Creative Reviews discussion

Hey everyone!
This is a folder where you can give us a snippet or a bit more than a snippet of your book! You can do it as a teaser or for any other reason - Say you just want to get a bit of feedback on a chapter - put in on up!

Hi Amy! What a great idea - thank you! I think I'd like to share the review we recently got from ForeWord Reviews because it's a nice synopsis and it made me happy!

http://www.forewordreviews.com/review...

Thanks again,


Suki

Well, you know me....

(SPOILER ALERT. This is the first chapter of my second book and if you have not read the first...which is silly because there is no charge for it on GoodReads or Smashwords lol...some of the twists in that first book might be spoiled for you)

http://splittersworld.blogspot.com/p/...

Splitter

I do sample sunday's on my blog of both published and non-published works :) you can check them all out:
http://ottilieweber.blogspot.com/search/label/Sample%20Sunday

I'll def do this, just gotta get it together first.

Thanks Amy!

Here is a sample of my newest, The Monster Of Silver Creek

https://sites.google.com/site/belinda...

Thanks for this Amy!!



Here is my sample chapter - In the Shadow of the Black Keep:

http://jamesawest.blogspot.com/2011/1...

Hi, all
For a sample chapter (Chapter One) of please click this link to go to my website, then click on The Girl in the Box book cover on the home page:
http://www.sheila-anne-dalton.com
Thanks.

Hi everyone .... if you like a nice romance, set in Australia and Ireland you might like to read

Check here for a little snippet.

http://iris-b.blogspot.com/2011/12/sa...

OK, here are the links for free excerpts of my books... mostly on Indie Book List but also on my blog.
http://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com...
Next year I'm considering doing a "Sunday Excerpt" as steady feature, but I'm still trying to decide the length (at the moment I'm participating in Six Sentence Sunday which is only, well, six sentences. I want to make it slightly longer, but not too much! ;-)).

I posted a sample chapter of "The Navigator" here on my (tiny) Goodreads blog.

http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...

There are some VERY nice samples. Thanks for sharing!

I agree with Iris; there are some really great samples on here! I am looking forward to reading many of these books :)

Hello guys,you can read My Half of The Story,one of three short stories that make up Revolution!, which is now published.I'd love to know what you think,and if you want more just message me for free ebooks or coupon.
http://www.tonyvinyoh.com/shortstorie...

Hi there! Amazon offers up a nice chunk of a book. You can view quite a snippet of here:

http://www.amazon.com/Somnium-Halos-e...

You can read Chapter One of The Apocalypse Gene at our our website - and check out the nifty page-turner graphic!

If you like it, the E-book is now only $2.99 at Amazon and Smashwords.

Hi, you can search inside my novel, Invisible at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/14663...

Thanks!

You can read the first 30 (?) pages of my novel, Legacy of the Highlands, on Amazon. It's been described by one reviewer as, "Tom Clancy with a bit of sexy romance." And if you like the sample, the e-book's just $1.99!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062LPA02

You can read the first THREE chapters of my inspirational peace-thriller THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FISH (or my other e-book novels, SEARCHING FOR EDEN and THE SHARD FENCE), on my website, www.keithmadsen.com I have purchase links there as well, for those who would like to buy any or all of them! You can also view book-trailers of all of my books on the website.

The story of 'Tom Fleck' is set in the Northern England of 1513, a place and time that seems to have been overlooked by authors.
The first chapter can be read on my blog:
http://1513fusion.wordpress.com/1513-...
But here is a snippet from deeper into the story:

Sounds of raucous singing, backed up by a fiddler, poured through the entrance. He took a deep breath and strode inside, straight up to a row of barrels that lay between chocks on a long table. A stout man, resting his apron-wrapped belly against the table, nodded to him. Meg squeezed among drinkers' legs, sniffing for scraps of food, until she got into a fight with a lurcher. A jug of beer crashed against the stone-flagged floor and a voice cried out in dismay. Tom cleared his throat and asked for ale. A tankard and a slopping wooden jug thudded onto the table.
'There you are, young man, a quart of the town's best, passed by Northallerton's properly elected ale taster.' The innkeeper laughed at his own joke and a group of men at a nearby table groaned aloud. 'You lot can shut up! How long will you cuddle that ale? You spend a farthing and clutter up my inn for the rest of the night! And that's a farthing to you, me brave boy. Have you come far?'
Tom took a drink. 'From Thornaby way, to see the market.' He lowered his voice. 'I'm told you've a dealer lodging here, I want to talk to him.'
'Can you keep that dog in hand? I've a few dealers here - the Swan's full tonight.' The men at the table set down their tankards and stared. 'What are you lot gawping at?' the innkeeper shouted - then beamed at Tom. 'Take no mind of that lot - they're inbred half-wits from top o' Swaledale, where they all sleep in one bed.'

An excerpt from my memoir The Reading List: Literature, love and back again (being released on January 15) can be read at: http://shimosreadinglist.blogspot.com...

Here is a sammple of my upcoming Urban Fantasy novel "Soul Sisters"

I'm currently looking for some feedback on it. Thank you in advance!
http://janieraeldridge.blogspot.com/2...

Sarah, that sucks! Hope you get it back together soon.

Here's an exerpt from my latest, Kiss Me Dead:

Christian watched the dying girl, and did nothing.

Watery sprays shimmered in the moonlight from the girl’s flailing arms, and her fear chopped across the water like turbulent waves. Longing tightened his stomach. He dug his nails into his palms and, teeth clenched, turned his head away.

He despised his addiction.

Christian envied her and her release from this life. Not that he loathed life…he simply loathed the life he led. And though he yearned to walk away, he knew he wouldn’t. He would stay and watch her die.

And then take her.

Her flooded gasps saturated the night’s stillness and her head dipped below the surface. Christian crept from the trees that circled the lake, his movement stilted from cold. The iciness came from his bones, his marrow, his soul. He’d gone too long without a hit, and now he suffered.

Christian lurched over her discarded dress and stopped just short of wetting his boots. The lake was snow-melt frigid. He detested the cold, and the water, as all his kind did.

With a violent thrust, her body broke the surface. Christian’s short intake of breath followed him backwards. Wet moonlight clung to her breasts, and the mark on her cheek glowed like slick silver.
The girl’s hands slapped the water. She slid deeper into the shadowy lake, lifting her chin, but the water covered her mouth, sucking out one last, drowning breath before consuming her nose and fear-glassed eyes.

Still he watched, and did nothing to save her.

He rubbed his thumbs along his pants’ seams. Excitement tempted a tremble through his body. Soon she would come to him in death and defeat the decaying cold.

The girl’s stillness revived the nocturnal silence: the grinding cheeps of tree frogs, a distant owl’s chirruping hoot. Wooden docks crept into the water like skeletal fingers, and a red fox’s tail flashed lakeside. Moments later, like dust motes in a sunbeam, the girl appeared. Her skin shone with an ethereal glow, and her hair hung in damp ringlets. Christian could smell and taste Giltine’s poisonous mark on the girl’s cheek, so saccharine as to make his teeth ache.

Gods, how he wanted her.

He studied the drop of water that tickled her neck and trailed between her breasts. Biting his lip, he focused on the ground, trying to remain detached and unemotional as a proper reaper should, but he was also human. The girl might be dead, might no longer care about decency or modesty, but Christian believed in dying with dignity. He bent like an old man and scooped up her dress.

Thought about it, then wasn't going to but ah what they heck..Here are two poems from my book The Macabre Masterpiece: Poems of Horror and Gore

The Grim Reaper

The spirit of the dead is near
They’ve asked me to bring you all here
I can see it in your eyes
You all look despaired
I’d like to help you but I no longer care
I no longer can
It’s ripping my insides out and nothings there
Im a victim to my own domain
To which I’ve put my self in my own pain
That’s why they have chosen me
They know I’ll bring them victory
My wrists have never bled
but you can still see some red
They have now closed the cage
I’m in a bit of rage
but there’s nothing I can do
Because people helping me is threw
Some will never get to know me in person
Cause now I’m all alone in this Ancient Dungeon


The Nightwatchman

A vicious storm rushes in on a cold gloomy night
Joining forces with the darkness all around
Off in the distance a lighthouse, the only trace of light
Rapidly the rain falls into the waters and the ground
No one dares adventure out into the terrorizing tempest
Except a man along the watchtower looking upon the rest

He seems without concern looking out into the sea
As the waves and gales pick up momentum
Unmoved and unimpressed seemingly is he
This courageous mysterious phantom
The storm is getting worse upon every abrupt strike
Lurking over is it is this man showing a taste of dislike

The sky sparks as thunder booms and lightning crashes
With ripples ripping against the port-side and shore
The monstrous wind slashes and dashes
Trying to make all that dare defy it no more
Suddenly all at once, all that’s happened does at the same time
The lightning, winds, thunder and waves come together in rhyme

The man goes inside and turns the light on at full blast
Casting a bright burst into the black abyss sky
The storm soon becomes calm and no longer vast
And the man says Poseidon you gave it a good try
At pace and peaceful the storm is now all but gone
As the man watches over as the night carries on

“So, they're good vampires and bad vampires but they all want a piece of Jerry fruitcake?” Goose said looking pretty surprised. “Well, this has been an interesting experience...”
“Interesting isn‟t the word,” Jerry snorted. “And from now on I'm carrying this thing around everywhere I go. Buffy style.”
“Err, about that...maybe telling that chick where to stick it wasn't the best idea.”
“What?!"
“I'm just saying, we'd probably be nasty stains on the road if that other vamp hadn't shown up.”
“You kiddin' me?! The bitch tried to eat me!”
“And I told you why...” a voice said.
Goose and Jerry jumped and shot backwards as they saw Claire standing at the window. Her long black hair was flapping slightly in the wind and she was now wearing a leather jacket.
“Is that -”
“Yes!” Jerry nodded, holding the wooden stake tight.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“Don't let her in!” Goose squawked. “Vampires can't come in unless you invite them!”
“Actually we can, I was just being polite,” Claire said simply. She folded her arms across her chest. “Daniel, we need to talk.”
“I think I've heard enough!”
“Daniel, please, we want to help you.”
“Like you did last time?” he spat back.
“That won't happen again, we're detoxing her and you won't see her again.”
“Detoxing?” Goose asked automatically.
“We're getting your blood out of her system. When she's clean she‟ll be sent away. Listen, can we do this inside, the sun's about to come up?” she said starting to sound a little frustrated.
“Then I guess you're about to get a tan,” Jerry growled.
“What do you want me to do, stay out here and get barbequed just to prove that I'm on the level?”
“Well, I notice that you're not forcing your way in here so I think you were lying about the invitation thing,” Jerry said with a nasty smile.
Claire looked at him angrily for a moment then sighed. “Alright, so I was lying about that part! It's a pain in the ass and it's attached to my whole species! Being a vampire comes with a lot of red tape!”
“I really feel your pain,” Jerry spat sarcastically.
“Christ, you still sound like her...” Claire mumbled
Goose and Jerry looked at each other with confused eyes. “Who?”
“Look, I'll explain but seriously, I'm about to be burned alive so can I -”
“Flame on bitch,” Jerry chirped. The light was starting to creep up in the distance as the suns ominous glow got closer.
“Fine! I'll just stay here and roast. Sorry to have bothered you. Enjoy getting eaten!”

Blood Heavy

This is a conversation from Torqed: The Quest for Earth in which Torq, a half-human boy is trying to get to his father's home world with the help of his "retired" pirate uncles.This book is available for free on Amazon March 5-7 BTW.

Uncle Dag picked up the tablet and scribbled something. “This is my Earthish signature.” What he showed Torq started with a large D and then turned into a mess of lines. “Start with connecting the letters together.”
“Look, here's mine.” Nole wrote his name on the tablet so that Torq could watch him do it. It was a lot longer than Nole au Zhou.
“Does everyone in the known worlds have a signature except me?”
“Everyone who wants to do business with Earth people,” said Uncle. “And since you're a citizen of Earth, you need to write like one.”
Torq tried. It was very frustrating. He had a hard time making the letters connect. Nothing he wrote met Nole's or Uncle's approval. Finally, he became so frustrated, he simply made a fancy T, a scribble, a fancy W, and another scribble. His critics approved.
“That's wonderful!” said Uncle. “Now you must practice it and I have other work to do.” He left Torq under Nole's supervision.
“Humans must be very strange indeed to make a person write this way.”
“All peoples are strange until you get to know them, but the Humans are very different from the G'Tari.”
“Tell me how, dear Nole. I need to learn about Humans if I am to live with them happily.”
And so, while Nole fixed dinner, he tried to teach Torq everything he knew about Humans. “Well, you know, they are bigger than G'Tari. The Earth ones are tall like me, but much thicker mostly, and very strong. Humans from Earth colony planets are sometimes shorter and different colors.
"Most of them have hairs, though not so many as you, or so long. Most like your uncle, but in many different colors. Some have no hairs on the middle of their heads and some have no hairs on their heads at all. Some have hairs on their heads, but not on their faces or the other way round. I don't know the significance of that.
"I do know that you should watch the hairs above their eyes. They express much with them as you do." He touched Torq's eyebrows. "Sometimes, they show their teeth when they're happy, but also when they're angry. It is hard to tell the difference if you don't watch their face hairs"
Torq became self-conscious about his eyebrows and every move they made. He tried to hold them still, but it was a hopeless effort.
"And you know, they have no nidti. I think if you tried to touch them with your nidti, it might frighten them, or even hurt them. So keep your nidti hidden inside your mustaches. And don't try to hug strange Humans either. You must learn to keep your distance.”
“What is my distance?” asked Torq.
“About the length of your arm, I think.” Nole held out his own arm to demonstrate.
“Why is that?”
“ I think, it is because, you might want to hit them. They want to stay out of striking distance.”
“Oh, I would never want to hit them.”
Nole cocked his head. “Don't say never. They have often made me want to hit them and I am not a violent person. Well, not intentionally. And sometimes they try to hit first. Then, you must defend yourself. I suppose I'll have to teach you how to do that.”
“I would be eager to learn.” Torq smiled up at Nole with his eyebrows high, looking as eager as he possibly could.
“First, learn your signature,” said Nole, pointing at Torq's tablet. Torq's shoulders slumped in disappointment. “You must always try to avoid violence." Nole advised. "Always behave like a fine person and use good manners. Say, please and thank you, and call them sir, or madam or miss.”
“What is sir, or madam or miss?”
“Sir, is what you call men, madam is what you call married women, and miss is what you call unmarried women. I'm not sure how you tell the difference between the married women, and the unmarried women. They look the same to me.”
“And what do you call the unmarried men?”
“You call them sir as well. I don't know why it is that way, but so it is, and it is very confusing. Oh, and you must always wear your clothes when you are around other people.”
Torq had no problem with that. He always wore clothes when he went out. On T'sai, you would get very cold if you didn't.
“And you can only relieve yourself in rooms called restrooms, or bathrooms, or washrooms, never relief rooms, urinate rooms or defecate rooms. I understand the bathroom or the washroom because you must always wash your hands before you return to work They have signs that say so. And when you stink, you take a bath all over, even though the tubs they provide are too small and too high. But I do not understand the restroom. I have never seen anyone sleeping in one.”
Torq was getting an overwhelming urge to twist his mustaches.
“Since you are male, you must always use the one that is marked with a circle and an arrow pointing down. Or, the one with a person with long legs, not the one with the person who has the short legs, and the triangular butt. That one is for females, though I don't understand why. I have never seen anyone with a triangular butt.”
Torq had never seen a Human female at all, at least not a live one. Only pictures. Sometimes, they had triangles on their chests, but never on their butts.
“Also, if you plan to eat anywhere, you must always wear your shoes. They will not feed you without your shoes.”
Torq threw down his stylus. He was beginning to wonder about these Humans. “What do shoes have to do with eating?”
Nole shrugged. He was cooking, and tasting, and his long thin feet were quite bare. “I don't know that either. Perhaps it is to discourage people from eating with their feet. There are people who do that, you know, innocent Torq. Maybe Humans find it unpleasant to watch.”
All of these strange Human rules were beginning to make Torq's head hurt. He put down the stylus and took up a knife. He was getting hungry and angry, and there were vegetables that needed chopping. He took them on with a vengeance.
“Not so thin, dear. They will break when we dip them and then your uncle, as beloved as he is to us, will be sticking his fingers in the sauce. Now what else would you like to know?”
Not more about Humans! he said to me mentally. We were both getting worried about fitting in with these strange people. I suggested that Torq change the subject.
“My favorite of all other peoples, dear Nole, you never explained to me what is a eunuch?”
Nole stopped stirring the sauce he was cooking. “That is because I hesitate to explain. Among my people such things are not talked about with young people until they are wed and must know their duty to bear children for their family.”
“I grew up on a farm breeding animals, dear Nole! I know about sex and where babies come from!”
The purple of Nole's cheeks was showing through his makeup. “Well, since you know so much, then. I was given to the temple as a small child to become a priest, and as part of becoming an initiate, they remove from us what makes us male.”
“Oh, you were gelded,” said Torq matter-of-factly. “Castrated, like we do the calves.”
Nole looked surprised and somewhat insulted. “Well, it wasn't so simple as that! I wasn't a calf!”
“I'm sorry. I meant no insult,” Torq said, but he was still curious. “Did it hurt?”
“I don't remember. I was a baby. But later, when I was older, I sang the ritual during the ceremony of dedication and the babies never cried.”
“But why...”
Nole sat down at the table next to Torq and placed the vegetables on a plate. “I was trained to sing and act the women's parts in the rituals when I was young. When I grew too old for that, I helped parents plan the weddings of their children, and trained the children in what to do at their marriage. Something I have not done and could never do.” He gave Torq a look of finality. “Now enough of that. Go tell your uncle that dinner is ready.”
Torq went without another word, but he thought to me, "and I thought Humans were strange".
"All people are strange to others," I thought back. "Some would think having an agzneh in your head and a lizard on it very strange."

Excerpt from my YA book, “Between The Land And The Sea”

It's free on Smashwords for "Read an e-book" week!

“Come!” she said, beckoning me into the water.
“But I can’t swim!” I exclaimed.
“I can swim for you,” she said, and before I could protest she scooped me up like Ethan had and flung us into the surf. The water was shockingly cold, and we stayed under for much too long. When we surfaced I was gasping for air. We had cleared the boat by a good fifty yards and were further out to sea than even the surfers went.
“I know a place we can go,” she said, and with a tight grip on me dove under again. My mind raced. I had read legends of mermaids who maliciously drowned humans. I knew I was going to die and they would probably chalk it up to another sleeper wave. Ethan would really think I was an idiot. I thought of how sad my father would be. We broke through the surface again.
“Stop!” I managed to gasp. We went under again. Now I was really afraid. I tried to pry her hands off of me but the glacial water was rushing by so quickly that I could barely move. I held my breath as long as I could and just as the dizziness set in we broke through the surface. She grinned at me, and then noticing my terrified expression, paused.
“I... I need to breathe,” I gasped, “Air,” I added.
She smiled again, wild and beautiful, “I know,” she said, and dove underwater with me. This time she came up a bit sooner.
“Wait!” I screeched, “I need to breathe more often!!!”
“Oh,” she said, and then held me above the surface as we sped along. With each powerful stroke of her fin we were propelled at least twenty feet. I was so frozen with cold I couldn’t protest. We finally reached a buoy, floating far, far from shore.
I grabbed onto the buoy as she hovered next to it, treading water with her powerful fin. There was an odd collection of objects draped and tied onto it. I recognized scissors, golf balls and an old hairless baby doll. The binoculars I had given Lorelei were dangling there, along with my soggy leather jacket.
The buoy looked like a piece of modern art I saw at a museum once. My vision doubled and I began to have trouble focusing.
“Let’s talk,” she said, giddily.
My body was involuntarily shuddering and my teeth were chattering uncontrollably but I managed to get out, “L-L-Lorelei, I’m t-too cold. M-must g-go back.”
“But the wave riders stay in the water a long time...” she pouted, disappointed.
“T-they have w-wet suits to k-keep them warm,” I said through gritted teeth. She looked puzzled. “T-the black s-suits–”
“Oh,” she said, crestfallen. I could see she understood.
“P-P-please take me back... now.”
She looked disappointed, and taking me by the waist again, started to swim back to shore. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore and a pleasant warmth crept through my body. I stopped shivering.
“Lorelei...”
“Yes,” she said, swimming without the slightest evidence of exertion.
“Why did you call me sisthter?” I asked, slurring my words. My vision was starting to blacken at the edges.
She paused for a moment, and then said “You were born of one like us,” she smiled, “And so you are a sister.” The blackness descended upon me totally.

I wasn't going to do this but I haven't yet created a separate profile for my SciFi self and would love to share a smidgeon of the sexy side of SciFi :) Here's a scene from Marjorie "Friday" Baldwin's first book, Conditioned Response:

#

Shayla hadn’t really wanted to see Kyree. She’d really just wanted to get away from the Seven Chiefs and Joshua. She pulled Raif’s jacket tightly around herself when the chilled night air blew across her bare neck and down her back. She could still smell Raif on the fabric. She blinked and cold tears slipped down her cheeks as she started down the main path to where Kyree’s tent used to be. She had no idea what she’d say to him but she hadn’t meant to hurt him. She knew why he was hurt, and she didn’t blame him. She was supposed to be his Mate. Showing up like this was a betrayal. He deserved better. She owed him an apology, at the very least.

He was sitting in front of his tent with their mutual friend, Treante, and Shayla’s cousin, Mandreas. There was a small fire burning inside his tent, casting shadows of the three men onto the main path in front of her. He looked so strange with his hair cut off. She wondered if she looked as strange. She moved slowly towards them. As soon as they caught sight of her, Mandreas and Treante stood up. Treante said good bye to Kyree before she’d come close enough to engage them, but Mandreas waited for her, stood between her and Kyree. Did he think they’d argue now? Kyree stood, glanced at Mandreas and tilted his head down the path towards Treante, waiting ten paces away in the dark.

Mandreas swallowed hard then defiantly turned back to her. “Shayla.” She nodded acknowledgement but didn’t take her eyes from Kyree. “My mother’s tent is open to you…if you need somewhere to sleep tonight.”
“Thank you, Mandreas. I—it’s good to know if I need you, you’ll be there.”

Mandreas nodded and put a hand on Kyree’s shoulder, whispered something to him then trotted to catch up to Treante. She heard them talking as they moved further into the darkness, down the main path.
“Hello, Shayla.” Kyree said, crossing his arms in front of himself and keeping his eyes glued to hers. Even with the firelight coming out of his tent, his face was dark.

“Hello, Kyree.” She said and sat down where Mandreas had been and said, “They didn’t have to leave.”

He crouched down again and said softly, “Yes, they did, and you know why. Besides, they’re going—there’s a game of fireball tonight. They wanted me to play…until you showed up.”

“Do you still want to play?”

“Why are you here—if I am dead to you?”

“You’re not, it’s—Kyree, it’s Raif. They killed him. They used me to kill him. He’s gone.”

His full attention was on her now. He looked beyond her then directly at her. “He’s not—How? How did he die?”

“I...I had to, or he’d—they made him do things, think things and...I had to defend myself, Kyree. You understand that, don’t you? You know I had to defend myself. He didn’t want to do it, but they made him—he wasn’t himself.”

“Shayla, what did you do? Please tell me you didn’t—”

“I had to, Kyree. For him. He asked me to, begged me.” She shivered when a gust of cold night air breezed suddenly past them. She looked up at him. “He would have killed me if I hadn’t stopped him. He didn’t want to die that way, hurting me, and I didn’t want to kill him. I would never have done it if—the Outsiders, Kyree, I can’t live with them anymore. The Seven Chiefs want to make me go back but now that Raif’s gone, I can’t. I’m never going back there, Kyree, I can’t.” She drew her knees up close to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins to hug herself into a tight ball.

He got up and offered her his hand. His voice was quiet and and all of the anger had left it when he spoke. “Come inside, my love, where the fire is warm and the wind won’t chill you.”

She let him lead her inside and sat down on the mat next to the fire. He draped a lightweight fur over her shoulders before sitting down next to her.

He whispered, “That’s his jacket, isn’t it?” She nodded. “I made clothes for you, if you—prefer.”

“What?”

“I—” He laughed nervously and looked into the fire, blushing. “I don’t know what I was thinking, Shayla. I was bored, I guess, and I missed you. I thought if I made something for you, I’d feel closer to you. It’s that pile, there.” She twisted around to see where he was looking. Next to a large, carved wooden Regalo box was a neatly-stacked pile of clothes. “I noticed you never have clean clothes when you come to visit so…I thought maybe you’d stay if…it was silly of me. I don’t know why I’m even telling you about—if you want new clothes, for your new life, they’re just sitting there waiting for you.”

“It wasn’t silly. It was sweet. Thank you.” She wondered who he’d made stand still to be his model, since obviously he hadn’t fit the clothing to himself, probably one of the girls who’d done his hair the last time she’d seen him. She thought it was interesting that he’d already taken it all apart again by her arrival tonight. Good thing, his knife wouldn’t have cut through all of those silver strands. Suddenly she wondered what had happened to the one she’d had in her own hair. Her life was spinning out of control, but being back here, with him, talking about things that didn’t matter, she felt grounded again. She pulled the fur pelt up around her neck. “I didn’t realize I was so cold out there. Thank you, Kyree.”

He stretched his hand out towards the fire and the flames crept back, as though he were sucking the life out of them.

“I’m sorry for your news, Shayla. It is not a good thing that he is gone.”

She reached her left hand out from under the fur pelt and slid her fingers over his right hand, entwining her fingers between his. She shrugged off the fur when a surge of heat coursed through her. She reached out with her right hand towards the small fire, letting the energy pass through both of them in a full circle. His eyes fell shut and he shuddered as the energy passed through him in ripples like the flames dancing. He opened his eyes and closed his hand into a fist under hers, then drew her hand up and kissed the backs of her fingers.

"You're still the only one who ever does that to me—with me.” He held her hand out to examine it. “But I am not the only one with you. Will you tell me now who gave this to you? Whose Shaklet do you wear, Shayla? Is it Raif’s?”

“No, it wasn’t like that with him. He’s human, Kyree and that’s not really a Shaklet. It looks like yours, though, doesn’t it?”

He studied the etching on the band of gold. “Exactly like mine. If I didn’t have yours over there in my Regalo box, still waiting for you, I’d think you’d gotten impatient and stolen it to put on yourself.” He dropped his hands to his lap. “Should I go check the Regalo box? Is it still in there?” He smiled weakly.

“I would never steal from you that way. No, a friend made this for me and it really isn’t a Shaklet. It’s a…a machine made it and this connects me to the machine but not like…it’s not a real Shaklet. It’s an Outsider thing.”

He shook his head. “Then why is it on your arm?”

“I don’t know but I wonder if it would work like a Shaklet?” She put her hand out, palm facing him, poised for him to entwine his fingers with hers again. “Will you try it and tell me?”

Impatient, he told her, “We can’t do that anymore.”

“Why not? You said I’m the only one who does it with you and you’re the one who taught it to me.”

“That doesn’t make it right. We’re not teenagers playing a game anymore and we can't risk a Joining.” He looked at her hair, cropped short. “We’re not even Mated anymore. That makes it wrong.”

She looked at his short hair then folded her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry for that, too. I didn’t do this to hurt you. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I just felt—I just needed to do something when Raif died. I needed to let out the pain.”
“I know.” He put a finger under her chin and lifted her face up. “Me, too. I can’t bear the thought of losing you, Shayla. I would take you back…if you would just ask me.”

She stared back at him and watched the firelight glittering against his deep blue eyes. His eyes sparkled at her then lit up from inside, glowing with his desire for her. She wondered if her own eyes glowed back at him. He looked like a man now, not the teenage boy she’d left behind so long ago, but he was still Kyree. She was still so completely in love with him. She just didn’t know how he fit into her life anymore. More importantly, she didn’t know how to fit back into his life.

After spending a lifetime on the Outside, she wasn’t the same girl she’d been when they’d been Mated as children. If they were Joined in a real Mating, he would know her, every bit of her. She was afraid he would find her lacking. She was afraid he was still in love with the girl she used to be, the one who had died thirteen years ago when the Seven Chiefs had sent her out into the world Outside. If it hadn’t been for Raif, she had no idea how she would have survived this long. Kyree would know that, too, if he Joined with her now.

She turned away, looking into the fire. “I can’t, Kyree. I’m sorry, I—I can’t stay here now. I don’t even know who I am anymore. You deserve someone whole. I’m—”

He took her left hand in his again and held her hand up, clasping tightly, palm to palm, letting the metal on her hand press against his palm, helping to focus the energy flow between them. It sure was acting like a Shaklet, Shayla had to admit.

He squeezed his fingers tightly around hers, pressing the metal into her skin on the back of her hand. She felt him pouring himself into her, his internal stores focused through the metal Shaklet emptying into her. She tried to pull her hand out of his grasp, and he held on more tightly—enough it began to hurt.

“You’re hurting me.” She said and looked up at him. His eyes were glowing a light blue now.

“Am I?” He leaned in closer but stopped a breath away from kissing her. “Do you even remember what it feels like to be with a real man? Are you so used to being with humans you’ve forgotten what it is to be Phoenician?”

She was starting to think she had! The feeling of his energy flowing through her, his stores emptying into her, through the single point of contact, the Shaklet on her wrist, was like nothing she’d experienced with a human. Not even the deep love she’d felt for Raif had been like this. Kyree was right. This wasn’t pain she felt. It wasn’t pain or pleasure. It was the energy exchange burning through her. It was so much more than mere sexual pleasure, and he was right about something else. She’d forgotten this feeling.

It took her breath away, then banished all thought from her mind as she felt her mind opening to him, and she lost her sense of physical self. She was floating in the flow of energy between them, the searing light. She was losing herself in Kyree. She was Joining with him—then suddenly she wasn’t.
She was alone. Again.

The stark aloneness left her gasping in the cold night air looking into his glowing white eyes. He’d let go of her hand. He’d actually broken contact. Kyree had never managed to break it off first before. It was the Shaklet. That had to be how he’d done it this time.

“Come back to me, Shayla.” He pleaded with her. “Stay with me this time.”

#

Read the first few chapters, FREE, on the Phoenician Series Blog. The book should be coming out "any day now!" (haha, seriously, it's nearly done with the editing stage but it'll be better for the delays, I promise!)

Excerpt from the prologue of "Comes the Dragon". The instances of ... show where text was removed to allow a very short version of the four page chapter. I hope readers will be interested in the plot and check out the book. Thanks for the opportunity to post here.

Deputy Sheriff Tomas Rico sat in his patrol car just north of Laredo, Texas…..
Rico’s patrol car shook and a bright flash near downtown Laredo lit the entire area...
Rico got out and ran to the nearest DPS unit to see if they could raise anyone. As he crossed the pavement, he was thrown to his back by a devastating explosion….
Directly above him appeared a figure in khakis and carrying an assault rifle.
Rico asked the figure, “Are you going to kill me?”
“No son I’m not, I’m Sergeant Ames with the Texas Light Cavalry….
As Ames helped him to run, Rico asked, “What the hell is happening?”
“I don’t know son. But from the level of firing in town and the explosions, it isn’t good.”…
Rico could see large orange tracers arc away from the vehicle toward the source of bright green tracers heading their way. Rico felt like he was in a video game, only this was real. When the small orange balls hit the odd looking green truck on the other side of the highway right-of way, it immediately exploded into a fireball…
Ames asked Rico if he had any holes in him. Rico shook his head no. His voice was just a whisper as he asked again, “What the hell is going on?”
Ames answered this time, “It looks like we are at war!”
The Captain in the front right seat spoke the unanswered question, “Yes, we appear to be at war, but who the hell is the enemy?”

Comes the Dragon
Available as ebook and print version at Amazon.

Hi everyone!

Here is an excerpt from my debut novel, "ReVamped".

The prologue and the first two chapters can be found here:
http://revampedthebook.wordpress.com/...

The Colors of Qua

First 100 words:

She sees me. I make sure of it. For this moment, we are just two strangers, seeing each other for the first and last time. We are bound together by our stares. I get chills. It’s the one time that I get to feel…anything.

Often when they see me, they start to say something; other times they don’t. In that moment, when our eyes lock and I know we only have a few seconds together, I try to convey to them everything they need to know. That they’re not alone, that it will only hurt for a moment, and then nothing will ever hurt again.

Here's where you can read a couple of short excerpts from my upcoming May release, Wicked Eddies. If you have a widely-read mystery book review blog and would like to get an ARC or NETGalley copy to review, please email me directly here, and I'll give you my publicist's contact info, to request a copy.

http://bethgroundwater.com/Excerpts_W...

Thanks for the invitation, Amy! I write a mystery series featuring a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police detective. There's an excerpt from my second novel, Ice on the Grapevine, on Kindle Mystery Authors along with a review: Please check out

http://www.kindlemysteryauthors.com/2...

If you like young adult post apocalyptic/dystopian stuff than read the first chapter of "The Fall" at

http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...

This (unedited) snippet is from Part II of my fantasy trilogy, A Drunkard's Journey. Part I is The Spaces Between (out now), and Dead Spaces will be out by summer.



The inner bark of the pine would be another starchy option. He wasn't sure his stomach could digest any of it, but the moss was starting to stick to the roof of his mouth, and each time he flicked his tongue to chew on it, the flavors of rot and decay filled his mouth. He had to press a hand under his chin to keep himself from vomiting. With another groan and protest from his ankle, he rose and stumbled to the pine tree. He extracted his knife and peeled away the outer bark, then carefully sliced slivers from its pale interior. While he loved the scent of pine and the taste of pinons in the spring, the bark was stringy and downright foul. Still, he forced himself to eat until his belly was partially full. The starch would need to sustain him a little longer.

In his many years of experience, he had never thought he would have to eat a tree.

Wolf Dawn is FREE ON AMAZON from today the 23rd to the 27th of July. Please download and try it.

SCIENCE FICTION - ROMANTIC FANTASY - HEROIC ADVENTURE

Here is the prologue:

The air was icy, the wind a steady roar. Assurance had crashed well above the timberline, high in the mountains among jagged, rocky peaks and ridges. It was just past midday, but it was already dusky dark. Thick, low-lying cloud blocked any light or warmth from a feeble winter sun. In the few moments he spent outside the broken spaceship the boy found the sky of this alien world deep scarlet, while windblown flurries of crimson snow had pounded against his flesh like tiny, blood-red icicles.

Ash reached out with his mind, desperate.

There was no one at all close by.

He continued, seeking further, trembling. It was so cold!

He brushed against something. Mental fingers sought to contact the unfamiliar intelligence. Was it even human? He had no idea.

Contact was sudden and startling.

Without a ripple, Ash's consciousness gracefully slid into the unfamiliar form as though diving into a warm pool of water. A rush of relief flowed through him as he escaped his own cold and injured body. Instead of freezing temperatures and the pain of a broken arm, his empty belly burned with hunger. But also, in that instant of contact, he could hear the snow fall.

Ash's mind registered this fact curiously, but accepted it.

A trace of something caused his nostrils to flare, a creature, warm, inviting ... alive. The scent was twill; he knew the smell, the taste. His stomach muscles contracted in anticipation. A thrill of flowing adrenaline surged through him and Ash quivered at the thought of life -- pulsing hot blood, fleshy tissue, oozing fat and muscle.

His nose twitched and his long thick tongue flicked out to lick his lips.

Ash's new world came into focus.

His panting breath misted, fogged and swirled in the crisp, frosty air. Fascinated, Ash looked down and saw that his paws were wet as they moved through hulking drifts of blood-red snow. His crimson fleece steamed. In the bone-deep chill of an icy winter, Ash felt warm in the thick hide of this living fur coat. Comfortable and content, despite the burn of hunger, Ash looked out from within this foreign wolfish flesh and wondered where he was.

This is the Story: Ashton Chayton was born with a powerful gift, a unique inhuman ability. Orphaned, raised by the Red Wolves of Opan, captured and enslaved - he is now free and on the run. Unfortunately everybody wants Ashton. Admiral Jones will torture him to get the secret of his power. Lady Lindha feels he is "The One" as named in Temple prophecy. The influential Lord Andros just wants him dead.

Ashton only wants two things: revenge, and the Lady Lindha. If you had unique powers, wouldn't you use them to get what you want?

I would love anyone who likes this sort of book to please read and review. Or just read it!

Thanks!

Susan Cartwright


Here is the link:
http://www.amazon.com/WOLF-DAWN-Scien...

I am offering a fair bit more than a snipet from my book, lol. The link below is to a comment here with codes to get my books for free. No pressure to review, but it would be handy :)

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/9...

Susan, if you haven't already, be sure to advertise your book in the SciFi and Heroic Fantasy group here on Goodreads :)

Thanks, Amy, for the opportunity. Here is a scene from my historical novel "Crossing the River," about the start of the American Revolution.

Having dragged his trailing leg awkwardly through his opened bedroom window, Robert Newman lowered himself onto the roof of the abutting shed. For a good twenty seconds he listened. Across and down the roof he then proceeded, slowly -- silently, he prayed -- lest he be heard by the British officers downstairs at their game of whist. He had excused himself from the general company ten minutes earlier, telling his mother that he was tired and wanted to retire. At the edge of the roof, listening, staring, he detected no one in the street. Carefully, soundlessly, he lowered himself, his shoes reaching the top of an upright, empty flour barrel. Crouched atop the barrel, he extended his left leg until the toe of his shoe touched the pavement.

Had they heard him? Stiff as a grave marker, he listened.

The dark shape of Christ Church dwarfed him. He moved quickly across the street into its shadow. A young man, twenty-three, he was the church sexton. His older brother was the organist. Times were hard; Newman did not like his job; too bad. When Paul Revere had explained to him what he had wanted, Newman had been eager to participate. Afterward, he had reckoned the peril.

Hearing footsteps on the cobblestones, he stepped behind the church’s corner. John Pulling emerged from the darkness. “Sssst! Over here!” Newman whispered.

Pulling was a church vestryman. Revere had recruited him to be Newman’s lookout.

“Not here yet?” Pulling asked.

“He didn't say when. Any time, I suspect.” He was right. Soon they heard aggressive footsteps. Paul Revere’s broad figure approached.

“Nervous?” Revere asked, joining them at the church’s darkest corner.

Newman nodded.

“You become accustomed to it.” For perhaps ten seconds Revere gazed at the deserted street.

Newman was taken by the silversmith’s air of confidence.

“The British soldiers are in the boats,” Revere informed. “Go easy. Take your time. But do your work to its completion. If I’m arrested, our fortune may rest entirely upon what you accomplish.” He patted Newman’s left shoulder. “I must prepare to leave. God be with you.”

Newman listened to Revere’s footfalls and then, too soon, but the night sounds.

It was too late to renege.

“All right,” he said, raising angrily his hands. He pulled out of his side coat pocket a ring of keys. He inserted a long key into the lock of the side entrance door. He turned the key and pushed open the door. Pulling nodded. Newman closed the door, locked it, and in darkness felt his way to a closet. Leaving it, carrying two lanterns, he moved to the stairway that led to the belfry.

Past the bell loft he climbed, the eight great bells within somnolent. He reached the highest window. To the north he saw in the moonlight the shoulder of Copp's Hill. Beyond lay the mouth of the Charles River and the glimmering lights of the Somerset, a moving, ethereal flicker.

He reached downward, lit the lanterns, and raised them chest high. Somewhere amid the lights of Charlestown, beyond the Somerset, Sons of Liberty were watching. They would now know that Gage’s soldiers were crossing the Back Bay.

Having counted to twenty, he set the lanterns down below the window. He extinguished them. Such a short while they had glowed, but Mr. Revere had assured him that patriots of Liberty would be watching. He had not wanted others, especially sailors on the man-of-war, to see them!

Other people, however, just might! An officer, taking a brisk walk along Snow Street. Newman imagined others: a soldier at the burying ground engaging a whore, sentries idling at the Charlestown Ferry. How swiftly might the source of that strange illumination be determined? How soon might soldiers be dispatched to investigate?

He heard unnatural sounds in the street! Sounds loud enough to startle him. What was Pulling doing? His heart thumped.

He waited a full minute.

He imagined Pulling arrested, soldiers posted silently outside the main entrance. Impeded by doubt, by anxiety, he tarried.

Ashamed of his cowardice, he willed himself down the dark stairway. He returned the lanterns to the closet. Then, to the opposite end of the church he walked, stopping to listen after each step. Eventually, he reached the window farthest from the main entrance. He opened it, not without some noise, listened again to silence, climbed through it, and placed his shoes on firm soil.

Five minutes later he was standing on the roof of the shed adjacent to his bedroom window. He eased himself soundlessly over the sill. Leaving his outer garments on the floor, he climbed into his bed. For at least an hour he lay still, his agitated mind imagining frightful consequences.

Below, concluding a most delightful evening, the officers jested and guffawed.


Crossing the River

Thanks, Amy!

Here are the openings of two stories in my Texas fiction collection The Acorn Stories.

From the story "Flip, Turn."

I pulled myself up enough to see the alarm clock just across my room. 10:15! It had happened again: after dreaming during the night that my alarm clock was buzzing, I had gotten up and turned it off, realized I was dreaming, stayed in bed wondering whether I had also dreamed turning it off, then fallen asleep without turning it back on.

"Swimming," I mumbled into my pillow. I was supposed to have met Jimmy Jacobs at Acorn College's indoor pool around ten. Since I hadn't gone swimming in weeks, I had no idea where my alumni I.D. was. I searched my disintegrating wallet, pulling out shreds of napkins, envelopes, and newspaper with scribbled numbers. Some of the numbers looked like combinations for P.O. boxes or lockers, while others looked like phone numbers, but none of them had words on them. My wallet housed numbers detached from their purpose. I thought I should keep them in case I needed them one day. But how would I know if I needed them, or which ones to use? Then I found a phone number with a familiar handwriting.

I could have called all the phone numbers to see if I recognized the voices of the people who answered. Then I could just hang up. Maybe that's what people are doing—the people who call me then hang up. Maybe they sorted through old wallets and purses, found my number on a scrap of paper. After finding my I.D. in the dark recesses of my wallet, I stuffed all the numbers back in to recreate whatever equation they had formed, knowing I would probably not see them again until my wallet fell apart.

After pulling on swim trunks, T-shirt, and tennis shoes, I walked outside into Mom and Dad's yard sale and suddenly remembered that I really need to get my own place.

Jimmy Jacobs wasn't even at the pool when I got there. I decided not to mention it to my mother—never mind that I'm twenty-eight—because she would just say, "I've told you about that Jacobs boy." From junior high 'till well past high school graduation, no teenagers within a forty-mile radius of Acorn could get drunk, stoned, beat up, arrested, or pregnant without their parents asking, "You've been hanging around with that Jacobs boy, haven't you?" By the time I graduated from college—a lot of good that did me, the new assistant manager at Ice Cream Dream—he was a husband, a father, and the pastor of Zionosphere Baptist Church.
***


From the story "Acorn Pie."
People tell me a little more than they should. Well, a lot more than they should. Actually, people tell me way too much. Or they say too many things where I can hear them, which is just the same as telling me, as far as I'm concerned. Do they really think I won't share what I heard with anybody? I mean, stories like these can't just sit on a shelf in somebody's brain. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that my neighbors want someone to tell their Acorn stories, that they don't want to be just a small part of a small town in a big state in a big country. People aspire to leave something behind other than babies, a mortgage, and a nasty rumor or two. And they certainly want someone reliable telling it, like what my grandmother did when she chronicled the early folks of Acorn.



***
I also edited a spin-off, The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer, and wrote four of its stories. One of them, Fat Diary, is available as a free eBook.

SciFi Adventure!

An excerpt from Degranon: A Science Fiction Adventure follows.
***

Lorfeltez suddenly realized that she had stopped speaking and that everyone had stopped listening, or even jeering. The Maintainers had arrived. They filed through the crowd like a swarm of insects, freely pushing and shoving with all the authority that their office granted them, elbowing several people, and pushing a few out the doorways.

Part of the crowd began disappearing, as if the weight of the entering officers forced them outside. However, many of them failed to move away in time, and the Maintainers freely grabbed at their collars or even punched at them, before finding the sources of the disruption.

A female Maintainer yanked the holo-projectors away, knocking them to the floor, then used the handle of her rifle to destroy them, sending hot metal parts and wires everywhere. One of the wires gashed a woman’s arm, sending out a small spurt of blood. Before even noticing her, the Maintainers quickly managed to handcuff all five men, even while the crowd continued to shift madly about, trying to escape. But then one of the Maintainers assisted the injured woman, holding his hand over the cut on her arm while obviously calling a healer with the transmitter in his ear.

Dr. Lorfeltez saw an elderly red woman in the audience, frail to the point that she had obviously lived beyond the virus’s benefits. One of the Maintainers waved his laser rifle around to scare away the remnants of the controversial gathering; he held the rifle at the center, his hand near the button.

It frightened Lorfeltez to see the Maintainer’s barrel sometimes pointing directly at the old woman. At least the other citizens could move quickly from his senseless demonstration of power, even if some of them ran in too many different directions for everyone to escape. As he swung it around again, the handle struck the old woman on the forehead, knocking her to the floor.

Surely that Maintainer sees what he’s doing, Lorfeltez thought. Just as some members of the crowd almost trampled the old woman, the handsome stranger pulled her up and helped her escape.

Lorfeltez had wanted to intervene as well, but another Maintainer stood beside her, aiming a laser pistol at her. The Maintainer was an extremely tall black woman, but barely more than a teenager, with hair shooting out from her headband, reminding Lorfeltez of a docle flower, one of the few remaining flowers on Valchondria’s overly industrialized landscape. The absence of stripes on her uniform revealed her as a trainee, but she carried herself like a Top Maintainer.

“Dr. Lorfeltez,” she said, her voice brimming with Maintainer superiority, and her unusual height adding to that superiority. Lorfeltez had always hated being short, especially at times like this. The Maintainer continued: “I find you in conflict with the glory of Valchondria. To protect our children and our society, I hereby refrain you from public mobility. Any verbalization on your part will be considered heavy hazard. Do you recognize my guidance?”

Her dark brown eyes studied Lorfeltez. The self-confidence was real, but Lorfeltez could see that this Maintainer didn’t actually want to arrest her or stop her from voicing her concerns. Something existed between them: a sort of sisterhood, if such a thing could exist for two young women in a world with no siblings below the age of forty.

But it was her job, her genetic destiny as someone with a Maintainer-quality genetic structure. That genetic structure reasserted itself. “I ask again, Dr. Lorfeltez: do you recognize my guidance?”

“I recognize it.” Lorfeltez clasped her hands together behind her back, her slender fingers grasping each other. It was the proper motion of surrender, and she imagined one of her own hands as that of her mother or her father, reaching out to comfort her in this moment of crisis.

But they wouldn’t be holding her hand anymore. They had warned her to avoid the rally. “Think of your career,” her mother had said. Her father had said much worse: “Stay away from disruptive elements. If you don’t distance yourself from them, we’ll have no choice but to distance ourselves from you. Be maintained, if you want to be a part of this family.”


[Note: a few chapters later, Lorfeltez takes Taldra as her chosen name. She hates her given name.]



Sons of Taldra is a stand-alone sequel to Degranon: A Science Fiction Adventure. Read a draft to Chapter 1 of that sequel, here at Goodreads.

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3...


Duane Simolke

Hello, all. Here is a link to the first chapter of my book, The Timekeeper's Son, to be released on September 3.

Read Chapter 1

Here's a link to an excerpt of my YA fantasy novella, Myriad.

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3...

Book Description:

After the tragic loss of his wife and child, Myriad Markwin began tormenting the Royal family of Prentor. For eighteen years, he'd mercilessly killed people in the castle on the Princess' birthday. But this year, he wasn't settling for servants or guards. He was going to kill the Royal family themselves. A group of warlocks and witches was out to stop him, but a young newcomer to them, Kalin, was proving the most trouble...

Kalin has denied his magic for years, but suddenly finds himself in a battle with one of the most powerful warlocks that has ever lived. He has to face up to things about himself he never knew, to try and save the Royal family from murder. With his new friends helping him, and a new love enchanting him, can he stop the coming bloodshed? Will he survive the fight of his life?

Thanks, Mona

Here's a sample from Teen Guide to Sex and Relationships which I co-authored with Jess C. Scott:

How do you tell the difference between love and lust?

JESS:

Lust is very much focused on the physical desires. You crave to be with the person physically/sexually. You might think about their fantastic abs/body/some particular body part or physical feature more than anything else.

Love can be trickier to define—each of us has our own way of describing it. Love goes deep. You share a connection with the person that goes beyond satisfying physical desires. You admire the person for something that goes beyond how good they look or how smooth they are sexually.

Yes, it’s possible to sometimes mix up love and lust. It sometimes happens with “friends with benefits” arrangements. A deep love is often free from tension and drama. It runs on compassion, kindness, and acceptance, and has a positive effect on both people that are sharing the deep love (a genuine love tends to encourage and inspire each person to “be better” versions of themselves, compared to if they were absent in each other’s lives).

It’s lust if two people want to be with each other for the rest of time because they both find each other “hot.” It’s lust if you could hate the person, but still have sex with them because the sex is just so good. It’s lust if all you think and care about is how “hot” the person is (you don’t really care about their personality, and emotional involvement doesn’t feature when you think about the person).

I once knew an old couple. The lady had to undergo surgery when she found out she had breast cancer. She was worried about the operation because one of her breasts needed to be removed, and she feared that her husband would no longer find her attractive. The man replied, “I married you for you, not because of those things!”

That’s love.

MATT:

Lust means the desire to have sex with a person regardless of whether there is a personal connection. You see someone and you think about having sex with that person, and your body responds by getting ready to have sex. Lust is about meeting your body’s need to have sex or about other emotional needs that you have—to feel powerful, or to feel special, or to feel in control. It is a very strong motivation when you are in your teenage years, especially for boys. It isn’t unusual for a teenage boy to go around the school in a constant state of sexual attraction to girls that he sees. This condition eventually passes, and if you get into a sexual relationship that works, then it will go away, and lust for everyone around you will turn into more manageable attraction.

The more connected you are to a person and the more you understand that person, the more lust turns into something else. If you become friends with that person, lust becomes love. If you aren’t compatible with that person, the dislike should make the lust less intense, although you can have strong sexual desire for people you don’t like. If you’re a boy, this happens because lust is partly about feeling in control, and you want her more because having her would mean you had triumphed over that difficult personality. If you’re a girl, you may find that you’re attracted to boys who are aggressive, rude, or rebellious, so called “bad boys.” There is some biological programming that tells you these bad boy personalities will make good protectors. I suppose that successful relationships have come out of these feelings over the years, but if so, only because the lust developed into friendship, commitment, and trust.

end selection

This book is available at pretty much every platform where independent books are sold. Amazon, barnes and noble, smashwords, etc.

Wolf Song

Here is a very small snippet of Wolf Song;

They were smart, though. They didn't break off into smaller groups, as the large predator watching had hoped. Their eyes scanned in all directions, waiting to fire on the man they were chasing. But Jon wasn't just a man. He knew they didn't have silver bullets, none of them burned when he was hit and he did not taste it in the air after they had fired round after round into the pristine forest. An
d since they did not have silver, Jon did not fear.

He rocketed upward again, landing directly in the center of their group. His arm swept down, using his claws to open one man from neck to groin, sending his entrails spilling onto the damp loam of the woods. Another, he punched so hard, her skull shattered and brain flattened in the now abbreviated case that was holding it. Meanwhile, they fired in panic and numerous bullets found Jon. Some hit bone and fragmented them, others burned through internal organs. He consumed the pain like an alcoholic consumed whiskey, glorying in it, but not relinquishing his right to more. An amazing amount of the projectiles missed him in the excitement. Instead, they exploded harmlessly into trees, sending wooden splinters in a frenzied cascade outward, or they pierced the flesh of their companions. Screams filled in the chorus of the calamitous melody the guns sang. Jon danced to that music, his body a living weapon, ripping, biting and snarling his own refrain, until the aria of his violence was complete.

heres my book chapter- just started writing my 1st book and would love comments or a like!

http://itsjennythewren.wordpress.com/...

Here's my first chapter of my recently released story Innocent Tears. Feel free to leave a comment - it'd be great!

http://iris-b.blogspot.com.au/2012/10...

I love the opening to my story "Black Friday". It's a suspense, thriller, Noir and great holiday reading if you want a thrill.

----Foreword---

"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life.That we convert the buying of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption...we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

Victor Labow
Journal of Retailing 1955

As the second World War drew to a close the soldiers came home, and the value of a man was defined, not by his intelligence or bravery, but by how much he was able to buy or sell.

---First Page---

Black Friday
By Jennifer Steen

Joe was a predictable man with a predictable life. He worked sales for a no-name light bulb distributor in a sterile white walled office with two doors and a locked closet. At six on the dot, the drive home brought him the muffled silence of snow on the hills, and the fog of too much traffic. He’d roll in to the corner drive, 503 Oakland Terrace, where white-washed picket fences framed the walks and the kids played out after dark.

This day, Friday, he moved through the front threshold of his cookie-cutter ranch-style home at an
anxious pace. The broken grandfather chimer greeted him with the lifeless cheer which pretended to be
something fine, well bred, and educated, but was really half-broken and dusty. Joe blew past it and into the bedroom, carrying a bin of work papers that he’d do for no hint of over-time. Some would call him a push over, an all-American sort of fall guy. He just couldn’t stop smiling. It was Friday.

His wife, a spent up dancer whose set of gams could give you the heebie-jeebies, liked the water on hot when she soaked to the radio. The antique speakers blared from the putrid bathroom. A light over the
mirror flickered. How many times would the same old shows play over and over? He wanted to shoot the
thing, and the writers who wrote the scripts of the 40’s serial dramas he had involuntarily memorized.

‘All right lousy…get outta the car.’

‘Hey, what’s the idea?’ her hero seemed ruffled.

‘Out! This ain’t a yo-yo I’ve got in my hands.’

The sound of a car door slammed…a jumble of shoes scuffled on the pavement.

‘Dr. Dangerfield, be careful!’ the voice box buzzed on the counter with this broad’s exclamation.

‘Not you dames,’ the rough and tough Bruno character cast them off like yesterday’s dirty trousers,
‘just him, he’s got a lot to answer for.’

Joe peeked in. The water gurgled from the steaming spout around his wife’s ankles reminding him
of a giant bone-in pork chop—some dead meat chunk oblivious to how the water boiled.

“You know gorgeous,” he stepped toward their bed again to shuck the armload of papers, speaking
to her through the cracked bathroom door, “that talker always on…is annoying.”

Silence was all he got while her show continued.
‘No Tony, don’t! Don’t you know he did it for me? Who’s payin’ you goons anyway?’

The tough customer continued, ‘Can it, lady. If either one of ya’ makes a move, this guy’s life won’t be worth a plucked Chinese buck. I’ll shoot him up so full of daylight your eyes will sing.’

Joe continued, mostly to himself, “I keep having this dream. Like, if someday we fix our broken
house clock and watered the plant, everything would change…like a snap. Maybe we’d jump into some
alternate reality. You’d turn off the damn radio and give a shit.”

Here's an excerpt from Suzie and the Monsters

Back in my suite at the Renaissance, we make love like there's no tomorrow, which in a way there isn't. I don't think there's a spot on Cleo's body I don't kiss at least twice, and there's one spot in particular that I could kiss all night long. Cleo's familiarity with what excites me is growing, as is her confidence in being able to give me pleasure. By the time the sun comes up we're both sated and exhausted. It's a strangely human delight to sleep with Cleo curled around me.

I don't sleep for long, however. I never do. I slip out of bed, leaving behind me that incredible illusion of safety in Cleo's protective and possessive arms. I settle instead for the warm embrace of the shower, taking time to clean away every trace of strip clubs, murder and sex.

I'm rinsing the lather from my hair when Cleo joins me in the shower. We share a long tender kiss. 'I love you, Suzie,' she says, and plunges a knife, my hunting knife, into my chest. My body screams, and for a few agonising seconds there is nothing except that sharp, bright edge of pure pain, and then I realise that Cleo is struggling to take the knife out again. I wrap my hands around hers, around the handle, and together we pull the blade from my chest, and there is blood everywhere, running down my newly cleaned body to mix with soapy bubbles, streaks of red across Cleo's breasts. Beautiful and obscene, she looks like a dark goddess to me.

'It's not enough,' I tell her. 'You need to cut out my heart.'

For more information, excerpts and links, see:
http://www.alinameridon.com/

Here's an excerpt from Home Schooling: The Fire Night Ball It's the debut novel of my Home Schooling trilogy about a line of self-educating sirens.

Chapter Six


"Right in here, Mrs. Bellum.”
"Ms. Bellum, if you don't mind," she said, following the nurse into the examination room.
“Please take off everything except your bra, Miss Bellum,” said the nurse, “and put this gown on with the opening to the back.”
“I never wear a bra,” Marlena said. "Burned mine in '69."
“Then take everything off,” said the nurse matter-of-factly. “You can sit up here on the end of the table. Dr. Huddleston will be right in."
On both coasts, she was thinking, women were cutting wide swaths through taboos that had for so long held them hostage and restricted their freedom. No-fault divorce now was available, and abortion was a legal right. On the bathroom mirror, her roommate had slapped a sticker: "Out of the war, out of the home, out of the closet." In Alta, WY, however, the natives didn't know from Gloria Steinem, though women had got the vote in 1869 and knew how to shoot a bear. In this town, the long-dead past loomed large, immovable as Alta Mountain and twice as ominous.
Marlena gazed at the documents framed on the wall. There were Dr. Ronald Huddleston’s diploma from Stanford University Medical School and his certification of residency at a St. Louis hospital. In the second grade, Typhoid Ronnie--so nicknamed because Ron Huddleston infected her with every childhood illness known to man--would dip her red-gold braids into his inkwell and torment her with opinions that contradicted her upbringing . He said Catholics were ignoramuses who worshipped graven images and were over-populating Mother Earth. The scarlet fever Ronnie had given her kept her at their dank cabin being home-schooled by her father. Her siren powers --perfect recall, stunning beauty, and a devastating will power--were useless against bacteria, though lethal on boys or men.
Despite Ron having been something of a bad luck charm, Marlena was looking forward to seeing him again. Yesterday, on the pretext of picking up medication for a house-bound patient, cousin Chloe had conned her into taking the royal tour of Ron Huddleston's offices and state-of-the-art medical equipment. She'd quickly seen her old nemesis was that rare thing, a good man and a sexy one.
In the nineteenth-century novels she'd read as a girl, there was a type of man called “Beauty’s Dog," a fetching title for Ron's sort. The women of Alta could do worse, it was Marlena's opinion, than trust Dr. Ron with their pap smears. A good man is hard to find, she thought as she settled herself atop the examination table.
But a hard man will come quickly, if you just put your lips together and blow.
She was wriggling her toes when Ron came striding through the door, his kind, grey eyes twinkling and a broad smile widening his boyish features.
“Howdy,” he said, dropping his gaze to scan her chart. “Was it yesterday you and Dr. Vye came by, or was that a dream?”
"A nightmare, you mean. Now it appears you can't get rid of me."
Ron's hands and trimmed fingernails were immaculate; he was closely shaven, his sideburns long and neat; his full head of auburn hair was carefully gelled and slicked back. When he came closer, holding out his hand, she inhaled a whiff of Bay Rum, her favorite scent.
“Thanks for seeing me on short notice, Ron.”
“No problem. How are you feeling today?”
“The same.”
“So, the nausea you mentioned has continued for more than a week?”
“Yes.”
“Any other symptoms?” With a firm, gentle touch, he began checking her throat and neck for swollen glands.
“I’m having trouble sleeping.”
“Are you taking anything for it?”
“Valium and Brandy Alexanders.”
She added, "That's a joke, Ron."
“I hope so. Combining alcohol and pills can be deadly.” He put the stethoscope on her back and began listening to her lungs. “Now, breathe deeply for me. Once more, a deep breath.” He continued to listen as she took several long breaths.
“Any cough or congestion?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“Some.”
“Abdominal pain other than nausea?”
“Some.”
“Tarry stools?”
“Making this up as you go along? Of course not.”
“Exposure to school children in the past week?”
“Not on my diet.”
As he listened to her heart through his stethoscope, his grey eyes were gazing steadily aside, which allowed her to examine his features. Other than the auburn hair and the pale, unusually long eyelashes, she never would have recognized this serious-looking young doctor for the boy who had sat behind her in second grade.
“Your pulse and blood pressure are normal. Your lungs sound fine. You don’t have any signs of acute appendicitis or our local influenza. Your temperature is slightly below normal.”
“So, other than cold feet, nothing's wrong with me?”
“Hopefully that's the case. Have you had any fainting spells?”
“Sometimes I feel dizzy when I stand up. Maybe I’m channeling the Russian astronaut.”
“When was your last menstrual period?”
“I’m late, but that’s not unusual.”
“How late?”
“Oh, a month or so. Make that two.”
“And you say that’s normal for you?”
“My flow is erratic; the timing's all over the place. Usually it’s heavy, but at the end of October, there was some spotting and that was all she wrote.”
I can’t believe I’m chatting with Typhoid Ronnie about my periods! He was asking her another question. She asked him to repeat it.
“I said, is there a chance you might be pregnant?”
“Are you serious? Can't be. I've worn an I.U.D for five years.”
“What I meant was, are you sexually active?”
“Oh, I see. Um, yes.” She could feel herself blushing.
The last time, when Harry casually strolled in, she'd been out of sorts after waiting for a day and a half. But eventually she sat on his cock, which was her favorite way to orgasm. Then he'd rolled her over and spanked her, entered her, and come quickly.
But as they parted, he'd spoken to her in way that rankled. As he buckled his belt, towering over her as she lay naked on the bed, he sounded like a professor delivering a lecture.
“Follow your own path, Marlena, for your own reasons. I can’t bear on my shoulders the burden of your lonely childhood.”
Parting was unbearable torture for her, especially when he whistled as he walked away. But after that cold message, she'd started to feel physically sick, and she'd been nauseated ever since.
“Using any other form of contraception besides the I.U.D.?” Dr. Ron asked.
“Why? It's foolproof, isn't it?”
“No form of birth control is 100% effective. Sometimes I.U.D.’s spontaneously slip or hang too low to be fully protective. Mind if I take a look?”
“You’re the doctor."
He called the gray-haired nurse back in. Marlena was instructed to put her feet up in the stirrups and lie back.
“Big scoot toward me,” he said. “Just a little more. Good.”
After a few seconds of investigation, he said, "there are no mullerian anomalies."
"Meaning?"
"You don't have two sets of equipment--two vaginas, two cervixes, two uteruses. Sometimes they account for a pregnancy where one wouldn't otherwise be expected."
"I didn't realize there was such a thing."
"It's not that unusual. They occur in one of three thousand women."
"It must lead to some unusual conversations in the bedroom. I can think of another advantage."
"What's that?"
"A woman might claim to be a virgin when she's not, because one hymen is still intact."
"Technically speaking, she'd be right."
"That's the kind of technicality that might save a Muslim woman's life."
When the examination was concluded, Ron waited until the nurse was out of the room, then he turned and put a hand on the table. He was looking directly at her.
"What's wrong with me, doctor?" she asked sweetly. "Will I live?"
“You'll make it to Christmas. That's a joke, Lena. We’ll run a chemical test to confirm it, ” he said, “but I’d say you’re about eight weeks pregnant, give or take a couple.”
“But what about my frigging I.U.D.?”
There simply must be another explanation.
In her seven-year marriage to Codwell Dimmer, they'd used virtually no birth control, and yet she hadn't conceived. When Harry became her sexual Svengali, she’d chosen the I. U. D. for its invisible, highly effective protection.
“It was a low hanger. I removed it. If the test turns out negative and you’re not pregnant, you’ll want to have another inserted or choose a different method, such as the birth control pill. I’ll be glad to help you with any option you choose.”