Friday, July 17, 2015

99 Cent Sale for Love's Battle by Angela Hayes

If love isn't worth fighting for, what is?

Love's Battle is on sale for 99 cents July 17-July 31

Love Howard has more than a knack for matchmaking. Born from a forbidden passion and a twelve-hundred-year-old promise, she and her sisters can literally see true love. And while Love has no problem bringing other couples together, her own romantic life could use a little help.

Danton DeAngelo has always been well grounded in reality. So it throws him for no small loop when the woman he’s fallen for believes that she’s been reincarnated eleven times and can actually see true love.

Now Danton is faced with the biggest decision of his life. Accept Love for who she really is, or walk away from her forever.

Title: Love's Battle 
Genres: Time Travel, Paranormal, Fantasy 
Rating: Sensual (PG13) 
Page Count: 310

Excerpt
             The hand Love pressed to her brow was visibly shaking. “There’s something I need to tell you. I just need you to keep an open mind.”
            “What is it? Are you sick?” Danton asked.
            “No, I’m not sick.” Her voice trembled on a forced laugh. “It’s something else. Something I‘ve been trying to prepare you for. This would be so much easier if you believed in magic. If you could believe that what I’m about to tell you is the honest truth.”
            Turning, Love opened the iron chest, the hinges groaning with the effort as specks of rust littered the floor. From its depths she pulled out a clear plastic bag that she held tight to her chest, eyes closed, before handing it to a confused Danton.
            “This is my tartan, my plaid. Before it faded and was dinner for the moths, it was once patterned in checks of green, gray, and brown. The purple and white stripes that ran through the hem identified the wearer as part of the royal family.” Love tapped the plastic, her finger pointing out where each color should be. “It was a gift from my father. The first and only time my sister’s and I met him, he was on his deathbed, we were eighteen. A week later our mother died in the same moment he drew his last breath.” Needing the extra air Love drew a breath of her own. “That day was the thirteenth of February, eight-hundred and fifty-eight AD. My father was Cinaed mac Alpin, crowned king of the Picts and Gaels. He was Scotland’s first king.”
            “Eight- hundred and fifty-eight?” That couldn’t be right, she was only twenty-five. “Don’t you mean Nineteen-eighty-seven?”
            “No. I was born for the first time in Scotland during the middle of the ninth century.”


Buy links:

Book Trailer:
http://youtu.be/t2_eJMzk9wA   or embedded you tube link   :<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/t2_eJMzk9wA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Author Bio:
A married mother of two, I split my time between bringing characters to life by computer, and yarn to life with needle and hook. You can find me at www.authorangelahayes.blogspot.com where I help connect readers and the author’s they love.


Friday, July 10, 2015

Book Review: Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett


Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett

I thought I knew rain. I’m not too proud to admit I cower in a corner during hurricanes. You try keeping your cool when screeching winds blow raindrops sideways from the sky. Seriously, sideways rain. I swear during the last storm there were whitecaps in my toilet. Now, that’s rain.

However, storms are only a small part of rain’s mystique. Cynthia Barnett, an award winning environmental journalist, gives a fascinating account of rain’s cultural, historic, scientific, religious, and, yes, even musical effect on humankind. There’s a surprise on every page, beginning with the shape of a shower. Rain is not a conglomeration of droplets. Instead it falls like “tiny parachutes, their tops rounded because of air pressure from below.” Since there is no standard global measurement for rain, its description is often personal. That’s why it rains cats and dogs here, but “shoemakers’ apprentices in Denmark, chair legs in Greece, ropes in France, pipe stems in the Netherlands, and wheelbarrows in the Czech Republic.”

Barnett describes the important roles rain has played in such far flung topics as presidential elections, human evolution and fashion design. She even tackles the effect of a wet versus dry climate on spiritual development. Monotheistic religions were born in the arid climates of the Middle East while people of damp rainy lands worshiped many gods. In the dry desert it made sense that a god could create something out of nothing. While in rain-soaked lands, where flora and fauna abounded, life was seen in a continuous circle of birth, death, and rebirth.

The best writers on nature and the environment weave words with a lyrical skill. Barnett is no exception. You will never hear a rainstorm the same way again after reading her description of a walk through the Hoh Rain Forest in western Washington State. “Drops strike a muffled plunk in the moss, a gentle splat on the muddy trail, a solid thwack against the mammoth logs and tree roots, a quiet pluck on fern fronds, and a louder snap when they hit the maple leaves scattered on the forest floor.” Nice, huh? Makes you want to ditch the umbrella.

Good science books are not dull and preachy recitation of facts. Barnett comes across with a cheeky sense of humor. (Global rain patterns are described as Mother Earth’s Bikini.) An entire chapter is even devoted to rain’s effect on entertainment; from the artistic use of rain wands in movies to the development of grunge rock. Could Kurt Cobain have written Nirvana’s angst-ridden songs in sunny Miami Beach? Would there have been any grunge rock at all if Seattle’s climate wasn’t so dreary. Barnett argues convincingly that rain “can create a mood and inspire a melody.”

This is a lovely book with an ecological lesson that falls as gently as a summer shower. Humans plow native grasses and settle in floodplains and expect rain to behave. Instead of craving mastery over the elements, it’s time we learned to live in harmony with them. I highly recommend this book. Save it for rainy day and you’ll never look at the sky the same way again.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.



Friday, July 3, 2015

A Heavenly Sale for 99 Cents: Heavenly Desire by J. L. Sheppard

Heavenly Desire by J. L. Sheppard
99 Cent Sale thru July 10th

Will he sacrifice his wings for a woman he loves but can never keep?

Clyde, an angel, battles the one thing he believes will lead to his fall from heaven—his new found emotions, forbidden among his kind. Nonetheless, the Angel Lords promise to promote him to warrior when he completes his last assignment—to find Jade. When he does, emotions he never knew possible arise. For the first time in two thousand years, he cursed his existence. Knowing she can never be his, will he sacrifice his wings for a woman he loves but can't keep?

Excerpt:
He bent toward her, wrapped one arm around her waist, the other around her back, then buried his face in the crook of her neck and inhaled. Relishing the feel of her body melded against his, he forgot the worries consuming him. She soothed his ache with a mere touch, with a mere embrace.

Exactly what he’d wanted, exactly what he needed.

She then pressed her full lips against his cheek, kissing him lightly. An innocent kiss. There was no passion behind it, but an unconscious consuming need, one he’d never felt, swelled inside him—desire. It was exciting, overwhelming and terrifying, blocking logic and reason. All he wanted now was a single kiss. All he could think about was how her soft lips would feel pressed against his.

Marvelous, he concluded.

It was absurd to want what he did and feel what he felt, for he was an angel. Carnal desires even as insignificant as kisses were for others, for all others except his breed, and yet he felt it so deeply it seared him.

The desire that gripped him didn’t release him even after she unhooked her arms from around his neck, and the warmth of her body melted away. There he stood, immobile, battling the desire she’d sparked. He didn’t want to leave yet knew he had to before he’d acted out his longing.

He willed his body to move. Finally, he placed one foot behind the other, stepped back and strode away praying the yearning he had no right to feel for a woman who would never be his would soon subside.

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Author Bio:
J.L. Sheppard was born and raised in Miami, Florida where she still lives with her husband and son. As a child, her greatest aspiration was to become a writer. She read often, kept a journal and wrote countless poems. She attended Florida International University and graduated in 2008 with a Bachelors in Communications. During her senior year, she interned at NBC Miami, WTVJ. Following the internship, she was hired and worked in the News Department for three years. It wasn’t until 2011 that she set her heart and mind into writing her first completed novel, Demon King’s Desire, which was published in January of 2013. Besides reading and writing, she enjoys traveling and spending quality time with family and friends.