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Through My Heart Teaser

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Romantic Moments 3

Romantic Horror, Vampire Romance

Date Published: October 01, 2023

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Adrian – I am a vampire whose physical ugliness intensified with my
immortality. For centuries I hunted alone, disguising myself from prey,
preferring illusions to brutal attacks. Others of my kind spurned me. Some
tried to destroy me, and on them I unleashed my wrath. I suffered the agony
of eternal loneliness, and then I met Anna.

Anna – My life was almost unbearable until a tall, black-haired
stranger with fiery eyes and needle sharp teeth drank my blood and swept me
into an unimaginable world. From the night we met, I gave Adrian my heart,
but a lie spun by a jealous enemy drove us apart. I swore I would never give
him the chance to hurt me again, but denying my love for him was harder than
I thought.

Note: Through My Heart is a very short horror romance featuring vampiric
love. It has a spicy heat level, violence, and a HEA. This Romantic Moments
story is the perfect length for a lunch break, before bed, or any time you
want a quick, romantic read.

 

Excerpt

I found her on the streets of Pompeii just days before the fateful eruption
of Vesuvius. Many centuries earlier, I had been thrust into the life of a
blood drinker, changed on the field of battle.

To this day, I don’t know why the blood drinker changed me. Beauty is
prized among our kind, and I was known as the Brutal Beast—a warrior
with the strength of a dragon and the face of one.

I suppose it doesn’t matter why. It might have been a gift, or a curse, or
perhaps it was just her sense of humor. I can still feel her teeth tearing
into my neck. I can taste her blood, as sweet and thick as wine.

I digress. Where was I?

Ah, yes, Pompeii. I had arrived on my merchant ship from Constanta, and
while my servants unloaded cargo, I sought nourishment in the brothels that
were plentiful in the city. Even then, I caught the scent of death emanating
from the distant mountain. I had planned to stay for a while, but just one
night might be too long. Still, I needed to drink before moving on.

A delicious scent teased my nose. It was musky, sweet, and sad. The aroma
of despair. My gaze riveted to a beautiful woman—hair as black as my
own, dark eyes with flecks of gold that my keen vision detected even from
across the street. She was slim and her skin kissed golden by the sun.
Despite the warmth of the air, she shivered and rubbed her bare arms that
were imprinted with bruises from an earlier customer.

I approached, still wearing a hood—blood drinkers are rarely affected
by warmth or cold, unless it’s extreme. The hood, combined with my powers of
the mind, would create the illusion of handsome looks. I didn’t spin the
dream quite yet, though. Sometimes, I indulged in the self-torture of seeing
how they reacted to me.

She glanced at me when I paused beside her, so close that my shadow
darkened her face.

“Welcome. Would you like to come inside?” she asked in a soft
monotone. Her voice, like her scent, emanated despair. She didn’t even look
surprised by my appearance.

“Very much.”

With a sigh, she turned and led me past a tattered curtain, into the small,
candlelit room where she lived and entertained customers.

She gestured toward the stone bed.

I remained standing and said, “We should talk first.”

Now she raised an arched black eyebrow. “About what?”

I pulled down my hood, completely exposing my pale, bony face that was
covered in scars, most from my mortal life, but some sustained after my
change, during fights with other blood drinkers, ones who couldn’t keep
their mouths shut and their weapons to themselves. My eyes, deep-set and
black as midnight pools, intimidated just about everyone who dared lock
gazes with me.

She swallowed visibly and audibly, but didn’t look away.

“Will you still take me to your bed, my lovely?”

 

About the Author

Kate Hill

Kate Hill is a vegetarian New Englander who loves writing romantic
fantasies. When she’s not working on her books, Kate enjoys reading, working
out, watching horror movies, and researching vampires and Viking history.
She runs the Compelling Beasts Blog that is dedicated to antagonists,
antiheroes, and paranormal creatures. Kate also writes as Saloni
Quinby.

 

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Maggie the Cat Who Came Home for Christmas Blitz

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Children’s Book

Date Published: Sept. 14th 2023

Publisher: Jan-Carol Publishing, Inc.

 

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Delightful illustrations bring you inside Grandpa Charlie Green’s
mountainside farmhouse. Join Maggie the cat, Pip the goat, Grandpa Charlie
Green, Daddy, and of course, little Wilhelmina Olive Blessing, as she tells
us this sweet wintertime story. What do they do to get little Maggie home?
Join the fun. Read out loud yourself or read along with others! You will
love the story of Maggie, the cat who comes home for Christmas.

 

About the Author

Julia Russo

Julia spent many winters in the mountains along with her little dog, Chloe,
and her sweet husband, Kent. She continues to live in Atlanta, but her heart
is really in those woods. 

One of her favorite things ever was hearing her first graders read aloud.
She sometimes wrote for the government and companies, and later wrote
descriptions of homes. She even spent time as what is called a
roustabout!

Today, she presents her first ever storybook! She hopes many children will
read the story aloud! She continues to visit her mountainside cabin often.
She lives in Atlanta along with Kent and two sweet cats named Rigby and
Linus. One of these days, she’s hoping to get a little goat.

 

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Mom Wombat Says Make War No More! Blitz

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Children’s Fiction

Date Published: Sep 22, 2023

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

 

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Mom Wombat says, “Make friends, not war!”

“Try to get along and don’t keep score… It doesn’t matter who
has more toys, just have fun, my girls and boys. Don’t YOU be a bully,
not even now and then, not even to a foe or friend.”

Known as Mombat to her kids, she has plenty of ideas on how everyone can
learn to get along with others and have fun. Using her wit and insightful
wisdom, Mombat aims to make the world a better place by teaching positive
communication skills and the importance of friendship.

 

About the Author

Phyllis Schwartz
Phyllis Schwartz is a married mother of two, who, after a highly successful
career in the TV news business, finally has the time to indulge in and focus
on her “civilian” writing. Even as a kid, she kept a diary and
wrote little stories and poems, a creative release that continued well into
adulthood.

She wrote news by day and poetry by night. And despite battling three
different types of cancer over more than three decades, she is still filled
with energy, joy, and optimism, and she looks forward to writing much more
poetry and children’s books in the future. Her writing often centers
on what she observes daily: including her friends, husband, and two
children, as well as her garden and her beautiful beach town residence in
dreamy Encinitas, all providing continued inspiration for her verse.

 

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Wild Asses of the Mojave Desert Teaser

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New Adult – Literary – Contemporary fiction –
Women’s fiction

Date Published:10-20-2023

Publisher: Mapleton Press

 

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This novel about friendship, nostalgia, and finding oneself is funny and
tender, moving and poetic, while standing firmly in hope and love. The
characters are thinkers, overthinkers really, who are trying to find their
way by asking the deep questions of life with wide-eyed wonder and talking
through life’s uncertainties. They fearlessly confront the choices they’ve
made, examining their desires and their mistakes. The result is a smart,
engaging novel depicting a young woman’s search for the people and place she
will call home.

A RECOMMENDED read by the US Review

 

 

Excerpt

 

The inside of the White Tavern was dark and smelled like stale cigarettes
and grease. A server came over, wearing tight black skinny jeans and an old
Van Halen concert tee.

Dylan turned sideways in the booth to stretch his legs out. “Tell me
about this beer that’s cheaper than gas.”

“Dollar eighty-four,” the server said, which was, in fact,
cheaper than gas.

“Do you have any fries to go with those competitive beer
prices?”

It had been a long time since I’d had my favorite sandwich. Pimiento
cheese. Pickles. Ham. I sunk my teeth into a yummy bite of teenage years and
moaned out loud.

Dylan looked up from his double order of fries and raised an eyebrow.
“Do you and that sandwich need to be alone?”

I ignored his comment. “Was there anything else in that car? Anything
that might indicate a drug deal gone bad?”

“Nope. Just the cooler and the rock.”

“Huh.”

Dylan locked eyes with me. “That rock means something,
Skye.”

The dining area was empty except for us, and one other table near the back
with kitchen staff. Still, Dylan leaned across the table and whispered
urgently, “It’s like that scene in Pulp Fiction with the
briefcase in the diner.”

I furrowed my brow and gagged on a sesame seed. “With Honey
Bunny?”

“And Pumpkin.”

“What?”

Dylan leaned back and shrugged. “The guy’s name was Pumpkin.
Honey Bunny and…”

“I know. I’ve seen it thirteen times. I’m just wondering
why we’re out here in the middle of the desert with you drawing
comparisons of your life to a film that came out when you were seven years
old.”

“You—you, you mock me, Skye, but there’s a
connection.”

“Between a film and that glowing rock?”

“Yes.” He clasped his hands together firmly and laid them on
the table.

“There’s no rock in Pulp Fiction.”

“It’s implied.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yeah, it is. It’s in the briefcase.”

“We never see what’s in the briefcase.”

Dylan squirmed in an exaggerated way and said, “God, use your
imagination, Skye. It’s a glowing rock.”

“Okay. Say it is a glowing rock. What does that have to do with
us?”

“It’s our time to finally make sense of our lives.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing.”

“No, you haven’t.”

I grabbed the ketchup bottle and whacked the bottom. “How do you
know?”

“Because you’re here. Right back where you started. Look,
don’t get me wrong, I love sitting out in the desert drinking Miller
High Life, listening to the coyotes howl, playing charades in the firelight
with your sister, but I’m glad you’re home.”

“You played charades with my sister?”

“Sure. Isn’t that what you were doing back east? Playing
charades? Sounds like? Feels like? Rhymes with?

“You saying those six years were nothing more than a
game?”

“We were all playing a game. It’s okay to admit the truth, even
if it’s hard.”

His answer was so simple and earnest, I didn’t know whether to kill
him or cry. I looked down at my plate with a strange mixture of surrender
and hunger. “What do you think I was doing on the East
Coast?”

Dylan inhaled and shrugged, “Trying to escape this place and burn
Trevor out of your mind with hot yoga and gluten-free buns.” He
touched my greasy hand and said, “It’s not a judgment. Look, I
don’t know what you were doing out there. You didn’t exactly
call. But you’re here now, and so am I, and I believe this is some
kind of strange gift.”

“If the rock is so important, why haven’t you moved
it?”

“It’s really heavy. I’m going to have to dig it out.
That’s where you come in.”

Dylan was always a crazy trailblazer adjusting his tinfoil hat, but
he’d leveled up the weird while I was gone.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

If I stood perfectly still in the stall, I could hear the sound of the end
coming. A sharp chapter break pushing forward. Tracks winding into a new
future. One I couldn’t see, because I was still stuck in the backseat
of my past life. I sat on the toilet and thought about escape. The problem
was I’d been escaping my entire life. Running from everything.
Destiny. Relationships. Myself. I looked down at my jeans bunched up around
my knees. I’d already managed to get stuck in a hole, might as well
grab a shovel and dig.

About the Author

Lis Anna-Langston was

Lis Anna-Langston was raised along the winding current of the Mississippi
River on a steady diet of dog-eared books. She attended a Creative and
Performing Arts School from middle school until graduation and went on to
study Literature at Webster University. Her novels have won the
Parents’ Choice Gold, Moonbeam Book Award, Independent Press Award,
Benjamin Franklin Book Award and NYC Big Book Awards. A three-time Pushcart
award nominee and Finalist in the Brighthorse Book Prize, William Faulkner
Fiction Contest, George Garrett Fiction Prize and Thomas Wolfe Fiction
Award, her work has been published in The Literary Review, Emerson Review,
The Merrimack Review, Emrys Journal, The MacGuffin, Sand Hill Review and
dozens of other literary journals.

Hailed as “an author with a genuine flair for originality” by
Midwest Book Review and “a loveable, engaging, original
voice…” by Publishers Weekly, you can find her in the wilds of
South Carolina plucking stories out of thin air.

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McMinnville Virtual Book Tour

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Science Fiction

Date Published: March 24, 2022

Publisher: MindStir Media

 

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Two photographs taken on a spring evening in 1950 that seem to show the
impossible-we are not alone. A thirteen-year-old girl disappears the same
evening, but returns thirty years later without aging a day. A dying
detective on the hunt for the answers to one mystery falls afoul of a more
profound mystery that calls into question all of human history and the
science on which the universe is based. McMinnville is the story of one
man’s coming to terms with his mortality and the inconceivable, while
falling in love for a second time, something he thought was
impossible.

Ray Baker is a retired NYPD detective, dying of cancer and dealing with the
crushing loneliness after the death of his wife. He wants to make the last
few months of his life count by traveling cross country to the places where
he grew up. Along the way, he stumbles upon a cold case that took place on
May 11, 1950, a few hundred yards from his childhood farm outside of
McMinnville, Oregon. At a little past seven in the evening on that day,
Evelyn Forsyth was feeding her rabbits when she looked up to see a craft
floating soundlessly toward her. She called for her husband, Glenn, to come
with his camera. Over a span of a few seconds, he took two photographs
before the craft tipped up on edge and sped away. That was the story that
appeared in the Telephone Register, McMinnville’s local paper under the
heading “At Long Last-Authentic Photographs Of Flying Saucer[?]” A
month later, the photographs were featured in the June edition of Life
Magazine. Were they real or a clever hoax? Ray takes it upon himself to
answer this question, applying his considerable detective skills. But in
doing so, he steps through the looking glass into a world that makes him
question everything. If that was not enough, he also discovers that there is
a clock and it is ticking down.

 

McMinnville is the first book in a trilogy that follows Ray Baker’s pursuit
of life, love, and the truth, which is most definitely out there.

McMinnville tablet

EXCERPT

 

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Henry pushed the car to go faster, looking in the rearview mirror. Houses sped by his window as he barreled down South Bridge Street, headlights cutting through the dusk.

 

“Can you see them? Oh, God. . . . please!” Debra was losing it, afraid to look around, eyes fixed on her rosary beads.

 

“Shut up!” Henry shouted. Then he realized his tone with his new bride. “Sorry, I don’t see anything . . .” Blackness.

 

What Henry Roberts remembered decades later as he sat homeless in a cardboard box in a city he did not recognize was something else.

 

The road was dappled with shadows and light. Trees formed a canopy above the road as he sped along in his brand new DeSoto. The setting sun threw shards of light through the passing trees. Debra sat next to him with her head on his shoulder. A warm breeze came through the window smelling of pine and juniper. Life was perfect.

 

The newlyweds had been on the road for nearly a week. California gave way to Oregon. The honeymoon in San Francisco now gave way to a drive through the lonely countryside outside McMinnville, Oregon. 

 

He first saw the rabbit from nearly a hundred yards away as the road turned round the bend. It walked on hind legs and stood around five feet tall. As the car drew closer, the rabbit slowed its walk, its swinging arms coming to a stop. It turned its head toward the oncoming car and grinned a grimacing smile that revealed a mass of gnarled teeth. It appeared to snarl.

 

Henry slammed on the brakes, and things began to move in slow motion. Then all sound stopped, except for the radio, which had been playing “Mule Train” moments before. Now all that came out of the dashboard was static. Walking outside the car but keeping pace with the moving vehicle was Debra. She had somehow gotten out of the car. “How’d she do that?” he thought. She was outpacing the car, which had to be going fifty. Her voice split the silence and the static. “Don’t worry, Henry. They won’t hurt you.”

 

On May 12, 1950, the police, acting on an anonymous tip, found the black DeSoto overturned and concealed in the bushes off the side of the country road. All indications pointed to a high-speed accident. Except, strangely, there were no skid marks on the road. No scuff marks on the tires. No signs of a rollover. Just a busted top and crushed windshield. And, no bodies.

About the Author

Derrick McCartney

Derrick McCartney was born in El Paso, Texas and grew up in Tennessee
before moving to the Washington, DC area. Despite a degree in Soviet and
East European studies, he made a name for himself as an expert on North
Korea. After a stint in the US Government, he has spent most of his career
in defense think tanks. He has published several books and articles on
international security affairs under his real name. This is his first work
of fiction.

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