Cover Reveal: Stone Cold by Jocelyn Adams (@jocelynadams) #IronHillJinn #UF #CoverLove

I’m super excited to share this cover reveal with you all. This one comes from one of my favorite authors (Like. Seriously.) — and my favorite people, Jocelyn Adams. She is a member of my favorite writing group, and over the years, I’ve gotten to know her well enough to truly call her friend.

The cover is for the second novel in her IronHill Jinn series and features the every dreamy, Isaac (in a kilt, people –YUM).

Check out the details and the fantabulus cover.

Stone Cold (Ironhill Jinn #2)

Release Date:  April, 2014

Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing

Genre: Romantic Urban Fantasy

Back of the book:

Lou Hudson makes a deal with the Isaac to save the Ironhill jinn from execution…and lands on the front line of a war between the vampire and his sire.

Daddy Dearest intends to have Lou for himself to spite Isaac and begins meddling in every corner of her life.  Her reputation shatters when people die, her monster-whispering skills shelved by public outcry and vampire politics.

When forced to confront their enemy, she isn’t prepared for the depth of Isaac’s plotting—or her increasing attraction to him—and to end their latest crisis will only cost Lou a piece of her soul.

Link to the book on Goodreads

About the author:

Jocelyn Adams is an office grunt by day and creator of romance and adventure by night.  Born a farmer’s daughter with a vivid imagination, she spent her childhood dreaming up stories.  With no formal training, she relied on the honest feedback of her writing group to take her from that first short story all the way to THE END of her first novel.  When she isn’t slinging words, you can find her shooting her bow or enjoying the serenity of family life in her little house in the woods.

Her Links (feel free to stalk away)

Facebook  |  Goodreads  |  Twitter

My Writing Process Blog Event: My turn to own up thanks to @ElyzabethMVaLey #writing

I’ve been tagged in a fun little blog event we’ve affectionately called the “Writing Process Blog Thingie”. 😛

Basically, I’ve been tagged by the wonderful Elyzabeth M. VaLey in a post on her blog last week, and this week, it’s time to pay the piper and share a little bit about my own writing process.

Here goes 🙂

1)     What am I working on?

Anyone who knows me kn0ws I am working on far too many stories than I should. Right now, I am working on the next story in my Roses and Thorns BDSM series, plus I have a naughty fairy tale in the works I would like to submit before summer is in full swing. On the mainstream author side (Rebecca Hart), I’ve got an antho release in March and I’d like to get the first novel in her fantasy series finished off and out for consideration.

2)     How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I’d like to think my writing brings the elements of strong prose and vivid description together with believable, likable characters and a story you can’t get out of your head. My erotic writing I think lends beauty to the oft misunderstood world of BDSM and the amazingly romantic elements inherent in the lifestyle. You’d have to tell me if I’ve accomplished that with my stories. 🙂

3)     Why do I write what I do?

With respect to BDSM romance, I write it because of what I mentioned above — the idea that the lifestyle is somehow dirty or taboo in some way. I hope to really highlight the romantic beauty and profound love that can be obtained in a strong BDSM relationship.

4)     How does your writing process work?

My writing process, and schedule, are complete chaotic. I work a FT job, so I tend to steal time wherever and whenever I can. I have written stories during meetings at the office, during breaks or lunches, before work, weekends, after work… the list goes on. I can be a procrastinator, so I do much better with a solid deadline than left to flounder and schedule my writing on my own. Really, the only thing I absolutely have to have to get my writing done is music, and the type depends strongly on the type of story I’m writing at the time. So, my writing process revolves mostly around inspirational playlists.

Now for the fun part of this feature — tagging some fellow authors for you to visit with. They will both be sharing their writing process next week on MONDAY, FEB. 25th, so be sure to stop by and visit with them as well. 🙂

See you next time.
~Bex

The Winner of the Love Scene Blog Hop is… #giveaway @evernightpub #Erorom

I have run the entries through the randomizer (read: a hat with a number for each comment logged where one is chosen by my 13yr old daughter) and come up with the winner of my giveaway in the Evernight Publishing Love Scene Blog Hop.

 

And the winner is…

wyndwhisper

 

Congratulations!  You are the winner of the Evernight Gift Card and your choice of any eBook from my backlist. My backlist can be found on the right sidebar of the blog. Look for an email from me shortly with the details. 🙂

Thanks to everyone for hopping along with us. Here’s hoping you found some steamy love scenes to enjoy and developed a few obsessions with some new authors as well.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all!

~Bex

Guest Post: Does Love Still Exist? #LoveComesLater #Romance

Does Love Still Exist?

By Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar author of Love Comes Later

St. Valentine may be horrified by the cherubs touting candy, flowers or jewelry. The overemphasis of eros, or romantic love, may have merged out of rampant marketeering. Between Christmas and Easter, after all, is a lot of retail silence. In modern society, with women marrying later, and partners divorcing earlier – not waiting for children to grow up – does love still exist?

I had a great idea in 2009; I would write a book about how a modern person with traditional values would find love. I didn’t think this would be so difficult. After all, I’d managed to resist the pressures of my own South Asian culture until the spinsterly age of 26, when, as my father put it, “to find a good man who would make a commitment to me” even if he wasn’t Indian.

Fresh from an unlikely, whirlwind romance in the desert, I sat down to explore in fiction the difficult choices facing young Qatari men and women amongst the myriad dilemmas of love, choice, honor, and duty.

The Qatari characters were based on a meld of dozens of stories I knew of real people; but the insertion of a South Asian girl into the love triangle was all my own.

I put Abdulla, the male protagonist, and Sangita, the unexpected loved interest, in a small London apartment. And waited for sparks to fly. In a Disneyesque-romantic genre, move, they were on a countdown; three days.

But nothing was happening. There they were; young, attractive, in close proximity, and I couldn’t believe that they were falling in love. All the elements were there but the emotions were missing.

I started asking everyone: “How do people fall in love?”

My older Indian friends were surprised.

“Didn’t you have a love marriage?” They asked me, products of the arranged marriage system. “Don’t you know?”

“Seems so long ago,” I muttered, well out of earshot of my husband.

“I loved your book,” another friend said. “I’ve never known what love is…” she said, with a dreamy look in her, having been arranged to her husband.

“It’s all the same after a while,” I said to her dryly, watching our husbands on their mobile phones while we mothers ran after our children.

“But how can they fall in love,” I asked my Qatari friends, growing desperate for realism as the book entered a seemingly endless cycle of revisions.

“She has to be hot,” one of my male beta readers said, in all honesty.

Chemistry. Right. I forgot that part, somehow, settling into comfortable domesticity.

Abdulla and Sangita did eventually find their way in the story. The sequel to the book is in progress and explores an equally murky area: what happens after the spark? Are the chances for survival of ‘falling into’ love greater?

I grew up with the idea that no, falling in love did not guarantee romantic success; making allegiances between well researched partners was stacking the cards in your favor. My parents’ anti-falling in love argument was the 50% divorce rate in America.

We’ll see what happens for Abdulla and Sangita as they try to grow their spark into a fire to heat their home.

What do you think? Do you fall in and out of love? Or do you choose to love?

Love Comes Later
By Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar

Winner of Best Indie Book Award, Romance, 2013
Semi Finalist, Best Novel, eFestival of Words, 2013
Finalist, New Talent Award, Festival of Romance, 2013

“…a deliciously tangled plot and insight into life on the Persian Gulf.”
Kirkus Review

Blurb: When newlywed Abdulla loses his wife and unborn child in a car accident, the world seems to crumble beneath his feet. Thrust back into living in the family compound, he goes through the motions—work, eat, sleep, repeat. Blaming himself for their deaths, he decides to never marry again but knows that culturally, this is not an option. Three years later, he’s faced with an arranged marriage to his cousin Hind, whom he hasn’t seen in years. Hard-pressed to find a way out, he consents to a yearlong engagement and tries to find a way to end it. What he doesn’t count on, and is unaware of, is Hind’s own reluctance to marry.

Longing for independence, she insists on being allowed to complete a master’s degree in England, a condition Abdulla readily accepts. When she finds an unlikely friend in Indian-American Sangita, she starts down a path that will ultimately place her future in jeopardy.

The greatest success of Rajakumar’s novel is the emotional journey the reader takes via her rich characters. One cannot help but feel the pressure of the culturally mandated marriage set before Hind and Abdulla. He’s not a real Muslim man if he remains single, and she will never be allowed freedoms without the bondage of a potentially loveless marriage. It’s an impossible situation dictated by a culture that they still deeply respect.

Rajakumar pulls back the veil on life in Qatar to reveal a glimpse of Muslim life rarely seen by Westerners.

About the Author: Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar is a South Asian American who has lived in Qatar since 2005. Moving to the Arabian Desert was fortuitous in many ways since this is where she met her husband, had a baby, and made the transition from writing as a hobby to a full time passion.  She has since published seven e-books including a mom-ior for first time mothers, Mommy But Still Me, a guide for aspiring writers, So You Want to Sell a Million Copies, a short story collection, Coloured and Other Stories, and a novel about women’s friendships, Saving Peace.

Her recent books have focused on various aspects of life in Qatar. From Dunes to Dior, named as a Best Indie book in 2013, is a collection of essays related to her experiences as a female South Asian American living in the Arabian Gulf. Love Comes Later was the winner of the Best Indie Book Award for Romance in 2013 and is a literary romance set in Qatar and London. The Dohmestics is an inside look into compound life, the day to day dynamics between housemaids and their employers.

After she joined the e-book revolution, Mohana dreams in plotlines. Learn more about her work on her website at www.mohanalakshmi.com or follow her latest on Twitter: @moha_doha.

LINKS:

Author Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/Mohanalakshmi-Rajakumar/e/B002PMRI1U
Author website: http://www.mohanalakshmi.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/@moha_doha
Facebook: www.facebook.com/themohadoha

Youtube:www.youtube.com/themohadoha

Pinterest:www.pinterest.com/mohadoha

Evernight Publishing Love Scene Blog Hop and #Giveaway #ValentinesDay #Erotic #Romance

Welcome to the Book Nook. So glad you could stop by for my little piece of Evernight Publishing’s Love Scene Blog Hop. I am quite excited to have you here. *happy dance*

Since the theme of this HOP is love scenes, I thought I would share with you a bit of a love scene from my latest Evernight release, LOCK, STOCK, and SPANK HER, which is one of 6 stories in Evernight’s Crimson Rope anthology… which by the way, was a Predator’s and Editors Top 10 Erotic Romance for 2013. *cue confetti*

Pay special attention to the little clip I post, as there will be a question asked at the end. One you must answer in the comments to be qualified for my giveaway.

Bet you’re wondering now what I am giving away… welp, this time around I am offering one lucky winner the choice of any eBook from my backlist, as well as a $10 Evernight Publishing Gift Card.

Here is your teaser first…

* * * *

While the collar he’d made Mia was breathtaking, Beth decided she would much prefer the pretty blue sapphires in the pile than the emerald jewels that adorned that one. She picked one up, held it up to the light and marveled at the way the gem sparkled, tossing its refracted color onto the plain white walls.

“They are almost as beautiful as you are. Almost.”

Beth dropped the sapphire stone on the dresser and whipped about. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

His grin jumpstarted her pulse. “Yes, I see that.” He crossed to her in three long strides, his proximity stealing all the air from the room, and her lungs. “Hello, angel. I’m so glad you came.”

“Hello again, Sir.”

Before she could say another word, think another thought, Alexander grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. His mouth crushed hers in a bruising kiss.

Beth melted against him, her arms sliding up to encircle his neck. She welcomed the feel of his body pressed against hers and savored the taste of his forceful lips.

Alexander growled and pressed forward, backing Beth against the wall beside the dresser. His hands found her wrists and pinned them above her head while his mouth continued to ravish hers. He held her wrists immobile with one hand, the other sliding down her side to the hem of her skirt. With minimal effort, he managed to hike it up above her waist. Hot lips kissed a trail of fire along the column of her throat. His voice vibrated against her racing pulse. He drew back enough to capture her gaze, his lips curling in a wicked grin. “Now that we’ve gotten the vanilla out of the way.”

She gasped for air, desperate for the feel of his hands on her body. “Take me, Sir. Please.” Her voice was little more than a whimper.

Growling, he captured her lower lip with his teeth, held it for a heart beat, and released it. “Oh, I intend to, angel.” Alexander grabbed hold of her wrist and drew her with him to the bed, dropping onto it as he hauled her against him. With a hand to her back, and a twist of her torso, Alexander had her positioned across his thighs, ass in the air, and hair hanging about her in a tawny curtain that reached to the floor. “But, first, we have some unfinished business. You still have two more coming, girl. A good master never forgets.”

* * * * 

If you are interested in picking up a copy of THE CRIMSON ROPE anthology, you can get it here:

Evernight Publishing  |  Amazon  |  Amazon UK  | Barnes and Noble

Now, without further ado, here is my question. You must leave your answer in the comments section, along with your email address to be entered in the drawing for the prizes. Copied and Pasted Entries will be deleted!

WHAT DOES ALEXANDER THINK IS ALMOST AS BEAUTIFUL AS BETH?

A random winner will be selected from all entries received. You must leave an email address with your comment so I can reach you if you are selected as my winner.

Now, if all this isn’t enough to get you hot and bothered… Evernight is also having a huge giveaway to celebrate the event. They will be selecting one commentor to give a $100 VISA gift card. Nice, right?  So make sure to leave a comment below.

Please make sure to swing by the other sites participating in the HOP as well. Each blog or website will be offering their own giveaways, plus comments on the other blogs will also count as entries for the GRAND PRIZE — so make your thoughts known!

Below is a link to the list of participating blogs.

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Click here to view this Linky  list…

Thanks so much for stopping by.