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Dragon Love by @marcauthor Book Blast & Giveaway by @MasqTours #DLBlast #fantasy

For love that is tested
in the crucible of fate must burn, or die…
 
Publication Date: August 15, 2015
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Series: Dragonfriend #2

When a woman loves a Dragon, that love will change the world.

Six years have passed since Hualiama and Grandion defied the Island-World’s most sacred law. They burned the heavens together as Rider and Dragon. For his crime, Grandion the Tourmaline Dragon suffered exile and imprisonment. The Dragons forced Hualiama to forget her past.

Now, the suns must set upon the age of the Ancient Dragons. Amaryllion Fireborn, last of his kind, bequeaths Hualiama an astonishing legacy. She is the Dragonfriend. Raised by Dragons. Burned by Dragon fire. Oath-bound to a Dragon. Crossing the Island-World in search of her Dragonlove, she will forge an indelible mark upon history.

As war between Dragons and Humans engulfs the Islands, Hualiama must unravel the secrets of her tragic past in order to confront an evil that threatens the very existence of the Dragonkind. For love that is tested in the crucible of fate must burn, or die.

Excerpt

DRAGON-THUNDER SHOOK the palace.

Hualiama kicked off her soft slippers. Picking up her formal lace skirts, she began to run, but the long train snagged immediately on the curved claws of a stylised jade Dragon. Dagger in hand, she hacked wildly at the priceless fabric restricting her stride. Bleeding–Dragon fire take it! She stumbled up endless stairs designed by an architect enamoured with galleries sized to house ridiculous mountains of royal artefacts. Entering a long corridor, her woefully short legs stretched into a sprint. Ranks of larger-than-life paintings of tall, pointy-eared ancestors blurred to either side. All of her attention was focussed on the altercation on the Receiving Balcony, atop Fra’anior’s Royal Palace.

A Dragon’s voice boomed, “This means war, King Chalcion!”

She had to stop them. Now.

Slewing around a corner, Lia deliberately cannoned off a man-high ornamental vase. She caught her balance, agile as any dragonet, and picked up her knees. Head down, she pumped her arms, accelerating to the speed of a warrior and dancer who trained for five hours daily. Twisting between two thickset marble columns to shortcut her route, Lia used a stone pot-plant as a springboard to leap upward at full stretch, flying briefly over a yawning drop to the palace gardens below. Snagging the crenulations atop the wall with her fingertips, she wriggled upward with the facility of a lizard scaling a wall and vaulted smoothly onto the balcony beyond. One more level.

She heard querulous voices, and the swish of Dragons’ wings. They were leaving.

Her heart could not sink, because it was thrashing about in her throat. But it should. This was just the incident to ignite the simmering relations between Dragons and Humans. She should know. That very morning, Lia had witnessed a Dragonwing immolating a Human village.

Bounding up the final staircase, she raced out onto the balcony, screaming, “Stop!”

Lia caught her foot in the wreck of her dress, slipped, and skidded across the rough flagstones all the way to the edge of her father’s robes.

“Stop them!”

Stooping, the King seized her arm. “This is an outrage, Hualiama! How dare you barge–”

She tore herself free, hurled herself to the balcony’s edge, and screamed again, “Stop! By the Spirits of the Ancient Dragons, please!”

Hualiama gazed out over her beloved Island. Sweet, haunting harmonies of birdsong and dragonet-song saluted the gathering evening, the ever-song, some called it, the unique melody of Fra’anior, which was an Island-Cluster of twenty-seven Islands precariously perched on the rim-wall of the greatest volcano in the Island-World. The late afternoon light streamed in so thick and golden, she feared the King might pass a law to store it in the royal treasury. But she had eyes only for the Dragons.

Four Dragons winged over the vast bowl of Fra’anior’s volcanic caldera, their scales gleaming like glorious jewels in the resplendent light. Two were hundred-foot Reds, as perfect as matched rubies, called Zulior and Qualiana, and the third a vast emerald-green named Andarraz. Sapphurion, the Dragon Elder himself, led their Dragonwing. His scales evoked the turquoise hue of a clear lake. All were breathtaking, but Sapphurion was the greatest of all, the leader of the Island-World’s Dragons.

The four Dragons banked with supreme grace, angling back toward the Receiving Balcony. Hualiama’s heart stood still.

Marc is a South African-born author who lives and works in Ethiopia with his wife and 4 children, 2 dogs, a rabbit, and a variable number of marabou storks that roost on the acacia trees out back. On a good night there are also hyenas patrolling the back fence.


When he’s not writing about Africa Marc can be found travelling to remote locations. He thinks there’s nothing better than standing on a mountaintop wondering what lies over the next horizon.

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The Brother’s Keep by @TessaStockton Book Blast & #Giveaway by @MasqTours #KeepBlast #fantasy

Four brothers… Four maidens… Four challenges…
Publication Date: May 6, 2015
Genre: YA Romantic Fantasy
Series: The Brother’s Keep (4 Novellas in 1)

Four brothers are appealing in appearance and stature. Yet beneath the striking features, magnitude and charm, they are monsters, for each one of them have fallen to darkness and are cursed for all time. Possessed with unique power, along with the wrath to destroy, the brothers consume all in their paths …until unlikely maidens challenge them apiece.

Each of the four young maidens ventures out, vulnerable and alone, to battle unknown elements, demons, and strange magic. Risking all for the journey, they are set to find the demise of their monster. But the question of motive begins to infiltrate each of their minds. Are they really trying to save their people from the harm of the monster or redeem a heartless being for the sake of love? Because somehow, while daring, their own hearts are stolen in what could be the quickest path to destruction, the greatest betrayal of all.

Along the way, meet Lily of the Valley, Bright & Morning Star, Promise the King, and The Messenger, characters potentially aiding these impressionable young women who find themselves quite lost in the keeps of alluring yet unscrupulous brothers.

EXCERPTS

WIND’S ARIA

“Who are you?”

He pushed further back into the shadows as she strode closer. “Someone you need not know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

When he didn’t answer, she sighed.

“What a strange, terrible day,” she mumbled. “Well, at least tell me your name . . .”

He stood, speechless, knowing he shouldn’t be there at all—conversing with a Meleyan—especially not their musical deliverer that he was set to doom the day after tomorrow.

A peculiar grumbling interrupted her insistence, to his relief.

“Sorry.” She patted her stomach. He could see, even in the blackened night, how her face turned a deeper shade of red than her hair. “I’ve forgotten to eat. I guess I’m hungrier than I realized.”

He plucked an apple from the tree he’d nearly become a part of and held it out to her. The girl approached tentatively. She reached for the fruit but recoiled when her fingers brushed his.

“Is touching me so horrible?” he asked.

Her jaw dropped open and her delicate brow furrowed. She inclined her head. “It . . . hurt.”

“How?” he asked, for her fingers felt good to him, soothing. Warm. He wanted to try again.

“I don’t know how to explain . . .”

“Hum.” Unsatisfied with the answer, he tossed the apple to her and watched as she crunched her teeth into it.

SEA GOD’S SIREN

“You’re not being very nice.” Syrena glanced in the direction of an especially loud wave that crashed against the shore, reaching to kiss the tips of her toes. She pulled her legs in and rested her head on her knees.

The three sisters lingered in silence for a spell, absorbing the sun’s offering for the day.

“Well, anyway,” Steffi said. “It’s high time you got over your fear of the sea. You’ve lived at its edge your entire life and you haven’t even put your feet in.”

“I don’t have to. And I don’t need to listen to you.” Syrena didn’t budge.

Gwyn snorted. “Grumpy this morning. . . .”

Syrena stood then, brushing off sand. She took several steps into the unknown, this time without her sisters, trying to feel her way back home but stumbled over driftwood.

“Here,” Gwyn said impatiently. “We’ll help you. We always do, you know. It’s because we love you and want to see you happy.”

“I know,” Syrena whispered. “Love you, too. Thanks,” she said, as her sisters grabbed a hand each and led her up the path from the beach.

A head popped out of the water not far from the coastline. Not one of the sisters noticed the keen eyes that watched the back of one girl in particular and had done so every day for a very long time. The wave he sent almost reached her this time, pulling her into his world. When would he ever hold her again?

Syrena.

Dagon dove to the darkest, deepest crook of his domain and sulked.

TREE LORD’S ORACLE

Gaping, Arekel tried to find words but couldn’t speak—only stare. Her heart palpitated in fear, yet she couldn’t pull away from him—couldn’t move.

He cocked his head. His brow furrowed. He pressed closer as if examining her. His snarl slowly wilted.

A strange sort of languish grew on the man’s face. His mouth and jaw shifted. Evil prevailed in him, yet it seemed as if Arekel opened a door to a dark room and in its depth a flicker of light, though very small, subsisted. In an odd way, it made her ache.

With tentativeness the man finally took hold of her face . . . but then his grip began to soften. He inclined his head again. “Warm,” he said, as if he’d never felt warmth. A long, cold finger delicately traced the line of her jaw. His voice purred like silk. “Fortunate,” he said, one side of his mouth curling upward. “You will live another day.”

ICE DANCER’S HOLD

Sasha’s heart hammered against her chest. She stared at Kilian, distrusting the vampyre. But after he had lifted her hands and brushed her palms with his sensuous lips, he sat upright with a deeply furrowed brow. “I don’t want to hurt you.” She could detect the tendon in his jaw that shifted as he glanced out the window at the falling snow. “That’s what’s strange.” He released her hands and stood.

She watched him, and felt the cloud of doubt that seemed to materialize from nowhere.

“The province from where I came is in the middle of an arctic.” He sighed. “My fortress is made of ice.” He lit a candle and then moved again toward the windows, whispering, “How I miss it.”

“I’m sorry for your unhappiness, Master.”

He turned partway and said, “Yes, you’ve said that before. At the water’s edge.”

“It’s true.”

“Well, then, I thank you.” He pursed his lips. “You are virtuous.”

She bowed her head.

He exhaled what sounded like the weight of his and her worlds combined. “Walk with me, Sasha.”

“I beg your pardon, Master?”

“A stroll. Come.” He extended his arm. Around his other arm draped a fur coat while heavy boots appeared at his feet.

She didn’t question his magic, but donned the items and then took his hand. “Will you not be cold, Master?”

“I cannot be touched by what I am. I am the cold, my dear.”

For whatever reason, Sasha felt glad Kilian didn’t address her as his sweet like he had Princess Kristyana. When he’d called her my dear, the endearment sounded dipped in a degree of respect. But that couldn’t be. She rubbed the fading sleep from her eyes. She was a slave and he, her master; she a fae and he a vampyre. Vampyres and faes didn’t go well together.

TRAILER

Tessa Stockton is a veteran of the performing arts and worldwide missions, having come from a long line of musical arts professionals. She loved seeing the world and absorbing the beauty of other cultures . . . an enriching life full of dance, music, faith, and interesting cuisine. Over the years, she also contributed as a writer/editor for ministry publications, ghostwriter for political content, and headed a column on the topic of forgiveness. Today, she writes fantasy, romance and political intrigue novels.

 
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Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords

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Sarai’s Fortune by @AOwenBooks Cover Reveal & #Giveaway by @MasqTours #SaraiReveal

Sarai’s Fortune
by Abigail Owen

Designed by: Debbie Taylor (The Wild Rose Press)

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Series: Shadowcat Nation, #2

Release Date: May 13, 2015

Zac Montclair’s first priority is to protect his people. With the escalating war between factions of shifters over land and resources, he has agreed to an alliance between his polar bears and the Shadowcat Nation of cougar shifters. But the treaty comes with a condition…he must accept one of their Seers into his Timik and put her under his personal protection.

Sarai Bouchard doesn’t need her supernatural gift to know that Kyle Carstairs’s obsession with controlling her ability will eventually result in her misery and demise. Her power is essential to her people’s survival, so when Kyle goes rogue, she’s sent to Zac Montclair to keep her safe. However, her visions reveal that while staying will lead to their becoming lovers, it also leads to his death. Leaving Zac will result in her own.

If Sarai can’t find a way to change the future, she will be forced to choose…save her lover or save herself.  Pre-order here.

Watch the Trailer…

 

Award-winning paranormal and contemporary romance author, Abigail Owen was born in Greeley, Colorado, and raised in Austin, Texas. She now resides in Northern California with her husband and two adorable children who are the center of her universe.

Abigail grew up consuming books and exploring the world through her writing. A fourth generation graduate of Texas A&M University, she attempted to find a practical career related to her favorite pastime by earning a degree in English Rhetoric (Technical Writing). However, she swiftly discovered that writing without imagination is not nearly as fun as writing with it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords