Don’t Forget The Tirgearr Summer Sale…

Yes, the sudden bursts of sweltering hot weather followed by spectacular rain and thunderstorms (great for all you lovers of atmospheric ASMR videos) means summer is here. And that, of course, means the annual Tirgearr summer sale, when all their full-price books are available at 50 per cent more. Great for stocking up the e-reader and maybe trying out the first book in a new series.

Here’s the blatant plug – my Tirgearr City Nights hot contemporary romance One Night in Brussels is already available at Smashwords for 99p/99c, but to get the historical romance One Knight in Muiden for a bargain price, follow this link, or click on the image below:

If you want to find out more about all things Tirgearr, visit my author page at the Tirgearr site. Happy reading!

It’s Read An E-book Week!

Even if you have the biggest TBR pile in the world, it’s always hard to resist stocking up on a new title or two whenever a sale comes along. And to mark Read An E-book Week, Tirgearr Publishing is throwing one of their excellent Smashwords sales. This means all Tirgearr titles priced above 99c are available at half price until March 13th. If you haven’t read it already (and why not), you can get your hands on my historical romance novella, One Knight In Muiden, part of the City Knights series for this bargain price. If you love handsome knights and tales of innocent deception that turn into something more complicated, this is the one for you. To find the book on Smashwords, click on the link below, and don’t forget to use the code EBW50 when you check out. And keep reading those e-books!

In A Mediaeval Mood

I’ve become a big fan of ambience – I mean the videos you find on YouTube and the tracks on Spotify designed to create a mood or a time and a place. Often, these are pure ‘white noise’ – everything from pounding rain to the sound of a washing machine churning, which many people find aid them in drifting off to sleep. But an increasing number of very talented people are creating – or recreating – soundtracks with any number of voices, sounds, or pieces of music woven together to whisk you off to somewhere less mundane than the room where you’re working or studying. Some of them are even based on books, for fans of the Harry Potter series or Tolkien’s epic fantasy doorstops. But you don’t have to look too hard to find one that could be the perfect accompaniment to the romance books in your TBR pile.

For instance, on a channel called Ambience of Yesteryear, I found this little beauty. To me, it really enhances the scene in my mediaeval romance, One Knight in Muiden, where the story’s heroine, Lady Swaneke, begins to grow increasingly attracted to the brooding and mysterious knight, Sir Alwin, as the characters eat together in the great hall of Muiden Castle. Take a listen and see what you think – and if you know of any other great ambient sounds I should be checking out why don’t you leave me a comment.

And if you haven’t yet read One Knight In Muiden, now’s a great time to pick up a copy, as all the Tirgearr books that aren’t perma-priced at 99p/99c are currently on sale for half price in the Smashwords summer sale.

You can find more details about both One Knight in Muiden and my City Nights book, One Night in Brussels, on my Tirgearr publishing page, and if you click on the graphic below you’ll be taken to the Smashwords site for One Knight in Muiden. Don’t forget to use the code SSW50 at checkout, and happy reading, whatever you choose as the background noise to accompany it!

Feed Your Reader With City Nights/City Knights

Longing to travel but can’t go anywhere at the moment? Well, you can bring the hottest cities and adventures in the world to your e-reader courtesy of the Feed Your Reader blog tour and price promotion for Tirgearr’s City Nights and City Knights series. Set in cities as varied as Memphis and Manchester, Budapest and Barcelona, each one has a perfect mix of erotic romance and great storytelling that’ll have you hungry for more. All the titles are on offer for 99p/99c and among those available are my own romantic suspense tale, One Night In Brussels, and the historical adventure, One Knight In Muiden.

The blog tour is organised by Goddess Fish Promotions, and it runs until April 3rd. You can find a list of all the blogs taking part (and it’s a pretty long list!), by clicking on the image below.

If that’s not enough, Goddess Fish is also running a Rafflecopter giveaway to win a $25 Amazon gift card – that’ll buy you a lot of City Nights books! No purchase is necessary – to enter, simply visit the Feed Your Reader bargain books page on the Goddess Fish site. Good luck!

It’s Christmas Sale Time!

So you’ve opened your presents, eaten your turkey, and done whatever else you do to mark the festive holiday season, and now you’re keen to curl up with a good book. (At least, that’s how I like to end my day…) Well, Tirgearr are bringing you a present in terms of the Smashwords Christmas sale. From December 25th to January 1st, all Tirgearr titles will be available at 50 per cent off, apart from the fabulous hot romance titles in the City Nights series, which are already perma-priced at 99p/99c (which should be all the excuse you need to grab a copy of my romantic suspense novella, One Night in Brussels). You’ll be able to find loads of great books from Tirgearr’s range of talented authors, and to take advantage of the savings, use the code SEY50 at checkout. If you’re looking for my historical romance novella, One Knight In Muiden, a tale of disguise, deception, and overwhelming passion, simply click on the link below and you’ll go straight to its Smashwords page.

And have a happy Christmas, and a wonderful, book-filled New Year!

Happy Halloween!

Tonight’s the night when all the ghosts and ghouls come out to play, the trick-or-treaters knock on doors in the hope of collecting sweets and chocolate, and the rest of us curl up with a good spooky erotic romance. If you’re in the Amsterdam area, there may still be time to book yourself on the ghost tour offered at the Muiderslot castle, where you can explore the dark side of this amazing building. In an article in today’s edition of Dutch newspaper, Het Parool, the organiser of the event, Imre Besanger explains that the staff who close the castle up for the evening sometimes hear creaks, moans, and footsteps, and have to take care not to let their fantasies run away with themselves because otherwise they’d run away in fright.

I mention all this partly because the Muiderslot is the setting for my my mediaeval hot romance novella, One Knight In Muiden, where all the thrills are purely of the flesh and blood variety, and partly because if you follow this link, you get to see a fabulous shot of the castle lit up for a ghostly celebration. Have fun tonight, and don’t let anything put the willies up you!

Summer Sale Ahoy!

Yes, the weather is stupidly sticky, Wimbledon is about to start, and England are doing well at the Women’s World Cup. As only two of those are good things, let’s round it up to three by announcing that it’s time for the Tirgearr Publishing Summer Sale!

For the month of July, any book retailing at $1.99 or above will be available at Smashwords for 50% off, in all formats including epub, mobi and PDF. What more incentive do you need to check out their fabulous selection of titles, including the City Knights hot historical romances and City Nights contemporary romances. And don’t forget that many of the earlier City Nights books, my own One Night in Brussels among them, are permanently priced at 99c, which is a bargain in anyone’s books.

Remember – this sale only applies to titles bought via Smashwords. Just use the code SSW50 when you checkout. To start shopping, simply click on the image below and you’ll be taken straight to the Tirgearr portal on Smashwords, where the browsing can commence. Happy reading!

 

It’s Read An E-book Week!

Everybody loves ebooks – they’re so simple to load onto your e-reader, tablet or even your phone if you’re one of those people who likes looking at a tiny screen, and you can read them just about anywhere. They’ve opened up so many opportunities for self-published authors (your mileage may vary on whether this is universally a good thing) and best of all, they enable you to read a huge slab of a bestseller (Stephen King’s The Stand, I’m looking at you) without straining to hold the thing in place.

To mark Read An E-book Week, Tirgearr are offering all their titles at a whopping 50 per cent off on Smashwords until this coming Saturday (March 9th). That means you could pick up both my Tirgearr titles – the hot contemporary romance One Night In Brussels, packed with suspense, intrigue and sizzling sex, and the historical romance One Knight In Muiden, an erotic tale of handsome men in armour and disguised identities – at a bargain price.

To take advantage of the offer, click on the image below to go to the Tirgearr site, choose the books you want, select the Smashwords link and don’t forget to enter EBW when checking out.  Enjoy your ebook!

 

One Knight In Muiden Is Released Today!

Photo courtesy of Rijkdienst voor het Culturel Erfsgoed

My mediaeval historical novella, One Knight In Muiden, gets its full release from Tirgearr Publishing today, and I’m really excited about my first serious foray into the world of knights, ladies and court intrigue. Like its parent series, the City Nights contemporary romances, each of these stories takes place in a different city, but there’s the added restriction that only one city per country is allowed. So why did I choose Muiden and its beautiful castle, the Muiderslot?

The Netherlands isn’t a country you immediately think of when it comes to castles. The British Isles is an obvious choice. England has many settings that are well known in myth and legends, from Nottingham, in prime Robin Hood country, to Tintagel, believed to be the home of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Wales and Scotland have their fair share of amazing fortified buildings too (indeed, Stirling was the setting for the first City Knights book). France has its romantic chateaux, Germany its Schlösser, with their mountainous locations and fairy tale turrets. But the Muiderslot is as beautiful in design as any of those, and at the time when my story is set, the 14^th century, it was of real strategic importance.

The route through North Holland played a vital part in trade across Europe, and whoever owned the castle at Muiden was able to extract hefty tolls from merchants who wanted to travel on the local roads. In the novella, this makes Swaneke, the daughter of Count Jonas of Muiden, a very eligible woman. Her father wishes to marry her to Count Reynold of Utrecht, and seal an alliance that will keep them both wealthy. Of course, at the time, someone like Swaneke would have had very little say in her choice of husband, but it doesn’t prevent her from having doubts about Reynold’s suitability as a husband. Throw in her attraction to a handsome knight who, unlike his master, lives by the concept of ‘courtly love’ and is obliged to act nobly and bravely in the service of the woman he loves, whether or not she can ever be his, and the resulting tale is a mixture of desire and deception that will change the lives of everyone living in the Muiderslot forever.

Muiden Castle has been rebuilt in recent centuries, though it’s retained its original mediaeval design, and it’s become a popular tourist attraction. You can find out more about visiting the castle here. And to read an extract from One Knight In Muiden and get details of the various online retailers where the book is for sale, check out its page on the Tirgearr website.

Oh, What A Knight!

You may remember that a while ago I posted a few images of castles and handsome, brawny knights, which were all part of the inspiration for my then-work in progress. Well, the fruit of that work is One Knight In Muiden, the second book in Tirgearr’s new City Knights historical romance series – itself a spin-off from their successful City Nights series which includes my own One Night In Brussels.

Here’s the beautiful cover for the book, created by Tirgearr’s very talented cover artist, Cora.

The idea behind City Knights is that each novella takes place in a different country, allowing the authors to delve into mediaeval history while creating a compelling romance with a knight’s adventures at its heart.

One Knight In Muiden is set in the Muidersloot, a castle which in the Netherlands of the 14th century was sited on an important trade route, and whoever controlled the castle was able to set tolls for merchants wanting to travel through Europe and beyond. Some of its history has been lost to time, which is a useful excuse for a writer who needs to take a few liberties with historical accuracy and can’t claim that a wizard did it…

The castle is home to Swaneke, whose father seeks to make a marriage that will benefit him by strengthening his grip on this toll route. He thinks he’s found a perfect match for her in Count Reynold of Utrecht, but Swaneke is frightened by the count’s reputation for coldness and cruelty and doesn’t want to be married off. Her lady-in-waiting, Mette, hatches a plan – if the women trade places, Mette can spend time with Count Reynold and report back. It sounds like fun, until Swaneke meets Count Reynold’s man-at-arms, Sir Alwin, and develops a powerful attraction to the brooding and withdrawn knight…

If you want to find out what happens next, One Knight in Muiden is currently available to pre-order from ebook retailers including Amazon US and Amazon UK, and you can get more of a flavour of the book on its Tirgearr page. It’ll give you a knight to remember!