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!

Book Review: Earthbound By Melora Johnson

Allyson Reynolds is a vet specialising in the area of wild birds, specifically raptor rehabilitation. Since childhood, she’s carried a secret that means she’s ideally suited for her job – she can cure animals by laying on her hands and sending healing energy into them. Her job brings her into contact with handsome Matt Blake, an ornithologist at Cornell University. Matt needs her to look at an injured bird, and when he and Allyson meet, sparks fly. What Allyson doesn’t know is that Matt is completely aware of her special powers – and that he needs her to help him in his role as a demon hunter. And that’s just the beginning of the secrets he has in store for her. Before she knows what’s happening, Allyson is plunged into a nightmare fight for survival against the most evil of demons, not knowing who she can trust, who wishes to harm her, and whether she should act on her growing attraction to the very sexy Matt…

Earthbound may start with the cliched set-up of a feisty, intelligent, high-flying woman who has everything going for her but still can’t find a man. However, it soon transforms into an entertaining and fast-moving paranormal adventure which will appeal to readers who were raised on the likes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Allyson is faced with a variety of adversaries, some of whom are far more attractive – and familiar – than others, and though she at first struggles to adapt to all the things she learns about herself, as the book progresses she gains an increasing mastery of her powers. She and Matt make a compelling team as they fight all the obstacles that are thrown in their path, and they have a sizzling chemistry in and out of the bedroom, swapping wisecracks and complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Matt is skilled and resourceful without being a boring typical alpha male hero. Meanwhile, Allison may be more than human but she never loses her compassion for her friends, family, and her pet cat, and though Matt is on hand to help out when the forces of evil threaten to overwhelm her, she’s definitely no damsel in distress.

The end of the book, while not a cliffhanger, sets up the possibility of more adventures for Allyson and Matt – here’s looking forward to them kicking more demon ass in future!

Earthbound is published by Tirgearr Publishing. To find out more about the book, read an excerpt, and find a full list of retailer links for the title, visit the Earthbound page at the Tirgearr website.

I was given a copy of Earthbound by Lucy at Writer Marketing Services in return for an honest review.

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!

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!

 

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!

One Night In Brussels – Hot Chocolate For A Cold Day

With the weather at Naughty Corner Towers having been positively glacial for the past few days, my thoughts inevitably turned to ways of warming up. So here’s a cheeky one from One Night In Brussels, which is on sale till Sunday as part of Tirgearr’s birthday celebrations. And no,  it’s not what you might be thinking…

When Saskia and Dominic reach the corner café, all the tables outside are occupied, even though it’s really too chilly to be sitting for long in the open air.
They find a spot inside, next to a couple of elegantly dressed middle-aged women who are clearly at the end of a shopping spree, their feet surrounded by bulging carrier bags. One of the women is examining a purchase she’s made—a milk chocolate copy of the Manneken Pis statue, similar to those Saskia noticed in a
window back on Zuidstraat.
A waitress in a black waistcoat and skirt over a white blouse, her blond hair scraped back in a tight ponytail, comes to take their order.
“Cappuccino for me,” Dominic tells her. “How about you, Saskia?”
“I’d love a hot chocolate.”
“With cream?” the waitress asks, scribbling a note on her pad.
I shouldn’t, but why not? It’s not the naughtiest thing I’ve done today—or might do later…
Saskia doesn’t know where the thought has come from, only that she’s aware of a subtle tension between herself and Dominic, heightened every time she glances into those expressive dark eyes of his.

To find out how things heat up once Saskia and Dominic leave the café, pick up a copy of One Night In Brussels from 99 cents from Amazon US or 99p from Amazon UK.

It’s Tirgearr’s Birthday!

Yes, Tirgearr is celebrating another year of bringing readers the best in romance, mystery, sci-fi and so much more, and just like last year they’re celebrating in style. From today until Sunday there’s a huge sale at Amazon with lots of Tirgearr titles on sale – take a look at the image below to see all the authors taking part.

My book from the City Nights series, One Night In Brussels, is on sale at Amazon US and Amazon UK, so take a look if you like tales of hot romance mixed in with a dash of suspense (and delicious Belgian frites…)

There’s also a Rafflecopter giveaway running between now and March 4th, where you can win a House of Tirgearryen teeshirt and three Tirgearr ebooks of your choice. You can enter at the official Tirgearr site or on the Tirgearr blog. Good luck!

If that’s not enough, you can pick up the teeshirt on sale for $15. Click on the image below to find out more and place your order. And happy birthday, Tirgearr!

Taking One For The Team

All publishing houses have their own ways of promoting themselves, but how many would produce and send a teeshirt to all their authors? That’s what Tirgearr did with their Team Tirgearryan shirts, and here I am, modelling mine on the picturesque (and rather windy) Brouwersgracht in Amsterdam.

Photo by Ted Blair. Fancy image filter courtesy of Microsoft Photos.

As you can probably tell, the teeshirt design is a nod to Game of Thrones, though sadly the lovely Kemberlee at Tirgearr hasn’t yet provided us all with our own dragon…

If you’d like your own House of Tirgearryen teeshirt, they’re available to buy on the Tirgearr website. And as an added bonus for lovers of the Tirgearr City Nights series (including my own One Night In Brussels), all the books are part of the Tirgearr store-wide sale at Smashwords from now until the end of July. To start shopping, click on the banner below, then use the code SSW50 at the checkout to receive your discount. Gelukkig lezen! (That’s Dutch for ‘happy reading’.)