Thursday, April 30, 2020

Unpredictable Fate by Jessamyn Kingley - Cover Reveal

COVER REVEAL


Book Title: Unpredictable Fate (D’Vaire, Book 17)

Author: Jessamyn Kingley

Cover Artist: LJ Anderson, Mayhem Cover Creations

Release Date: May 14, 2020

Genre/s: M/M Urban Fantasy Romance

Trope/s: Fated mates

Themes: Second chances, fate, love

Heat Rating: 3 flames
 

Everyone deserves a second chance in life and love.
 

Blurb

Chieftain Kalthekor Valzadari is an elf with many regrets. Once a man concerned only with what would bring glory to his tribe at the expense of people he should’ve protected, everything changes when his son is born. Trapped in a loveless matebond, Kalthekor wants to leave his old life behind, but he is bound for eternity. Still, he can’t help but wish for freedom and a relationship as rich in joy as those around him.

Although Aristos Centaurus is brother to the leader of the Centaurs, he is unable to forgive or forget that he once spent centuries committing inexcusable acts of war. With so much blood on his hands, he cannot ignore that he should have been sentenced to death. Aris might help the centaurs now, but he keeps his distance, knowing better than to befriend any of his brethren. He doesn’t deserve happiness or love, but he yearns for it nonetheless.

A misunderstanding sends Aris from the isolation of his brother’s house to Council Headquarters, where he finds himself staring into Kalthekor’s blue eyes. After an instant connection, both are ready to have a partner, and believe they can find what they need in each other. As the pair build a life and a home together, Kalthekor and Aristos realize that although they have created a wonderful foundation based on friendship and love, if they are to move forward as a family, they must find a way to face and reconcile their pasts. Only fate knows if it will tear them apart or if a blissful future awaits them.

    
 

About the Author

 


Jessamyn Kingley lives in Nevada where she begs the men in her head to tell her their amazing stories which she dutifully writes it all down in what has become a small mountain of notebooks. She falls in love with each couple and swears whatever book she wrote last is her absolute favorite.

Jessamyn is married and working toward remembering to start the dishwasher without being distracted by the scent of the magical detergent. For personal enjoyment, she aids in cat rescue while slashing and gashing her way through mobs in various MMORPGs. Caffeine is her very best friend and is only cast aside briefly for the sin better known as BBQ potato chips.


Join her Facebook group, Jessamyn's Ruffian's



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Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Dream Weaver by Dez Schwartz - Release Blitz with Excerpt and Giveaway


Title: Dream Weaver
Series: Roam, Book Three
Author: Dez Schwartz
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: April 27, 2020
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 45400
Genre: Paranormal, celestials, death, dream world, dreams, Elementals, ghosts, magic, MM Romance, sandman, witches

Add to Goodreads

Synopsis

Ethan Roam has faced a lot of nightmarish challenges—finding out he’s a sandman, falling in love with the man who once hunted him, and thwarting attacks from The Order of Azoth, a secret occult organization set on using his bloodline to conquer the universe by controlling immortality. And the battle is far from over.

To defeat The Order and its leader, Phantom, Ethan must first find the original Sandman and then bring the fight to the Dream World. Saving the universe might be too tall an order for one dream creature, but with the help of his friends and some Celestial beings with questionable motives, Ethan just might be able to weave a trap of surreal proportions.

Excerpt


Dream Weaver
Dez Schwartz © 2020
All Rights Reserved

The Misguided Travelers

“Maybe it’s broken.” Ethan Roam, the sandman, shook the orb as though giving the device the magic-eight-ball treatment would bring it pulsing back to life.

“It had better not be. Technical support doesn’t exist for magical artifacts,” Mercury said.

Unsuccessful at reviving the device, Ethan set the orb down on the flattened surface of a nearby stalagmite. “I’m surprised to say it, but I really wish Chris was here. If anyone could fix this, it would probably be him.”

“The Sandman Orb doesn’t need to be fixed. You’re just a bad driver,” Mercury, the former vampire, Dacey, who was now transformed into a celestial entity, chided. Guarded, he turned a one-eighty to view what little he could make out about their dark cavernous surroundings. This wasn’t the first alien planet Ethan had transported them to. But without the Sandman Orb working to give them a proper idea of where they physically were, it was becoming the most foreboding.

“Well, it would help if I had the driver’s manual,” Ethan defended, referring to the Codex, which had been left behind in Grady Hunter’s study during the battle with the Hunters of Azoth, forcing them all to escape to the Dream World. “My driving doesn’t explain why the orb just stopped working all together.”

“Of course, it does. You took a wrong turn into an uncharted dimension. You’re off the grid, darling.”

“Sorry I didn’t pull over to ask for directions,” Ethan snipped.

Before he could add anything else to his sarcastic rebuttal, Mercury grabbed his arm in a protective manner and whispered, “Hide the orb. We’re not alone.”

Ethan scooped the archaic device up and stowed the orb away inside his jacket’s inner lining, thankful Grady had bestowed the hand-me-down to him. His boyfriend’s wardrobe had all sorts of custom pockets and restraints for portable weaponry, which Ethan found to be more and more a necessity.

A cluster of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness, followed by the sound of grunts. Ethan released a pulse of glowing blue dream energy from his palm to light up the space. The alien animal let out an annoyed squawk. Now that Ethan could get a good peek at the creature, he wished he hadn’t.

The alien matched the murky gray sediment of the walls around them and appeared just as bulky. Its long body reminded Ethan of a salamander, only several feet longer and the size of a large crocodile. Once its gaggle of eyes adjusted to the light, the creature used six legs to propel itself rapidly toward them.

“Ball play is over. Back to basics,” Mercury instructed. Mercury had no reason to worry for his own life, seeing as he currently held the title of Death. Instead, he’d be more interested in protecting Ethan’s.

Picking up on his meaning, Ethan opened a portal back to the Dream World. In the blink of an eye, he and Mercury left behind a confused, angry, and hungry alien life-form.

*

Luckily, Mercury noted, Ethan has mastered the art of landing on his feet and not on his face when traveling between worlds.

Mercury grinned his approval. “You’re improving.”

“Not nearly fast enough,” Ethan reminded him, producing the orb once again. At least now they knew for certain the device wasn’t broken since the orb glowed back to working order with the atmosphere of the Dream World to energize it. “And this thing is basically useless without the Codex.”

“There’s more than one way to navigate foreign waters. Might I refer you to the Age of Exploration?” Mercury patted him on the shoulder in encouragement.

“No need to ask if you had any luck. I see Vincent still isn’t with you.”

They turned to see Marcus von Rottal, the vampire, standing nearby, his hands casually resting in his pockets.

Mercury had reason to be wary of Marcus’s extreme interest. They were all in limbo until they could find Vincent Roam, Ethan’s father—the original Sandman. Unbeknownst to the others, Marcus was the reason for Vincent’s disappearance. He’d pushed Vincent into a portal out of unfounded jealousy. Mercury had guarded their secret in order to protect Marcus. However, the truth seemed destined to come out. Especially if they were successful in finding Vincent alive. Mercury imagined Marcus would want to put all his efforts into doing whatever he could to prevent that from happening.

As long as Mercury had known him, Marcus had put his own interests above everyone else’s. Nothing could stop him or deter him once he set his mind on something. Mercury would have to play his hand very close to keep Marcus from interfering or suspecting he mistrusted his intentions. And as unrealistic as his desire was, a part of him also hoped the others never would know the truth. Regardless of everything which had transpired to drive them apart in the last century, and as much as he’d shed the coil of his past life as Dacey, Mercury still felt protective over him. Or at least responsible for him.

“Marcus, darling! I’m so glad you’re here,” he lied. “Would you be a doll and fetch Grady and perhaps even the portly fellow? What’s his name again?”

“Arthur,” Ethan helped.

Mercury snapped his fingers in confirmation. “Yes! I have an ever-growing list of questions needing answers from those bookish occultist blokes.”

“Hunter wandered into the dream forest,” Marcus informed them. He often referred to Grady by his surname to slight him. “I was quite hoping he’d lose himself in there, but I suppose I’ll go fetch him out if I must. Must I?”

Mercury nodded.

Marcus pursed his lips in response before making his way into the fluorescent-hued woods surrounding them.

Knowing full well Ethan would question the need to interrogate the other men, Mercury went ahead and answered. “Who has read the Mechanics of Sleep Travel more times than anyone else, and even better, who helped write the damned thing?”

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author


Dez Schwartz is a LGBTQ, Dreampunk, & Gothic Romance author and artist based in San Angelo, Texas. She holds a BFA in Studio Art and worked as a graphic artist, and a Director’s Assistant at a fine arts museum, before transitioning to writing full-time.

Her longtime love of Victorian spiritualism, gay literary fiction, and romantic comedies inspired her to begin writing all of the stories she wished existed.

When she’s not passionately crafting tales, she can be found drawing, researching, or traveling with loved ones

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

Giveaway


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The Qinali Virus by Valerie J. Mikles - Blog Tour with Excerpt and Author's Guest Post


The Qinali Virus



Valerie J. Mikles has a new queer sci fi book out: "The Qinali Virus."


Rage. Poverty. Disease.


They’re gone. Every last one.


The cost was great. The population has been devastated. But for the survivors, utopia has arrived.


Then the suspicious death of a young person forces Amber to question her world like she never has before. The Contentedness Council is after her, determined to protect their perfect society. Now Amber must unbury her city’s repressed past, expose the crimes that led to their utopia, and find a way to stop the Council from killing the world… again.


Join astral-projecting asexual Amber and her telepathic sister as they fight to save the human race from extermination!


Get It on Amazon




Excerpt



The Qinali Virus Meme


Jenise gasped. “Don’t do it.”

“Don’t call for help?” Amber asked, setting the tablet aside. “This is an astral injury. Maybe someone back home can help you.”

“No, please,” Jenise whimpered.

Amber felt her body vibrating and heard a ringing in her ears. The world became hazy and she saw her physical body collapsed on the ground. She hadn’t moved, and when she reached to the side, her hands passed through everything. This was how her book had described the astral plane.

“I did it! I’m here,” she squealed. Then she saw Jenise lying on the ground. A needle-like splinter pierced Jenise’s brain, and her aura seemed to ooze from the wound.

“Oh, this… this is bad…” Amber stammered, gathering the oozing essence back toward Jenise. Her hand went right through the glowing ooze and Jenise’s body. “How can I help you if I can’t touch you? What did the book say?”

“She’s coming for me,” Jenise murmured. Her physical form twitched, the red welts spreading as the needle dug deeper into her brain. Amber tried to clamp Jenise’s chin, but Jenise’s body passed through hers, so she grabbed the needle, and suddenly Jenise went still. She saw the needle because Jenise had described the needle. It was a manifestation of an injury; not a physical injury.

“I can manipulate a manifestation,” Amber murmured. Moving gingerly, Amber extracted the needle from her sister’s brain, and Jenise started to scream.

“Do you want me to stop?” Amber asked. Jenise kept screaming, oblivious to the question.

Gritting her teeth, Amber removed more of the needle, and her sister’s essence gushed from the wound. Amber blew gently on the oozing liquid and it seemed to dissolve into her sister’s skin. Once the needle was out, she molded her hands around her sister’s head, trying to close the wound. Her hands kept passing through Jenise’s skull, making her twitch. Amber didn’t like astral surgery, and she hoped she was helping.

“They’re coming,” Jenise murmured, her hands flailing, passing through Amber’s astral body. She felt her form vibrate and a ringing sound filled her ears.

“No. No, I’m not finished!” Amber cried, feeling an anchor pulling her back to her physical form. She curled into a fetal position, fighting to get back to the astral plane.

Jenise rolled onto her side and spooned behind Amber. “We have to run,” she rasped. “Someone’s coming.”

“Who? Is it Parey? Someone from the Council?” Amber asked. Amber heard the truck now, its wheels crushing the dirt and gravel as it came down the road from Highmere.

“I can’t tell,” Jenise rasped. “Don’t give up, Amber. Don’t go back.”

Amber sensed Jenise’s urgency, but when she saw the truck, she felt relieved. Running meant more isolation and uncertainty. What if Jenise wasn’t really better? Going back to Highmere made sense.

“Let’s go home,” Amber said. “You were scared, Jenise. We were scared. We can say… I don’t know. They’ll give us counseling and then we can go back to our lives.”

“I don’t want to go to brainwashing therapy,” Jenise said.

“Stop calling it that,” Amber explained.

“You don’t even know, do you?” Jenise said. “You don’t remember how you were before Cenn died. What “therapy” did to you.”

“It helped,” Amber insisted, looking hopefully at the truck ambling toward them. “I was a mess. I needed to be able to talk to someone without dumping it on all of you.”

“But you stopped feeling,” Jenise argued. “Not just the grief; you stopped feeling joy. You used to make twittering noises when you read books. You used to get so excited about things that Cenn had to sit you down so you wouldn’t pass out.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll be calm,” Amber said, fighting for a reason to trust her people. “They want the tablet with Chenna’s research. That’s all this is. A misunderstanding.”

“I was almost misunderstood to death!” Jenise cried, kicking at Amber, and rolling out of reach.

“Jenise, unless you can move, we can’t outrun them,” Amber said. “I am not leaving without you. I—oh, no.”

The stress of the argument made her dizzy and she dropped to her knees. A moment later, she was standing by the road, watching the truck roll by. Her voice caught in her throat, but she didn’t need to call out. The husky man in the passenger seat saw her and hollered, and the truck screeched to a stop. She recognized him from the Council—Tobin Wauld.

“I know we’re not supposed to be here. We’re scared. Can you take us home?” she asked. The weight of fear lifted for a moment, but then Wauld hoisted himself out the window, and drew a long-barreled weapon.

“Well, well, Discontent Delouise. This was too easy,” he smirked.

Amber’s lips quivered and her legs froze. She’d never seen a weapon like that in Highmere, but she’d seen them in that zombie movie. Run, you idiot, her brain shouted. She’d muttered it at the characters in the movies often enough.

He shot Amber with an orange-tipped weapon as he stalked past. She felt the sting of the puncture and a thin stream of liquid dripping into her astral form.

“Tobin, you shot her!” his companion cried.

“We came with tranqs for a reason. We don’t have time to argue with discontents,” Wauld said.

Amber still couldn’t believe a councilperson had shot her. Pretending to faint, she turned and dropped, rolling down the embankment. The moment the truck was out of sight, she willed herself back to her physical body.

“How’d it go?” Jenise asked.

“They shot me,” Amber said. Her whole body was trembling from adrenaline and she could feel the spread of the tranquilizer dart pushing against it.

“Misunderstanding?” Jenise taunted.

“Oh, no. Very clear,” Amber said, blinking away the spots in her vision. She had never experienced violence in Highmere, and she didn’t even know her people had dart guns. The feelings of shock and betrayal hit her in waves, as did a profound sense of loss. This wasn’t a short camping trip that ended with a meek return home anymore.





Representing aromantic/asexual characters

I was 32 before I realized I was asexual. That means I don’t experience sexual attraction. At all. Ever. Part of the difficulty both in recognizing this and accepting it was that I’d never before encountered an asexual character in anything I’d read or seen on TV, except for aliens. So in my head, I was a bit of an alien. When I started writing The Qinali Virus, I wanted to create an aromantic, asexual character who was human. I wanted to show it was possible to show and experience love without it being tied to romance and sex.

This is not the first time I’ve written an asexual character in a book. In my third book Trade Circle, I also featured an asexual character. The interesting thing is that I first drafted this book before I realized I was asexual. I didn’t have a word to describe her. My editor thought her behavior was kind of unbelievable (especially when she claimed to have never thought about her childhood friend as a potential romantic partner). Once I had a word for it, I was able to give more form to her struggle.

Before I began publishing books, I took a brief foray into films. My main project was a web series called Aces - a story about asexual friends surviving a hypersexual world. The comedy shorts are designed to entertain and educate people about what asexuality means and what it’s like to be asexual. Some of the characters are aromantic, some aren’t. Some are still figuring out where they fit in. There are so many blogs and documentaries, but I learn through comedy and entertainment, so I created that. The other fun thing about doing it as a film project is that I got to educate everyone in the cast and crew as well. I have more scripts that I’d love to produce, but everything needs a season, and this is my season for novels.

You can check out my film work at: http://www.aces-sitcom.com

Also, check out Trade Circle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1975783905/


Author Bio


The Qinali Virus - Valerie J Mikles


Valerie loves dancing, writing, astronomy, sci-fi, and grapes. She’s agender, aromantic, and asexual, and even though her labels describe many things she is not, her motto in life is “I can be everything I want, just not all at the same time.”


Although she has yet to get paid to eat grapes, she was delighted to learn that people would pay her to study black holes, and spent much of her twenties as a black hole hunter. She was rewarded with an astronomy PhD, which promptly inspired her to move to L.A. to be a screenwriter. How she ended up working on weather satellites for NOAA, we may never know.


Her passion for story-telling extends back to before she could write, and in fall 2017, she achieved a life dream and published her first book, “The Disappeared.” Valerie currently has six books published in her New Dawn series You can learn more about Valerie’s books on her website: 
http://www.valeriejmikles.com


An asexual activist, Valerie has written and produced a series of comedic short films featuring asexual characters. You can watch her films online at: http://www.aces-sitcom.com. Her third book ‘Trade Circle’ features an asexual protagonist, and interestingly, she created this character before she even knew there was a word to describe it. She is super-excited about the release of the Qinali Virus, featuring an asexual, aromantic astronomer (and a weather satellite for good measure).


Author Website: http://www.valeriejmikles.com

Author Facebook (Author Page): http://www.facebook.com/vjmikles

Author Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/valeriebean

Author Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16941635.Valerie_J_Mikles

Author Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Valerie-J-Mikles/e/B074K2QCHG

Author LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/author/miklesvaleriej




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