Showing posts with label Author Saturday Spotlight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Author Saturday Spotlight. Show all posts

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Author Saturday Spotlight: Sadie Rose Bermingham #Interview #Giveaway



It's Saturday Spotlight day and today we have the talented and lovely Sadie Rose Bermingham. If you haven't read her work yet you'll want to by the end and if you have than you know she's amazing. We have an interview for you, we will look at some of her books, and wrap it up with a giveaway. So, get comfy.




Every breath brings them closer to love, and a killer.
Jake Chivis is the descendant of Fire Elementals with a gift for psychometry, the ability to see memories from touching objects. After a bad breakup and trouble at work, Jake gave up his career as a detective in Detroit and moved to England to join a research program studying Elemental gifts at University College London. It seemed like the perfect way to escape his past and start over, and this time he’s vowed not to fall into the trap of dating a coworker. At least that’s the plan, until he meets Doctor Ilmarinen Gale.
Mari Gale is blond, sexy, relentlessly academic and comfortable in his own skin in a way Jake envies. After a handful of embarrassing encounters, Jake is ready to resign himself to staying under the radar, but when a colleague’s brother goes missing, he and Mari must work together to find him. As they dig into the inexplicable disappearance, Jake is impressed with Mari’s competence and unique skills, and even more impressed by his ability to wrap Jake around his finger. Together the unlikely pair discover murder, betrayal, secrets and just how high Mari can fan Jake’s flames.
Purchase on Pride Publishing



Their passion isn’t the only thing creating flames.
Mari Gale’s life has been a whirlwind since meeting Jake Chivis. A new job prospect and his mother’s health preoccupy him, so when Jake invites him on a date he’s ready to cut loose. Their night out turns into a nightmare when a fire breaks out in the basement of the bar and they barely escape.
Soon Jake learns that the horrific accident is being investigated as a possible homicide, and it’s not the only case. Detective Inspector Cordiline of the London Met hints at spontaneous human combustion, but as far as Jake knows, SHC doesn’t exist.
When Mari looks into a group called Birthright, he finds a connection to the victims of the fires and Jake risks himself to go undercover at the shadowy organization. The race is on to determine the truth before Jake becomes the next target.

Purchase on Pride Publishing





hey’re treading water in an ocean of secrets. When ex-cop Jake Chivis is woken by the police and questioned about the mysterious death of his neighbor, he thinks his day can only get better. Things go from bad to worse when his lover, Mari Gale, brings him a horrific sex tape which appears to show a man being murdered. As they begin to investigate the origin of the video, nothing is as it seems. Will they find the killers before they strike again? Or will dark secrets rising to the surface in their own lives erupt and tear them apart?

Purchase on Pride Publishing











Unearthing the past brings them closer together…and to danger.
A maniac is on the loose in London, drugging young women and assaulting them before burying them in shallow graves.
When Inspector John Cordiline asks Jake Chivis for his unique assistance as a Fire Elemental with the Cemetery Rapist case, he feels he can hardly refuse. What begins as a simple job—trying to get memories from a suspect to aid conviction—soon takes a darker turn when one of the victims dies and an offer of help comes from an unexpected and unwelcome source.
Dr. Mari Gale is disturbed to find that his former lover Tomas Arregui is London and wants to meet with him. Despite his best efforts to avoid the man, fate seems to be pushing him onto a collision course with Tomas. And the impact will cast him into more trouble than he could ever have imagined.
Digging deeper for the truth could be the death of them.

Releases August 28th

Pre-order on Pride Publishing



Sometimes when you don’t know what you want, life gives you what you need.
When Neil Markovic witnesses the murder of his mother by Bone Men, his world is thrown into turmoil. On the run from the assassins that killed her, his sorcerer father and the police, Neil finds help in the form of a tall half-fae alchemist named Malachai. Mal seems more accepting than most of Neil’s demon bloodline but curiously immune to his charms.
Malachai Valentine, disgraced scion of a noble leprechaun clan, back in the Old Country, is happy living as an anonymous scrap dealer. Using his talent for alchemy to make fuel and potions, most days he doesn’t even think of his ruinous past. When a scared young man with a fancy car crashes into his life, at first, Mal thinks he can do without the hassle. But as Neil begins to get under his skin, Mal reassesses his hopes and ambitions.
Harassed by megalomaniac fae and stalked by sorcerous killers at every turn, Malachai and Neil must fight to be free, and to find what they both always wanted.

Purchase on Pride Publisher






Interview 


I’m so excited to have you here with us today as the Saturday Spotlight Author! I have questions for you and I’m excited for your answers.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. 😊

Let’s start off with how you knew writing was what you always wanted to do?

Well, I’ve been a storyteller since I was very small. I used to make up stories for my little sister and my friends – something I inherited from my late father, who used to invent fairytales for us when we were kids. (King Englebert and the Humper Dinkers was a favourite, as I recall.) My early tales were Famous Five style adventures, involving me and my friends. I think one of them involved a flying carpet and a trip to Blackpool Tower. I was probably eight or nine years old.

I had a wonderful year seven teacher, Mrs Pallant, who encouraged me in my creative writing, telling me, and my parents, that one day I could be the next Enid Blyton.

When I was twelve, I graduated to erotic fiction. Yeah, I know! Precocious, much! I went on holiday to Somerset with my best friend and her family and while we were there I kept her entertained with a mildly salacious tale about a female scientist who falls in love with her service android. I think it was based around a story I’d sneakily read in my mother’s Cosmo. It was truly awful but it was, however, the first example of a trope that I’d reuse quite a lot as I grew older and began to hone my craft – the slightly androgynous, floppy-haired male lead.

Around this time, my dad brought home an ancient, massive Remington typewriter that his office was throwing out and I lugged it up to my room and over the next eleven months or so, pounded out a fantasy novel, based loosely around a theme by Tolkien. (The neighbors could hear me typing three streets away!) This too was awful, but there were sound ideas, and lots of floppy haired, androgynous men, so I was made up about it at the time.

Over the intervening years, work and real life have kind of taken over but I got back to writing in a serious way about twenty years ago and in 2014, I finally got into print with – yes, you guessed it – another floppy haired, androgynous young man, Dr Mari Gale from Elemental Evidence.

You have a book releasing this month, Digging Deeper. It’s book four in your and Bellora Quinn’s Elemental Evidence series. IS this an ongoing story, can it be read as a standalone, and what can you tell us about what to expect?

For anyone thinking of reading the series, I seriously would NOT recommend that you start here. Hahah. No. The earlier books can be read as standalone stories but there is ongoing character and background progression so it really is best to start at the beginning, with Breathing Betrayal.

Bellora and I planned the first four stories - set in London and featuring a pair of freelance paranormal investigators - loosely around a theme of elements, beginning with Air, which is Mari’s element and progressing through Fire (his partner, Jake’s) and the heavier elements of Water and Earth. Jake and Mari are brought together as part of a program to study elemental talents at University College London. Jake is able to review memories captured in inanimate objects and sometimes people. Mari can mind-surf communications networks by touching them, and was headhunted to the department where he works by the British Government, although this is background to the actual stories.

Digging Deeper is a very dark tale and begins to bring together a lot of threads that were sewn through the first three books. It is also kind of a transit story, leading from the first three to a more intense exploration of elementals and Jake’s part-Native American heritage, in the final two (or – at the risk of sounding like George R R Martin here - possibly three) books.

I’m kind of steeling myself for people not to be happy with us about the conclusion to Digging Deeper, which I guess I shouldn’t say when I’m trying to plug a book, but it’s by far the darkest storyline we’ve written for the boys so far. Mari’s horrible ex, Tomas Arregui shows up in London, young women are being drugged and buried alive, and there are threads we haven’t yet tied up which I’m sure will make some folks grind their teeth.

I’m already looking forward to book five though. There will be snow. And hostile relatives. And people setting fire to things. All the good stuff.

Out of all your characters which one would you say is most like you?

Hmm… that’s a difficult one. I think a lot of my characters have elements (see what I did there?) of me in them.

Mari has my borderline-autistic-spectrum tendency to see things in a straight line from A to B with nothing in-between. He gets very frustrated and discouraged when things don’t work out the way he thinks they should.

Rayne Wylde, was a rock-star vampire I wrote with two co-authors -originally with my friend Emily Regent and later, with Bellora, on Literotica and our own blog – and he has my short fuse and love of indie rock music.

In Elemental Evidence, I’d say that John Cordiline is probably the character who channels me the most. He’s older than the MCs and very protective, especially of Jake, plus he has my cynicism and a dry sense of humor.

Are you attending any conventions or signings this year or next?

Not this year. I’ve been out of work for a little while and I can’t really afford it, though I will be attending ShiMMer next year in Birmingham (appropriately). I’m kind of anxious/excited about that.

Bellora will be at GRL this year though, so please go and talk to her, everyone, it’s her first time.

(From Bellora [who is reading this over my shoulder]: OMG Mom, tell everyone why don’t you?)

What inspires you out of a writer’s block?

This is where having a co-writer really comes into its own. Having someone to bounce ideas off is brilliant. It may not always take us in directions we were expecting but it’s great for getting things moving. We wrote Demon Familiar (the first book in a new series, Wanted) earlier last year when we were stuck in the bog of eternal edits for Surfacing Secrets. It started as just a vague idea based on photos of a run-down city, like Detroit, and an image of an abandoned parts-shop covered in graffiti. We knew we wanted Fae in it, as Bellora had been playing around with a Fae based story that didn’t get off the ground. Then we threw demons into the mix and wound up with an alternate future world where Demons, Humans and Fae co-exist. Twelve months later, Demon Familiar was born.

Now we need to get our act together and write book two.

Can you tell us what you’re currently working on or any future projects?

With Bellora, I’m gearing up to work on book five of Elemental Evidence and the aforementioned Wanted part two (neither of which have titles at the moment).

I’ve been working on some old material, myself, which is a long running fantasy cycle set in a world where earth magic given by the gods and closely guarded by elf-like beings, restored a dead planet to life. Fantasy fiction is my first love and it would be great if I could finally get this published.

Growing up what were some of your favorite books and authors?

I would read anything with a horse on the cover up to about the age of eleven. Primarily to shut me up, my Mum gave me her copy of Black Beauty when I was about four and I read it from cover to cover, again and again. The Misty of Chincoteague books by Marguerite Henry were a favorite too, and Elynne Mitchell’s Silver Brumby series, set in Australia.

When I was a kid I loved Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley stories. I still have the original paperback novels and find them a very philosophical read in current times.

I recently re-read The Power of Three, by Diana Wynne Jones, a story of three different races of people living on a moor under threat of flooding and all fighting for their own space. Its characters had a huge impact on me as a pre-teen – I remember making my own cut out and color figures of all the principal MCs. It was my first inkling that kids could be activists too. The book is still amazing now, after all these years. 

How can your readers follow you: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Website?

·       I have an Author Page on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ElementalEvidence/



·       Plus there is a Facebook group for Elemental Evidence and other authory updates –




·       You can follow me on Twitter @SadieBermingham



·       Or Instagram – sadie_rose_69

What is the one thing you’d love your readers to take away from your books?

I always hope that people will fall in love with our boys as much as we do. When we’re creating a world, we get completely immersed in it and the characters are like the kids we never had. Sometimes they’re awesome and funny, sometimes they’re a pain in the ass, but we still love them to bits.

Fast Fire Questions

Favorite color:    Purple
Lucky number:    42
Soup or stew:    Stew, I can only cook if it’s something that involves one pot. (Unless it’s mushroom soup, in which case, Soup!)
Cat or dog:    I love both but I’m primarily a cat person.
Day or night:    Night Owl
Favorite season:    Autumn
Go to comfort food? – I’m weird, I don’t really eat for comfort, but I do love crumpets, it’s a British thing.


Thank you so much for talking with me.






Giveaway

$10 Amazon gift card and e-books of any two books in the back catalogue that the winner would like/hasn't read. 
Contest ends August 31st
Thanks

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Author Saturday Spotlight: Ella Frank #Interview #Giveaway




I am beyond thrilled to have the outstanding Ella Frank as our Author Saturday Spotlight. I joked recently about having not read her and so I started and haven't looked back. She's an extraordinary writer and today you will see some of her work, there's an interview, and a wonderful giveaway. Grab your drink of choice and join us.






ROBBIE

Relationships are complex.
Love ever-changing.
And when it comes to rules of the heart,
they were made to be broken…

That’s what Robert Antonio Bianchi was telling himself, anyway.
Otherwise, he really had no excuse for what—or who—he’d done.

No excuse, except for his lonely heart, a pitcher of margaritas, four Bitter Bitches, and the apparent need to confess all his weaknesses to the two men he knew would bring him nothing but trouble.

But trouble was nothing new.

Just ask his crazy sisters or any of his friends, and they’d be the first to tell you:
If there was a bad decision to be made, Robbie always had a knack for making it.

And thus begins the story of the priest, the princess, and the prick.



Confessions: Robbie (Confessions Series Book #1) - Buy Link





FINLEY

It's time to come home, Finn.
It’s been seven years since Daniel Finley left his hometown in Florida for the hustle and bustle of Chicago’s city life.
Since then, he’s worked hard for his position at the prestigious law firm Leighton & Associates, even when it’s caused distance and isolation from his family and friends. But that’s all about to change.
On his thirtieth birthday, he receives the one thing he never dared hope for. Something that was promised to him years earlier—a note. One simple sentence from the man he’s never been able to forget.
Six words will forever change the course of their lives.
Brantley Hayes has it all. Or so he thinks. When he first made the decision to take a job down in Florida, his family thought he was crazy. But, after years of living in the quiet beach town, he finally feels a sense of community. He’s surrounded himself with friends who are like family, has a job he loves, and owns a spectacular beachfront property that is his sanctuary.
Yet he still feels unfulfilled, as if a piece of the puzzle is missing, and he knows exactly which piece it is. On an impulse, he follows through with a promise he made years earlier. A promise to call home the one he sent away.
Nothing is as simple as it seems.
After years of separation, the former lovers are reunited, but Brantley wasn’t expecting to encounter the high walls now guarding Daniel’s heart.
Daniel may not be the same person he was when he left, but he knows that the first step to healing is the note in his hand.


Finley (Sunset Cove Series #1) - Buy Link




 SHIVER

Wide-eyed and innocent, you stumbled into my world, never knowing the danger that lurked within. The Wolfe’s Den is no place for a little lamb, but you came anyway, and from the moment you stepped inside, you were mine.

In my life there are no happy accidents. Every move is carefully orchestrated. Every situation premeditated. That’s what makes the hunt so intoxicating.

What you need, I become.

What you crave, I will give.

Except the one thing you desire above all else—love.


Everything I told you is true—I’m not a good man, but you choose what you want to hear.

You shouldn’t have come that night. Maybe then you’d be safe. But it’s too late now.

I want you because you remind me of him. I need you to give me back what I lost.

SHIVER WARNING: This is not a love story. It is not a romance. This is an obsessive stalker lust story that contains darker themes that may serve as a trigger to some readers. Shiver is a standalone novel.




Shiver (Standalone) – Buy Link




TRY

Try – verb: to make an attempt or effort to do something or in this case…someone.

Sex. Logan Mitchell loves it, and ever since he realized his raw sexual appeal at a young age, he has had no problem using it to his advantage. Men and women alike fall into his bed—after all, Logan is not one to discriminate. He lives by one motto—if something interests you, why not just take a chance and try?

And he wants to try Tate Morrison.

Just coming out of a four-year marriage with an ex-wife from hell, a relationship is the last thing on Tate’s mind. He’s starting fresh and trying to get back on his feet with a new job at an upscale bar in downtown Chicago.

The only problem is, Tate has caught the unwavering and unwelcome attention of Mr. Logan Mitchell – a regular at the bar and a man who always gets what he wants.

Night after night Tate fends off the persistent advances of the undeniably charismatic man, but after an explosive moment in the bar, all bets are off as he finds his body stirring with a different desire than his mind.

As arrogance, stubbornness and sexual tension sizzles between the two, it threatens to change the very course of their lives.

Logan doesn’t do relationships. Tate doesn’t do men. But what would happen if they both just gave in and…tried?



Try (Temptation Series Book #1) - Buy Link




ACED

What happens when these two worlds collide?

Ace Locke is Hollywood’s hottest action hero. Women across the globe fling their panties in his direction, but Ace isn’t interested in those—he’s more of a boxer briefs kind of guy. Specifically, those of the nearly naked male model on a billboard he drives past every day.

Though he recently made headlines for his public coming out, Ace is wary about pursuing a relationship, fearing what the court of public opinion will do to his career. But there’s something in the model’s expression that intrigues him and has him wondering what if?

Dylan Prescott just scored his biggest modeling campaign yet. One that has him plastered all over L.A. in not much more than what he was born with. And when he’s cast in Ace’s latest blockbuster, it puts him in close proximity to his ultimate fantasy.

Outwardly confident, Dylan has no problem with his sexuality or his pretty-boy looks, and uses both to his advantage to get what he wants. And what he wants is the impossible—Ace Locke.




Aced (Preslocke Series Book #1) - Buy Link






Interview

I am so excited to have you on Diverse Reader! I am a fan and greatly respect your work. I want to ask you some questions, get to know you, pick your brain a bit.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here with you at Diverse Reader, pick away, I’m ready…maybe…okay, yep, I’m ready! Go for it.

What are three things about you we won’t read about in your bio?

Hmm… let me see. I’m an Australian. Born and bred. I moved from Sydney to the US when I was nineteen, and the rest of my family still lives Down Under.

I am a total foodie, and not necessarily the snobby, posh food. I mean I love to try anything and everything food wise—except Sushi. In most of my books there is some element of food, and it’s usually just a great excuse for me to try things or get into research by eating it— #noshame.

I love to dance and sing…badly. I don’t care that I can’t hold a tune to save myself if there is a song on I love, I will be the one belting it out at the top of my lungs. As I just recently displayed for my co-author Brooke at the Taylor Swift concert we went to. I don’t think I stopped singing and dancing all night.

You write in both the MF world and in the MM world. It’s not easy to make both work but you do wonderfully. What made you cross the streams so to speak?

I love romance, no matter what genre it is. MF/MM/PNR/Historical, I love to write about love and am fortunate that readers have trusted me when I’ve gone off in a different direction.
I started with MF romance because that was what I was reading. I had grown up reading Sandra Brown and Nora Roberts and was fascinated by the many different ways people could meet and fall in love. By age fourteen, I was writing long drawn out romances that I made my friends listen to which I’m sure they just loved…okay, maybe not LOL.
The crossover happened after reading Blackdagger Brotherhood by J.R. Ward. I found myself incredibly invested in a certain friendship/love in that book (Butch and V, I’m looking at you) and it had me going in search of romances in the MM genre and I found a whole new world of romance and I fell in love.
It called to me and made me think how wonderful it would be to write a romance in this genre and maybe introduce some of my readers who hadn’t read MM before (like me) to it—and so TRY came about.
After that it was really about writing what came to me. Try was a huge surprise. I never expected it would be as well received as it was. But word of mouth got Logan and Tate into people’s hands after a year or so, and when Take came out it was exciting to know I could explore both the MF and MM worlds when it came to my writing. 
I hope that remains the case as I go on in my career, and I never know what exactly I will write until I get there but I am open to anything and I think that is the beauty of being in a creative field like writing—the sky is the limit.

You co-author with Brooke Blaine often. Co-authoring is one of those things that when you find someone that you click with you feel like you’ve won the lottery. What, in your opinion, makes that partnership work?

We know and trust each other. Co-authoring isn’t easy. You not only have to come up with a plot you both love and understand, you then have to blend your voices in a seamless way that makes the reader feel as though the story they’re reading came from one mind.
I’ve known Brooke for years, both personally and professionally. We have worked on our solo projects together (nearly all of them) and we know how each other thinks. This is key in my opinion. She can finish a sentence of mine that I stop halfway because she understands my style so well—and vice versa—and I think that kind of working relationship is extremely rare and vital to having a successful and long lasting co-author partnership.
I couldn’t, and don’t want to, imagine doing this with anyone else (But we both know if J.R. Ward asks either of is—that’s a given LOL)

What is your favorite part about writing a book and your least favorite?

My favorite part of writing is coming up with the characters and stories and all the possibilities. Also, when I get a devious little ah ha! moment. That’s fun too!
My least fun part is writing chapter one. I always write it ten times before I am happy,  and I usually end up going back to the first draft.

We often read authors saying, “I write JUST too much.” Or “Oh my god, I wrote looked 32 times in this book.” What is that one word you always find you write too much?

All of them? LOL. I find it changes from book to book. Isn’t that crazy? I will say there are the standard repeaters such as turned, looked, or narrowed. But I also find there are phrases we sometimes get comfortable with in certain books, and we keep using.
I’m very lucky in the sense my editor pulls no punches in being a wiseass and telling me when to cut things or just cuts them for me, and between him and Brooke, I can honestly say my writing has improved in leaps and bounds.
We all start somewhere, and I am proud of my first stories, but I would like to believe that with every new novel I improve and become better at my craft. Tough skin and the willingness to listen and adapt can really change and improve a writer’s course.

Name three famous people, either living or dead, you’d love to sit down with and pick their brain?
This question is so HARD. It changes all the time for me. But right now it would be Jane Austin, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and my third is a three-way—Nora Roberts, J.R.Ward & Taylor Swift!

Can you tell us what book signings, conventions and such you’ll be attending the rest of this year?
I’m not attending any book signings for the rest of this year. I have decided to take some time at home and recoup after a few health issues, and really focus on my work.

Can you tell us what you’re currently working on or what you have coming?

I can! I am currently working on CONFESSIONS: PRIEST (Confessions Series Book #3) and I have just announced in my reader groups that there will be a fourth novella/novel (depending on what’s left to tell) for Robbie, Julien & Joel to wrap up their story this year. Heading into 2019 I will be writing more standalone MM romances in the Confessions world/universe. I’m not divulging who will get a story as of yet and when, but I love the Chicago I have created with Mitchell & Madison, The Popped Cherry, JULIEN Restaurant and I don’t want to leave anytime soon. I’m very excited!
There will also be some co-authored books with Brooke and maybe an MF thrown in there somewhere. I’m very excited for the future!

How can readers find you: Twitter, Website, Facebook, Instagram…?


How do you decompress after writing a book?

I go on TV Show binges. It is really quite alarming how much TV I can watch in a week. But I find after writing and editing I am so drained it is like you are coming down from an adrenaline rush. My brain goes numb and zoning out for a week is the perfect remedy—though probably not the healthiest.


What is your writing process?

I listen to a lot of music building up to writing a book. Songs that I think would fit the characters and their relationships, and then I start to write down quotes here and there. From there, I’ll try my hand at chapter one (and we all know how that goes for me…) and after I nail the vibe and feel of that, and know I am heading in the write direction, I start work on a very loose outline.
I used to be more of a pantser when it came to writing. I would sit down and just go with the flow. But the more I delved into series and had the same character’s popping up here and there, it became MUCH easier to have some idea of the direction I was going and the different layers I wanted to explore.
Right now I am in the middle of fleshing out an outline for Priest, and while I know all the things that need to be in the story, I need a sense of direction with the three POV’s and flashbacks and story building. It just makes life more manageable.
After that, I start my actually writing. I am pretty good at keeping to a schedule and I am one of those weird people who love to get up bright and early and work in the wee hours of the morning. Once I start, I don’t like to stop. I will work on the story every day unless something comes up—and I am laser focused. I live, breathe, and eat the story until it’s done.
Brooke chapter reads for me (as I do her) and gives me notes and suggestions on what to fix along the way, and then once the story is complete and I love it, it’s off to the editor.
My critique/beta process has changed dramatically over the years, and I have discovered that what works well for me, most certainly won’t work best for others. My best advice is to find what DOES work for you. No one’s way is the “right” way, but it is imperative to edit your books, take pride in your work, and put out the best product you can—don’t rush. You only get one first impression with a book.


Fast Fire Questions:

Coffee or tea? Coffee
Day or night? Morning/Day
Favorite comfort food? Sweets (especially caramel)
Favorite color? Blue
TV show or movie? TV Show
Favorite flower? Tulips

Thank you, Ella, so much for hanging out with me today.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s been an absolute pleasure getting to know you Meredith!
Xx Ella






Giveaway

Ella Frank is offering one person a signed
paperback copy of Robbie!!! EEEK.
Enter the rafflecopter below for your chance.
Contest ends June 22nd
Thanks!

a Rafflecopter giveaway