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Full Moon Reads - Pink Moon

4/21/2016

Happy Pink Moon!

This is a special Full Moon Read, because it is a
COMPLETE SERIAL - ON SALE for $0.99!
So quick, go GET THE BOOK before the sale ends. I'll wait here:

Get it on Amazon!

Get it on Nook!

Get it on iBooks!

Now for the fun stuff...
I've been FaceBook friends with author Chloe Cole for a long time and can't help but enjoy her fun personality and great input on all things bookish But this month was my first time checking out one of her stories. And WOW was I glad I did!

Let's start with the facts, here's the book blurb:

When Willa Stone is cast aside by the alpha-wolf she’s been promised to since birth, she’s humiliated and angry, but also secretly relieved. Now, maybe she’ll have the chance to mate for love. If her power-crazed parents will just give her a little time, she’s sure to find the man of her dreams…

Dragon-shifter, Drake Blackbourne, has an itch to scratch and precious few options for an outlet. When the Stone family offers up their daughter’s hand in exchange for protection and political favors, he agrees to wed her, sight unseen. Drastic times call for drastic measures and, so long as she does her part and keeps out of his way the rest of the time, surely he can manage to bed her, no matter how plain she might be.

What he doesn’t expect is that captivating, defiant Willa will ignite a fire in him that will burn everything in its path, and turn both of their worlds upside down…

This book is all about CONTROL. The control of the pack over the wolf. Willa's parents controlling her destiny. Blake controlling the blazing desire he feels for Willa. Willa using her sensuality to control Blake to any extent that she can. And ultimately her own waning control over the drowning need she feels for him.

The power plays between the two characters were dizzying. Given that the whole serial mainly takes place between two characters in one setting I was amazed at how fast the pace was, and how high the stakes were for both characters.

Also it was hot. Really, really hot.

Imperfect characters, moments of unexpected humor, and fantastic descriptions of a mountaintop mansion all added to my enjoyment of this fun and addictive read!

Have YOU read Coercion yet? What did you think? Sound off in the comments!

P.S. Did you miss yesterday's sale price on this book? Or did you read this one and want more?? Chloe Cole's Obsession is on sale for $0.99 for BookBub today! You can check it out here:

https://www.bookbub.com/books/obsession-by-chloe-cole?email=other_retailers&ebook_deal

1 Comment

Full Moon Reads - Crow Moon

3/22/2016

11 Comments

If you've been following my blog for any amount of time, you know that Elle Thorne is one of my author buddies! We've had so much fun participating in box sets with each other and we even met in person for pancakes last year!

This month's Full Moon Read is about one of her fan favorites, Persuasion.

Persuasion is the story of Kelsey and Teague. These two have a history together - a history that ended abruptly with an event that forever changed Kelsey's view of herself and their relationship.

This is heavy stuff for shifter romance, but it doesn't impede the strength of the characters' connection or the sizzling heat between them as they navigate their way back into each other's arms.

I read this sweet story in a sitting and finished it up feeling warm and fuzzy with that sense of satisfaction reserved for stories where a conflict must be resolved or a past wrong righted.

Have you read Persuasion? What did you think about Kelsey and Teague's story? Sound off in the comments!

Get it here on Amazon!
Get it here on Nook!
Get it here on iBooks!
Get it here on Kobo!
Get it here on Googleplay!

In happy news, many of Elle's books (including all of the books in the picture above) are now available wide on all vendors! If you would like to learn more about Persuasion or about her Shifters Forever world, you can visit her series page:

http://www.ellethorne.com/shifters-forever-worlds.html

11 Comments

An exclusive excerpt from Burn This!

3/4/2016

8 Comments

Burn This! will be releasing on March 7th on ALL VENDORS!
(Yes, that's Monday!!!)

A bad boy rock star with a debt to pay.
A no-nonsense nurse with her eye on the prize.
A touch of full moon magic.
Put them together and the result is so hot it might just set your eReader on fire!
A brand new series of standalones from USA Today bestselling author Tasha Black.

Johnny's 300th moon is here.
Will he deny the fire inside him long enough to lose it? Or will he give in to his passions and give up his only chance at control?

Here's your EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK at Chapter One!!!!

CHAPTER ONE:

Johnny Lazarus looked out at the crowd.

He was a handsome guy, he looked at home on the farm with his shirt off, at home on the tour bus, at home in a fancy restaurant with his long dark hair brushing the shoulders of his tux.

But it was on the stage, with the savage beat reverberating through his body, making his feet feel like they had roots down to the center of the earth, that he felt in his element.

His band, Somnambulance, was on top of the world, and everyone wanted a piece of Johnny Lazarus. They had always traveled a lot, but this summer’s Outlaws of Rock festival was the longest tour they’d done in ages. It was starting to feel like one long concert, and the drives, hotel rooms and groupies in between were just breaks between the sets.

Even here in LA, the biggest venue of the whole tour, with thousands of screaming fans, he walked right onstage feeling at home, and unconcerned. He would snap his fingers and the crowd would fall at his feet, no worries. The crew was lean. They had been at this for months and the whole thing ran like clockwork.

Johnny closed his eyes and breathed in the experience. The huge field laid out before him swam with every scent the human body was capable of producing: sweat and tears, tobacco and booze, arousal and even a hint of fear here and there.

And the sounds: the shudder and thump of tens of thousands of hearts beating, feet shuffling, howls and sighs and palms slapping, some in perfect time to the old school Metallica cover they were doing, some not.

Above it all stood the silky smooth feel of the guitar in his hands. Little Ruby, his darling, her strings singing under his fingers. No matter how gritty the concert, little Ruby was always smooth and clean and cool to the touch. She was impervious to the bacchanal. He should have named her Pallas Athena. Except she sang so sweetly when he stroked his fingers against her, it reminded him of something else entirely. So little Ruby was her name.

He sang into the mic as the crowd screamed along, and who the fuck could blame them? The band was killing it. The song was an old favorite, from back when Metallica was good. And as a bonus, the post-Fifty Shades chicks really got into the master-servant lyrics.

Johnny had vague memories of his mom listening to this type of music, before… Before the fire, and before everything changed. Before the night she snuck him out and drove all night to the suburbs of Philadelphia to leave him with Kate Harkness.

“It’s just for a little while, bud, until I can get a job out here and an apartment, okay?” she had assured him.

Even at age five, madly in love with her big brown eyes and the flowery smell of her shampoo, he had known that wasn’t true.

And, in fact, she had never come back.

To her credit, she also hadn’t come back after he got famous. He’d made a point of keeping the name she gave him. So she would know what she had missed.

The machine gun beat of the drums splattered out and the song ended.

The whole crowd screamed like crazy, like they never wanted him to stop.

Well, too bad. It was time for the finale.

Jazz, the young girl on crew who was in charge of little Ruby during the finale still looked nervous even tonight, the last show. She was probably the only one still feeling the heat, and he couldn’t say he blamed her.
It was Jazz’s job to grab the guitar out of the air when Johnny tossed her. Then she had to run backstage and protect her until the show was over and Johnny came to snatch little Ruby up fiercely from her arms.

Johnny had been known to get a little carried away during the final song. And little Ruby was an irreplaceable antique Les Paul.

Though Jazz seemed barely old enough to be allowed to go on a tour at all, there was a serious look on her soft brown face. Johnny knew instinctively that she would protect his instrument with her life, if necessary, and would never allow herself to get caught up in an some silly prank, egged on by one of the pop princesses or boy band geeks, where she would scare Johnny into thinking something had happened to little Ruby.

He tossed his beloved tenderly into Jazz’s slender hands and gave the kid a grin when she caught little Ruby as if the guitar had flown into her arms of its own volition. She grinned back and disappeared into the darkness offstage.

He strode slowly back to the mic, grabbing a bottle of water off one of the amps along the way.

The air hung hot and wet, like a damp sponge, even though the sun had set two hours ago. Ominous clouds had formed a dome over the field since morning. The kids selling umbrellas and disposable plastic ponchos had been making a killing all day. But it turned out to be an empty threat.

At least the cloud cover probably cut down on the cases of sun-stroke in the medical tent.

Johnny sucked down half the water bottle, then poured the other half slowly over his head.

Screams, mostly female, rang out as the t-shirt went transparent over his lean, muscular frame. He let himself smirk and they got even louder. He tossed the empty bottle out into the crowd and tried not to watch as a sea of people reached for it.

“You guys havin’ a good time tonight?” he asked mildly into the microphone, scanning the crowd.

They roared back at him.

“Me too. Me too. I was hoping we’d get to hang out with you a little longer, but we just got word from the park management that it’s time to shut things down,” he said sadly.

“Booooooooooo,” they screamed.

There was no word from anyone, of course. He was teasing them.

They knew it. And they loved it.

“They told me if we don’t get off the stage, they’re gonna pull the plug,” he told them with a confidential tilt of his head, like he was spreading a juicy rumor about a neighbor.

“Booooooooo,” they screamed back.

“You know what I got to say to that?” he asked, dropping the gossipy tone, and picking up his branded rebellious attitude.

The crowd began to cheer loudly.

“I said… You know what I got to say to that?” he asked, taunting them.

They cheered frantically, louder than before.

“Fuck that!” he screamed back.

The whole crowd went nuts.

Johnny literally couldn’t hear himself think.

“Fuck that!” he screamed again, instead of trying. He pumped his fist, unsure if any mic in the world would allow them to hear him over their own sounds.

But they heard him, they always did. They picked up his phrase and began to chant.

“Fuck that…Fuck that…Fuck that,” their collective voice bounced off the back of the stage and echoed back to him.

He smiled and stripped off his water and sweat-soaked shirt.

More high-pitched screams.

He let them take in his naked torso. He was glad he was built. Chicks went wild for the abs and the biceps. And the dudes seemed to get a kick out of his body too. Like somehow because they connected with his lyrics they felt like they were a part of him, like his body was theirs too, since it expressed their feelings.

And of course, some of them just wanted to fuck him.

He basked in it, glorying in sharing his beauty, though he knew from a certain point of view, it would be considered vanity.

His foster sister, Darcy, for one, would never let him live this sort of thing down.

But he was merely sharing with others what had been given to him freely - not earned. Shouldn’t he share it with the world, much as he shared his musical talent, which had also been bestowed upon him?

Of course there was that other gift.

Best not to think about it.

He threw his shirt into the crowd and their screams ratcheted up higher. People literally dove to catch it.
“I say we play one more. Let ‘em try to stop us!” he offered.

He held up his right hand, and a guitar flew at him from stage right.

A serviceable, but disposable, Fender Stratocaster.

He caught it expertly and strapped it on.

Man, they were smooth tonight. He could have caught it with his eyes closed.

“Anybody have any requests?” he asked innocently.

He didn’t really need to ask. There was only one song they hadn’t played.

One song that all these people paid their hard earned money, or their parents’ money at least, to hear.

In answer, the crowd lifted their heads up to the clouds and and howled, like wolves baying at the moon.

Adorable. They were all adorable from up here, their flaws hidden by the distance, their imperfections smoothed out by perspective. So small, crying out to be heard. They were all his babies.

Johnny drank them in for another moment.

Who knew when the next tour would be? He’d be back in the renovated attic soon, all by himself, trying to coax little Ruby to sing the songs in his imagination again. Then they’d all be back in the studio, in an antiseptic booth, nothing but his own voice playing back on a loop to tell him whether it was any good or not. He might never write another song that made the world throw their head back and howl, like he was inside their souls.

He stopped thinking and gave his babies what they wanted.

He punched out the three notes of the opening riff of “Strength of the Pack.”

Three…two…one…

The crowd erupted, stamping their feet on the ground and yelling. The effect from the stage above was like watching a pot of water boiling over.

Johnny smiled at what he had wrought. This song was his, and they were all here to bask in it.

His fingers punished the strings of the Strat, jabbing the notes out like they were Morse code.

Take me. My body, my soul, they are nothing more than a mirror, made to show you yourselves. Look into me unblinking, my heroes, my slaves.

The riff stopped for a quarter rest before the song kicked in and their hearts pounded with anticipation so fierce that he could hear the throb over their screams.

He let the energy flow through him, carry him.

Then the bass and drums led him into the verse and he sang.

When Johnny had first started playing, he’d tried to copy the bands he idolized. He’d studied the greats and then tried to take from them what he thought the fans would want to hear.

It turned out the fans were smarter than he thought. They could smell that bullshit a mile away.

But “Strength of the Pack” was different. It was something he had written for himself, a song about his brothers and the bond they shared, straight from his heart.

And that was why they loved him. Why he was on all the magazines and world tours. Why thousands of teenagers were sticking his face on their home screens and howling his lyrics into their selfie sticks on youtube.

It was because his songs were his truth.

And his truth was universal.

The verse built up steam heading to the first chorus. Johnny could practically taste their excitement on the air.
Something flew out of the crowd at him and landed at his feet.

He knew it was a bra before he looked down. He could smell the woman who it belonged to - young and brave. She’d been working up her nerve to do this all night.

He scooped it up and hung it from the mic stand without missing a beat, and went right into the chorus.

As they always did, the crowd sang it right along with him.

“You can’t fight the…
Strength…
Of…
The…
Pack.”

God, it sounded good like that. He smiled down at them and spotted bra girl in the front row.

She was blonde and her curves were a bit on the generous side, just his type.

She pointed at the lacy thing on his mic stand and lifted her shirt, giving him a great view of the bra’s previous contents.

It was par for the course, and similar things happened during every show, but somehow, it felt different.

He looked down as a soft haze enveloped her. Her hair was a halo of the softest gold, her eyes china blue in an angel’s face. In spite of the crowd, he knew her beautiful breasts were revealed just for him. Those stiff little nipples were pink as flowers and reaching for him as if he were the sun.

Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to go to her. To push the crowd away and claim her for himself.

Confused, he stepped away from the mic and leaned down to stare at her for a moment.

He nearly missed the start of the second verse, but luckily the girl didn’t keep her cool. She freaked out under the focus of his attention, squeezing her eyes shut and letting out a piercing scream that brought him back to reality.

Jesus. Too much time under the lights today, for sure.

He shook off the cobwebs and kept singing.

A minute later and the weird incident was forgotten.

A light breeze swept in at last after a stifling day. It felt good against his skin, nice way to end the night.

Johnny was in the middle of his guitar solo, really shredding, when the cloud cover finally broke, bathing the stage in the light of the new moon.

Johnny had just enough time to notice the haze over the crowd before the moonlight gripped him like a fist.
His skin tingled with electricity and a crawling pain ignited on his forearm.

He faltered, the Strat yelped out flatly.

His fingers fell uselessly off the strings and he stopped singing.

Seth, the bass player, was solid. Johnny heard him fill in the last few bars as the chorus approached.

The crowd would probably think it was planned that way.

But Johnny could barely hear the crowd or the song now.

There was something alive in his arm, scratching to break free. He watched as the skin writhed and stretched.

He looked away and caught Seth’s eyes. Seth nodded at the mic with a what the fuck? look on his face.

Johnny would have liked to know the answer too, but the chorus was coming and he was rooted to the spot.

Seth grabbed the mic and held it out to the crowd. They filled in eagerly.

“You can’t hide the…
Strength…
Of…
The…
Pack.”

Johnny’s arm seethed with electric pain.

What the hell is happening?

Inside he felt the flapping of wings.

He could deny it all he wanted, but he knew where this was going. And he needed to get away. The consequences of losing control were unthinkable.

He pictured the bodies of the crowd, burning to ash, or trampling each other in an attempt to escape.
He turned to run, oblivious to the shouts of his bandmates.

Seth stepped in front of him, arms out.

But Johnny dodged and slipped away.

If he could just get away from all of these people, maybe everything would be fine.

Two steps later, he was engulfed in red flames.

His first thought was that he was too late.

He’d let his control slip too far.

And now everyone was going to pay.

Then the flames turned to a rosy purple, and the truth hit him. The flames were not his own.

He’d blundered in front of the pyrotechnics. They switched again, in time with the song, and he was showered in green sparks.

He fell to his knees as a pair of hands lifted his smoldering form clear.

Someone threw a fire blanket over him.

Fear overwhelmed him and he fought to breathe.

He wasn’t afraid of the fire - never of the fire.

It was that out of control feeling.

He peered out.

The crowd shrieked as the clouds covered the moon again.

He looked down at his arm.

The pain was gone.

His bandmates gathered around him. He noticed almost absentmindedly that the music had stopped.

Paramedics pushed past. He would have to deal with them.

But not yet.

He flashed Seth a grin and stood, tossing the fire blanket aside. He pushed past the paramedics and grabbed the mic.

The crowd stood before him, silent.

He took a huge breath, then pulled the mic against his mouth.

“You can’t fake the…” he began.

The crowd went nuts, joining him as he sang.

“Strength…
Of…
The…
Pack.”

His bandmates scrambled back to their places as he belted out the final chorus, with 40,000 screaming fans losing their collective mind.

“You’ll never take the…
Strength…
Of…
The…
Pack.”

Seth leaned in as the roar washed over them.

Johnny waited for a question or accusation, but it never came.

“Now that’s fucking Rock and Roll,” Seth shouted with a conspiratorial grin.

***
Burn This! is available for pre-order on Amazon and will be releasing and available for sale on all vendors March 8th! Click here to reserve your copy or bookmark to grab a copy on release day:

http://www.tashablack.com/burn-this.html

Did you enjoy the first chapter? What do you think will happen next? Sound off in the comments!

8 Comments

Full Moon Reads - Snow Moon

2/23/2016

36 Comments

Happy Snow Moon! As you know, I like to share a fun read with you on each full moon! This month I read TWO books that just have to be shared! One is a brand-new release with an excerpt just for The Black List! Here they are...

Available on ALL vendors!

Author Jessie Donovan has a way with dragons. I've shared her books before, but this one was special to me!

Imagine walking away from your life, braving the danger of dragons and immersing yourself in a whole new culture in order to save your father's life by being assigned to a dragonman for six months of attempted impregnation.

Then imagine falling hard for his TWIN BROTHER.

This book had me smiling and nodding in the beginning. I seriously thought I had my head around it and knew right where it was going. The sassy heroine, the theme of forbidden love, all classic stories.

Boy was I wrong!

Holly isn't really a sassy heroine. Holly can be proud, balls-to-the-wall indignant, and sometimes even implacable. Her sense of right and wrong and her desire to control her own destiny make her a fascinating character to follow in a situation where she has very little control.

Then the first steamy scene happened and... well, I felt like I had been punched in the ovaries. In a good way. (Just read it, you'll understand.)

Fraser is hot as can be and a very sympathetic character though we know he has been a playboy in the past. Believe me, you will not mind at all when Holly is sorely tempted to succumb to his, er, charms.

The next standalone book in this series, The Dragon Guardian, was just released. I haven't read it yet, but I plan to. Have you read The Dragon's Dilemma or The Dragon Guardian? What do you think of Jessie Donovan's Lochguard Highland Dragons? Sound off in the comments!

Grab it now on Amazon!
Grab it now on Barnes & Noble!
Grab it now on Kobo!
Grab it now on iBooks!
Grab it now on GooglePlay!

Available on Amazon only

I've shared books by Sylvia Frost here before (you may remember her Moon Fate serial) but this is something DIFFERENT!

Cinder's Wolf is a standalone shifter retelling of Cinderella! I was lucky enough to have scored an advance copy and let me tell you, it was so much fun!

Did it have a hot billionaire? YES!
Did it have a curvy career minded heroine? YES!
Were there steamy scenes? YES!
Was there humor? Oh, YES!
Was there a unique perspective on the fairy tale characters? YES!
Am I looking forward to more fairy tales from Sylvia? YES!!!!

Here's the official blurb:

Billionaire Rex West may be known to the world as a Wall Street wonder, but he's got a secret. In order to live among humans, this werewolf has trapped his inner beast in a gilded cage of control and lost any hope of finding his mate.

Until he meets her...

Curvy Cynthia Cinders has one focus-- save her cleaning and organizing business and move out of her stepmother's house. So when she gets an invitation to a masquerade, she's more interested in landing an investor than playing princess.

But this prince isn't just a prince, and he has plans for Cynthia...

And here's an EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT just for the Black List:
“Ugh!” Cynthia kicked the air, trying to get the slime out from between her toes, and sent her blue flip-flop flying through the forest end over end in the process.
It went almost fifteen yards. Impressive. Even more impressive, it didn’t snag on any of the low-hanging leafy branches. Most impressive of all was where it landed. In a man’s hand. He plucked it from midair as easily as if time had stopped before leaning back on a nearby oak.
“Nice kick,” he drawled in an accent that was all old-money prep school. He was so not from Michigan.
Cynthia’s eyes widened. “Nice catch.”
He gave her a too-charming grin. “Thank you.”
The first thing that struck her about him was his clothes.
Any self-respecting aspiring fashion designer would recognize the sharp silhouette of a deep blue Zachary Prell sports jacket or the gleam of bespoke cobbled oxfords. His silk navy tie had to have been custom made to match the coat. That alone was enough to grab her interest.
Then there was the matter of his face. While his clean-shaven jaw should’ve looked non-threatening, it was male-model square, and his cheekbones were high and sharp enough to cut glass. Only his hair was slightly messy. Its sandy locks rebelled against his attempt to slick it back. The hair was the thing that gave him away as just another grade-A douchebag.
But damn it if she didn’t want to run her fingers through it.
Cynthia frowned and crossed her arms.
The man pushed off the tree and began to stroll toward her, sizing up her as he went. “So what are you doing in the woods?”
Cynthia refrained from rolling her eyes at his obvious interest. She pointed at her T-shirt.
“Camp Kick-A-Canoe?” he read, staring openly at her chest while not going completely slack-jawed. It was a feat most guys rarely managed.
“Camp Ki-Ka-Noo.” Her hand traced over the each syllable like the bouncy ball on a musical sing-along. “I’m a counselor.”
“Lost your campers?” He stopped about a foot away from her. It was still too close.
“Campers left yesterday. Now I’ve just lost my friend. Brown hair, glasses—seen her?” Cynthia gestured to the forest around her vaguely, as if she and Bel were playing a game of hide-and-seek and she was just asking for a friendly tip.
“Can’t say I have. Although I do wonder why you went on a search and rescue mission in these?” He raised an eyebrow and held up her shoe, glancing dolefully at the one remaining rhinestone that glinted in the dying light.
“I’m not the one going on a hike in a sport coat that hasn’t even been officially released in stores yet. Are you interning at Zachary Prell?”
“Nice guess, but no.” His second eyebrow joined his first, and his gaze dipped to survey her waist, lingering where the camp T-shirt rode up to reveal her tanned, but very much present and convex stomach. It was the one feature Cynthia was self-conscious about, but his pupils dilated as he took in her naked skin.
Cynthia tucked her shirt into her jean shorts to keep it from rising up again. “What are you doing in the woods?”
He smiled, showing a line of white teeth. They didn’t look like veneers. If anything, his canines seemed just a tad too sharp. The back of her knees went stiff.
“I live nearby.” He pointed casually in a direction that Cynthia would’ve sworn was the way back to camp. As he turned, a sunbeam caught on his dark eyes, revealing the hidden blue color beneath them.
He caught her staring, but kept smiling in that way that should have been gentle. “I heard yelling,” he continued, “so I thought I’d investigate.” He looked her up and down once again, and this time, his eyes did linger on her chest. For a while.

Grab it now on Amazon!

(Depending on what time it is where you live, this book either JUST RELEASED or is in its last few hours of pre-order! It will be enlisted in KU as of 2/24.)

Have you read Cinder's Wolf? What did you think? What fairy tale do you hope Sylvia Frost will retell next? Sound off in the comments!

36 Comments

Burn This! - Cover Reveal (Post #4)

1/26/2016

80 Comments

A bad boy rock star with a debt to pay.
A no-nonsense nurse with her eye on the prize.
A touch of full moon magic.
Put them together and the result is so hot it might just set your eReader on fire.

This cover was designed by the lovely Sylvia Frost. Presenting, Burn This!

Pre-order Burn This! on Amazon now!

Writing this book has me thinking about all my bad boy musician crushes!
Who was YOUR first rock star (or rap star, or pop star) crush???
Tell me about it in the comments!

80 Comments

Happily Ever ALPHA (Post #3)

1/26/2016

59 Comments

I know even know what to say about this one, guys.
It's just SO MANY BOOKS.
For $0.99.

Let's start with how to get it:

Grab it now on Amazon!

Grab it now on Barnes & Noble!

Grab it now on iBooks!

Grab it now on Kobo!

Here are the authors involved:
Sarah Makela, Michele Bardsley, Sylvia Frost, JC Andrijeski, Steffanie Holmes, Conner Kressley, Rebecca Hamilton, Elle Thorne, Alexia Purdy, Ambrielle Kirk, Amy Lee Burgess, Angel Lawson, Roslyn Sparks, Tasha Black, Kim Faulks, Katie de Long, April Aasheim, Jesi Lea Ryan, Rainy Kaye, L.B. Gilbert, J.E. Taylor, and Aimee Easterling

Do you have a favorite PNR author on that list? Give them a shout out in the comments! :)

59 Comments

Bait This! An Exclusive Excerpt (Post 2)

1/23/2016

113 Comments

Great news for those of you who are waiting for Bait This!, the first in the 300 Moons series of standalone PNR romance novels I'll be releasing this year...

Bait This! is almost ready for you!

I've been thinking about the 300 Moons series for a long time.

When I finally holed myself up to write the first book, the characters and plot absolutely exploded, and it all flew out faster than expected!
I can't wait to share Bait This! with you - and if the editing and proofreading phases go as planned, the book will be ready for you before Valentine's Day!

To celebrate, I thought I'd share an excerpt with you! Here's the set-up:

Derek Harkness is a billionaire who plays by his own set of rules. By repressing his inner bear, Derek keeps every aspect of his life under his iron control.

Hedda Lane is a strong, independent woman, but a single mistake in her past has put her whole life on hold.

This scene begins with Derek worried about how Hedda will react when she discovers that he is a shifter...

Bait This! (Excerpt):

Derek couldn’t distract her.

She was going to see that he had already healed, impossibly quickly.
It was already too late, she was up on her knees, her hands reaching for his hair.

He would have to submit.

She was close enough that he could hear her heartbeat, scent the sweetness of her. The bear moaned, but Derek held him in with all he had, the mark burning his hip like a hot coal beneath his skin, his whole body teeming with energy that he held in by a thread.

He moved fully into the shelter, hunkering down to her level, and the feeling eased a bit.

Whatever was going on with him, it seemed to be worse in the moonlight.
He stilled as her fingers touched his hair.

Her hands were so gentle. It could have been her feather touch, but he felt a light prickle of electricity between them.

“It’s fine,” she breathed at last, sitting back on her heels.

He was drawn between the agony of aching for her touch and the relief of having passed the test of having her touch him without incident.

Her silence roused him.

He didn’t know what to say. He had been found out.

“You’re one of them, then,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked, not turning, afraid to look her in the eye.

“You’re a wolf,” she said.

The bear tossed his snout in the air indignantly at being confused with a canine. Darcy would have howled with laughter at the thought.

Derek turned to examine the woman’s expression.

She stared back at him, her green eyes clear and frank.

She knew about shifters.

He had never told a human he was a shifter before. But this was a different situation than he’d ever been in.

He considered his options and made a calculated decision within the time it took to blink.

He nodded and made a noncommittal grunt.

Willing to admit to being a shifter, but not exactly wanting to tell her he was a bear.

The way Derek saw it, women fantasized about guys who turned into wolves, he’d seen it in those sparkly vampire movies.

But most people were white-knuckled in terror at the grainy internet home videos of lumbering bears running rampant. They were forever vandalizing suburban backyards and killing deer, never standing confidently on the edge of a cliff or something, giving a poignant howl.
If you were going to be a shifter, the writing was on the wall. Wolves were the sexy, sympathetic kings.

And bears were… well, bumbling and brutish.

Hedda nodded matter-of-factly at his admission, not seeming to question his status as a wolf.

“I knew you were a shifter,” she said.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “How did you know?”

“The town where I used to live was all shifters - wolves,” she said.

“Not you,” he corrected her.

“You’re right, not me,” she smiled.

“But the whole town was shifters?” he asked.

She nodded again.

Derek thought about that.

“You grew up around people, I take it,” she said.

“Yeah. Well… not exactly, but yes,” he replied.

“Family of shifters, but out in the human world,” she nodded.

“Nope, I don’t know anything about my shifter family. I grew up in a home for shifters who were… early bloomers. We lived in a mostly human town,” he told her.

“Like an orphanage?” she asked.

Derek shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t like anyone talking about Harkness Farms like that. And he certainly did not consider himself an orphan. He had a mom. That she hadn’t given birth to him, and that she had twenty-six or so other kids didn’t change how he felt. Kate Harkness was his mom, plain and simple.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you talk about something uncomfortable,” she looked down, chastened.

“No, it’s not that at all,” he told her. “As a matter of fact, that’s where I was headed before the plane crash - back home.”

“So you still visit?” she asked, her head tilted slightly, dark hair slipping forward again.

He smiled.

“Oh yeah, I go back every year, more often if Mom needs me. Though she’s pretty self-sufficient.”

“She’s older?” Hedda asked sympathetically.

Derek threw his head back and laughed.

“Maybe, but you’d never know it. She runs a farm, the kids help her. But if she’s got too many new kids and not enough older ones then harvest-time can get difficult. We get a lot of tourists from Halloween to Thanksgiving,” he explained. “I like being back there though, the farm will always be home. And the little guys are hysterical.”

“Wow,” she said. “You’re right, that’s not what I pictured.”

He shrugged.

“So if you’re not a shifter, what were you doing out in the middle of nowhere before a storm? It seems like we’re pretty far from civilization.”

Suddenly, her heart-shaped face went pale and she looked away from him, into the fire.

“It’s a long story. But basically my sisters and I were living here to protect the town on the other side of this mountain.”

“What town?” he asked. Hadn’t they just come from over there? Was she leading him purposely away from town after all?

“There is no town anymore,” she said to the crackling fire, her voice steady but her shoulder drooping.

Derek stared at her, thunderstruck.

He took a deep breath through his nose.

There it was.

The other scent that had been bothering him all night. Fire. But different than the smoke from the plane. Had the town burned down somehow?

Was he smelling the remains?

The bear in his head prodded him unsubtly to think of how to help the woman.

Derek studied her small form. This human and her sisters were supposed to protect a mountain of wolves? That didn’t make sense. And now the town was gone. Something had gone very wrong. But he didn’t want to ask the wrong question.

“Where are your sisters?”

It seemed a good place to start.

She looked down at the blanket, trailing her fingers over the frayed edge.
“I messed up. I messed up so badly,” she shook her head. “The whole town was uprooted, the coal mine is still burning. Everyone left.”

That explained the smell. He remembered reading about the the cave-in and the failed rescue effort that set the mine ablaze. He had no idea the mine was still burning.

“They left you?” Derek asked incredulously. He couldn’t imagine turning his back on any of his brothers or sisters.

“Someone had to stay…” she trailed off.

He looked up at her again and was surprised to find her usually steadfast expression had folded into a mask of sadness. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

All his concerns and calculations went out the window, and Derek Harkness pulled the woman into his arms and held her close.

As soon as she was against his chest, he heard her heartbeat thrumming. She smelled like a wood fire, and chamomile tea. She was warm in his arms, and so soft.

Derek thought suddenly of his childhood blankie - a feather filled duvet of monstrous proportion that he had taken a liking to. Mom had cut it down and sewed it into manageable squares for little Derek to snuggle and carry around the farm.

The train of thought was gone as fleetingly as it hard arrived when she wound her arms around his neck and nuzzled into his chest.

Derek’s hip burned like it was on fire.

And her nearness took on a new meaning.

Her breasts were crushed against his chest, his hands tightened on the curve of her hip.

The air was suddenly charged with energy.

Did she feel it too?

He reached out with his senses and the bear roared with approval in his chest.

The woman’s breath was shallow and faster than before. A haze of desire haloed her. The small room was filled with the enchanting scent of her arousal.

Derek felt himself harden to the point of pain.

She wiggled on his lap, seemingly to find a more comfortable position.

But to Derek, it felt as if her every move was meant only to tantalize him.

You can pre-order Bait This! on Amazon here!

Sound off in the comments to let me know what you think! In this scene, the characters have met only a few hours before, yet they feel a strong connection. They share some secrets and keep others. How long do YOU have to know someone before sharing your secrets?

113 Comments

Full Moon Reads - Wolf Moon (Post 1)

1/23/2016

68 Comments

Did you read the Building A Hero series? Are you hungry for more superhero romance?

If so, author J. A. Huss is here to save the day!

But don't worry, she's saving it in a gritty, angry, sexy way with more black leather than red capes!

I picked this gem up a few days ago and I'm already in love with Huss's humor and rich prose. And yeah, maybe I'm picturing myself as Molly Masters, just a little, when I read it...

Here's the blurb for Anarchy Found:

Everyone needs a hero.
That’s what Detective Molly Masters tells me. “What we need,” she says, “what the whole world needs,” she pleads, “is a champion.”
The only thing I want to talk about with Molly Masters is how I’d like to make her scream my name when I push her up against a wall, slide my hand up her thigh, and live out my wildest fantasies.
“Someone who will fight against injustice,” she says.
I’ll fight against anything you want, honey. Just come a little closer.
“Someone who will stand tall in the face of adversity,” she says.
I’ll do it standing, sitting, or lying down. See how easy I am?
“Someone who believes in the value of a good deed,” she says.
I believe in the value of me, sweetheart. Because I’m Lincoln Wade. Jaded genius, obscenely wealthy, capable of violence, and looking for revenge.
Molly Masters might have delusions of grandeur. She might see me as some superman capable of cleaning up the scum, filth, and corruption in Cathedral City.
But I’m not the hero she’s looking for.
I’m the dark alley where all her good intentions hide.
So be careful what you wish for, Molly Masters.
Because you’re about to get it.

Here's how to pick up your copy:

Grab it here on Amazon!

Grab it here on Barnes & Noble!

Grab it here on Kobo!

Grab it here on iBooks!

Have you read Anarchy Found? What did you think?
Don't forget to sound off in the comments for me!!

68 Comments

Bundle Release! (Post #5 of 5!)

1/5/2016

72 Comments

Oh how I love those dreamy covers! If you snagged every box set I wrote a new book for this year (Alphas on the Prowl, A Very Alpha Christmas, and Shifter Wonderland) then you have these three standalone stories already! If not, they are now available individually, AND as a box set, offered for $2.99 (that's a 40% savings for grabbing them all at once.)

You can find the Tales from Tarker's Hollow bundle of standalones here on all vendors:

http://www.tashablack.com/tales-from-tarkers-hollow.html

Alternately, you can find the individual titles on Amazon. (They will be available very shortly on Nook, GooglePlay, iBooks and Kobo too!)

Did you read any or all of these books? Did you have a favorite character or a favorite story?

Sound off in the comments!

72 Comments

New Release! (Post #4 of 5!)

1/5/2016

52 Comments

As you all know, Tasha Black plays well with others! So it should be no surprise to see another box set featured here! This is another bundle of bad-ness with steamy excerpts from new releases by your favorite PNR authors. If you read Shifter Wonderland, then you're familiar with my except from Ghost of Shifters Past. But there are so many more to choose from here!

You can find the book on all vendors here:

http://www.tashablack.com/wicked-alphas-wildest-nights.html

Comment below to let me know whether you like these collections. If so, why? If not, what kind of collection do you like best?

52 Comments

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