Demon's Revenge Tasty Morsel 4

Ooh, this is getting exciting! Only 2 weeks to go until publication and there are whispers of a proper launch party at my local bookshop. How amazing would that be?!!! Anyway, will keep my fingers crossed about that and share another wee snippet with you in the meantime. Best wishes :-)

Asmodeus forces Emily  & Seth to split from their mother. As they attempt to ditch her, Joanna turns back...

'   Mum turned back and her face had changed, she looked frantic. I gasped as she ran back to the car, reached in and took my hand. She reached for Seth’s too and he leaned right over Jude to get to her. I almost panicked, convinced that she was about to drag us both out of the car and into the depths of the hospital where Asmodeus’s goon squad was waiting to take us to hell. Instead she kissed my hand and then Seth’s looking up at me with tear filled eyes that most certainly belonged only to my mother. “Get out of here,” she said hoarsely. “Get away and keep driving. Don’t come back for me. He has me. I know it. I love you both.” She turned to Jude. “Put your foot down and look after my babies.”

            With that she gave Seth and I one last agonised glance and then, letting go of our grasping hands, turned back to the hospital. Jude shoved Seth away and sped out of the ambulance bay, across two lanes of oncoming traffic and drove like Satan himself was on our tail for almost three miles before pulling into a lay-by and shutting off the engine.

            I had begun crying as soon as mum had started to speak. I couldn’t seem to stop. I was a human sprinkler system for the back seat, my tears seemed to jet from my eyes as I gave into the anger, fear and loss, feeling despair in the very marrow of my bones. Seth sat with his hands braced against the battered dashboard and his head down. His shoulders shook with silent sobs and I wished I could go to him and put my arms around him but I knew that, at that moment, it would be the wrong thing to do.

            Jude turned to look at us both. “Would someone like to tell me what the hell just happened?”   '

Demon's Revenge will be out in paperback and eBook format on 16th August 2012.

Demon's Revenge Tasty Morsel 3

Time for another yummy dipped-in-batter-and-deep-fried excerpt from Demon's Revenge...

In this scene, Emily has been captured by a vampire, Lucas. Thanks to their telepathic connection she is able to let Sariel know what's going on and enable him to track her down but will he be too late?

'   “So, these pheromones are making you smell like this?” He whispered into my neck and I allowed myself a sigh of relief.

            “Yeah, that’s right. I wouldn’t normally smell this good. If you think I do, I mean. I have no idea how I smell. I could smell like blue cheese for all I know,” I hiccupped a laugh.

            “You smell…it’s hard to think of the right words. You smell like everything I enjoy. Like my best memories and favourite people and places. Like blood and fear and tears.”

            Okay, perhaps the relief had been a little premature. “So, I don’t smell like chocolate?” I asked weakly.

            He chuckled and I could feel his smile against my cheek. I looked up into his dark, dead eyes and forgot to breathe for a moment.

            I’m going to die.

            No! I’m almost there.

            I didn’t have to tell him that he would be too late. The look in Lucas’s eyes told me that death was standing beside me, holding me in its arms and looking down at me with an expression of cruel anticipation.

            “You want to know how you smell?” He asked through fangs that had slid gracefully down further as he spoke. I swallowed a sob and nodded. “You smell good enough to eat.”   ' 

Demon's Revenge will be out in paperback and eBook format on 16th August 2012. 

Demon's Revenge Tasty Morsel 2

  

Emily and Sariel have an ...attraction...but both fight it for different reasons. I allowed them to let go a little and look what happened!

'  I swallowed a sudden burst of shyness. “Are you, um, distracted?” I asked and he chuckled.

            “You could say that,” he said in a voice that now bordered on husky and made my toes curl. He leaned in and, before I knew what he intended, he kissed my tears away with warm, gentle lips that left a trail of heat across my cheeks and down my neck. I sighed and closed my eyes as his lips found mine and the taste of him took my breath away.

            The kiss deepened and his arms tightened, pulling me hard against him as his tongue swept across mine and little shooting stars went off in my head, making me dizzy and sending streaks of lightning through my blood. I kissed him back, loving the feel of his hands on my back and his body against the length of mine. Our bodies touched in several interesting places, making me forget where we were and why. This was what I wanted from Adam. This was a proper sweep-you-off-your-feet-and-send-you-insane-kiss!  '

Demon's Revenge will be out in paperback and eBook format on 16th August 2012. 

What do you mean there's no Internet?!

As disasters go, the events of the past few weeks have been tame when compared to floods, earthquakes and the like. For the inhabitants of our little house, however, it's been a kind of 'asteroid-hits-the-planet' calamity.

It began with a small blip of a nuisance - the router had a 'bad day' and had to be switched off and on more then once. We laughed about it - silly router had a little huffy fit, that's all.

A few days later we woke up with no wi-fi anywhere in the house. There were a few minutes of blind panic where everyone fired up their individual devices and went 'Huh?!' The router was switched off and on, we all noted how hot it was and figured that the poor thing must have simply overheated. It was decided that the router should remain switched off until it cooled down and, after a couple of hours of us all wandering around trying to figure out what to do with ourselves, we switched it back on and - phew! - normal service had resumed.

All was right with the world again.

Except it wasn't - this pattern continued for a few days with increasing frequency and the worry and concern turned into anger. I called the ISP, spent half an hour on the phone with a poor lady who wanted to me to keep telling her which lights were on and which were off, how fast they were blinking, was there any change now? Now? Change the filter. No difference. Change all the filters in the house. Really? Ok but no change. Unscrew the front of the socket and plug the router directly into the....Are you kidding me? Fine, unplug everything for 48 hours and it should be ok.

48 hours later it was definitely NOT okay - on the router, there was one solitary light blinking on and off in a pattern of desolate loneliness so I called the ISP again. 'Try this', the man ion the other end of the phone suggested and talked me through rebooting the router and resetting the factory settings. OK, there are lots of happy little lights on now. Yippee!

All was right with the world again.

For two days.

I was rudely awakened from a dream about sewing books together to make a computer (I kid you not) by child number one's anguished cry of 'What do you mean there's no Internet?' Hubby and children were in the kitchen looking shell-shocked and depressed. "Mum!" cried child number two, "There's no Internet connection at all - we're UNCONNECTED!"

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

'We'll send you a new router,' the ISP folk promised, it should be there in a few days. With bank holidays in the way, it took over a week and for the first few days we were a family adrift from our usual routines and connections. Child number one and I decided to re-read some books, child number two went out to play football, hubby headed off to the gym. It was a kind of old-fashioned, back-to-basics kind of connecting which I realised I'd kind of missed.

And now we're back on line, connected again to the wonders of the world wide web and our online, far away friends. It was a very long 'week and a bit' without Google and Facebook and Twitter and Blogger and all those other little bits and pieces that make up my day-to-day existence. I missed them, missed a lot of people that I chat to every day in some form or another but will probably never meet but I realised that, if the unthinkable happened and the web of wonders disintegrated, I would survive but my world-view and my circle of friends would shrink a HUGE amount. (Hmmmm...there may just be a future book in that!)

Plus, I wouldn't get directed to things like this:

Thank you very much legogenie123! That's AMAZING!!!

Demon's Revenge Tasty Morsel 1

  

From now until the publication date, I'm going to share a short excerpt from Demon's Revenge every week to whet your appetite. Interested in a sneak peek? Great!

If you read book 1, 'Demon's Daughter', then you'll be familiar with Emily (the heroine), Sariel (a rather tasty Fallen Angel) and Rick Farlow (Alpha of the local Werewolf pack). Emily & Sariel are visiting Rick to negotiate the return of the pack's rare and valuable knife, unfortunately Emily's focus is on a slightly more human problem...

   '  I was bored already. "Look, Rick," I stepped forward, causing an outbreak of growling and snarling all around the room. I studiously ignored everyone else, although my heart was having serious palpitation problems. "Enough of the pleasantries. Take your damn knife and point me in the direction of a bathroom before there's an accident." Beside me, Sariel sighed. "What?" I hissed. "I told you, I need to pee."
     "Way to negotiate," Sariel stage-whispered. "You basically just told him that he can have his extremely valuable artefact so long as you can use the facilities." '

Demon's Revenge will be published in paperback and eBook format on 16th August 2012.

Cover Reveal - Demon's Revenge

I am REALLY excited. Only 6 weeks to go until Demon's Revenge gets unleashed and today I get to share the new cover with you. *excited dancing around my writing cave and girly giggles*

STOP!

I know you want to scroll down and feast your eyes on the gorgeousness but before you do I'd like to send a huge...

...to Mr. Nigel Johnston, the Graphic Designer. Once again he took my words and found exactly the right mood and images to accompany them - that's a fabulous gift you have there, Mr. Johnston - and I'm absolutely delighted with the results. 

What do you think?

Demon's Revenge back cover blurb:

'My name is Emily Carson.

Last year my twin brother, Seth, and I discovered that we have Demon DNA and things got a bit...messy. Surprisingly, Asmodeus (our Daddy Dearest) doesn't seem to have forgiven me for my actions the last time we met and the word is that he's out for revenge.

It's okay though 'cause there's a plan - escape to Italy with gorgeous Fallen Angel, Sariel; meet his buddies, catch a few rays, convince him to wear Speedos and maybe even engineer another excuse to lock lips with him (that's my plan anyway). Sounds good, right?

What could possibly go wrong?'

The countdown begins!

In 7 weeks time my second book will be published. I'm excited, slightly nervous and being visited fairly constantly by my old friends Fear and Doubt. You may have met them at some stage in your life too - they're a right pair! 

Fear likes to snuggle up tight against your ear and whisper that you missed some important detail - your files are incomplete, you only sent half the book, the file is so messed up that it will infect every other file in the Lightning Source, Amazon and Smashwords vaults resulting in the loss of millions of books from the face of existence; your book won't sell and all the money that your hard-working husband has given you from his wages to fund your little venture will be gone, other bills will go unpaid, you'll lose your home, your kids will have nothing to eat, you won't be able to afford pencils or paper and will have to write on the walls in your own blood! (Fear's a tad theatrical.)

Doubt creeps up on you, yells urgently and darts off again - no-one will read your book because it's not good enough, you're not good enough, you weren't 'properly' published and so you're nothing but a fraud and a pathetic, egotistical fool; someday soon you'll be found out, people will start pointing at you and demanding that you be sent back to your writing cave and promise never to inflict your words on humanity again! (Doubt does a lot of arm-waving and eye-bulging whilst yelling which is very distracting.) 

As you can see they travel around together for a reason - they complement each other beautifully - Fear feeds Doubt and Doubt fuels Fear. Now, I don't for a moment believe that I'm the only person in the universe that they visit and I'm fairly certain that writers and self-publishers aren't the only folks that they choose to pick on but I'm willing to bet that most people spend a huge amount of energy projecting a 'Fear & Doubt? Don't know them' façade rather than admitting to having several Pity and Panic parties a day/week/month. Of course, I may be incorrect about this and be the only....nope, that's doubt whispering again. Ha! Caught you out there you naughty little bubble of angst!

I've listened to Fear and Doubt's thoughts on self-publishing another book and yes, their arguments are pretty sound and sensible (the fact that they use voices eerily similar to my own probably helps) but I'm going ahead anyway - 'Fortune favours the brave' and all that jazz - so next week I'm going to do a cover reveal for my new book here on this Blog, publish snippets from the book for the six weeks after and then on publication day I'm going to bake cupcakes and have a Courage and Confidence party which Fear and Doubt will most certainly NOT be invited to!

You, however, will be very welcome :-)