Posts Tagged ‘paranormal romance’

Exclusive Excerpt

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: Gone with the Ghost by Erin McCarthy

Two things I was obsessed with as a kid- ghosts and murder mysteries. Yes, I was a weird child. Yes, my mother debated therapy for me at one point given my active imagination and macabre hobbies, but she decided to trust her gut and let it play out. Now she’s happy to know I’m not a psychopath, I’m just a writer. Starting a new series and branching into mystery from romance was an easy leap for me. I always loved adding an element of mystery to my romance novels and I’ve been a mystery reader since childhood.

When my daughter was a baby and I had zero money, I went to the library three or four times a week and eventually checked out every Agatha Christie book they had (close to 60, I would guess) and then worked my way through all their cozy mysteries. If it had a kitten or a cupcake on the cover, I was all over it! So when the opportunity came along to create a mystery series, my heroine Bailey popped into my head immediately. An amateur sleuth with a love for fashion and HGTV yet who grows intrigued by mayhem and murder? Very close to my heart. While I’ve always been fascinated by ghost stories, I honestly am not even sure where the idea for the ghostly sidekick came from. Suddenly Ryan was there talking and the first book just about wrote itself.

If your best friend came back as a ghost, what would be the first thing you would do with them?

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Guest Post

Guest Post: Grace Goodwin’s Top 5 Happily Ever Afters!

So, like me, you’re a romance fan? It’s my one undeniable weakness. Show me a sappy movie, a heart-melting book or let me hear an emotional song about love and I’m a goner. Sold. Sign me UP.

Which means, over the last…ummm…few years, I’ve read, watched, seen and heard a LOT of stories about love, falling in love, losing love, finding love, making love. Love is in the air, isn’t it? Isn’t it always?

Now, I combine my two favorite loves, science fiction and romance, in the Interstellar Brides series. In Mating Fever, our sassy, smart, little-bit-crazy heroine gets a bit more than she bargained for when her assigned mate is a Beast suffering from Mating Fever. Beauty and the Beast? Yep, you guessed it, one of my favorites.

But make Beast a hot, protective, sexy-as-hell alpha male in outer space? Yes. I DID do that. Sorry. (Not Sorry!)

But I digress. Top 5 BEST HEA’s ever? Here’s my personal list. What’s on yours?

1 – Beauty and the Beast (Yes, I saw the new movie. LOVED it.)

2 – Blay and Qhuinn in Lover At Last by JR Ward – I cried for an hour… (*warning – it’s a gay vampire romance, and one of the best love stories I’ve ever read…especially if you know their history in the previous books. Explicit scenes – including a M/M/M/M/F scene may be a bit much for some readers.)

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Guest Post

Guest Post: “The Reality of Loving a Paranormal Shifter” by Wendy Sparrow

I know! I know! Paranormal romance isn’t all about reality, but when you’re creating a paranormal world—you think of weird things. You have…concerns.

The first quandary I have when I start a new world is how I will deal with their clothes. Seriously. That’s my very first detail to work out. Do the clothes shift with them? Do they bust out of their clothing and go through a wardrobe of clothes? If they do destroy the clothing they have on, will they wind up somewhere naked? It takes something out of the sexy momentum when your tux-wearing hero shifter ends up hiding in bushes at a party after he wolfed out. And, sure, maybe they’ll undress some of the time, but in an emergency—you’ve hit the climax—and clothing is a casualty because all hell has broken loose. But, that’s not the only thing jiggling loose, if you know what I mean. The awkward could be high. Sure, some heroes and heroines could pull it off with panache, but they’d still be starkers.

Then, there’s the shift itself. No matter how many times I write shifters, I always think, “How would it really work?” There’s the Hollywood shift where the hair grows in slow-mo as the bones twist and enlarge. There are stages as one or the other form recedes. Human to hairy human and then to upright human-wolf followed by some mixture of wolf and human. How far does it go? To full creature? Full-wolf or bear or whatever? Would it be loud or quiet? Fast or slow? I vary it up in different worlds, but I figure I might as well embrace the magic and assume the definition of paranormal invites interpretation of what’s possible. I get a little contrary with my inner voice and yell, “Don’t blind me with your science!”

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Q&A

Q&A: Jessica Lee of UNDYING DESTINY

Guys, we have such a mid-week treat for you! We got to pick the brain of one of our favorite paranormal romance authors. Don’t miss our Q&A with Jessica Lee, author of Undying Destiny!

What was your favorite aspect of pulling all of these stories together?

Great question. You know, I think it would be getting to dig deeper into who these men are that formed the Enclave. I adore a tortured alpha male, and getting to pull back the veil on the Enclave men and watch them fall for their women was so much fun.

Most frustrating?

The most frustrating…? Life getting in the way of telling their stories. It was a long time between books two and three and four, so it was frustrating for me to have to wait so long to get back to my Enclave warriors.

FIVE BOOKS

If you could only read five books for the rest of your life, what five books would they be, and why?

Oh wow! Tough question. Gah! If I had to choose, I would say it would have to be the last five novels in Karen Marie Moning’s Highlander series. I fell so hard for those Highlanders!

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Guest Post

Guest Post: Paige Tyler’s Favorite Character From HER TRUE MATCH

That’s easy. It’s Trevor Maxwell, the snarky, occasionally inappropriate coyote shifter whose been showing up in the X-OPS Series here and there.

Trevor was originally only going to have a bit part in Her True Match, even though his book is coming up next in the series. But then he got involved in checking out a possible hybrid research facility in Maine, and from there, things got a little bit out of hand.

Much of this had to do with the fact that the Department of Covert Operation (DCO) needed to get one of their agents into a psychiatric facility to see if there were some evil people up there trying to cook up a new batch of hybrids. The critical issue at hand here is that the DCO thought the best way to get someone deep inside the facility was if that person needed to be committed. When it came to finding someone who could pull off that role easily, it was Trevor.

Not too sure what that says about him.

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Guest Post

Guest Post: “Earning That Happily Ever After” by Lisa Kessler

Thanks for having me back on the EverAfter Romance blog! If we’ve never met, I write dark paranormal romance, and my devoted readers will tell you, I like my characters to earn their Happily Ever After.

What does that mean? One of my favorite parts of a romance is that big black moment. We’ve been building up to it the whole book. Will they or won’t they? Whatever they fear most, we’re going to face it. I yearn to see them grow into the people I know they can be. This is usually the moment in a book that can bring tears to your eyes.

My poor husband has found me sobbing in the kitchen more than once as I face having to write that scene. By the time I get there, I love my characters, and I don’t want to hurt them, but for me, it’s that huge moment when love really does cause a transformation. That’s when the happily ever after is only as delicious as that dark time is painful.

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Guest Post

Guest Post: “The World’s Gone Crazy and Here are the Tropes I Want to See in 2017” by Patricia Eimer

No matter what side of the aisle you sit on politically – and I really really don’t care FYI—I think we can all agree that 2016 was a bloody dumpster fire of a year. David Bowie set the tone by dying and leaving us with the album Dark Star (that he recorded knowing it was his final love letter to the world) at the beginning of the year; Carrie Fisher died and left us with a final image of her in Rogue One at the end of the year; and in between, a whole raft of talented people left the world a darker place with their passing. The election seemed like it was never going to end. The weather was crazy. People were shot in churches and nightclubs and medical facilities and schools. A politician was stabbed on the street in England. A child was killed by an alligator at Disney World. The papers were filled with pictures of Syria. Freaky clowns kept appearing in playgrounds because we aren’t all scarred enough by clowns already. 2016 was literally a highlight reel of tragedy porn.

But I’m lucky, because I had people that I could go to who looked at the dumpster fire that was 2016 and could make me laugh about it. My girlfriends and I have a tradition, we always try to get together in January. Some years we all fly to the same place and spend a long weekend together. Sometimes we do a large conference call kvetch. This year we were all feeling pretty battered and bruised so we actually decided that it was worth it to spend the money and get together in person—away from our families. And every one of us made the comment that we didn’t go out New Year’s Eve. Partly because we’ve gotten old enough that being drunk young people puking on our feet just isn’t fun anymore, but the other part was that we were all essentially hunkered down, waiting for the dumpster fire that was 2016 to finally end. We didn’t want to risk setting foot outside until it was over.

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Exclusive Excerpt

Exclusive Excerpt: BEAST RISING by Angela Addams

WARNING: This excerpt is too hot for work. Nothing says ‘wild’ quite like an erotic romance with a paranormal twist. Make sure no one’s around and kick back and enjoy this excerpt from Angela Addams!

The only way he could find solace was in the arms of his mate. Mayhem took the minutes that he had to be alone with Hannah and used them to love her.

He ran his fingers through her hair, sweeping the wet strands from her bare shoulder. “You showered.”

After his meeting with Aubrey, he’d tracked Hannah down, knowing his time was limited. That important things would demand his attention.

“I needed time to unwind.” Hannah’s smile was sad but tender. “Lots of intense emotions swirling around down there.”

He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip, cupping her face at the same time. “What do you feel now?”

She giggled a little. “I feel like things are going to get very interesting.” Her smile faded as she reached her hand to trail a line from his brow to his jaw. “I feel your sorrow. I’m so sorry, Mayhem. Whatever you need from me…”

“I need you to love me, Hannah. That’s all I’ve ever needed.” He bent and kissed her, sweetly, tenderly as he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off the ground. “Let me think of something else for a minute.”

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Guest Post

Guest Post: “10 Ways Lacey and Alex Celebrate the Holidays!” by Paige Tyler

In my newest release Wolf Unleashed (SWAT Series), we get to see how Lacey Barton, veterinarian by occupation, heroine by nature, becomes The One true love for Dallas Police Department SWAT Officer—and werewolf—Alex Trevino. Their story will make you laugh, cry, sigh, and completely fall in love with them.

Now that Lacey and Alex are together, and she’s officially part of The Pack, here are ten things on their holiday to-do list!

  1. This will be Lacey and Alex’s first Christmas together, so they’ll spend the morning lazing around the apartment treating themselves to breakfast in bed, then exchange gifts.
  1. Later, they’ll head over to spend the day with the extended Pack family at the SWAT compound, along with their two dogs, Tuffie and Leo, for Christmas dinner. That means lots of food on the grill with some smokers and deep-fryers to boot. Werewolves eat a lot, so there are going to be enough turkey, burgers, hot dogs, and barbecue to feed an army.
  1. A party at the SWAT compound wouldn’t be a party without playing some volleyball. Alex and the other guys are going to need some exercise to burn off all those extra calories, right? Since it’s Christmas, it’s probably going to be cold outside, but something tells me the SWAT hunks will be taking their shirts off anyway.
  1. After the game, they’ll head inside to exchange presents with family and friends, which now includes the entire extended SWAT family. Because there are so many people, the gifts are typically small, but meaningful.
  1. While Lacey isn’t off from work and the veterinary clinic is closed for the holiday, after the party, she and Alex stop by to check on the animals to make sure they’re all doing okay.

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Guest Post

Guest Post: “Paranormal Heroes” by N.J. Walters

I’m a writer, but I am also a reader. I love to curl up with a good book and lose myself in a story. Like any reader, I have my favorite heroes. They’re usually the emotionally or physically wounded, the anti-heroes, those tough men who don’t believe they could ever be anyone’s hero. Flawed and sometimes broken, they nevertheless stand head and shoulders above the usual leading men.

There are far too many to list them all, but here are five of my favorite paranormal romance heroes.

  1. Rhage from J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. I admit that I put off reading this series when it first came out because the blurb from the first book just didn’t hook me. But it kept getting such great reviews I ended up reading the first three books one after another, and I fell in love with the brotherhood, but most especially with Rhage. He’s handsome, but it’s not his looks that drew me in. It was his tortured soul and his huge capacity for love. How can you not love a vampire who can morph into a purple dragon to save the people he loves?
  1. Kaleb Krychek from Nalini Singh’s Heart of Obsidian. I was a huge fan of her Guild Hunter series, but had never read any of her Psy-Changeling series. Then I read about Heart of Obsidian and bought it, even though it meant starting in the middle of a series. Kaleb is arguably the most dangerous man on the planet. The only person he ever loved was kidnapped and it has taken him years to find her. The ones who took her from him will pay, even if it means he has to lay waste to the world.

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