Read TODAY ... Free!

Guest Post: Favorite Paranormal Influences by Sarah Mäkelä

Today I’m hosting Sarah Mäkelä, author of The Witch Who Cried Wolf, as part of the New Adult Blog Tour. You can download The Witch Who Cried Wolf on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, ARe and iTunes

Why do I write paranormal? Great question!

I’m sure we’ve all have influences in our lives that tugged at us, pulling us in a single direction without letting go. That’s exactly what happened with me and the paranormal.

As a kid, I grew up on RL Stine and the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books by Alvin Schwartz. Honest to God, those freaked me out so badly! They’re marketed as kids books, but… geez! I also watched horror movies on TV with my mom. My favorites were ones with witches, werewolves, and vampires.

Growing up, I moved a little away from books that scared me. In my young teenaged years, I mostly read historical romance (especially Scottish/Celtic ones with pixies, fairies, etc.), but I still loved the supernatural. However, I’d rather daydream about being a supernatural being or having a relationship with one. I adored the music video Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) by the Backstreet Boys because they were all dressed up like paranormal creatures.

While I enjoyed historical romance, I found out about paranormal romance and urban fantasy and delved deep in those genres. My favorite authors were Laurell K. Hamilton and Christine Feehan. Urban fantasy wasn’t known as urban fantasy yet. I had to get the books in the horror section, and the genre hadn’t exploded to what it is today.

I loved reading the paranormal romance books because of the romance and paranormal aspect, and okay, I was still a teenager, so yes, I skipped ahead sometimes to the “fun” scenes. But I really liked the Anita Blakes series by Laurell K. Hamilton because I was able to follow her character while she explored this hidden paranormal world and I could come back for more on a regular basis. I didn’t have to move on to new characters in new books.

I love the New Adult Paranormal Romance genre. Being able to hang out with the characters for more than one book and really tell their story is amazing. I also enjoy getting inside the heads of different characters in the series because I’m not confined to only hanging out with one or two characters. The possibilities are endless for great supernatural reads.

Thanks for having me here today, Tara!

Enter to win a copy of Sarah’s The Witch Who Cried Wolf and some other great swag!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Find out more about Sarah’s The Witch Who Cried Wolf, available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, ARe and iTunes:
Continue reading

Submerged by Nicole Sobon

After a mysterious virus makes its way into the United States, the government demands that states seal themselves off from one another and do their best to protect their surviving residents. When the state of Florida is bordered off from the surrounding states, Taylen Fincher, a seventeen-year-old girl with a yearning for her former life finds herself wondering how much of what they’ve been told is true.

When Troum took control of the state, he told the residents that the other states had fallen to the virus and that he wouldn’t allow the same thing to happen to them. But Taylen doesn’t believe it. She insists that there is still life outside of the state, and she is going to do whatever it takes to prove it… but her actions will cost her more than she ever expected.

Troum kidnaps Taylen’s sister, Penelope, in hopes of coaxing her into behaving – into being a submissive resident, much like the others. But Taylen isn’t one to give in that easily.

Eager to rescue her sister, Taylen will set out on an adventure that’ll force her to open her heart to the unexpected and to uncover secrets that will change everything.

Get Submerged on Amazon.

Excerpt

“What’s wrong, princess? You couldn’t stand to be away from me?” He winked.

“You are aware that I have a knife in my pocket, correct?” I reminded him. “I’d be more than happy to use it if you’re going to continue being a jerk-face.”

He burst into laughter, his body vibrating the mattress. “Anyway, back to what I was saying.” He ran his fingers along my spine. Goosebumps developed over my body, alerting me of just how close he was. “We have to locate Troum’s headquarters. If we find his headquarters, we’ll find Penelope.”

It sounded easy enough, but nothing was ever that simple.

Not with Troum.

I lay down beside Glate and closed my eyes. I thought that escaping the Family Sector would bring me a sense of happiness, but it didn’t. It only brought me more pain. Lex and his men were still searching for me, and I’d yet to rescue Penelope. Nothing was going as planned. I should have had Penelope by now. I should have been half way out of this state, not curled up on a mattress with a boy that I hardly knew.

That wasn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy Glate’s presence because I did. He was the comfort that I needed; the only thing keeping me sane throughout the chaos. It wouldn’t be hard to fall for Glate, hell, it’d be easy, and that frightened me.

Even though I wouldn’t admit it, I was still heartbroken over Lex. He was the boy that I had grown up with. He was my best friend. He was someone that I thought would always be there, someone that I could start a life with, and then he betrayed me.

And it was his betrayal that led me to Glate.

Being this close to him, with his body pressed against mine, it felt wrong; wrong because I barely knew him, wrong because he wasn’t Lex, and wrong because I didn’t want him to leave.

What is wrong with me? I thought.

“Taylen,” Glate whispered, wrapping his arm around my waist. “Are you okay?”

Was I okay? No. I was a complete and utter wreck, but there was no way in hell I was going to show him that. “I’m dandy.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” He propped himself up on his elbow, and leaned in closer, resting his chin on my shoulder. My body was well aware of how close he was, and it took everything in me to fight the urge to turn and face him. Teenage hormones were the absolute worst. “You know how I can tell?” he asked, running a single finger down my arm.

“How?” the word barely escaped my lips.

“Your voice trembles,” he whispered.  Glate moved his hand to my hips and pulled me back towards him. “Whenever you lie, you get this slight tremble in your voice. It’s almost as if you’re scared to admit the truth, so you try to conjure up a lie, but the fear engulfs your words on the way out, calling your bluff.”

He pressed his lips against my neck, and my body quivered, welcoming the feel of his mouth against my skin.

The right thing to do would have been to move away, to tell Glate that this wasn’t right because it wasn’t right. I was supposed to be rescuing my sister, not getting it on with the first cute guy I met outside of our Sector. But every cell in my body was eager for his touch.

Get Submerged on Amazon.

Find more from Nicole on her website, Twitter and Facebook.

SNAP: Happily Ever After? by Michele Drier

Loving Jean-Louis for eternity doesn’t mean that Maxie Gwenoch will let him turn her. Jean-Louis is a vampire, is gorgeous, is the second-in-command of the Kandesky Family of Hungarian vampires, and is her boss at SNAP, the multinational, multimedia celeb gossip empire where she is the VP for International Planning. She moves to Kiev to build a home with Jean-Louis and finds her future under a cloud from Leonid, a rival from the Huszar family, now living in a bolthole in the ruins of Chernobyl. Will Maxie find safety by giving up her days and joining Jean-Louis in the vampire nights?

Download SNAP: Happily Ever After?  from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Excerpt

Had I forgotten Leonid? Oh no, I’d never forget him.

He’d captured me, held me hostage for Jean-Louis, beat and raped me, let his toady Jules rape me. Much of the immediate horror of that time was pushed so far back in my mind that it took an effort of will to bring it out, but the fact that it happened never left me.

And I hadn’t forgotten that Leonid got away after the murder verdict and execution of Matthias, the head of the Huszar family.

“You said he couldn’t be found. You said there were only some tales of people and animals going missing in Romania and Belarus.”

His glimmer dimmed then flared back again, a sure sign he was going to try to convince me of something. “It’s true, we believed he was disappearing back in to the countryside. He had no contacts, no money and only a few followers. We didn’t think he’d try and head for Ukraine, but he did. He still had a small nucleus of followers here in Kiev.”

There was no oxygen in the room. I couldn’t breathe. My heart pounded. I knew Jean-Louis saw that. He may not have hunted and killed humans for food for more than 500 years, but his instincts were still there. I tried to keep myself calm around the Kandeskys, hoping they’d forget I was a regular. Fat chance.

On occasions like this, with blind panic and fear running along my nerves and affecting my circulatory system, the vampire’s internal hunting responses started to kick in.

He looked at me. “This is not something I wanted to tell you and I certainly didn’t want to tell you until we had a chance to decipher the information coming in. I had a very different ‘Welcome to Kiev’ planned.”

OK, I knew he’d explain things. But, wow, I didn’t even think that Leonid would be part of the explanation. He watched my eyes fill with remembered terror and reached over to hold me, but I pushed him away.

“And when were you planning to tell me this?”

He sighed. “Nik and I planned an evening with you. We’d tell you about Leonid then go over all that we knew and all that we’re planning to neutralize him. I, we, never want him coming within miles of you ever again.”

I flashed back to my first glimpse of him, standing on the steps of Nik’s mansion so coldly angry that the air around him looked crystalline. “I hope your anger wasn’t part of the plan.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “You ninny! Even teasing me, you do entertain. No, of course not. Now you’ll have to wait. Nik’s already gone up to his room.”

Rooms! Ah ha, an opening. “Speaking of rooms…”

He looked at me, gazed around the room and looked back. “What’s the matter, you don’t like the accommodations?”

I threw my reader at him and followed it up with a pillow. He was fast, batting the pillow back hard enough to knock a gasp out of me. I found a breath. “No, I wasn’t expecting to be put up in an economy hotel. And where’s the help?”

“We were going to hash all of this over with you until you forced a change of plans. You’re going to have to wait for this, too. I will say that we had other ideas about accommodations, but we’re having to use a fall-back position. And until yesterday, we didn’t have one.”

He was up, pacing, a movement I knew well. His mind worked more creatively and clearly when he was on the move. Then his pacing stopped as he threw himself down on the bed next to me, turned my face to his and kissed me, so hard, so long and so deep I melted from the heat that rose to engulf me.

“My love, my love.” He was murmuring into my hair. “I’m desolate without you. If you’re not around when I expect you to be, I panic. I know I react badly, in what looks like anger, but it’s fear…fear of losing you.”

His hands were stroking my hair and moving down my back, then he started pulling my shirt up.

“What do you have on? Where’s all your lingerie? Didn’t you pack it?”

I all but giggled. There were times when I even slept in one of his old shirts, so that I had his scent with me, but tonight I’d been too upset to want anything of him around. And sexy lingerie to sleep alone! No way.

“No thanks to you, but yes, Elise and I packed some things. Of course I don’t have anyone here to help me…”

I stopped. He was helping me. Sort of. He managed to pull the tee over my head, which trapped my arms, and began kissing and slowly licking my breasts, working his way down my body. The bed shifted and I heard sounds of clothing coming off, the soft snick of buttons and the hiss of a zipper. As tangled as I was in the tee, I hadn’t managed to get an arm free before I felt the length of his naked body against mine.

Now I truly melted and lived for the sensations he brought to me.

As I came back to consciousness, I was aware of movement in the room. I opened my eyes to the faintest glimmer of dawn and saw him silhouetted against the window as he pulled the heavy drapes shut.

He turned to me. “It’s six, true dawn is still half an hour away. I’m leaving now. We’re planning dinner and a long conversation tonight. No matter what, remember that I love you for eternity.”

I slept, my body remembering his touch and my mind drifting in an ocean of caring.

Without Elise to wake me, I jerked upright from a deep sleep, disoriented. Where was I? What time was it? The room was dark. I groped around on the bedside table, found a lamp and flipped it on. Memory came washing back. Last night, the wretched fight, Nik’s guest room, Jean-Louis…ah, Jean-Louis. I lay back on the pillows remembering the last look of him closing the curtains…oh, crap! What time was it? I was supposed to meet Jean-Louis and Nik for dinner and a discussion.

I rolled back over and checked. Four in the afternoon. Enough time to shower and get ready, even without help.

The tap on the door came as I was putting the final pins in a wrapped updo. He came in and I stood. I’d chosen a short, layered dress the colors of autumn leaves and strappy two-inch Via Spigas and felt confident enough to hear what the two had to say.

Jean-Louis looked me over and smiled. “I knew when we offered you the job that we’d chosen well. A woman who can overcome adversity, a few little bumps along the road, and still come up looking good enough to eat!”

This time I picked up a pot of blush to throw but decided I didn’t want to waste perfectly good Lazlo on him. He knew I hated those stupid vampire cracks, made them only to push my buttons. I gave him the evil eye as I sailed out the door.

Something was wrong. Something was missing. I looked around as Jean-Louis joined me and took my arm. Bam, that was it. No demons!

Even after the execution, I had demon guards outside the door to my suite in the Baron’s castle. Though the Huszars may have been scattered or co-opted, their centuries-old headquarters was only a few miles away and Stefan Kandesky and Jean-Louis didn’t believe in taking chances.

Here in Kiev it was pleasant being able to come and go without a trailing demon, as fond of them as I’d become.

Under the freedom of not having a guard, though, there was a twinge of nervousness.

Leonid was alive.

Download SNAP: Happily Ever After?  from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Find more from Michele on her website and Facebook.

Persephone by Kaitlin Bevis

There are worse things than death, worse people too.

Pigments of My Imagination by Angela Kulig

From the moment Lucia steps into Bayside Art Academy, she is fed a steady stream of lies, but it’s not until she meets William that she begins to question the people she trusts. Unraveling fact from fabrication seems impossible until Lucia finds her first painting, and discovers the dead do not lie–at least not to her.

A dozen lifetimes ago, Lucia started a war. Not a war with armies or guns, but a bloody war nonetheless. The path leading Lucia to the truth is hidden within lovely art that spans the ages. In this life, however, Lucia doesn’t know where to look. Lost, she turns to the one thing she knows with certainty–she is in love with Leo, and has been before

Download Pigments of My Imagination on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. You can also purchase it in paperback.

Excerpt

Everblue (Book 1 of Mer Tales) by Brenda Pandos

She wanted her life to change … he wanted his to stay the same.

Seventeen-year-old Ashlyn Lanski is tired of her boring, single life. Swimming and spending time with Tatiana, her best friend, are her only sanctuary. The girls plan to leave their drab lakeside town far behind for college, and Ash hopes to finally ditch her longtime crush for Finley, Tatiana’s twin brother. But when Tatiana and her family fail to return home after a family emergency, Ashlyn chooses to do something drastic to find them.

Finley Helton and his family are good at blending in as they run their sailing charter business in Lake Tahoe. But together, they guard an ancient secret. When a not so routine meeting forces Finley, Tatiana and their mother to return to Natatoria and Fin’s father on a dangerous mission, Fin can’t stay caged up for long.

Secrets lurk beneath the deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe, and a simple lifesaving kiss could change their lives forever.

Excerpt

ASH

“What’s wrong?” I asked and glanced over to where Tatiana looked, afraid her father might be storming down the beach towards us. Instead, a red Jeep rolled over the ridge and down the rocky path that separated our neighborhoods.

She tsked. “What does he want?”

My mouth parched as I caught a glimpse of Tatchi’s twin brother through his windshield. He wore his usual black baseball hat, and looked nothing short of adorable.

“He’s coming here?” My voice cracked.
Continue reading