Had a last minute bail from an author. So, I thought I’d do something fun. I uploaded a story to Amazon early this morning. I love the cover. The girl in the pic looks very, very tired, which is very appropriate for this sex-fest story. It’s a refurbed story I had with Ellora’s Cave way back when…

If you’ve never read it, you should enjoy—if you’re into sexy firefighters, weekend orgies, and… Well, you’ll just have to see. 🙂

First the blurb, then play!

Jane wants Bruno…Bruno wants Cord…Cord wants Jane…but can everyone get what they really want?

Jane, fresh from a breakup, decides to seduce Bruno, one of the firemen next door, to restore her shattered confidence. But the trap she sets is sprung instead by his best friend, Cord.  After she flees in embarrassment, Bruno makes a proposition too wicked for any good girl to consider, but how can she refuse the chance at not one, but two strapping firemen?

Bruno’s shared women with Cord before, but decides to use Cord’s attraction to Jane to break down his friend’s defenses for the ultimate threesome. Cord thinks he knows how this little tryst will go down, but he’s seduced into allowing Bruno intimacies this hetero guy has never before considered.

NEVER ENOUGH, 3B1, is a Delos series novella and sequel to Forged in Fire, Book 3. Being Indie, it’s fun to write the “big book” and then follow it with a “Well? What happened to Matt and Dara next?” and answer my readers burning question. I don’t know a reader that doesn’t appreciate a follow-up novella or sequel. When I’ve formed a bond with the main characters and have sympathy for them, I want to know what happened after reading the book.

Sergeant Matt Culver, Delta Force, has fallen in love with Dr. Dara McKinley, a pediatrician who was visiting Kabul, Afghanistan to do charity work for children. They fall in love, but this country is dangerous to anyone who is an American. After a harrowing escape at a village in mid-Winter, Matt must keep Dara alive.

I admired Dara McKinley because she was thrown into a violent, life-and-death environment and had no clue as to how to survive it. Except that the man she was falling in love with, Sergeant Matt Culver, would become her guide, teacher and protector.

Sometimes courage comes in moments of shock, trauma and extreme conditions. Dara is a pediatrician, finishing up her residency, and getting ready to put a clinic for the poor near Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. But all her dreams explode when her vehicle is attacked, leaving her in the harsh winter of Afghanistan, chased by Taliban.

Matt Culver is a survivor and is saddled with a woman who has never been under such duress. He’s fallen in love with her. The challenges are enormous, not only brutal winter conditions in the mountains, trying to keep her safe and knowing odds of living through this, are next to nothing. Somehow, they survive.

Afterward, I wrote a book to take them in the next step of their relationship.  Matt has surprised Dara with a Hawaiian vacation.  He wants to get her into a safe place that she’s always wanted to visit, where they can have serious time for one another instead of running for their lives.  Somehow, even Paradise can have a dark side and Matt’s wish for a quiet vacation doesn’t happen.

Buy Links: Amazon Buy Link | B & N Buy Link | iTunes | Kobo |  Website

I was trying to be positive with the title of this blog entry.   Truth is, as I’m ready to publish my eight novel, I’m in a dedication pickle.   Forget ‘artful.’

I started writing romantic suspense stories in 2001, got picked up by Wild Rose Press in 2011, and have published one book a year since then.   My first book lauded all the people who encouraged me to keep on writing.  Dedicating my second book to my father was a slam-dunk, because a character in the novel acted like my dad.  I wanted another book to honor my mother.  Then what?

We seat-of-our-pants writers don’t plan ahead.  Thus, the dedication pickle.

Subject matter for book four fit my sister.  Wait!  I can’t leave out my husband.  Book five lauded him.  I consulted with my two brothers for books six and seven, so no worries there.  Book eight is dedication-less, so far.

I’m curious about how you determine your dedications and the process you use to choose/ask/notify the dedicatee, or publicize the dedications for your books.  I could use some ideas!  Please leave your comments by clicking on the people said link below.

As you think about your answer, here’s my release, BAD LIES, dedicated to my brother, Colin, a brilliant geologist, who works on contracted projects with the U.S. Government.  My main character in BAD LIES has a career like my brother’s, so consulting with Colin not only gave me information I needed, but brought me closer to understanding his passion for studying the earth.

Here’s BAD LIES, now out in Kindle and paperback https://a.co/0DuYNPn

Italy’s haunted caves spell danger for an American golfer and a NATO geologist…

Sophie Maxwell is a late-blooming, unorthodox golfer, and mother of a precocious thirteen year-old. Determined to put divorce, bankruptcy, and a penchant for gambling in her past, Sophie goes to Italy for a qualifying golf tournament.

Jack Walker turned his back on a pro golfing career to become a geologist. As a favor to his ailing father he’ll caddy for Sophie; off hours, he’ll find caves on the Mediterranean coast, suitable for NATO listening posts for terrorist activity.

Someone is determined to stop Jack’s underground hunt and ruin Sophie’s chances to win her tournament.

On a Rome golf course and in the Amalfi coast’s haunted caves, all the odds are stacked against Sophie and Jack.  In their gamble of a lifetime, who wins?

Web and Blog: https://rolynnanderson.com
Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rolynn-Anderson/188767867821613
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rolynnanderson
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4990049.Rolynn_Anderson

My questions, again:  I’m curious about how you determine your dedications and the process you use to choose/ask/notify the dedicatee, or publicize the dedications for your books.  I could use some ideas!  Please leave your comments by clicking on the the people said link below below.

I owe vampires big. Without them, I may well not be writing anymore. Though I have told stories from an early age in some form or other, by the time I graduated college and suffered my first rejection by a publisher, I was pretty much done. There were business trips and work projects and real-world relationships that filled up my time. And after two years of graduate degree work in technology, I was certain that every creative synapse in my brain had been fried for good.

Enter vampires.

Vampires never interested me before (I mean, seriously, the whole blood drinking thing…ewww), but after reading a discussion of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, I was intrigued enough to want to check it out. The moment I started reading, I was in raptures. The lush descriptions, the erotic overtones, the alien-yet-not characters and their horrific-yet-familiar struggles—all of it simply blew me away.  I inhaled every book in her Vampire Chronicles. Twice. I also began gobbling up all things vampire in print, TV and film, and I learned which ones I loved and which I still couldn’t tolerate. It’s true—character development is everything. And as characters go, few canvases are richer than the tragic figure of the vampire and the high price he pays for his immortality, supernatural powers, and often great beauty.

I was hooked. And I had to process all these creative inputs by writing, or else I risked exploding. It took a few more years (okay, a lot more years) of squeezing in writing time between work and life (and untold books and workshops on writing craft) but I did eventually end up with a manuscript I was happy with and that a publisher wanted to take on.

Dark Heart of the Sun, the tale of a new-born vampire coming to grips with his new reality, was published by Soul Mate Publishing in August of 2016. In the sequel, Dark Lord of the Night (available on KU May 31st), he continues his perilous journey together with the mortal woman who claims his heart and is the key to his humanity.

If you have a similar fascination with vampires, leave a comment below and share how you first discovered them. I love to compare notes.

About Dark Lord of the Night

The only thing standing between a new vampire and eternal darkness is the mortal woman who claims his heart.

Youngling vampire Dominic Marchant struggles to master his deadly instincts as he hunts the urban jungles of South Florida. He keeps his hunger confined to the blood of the guilty with help from Cassidy Chandler, a human woman who can literally touch his soul. Their love is his last remaining tether to humanity, which is tested beyond endurance when powerful forces from his past introduce him to terrifying new appetites he could never have imagined.

His efforts to protect Cassidy from the depravity overtaking him push their relationship to the brink of shattering. Refusing to give up on the man who is her heart, she takes an unthinkable gamble to save him. But is she fulfilling an ominous prophecy that ensnares them both? Or has she become just another pawn in a cunning game played by the five-thousand-year-old vampire who claims Dominic as his own?

Desperate to rescue her from a fate worse than death, Dominic strikes a perilous bargain with his greatest enemies only to face an impossible choice–embrace his darkest self…or destroy the woman he cannot live without.

Available for pre-order now:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071F7JW69/

Excerpt

Dominic Marchant hunched low over the BMW motorcycle screaming between his legs and tried to outrun a nagging sense of unease. He wove through I-95 traffic at two hundred miles per hour. He swerved between hurtling semis and darting sedans. He blew past other bikes so close he could have snatched their riders from their seats. He rode the highway’s shoulder when all three lanes were plugged.

The ghost of anxiety had no trouble keeping up.

Serge would not hunt with him tonight.

The old pirate-turned-vampire was no model of consistency—or sanity—but he never passed up a chance to ride on Dominic’s bike. Never said no to hunting the most vice-infested streets in South Florida. Never hesitated to prowl together as that rarest of all vampire social structures, a team.

Not tonight. Tonight Serge was ‘busy.’

Dominic gave a derisive snort. The excuse was thinner than air. What it concealed, he couldn’t guess. Or, more accurately, didn’t want to guess.

No matter. He would hunt alone and satisfy the beast that lived in his heart. Tonight the blood he drank had to be spiced with terror. If he waited much longer, he would make corpses, and he was in no mood to dispose of those, much less explain them to Cassidy.

Thinking of her made him impatient to return home. The November night was soaked in cold foreboding. The only place he wanted to spend it was cocooned in her intimate warmth.

He took the next available exit ramp.

The disquiet continued to nip at the back of his skull. He couldn’t forget the way Serge had looked at him earlier, looking right through him like he hadn’t done in many months, seeing what only he could see—Dominic’s immediate future presumably, his ultimate fate maybe, madness most certainly. Whatever it was, Serge had opted to conjure an excuse and stay home tonight, which did not bode well. Serge’s glimpses of the future were rarely happy, and they always transpired in the most horrific of ways. But he’d sooner be staked in the morning sun than share any details of what was to come. That would have been ‘meddling’ in ‘what must be.’

Dominic scoffed again, but with less vigor this time. He had changed his routine tonight by choosing to hunt the urban sprawl of West Palm Beach rather than the greater jungle of Ft. Lauderdale or Miami. Would that stop whatever disaster awaited him?

Or put him squarely in its path?

Continue reading: https://wp.me/P3RYkc-h3

About S.K. Ryder

S.K. Ryder is a software developer by day, a scribe by night and answers to Susan any time.  She writes the type of stories she loves to read: heart-pounding adventures full of supernatural mysteries and relationships between strong, compelling characters. Though she calls South Florida home, she has also lived in Germany and Canada and has traveled widely, usually in the hot pursuit of wild and scenic nature. When not debugging code, complicating her characters’ lives or plotting her next rafting adventure down the Grand Canyon, she can be found beach combing, scuba diving, sailing or just hanging out with a good book. When push comes to shove, she can also bake a halfway decent cake and stand on her head, though not at the same time.

Newsletter: https://skryder.com/newsletter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sk.ryder.books/
Website: https://skryder.com
Amazon: https://amazon.com/author/skryder
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15560843.S_K_Ryder

UPDATE: The winners are…Snarky Mom Michelle and Colleen C.!

* * * * *

Romance, Adventure, Danger!

These three words are on the banner of my author homepage and are a good description of my writing. I’m a romantic suspense author who loves adventures, both in my fiction and in my travel life.

My first adventure was an airplane ride when I was two months old. It was some plane ride—a bumpy, scary one (so my mother told me) from Lima, Peru, on the coast, over the Andes Mountains, to a then small dirt landing strip in a place called Tingo Maria. Tingo, as the natives refer to the town, is on the Amazon side of the mountains and is the home of the Bella Durmiente, Spanish for Sleeping Beauty. The Bella Durmiente is a mountain range of around 2200 feet in this jungle area. Looking at it from the town, it forms the silhouette of a reclining woman—a “sleeping beauty.”

Maybe the fact that I lived close to the Bella Durmiente for five years influenced the romance side of my writing. After all, Sleeping Beauty is a romantic tale, even if the heroine didn’t participate in saving herself. Tingo certainly influenced the adventure in my writing. The area around there, with it’s sometimes dangerous jungle habitat and its history of terrorist activity, provided part of the setting for my latest release, TO THE LIMIT, book three of the Shadow Heroes series. I also added some details about driving over the Andes—the altitude, soroche (altitude sickness), and the desolate terrain.

In this mixed setting, I placed Mary Beth Williams, in effect a “fish out of water,” and Nicholas Romero, an ex-soldier turned diplomat. Theirs is a romantic suspense adventure that challenges not only their lives but also their hearts.

GIVEAWAY!!

I’m giving away one copy of the very sexy Dancing in the Dark (Kindle, Nook or iBooks), book one of the Shadow Heroes series, to two people who answer this question:

What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done?

To the Limit

“To the Limit puts the romance in romantic adventure. Dramatic, emotional, and steamy as the South American jungle. Loved it!” –RWA Honor Roll author Ann Voss Peterson

A desperate woman…
Since scandal rocked her life, Mary Beth Williams has only trusted one person: her brother. Now he’s been kidnapped by narcoterrorists in a remote part of San Mateo. With only ten days to ransom him, she seeks out ex-soldier turned diplomat/negotiator, Nicholas Romero, the only man who can help.

An old score…
The last thing Nick needs is a distraction from settling a score with the powerful general responsible for killing his cousin. But when he learns that Mary Beth might provide him a way to achieve his goal, he agrees to help. It isn’t until they’re deep in the San Matean jungle, pursued by the general’s forces, that Nick realizes what a mistake he’s made. Because the beautiful American tempts him with passion and a future he cannot claim.

A secret buried in the past
Fighting distrust and desire, Nick and Mary Beth work to uncover a dangerous truth. But Nick didn’t count on exposing his own secret…one that could cost both their hearts and their lives.

Limited time only: To the Limit is available at the reduced price of $0.99.

Buy links:
Amazon : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HMYHNW
Kobo : https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/to-the-limit-10
iBooks : https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/to-the-limit/id1234795507?mt=11
Nook : https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/to-the-limit-virginia-kelly/1100335688?type=eBook

About the Author

Virginia Kelly is an award nominated author who loves to travel. She lives in Florida with her family.

Website : https://virginiakelly.net
Facebook : https://facebook.com/virginiakellyauthor
Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3151712.Virginia_Kelly
Twitter : https://twitter.com/virginiagkelly
Pinterest : https://pinterest.com/virginiagkelly

Some books take more time to write than others. I’m celebrating the release that took me years to write. We’re talking numerous rounds of edits where I thought I’d never get through the comments. I told myself to just forget it, I have other books to write. But I kept going back to it to write and rewrite the book that I couldn’t let go. Now, many versions and countless rounds of editing later, I am thrilled to announce my new release, When Darkness Whispers.

When Darkness Whispers

Some memories are better left forgotten…

Haunted by an unclear past, biologically enhanced Marine, Eva Montreaux, can’t be distracted from her mission. With American servicemen being brutally murdered on the island of Okinawa, it’s more than priority. It’s critical. But when her investigation brings her face to face with Marcos Delacruz, it triggers memories. Ones she lost. Memories that somehow include him.

Marcos Delacruz has tried to forget the woman who left him with nothing but empty promises. Even now, three years later, Eva doesn’t seem to express any guilt over breaking his heart. In truth, she seems to barely recognize him. This deployment has been challenging enough with too many restless spirits haunting the island. But when his own investigation forces him to cross paths with her once more, Marcos discovers there may be a deeper truth.

With the number of murders climbing rapidly and the rising need to track the murderer across the tropical island, Eva struggles to reclaim what she lost. But the island holds darker elements–a serial killer. One that doesn’t appear to be human.

Thrust into a world she can’t escape, Eva must discover a way to stop a murderer from destroying anyone else’s future, but how can she succeed if she can’t even remember what role Marcos played in her past?

When Darkness Whispers is a paranormal military romance you won’t want to put down! Go undercover with a supernatural team into a world of vampires, gargoyles, shifters, demons, and ghosts. If you like haunting mystery, spine-tingling suspense, and Japanese mythology, you’ll love When Darkness Whispers!

 Read now! 
https://books2read.com/whispers 

Lisa Carlisle
USA Today Bestselling Author of Fiery and Forbidden Romance
Sign up for new releases and specials at
lisacarlislebooks.com

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