All In by Melanie Jayne

June 13, 2016June 4, 2016 / tasz1976 / Leave a comment

All In by Melanie Jayne

Date of Publication: June 9, 2016

Blurb

Slow and steady wins the race.

Remington Cooper hopes that the same is true for winning Francesca Luchetti’s heart. He wooed and won her interest in Let It Ride.

Now they have returned to their lives in different cities with the demands of their busy careers getting in the way.

Work has taken over Francesca’s life and ruined her first marriage. Long distance relationships are a challenge; add in the three hour time difference, her crazy sixteen hour days at The Red Rose Casino and her long held fears that she is unable to sustain a loving connection.

Remy is ready and willing to make Francesca’s dreams come true and has a plan in place. Can she make the needed changes in her life and learn to trust her heart to the man that’s put it all on the table?

For this relationship to work– Remy and Francesca must be All In.

Available From

Amazon (Kindle)

About Melanie Jayne

I live on a grain farm southeast of Indianapolis, Indiana with my very patient husband of twenty-five years and our two English Mastiffs, Buster Brown and Ginger. I graduated from Indiana University when it was the #1 party school in the country and I took great pride in helping the school achieve that ranking.

I haven’t figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I change careers every decade. I have worked in retail, a federal courtroom, travelled across the state closing loans, and behind the scenes in a casino.

I’ve always had an active imagination so when a good friend suggested that I try writing a book, I thought why not, it should be fun. It has, but I have had to work very hard to learn how to do it. I am so lucky for the outpouring of advice and education from so many in the industry, plus the hand-holding and cheerleading from My Gurls. I also have an incredible Ad-man-istrative Assistant, who tries to keep me under control. He rolls his eyes so much that I worry about a permanent condition.

When I ‘m not working or writing type stuff, I sleep, watch courtroom TV shows, and sports. I was a competitive pro-am ballroom dancer for ten years and I read as many books as I can.

I love to attend Author-Reader Conventions and look forward to meeting you.

Find Melanie Jayne Online

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Jewels of Desire – Duo #1

January 18, 2016January 17, 2016 / tasz1976 / 1 Comment

Jewels of Desire – Duo #1

By Erica Lucke Dean & Elise Delacroix

Genre: Erotic Romance

Diamond Duplicity:

Passion hotter than stolen diamonds Lucy Matthews can’t believe her crazy luck. While she’s on a date with Mr. Wrong, her evening tilts from merely unfortunate to downright surreal when his attempt to sneak them into a club lands them in the middle of a diamond heist.

When gorgeous Max Callaghan discovers a hot and disheveled Lucy clutching his bag of diamonds at the crime scene, he brands her with a fiery kiss. His gang wants her dead, so Max rescues her by claiming her as his girlfriend. Lucy soon realizes with sudden, pulse-pounding clarity that she needs Max for another reason entirely, but their passionate ruse might not survive the intense pressure of a high-stakes mob war.

Ruby Ransom:

Romancing the ruby…

Red Callaghan climbs into bed after a wild night of clubbing… and wakes up with a gun to her head. Fortunately, she knows more about weapons than her would-be kidnapper, and she manages to disarm him then turn the tables by seducing him.

When shy chemist Will gets roped into settling his father’s gambling debt, he thinks the ruby he’s tasked to steal is a precious stone. He soon finds out it’s actually the daughter of a rival crime lord.

After striking a compromise, Red and Will collide in one explosive sexual encounter after another while executing their plan to teach both sides a lesson.

Author Bios

Elise Delacroix married her high school sweetheart and moved to a remote hideaway far enough from civilization that she was forced to create her own entertainment. When playing charades got old, she came up with a plan to write erotic romance in order to keep life exciting. She may spend most of her days lounging in a pair of red flannel pajamas, but her characters wouldn’t be caught dead in anything less than satin and lace.

While Elise also writes in other genres using a pen name, it’s her collaborations with Erica Lucke Dean where she lets her naughty side come out to play. And oh, what a naughty side she has.

Erica Lucke Dean

After walking away from her career as a business banker to pursue writing full-time,

Erica Lucke Dean moved from the hustle and bustle of the big city to a small tourist town in the North Georgia Mountains, where she lives in a 90-year-old haunted farmhouse with her workaholic husband, her 180 lb lap dog, and at least one ghost.

When she’s not writing or tending to her collection of crazy chickens and diabolical ducks, she’s either reading bad fan fiction or singing karaoke in the local pub. Much like the main character in her first book, To Katie With Love, Erica is a magnet for disaster and has been known to trip on air while walking across flat surfaces.

How she’s managed to survive this long is one of life’s great mysteries.

Erica on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EricaLuckeDean

Erica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericaluckedean

Jewels of Desire on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1PnSIA7

Jewels of Desire on Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1XQYTQf

Jewels of Desire on Red Adept Publishing: http://bit.ly/1PnSSaz

GUEST POST

Sex and the married writer

By Erica Lucke Dean

There, I said it. Sex. Sex. Sex. Shall I spell it out for you? S-E-X.

To say I have sex on the brain tonight would be an understatement, but sadly…the brain is the only place I’m having it.

Maybe I should explain…

Basically, I’m at it again. No, sadly, not sex. I’m writing. Specifically, sex scenes. And can I just say, this is a bit more exciting than I remembered from the last time I wrote sex into a book. After all, writing about sex is infinitely less sexy than actually having sex. But maybe I’m just having a bit more fun with it this time. Or rather, my characters are having a lot of fun with it. As for me, I’m wearing sweat pants and no deodorant. I mean, not on purpose. I ran out. I’ll get more, I promise. But in the meantime, I’m struggling for different ways to say things without sounding like I’m writing about one of my roosters again. And it’s not because I’m afraid of those words. Honest, I’m not. Ok, maybe I am. Although, I have no idea why. Well, they do make me giggle a little…and cringe a lot.

It could have something to do with the look on my husband’s face when I read the chapter I’d just finished. Did I mention I read it out loud? His mouth actually dropped open and he just stared at me with this horrified expression on his face. And then he stammered out, “You can’t…I mean…you can’t write this…what if kids read it? What if OUR kids read this?” To which I reminded him, “I’m not writing books for kids. Besides, our adult children already know what I write.” And they do. They just shake their heads and pretend to be clueless.

Then the really embarrassing part happened. My husband actually asked if I’d ever done any of those things I’d written. Because, hey, I put some crazy stuff in there. Things I wouldn’t admit to if I had done them. And just for the record, if it made you shudder with revulsion then nope, I’ve never done that. Never.

But I think I might be jealous of my own fictional characters.

The Weight of Guilt

January 17, 2016January 10, 2016 / tasz1976 / 1 Comment

The Weight of Guilt
By Jon Ripslinger
Genre: Young Adult

Book Description

Driving home from a bonfire party, eighteen-year-old John Hawk crashes, killing his girlfriend, Riley. Bullied and tormented at school, his guilty conscience crushing him, John transfers to a school on the banks of the Mississippi River, where he attracts the eye of the principal’s daughter, Megan Jones. Though he’s reluctant, she convinces him to be her prom date. The morning after prom, Principal Jones reports Megan missing. Four days later, her body is recovered from the Mississippi River, and John becomes the prime suspect in her death, a rape and murder case.

Charley Cotton, Megan’s best friend, knows that Megan had a secret, but she doesn’t trust John because of his past. John is desperate to avoid adding to the shame he carries for Riley’s death—it’s destroying his life. With Charley’s help, he learns that others in Megan’s life have a motive to keep her quiet. But every effort they make to uncover the truth edges them closer to a desperate murderer with everything to lose.

Falling in Love

No doubt every writer has lows in his career.

I had one that lasted seven years.

In 1992 I found an agent to represent the second novel I’d written—the first one still remains in my file drawer. The book was titled Triangle. My agent also found a publisher, Harcourt Brace, and in 1994 the book hit the marketplace with good reviews. The publisher quickly offered me a contract for a second book and paid me $1500, half of my $3000 advance. Man, I thought I was headed for a brilliant writing career as a young adult novelist.

But I was wrong.

The editor who worked with me on Triangle left Harcourt Brace, and though I’d signed a contact with HB, the company decided not to publish my second book, but I was allowed to keep my $1500. Not only that, my agent decided she no longer wanted to represent fiction, so she dropped me.

So there I was: 1996, no agent, no publisher.

What did I do? I kept writing and kept looking for a new agent.

And I’ll tell you why.

First of all, I fell in love with my writing space at home. The room was once a bedroom for my two daughters. But when they moved out, I quickly moved in. A full-sized metal office desk with five drawers faces the west wall. On it sits my iMac and an HP all-in-one Deskjet printer. On the wall above the desk is a four-foot long shelf holding thirty-five hardcover and paperback books (I just counted them) about the craft of writing fiction. Above the shelf hangs a clock. Other walls support shelves the hold perhaps 100 paperback and hardcover novels that I bought and read before I discovered amazon.com and Kindle. Two large inspirational posters that I glance at every day hang on the walls. One says: Miracles happen only to people who believe in them. The other: Happy are those who dream dreams and are eager to pay the price to make them happen. The room is my sanctuary, a place where I can meet with the characters in my head and record their adventures. I think every writer needs a space like that. Without it, I think I would have quite writing.

Secondly, I didn’t quite because I fell in love with the process of writing.

I simply love to return to the computer every morning and hook up again with my story friends. Listening to them telling their story in my head and recording it are the most important things I can do that day. I like to start at maybe six o’clock in the morning and write until nine and then have breakfast. Grocery shopping, lawn cutting, snow blowing, doctor appointments, and everything else can wait until later in the day. If something drastic happens and I can’t get to the computer with my story friends, I feel guilty. I don’t try to meet them later in the day. Morning is the only time for me and for us.

I’ll offer this somewhat embarrassing statistic from my records. During the twenty plus years I’ve been writing YA novels, I have sent out over 200 book queries to agents and publishers and have had only nine books accepted for publication. Not a very good batting percentage. Would a person really do that, go through all that work, if he didn’t love his space and the process?

I don’t think so.

Author Bio

After Jon retired as a public high school English at Davenport West High school, he began a career as a young adult author. His credits include eight published YA novels, and he has signed a contract with Red Adept publishing for a ninth YA novel. Jon has been a presenter at the Pen-in-Hand workshops for the Midwest Writing Center, Davenport, IA, and for the David R. Collins Writers’ Conference held yearly at St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa. He has also published numerous short stories in Woman’s World, a leading woman’s weekly magazine. Jon and his wife live in Davenport, where their six children and their families also live. When not working on his computer crafting another story, Jon enjoys collecting music from the ’40s and ’50s playing pool, and spending time with his family.