, two weeks, and five days since he’d seen the sunlight outside of the academy, for instance.

Not that he was counting.

Anyway, the year-long course at the FBI’s sister division, P Ops, had kept him plenty busy.

“Shotgun!  You coming or scratching your ass back there?”

“No, my friend, I was just thinking of asking your sister to scratch it for me,” Alejandro said. “She reaches all the itchy parts so well.”

“I will kick your ass if you get any of your itchy parts anywhere near my sister. Or she’d kick it for you. Jenny scares even me.”

The sound of Mac’s Glock firing three shots in rapid succession caused Alejandro to break into a run as he slapped his night-vision goggles in place.

“On my way,” he called, not bothering to try to be stealthy. “Save some for me.”

He caught the shifting glimmer of light in the corner of one eye and whirled around, aiming and firing in one smooth motion. Whatever it was, he missed. Too short to be a troll, so there was one mercy. If he were the type to have nightmares, he’d still be having them about the last one’s breath. Green, moss-covered teeth. What the hell was that about?  Toothpaste was cheap.

“Shotgun!  Could use a little help here!” Mac sounded just the slightest bit out of breath, which was unusual for the man who’d beat the all-time speed record for the FBI’s obstacle course at Quantico in an inter-agency competition. Alejandro had won a hundred bucks on that one.

He took off running, cocking the Remington as he moved. The vampire who jumped him five feet down the hall took a blast to the head. Alejandro vaulted over the vamp’s disintegrating body, not wanting the acidic slime of decomposing vamp on his new shoes.

A high-pitched scream warned him of the approach from overhead of a deadly Mngwa, but he had a silver throwing knife at hand. One lethal toss later, a couple hundred pounds of mutant killer cat lay on the floor, blood gurgling out of its throat.

He skidded to a stop at the end of the corridor, not willing to rush headlong into a blind turn, and Mac called out to him again, his deep voice rough and strained. “Alejandro, if you’re coming, now would be a really good time.”

Alejandro instantly switched from student-taking-his-final-exam mode to deadly-predator mode. They had a code between them, he and Mac. They were only Alejandro and Maxwell to each other in the event of a dire emergency. Whatever faced Mac around that corner was no training-ground obstacle. Somebody had set a trap, and Mac was caught in it.

Alejandro was going to kick somebody’s ass for this one.

Who is your favorite bad boy of Paranormal Romance or Urban Fantasy?
Comment for a chance to win one (1) ebook copy of Dark and Deadly.

 Open internationally. Winner will be chosen at random. Prize will be sent on May 14th by Xpresso Book Tours.

Dreaming Up... Ideas

I love sleeping. Who doesn’t? But I love sleeping not just for the blessed rest I get after a stressful long day but also because I love dreaming. Since I was little, I’ve had vivid, beautiful, action-packed dreams. Ok, maybe not always beautiful, but nearly always interesting.

Some writers claim that they got their story ideas in a dream. Stephanie Myer, for example, is one them. I always wish that this was true for me but could never say that it was. A couple of nights ago, however, I had a dream where I was (literally) writing not one, but two different novels. I heard myself speaking the words to the first paragraphs of both novels, while actually seeing the scenes play out as in a movie. I have to say, it was pretty cool. When I woke up, I remembered the general gist of what I was writing, though unfortunately, not the exact words. I grabbed a sticky note and wrote down what I could remember. It cracked me up that one of the details I remembered was that the heroine of the second novel was dressed in a “bitching suit”. Yes, honestly, I actually heard that description in the dream!

Now whether these stories will develop into something, I’ll have to see. But I hope I get more dreams like this in the future. Since dreams are often the sparks of both what we think about in our waking state or of our unconscious – and often the combination of both – we can learn about ourselves through them. Dreams also bestow on us a different way of looking at something, an unexpected and fun perspective. It’s not surprising that the answers to many questions, and sometimes even work-related solutions to problems, come during the night. So why not have fun with dreaming and see what comes of it. There are even techniques designed to help one have more consious dreams, called lucid dreaming. Perhaps it would be interesitng to try. If I do, I'll post on the experience.

Keep a notebook by your bed so you can jot down any idea that seems interesting as soon as you wake up – you remember your dreams most vividly in those first few minutes after waking. You never know…

Have you ever had ideas for your writing following a dream? Did it ever develop into something more?

Martial Arts in novels

Martial Arts have always been my passion. I don’t remember exactly how it all started, but as long as I can remember, the fighting arts (key word is arts) held my interest. You may wonder if I’m a violent person by nature. The simple answer would be I am not. But it’s too simple. I believe we all have violence in our nature to an extent. It’s how you chose to channel it that makes all the difference. Let’s be honest here, not many of us would shy away from violence when it comes to protecting ourselves or our loved ones. Now, don’t be too fast to deny that. Think about it first. Would you do what you have to do to protect your child or your spouse? Would you use violence if necessary? I should hope so.

But Martial Arts are not about violence, not at its core.  It’s about learning to defend your life and the life of those you love. But it’s also much more. In Japanese, “martial fighting technique” is called bu-jutsu. It is quite different from the term bu-do, which means “the martial way”, the way referring to the way of life. What differentiates the two, besides the obvious, budo encompasses a lifelong pursuit for the perfection of character and technique, while bujutsu is just that – learning to fight with no concern for one’s personal development as a human being. One of the main precepts of the Japanese style of karate called Shotokan is “to seek perfection of character”. This is what got me involved with Martial Arts in the first place.

I love when I find a novel where the hero or the heroine is practicing a form of Martial Arts.  I mean, I enjoy any kick-ass heroes but I feel that the actual practice of Martial Arts by a character lends them more depths and gives more of a glimpse into their personality. Generally, it would tell the reader that this character has enough patience and diligence and willpower to push their bodies and minds for years and reach for something beyond the physical. The training scenes in particular often reveal much  about a particular character. It also humanizes them, makes them more easily relatable.

Here are just a few examples of the novels with a character that practices Martial Arts or has some kind of a connection to it. These are novels that I really enjoyed reading and would suggest.

The Ninja Series by Eric Lustbader – Martial Arts in this series has an almost mystical nature but nevertheless, it makes for a great character and interesting insights.

A Devil In the Details by K. A. Stewart – I’m partial to the Japanese Martial Arts, so I’m partial to Jesse’s way of life and connection to bushido. Lots of quotes and mentions of such great classics as the Book of Five Rings and the Art of War.

Night’s Cold Kiss by Tracey O’Hara – Includes good training scenes

 Please add your favorite novels with Martial Arts connections.