Book Excerpt: Jack Canon's Women of the House by Greg Sandora

 

"Guys, would you excuse me for a moment. Daphne teased biting her lower lip in an adorable half smile. Jack, I’ve got something to show you." Her voiced pitched as she trained her pretty eyes toward mine anticipating my reaction.

"Nice, Honey. While you’re out there…tell the V.P.—we’ll meet with her on Monday."

"Are you sure, Jack?" Locking eyes, "Your Mondays are always so full?"

"Sweetie, just fit her in the best you can—between something else – we might as well get it over with. Ten minutes tops."

Daphne leaned into my side to whisper, "Okay, I’ll be right back," I couldn’t see them, but I imagined her raising her perfectly brushed brows. She leaned in closer, her pretty voice got softer, "With a surprise – I’m just dying to show you the dress I bought for the wedding." Her breasts and tummy pressed against my arm as she tenderly whispered the words.

"How’s that a surprise if you told him?" Alyson asked freshly. "I heard you."

Daphne was generous with her touch and rubbed into me. I’ve never met a girl more comfortable in her own skin. Placing one hand firmly on my leg, she squeezed, delicately leaving the chair, before performing her usual sexy slink toward the door. This girl couldn’t help being beautiful!

Alone together, Alyson piped up, "That’s why woman hate her, Jack." She added shaking her head gently against my chest, "That walk – it’s like she’s always trying to turn you on. Every minute she’s around you – she never let’s up. She’s so competitive – do you see it? And,—that voice – nobody talks like that!"

I put both arms around Alyson and held tighter to reassure her, "Honey, – this job would kill me if I didn’t have you girls to take the edge off." She seemed satisfied to hear me excuse Daphne’s sultry antics. We sat quietly a moment before she started fidgeting with the ends of her dress.

"I’m sorry, Jack – you must think I’m just as bad the way my dress is riding up. It’s so short to begin with – I wore it for you."

"Don’t ever worry about me, – you’re a wonderful distraction."

"You know what – the heck with it then, I’ll just let it ride up so you can see the tops of my thighs." She giggled.

"They’re beautiful. I just don’t want to take advantage of you."

Alyson snuggled closer, getting more comfortable, "Really, Jack? It’s my body and I want you to see it. For that matter these are my lips," I felt a trace of lip-gloss, scented cherry.

"My mouth wanted to kiss you."

"Yeah?" I said a bit too softly, wishing I’d said it in a deeper tone. Rubbing her arms, feeling tender towards her. "It’s sort of funny, your body does whatever it wants."

She giggled and smiled, "I guess."

"Okay, I’m good, Sweetie."

"Hey, Jack? What ever happened to Elsa?" Changing the subject.

"Elsa? We located her shoes. We found them in a Greek brothel. The girl that had them told our crew Elsa was auctioned off to a Saudi Sheik."

"Oh my God." Alyson covered her mouth.

"No, that’s good news because chances are she’ll still be alive when we go get her."

"You’re going after her?"

"We sure are. Tip has your dad training on weapons and systems right now. It’s going to take him a few days to get him back up to speed. He’s been out of commission for a while, but as soon as he is ready he’s heading over there to rescue her."

"Jack, do you think the sheik will just hand her over?"

"No, it’s going to be messy, we’ll have to wreck the place, but we’re sending a message. The only thing that matters is that Elsa will be coming home. And, girls like her will be safe. We’re going to stop human slavery once and for all."

"What about in the U.S., Jack?"

"Here it’s a different story – we need to beef up law enforcement. We already have the means to stop trafficking, but it’s been allowed to go on."

"Why?" Alyson asked in disbelief.

"Tip would be angry for me telling you – for your own sake, Sweetheart—you really don’t want to know…" Just as I was about to spill it—Daphne saved me from having to explain any further. Sauntering in wearing a peach form fitting tube dress—flattering her knock out figure to lengths I hadn’t ever allowed my mind to go. All-over- glitter silver stilettos shining over glossy black platforms gave her a statuesque long-legged appearance. She made her way toward me stopping short in the middle of the room. Daphne had a way of making love with her eyes.

 

 

 

Author Bio:

I'm originally from the Portland, Maine area and lived and worked there for years before moving to Southwest Florida. I am currently working on a Supernatural Romatic Thriller titled: Gabby, Angel of God
My Dad and Mom were artists, my father painted and my mother wrote poetry and loved to garden. Most Saturdays we loaded up the 1970 Chevy Impala to trek to a one man show somewhere or other. I took a different track graduating with a business degree; owning and operating an Award Winning Franchise Fitness Center. Currently a professional manager I am living in Florida with my beautiful wife and children, and following my passion.
 My current project in the works involves angels - a man during a visit to Bar Harbor Maine encounters an angel; quite accidentally, he is told - she was not supposed to make him aware of her existence. Only three others have ever seen the real thing. Naturally he falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful creature.

 

 

Author Links - The link for any or all of the following...

Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Linkedin | Goodreads | Amazon

Amazon http://amzn.com/B00HC290W8

website  http://www.gregsandora.com

Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/gregsandora

Twitter   https://twitter.com/gregsandora

Google +  https://plus.google.com/115306432722909460506

Pinterest  http://pinterest.com/gregsandora

Goodreads   www.goodreads.com/book/show/18369918

 

 

Book Excerpt: The Chosen by Annette Gisby

Book Excerpt

Drunken revellers spilled out onto the street, a few of them leering at Havyn, who moved closer to Severin and held onto his cloak. “No one will harm you,” Severin promised, although looking at some of the toughs, he wondered if his own skill with a sword would be enough if they all decided to attack at once. One of the men vomited over the threshold of the inn, and then two of his friends dragged him off, all three of them singing off key as they staggered into the twilight.

The inn was crowded with people, some looked like smiths relaxing after their day’s work, others had the look of soldiers or adventurers, yet others were apparently groups of travellers who looked warily at the door when Severin and his companions stepped carefully over the puddle of vomit.

The smell made him a little nauseous himself, and he hurried the three of them over to the bar and the woman behind it.

Her face was caked with makeup, and her large bosom seemed in danger of falling out of the tight bodice that encased it. Havyn blushed, looking down at his feet. Had he never been in a tavern before?

“We’d like a room for three for the night,” said Severin. “How much?”

“A gold piece for you and the wizard. The dog can sleep in the barn with the rest of the animals.”

“We don’t have a dog.”

The alewife jerked a finger at Havyn. “Him.”

“He’s not a dog. He’s a person!”

“He’s a slave, ain’t he? Slaves ain’t people. He’s an animal. I don’t want my rooms fouled up.”

“He will be staying with us. I insist,” said Severin. “How much?”

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” the barmaid winked at him. “That’ll be four gold pieces then. Food and drinks are extra.”

“Do you have a bath house?”

She snorted. “A bath house? Oh of course, my lord.” The woman made a mock curtsey. “And we have gold plated chamber pots an’ all! Where do you think you are? In a palace? No, we ain’t got a bath house, but I can send you up some hot water. There’s a tub in the room. A fireplace too. Not every room has a fireplace, you know. That costs extra.”

“Of course,” said Severin, trying not to roll his eyes.

About the Author

Annette Gisby grew up in a small town in Northern Ireland, moving to London when she was seventeen. Being a very small town there were no bookshops and a small library. When she'd devoured every book she could get her hands on in the library, she started writing her own stories so she would always have something to read later.

When not writing she enjoys reading, cinema, theatre, walks along deserted beaches or wandering around ruined castles (great places for inspiration!) New Zealand is her favourite place and she hopes to travel back there one day. She's a fan of Japanese Manga and Anime and one day hopes to learn Japanese.

She currently lives in Hampshire with her husband, a collection of porcelain dolls and stuffed penguins and enough books to fill a small library. It's diminishing gradually since the discovery of ebooks but still has a long way to go.

About the Book

Ebook http://www.amazon.com/The-Chosen-ebook/dp/B00DFKVJ5C/ https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thechosen-1222707-143.html http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/326842 Paperback http://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Annette-Gisby/dp/1291504532/ http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-chosen-annette-gisby/1019324794?ean=9781291504538&itm=1&usri=annette+gisby

The neighbouring kingdoms of Oscia and Arcathia have been at a tentative peace for three years after centuries of warfare. Prince Severin of Arcathia has been brought up to put duty before all else and as the only son of the King and Queen, it is his duty to marry and produce an heir. His parents want him to marry an Oscian princess to cement that tentative peace. Unfortunately Severin isn't interested in princesses. Now, if he had his pick of princes that would be another matter.

Havyn has been a slave all his life. When his aptitude for wizardry is discovered, he finds himself purchased and freed by Prince Severin and apprenticed to the royal wizard, Ildar. His duty is to stay chaste to keep his powers strong, but his feelings for Severin sorely test his resolve.

With kingdoms at war, the throne hanging in the balance, magic in the air , and outside forces trying to keep them apart, can the two men find happiness together, or is duty more important than love?

Book Review: Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller by Demelza Carlton

By charleneleatherman on March 15, 2014 in Books and Reviews

Book Review: Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller

By

Demelza Carlton

‘Returned from the dead.’ Caitlin Lockyer is a survivor of a horrendous kidnapping. She is guarded night and day. The people who kidnapped her want her back. The police and other agencies want her memories, to catch the kidnappers and to…  Newspapers, publishers and television want her story.
She wants her life back …. right after she kills the monsters that kidnapped, raped and tortured her.  Everyone wants a piece of her. The law enforcers want her memories as testimonies. Newspapers, books and television want her memories for the thrill of it. The kidnappers want her dead. The only one she can turn to is the man who found her. The man who everyone warns her away from.
Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller is the second of a trilogy. However, I found it reading very well on its own. The book is written in first person. Caitlin Lockyer tells her story. Sometimes things are clear. Sometimes they are as muddled as her brain on pain-killers. The way the book is written, in first person, makes the story more immediate, more frightening. I was captured by the book, by Caitlin Lockyer and what she survived, how she met the aftermath.
The first book of the trilogy is Nightmares of Caitlin Lockyer. From what I have read, it is from the perspective of one of the perpetrators. Having read the second book first, I may read the first simply to fill in some information. However, I REALLY want to read the third installment. Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller stands alone, in my opinion. It stands alone in a very dark, scary place. When you read it, you might want to keep the lights on.

Interview: Demelza Carlton, Author of ‘Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller’

By charleneleatherman on March 14, 2014 in Books and Reviews

Thanks for stopping by, Demelza Carlton. Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing your book Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller. The book is the second in a trilogy, but I found it to be an exceptional stand-alone. Today, however, let’s find out more about you and your characters.  Let’s get started.
What were you like at school?
I read a lot…and finished work quickly, so by high school I carried a notebook with me to write stories in when I got bored. I’d type them up at home and bring the fresh pages in a loose-leaf folder for my friends to read the next chapter. It was 1995 – the internet only just existed and none of us had computers that could connect to it.
Were you good at English?
I was in primary school, when it was predominantly grammar rules, reading and writing. When it came to English Literature at high school, and I was expected to critique books to my teachers’ specifications, well…I had one English teacher who never agreed with my interpretation of the books we studied. I mean, Pride and Prejudice is one of the most radical feminist texts I’ve ever read – it refers to men as property in the first paragraph! – so in my final exams at my last year at high school, I actually scored better in French, Physics and Calculus than in English.

Give us an insight into your main character in Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller. What does he/she do that is so special?
The main character is not the bloke in the title. Her name is in the first book’s title – Caitlin Lockyer. Caitlin’s abducted, abused…and left for dead on a beach. She survived where other girls died, yet she’s little and delicate. No one knows how she managed it – but in this book, you find out how she managed to survive as long as she did – during the abuse and afterwards. If you’ve read the first book, there are a fair few surprises still in store. And if you haven’t read the first book…I’ll give you no spoilers.

Do you write full-time or part-time?
Usually, I write part-time, in addition to my full-time job. I actually took some time off work to see my books published, but I’m not sure I could just write full-time. I like more variety than the contents of my own head – not to mention interacting more with real people!

Do you have a special time to write or how is your day structured?
I write best in the early morning, just after I wake up, or in the evening, when I’ve had stories spinning in my head all day. That doesn’t mean I get to write every day, but those are generally when I do write on the days I can.

Do you write every day, 5 days a week or as and when?
Some weeks I do, some weeks I don’t. I tend to write books in a flood, over the course of a few weeks, just letting the writing flow as much as time permits. So I write in bursts, sometimes seven days a week for a month, before taking a break almost entirely for the following month. Of course, when inspiration hits, I still try to write it down – even if it’s just in note form for later.

Do you aim for a set amount of words/pages per day?
No. I’ve had days when I write more than 10,000 words and some where I’ve barely managed 200, but somehow they all even out.

How do you think you’ve evolved creatively?
Creative evolution? Have you been looking at my more speculative drafts? I admit I do have a science fiction work in progress that involves terraforming planets. It follows a couple of sloppy terraforming engineers who are more interested in each other than their job as they transform a planet from lifeless rock to the beginnings of life and how it evolves into ever more complex beings until…oh, no. I won’t tell you what the pinnacle of their evolutionary process was. That’d be spoiling the story.

What was the hardest thing about writing your latest book?
Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller was already half-written when I completed Nightmares of Caitlin Lockyer, because the stories are complementary. They cover the same time period, but from very different perspectives. The hardest part was taking that first half and giving it the other half, because I started another project in the middle of it that occupied so much of my attention.

It was a romance – involving Caitlin’s doctor, six years before Necessary Evil. The doctor’s book is called Water and Fire. So, the most difficult part of writing Caitlin’s story was when her red-haired, Irish doctor walked through my scene, completely disrupting my thought process as it followed him instead of her!

How long on average does it take you to write a book?
I’d say roughly a month to six weeks, though this book took me nineteen years, all up, in three different iterations before it took a vague shape similar to what it has now. Editing, now that takes three times as long as writing…

What are your thoughts on writing a book series.
I never intended to do it. Necessary Evil and Nightmares were originally ONE book, with Necessary Evil coming first, as it describes Caitlin’s kidnapping and what happened, while Nightmares starts with her arriving in hospital. I separated it when I decided that I had to write Nightmares from only Nathan’s perspective. Once I’d written outlines for the two books, though, I realised that their story wasn’t finished. There was more…hence there is a third book, to complete the Nightmares Trilogy, which will be released in 2014.

For your own reading, do you prefer ebooks or traditional paper/hard back books?
I love my Kindle, because it’s light. I like my stories to be as long as possible, so I can be a part of the characters’ lives for longer, but that makes for some very heavy hardbacks or even paperbacks. I have an extensive print library and I still buy print books – in fact, a lot of my favourite books I have ebook and hard copy editions.

What book/s are you reading at present?
Several, probably, all on my Kindle. There’ll be a couple I’ve agreed to read and review for other authors, including one on digital photography. There’s a very useful book called Self-Printing by Catherine Ryan Howard that I’m slowly re-reading, to see what I’ve missed in my marketing that I might focus on next. As for my personal choice of fiction, that I read when I just want to enjoy the story and not think about anything else…actually, I finished one such book on the weekend (Tears of Tess, by Pepper Winters) and I’ve just started a new one, which is shaping up to be a great read – Chaos Born, by Rebekah Turner.

Do you proofread/edit all your own books or do you get someone to do that for you?
Of course I proofread all my own work – I’d be crazy not to – but I also pay a professional editor to do it for me. My editor isn’t just anyone – he’s a professional media editor with a Masters degree in English and published books of his own. Plus the two of us, I enlist a team of beta-readers, who kindly tell me whether my book has too much sex in it, too little or if someone’s Mercedes has mysteriously morphed into a Mazda. Those extra sets of eyes are invaluable – and I can’t thank them enough.

The end product, I hope, speaks for itself – minimal typos, if any, and no silly mistakes. If I don’t feel a book is perfect, I won’t release it for sale.
 
Do you let the book stew – leave it for a month and then come back to it to edit?
When time permits, yes. I try to go write or read something else, before coming back to my own work. I notice things I never had before.

Who designed your book cover/s?
The covers for the Nightmares series are actually my own work, I’m pleased to say. As these were my third and fifth published books, I’ve had time to learn to use my photography software to an extent that I could create these. After paying a graphic artist for the cover of my first book and seeing some disappointing results, until we reached the final cover design on Ocean’s Gift today, I’m hesitant to work with another artist again, unless I really admire their work.

Do you think that the cover plays an important part in the buying process?
A cover is crucial in catching the eye of a reader. If I see an ebook cover that screams, “Amateur!” I’m less inclined to buy the book because there’s a high chance that the book isn’t well formatted and edited, though the story might be incredible. Now, if I’ve heard from someone I trust that the book is great or I just know the author is awesome, so I’ll love anything they write, the cover doesn’t matter in the slightest, but those books are few and far between.

That’s why I try to ensure mine include full-cover photographs that are as striking as possible. I mean, take a look at the cover of Necessary Evil. Doesn’t the bloke on the cover make you wonder what he’s thinking? I imagine it’s something along the lines of, “Evil might be necessary…but it’ll feel sooo good…”

Have any strange things happened while you were marketing your books?
I spent some time up at Ningaloo Reef, in the northern part of Western Australia, and I was taking photos and video to use for marketing purposes for my Ocean’s Gift series, which is about mermaids. I was finishing up a day of scuba diving, just sitting on deck as the dive boat cruised back to the jetty, filming the waves on the reef as we went past.
My mind started to drift as I watched the breakers, thinking about Necessary Evil. By the time the boat tied up, I had Chapter Three almost complete in my head. So, after we’d landed and put all our gear away, I just sat on the beach and watched the breakers again, filming as I perfected the scene in my head.
Later, when I was looking at doing some promotional videos, I stumbled across that wave footage – and set it as the background picture when I narrated that chapter for a YouTube video. So if you ever wonder how an oceanic chapter ended up in a book about evil, that’s how it happened.
How do you relax?
With a camera. I love my DSLR and I like travelling – even when it’s just to the bushland near my house – to take photos of things. Last year, I spent hours on whale-watching boats, just photographing the whales, the ocean and anything else that came within lens distance of the boat. There’s just something about forgetting everything else except what you’re looking at and just lazily pointing the camera at it so you can remember it later. Of course, it’s even better with a glass of alcohol in hand – not to mention much more relaxing, too!

Where can people learn more about you?
 Ooh, I have a whole list of links and places people can stalk me, from my website to YouTube to Facebook.
I’ve been told I have a sexy Aussie accent, so if you’d like to judge for yourself, pick one of my YouTube videos. I do the voiceovers for my trailers and background videos, with some occasional chapter readings, too.
So, what are those links?
Sorry, those links are:

Website: http://www.demelzacarlton.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DemelzaCarltonAuthor
Twitter: http://twitter.com/DemelzaCarlton
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/DemelzaCarlton
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/DemelzaCarlton?feature=watch
Amazon: http://viewauthor.at/DemelzaCarlton
Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself?
What would you like to know? Drop me a line, PM, whatever and ask!
Someone asked me once how mermaids could possibly have sex. Yes, I answered that one in descriptive detail. Surely no question can be stranger than that.