Sunday, March 31, 2019

Book Blitz and Giveaway: Smoke City by Keith Rosson

Smoke City 
Keith Rosson
Published by: Meerkat Press
Publication date: January 23rd 2018
Genres: Adult, Magical Realism

Marvin Deitz has some serious problems. His mob-connected landlord is strong-arming him out of his storefront. His therapist has concerns about his stability. He’s compelled to volunteer at the local Children’s Hospital even though it breaks his heart every week.
Oh, and he’s also the guilt-ridden reincarnation of Geoffroy Thérage, the French executioner who lit Joan of Arc’s pyre in 1431. He’s just seen a woman on a Los Angeles talk show claiming to be Joan, and absolution seems closer than it’s ever been . . . but how will he find her?
When Marvin heads to Los Angeles to locate the woman who may or may not be Joan, he’s picked up hitchhiking by Mike Vale, a self-destructive alcoholic painter traveling to his ex-wife’s funeral. As they move through a California landscape populated with “smokes” (ghostly apparitions that’ve inexplicably begun appearing throughout the southwestern US), each seeks absolution in his own way.
Now in Paperback!
The years bled together. Each waking morning—or afternoon, truth be told, or evening—couched in a familiar bloom of panic. After that, after Vale realized where he was, who he was, came the rest: sickness, fear, assessment of damage, all of it stitched together with the fine red thread of guilt.

Art & Artists had once called him a “relentless avatar of our contemporary, post-nuclear unease.”

He woke to the alarm, studded in fresh bruises. New scabs on his knees and his teeth loose in his mouth. His lack of memory familiar in itself. Sunlight fell in the room in fierce, distinct bands.

He stood shivering in the shower, the water lancing against him while lava, hot and malicious, compressed itself behind his optic nerves. This pulsing thunder in the skull, and moments from the Ace High the night before came to him slowly, like something spied through a fun house mirror. He bent over to pick up a sliver of soap and with his trembling hand batted a rust-dotted razor lying on the rim of the bathtub. The razor slid down the tub, luge-like, and Vale reached down for it, trying not to gag as dark spots burst like stars in his periphery. He stumbled and stepped on the razor. The crack of plastic, and thin threads of blood began to snake toward the drain. It was painless.

“Oh, come on,” he croaked. “Shit’s sake.” He’d smoked nearly two packs of Camels the night before and sounded now like something pulled howling from a crypt. He tried to stand on his other foot to examine the cut and couldn’t manage it. He put his foot back down and stepped on the broken razor again, and now the floor of the tub was awash in an idiot’s Rorschach of red on white. He retched once and shut the water off, resigned to death—or at least collapse—at any second. The towel hanging from the back of the door reeked of mold, and he gagged against it and dropped it to the floor. He left bloody, shambling one-sided footprints to his bedroom.

Apart from the painting hanging above his bed (the sole Mike Vale original still in his possession), the fist-sized hole next to the light switch was the room’s only decoration. There was a dresser pitted with cigarette burns and topped with a constellation of empty beer bottles. An unmade bed ringed with dirty sheets. The alarm clock on the floor. Plastic blinds rattled against the open window.

He dressed slowly and stepped to the kitchen. Flies dive-bombed bottles mounded in the sink, on the counters. The light on the answering machine was blinking. He pressed the Play button, already knowing who it would be—who else called him?—and there was Candice’s voice.

“The only man in the country still using an answering machine,” she said. “Okay. This is me saying hi. Give me a ring when you discover, you know, fire and the wheel.” Her voice then became steeped in a cautious, thoughtful cadence, a measured quality he remembered more clearly from their marriage. “Richard and I should be heading up through there on tour for another Janey book soon. It’d be good to touch base, get dinner. Call me.”

It was September, the last gasp of summer. The apartment was explosive with trapped heat. A swath of sunlight fell across the countertop. Just looking at that glare hurt his eyes, his entire body, made him feel as if rancid dishwater was shooting straight into his guts. A nameless sadness, the sadness, the exact opposite of the Moment and so much more insistent, tore through him like a torrent. Like a rip of lightning, there and gone, and Vale sobbed. Just once. One ragged, graceless gasp. Pathetic. He stood sweating over the answering machine, ashamed of himself.

He was out the door five minutes later, blood wetting his sock, cold coffee and aspirin hammering a bitter waltz somewhere below his heart.

Time had once called him “a shaman of America’s apocalyptic incantations, one who catalogs our fears and thrusts them back at us in a ferocious Day-Glo palette.”

On his way to the bus stop Mike Vale, the shaman, the avatar—looking down in his shirt pocket for a cigarette—ran directly into a telephone pole, hard enough to give himself a nosebleed.

Keith Rosson is the author of the novels The Mercy of the Tide and Smoke City, and his short fiction has appeared in Cream City Review, PANK, December, The Nervous Breakdown, and more. He's been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a finalist for the Birdwhistle Prize for Short Fiction. He's also an illustrator and graphic designer, with clients that include Green Day, Against Me, the Goo Goo Dolls, and others. A fierce advocate of public libraries and non-ironic adulation of the cassette tape, he can be found at keithrosson.com.
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Saturday, March 30, 2019

Cover Reveal: Devil's Queen by Avelyn Paige

Photographer: FuriousFotog
Models: Joe and Erica Worden
Cover Designer: The Final Wrap
His Little Girl.
The Zulu Kings MC’s beloved little princess.
Until it all ends with a bullet to the brain.

Remington Laveau's life with her father's club was one she couldn’t afford to lose. But her father’s death, sends her life spiraling out of control. She and her mother find themselves cast out, as outsiders by her father’s former motorcycle club, before his body is even cold in the ground. Remington is thrust into a world of endless betrayal, corruption, and darkness with nothing. That is until her father’s last request and legacy becomes her own. 

Now, Remington is in the fight of her life to keep the business, her father left to her, and her heart protected from the one man who has always held the keys to it. The man who now sits on her father’s throne of lies. The coil of corruption runs deep within their ranks, and Remington will stop at nothing to get what she wants, even if she has to lose everything in the process, including her heart.
Releasing June 14th, 2019
Avelyn Paige is a born and raised Indiana girl. While she may be a Hoosier by birth, she is a Boilermaker by choice. Boiler Up! She resides in a sleepy little town in Indiana with her husband and three crazy pets. Avelyn spends her days working as a cancer research scientist and her nights sipping moonshine while writing and book reviewing.

Avelyn loves everything paranormal, Cajun culture, and wants to try tornado chasing as a hobby when she finally grows up. She just has to get over that pesky fear of thunderstorms first. Avelyn also enjoys collecting voodoo dolls from her trips to New Orleans.


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Friday, March 29, 2019

Release Boost: Don't Let Me by Marie Skye

Title: Don't Let Me
Series: The Simplicit Duet #1
Author: Marie Skye
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Release Date: March 26, 2019
Temptation is a sneaky bitch that brought two men in my life and I wanted them both. One left without saying a word. The other asked me to be his and I said yes. I moved on...so I thought. 

Life isn't a fairytale. Everyone has a secret. Everyone has a flaw. And mine? Well, sometimes vows aren't for everyone. 

They say there's two sides to every story, but the truth makes three. In case you didn’t hear me the first time, let me repeat it. 

Life isn't a fucking fairytale.

99c for a limited time!!
AMAZON US / UK / CA / AU
Free in Kindle Unlimited
Marie Skye is your average career driven woman by day, and a hidden lover of all things dirty by night. Or, as she likes to say, professional by day; author whore by night.

Army brat, and now just a brat. She currently resides in Austin, TX where there really is a difference between breakfast burritos, and breakfast tacos, but she really doesn't know what the difference is.

If it's dark, and full of inappropriate material. She's attracted to it. She prefers making her character's work for their happy ever after, if they get one, and she has no problem making sure they endure every obstacle to try to get there. She's known as not having a filter, and if she's asked for an opinion, be prepared to get a response that's most likely a mixture of sarcasm and bluntness.

She also has a soft side, and volunteers her time to support Elephants, as well as not attending any events that has elephants in their acts. She also loves sloths, and cute kittens, and prides herself on being able to quote the entire series of Friends.

Marie is the type of person that can be friends with anyone, but if you have cake, you're pretty much her best friend. 

Book Blitz and Giveaway: The Last Wingman by Daisy Prescott


The Last Wingman
Daisy Prescott
(Wingmen #6)
Publication date: March 7th 2019
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

The Last Wingman is a standalone enemies to lovers romance. 
Jonah Kingston is the last wingman standing. 
June Moxee doesn’t care if he’s the last man on earth.
I haven’t exactly avoided relationships, but love has never been a priority. Solitude doesn’t bother me and being alone doesn’t mean being lonely. Until she moved to the island and I had to reconsider everything. 
June seems content running her yarn shop, knitting with the local church ladies, and avoiding me. She’s a temptress in a hand-knit sweater. And for some reason, she’s not a fan of mine. It might be the tattoos. Or the beard. Or the fact that we’re polar opposites. 
A woman has finally caught my attention. Too bad she thinks she hates me. Good thing I’m stubborn enough to try to change her mind.
Now on Kindle Unlimited!
An old-fashioned brass bell jingles when I open the door to June’s store. The narrow space is made even tighter by the floor-to-ceiling cubbies that line the two long walls. In the back of the store, a picture window frames a view of Saratoga Passage like a painting.

Tucked in the corner near the window is a comfy-looking wingback chair, and next to it, an oversized basket filled with balls of yarn. The shop is cozy and feminine, comfortable like a sweet grandmother’s house.

A grandmother who listens to “Sex and Candy” on low volume.

Not what I was expecting.

“Hello?” I call from my spot near the door. There’s no sign of June or anyone else inside. Double-checking the door for a Be back soon note and not seeing one, I step farther into the space. “Hello?”

A soft thump followed by more thumps comes from the desk area. Metallic pings and something heavy hitting the floor precedes a feminine voice yelping “Ouch” and “Fuck!”
June doesn’t seem like the type to drop f-bombs. Maybe she’s hired a ’90s-music-loving teenager with a foul mouth.

“Everything okay?” I follow the noise to the partially open door near the register.

“Fine. Fine! Nothing to see here! I’ll be with you in a second. Thanks for your patience.” What sounds like rapid-fire beanbags hitting a cornhole board contradicts her words.

As I see it, I have two options. I can ignore whatever is going on inside the closet and wait, or I can ignore her lie and step in to help.

I go with the second choice.

Swinging the door open, I’m greeted with a scene of colorful chaos. A box balances on its side on the edge of a high shelf, most of its contents now on the floor around June’s feet. 

She’s keeping the box aloft with both hands, but doesn’t have the height to shove it back into position.

“Here, let me help you.” I step into the small space behind her and reach above her head to stabilize the cardboard container before she ends up concussed.

“I don’t need your help.” Reluctantly, she releases her grip.

“Okay.” Disappointed and a little hurt by her obvious annoyance at my presence, I give the corner a final shove to guarantee we’re out of danger. “You’re welcome.”

“I said I was fine.” Continuing to face the shelves, she doesn’t turn her head to speak to me. In fact, she sounds downright angry.
“Got it. Well, I’ll get out of your way.” Resigned, I decide to abandon my mission and retreat to the safety of my own business, both literally and figuratively.

What happens next is more her fault than mine. Had she used a step stool and not tipped the box over, there wouldn’t be balls of yarn strewn across the floor, creating a minefield. Easily-tripped-over round objects that cause me to lose my balance and reach for the closest available thing to stop myself from landing on my ass.

Unfortunately, I grab June by the waist, surprising her. She’s not prepared to act as my anchor. Unstable, we both stumble backward.

Lucky for June, I break her fall. Unlucky for me, she lands on top of me.

We’ve never even hugged before this moment. I think we might have shaken hands once when Dan introduced us, but the memory isn’t clear. There wasn’t an electric shock when we first touched or met eyes, no love-at-first-sight zings upon initial contact—unlike now when my body is on high alert that we’re not only touching but lying flush against each other.

“I’m so sorry!” June wiggles, her movement drawing my attention to her clothes. How did I not notice she’s wearing a full skirt made of thin material? My imagination easily erases its existence altogether.

“Don’t apologize. This was completely my fault.” My words come out a grunt as I try to catch my breath.

My hands still grip her waist, making this position more awkward by the second. Unbidden, my fingers flex against her softness. Bad idea. Feeling my dick thicken, I tell myself not to move, not to even breathe. Oxygen is overrated.

Shifting on top of me, she bends her knees and gets her feet under her enough to stand up in a single, ninja-quick movement. Instead of waiting for me to stand or extending a hand to help me, she exits through the door and closes it behind her.

I’m left sprawled out on the floor, balls of yarn and possibly a needle poking me in the back. “No good deed goes unpunished,” I mutter to myself as I scramble to my feet. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
USA Today Bestselling Author Daisy Prescott writes romantic comedies about real love.
Love with Altitude, Daisy's new series of standalone Rom Coms, is set in the mountains of Colorado. The Wingmen books star regular guys who often have beards, drive trucks, and love deeply once they fall. Modern Love Stories feature characters in their thirties and forties finding and rediscovering love in unexpected and humorous ways. 

Born and raised in San Diego, Daisy currently lives in a real life Stars Hollow in the Boston suburbs with her husband, their rescue dog, Mulder, and an imaginary house goat. When not writing about herself in the third person, Daisy can be found traveling, gardening, baking, or lost in a good book.
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