Ever wondered what magic goes into designing a great cover? The cover artist who designed mine for Once in a Blue Moon, Gabrielle Prendergast, gives you a glimpse inside. I’m sure Gabrielle would love to hear your thoughts…

See more of what Gabrielle can do at www.coveryourdreams.net!

New book! GOD WHISPERER
10% of author royalties will be donated to the American Society for Deaf Children.

I am so happy to be here again. Thank you, Delilah.

When I posted in April, I was super-excited about the upcoming releases of our SEALS OF SUMMER Military Superbundle. Thanks to you wonderful readers, we hit the NY Times Bestselling list. Wowza, it’s still such a dream come true!

Since April, I’ve released another book in the SEAL EXtreme Team series, LOCK and LOAD, and am working on book 3. I love, love, love the SEALs. Writing about them makes my heart go pitter-patter. But sometimes I need to go in a different direction when a story grabs hold of my heart and won’t let go until I write it.

GOD WHISPERER is a romantic and inspirational suspense. I hope you all like it (she says as she chews her nails). It’s different and personal. My son was the inspiration behind the book because he was born with a very rare defect called Atresia—meaning no ear canal. He was also missing an eardrum. The surgeon at UCLA drilled a hole and created an eardrum from tissue behind my son’s ear. The auditory ossicles, or hearing bones, vibrated to sound on the operating table. When my boy could hear out of both ears for the first time? Holy moly, what a miracle!

While the book is pure fiction, a river of truth flows through the pages. The emotions? Those are mine. The fear of losing a child, the elation and gratitude of a surgery that changes everything, the joy? Mine, mine, mine. Wanting to help others? You guessed it. 10% of my royalties will be donated to the American Society for Deaf Children to help families and children. When you buy the book, you help, too. Thank you so much.

I’d love to hear what you think of the book. Honest reviews and emails make my day. You can write to me at kimberleytroutte@verizon.net.

Amazon   |   Barnes and Noble

A frightened mother on the run…

LONNIE HOGAN has lived and breathed fear for the eight years she and her son have been on the run. She cut ties with the past and is hiding out in a small offbeat Danish community in California. Will the killers find them? She’s ready to run again, or fight for her son’s precious life, but she won’t let anyone take David.

A desperate man searching for his family…

Few people on St. John, Virgin Islands, know their favorite doctor, MARK NORTON, is a desperate man searching for the life that was stolen from him. After hours, he surfs the internet for leads and retraces paths gone stone-cold to find his missing family. He’ll do anything to find them and get his son back.

Will sacrifice everything to protect the boy who hears God…

DAVID HOGAN is a regular kid, if you don’t count the one-ear thing. He didn’t mind being deaf in one ear, but it hurt his mom, way down deep, as if she caused it. Why won’t she see bad things can happen for good reasons? Like the ear surgery that allowed him to hear God. Talking to God is one of the greatest things to ever happen to him, even if Mom doesn’t believe it. But the killers can find them now. Can one little kid save them all?

Kimberley Troutte

NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Kimberley Troutte has been an accountant, substitute teacher, caterer, financial analyst for a major defense contractor, aerobics instructor, real-estate broker, freelance writer, homework corrector and caregiver to all the creatures the kids/hubby/dog drag in. She lives with her husband, two sons, a wild cat and a snake in Southern California. She writes romantic suspense and children’s fiction.

Website | Blog | Facebook | @KTroutte |NEWSLETTER

It’s finally here! If you’ve missed my paranormal stories, well here ya go. And there’s so much room for more—at least five more stories, anyway. The books center around the Beaux Rêve Coven, a displaced group of sister-witches (friends not sisters, really, but I liked the polygamists’ term “sister wives” so much, I decided my new descriptive fit my girls’ situation perfectly.  😉

And since I have a familiarity with Wiccan/Pagan practices, magic seeps into the witches’ stories in big and small ways. If you want to try some spells, well, there are a few inside the book I hope you’ll enjoy.

Is the book sexy? While this first one’s not a ménage, the sex is plentiful and raw. The stories that follow will likely include multiple partners—too few witches, too many demons…  But I led with a very sexy hero in this book. A troll. And now you have to know how one of those can be sexy, don’t you?

So enjoy Once in a Blue Moon! Let me know if you want more stories set in Bonne Nuit. And if you have time, please post a review. Let another reader know whether the time and the money they’re considering spending on my story is worth their while. I’d be forever grateful. Thank you! Be watching my Facebook and Twitter because I’m setting up a FB party to celebrate the release! There will be prizes!

Here are the links:

Samhain | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

When testing an enemy for weaknesses, prepare for things to get hard. (*snicker*)

Beaux Rêve Coven, Book 1

Bryn Cavanaugh and her coven like that the community they live in is isolated thanks to a storm that destroyed the bridge between them and the outside world. Now the state wants the bridge rebuilt. When the construction crew checks into the inn, Bryn begins to suspect something about the crew’s boss isn’t quite…human.

Bridges are Ethan Thorne’s thing—after all, he’s a troll—so building a simple span over a remote canal in backwater Louisiana shouldn’t be this much of a problem. When he follows the pretty little innkeeper to a midnight rendezvous, he discovers why his crew keeps running into trouble. Bryn and her coven are casting spells in the moonlight.

As a troll, Ethan feels the sting of his low place in demon hierarchy. But finding an unprotected coven of witches in the middle of the bayou could lead to all sorts of adventure. And it’s better to keep your enemies close…

Warning: Contains a handsome troll (Hey, it can happen!) who’s skilled at building sexual tension with his hands—and several other body parts, as well—and a witch who’s determined to protect her home, but forgets to shield her heart.

Read the First Chapter if you’re still not convinced!

Thank you so much for having me on your blog today, Delilah. Writing romantic suspense isn’t the easiest subgenre since you have to blend two threads together—the suspense and the romance—and do it almost evenly. In Echoes of the Past, I took the challenge one step further. I added a paranormal component to the story, one that meshes with both the romance thread and the suspense, and hopefully draws the reader into my wild and crazy imagination.

When I first set eyes on the Lake of The Mountain, I knew I had to craft a story around its unique and mysterious nature. Discovering a Mohawk legend attached to the lake brought the story together for me quickly. When you think of lakes and suspense, drowning seems like the ready-made crime, but I added a dash of today’s drug problems to it and wove everything together.

In the romance thread, you need a heroine and a hero looking for love, but unable to find it. What if they did find it once, but lost it? How poignant would their search to find their soul mate and recapture their love be? That’s the angle I took In Echoes of the Past. My hero and heroine are madly in love with one another, but they can’t be together initially. Why? Because they’ve never met. Sound strange?

That’s where the paranormal thread fits in. Remember the Mohawk legend I mentioned? What if my hero and heroine were reincarnations of those doomed lovers, who died and were kept apart throughout eternity because of a curse? What if they meet in dreams and relive their time together, and awake alone and bereft? How can the curse be broken? Let’s bring in the Mohawk spirits who possess their souls. Those spirits are in trouble and need our hero and heroine’s help, but only together can they defeat the evil threatening the lake. So, after two centuries, our lovers will be reunited, but will they recognize one another in this world?

Now, we have the paranormal moving into the suspense. Let’s give it another nudge by creating a heroine who can speak to the spirits of those who die by drowning and have two bodies wash ashore at the Lake of the Mountain Resort. Now, we’ve added to our paranormal thread and pulled in the mystery. What will the bodies tell our heroine?

About Echoes of the Past:

Born Mohawk, raised white, forensic pathologist, Michelle Thomas is trapped between two worlds—this one and the spirit world where the ghosts of those who’ve drowned speak to her. Haunted by crippling nightmares of her own drowning death and erotic dreams of a phantom lover, she strives to make sense of her life. When two suspicious deaths occur at the Lake of the Mountain Resort, she’s sent to investigate. She’ll face the greatest challenge of her career when her past and her present collide. One of these men is her future, but which one—the rich and powerful Mayor Ron Davies, or Tony Steele, the hydrology professor who may be responsible for his students’ deaths? Charged by the spirits of her Mohawk ancestors to atone for her previous sins by protecting Lake of the Gods, can Michelle solve the murders, save the sacred waters, and fulfil her destiny?

Excerpt from Echoes of the Past:

Naked, she lies on her back inside the green, leafy grotto, which meshes seamlessly into the landscape. It’s late morning, and after last night’s storm, everything smells clean and fresh. She stares up at the man she loves, but darkness and his long, honey-brown hair shadow his face. Her body hums in anticipation of his touch. Her nipples harden. His large, calloused hands caress her, and where they touch, her flesh burns with desire.

He runs the fingers of one hand through her unbraided hair. His lips capture hers in a searing kiss, branding her his. She reaches up to him. She opens her mouth, and a deep moan escapes her as his lips meet hers.

The scene changes. He runs along the edge of the forest across the lake. Run, my love, she screams silently as all around her the women urge their men to hurry, pointing at him, screaming instructions. He stops, and once she knows he’s seen her, she turns away. They’ll catch him, and she can’t bear to watch him be killed. She pulls her marriage blanket tightly around her shoulders. Everyone thinks she’s made it for another. Sobbing, she hurries away from the beach…

Michelle Thomas awoke in tears as she had so many nights since arriving in Thunder Bay. Bathed in sweat, she shivered with need and a bone-deep cold invaded her body. The nightmares, usually terrifying, realistic visions of her watery death, exhausted her. Recently the dreams which had plagued her most of her life had changed, and these new ones in which she was both participant and witness, frustrated and grieved her. She preferred those old night terrors to these out of body erotic fantasies with a man whose face she never saw, but loved with every ounce of her being. Tonight, the thought of his capture and death made the pain of loss worse than ever. How could she go on like this?

Her wild weeping slowed to sobbing. She got out of bed and padded into the motel room’s washroom. She turned on the light and gasped at the mirror’s reflection. The face of a woman who closely resembled her—the Mohawk woman in braids she’d been seeing off and on for weeks now—glared accusingly at her.

“What do you want from me?” She yelled at the face in the mirror, anguish loud in her tear-filled voice. “You’re dead. He’s dead. I don’t have any answers for you. Go away. Leave me in peace.”

*~*~*~*

Echoes of the Past is available from Secret Cravings Press
http://store.secretcravingspublishing.com/

Check Susanne’s website for other vendors.

About the Author:

Susanne Matthews was born and raised in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada.  She’s always been an avid reader of all types of books, but always with a penchant for happily ever after romances. In her imagination, she travelled to foreign lands, past and present, and soared into the future. Today, gets to spend her time writing, so she can share her adventures with her readers. She loves the ins and outs of romance, and the complex journey it takes to get from the first word to the last period of a novel. As she writes, her characters take on a life of their own, and she shares their fears and agonies on the road to self-discovery and love.

Follow Susanne on her:
Website
Blog
Facebook
Twitter @jandsmatt
Amazon author page
Goodreads author page

There, just so you don’t forget. Like I’d let you, right?

It’s a novella, so not a huge drag on your free time. It’s currently discounted because this is release week, so you’re saving money…

Hear the wheedling? The nagging? Yeah, yeah. I’d love for you to all pre-order it, read it the second it hits your devices, and get back to me with comments, because I want to know what you thought, where you’d like this new series to go. Because I’m excited to write it. So if you haven’t already pre-ordered the book, now’s the time! Here are the links:

Samhain | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Here’s what the story is all about…

When testing an enemy for weaknesses, prepare for things to get hard. (*snicker*)

Beaux Rêve Coven, Book 1

Bryn Cavanaugh and her coven like that the community they live in is isolated thanks to a storm that destroyed the bridge between them and the outside world. Now the state wants the bridge rebuilt. When the construction crew checks into the inn, Bryn begins to suspect something about the crew’s boss isn’t quite…human.

Bridges are Ethan Thorne’s thing—after all, he’s a troll—so building a simple span over a remote canal in backwater Louisiana shouldn’t be this much of a problem. When he follows the pretty little innkeeper to a midnight rendezvous, he discovers why his crew keeps running into trouble. Bryn and her coven are casting spells in the moonlight.

As a troll, Ethan feels the sting of his low place in demon hierarchy. But finding an unprotected coven of witches in the middle of the bayou could lead to all sorts of adventure. And it’s better to keep your enemies close…

Warning: Contains a handsome troll (Hey, it can happen!) who’s skilled at building sexual tension with his hands—and several other body parts, as well—and a witch who’s determined to protect her home, but forgets to shield her heart.

Read the First Chapter if you’re still not convinced!

And just so you know, there will be things happening this week, appearances in different places, an FB party, prizes… Be sure to keep checking in at my home page and my Facebook page. In the meantime, let me know this: Are you ready for a fun witchy, demony new series?  ~DD

In 2009, I was finishing my Black Hills Brotherhood trilogy for Intrigue and hoping I could return to New Orleans as a setting for my next books. I spoke with my editor at RWA Nationals and pitched an idea that was beginning to gel in the back of my mind. I think I actually created the pitch as I was saying it.

Huey P. Long

One of the most infamous politicians in American history is Huey P. Long of Louisiana. He used all sorts of illegal and unethical tactics to get what he wanted as governor and in the Louisiana senate, but he was always popular among the voters. I’ve often wondered what the lives of the children and grandchildren of such a man would be like. So I created a fictitious politician named Con Delancey and gave him 10 grandchildren (including a bastard son), plus a great-niece.

Con Delancey of Chef Voleur, Louisiana, was one of the state’s most infamous politicians. His grandchildren are grown now and must live with his scandalous legacy. Each one of them has a past and a secret. And each one has a story.

The Delancey Mansion in Chef Voleur

I sent in a proposal and within a short time I heard back. They loved the idea and wanted to do all eleven books as The Delancey Dynasty.

Con Delancey’s grandkids include cops, private investigators, military and attorneys, despite the fact that each one of them received a substantial inheritance from their grandfather.

There’s an overarching mystery that runs through the books—Who really killed Con Delancey? Although his personal assistant went to prison for his murder, the man declared his innocence until the day he died. With the final two books in the series, Sanctuary in Chef Voleur (July) and Blood Ties in Chef Voleur (August,) that mystery is solved, amidst kidnappings, murder and two very steamy, very moving love stories.

Outdoor cafe from Her Bodyguard

Sanctuary in Chef Voleur hit shelves on July 1, and the final Delancey book, Blood Ties in Chef Voleur will be released on August 1. An incredibly fun thing I did to celebrate the release of these two final books was to throw a live on-air release party on June 25, 8-10 pm, on Blogtalk Radio’s Hummingbird Place, Your Home for Romance. It was SO much fun talking about my mini-series, all my characters and how I went about writing an 11 book series. But the most fun was being live on BlogTalk Radio with the host, Donna Wright. She’s an amazing host. I was nervous about having enough to say to fill up two hours, but we actually ran out of time—which wasn’t a bad thing, because the reason was all the call-ins and questions from listeners. Some of the things we talked about were:

• keeping up with everybody in a multi-book series,
• my favorite hero and heroine,
• the ending that made me cry,
• the book that took place in one night,
• the goriest beginning I’ve ever written,
• the heroes and heroines who get themselves into impossible situations and expect me to get them out, and much much more.

I gave away a lot of swag and got to talk to some fans I’d never met or spoken to, and I got to discuss what might be the best experience I’ve had writing. Putting together eleven books about one family was a daunting task for me. I’ve written three book mini-series, but this was different. I truly feel as though I know each of these couples and am friends with them.

Tarot reader in Jackson Square, Like Rose from Death of a Beauty Queen

A great thing about BlogTalk Radio and Hummingbird Place is that the programs are archived. So, although you may have missed the live broadcast, you can listen to us and all the fun we had at BlogTalk Radio, The Hummingbird Place Archives. I invite you stop by and find out just how much fun we had. Go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hummingbirdplace/2014/06/26/delancey-dynasty-release-party   And keep an eye on Hummingbird Place. Donna is having more release parties with some of your favorite authors. Meanwhile, check out my Delancey Dynasty mini-series on harlequin.com or amazon.com and other e-outlets. My 10th Delancey book, Sanctuary in Chef Voleur is on shelves now and the final Delancey book, Blood Ties in Chef Voleur will hit shelves August 1.

Visit me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMalloryKane, on Twitter: twitter.com/mallorykane, and on my web page (under construction, excuse my mess) at mallorykane.com.

Mallory

What do you think of when you hear the words, “Summer Lovin’”? Does the phrase conjure up fond memories of that cute guy…the one who manned the fry basket at the fast food joint where you worked during your college summer breaks? Maybe you think of John Travolta hitting the high notes in Grease, or Justin Timberlake singing Summer Love.

I think back to those days fondly, and to be honest I miss them.  The days weren’t always carefree and full of fun.  Sometimes they were filled with angst, love, pain, drama and even sex!  Really, really great sex where we were just learning about our bodies! The best thing about being a writer is we can go back to those times through words, and using our experiences we can recreate everything we felt, loved and hated.

When I, along with five other authors decided to do a project together, we started brainstorming ideas.  In no time at all we found ourselves swapping some really fun stories about our own lives. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of those stories took place during our respective college years…those summers when we were on our own for the first time, exploring what it meant to be an independent adult.

Those magical summers during college have a really specific feel and fit perfectly with our Summer Lovin’ theme, so we decided to make all six books in the series New Adult contemporary novels. Each story takes place over the same summer, at the same vacation resort in Canada, so there’s quite a bit of fun character overlap!

So tell me, what are some of your fondest memories from your twenties? 

To learn more about the Summer Lovin’ series, check out our facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/SummerLovinNewAdultRomance

We’re releasing a book every two weeks starting July 7^th, starting with Cathryn Fox’s Crashing Down.

Each couple’s story is unique, emotional, and as hot as the summer temps!

The Summer Lovin’ authors are also hosting a giveaway!
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b6ff204/

To learn more about each book on Goodreads:
July 7:  Crashing Down by Cathryn Fox
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22046235-crashing-down
July 21: Losing It by Audra North
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22047639-losing-it
Aug 4:  Loving Lies by Renee Field
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22046428-loving-lies
Aug 19: Surviving Nikki by Lilly Cain
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22048922-surviving-nikki
Sept 1: Taming Tess by Jan Meredith
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22046428-loving-lies
Sept 15: Saving Sullivan by Sara Hubbard
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22043110-saving-Sullivan