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Spotlight - Echo Falls

About Echo Falls

Running from a nightmare stalking her every move, Phoebe Martin arrives in Echo Falls hoping she has finally found a safe place to stop. But trouble has a way of catching up and soon the signs are there.

After a vicious attack in an alley, policeman Aidan O’Bryan is left with Phoebe as his only path to understanding why the Echo Falls werewolf pack – his pack – is being attacked. When another pack member is killed, Phoebe is forced to confront her past before she loses Aidan and everything she has come to love.

Love and duty become one as Aidan strives to prevent Phoebe from becoming the next victim. But with Phoebe just as determined to protect Aidan and her new home, secrets from her past threaten to tear them apart.

Will love give Phoebe the strength to trust Aidan and face her fears, or will her past destroy her future?

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE Keep running, keep running, keep running. Phoebe’s lungs burned as her mind screamed the mantra. Keep running, keep running.
How many steps can there be?
She should know. She lived in this apartment building.
Tears ran down her cheeks and her lungs burned for air. Only the random irrational thought broke through the panic keeping her feet moving down the steps. Keep running. Keep running. The light of the emergency exit came into view. Almost there…
The door to the stairwell slammed open with a hollow boom. She tripped and clung to the railing to steady herself.
Keep running.
The shock of the cool night air sent a shiver of relief through her body. She’d come out a side exit into an alley. If she could just get to the front –
Suddenly she was thrown to the ground from behind. She hit the concrete, what little breath she had knocked from her lungs. Blood began flowing from where her head hit the ground, and small sparks of light floated into her vision.
How did he catch up so fast?
Desperately she tried to gulp down as much air as she could, willing her lungs to cooperate. Instinct kicked in as the attacker slashed at her, and she curled into fetal position.
A dog. He’d turned into a dog. A big dog with vicious claws and teeth he used to tear into her exposed back, thigh and shoulder. She slowly regained her breath but could only use it to scream her throat raw.
Her vision faded, taking the small sparks of light with it. Searing pain ripped through her shoulder as a claw dug down against her bone. One last, long scream tore from her lungs before she was left gasping and sobbing, her fear slowly smoldering into rage.
Things can’t end like this.
She opened her eyes as the dog stood over her, trying to get to her throat. A paw came into her line of vision and she saw her chance. She reached out, grabbed it and squeezed with all the strength she had.
The dog yelped and tried to twist away, but she held on with all the strength she had. She knew she’d only bought herself time. She couldn’t move the dog off her and she couldn’t squeeze his paw all night. He tried uselessly to bite her, his jaws having no strength so long as she squeezed his paw. But she could already feel her strength waning.
Suddenly the weight of the dog flew off her, taking the paw out of her grip. Without thinking, she used her one cooperating arm to drag herself toward the front of the building.
She shivered, her arm giving out, and caught a glimpse of a second dog. No. A wolf… Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she listened to the dogs fighting, the battle just a few steps away. She tried her best to curl up against the building wall and willed the growling and snapping to go away. They sounded like they were tearing each other to pieces.
The universe granted her wish, the battle ending with the sound of two bodies hitting each other and a sharp whine. She shivered and softly whined as well, dreading the approach of the winner as one of the dogs yelped and ran away.
A few moments later warm, human hand brushed the back of her head and she screamed again. If it could be called a scream. Her throat burned and rebelled at her abuse of it.
“Ssh. You’re safe now.”
She tried to scream again and move away, but her body wouldn’t obey her commands. She groaned as the full force of the pain washed over her.
He murmured and she relaxed her desperate grip on staying conscious. Sleep seemed so tempting, the black abyss singing a siren’s song to her. Her rescuer – or captor – tried to soothe her, but something dark and dangerous in his voice betrayed him. He was different. She tried to bat away his hands but gave up after a few attempts, not sure if her good hand was actually moving.
As she slipped into the darkness, she wondered if death had merely granted her a short reprieve from the inevitable.

About Jaime McDougall

Jaime McDougall is a citizen of the world, currently loving life in beautiful country Victoria in Australia. She loves eating sushi, kidnapping her husband and naming her pets in honour of science fiction authors.

She has been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: High School: The Real Deal and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Campus Chronicles. So You Want to Write a Guest Post: An Author’s Guide to Promoting with Guest Blogging is her most recent non-fiction ebook. She has also enjoyed writing a column called ‘The New Australian’ in local newspapers as well as various articles online.
Echo Falls is her first paranormal romance novel. You can buy it now at:
Amazon ( Kindle ) | Barnes and Noble ( Nook ) | Smashwords ( Multiformat )
Amazon ( Print ) | Barnes and Noble ( Print )

You can visit her website at InkyBlots.com

Echo Falls Tour Schedule

Tuesday, November 1st
Interview at Pump Up Your Books
Wednesday, November 2nd
Guest Post at Review From Here
Thursday, November 3rd
Guest Post at Live to Read
Friday, November 4th
Review at Live to Read
Monday, November 7th
Interview at Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews
Tuesday, November 8th
Review at Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews
Wednesday, November 9th
Review at Inside of a Dog
Interview at Paperback Writer
Thursday, November 10th
Review at Reviews by Molly
Friday, November 11th
Interview at The Plot Thickens
Monday, November 14th
Review at Mad Moose Mama
Tuesday, November 15th
Interview at Mad Moose Mama
Guest Post at TBF Reviews
Wednesday, November 16th
Guest Post at Coffee and a Keyboard
Thursday, November 17th
Review at Coffee and a Keyboard
Friday, November 18th
Review at The Book Connection
Monday, November 21st
Review at Ohio Girl Talks
Tuesday, November 22nd
Guest Post at The Book Bin
Wednesday, November 23rd
Guest Post at Donna’s Blog Home
Monday, December 5th
Review at Words I Write Crazy
Tuesday, December 6th
Review at Review From Here
Wednesday, December 7th
Interview at The Examiner
Thursday, December 8th
Interview at Paperback Writer
Friday, December 9th
Review at Community Bookstop
Monday, December 12th
Guest Post at Sweeping Me
Tuesday, December 13th
Review at Sweeping Me
Wednesday, December 14th
Review at Reading Between the Wines
Thursday, December 15th
Guest Post and Review at Celtic Lady’s Reviews
Friday, December 16th
Review at Reading Frenzy

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Review - Devil's Hand

A Las Vegas poker ace with supernatural luck is swept into a world-ending conflict between fallen angels and otherworldly shades, in a thrilling debut novel for readers who enjoy Dean Koontz, Jim Butcher, and Tim Powers.


The lone survivor of a tragic plane crash, Trent Hawkins inherited a mysterious lucky streak that made him famous, and hated, in the poker circles of the City of Sin. It wasn’t long before the eyes in the sky threw him on the blacklist and chased him out of town. Now, after years away, Trent returns to Las Vegas, and walks right back into trouble.

As a serial kidnapper terrorizes the city, Trent and his wife, Susan, rescue a strange, thirteen year-old girl, only to find themselves caught in a fallen angel’s plot to cleanse Las Vegas with an unholy blizzard.

As the neon dims and the city freezes, Trent is forced to make terrible sacrifices in order to protect his new charge, and learns dark truths about himself and the creatures plotting against mankind. Poker-playing demons, fallen angels, and otherworldly shades all vie to enlist his strange luck, and Trent must choose his role in the coming War, or watch our world fall to ruin beneath a blanket of shadow and ice.

*-*-*-*-*
My review:

From the beginning you are drawn into the world he has created.  If you like stories with suspense, horror, non stop action and likable heroes you will love this book.  For a debut novel it is amazingly well done.  You would think he had been publishing for years.

The story drew me in from the beginning and didnt let me go until it was over.  Trent is a surprisingly likeable hero that has an uncanny kind of luck.  However as he learn more and more, all start to question what kind of luck is it really.  He ends up in the middle of a plot to start a modern day Apocalypse.  You have an interesting mix of demons, angels, and mixes in between all fighting to be in control.  You are pulled along as Trent tries to understand what is happening around him and what his role is in this battle among beings that are not of this world.

This is a great book for fans of all kinds of supernatural fiction, suspense or horror.  And it is not one to miss.  Following along on Trent's journey is an interesting adventure for all who care to join in.  I highly recommend this book for those even just looking for a good story.  And I am eagerly looking forward to his next book.

Guest Post - David Scott Milton

ON THE CREATION OF “IRON CITY”

By David Scott Milton

Ten years ago I made the first notes on “Iron City”. It began as a stage play, became a screenplay, and eventually was written as a novel. It’s a companion work to my earlier novel, “Kabbalah”, though I hadn’t planned it that way. Both take place in Pittsburgh, Pa., the Squirrel Hill and Greenfield sections, and both involve murder. In “Kabbalah” the murder takes place at the very beginning and the reader knows who the murderer is. It is a chase novel in which two people who grew up with the murderer, a cop consumed by ineradicable envy and a rabbi obsessed with the ancient Jewish practice of Kabbalah, for their own complex reasons, set out to find him.

(You can read the preface to the reissued edition of  “Kabbalah” to learn how I came to write it, not an uninteresting process. See www.dsmilton.com or www.redroom.com/author/david-scott-milton)

“Iron City” is more traditional, a dense mystery involving a string of bizarre murders that is not solved until the very end. A disgraced ex-cop, Frank Kalinyak, a Greenfield native, is on a mission to find why the victims are being killed and who the murderer is. Kalinyak, who has suffered a tragic loss in his life, seeks to redeem an existence that is drifting, splintering, by tracking the murderer who has terrorized the city he grew up in, Pittsburgh, Pa., known by people raised there as Iron City. The area that Kalinyak operates in, the area where the killer lurks, is a harsh, brutal environment of pimps, hookers, druggies, failed clergy, business hustlers, closed-down, rotting steel mills.

We follow Kalinyak on his increasingly desperate search for the murderer and to prevent further terror and slaughter, through the underbelly of Iron City. We find ourselves in a maelstrom of political and church intrigue, brutal encounters, surprising duplicities, ghosts of the past, furies of the present.

There are complex psychological elements in both novels. I have always had great respect for the mystery form. Dostoyevsky was an early influence on my work, as were the novels of the Belgian, Georges Simenon. I admired the seriousness, the complexity in their works, Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, “Brothers Karamazov”, “The Possessed,” Simenon, “The Man Who Watched Trains Go By”, “Belle”, “The Brothers Rico”: they were less “whodunits” as “whydunnits”, mysteries of character: they were about peeling away levels of reality to reach the core of a human being, the person’s soul.

“Iron City” is a mystery that’s not solved until the end.  I’m limited in what I can reveal about what propelled me to write this story. It involves a series of murders that are connected by a horrific act that has poisoned a community. As is true of all of my novels it has relevance to my life and the complications in my life.

The texture of the neighborhoods I grew up in is a very important element in the book, as it is in many of my books. Squirrel Hill and Greenfield to the south; North of Forbes, above Squirrel Hill—these neighborhoods have become my Dublin, North and South Sides, the Hill District, my Nighttown. Squirrel Hill proper was middle-class; as you moved into Greenfield the environment became working class. North of Forbes was upper middle class with pockets of wealth. These areas form a checkerboard of class and religious tensions, envies, wounds that fester, scars that remain open.

I must warn you—the novel is dark. I recently read a review of Simenon’s “The Man Who Watched Trains Go By”, and the critic said of the book, “Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's ‘The Man Who Watched Trains Go By’, a book that I considered to be darker than noir.” I’ve told you how much I admire Simenon. And it’s possible that “Iron City” is darker than noir. It’s possible that all of my novels are darker than noir. Sorry.

The book forms an intricate puzzle. I think the writing is strong. I have not condescended to the genre. It’s a serious novel, ambitious, ingenious. If you’ve liked my earlier novels, plays, and films, I think you’ll like “Iron City.” It’s a tough book, a journey through a hellish world of harsh entanglements, brutal relationships, reversals, twists, piercing insights into the dark night of the soul. To be true, also, there are bright spots and entertainment and the pleasures in what the novel illuminates, much darkness, but also explosions of light, rich characters, the way they talk and behave, their ambitions, dreams, foibles. And there is also tenderness and love and the generosity that grows from love.

I aspired, ultimately, to reveal something true and strong about our lives, about retribution, foundering dreams, guilt, love lost, and love redeemed, to tell one tale of this strange journey we all take to a dusty end. 

About the Author:

David Scott Milton (born September 15, 1934) is an American author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His plays are known for their theatricality, wild humor, and poetic realism, while his novels and films are darker and more naturalistic. As a novelist, he has been compared to Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, and Nelson Algren. Ben Gazzara’s performance in Milton’s play, Duet, received a Tony nomination. Another play, Skin, won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award. His theater piece, Murderers Are My Life, was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles. His second novel, Paradise Road, was given the Mark Twain Journal award “for significant contribution to American literature.

http://www.dsmilton.com/

Learn more about David at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Scott_Milton

You Tube Video of David reading from Iron City http://youtu.be/U-ERnDTWhaA

 

Iron City

By David Scott Milton

Publisher: White Whisker Books Date Published: September 1, 2011

Genre: dark mystery 

Frank Kalinyak, disgraced ex-cop, returns to Pittsburgh, Pa., “Iron City”, his hometown, from Tucson where he has been living a desperate existence since the death of his young daughter. He has been summoned home by Bobby Mack, an Assistant D.A., to find out who murdered an old high school friend. Kalinyak is swept into a whirlpool of bizarre killings, religious fanaticism, church duplicity, hustlers, cops, junkies, old friends gone bad. Amid the fractured landscape of Iron City, rusting mills, rotting industry, he struggles to find sense in his life. Ultimately he must ask: who is he and can he survive?

“David Scott Milton can write like an angel… a writer hell bent on fulfilling the legacy of John Steinbeck, carrying on the tradition of James Jones and exploring his own heights.” -- Alabama Journal

Available for the Kindle on Amazon and on BN for the Nook

Pimpin' Reads: November Giveaway Hop

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All Things Urban Fantasy: Giveaway: The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa

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Spotlight - Antique Charming

Antique Charming

By Natalie-Nicole Bates

The night he came home…forever

Third-generation funeral director Lizzie Morton is about to have her dream realized. She has purchased the long abandoned Nichols Funeral Home and its upstairs flat, determined to restore the funeral home to its once former glory. 

 

But a late night visitor, Adam Nichols, claims the funeral home still belongs to his family. Lizzie scoffs at his odd behaviour and outlandish claims, but when a vintage photograph appears, she soon realizes, to her horror, that Adam Nichols did once own the funeral home—more than one hundred years ago—and now she has allowed this entity to pass into her home.

http://www.bookstogonow.com/antiquecharming.html

Amazon Kindle

Book Trailer on YouTube http://youtu.be/Z1U7hlZ0koQ

Antique Charming Excerpt
 

She heard it again. 

 

The same time as last Friday night. 

 

Three taps at her front door.

Lizzie muted the television, tossed the blanket off of her body and scurried out of bed. She slipped her robe over her shoulders and tied it securely, determined to find out who in the world would knock at her door at three in the morning. By the time she had reached the door the week previous, no one was there. The street had been dark and still.

It had to be a mistake. She had only recently closed sale on the long abandoned funeral home, determined to restore it to its once former glory. She had only been living in the upstairs flat for a few weeks.

As she hurried down the staircase, each step beneath her feet creaked in protest. There was no one visible through the peephole. She unchained the door and opened it just enough to peek around it.

No one was there, just like the previous week. 

 

The street was dark and quiet. Not even the whisper of a wind could be detected. Only the cold dampness of the October night raised a chill on her skin.

Who was playing this weekly joke on her? Could it be the ghosts of some departed soul who had passed through the halls of Nichols Funeral Home sometime during the past century? A small smile crossed her lips as she prepared to close and lock the door. She was a third generation Funeral Director. Did she now believe in ghosts?

Before the door could close, a hand poked into the slight space and seized her wrist. A cry rose in her throat and she jerked backward, but the hand held tight and the door flung open.

The man emerged, shrouded in darkness. He was an ethereal creature, tall, and dressed in anonymous black. Only a streetlight glowed behind him. 

 

“I’m home,” he announced.

About the Author:

Natalie Nicole-Bates is a book reviewer and author. 

 

Her short paranormal romance, Antique Charming, was published by Books To Go Now Publishing in October 2011 and her contemporary romance, Change of Address, is scheduled to be published by Secret Cravings in January 2012.

Her passions in life include books and hockey along with Victorian and Edwardian era photography. Natalie contributes her uncharacteristic love of hockey to being born in Russia.

She currently resides in the UK where she is working on her next book and adding to her collection of 19^th century post-mortem photos.

Visit Natalie online at http://natalienicolebates.blogspot.com/

Short and Sweet: 300 Follower Giveaway!

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Interview - Shannon K Butcher

Please describe your novel twitter style 140 characters or less. 

Mercenary chick and her hot partner uncover plot to hijack soldiers for nefarious purposes.

What is the one thing you wish you knew before you tried to get published? 

I had the advantage of knowing quite a lot about the world of publishing before I decided to dive in. My husband had already been published for years, so I had a good idea of what happened behind the scenes. I was a little surprised by the advent of social media, since that wasn't really around when I first started writing. But since then, I've learned to enjoy interacting with fans online, so that's a positive thing for me. I think the biggest surprise has been the sheer amount of work that has to get done which has nothing to do with actually writing the book.

What to you is the best part of being a writer and what is the part you wouldn’t mind giving up?

The best part of being a writer is actually writing. The stories, the characters, and all the things that go into getting words on the page, and knowing how excited fans will be when they read what I've written – those are the things that keep me going every day. It’s also nice to get to spend most days in my jammies with hot men and kick-ass women.

My least favorite part of writing is revision. While a necessary evil, I wish I was a good enough writer to never have to revise anything. But I'm not, so I revise. :-)

What city would you love to set a story in but the right one hasn’t come along yet?

I try not to use too many real cities. I like to blow things up and have gunfights and plenty of illegal activity. I find that people get upset when you blow up their cities and break their laws, so I prefer to create my own for the most part. That way I don’t have to hold back. I think that the fact that I’ve lived in several different states and traveled a lot gives me an idea of the flavor of different areas of the country.

Vampires, Shifters, Zombies, Angels - who wins the final ultimate battle?

I saw the season finale of Deadliest Warrior, so I know the answer to this is vampires. They had scientific proof. :)

If you could witness any historical event past, present or future what would it be and why?              

        

I would like to be standing next to the researcher when s/he discovers the cure for cancer. I've lost too many people that I love to this disease, and would like to be there to witness when the villain is ultimately defeated.

Thanks Shannon for taking the time to do this interview.

Everyone else.  Check out her new release Razor's Edge.  You wont be sorry.

Roxanne "Razor" Haught is an expert in stealth security for corporate espionage cases. But now she's a target. Tanner O'Connell has no intentions of leaving Razor's side. Despite her objections to having a "babysitter", his orders as the newest member of the Edge are to watch her back. With a brainwashed assassin after his partner, Tanner cannot afford to let his desire for Razor interfere with his duty. His special ops skills may be all that stand between saving Razor-or losing her forever.