Unremembered Things: Promo and Giveaway!

Unremembered Things by Rachel Tsoumbakos

Unremembered Things (Wood Nymph Chronicles #1) by Rachel Tsoumbakos Age category: New Adult Release Date: February 10, 2015 Genre: Paranormal Romance

Blurb

One woman, two worlds and nothing but UNREMEMBERED THINGS separating them. Indiana Shamira has a dark secret that could shatter her version of reality and get her killed in the process. Now if only she could remember what it is… When Indiana wakes with no memory of her past life and a vampire called Sam hanging from the rafters in her cellar, she knows things are about to get nasty. Not only does Sam know all about her previous life, but he seems intent on seducing her as well. Of course her boyfriend, Kurt, has different ideas – like making her open the portal to hell! And then there is the nagging suspicion that Indiana is not entirely human, now she can see ghostly images from the Otherworld. Or could it be from the life she can no longer remember? They include the flickering effigy of Kurt and a redwood forest that conjures up deeply repressed magic. Not only will Indiana have to risk everything to keep the door to another dimension closed, she will have to decide whether she is ready to lose her heart to someone who has more secrets than herself. Set in the lush Australian bush, UNREMEMBERED THINGS is a fusion of fantasy, paranormal and forbidden romance.

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Excerpt

“It is time.” Her voice purred like a kitten, but Indiana suspected she was really a feral animal on the inside. “For what?” Her voice was raspy, hesitant and unsure if she really wanted to know the answer. Somewhere, deep inside, she suspected she already knew. “Just remember I’m doing this for us,” Sam whispered into her ear. “So we can be together forever.” Before Indiana could question him further, she felt a flurry of hands over her body. Indiana tried to open her eyes, but a warm hand reached up and carefully covered them. Indiana was bitten – hard, and she groaned in pleasure. Shocked by her unexpected display, she clutched her hands outwards. Feeling the writhe of skin on skin, she tried to pull herself free. The tickle of fingers across her neck and down her spine calmed her with their warm familiarity. “It’s okay, Indiana.” The feathery words danced across her skin, warm like a summer breeze. She stilled and let Sam’s fingers intertwine with her own, relieved by his simple touch. Time seemed to move forward and Indiana was presented with brief snippets of fleeting images; Camilla biting Sam, biting her. Indiana enjoying the pain of Camilla’s sharp teeth as they gnashed at her neck, her thighs and her wrist. The flurry of skin and hands and teeth as they writhed together in the height of passion. Pale hands slithered over her own luminescent skin, then Sam’s darker skin brushed against her own, warming her and protecting her but against what she was unsure. Then Camilla poised over Sam, a knife in her hand. A flash of blood as it splayed out from a gaping neck wound. Indiana’s involuntary gasp and then choking sob at the sight of the cavernous hole. Hungry sucking as Camilla drank her fill. A warm hand, its fingers still laced through hers, slowing turning ice cold.

Giveaway

PRIZE (international):

• 1 x eCopy of Unremembered Things
• 1 x eCopy of Metanoia
• 1 x eCopy of The Ring of Lost Souls
• 1 x $10 Amazon gift card

About the Author

Rachel Tsoumbakos is a stay home mother of two. Her main passions are writing, reading and organic gardening. Rachel lives with her husband, two kids, three cats and eight chickens in the hills surrounding Melbourne, Australia. While she has had several articles published through mainstream magazines, she has also written extensively for True Blood Net and the now defunct Suite 101. When she is not tending to her organic veggie garden, she is working on her cardio as she trains for the zombie apocalypse.

Author Links

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                 This product or book may have been distributed for review, this in no way affects my opinions or reviews. COPYRIGHT © 2014 LIVE TO READ

Imitation by Heather Hildenbrand: Promo

   

Purchase on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1wXxNHZ

Until a month ago, eighteen-year-old Ven had never set foot outside the windowless warehouse where she was created. An Imitation of Raven Rogen, Ven spent her days confined in the lab, studying videos of her Authentic, all so she could step into Raven’s life at a moment’s notice.

Now, Ven lives in Raven’s penthouse apartment, kisses Raven’s boyfriend, and obeys every order from Raven’s dad, Titus Rogen—the very man who created her. But Ven has a secret plan. She doesn’t want Raven’s life. She wants her own. In the action-packed sequel of Imitation, Ven wages a dangerous war against Titus. First she’ll free herself, then she’ll free every last Imitation. . . .

Haven't started the Imitation series yet?

Purchase on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1AO8UlO

Everyone is exactly like me. There is no one like me.

Ven wrestles with these contradicting truths every day. A clone of wealthy eighteen-year-old Raven Rogen, Ven knows everything about the girl she was created to serve: the clothes she wears, the boys she loves, the friends she loves to hate. Yet she’s never met the Authentic Raven face-to-face. Imitations like Ven only get to leave the lab when they’re needed—to replace a dead Authentic, donate an organ, or complete a specific mission. And Raven has never needed Ven . . . until now. When there is an attack on Raven’s life, Ven is thrust into the real world, posing as Raven to draw out the people who tried to harm her. But as Ven dives deeper into Raven’s world, she begins to question everything she was ever told. She exists for Raven, but is she prepared to sacrifice herself for a girl she’s never met? Fans of Cinder, The Selection and Sara Shepard’s Lying Game series will love Imitation, a thrilling, action-packed novel sure to keep readers guessing until the very last page.  

About Heather Hildenbrand

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Heather Hildenbrand was born and raised in a small town in northern Virginia where she was homeschooled through high school. (She's only slightly socially awkward as a result.) Since 2011, she's published more than eight YA & NA novels including the bestselling Dirty Blood series. She splits her time between coastal Virginia and the island of Guam and loves having a mobile career and outrageous lifestyle of living in two places. Her most frequent hobbies are riding motorcycles and avoiding killer slugs.

Heather is also a publishing and success coach bent on equipping and educating artists who call themselves authors. She loves teaching fellow writers how to create the same freedom-based lifestyle she enjoys. For more information visit www.phoenixauthorink.com and find out how to create your own OutRAGEous Life. She is represented by Rebecca Friedman. You can find out more about Heather and her books at www.heatherhildenbrand.blogspot.com

This product or book may have been distributed for review, this in no way affects my opinions or reviews. COPYRIGHT © 2014 LIVE TO READ

Why Men Opt Out of the (Women’s) Fiction World by Leonce Gaiter

Fewer and fewer men read fiction.  They compose only about 20% of the fiction market according to surveys. Some lay this off to genetics, suggesting that the way men’s minds work discourages them from entering into another’s experience the way fiction demands.

“Boys and men are, in general, more convergent and linear in their thinking; this would naturally draw them towards non-fiction,” wrote author Darragh McManus, pondering the question.

Others, like Jason Pinter, suggest that the overwhelmingly female publishing industry simply overlooks books that appeal to men because they fall outside the female experience.  In other words, men now suffer the same fate women suffered at the hands of a male-dominated publishing industry for so many years—and payback’s a bitch.

Others suggest that boys are discouraged from reading at a young age by children’s books that fail to engage them.  Give them the proper material, the story goes, and young boys will engage with reading.  They point to the fact that young males were principal consumers of the Harry Potter books as proof.  “More boys than girls have read the Harry Potter novels,” according to U.S. publisher, Scholastic. “What’s more, Harry Potter made more of an impact on boys' reading habits. Sixty-one percent agreed with the statement ‘I didn't read books for fun before reading Harry Potter,’ compared with 41 percent of girls.”

I always balked at these rationales because I read fiction all the time.  However, thinking on it, I had to admit that I avoid modern fiction like the plague.  I have tried the popular plot-thick page-turners and the feel-good tearjerkers and the occasional cause celebre with a literary reputation.  So many have left me so cold, that I simply won’t shell out the cash for a paperback or e-book version, much less a hardcover. 

Trying to assess what I found lacking in most of the current novels I attempt, I find their utter reliance on the world around them (and me) supremely dull.  So many work so hard to place characters in a world I will recognize.  Too many work hard to create characters with which I (or their prime demographic audience) will ‘identify,’ and recognize as someone they could be, or someone they know. 

It then made sense that men would ask why they should read something “made up” about this world when there was plenty of factual reading material on that subject.  I have never approached fiction to re-visit “this world.”  I’m already here.  Instead, I want an alternative—a vision of this world exhaled through the writers’ and characters’ hearts, minds and eyes.  Exhaled with the distinction of the smell of an individual’s breath.  Fitzgerald’s Long Island in The Great Gatsby is his own creation, no kitchen sink recreation.  Fitzgerald’s people and prose warp this place into something utterly unique. 

Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles is his distinctive projection of that city. You don’t pick up Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me with the idea of identifying with the protagonist.  You don’t grab Faulkner to meet the boys next door or titter with recognition of your kith and kin.  You don’t visit Patricia Highsmith to look in a mirror.  You pick them up to enter worlds as fantastical in their way as Harry Potter’s.  I read fiction to meet characters I otherwise would not.  I read fiction for the larger than life—not a retread of this one.  I want to watch and think with characters who are nothing like me, who dare what I never would, who experience in ways that I cannot. 

In an article titled, “Why Women Read More Than Men,” NPR quoted Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain suggesting a biological reason why women read more fiction than men:

The research is still in its early stages, but some studies have found that women have more sensitive mirror neurons than men. That might explain why women are drawn to works of fiction, which by definition require the reader to empathize with characters.

What horseshit. Reading, and reading fiction, require no such thing.  They require that you understand and grow intrigued by characters and situations.  You need not imagine yourself as them or believe that they behave as you would.

Perhaps more men stopped reading fiction when fiction stopped presenting unique worlds, and settled for presenting this one so that readers could better “identify.”  Maybe we’re too megalomaniacal to “identify” with that.  We want words recreated, not rehashed. 

“Shall I project a world,” asks Oedipa Maas in Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49.”  Somewhere along the line, in tandem with the female domination of the publishing industry and fiction readership, the ideal of doing so fell from vogue.  Instead, writers rely on identification with this one. Male readers seem have checked out.

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Leonce Gaiter is a prolific African American writer and proud Harvard Alum. His writing has appeared in the NYTimes, NYT Magazine, LA Times, Washington Times, and Washington Post, and he has written two novels.  His newly released novel, In the Company of Educated Men, (http://bit.ly/ZyqSuN) is a literary thriller with socio-economic, class, and racial themes.

BOOK LINKS

In the company of Educated Men

AMAZON:  http://amzn.to/1v411Kj

B&N:  http://bit.ly/1Eq5da0

APPLE:  http://bit.ly/1CyF3jo

This product or book may have been distributed for review, this in no way affects my opinions or reviews. COPYRIGHT © 2014 LIVE TO READ

Whipped Promo!

AVAILABLE TODAY: Whipped (Hitched #2) by Karpov Kinrade!

I love sex. I used to be a professional Dominatrix by day and a recreational Dom by night. Now I co-own a sex shop by day. I still do the Dom thing by night, when I can. 

So, yeah, I love sex. But I'm not a sub. That's never been me. I like to maintain control in the bedroom. That gets me off.

But when the guy I've been chatting up online as a potential roommate shows up at my condo dripping sex and temptation… let's just say I might be open to trying new things… for him.

If his playboy ways don’t drive me insane.
And if I can do the one thing I've never done for anyone.
Surrender. 

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. But when you live here full time… that's not much comfort, is it?

Whipped (Vi's story) is a sexy, full-length, standalone romance in the Hitched series. These books can be read in any order, but you might also enjoy Hitched, the first book in this series.

Content Warning: This book contains sex, swearing... and did we mention sex? Lots of sex. And abs. And Australian accents.

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This product or book may have been distributed for review, this in no way affects my opinions or reviews. COPYRIGHT © 2014 LIVE TO READ