Guest Post: Wolf's Castle by Madelyn Hill

Can he forget the past and embrace the future? 
He’s the beast of Lomarcan Castle. Tortured, angry, and bound and determined not to allow Vivian Stuart to invade his lair. Lord Galen Maclean refuses to be endeared to the lovely woman who has landed on his island looking to study alchemy. The island possesses secrets, secrets too horrid to share with the gentle woman. However, her beguiling nature brings light to the darkness of the castle and the few quirky inhabitants and edges into his heart. 

Can she tame the beast within him to gain his love? 
She was stranded on a remote island, her father dead and dishonored by her betrothed. Still, the lovely Vivian Stuart wears her heart on her sleeve and strives to redeem Lord Maclean. She knows his heart is good and the castle can be filled with love. Through science she learns more about the troubled lord and slowly but surely, the torture lord's icy heart begins to thaw as Vivian shares the magical healing power of love.

Inspiration

Writers find inspiration in numerous places. Some look for characters in magazines, news stories, and history. Some look to family members, strangers, or co-workers. No matter where you find inspiration, it can sneak up on you in the most particular places. Recently, I was on the treadmill and a story idea started playing out in my mind. I panicked because I didn't want to forget any part of the story. So, there I was, sweating away and I decided to dictate the story into my cell phone. Luckily, I have the microphone option on my smartphone and I was able to dictate to the note app the entire idea. Of course the people around me probably thought I had lost my marbles, but hey, writers can be eccentric.

What sparked the inspiration? At the time (while I was walking to no where on the treadmill) I was reading a writing skills book. The chapter was about characters and the word "alpha" immediately conjured this gorgeous guy who was a self-made man, etc etc - you get the idea. By the time I was done I had dictated a few pages of the story.

As writers we rely on our creativity and imagination to take inspiration and turn it into characters, plot, conflict, and a story. My current novel, Wolf’s Castle was inspired by a trip to Alexandria Bay in the 1000 Islands of the St. Lawrence River in New York. We visited Boldt Castle on Heart Island (you can see how I was inspired by a castle on a heart shaped island).  The castle was built to honor the wife of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel owner. When she passed away unexpectedly construction immediately stopped. The tools of the carpenters were left where they stood and so the building remained until it was restored seventy years later. The island, castle and love story was truly food for the writer’s mind.

As you can see, inspiration can come from many places. Think about what inspires you (even if you aren’t a writer) to create, work, and improve. How can the inspiration enhance your writing, work, or life? Just something to think about. . .

Author Info: 

Madelyn Hill lives in Western New York with her husband and three children. She loves reading, writing, and research! When not writing, Madelyn works as a teacher.

Website: http://www.madelynhill.com

Amazon Link: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAkJaNWFiDahotHdHjdOjTfr0CboEoIG3clWAwNfVZMmZ0nxfvBdWxX0_WSa9SPl0CEd782I7TGcjXQYzYxX2Kgnf6r45vBIdcH6pknvtReU1Ybr8l4sNDio5mzJgaOzUZ1iOsLecrq_dO/s1600/200x300.jpg

Guest Post: Meet Soon-to-be Released Author Ryan Jo Summers

BLURB:
          Logan Riley is a Civil War hero turned outlaw and hanged for his crimes in 1869. Except he survives, traveling through time, until he is found by modern day anthropologist, Dr. McKenzie Lynne. Hired by team of physicists, Kenzie soon learns real fate they have in mind for him. Horrified, she runs, taking their living treasure. 
    Now, pursued by obsessed physicists and the military, they race across the deserts and mountains of AZ and NM. If they get caught, it’s a lifetime of imprisonment and tests for him and certainly worse for her. But staying free means forever on the run, hunted and homeless.
        Running and hiding, hunted like criminals, they also discover attraction and love blooming like desert flowers. Logan knows how to survive on nothing, how to outwit the pursuers, when to run and when to hole up. What he doesn't know is how to keep himself safe from Kenzie's power. Kenzie's strong Christian faith works to convict him of his past crimes better then the hangman’s noose had. As their affections continue to grow and their pursuers close in, their love will face the harshest test of all—Christian morals against nineteenth century outlaw justice.

FUN FACTS:

    In 2011 I had this super idea for a story. I wanted to take an 1800 outlaw, hang him and bring him to our present day. I wanted to have an anthropologist/ archeologist find him and spend the book on the great military chase and their developing, doomed relationship and bring in her Christian beliefs to convince the bad boy of his criminal past. Thus Shimmers of Stardust was born, in 2011. In late 2012, as the book was nearly finished, I was cleaning out some old papers and chanced upon a scrap I had written a random story idea upon, stored away and lost. Reading it, I realized it the just about identical to the story line of Stardust. It was dated November 1997. Yes, fourteen years earlier! 
    The other fun fact is the main character names came from names of my dogs, siblings Riley James, Logan, McKenzie Lynne and Miles.  Riley James and McKenzie Lynne took middle names in honor of two special family members and were always called by both names. They were tweaked for the story of course.

BIO:

    Ryan Jo Summers is a North Carolina writer who pens romances with a twist, mixing contemporary love stores with threads of Christian messages, time travel, paranormal and mystery. She began writing at the age of ten and never really stopped, always having to give voice to the characters and scenes in her mind. When not writing, she enjoys spending time with her menageries of pets, time out with friends, getting with nature, cooking and reading or painting just about anything.  Shimmers of Stardust is her first book out with Soul Mate Publishing, expected September of 2014, followed by a mystery romance in November. 

LINKS: She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted or followed at:

website-- www.ryanjosummers.com 
blog-- http:summersrye.wordpress.com 
www.facebook.com/pages/Ryan-Jo-Summers-suthor-page/312875648810797 
Also Amazon and Goodreads pages as well.

Guest Post: Historical Romance; Lauren Linwood

Most historical romance authors write their stories in the Regency period, but I’m drawn to two eras that I taught about as a high school history teacher—medieval times and the American Old West.

My latest novel is the western historical romance Written in the Cards. I brainstormed ideas for my hero’s occupation, not wanting him to be the usual cowboy. I’d just read about a new Showtime series called Penny Dreadful, which would debut in 2014. Penny dreadfuls were 19^th century serialized publications that were quite sensational and lurid. That got me to thinking about their American counterpart—dime novels—and so the beginnings of a plot started stirring in my mind.

Dime novels became very popular after the Civil War. With the US literacy rate rising dramatically, people clamored to read for pleasure. At the cost of a dime, these novels were affordable and full of adventure, oftentimes set on the Western frontier.

I decided to make my hero Ben Morgan be a dime novelist. As he traveled the West, he would get all kinds of ideas for his stories. That didn’t set well with my heroine Maggie Rutherford. I already saw Maggie in my mind—a feisty redhead who grew up as a bit of a tomboy because she shadowed her older brother wherever he went. Besides the typical female lessons of dancing and embroidery, Maggie had been by her brother’s side and learned skills such as fencing, shooting, and boxing. She complained to me (Yes, characters really do talk back to the writers that create them!) that she could write a dime novel as well as any man—and she claimed to be artistic enough to illustrate them as well.

I have to thank Maggie for standing up and speaking her mind to me. It made for a wonderful plot twist to have a woman authoring dime novels (under a male pen name, as did many 19^th century women writers). She wound up leaving the safe confines of her family’s New York City mansion and set out to the Wild West so she could experience firsthand all the things she was writing about.

That freed Ben up to become a gambler who’d killed a man cheating at cards. When Ben called the fraud out, the man tried to shoot him, so Ben fired back in self-defense. But when you’ve killed the baby brother of the most famous gunslinging outlaw in Texas, you better get out of town fast! Ben eventually meets Maggie in Abilene, Kansas, and she is quite taken by his rugged looks. She interviews him for her upcoming novel, and sparks fly—especially when Maggie decides that she needs to do some research into kissing. After all, she might want to write about love one day in one of her tales, and what better man to investigate kissing with than Ben Morgan?

I had fun researching about card sharks, cattle drives, dime novels, and even tornadoes while writing Written in the Cards. And Maggie’s shooting and boxing skills? They came in awfully handy down the road!

Blurb:

Maggie Rutherford jilts her too-perfect society groom at the altar and flees to the American West, where she turns her travels into dime novels that she writes under the pen name Lud Madison.

Civil War veteran Ben Morgan marries his childhood sweetheart and takes her to homestead on the Great Plains. Losing her in an Indian attack, Ben becomes a gambler. When he kills a cheating opponent in self-defense, the man’s gunslinger brother swears revenge.

Ben hides on a cattle drive and brings in a herd to Abilene, where a waiting Maggie interviews him for her next story. Sparks fly as they wind up living in the same household, running a general store east of Abilene. But with Black Tex Lonnegan on his trail, will Ben run from his growing attraction to Maggie and the gunfighter’s promise of death–or will he make a stand for his life–and love? 

Buy Link:  Written in the Cards

Author Bio:

Lauren Linwood became a teacher who wrote on the side to maintain her sanity in a sea of teenage hormones. Her romances use history as a backdrop to place her characters in extraordinary circumstances, where their intense desire and yearning for one another grow into the deep, tender, treasured gift of love.

Lauren, a native Texan, lives in a Dallas suburb with her family. An avid reader, moviegoer, and sports fan, she manages stress by alternating yoga with five mile walks. She is thinking about starting a support group for Pinterest and House Hunters addicts.

Website   Facebook   Twitter   Blog   Amazon Author Page   Goodreads Author Page  About Me

Amazon Buy Links:  (for other available books)

Music For My Soul          Outlaw Muse          A Game of Chance

Release: Redeeming You by Lisa Cardiff

After walking away from a controlling relationship, Taylor Reed is broke, homeless and unemployed…

When her brother, Alec, the drummer for Chasing Ruin offers her a job working for Chasing Ruin for the final thirty days of the tour, Taylor jumps at the chance.

Unfortunately, that job entails keeping Cam Donovan, Chasing Ruin’s lead guitarist, out of trouble for the remainder of the tour…

But Taylor isn’t worried. She’s smart enough to keep her distance and there’s no way she’ll let herself be another notch on his bedpost.

Cam Donovan’s life hasn’t been the same since he ruined his chances with Bre, his childhood sweetheart.

With regrets eating at his soul, he fills his life with meaningless one-night stands blurred by alcohol and drugs until Chasing Ruin threatens to kick him out of the band.

When Taylor joins Chasing Ruin on tour, he’ll do anything to avoid the mutual attraction burning between them. He can’t afford another the distraction.  But as the lines blur, and the days turn into weeks, Cam and Taylor realize their feelings might be worth fighting for.

Playlist

Passenger- Let Her Go

Sarah Bareilles – I Choose You

O.A.R. – I Want Peace

Elvis Costello – Alison

Sarah Bareilles – Gonna Get Over You

Allah-las- Every Girl

Kongos- Come with Me Now

One Republic - Counting Starts

A Great Big World & Christina Aguilera - Say Something

John Legend & Lindsey Stirling – All of Me

Cher Lloyd- Sorry I’m Late

 

 

After spending years practicing law and a million other things, Lisa decided to pursue her dream of becoming a writer and she must confess that inventing characters is so much more fun than writing contracts and legal briefs.  A native of Colorado, she lives with her husband and three children in Denver. When she isn’t managing the chaos of raising three children and owning her own business, she can be found reading or writing a book.

Connect with Lisa 

 

·      Twitter * Facebook * Goodreads * Website * Amazon *

 

 

Excerpt 1

            Holding her breath so she wouldn’t wake him, she lifted her head so she could see his face. He looked beautiful when he slept with his dark eyelashes resting on his high, defined cheekbones. And his lips—the way they curled up at the corners was sinful. They should have a warning stamped across them. Smiling faintly, her fingers drifted over the swirling design of his tattoo starting at his forearm and ending several twists and turns later where his collarbone met his shoulder. As much as she liked that tattoo, she loved the guitar nestled between his hipbone the deep groove of muscle of his lower abdominals even more.

 

Excerpt 2

            When she reached Cam’s table, she stood next to the vacant side of the booth waiting for Cam to acknowledge her presence. He knew she was there, staring at him, but he patiently flipped the pages of the menu refusing to look at her. Typical. After a few prolonged seconds of her temper steadily rising, she cleared her throat.

Cam still didn’t look at her. “Are you going to sit or do you want to stand there admiring me for a couple more minutes?” he drawled lazily.

“Are you going to take off your cheesy sunglasses or are you too hung over to act like a normal human being?” she shot back, anger pumping heatedly through her veins as she sat in the booth across from him.

Cam peeled of his dark sunglasses and carelessly tossed them on the table. “Better?” Cam asked gazing at her with his heavily hooded eyes, a sardonic smile floating on his lips.

She already wanted to kill him; well, maybe not kill him. That was too extreme. Tossing a glass of ice water at him might be more appropriate, but thirty days of this back and forth shit and one of them would probably be dead. “Slightly, but now I have to look at your eyes and they’re a bit distracting.”

Cam leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the edge of the table. “Are you trying to tell me something...like you’re attracted to me? I get that a lot, you know.” His lips curled up at the corners sinfully.

Smiling contemptuously, Taylor purposely let her eyes trail over his face down to his chest and back up again. Blessed with the face of an angel and a body made for sin, he was good-looking; there was no doubt. His messy light blonde hair, his back t-shirt stretched across his obviously muscular chest in all the right ways, his normally piercing blue eyes and perfectly sculpted bone structure made him one smoking hot rocker, but she’d never tell him that. He already knew. She didn’t need to contribute to his already inflated ego.

“No, not even close. I was trying to tell you that you look like shit. Your eyes are bloodshot and swollen. I think your face is a little waxy and bloated looking too.” Taylor leaned forward, pretending to study him as she tapped her fingers on the table. “Other than that, I guess you’re okay if you’re into the yuppie loser pretending to be the big bad wolf type...and I’m definitely not.”

Cover Reveal: Lifer by Beck Nicholas and Giveaway #M9BFridayReveals

Welcome to the Cover Reveal for

Lifer by Beck Nicholas

presented by Month9Books!

Be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!

Asher is a Lifer, a slave aboard the spaceship Pelican. A member of the lowest rung of society, she must serve the ship’s Officials and Astronauts as punishment for her grandparents' crimes back on Earth. The one thing that made life bearable was her illicit relationship with Samuai, a Fishie boy, but he died alongside her brother in a freak training accident.

Still grieving for the loss of her loved ones, Asher is summoned to the upper levels to wait on Lady, the head Official’s wife and Samuai’s mother. It is the perfect opportunity to gather intel for the Lifer’s brewing rebellion. There’s just one problem—the last girl who went to the upper levels never came back.

On the other side of the universe, an alien attack has left Earth in shambles and a group called The Company has taken control. Blank wakes up in a pond completely naked and with no memory, not even his real name. So when a hot girl named Megs invites him to a black-market gaming warehouse where winning means information, he doesn’t think twice about playing. But sometimes the past is better left buried.

As Asher and Blank’s worlds collide, the truth comes out—everyone has been lied to. Bourne Identity meets Under the Never Sky in this intergalactic tale of love and deception from debut novelist Beck Nicholas.

Title: LIFER
Publication date: December 16, 2014
Publisher: Month9Books, LLC.
Author: Beck Nichols

Complete the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win!

(Winners will receive their book on release day)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Author Support Blog Hop

Thanks to Sharon Bayliss for organizing this blog hop! I love this opportunity to be frank about how crazy life as a writer can be.

• WHAT do you do? Give us a summary of your crazy life and all your responsibilities

Well... let's see. I work part time as a Clerk with a Lien company. I think the hardest thing about that is getting someone to watch my daughter, or it could be my chronic mommy lateness. I swear, I used to be so punctual, even a little early!

My most time consuming commitments are as a mother and wife. My daughter is still young, and needs me to watch her and help entertain her as well as help her grow intellectually, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I think the job of mother is something you can never anticipate how much effort you need to invest into it. This little life is going to be molded on my example and teachings, and that's a huge responsibility. But, I'm getting off topic.

Being a wife also fills a lot of my time. Being married isn't the end of the story, it's ongoing, and my hubs needs a ton of attention.

I also work part time as an Acquisitions editor with Curiosity Quills. It's so much fun, and honestly, I wish I had more time to do it. As a side note, I've noticed the quality of submissions has improved of late. Good job, people!

Last of all, I need to edit and write, plus everything else that entails. Promotion isn't where I'd like it, simply because I don't have the time or energy to push my books and do things as much as I'd like. I also don't get as much time to write as I used to. I miss it.

• HOW do you do it? How do you manage to find time to write? What tips can you share?

I have NO IDEA! I'm losing my freaking mind! lol. I guess it's just a labor of love and struggling to keep things balanced and scheduled. My smart phone helps too.

• WHY do you do it? Other than just sheer insanity, what keeps you going? Why have you chosen the life of an over-stressed author? What keeps you motivated during dark days?

I just love telling stories. It's in my heart, and no matter what, I want to get it out and share the joy it brings me. Although the criticism and rejection often makes me want to quit, I can't stop telling stories.

• QUESTIONS and PLEAS for help. Other authors will be reading your post, so if you have questions or want advice, you can ask. Also, if there is anything you need, or anything you can do to help others, mention that here as well.

Do you ever feel incredibly lonely? I feel like I'm the only one who cares about what I do and my books. I try to help people as much as I can with cover reveals, blog tours, guests posts, CP/Beta reading, retweets and reviews (btw, I'm happy to help with any of these if you want, although I'm limited with reading time due to my acquisitions work. Feel free to ask about any!) But I still feel isolated. What about you?

Please leave a comment below, and visit the other hoppers in the linky below!

Featuring... Blog Tour Banners

I have joined in many blog tours to help other authors along the way. So, here are some of them! And I may have thrown in my own too. lol.

Featuring... Memes!

Memes are soooo fun! I love getting little snippets with cool pictures to give me a taste for the book. So here are the memes that have appeared on my blog.