Today I am happy to host the lovely and talented Jessica Bayliss! She is releasing her short Breathless today! Squee! So excited for her!
A brush with death brings Leah closer to the ghosts she longs to find and throws her into the arms of the troubled scuba instructor who saves her.
Dale, an Operation Enduring Freedom Veteran, is haunted by his own restless spirits. He's on a hunt for forgiveness, and the Caribbean Sea is his hunting ground. The peace they search for lies in the bond they never suspected they shared. BREATHLESS BUY LINKS: Amazon (Kindle) B&N (Nook) iBooks (Apple) Kobo RELEASE TOUR GIVEAWAY INFO:
Excerpt:
I exhale and watch bubbles float off into the churning blue above me. I draw another breath, except this time, there is no air. My lungs, in all their twenty-seven years of finding no resistance to their whims, of drawing in sweet gulps, huffs, and puffs, meet a wall of stainless steel. With the next try, that wall slams into my diaphragm. My left hand grasps the air pressure gauge as it bobs and snakes down by my hip. The dial’s needle hovers at a thick black line highlighted in red. Zero pounds per square inch. I’m seventy feet below the Caribbean Sea, and I’m out of air. Heavy nausea grabs hold of my gut and throat. I almost spit out the regulator mouthpiece, but reason kicks in. I stop myself just in time. Don’t panic. Stay calm. But it’s so hard to follow my own instructions. The warm water cradling my body has no mercy for this tiny, helpless human, and it turns to ice around me, needling my skin with cold until I’m numb. I hold my final breath. Everything in me screams out the wrongness of this. The world on the other side of my mask fuzzes out. My mind will soon follow if I don’t do something. Now. Remember the training. Just find another diver. Thank God, one of the instructors is less than ten yards away. My finned feet power me to Dale’s side with five hard kicks. He’s tucking something into a waist bag, and when I thrust my air pressure gauge into his face, at first he jerks away from it. Then his eyes widen as realization hits. I expect him to immediately reach for his spare regulator, the savior of rubber and metal, my sole hope if I want any fate other than drowning. Instead, he brings his large, strong hands to my face. The honey-gold flecks within his irises glint and flash in what filmy light breaches the yards of water between the surface and my airless lungs. There’s no warmth down here, and I’m out of time. Dale is my only hope. I let him capture my face between his palms and hold me with his anchor eyes. My heart beats a fluttery, jerky rhythm, and I count--One. Two-three. Four. Five-six-seven--and wait as though I’m not moments from my death. As though I have all the time in the world. But whatever he’s doing, it’s working. I’m calmer. For the first time since I found nothing behind my inhale, my heart beats steady and true. He gives me a firm nod, and I return the gesture. It’s then, only then, that he unhooks the spare regulator from his dive vest. His other hand comes to the mouthpiece I still clench in my teeth. He brushes his fingers against my lips as he pulls the device free, and I give it up reluctantly even though it’s totally useless. A small, salty flow of water hits my tongue, and I swallow it down—the first of what could turn out to be a whole ocean’s worth if we mess up this maneuver.
BIO:
They say write what you know, so Jessica Bayliss did. Her story, BREATHLESS, was inspired by her own experience running out of air on a scuba dive—except without all the steamy romance and eerie paranormal happenings. Alas, real life. Obviously, she survived. Her genre-bending fiction holds a little something for everyone. A lover of ghost tales and horror since her days scanning VHS rental shelves—admittedly with eyes half-averted from the gory covers—a touch of the mysterious always finds a home in Jessica’s work. Romance with a dash of supernatural. Horror with a bit of humor. You get the gist. Jessica also writes across age groups and is a firm believer in the motto: there is a new reader born every day, whether young or not-so-young. Look for her upcoming releases: TEN PAST CLOSING, a YA contemporary thriller (Sky Pony Press, Spring 2018), and BROKEN CHORDS, a YA horror novella (Leap Books, October 2017). You can find her story “Care of the Undead Dog” in ZOMBIE CHUNKS, which came out earlier this year. Read about all of Jessica’s books and stories here. Connect with Jessica online: Website Goodreads
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The wonderful author Torie James has a pretty new cover to share with you all! And to celebrate she had made the first two books in the New Camelot series free for a limited time! These are great books, so be sure to grab them and keep an eye out this summer for Timeless Surrender!! Here are the freebie links...
Book 1 #free at time of posting: www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZQ1OWVG Book 2 #free at time of posting: www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZQLO612
Today I am happy to host another cover reveal for the fantastic Jessica Bayliss!
A brush with death brings Leah closer to the ghosts she longs to find and throws her into the arms of the troubled scuba instructor who saves her.
Dale, an Operation Enduring Freedom Veteran, is haunted by his own restless spirits. He's on a hunt for forgiveness, and the Caribbean Sea is his hunting ground. The peace they search for lies in the bond they never suspected they shared.
Excerpt:
He breathes with me, using his pace to slow mine. It feels like too much. The stillness. Our breath as one. His touch against my face and unyielding gaze locked onto mine. I want to escape up to safety, but he won’t let me. All I can do is trust him.
They say write what you know, so Jessica Bayliss did. Her story, BREATHLESS, was inspired by her own experience running out of air on a scuba dive—except without all the steamy romance and eerie paranormal happenings. Alas, real life. Obviously, she survived. Her genre-bending fiction holds a little something for everyone. A lover of ghost tales and horror since her days scanning VHS rental shelves—admittedly with eyes half-averted from the gory covers—a touch of the mysterious always finds a home in Jessica’s work. Romance with a dash of supernatural. Horror with a bit of humor. You get the gist. Jessica also writes across age groups and is a firm believer in the motto: there is a new reader born every day, whether young or not-so-young.
Look for her upcoming releases: TEN PAST CLOSING, a YA contemporary thriller (Sky Pony Press, Spring 2018), and BROKEN CHORDS, a YA horror novella (Leap Books, October 2017). You can find her story “Care of the Undead Dog” in ZOMBIE CHUNKS, which came out earlier this year. Read about all of Jessica’s books and stories here. Connect with Jessica online: Website Goodreads Today I am so happy to welcome the award winning poet KD Rose here to the blog! She has a shiny new cover for her upcoming book Dream Poem. Learn more about her from her links below! And without further ado, I present the cover reveal for Dream Poem... BIO K. D. Rose is a poet and author. K. D.’s book, Inside Sorrow, won Readers Favorite Silver Medal for Poetry. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have been published in Word Riot, Chicago Literati, Poetry Breakfast, BlazeVOX Journal, Ink in Thirds, The Nuclear Impact Anthology, Stray Branch Magazine, Literary Orphans, and others. Publication is forthcoming in Eastern Iowa Review, Lunch Ticket Arts and Literary Magazine, Santa Fe Literary Magazine, Northern Virginia Review, Hermes Poetry Magazine, Maintenant Contemporary Dada Magazine, Slipstream, Wild Women's Medicine Circle Journal, and The 2016 Paragram Press Anthology. She also won an Honorable Mention in the 2016 New Millennium Writings Poetry Contest. Her last release was Brevity of Twit. Her new book DreamPoem will be out in summer 2017. She has a B.S. in Psychology and a Master's Degree in Social Work. Member: Poetry Society of America. Member: Poets and Writers. Member: Academy of American Poets. Where you can find KD Rose:
Twitter – https://twitter.com/KDRose1 Tumbler http://kdrose1.tumblr.com/ Google + https://plus.google.com/u/0/102870988804959230001/about/p/pub Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kdroseauthor LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/profile/preview?vpa=pub&locale=en_US Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6038789.K_D_Rose Instagram https://instagram.com/kdroseauthor/
Broken Chords
Genre: YA Horror (novella)
Release date: October 2nd 2017
Leap Books
Summary:
They rip, they tear, they FEED, and you never come back again.
Hereâs how last yearâs Gypsy Cob Music Festival should have gone. Lenora âLennyâ Ragno was supposed to rock her duet with her long-time crush, Jeb, during the open-mic competition. Then, swept up in the glow of success, heâd finally kiss her. Instead, Lenny choked on stage and spent the whole year dodging him online. And avoiding playing her fiddle in public. She thought her worst nightmare was behind her, but she was way wrong.
Now, sheâs back at Gypsy Cob where avoiding a public performance is about as impossible as hiding from Jeb. She thinks facing him will be the scariest part of the festival, but when one of their friends talks everyone into trying astral projection, Lenny catches the eye of a demonic entity that marks her as its own.
Now, whenever it wants, the demon can pluck Lenny from her reality and transport her to a hellish between-world, haunted by its countless, gruesome victims. If she doesnât want to become one of them, she must discover the nature of the demonâs hold on her and remove it. But how can she defeat a literal demon when she canât even get over her personal ones?
Jessica Bayliss is a fiction author who loves all things reading and writing. Her genre-bending fiction holds a little something for everyone. A lover of ghost tales and horror since her days scanning VHS rental shelvesâadmittedly with eyes half-averted from the gory coversâa touch of the mysterious always finds a home in Jessicaâs work. Romance with a dash of supernatural. Horror with a bit of humor. You get the gist. Jessica also writes across age groups and is a firm believer in the motto, there is a new reader born every day, whether young or not-so-young. Because one cannot live on writing alone, Jessica also spends a great deal of time with friends and family. She is a lover of all animals especially one very special Havanese and one extremely ornery cockatiel. She also loves to eat, cook, and exerciseâin that orderâand is a firm believer that coffee makes the world a better place. Jessica also has stories in several of Leap Books anthologies: Beware the Little White Rabbit and Fright Before Christmas.
Author Links:
Detectives Kelli Storm and Eric Ryder follow the bloody trail of a notorious drug kingpin from the streets of Washington Heights, New York and south to Medellin, Colombia. When the suspect in her partner’s shooting is stabbed while in custody at Rikers, he makes a startling deathbed confession… Miguel Garcia is still alive and out to kill her. With this revelation, Kelli finds herself unwillingly thrown back into the world of the drug cartels. $2.99 eBook through 3/31/17 Amazon: http://ow.ly/QYON309Obqz Barnes & Noble: http://ow.ly/cXHN309ObpZ iTunes: http://ow.ly/rhV5309Ob03 Kobo: http://ow.ly/J9VL309ObEV Excerpt from Storm Warning (A Kelli Storm Novel 2)
Jesus Reyes looked up from his bed, his eyes thin slits. “I guess I was lucky. Doc says the knife just missed killin’ me. Said an inch more to the left and I’d been dead, coulda’ punctured my kidney or somethin’.” “I’m sorry, Jesus. I didn’t know the DA’s office would throw you back into general population. Did you get a look at the man that stabbed you?” He shook his head. “No, the pendejo stabbed me from behind and then disappeared in the crowd.” “I’m going to make sure you stay in here until I have enough for a conviction against Diaz.” “Lady, you’re fuckin’ crazy. You ain’t gonna get nothin’ on Diaz, and even if you do, jeffe is gonna make sure he don’t talk.” Kelli leaned in close and looked into his eyes. “Jesus, you keep saying jeffe. Who is this jeffe? What’s his name?” Jesus took a labored breath and looked at her. “I don’t know his name, but he’s supposed to be the head of some drug cartel out of Colombia. All I know is that Diaz and the rest of the Trinitarios kiss his ass, includin’ me.” He closed his eyes and turned his head. “The motherfucker’s gonna make sure I’m dead, too.” “He’s not going to get to you in here, Jesus.” “Yeah, maybe, but I gotta leave here sometime. I gotta go back to the street and then the motherfucker is gonna get me. You can’t protect me, ain’t nobody can protect me on the street.” Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. Kelli put a hand on his arm. “He’s not going to get the chance, Jesus, because I’m going to put the son of a bitch away. And maybe I can talk to someone about getting you into witness protection.” He cocked his head to one side as he looked up at her. “Huh? How you gonna put someone like that away? You don’t even know this fucker’s name. Shit, I’m fuckin’ dead, lady, and you go messin’ around with people like that, you’ll be dead too. Cop or no cop.” “Then I guess I’ll have to kill him first.” It's Valentine's Day and I am celebrating by sharing the love and hosting one of my favorite authors, the lovely and talented Torie James! She has a brand new release out the 16th! Preorder it now so you are one of the first to get it! The Ghost of Secret's Gate
Genre: Paranormal/Contemporary Romance Series: Loch Ness Legends #1 He wanted a home... 1861. Estranged from his family for a shocking betrayal, Highlander Lachlan MacQueen is a man who lives by his rules and no other. Reckless and rootless, he roams the border towns between Scotland and England, a mercenary for hire with an unspoken determination to regain all he's lost. By any means necessary. When he inadvertently saves the life of Queen Victoria, she rewards him with a royal boon, the deed to a small manse nestled along the shores of Loch Ness called Secret's Gate and a stipend to ensure his outlaw days are over. But past sins demand payment and when the price becomes too high, Lachlan's untimely death becomes another skeletal ghost in an unopened closet. She wanted to heal... 2017. Verity Harper's memories of Secret's Gate are hazy at best. Two months spent in Scotland 25 years ago echo with remnants of a mysterious, hasty departure home to America and fresh beginnings with her mother, Pamela and new stepfather, Archibald MacQueen. Now, she returns to claim the legacy left to her by Archie; the very manor of her erstwhile childhood summer. But the free spirited, fun loving child that roamed the grounds with innocent glee has been replaced by a heartbroken woman full of remorse and shattered by regret. And now, she's beginning to question her sanity when an alluringly familiar voice in her head opens the floodgates to a piece of her past long forgotten. Can a lie that destroyed one life give another the truth it needs to be whole? Author's Note: One of my all-time favorite movies is The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. Once a year, my mother and I watch it together, it's our "thing". I've always wanted to write my own ghostly love story but they can be tricky in various ways. I finally bit the bullet though and began work on "The Ghost of Secret's Gate". It ended up turning into a much larger story than originally intended but I am so happy with the end result! It's got a few of my favorite things: Scotland, Hot Ghost Dude and did I mention Scotland? So, meet my new friend Verity, a woman tottering on the brink of defeat.... Excerpt: Ah, she couldn't get enough of Clare's raspberry cranachan trifle. Clearly by the feel of her skirt's tightening waistline. Voices, however, she'd had enough of and reached for one of the six pill bottles on the nightstand, deftly plucking one from the rest. Her auditory hallucinations weren't a result of a psychosis, so there was no actual medicine to treat her. She refused to take anti-psychotics, scared it would do irreparable damage to her already battered brain. She noticed it only flared when she grew irritated or anxious, thus she had grudgingly accepted the doctor's recommendation of Halcion, in its lowest doseage. Sedating her brain activity afforded pockets of relief from hearing things. Thinking things. What's happened to you, sweetheart? Uncapping the bottle, she shook out a pill, popped it into her mouth and took a swig from the glass of water Clare had brought her earlier. Well, thank you for asking, Voice in My Head. Let's see. Life. Life happened. I grew up, got a job, made a career, married, divorced. Nearly got crushed by a train while working on location. Spent a lot of time in physical therapy for my back while alternately falling in love with painkillers. Lost my mind and my job after that. Lot of fuzzy time in between in which I did some pretty shameless things to keep my fix going. Woke up one day, decided this was my story and since I was holding the pen, it was time for a rewrite. Got clean, got a new job and got engaged. But instead of planning a wedding, I ended up missing a funeral after I killed my parents. That about sums it up. Oh, and my fiancé dumped me because my face is no longer pleasing to the eye. Anything I left out can be found in the brochure. Grab one on your way out. I'm here all week, try the veal! Release Date: 2/16/2017 Will be available on: www.amazon.com Author Bio: Born on the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous,Torie is the illegitimate love child of Han Solo and Daenerys Targaryen. Rescued by Gandalf shortly before her home planet was destroyed in the last days of the Clone Wars, she was raised in relative obscurity by her foster parents, Severus Snape and Pippi Longstocking. At the tender age of 113, she inherited the best little whorehouse in Texas and is rumored to be bringing Sexy Back. A self confessed chocoholic, she’s been engaged to Willy Wonka despite gossip surrounding a lifelong affair with Bruce Wayne. And clearly, she practices delusion on a daily basis. The truth is, I’m just an overgrown kid with a vivid imagination who loves to write and share my crazy with the world. My future plans include, hopefully, buying a lovely Scottish castle and convincing Queen Elizabeth I that I’d make a fab addition to the Royal Family. Four years ago, I finally got my ‘brave’ on and submitted a wee story about true love, honor, friendship and the magic within us all. That story was Timeless Night, the first book in a five book series I’ve named New Camelot. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to have published Timeless Desire (Book 2 of New Camelot), Beauty and The Feast (A New Camelot Thanksgiving Novella) Ties That Bind (The Cloie Chronicles I), Fractured Fantasies (Valentine’s Venom), Fractured Fantasies (Volume 1-6) and slew of short stories. I live in Southern California, a stone’s throw from Disneyland, with my family and the most ridiculously spoiled pets anyone could imagine. I wake everyday with the determination to make this life as random, quirky and beautiful as it can be. If I haven't scared you off yet, feel free to track me down at any of the following! You can find/follow Torie at: Blog and Website: https://toriejames.wordpress.com/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/WriterGurl216 Twitter: https://twitter.com/Writergurl216 Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7054839.Torie_N_James Amazon Author: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00CTBYH0M |
AuthorAuthor, artist, jewelry maker and all around creative person. I write in many genres and have a lot of fun doing so. Please take a look around and enjoy! Archives
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