BLOG TOUR! Author Louisa Kelley and a giveaway!

HI, frenz! So…Dirt Road Books just released author Louisa Kelley’s first book in the Shift series, Fianna the Gold, and I am hosting today’s stop on the Fianna tour!

It’s a F/F dragon shifter contemporary fantasy story set in the Pacific Northwest. Adventure! Romance! Suspense! Intrigue!

And did I mention DRAGONS?

And dragon SHIFTERS?

YEAH! ALL OF THAT! Below, find all kinds of cool Fianna stuff, including an excerpt AND the chance to win books!

So come on! Spend some time with Fianna!
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Happy Friday! Here’s a Halloween reading for you! (plus giveaway!)

Hey, all!

So I decided to post a reading from my Halloween-flavored book, The Secret of Sleepy Hollow, which is my re-telling of the classic American ghost story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the short story by Washington Irving (which you can read at Project Gutenberg).

Many of you probably know the story. Or at least parts of it. A lanky, superstitious teacher Ichabod Crane goes to a village in 1790 ostensibly for his job and seems to take a shine to a local woman, Katrina Van Tassel, but local hero guy Abraham “Brom” Bones also has his eye on her. The village is also allegedly haunted by the ghost of a headless horseman. One night at a harvest party, Ichabod gets turned down by Katrina and he leaves. It’s dark and creepy and his over-active imagination created all kinds of scary scenarios…suffice it to say that Ichabod may have met up with the horseman and he ends up disappearing from the village.

There are also other factors involved — was the horseman actually one of the local townsman who didn’t want Crane moving in on Katrina, one of the local women? Did Ichabod just get caught up in local ghost stories and psych himself out and scare himself so badly that he sustained some kind of fatal injury?

Irving leaves Crane’s fate open-ended for conjecture, which made it a lot of fun for me to explore what might have happened to him. And that’s exactly what I did in my re-telling.

SYNOPSIS

Tabitha “Abby” Crane, a doctoral student working on her thesis, doesn’t allow herself much time outside academia. Fortunately, she’s managed to squeeze in a research trip over Halloween weekend to the historical society of Sleepy Hollow, New York, where she hopes to uncover new research on the notorious town’s most infamous legend — that of the headless horseman. But she has a personal stake in this trip: Abby’s own ancestor, Ichabod Crane, disappeared mysteriously over two hundred years ago, perhaps at the hands of the ghostly horseman.

Abby has no reason to expect anything of Sleepy Hollow beyond immersing herself in archival collections and enjoying its Halloween festivities, but then she crosses paths with Katie, who makes her head spin and her heart pound. When Katie invites her on a nighttime visit to the glen where the horseman allegedly rides, Abby can’t say no, upending her plans for a quiet research retreat. And when Abby and Katie, who has her own ties to the famous story, find what may be the key to the disappearance of Ichabod Crane all those years ago, love, legend, and magic intermingle, making clear that Sleepy Hollow has plans of its own for yet another Crane.
———

So in the scene I’m going to read to you, Abby and her crush girl and fellow history geek Katie are in a pub and Katie invites her to go to the glen outside town, where the horseman allegedly rides. Lots of ghost hunters hang out there, and it’s a major Halloween attraction, so there are more hunters than usual, as everybody is gearing up for the big Halloween celebration in a couple of days, which involves someone local (a strictly guarded secret) dressed up as the horseman who rides Halloween night through the glen. So Abby agrees to go to the glen with Katie…

Have a listen. 🙂

And if you’d like the opportunity to WIN an ebook copy, head on over to Women and Words AT THIS LINK and leave a comment. I’ll pick a winner or two on Tuesday, October 31 at 9 PM EST!

Wanna buy a copy? COOL!

Ylva Publishing
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon Australia
Amazon Germany
Nook
Kobo
Smashwords

Happy Halloween (early)!

ORDER UP blog tour! Excerpt by Emma Weimann!

DARLINGS! It’s outta control up in here on this site. OUTTA CONTROL. We had Rebekah Weatherspoon, Jaye Markham, and now we’re having Emma Weimann!

I freaking love having all these people hanging out with me. Today we’ve got Emma Weimann, who scored a Goldie for her first novel, Heart’s Surrender.

Here, however, she’s got a story in Order Up: A Menu of Lesbian Romance & Erotica.

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In “Something Salty, Something Sweet,” Emma tells the story of two women who have been together a while but still find and make time for each other.

So I’ll turn it over to her, now, and let her serve you some delicious-ness.

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ORDER UP BLOG TOUR with author Jaye Markham!

Hello, people! Well, as it turns out, my blog is getting a lot of action (ha!) during the Order Up Blog Tour. Which is fine n’ dandy with me.

Today I’m pleased to introduce Jaye Markham, whose story “Not Spam Again!” deals with women in the armed services during World War II in London.

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I’m now going to turn this over to Jaye, who will give you some awesome historical (herstorical) background to her story and to the larger issue of women serving in WWII.

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Excerpt from my story “Red”

Hi, kids! I’m slowly emerging from my hiatus. Heh. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from my story “Red,” which appears in the Bold Strokes Books anthology Myth and Magic: Queer Fairy Tales, ed. by Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman.

It was JUST published in December 2014, and in case you couldn’t tell from the title, it’s a bunch of stories that re-tell fairy tales queerly. That is, LGBTQ-ly! WOOO! The list of authors: Andrew J. Peters, Clifford Henderson, Allison Wonderland, J. Leigh Bailey, Andi Marquette, Rob Rosen, Veronica Wilde, Juliann Rich, Sasha Payne, Stacia Seaman, E.J. Gahagan, Alex Stitt, Barbara Davies, Rhidian Brenig-Jones, Victoria Oldham, and Jane Fletcher and Joey Bass.

Anyhoo, below, find the intro to my story from this collection.

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From the Hat Down Blog Tour

From the Hat Down Blog Tour Banner

Hi, all! This week I’m doing a blog tour for my latest novel, From the Hat Down, thanks to Book Enthusiast Promotions!

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This is the follow-up to my Rainbow Award runner-up, the novella From the Boots Up. So you’ll see it posted in a variety of places — thanks, peeps! MUCH appreciated! Anyway, here’s more info plus some goodies to check out:

Synopsis

Meg Tallmadge is a veterinarian at a clinic in Laramie, Wyoming. She’s got a great job, great friends, deep ties to the family ranch, and big plans for her vet future. Sure, there are bumps in the road, like her mom’s continued denial about who Meg is and her painful and infuriating attempts to make Meg a “proper” woman. Then there’s Meg’s recent breakup with a girlfriend, which has her wondering why she can’t seem to open up to relationships. But Meg knows that life is messy, and sometimes all you can do is get through and shake it off. What she can’t seem to shake off, however, is her past.HatDown2a-small

It’s been almost ten years to the day since she met the love of her life, and about eight since she let her go. Meg has a hard time admitting that maybe she didn’t really let go, and that maybe some things you never really get over, no matter how hard you try. But her past is half a world away, caught up in her own life, relationship, and journalism career, and Meg isn’t one to chase the ghosts of past relationships. Even if they send you a birthday card and nudge what you thought were the closed-off parts of your heart. After all, second chances are the stuff of fantasies and movies where the good guy always gets a happy ending. You can’t count on something like that.

Or can you?

Excerpt

Click this link to read one!

Playlist

These songs and/or artists played a role in the writing of this novel.

Giveaway

Holy moly! Click to get into the running for a $25 Amazon gift card.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Where to find Andi

Website
Twitter @andimarquette
Facebook author page
Goodreads, From the Boots Up
Goodreads, From the Hat Down

From the Boots Up

Where it all started:
from-the-boots-up-website-use
Get it on Kindle.
More info here.

Thanks, all, for joining me. Happy reading, happy writing!

JOVE BELLE! Uncommon Romance blog tour!

Hi, all!

I’m pleased to be a stop on my fellow author Jove Belle’s blog tour for her Uncommon Romance. Below you’ll find all kinds of goodness and info about her and her book, so sit back for more info and teaser stuff.

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JOVE BELLE

was born and raised against a backdrop of orchards and potato fields. The youngest of four children, she was raised in a conservative, Christian home and began asking why at a very young age, much to the consternation of her mother and grandmother. At the customary age of eighteen, she fled southern Idaho in pursuit of broader minds and fewer traffic jams involving the local livestock. The road didn’t end in Portland, Oregon, but there were many confusing freeway interchanges that a girl from the sticks was ill-prepared to deal with. As a result, she has lived in the Portland metro area for over fifteen years and still can’t figure out how she manages to spend so much time in traffic when there’s not a stray sheep or cow in sight.

She lives with her partner of seventeen years. Between them they share a collection of six children, one dog, two cats, a mortgage payment, one sedan, and a cushy SUV big enough to hold the Lesbian Brady Bunch on their family outings. One day she hopes to live in a house that doesn’t generate a never ending honey-do list.

Incidentally, she never stopped asking why, but did expand her arsenal of questions to include who, what, when, where and, most important of all, how. In those questions, a story is born.
Her books include The Job (coming October 2014) Uncommon Romance, Love & Devotion, Edge of Darkness, Split the Aces, Chaps, and Indelible. They are available at Bold Strokes Books.

Jove’s latest, Uncommon Romance, is a collection of three steamy, sexy, erotic novellas.

SYNOPSIS
Happily ever after doesn’t look the same for every couple.

In “Raw Silk”, happily married June and Ashlyn Phillips occasionally enjoy adding another dynamic to their sex life. When Katerina “Kat” VanderVort enters June’s office one day, she sets her sights on June. Lucky for her, Ashlyn loves to indulge her wife’s fantasies.

In “On Her Knees”, Simone Davies is finally happy. That is, until her chief tormentor and biggest crush, Abby Nelson, shows up at her firm’s holiday party. Together they struggle to forget the past and build a future together.

In “Hollis”, homicide detective Jude Lassiter pushes a little too hard, and her instructor at a FBI anti-terrorism training session, Special Agent Beverly Hollis, knows exactly how to punish her. Jude is all too willing to submit.

And here’s an EXCERPT from “Raw Silk,” to whet (wet?) your whistle:

“The client hit on me. A lot.”

Ash swallowed hastily, her eyes narrowed and heated. “Bastard. I’ll kill him.” Jealousy made Ashlyn forget details.

“Her. The client is a her, remember? Katerina VanderVort.”

“That’s right.” The flash of anger was replaced by a curious, if not a little devious, smile. “Katerina?”
“Yeah, she told me to call her Kat.” June pushed her salad around with her fork. She wasn’t nearly as hungry as Ash, but she’d remain at the table for as long as Ash did.

“Kat?” Ash laughed lightly. “Is she hot?”

June nodded reluctantly. Ash was laughing now, but she didn’t want to give her wife any cause for genuine jealousy, either. “She is. She’s dark, like Mediterranean. She doesn’t match her Scandinavian last name at all.”

“Did you ask her why?”

“No, I was too busy trying to get her to stop touching me.”

“Wait, she touched you?” The jealousy June feared threatened to surface again.

“Sort of. She sat really close, like close enough for our legs to touch.”

Ash smiled again, then slid her chair closer to June. She stopped about a foot away. “Like this?”
June shook her head. “Closer.”

Ash shifted again but stopped before they touched. “Like this?” Ash leaned in intimately close and spoke directly into June’s ear. Her hot breath puffed against June’s skin, and she almost forgot what Ash was asking.

“Closer.” Her answer came out hushed and secretive.

Ash moved until her chair touched June’s and their legs touched from floor to knee. She slipped her bare foot over the top of June’s and caressed it. “Like this?” Ash whispered the question with her lips pressed to June’s ear.

June nodded, but she couldn’t force herself to speak. The words were trapped in an emotional bunch in her chest.

“And you liked it.” Ash worked the buttons on her blouse open in the middle until she was able to reach her fingers in and touch skin. June jumped at the contact. Ash rolled the backs of her fingers over June’s abs, tickling and teasing. “Didn’t you?”

June gasped and found her voice once again. It was shaky and uncertain, but it worked. “I did.”

Ash pulled her shirt free from her skirt and smoothed her palm flat against her stomach. She draped her other hand over the back of June’s chair and played her fingers through the ends of June’s hair. She pushed the hair out of the way and bent her mouth to June’s neck. Her kiss was hot and open mouthed, and she sucked hard on the skin where neck met shoulder. “Did she do this?”

She moaned and reflexively clutched Ash’s head to hold her close. She held her body tense and perfectly still. “No.”

Ash worked her way up until her mouth was once again upon June’s ear. She sucked the lobe into her mouth and breathed hot air over the wet skin. Excitement rushed to the surface and June groaned.

“You want her to.” Ash massaged her hand through June’s hair. The touch was rhythmic and lulling and robbed her of her ability to focus on anything but Ash’s fingers against her skin and in her hair. Ash nipped the sensitive skin behind her ear. “Didn’t you?”

Want more? Check it out:

Amazon
B&N
iBooks

You can find Jove at all of these places:
Facebook
Twitter
Website
Blog
Goodreads author
Goodreads book

HAPPY FRIDAY!

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Playlist, Land of Entrapment

Hi, all!

OMG I’ve totally been going nutso over in Spotify with playlists. I just did one for the first in my mystery series, Land of Entrapment. It’s 30 songs (OMG WTF SHE WENT CRAY CRAY OVER THERE)/artists that served as a soundtrack for this particular book.

As I noted over on Women and Words, each one of my projects tends to have its own soundtrack, though some songs/artists have crossover with more than one project. Speaking of Women and Words, I posted the playlist for my novella, From the Boots Up, over there. Here’s the linkie dinkie.

Anyhoo, here’s the playlist for Land of Entrapment.

It may take a little bit to load fully on your device, so don’t panic. Here’s a URL for it, too, in case you just can’t stand it and you have to go to Spotify RIGHT NOW, dang it. If you don’t have a Spotify account, you can log in with Facebook.

And now, here’s some MOAR INFO about Land of Entrapment:

K.C. Fontero left New Mexico in the wake of a bitter breakup to take an academic fellowship in Texas. With a doctorate in sociology and expertise in white supremacist groups, she’s well on her way to an academic career. But a plea for help from her ex, Melissa, brings K.C. back to Albuquerque to find Melissa’s troubled younger sister. Megan has disappeared with her white supremacist boyfriend and K.C. knows she has the expertise to track the mysterious group, and she knows she’ll be doing a public service to uncover it. What she doesn’t know is how far into her past she’ll have to go to find both Megan and herself and the deeper she digs into the group, the greater the danger she faces.

Winner, 2009, Golden Crown Literary Society award, best lesfic mystery
Winner, 2009, Lesbian Fiction Readers’ Choice award, lesfic mystery

Here’s an excerpt.

MOAR FUN STUFF!

Interview with K.C. Fontero, the main character
Interview with photographer Sage Crandall, K.C.’s love interest

And there you go. Happy reading, happy writing, happy listening, happy Friday!

These Boots were made for readin’

From the Boots Up

Hiya, peeps!

So you may see some bloggers ’round these parts doing some From the Boots Up pimpage for me today. It’s a bit of a “book blitz,” and I’d like to thank Debra over at Book Enthusiast Promotions for helping me out. Thanks, D!

At any rate, I know. A lot of you have already read Boots. Hope you liked it.

But some of you haven’t. And if you haven’t, well, I’ve got some stuff right here that hopefully will whet your appetite to do so. AND I’m giving away a copy (it’s an ebook) through Rafflecopter. If you want in on that, here. Notice how mysteriously it’s worded:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

That said, HERE’S SOME NEWS.

I’m giving those of you who have read it a Boots reminder because in a couple of months, I’ll be releasing the follow-up. That’s right, friends. More Meg and Gina, this time in a novel-length work. I’ll be unveiling the cover next month along with some other teaser stuff (hee hee) to get you all jazzed (hopefully) for it. So stay tuned for that.

Got that? The follow-up to Boots is JUST AROUND THE CORNER.

So go on and check out some of the goodies I’ve posted with this here blitz to get you in the mood (hopefully). And thanks for reading.

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