Saturday, March 29, 2014

Excerpt from Coming Home, featured in Hot Soldier Boxed Set

COMING HOME

CHAPTER ONE


  Morgan Donnelly walked into the small shop as his Uncle's truck sped off behind him. Going to work with his uncle hadn't necessarily been his plan, but it was a hell of a lot better than being at loose ends. Having too much time to think just left him in a bad way. Surveying his surroundings, he frowned.
  Searching his vocabulary for a word to describe the pastry shop, the only thing he could come up with was ‘girly’. The hot pink walls and white wrought iron tables were bad enough, but the delicate crystal chandelier was just too much. He tried to play it cool, as if being in such places didn't make him feel horribly out of place. Setting his toolbox down, he resisted the urge to rub his thigh.
  His leg wasn’t hurting. Not too badly, at any rate. Though never pain free, he did have some good days to counteract the bad. It’d become habit, massaging those muscles throughout the course of the day, so they didn’t seize on him. The shrapnel was gone, but the scar tissue and nerve damage was something he’d be living with forever.
  That was the easy part. It was the loss of his military career, of being forced into an early retirement that made him cringe. He felt old, used up and put out to pasture. At forty two, he’d spent more of his life in the military than out. During the past year, having surgery after surgery, with more physical therapy than any one person should have to endure, he’d tolerated the other kind of therapy too.
Of course, his medical leave would be ending soon, and it would be decision time. Go back and ride a desk, pushing papers around while other men, no more than kids, went headlong into danger. Or…he could embrace civilian life. Those were the choices he'd been given. It wasn't much of a choice.
Initially, he’d resented it. After a time, he’d come to see its purpose. Being out in the world, things worked differently than they did in the military, and he was adjusting to it. It wasn’t easy though.
Without fatigues and a gun, it was like walking naked into a room full of strangers. He’d spent the entirety of his twenties and most of his thirties on army bases or in war zones. The fluffy pastry shop seemed foreign to him, but that was only one of the reasons he’d avoided it. He had a few more.
  A woman emerged from the back of the shop then, her red hair pinned up in some elaborate style that reminded him of old movies. He took one look at her and was instantly, painfully hard. With the physical toll of the surgeries and the painkillers, the exhaustion of therapy and, he was willing to admit it, a raging pity party, his libido had tanked. He’d accepted this as just a part of it, until he came back to Falls Creek and ran into Lexi Flynn.
One look at her and his libido had come back to raging life. It happened every time he saw her. He couldn’t even look at her without feeling all the blood rush south. War zones he could handle. Bullets, bombs, screaming superiors and an entire country wanting his head on a plate, that he could cope with and not even raise a sweat. One curvy redhead and he felt ready to run for the hills.
Try as he might, he couldn’t look away from her. She was what his aunt would’ve described as plump. He didn’t have a word to describe her other than beautiful. Smoking hot also came to mind. Lush. Sexy. Sweeter than any of the desserts she baked. That line of thought wasn’t helping him to keep his embarrassingly apparent boner in check.
  Moving forward, he stood close enough to the counter to provide camouflage. She’s just a woman. Of course, he was a man who hadn’t had sex with another person outside of his imagination in a long ass time. Then the fact she had breasts and a pulse, made it even harder to deal with.
That wasn’t really a fair assessment, he thought. She had amazing breasts—large, full, supported by industrial strength lingerie and perfectly displayed beneath a T-shirt that was snug in all the right places. Look at her face, Donnelly, before you blow more than just the job.
  “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t hear you come in,” she said breathlessly.
  She had one of those voices. A sexy, I just rolled out of bed from doing very naughty things type of voice. The southern drawl became just icing on the cake.
  Watching her place the stacks of pastry boxes on the counter, Morgan watched her move as if he'd been hypnotized. “Sorry,” he managed, his own voice cracking like a teenager. Clearing his throat, he continued, “I'm here to do the estimate for the kitchen reno.”
  “It's good that you're working with Jess! I worry about him.”
  Morgan nodded. The truth of the matter was, his uncle was helping him more than the other way around. There weren't too many employers who would be as understanding about all the limitations he faced or the fact of how those limitations came with a certain amount of unpredictability. Uncomfortable with the topic, he just nodded.
  “You know, Morgan, you’ve been back home for months and I think this is the first time I’ve even gotten to speak to you! That’s an absolute shame!”
  “Yes, ma’am.” The ma’am was instinct. Twenty plus years in the military had taught him to be polite out loud, even while being a total pervert on the inside. It made him nervous when he realized she knew who he was.
  “I didn’t think about it when I called...I didn’t realize you’d be working with him,” she uttered all this with a slight, concerned furrow of her perfectly arched eyebrows. “It won’t be awkward for you, will it? I mean, yes, Ashley is my sister, but she’s hardly ever here at the shop.”

  And there was the other reason he’d avoided Lexi Flynn. He hadn’t changed her diapers, but it’d been damned close. Ashley Flynn had been his girlfriend when he was a junior and she was a freshman. At the time, the woman who now stood before him had been a cherubic four year old. Fucking pervert.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Hot Soldier Boxed Set

Okay, anthologies are work. They are a lot of hard freakin' work. Herding cats kind of work. Don't get me wrong, I worked with amazing ladies who also happen to be amazing authors… but you've got kids, families, day jobs, illness and all the general insanity that happens in life, then you multiply all that by 6. Six. SIXXXX!

Still, it was worth it. So much more than worth it. We put together a beautiful book with six fantastic stories of love (with a healthy dose of lust thrown in) featuring men, and in some cases women, who are serving our country.

Sadly, not all of our servicemen and women get their happy endings. Not everyone comes home, and those that do, they don't always come home whole. Whether it's physical wounds and injuries, or the mental and emotional scars of facing horrific situations and your own mortality every day, these are brave people who deserve to be honored. I hope we achieved that. I BELIEVE that we did. Each of these stories takes a different approach. Some feature military personnel still on active duty, dreaming of their loved ones during their deployment. Still others are about the rigors of coming home and adjusting to a civilian life that just doesn't make sense anymore. All of them are about facing the challenges of being impacted by death, violence and injury and responding with courage, duty, honor, sacrifice and a dozen other things that make up what being part of our great military is all about.

I hope you all enjoy Hot Soldier, and I hope that it brings home to everyone, in some small way, that these people who serve our country aren't simply there for two years, or six months, or however long they are deployed. Pieces of them, their innocence, their hope, their faith and sometimes their hearts, will be in those places forever.





EXCERPT FROM COMING HOME by SERAPHINA DONAVAN




CHAPTER ONE

Morgan Donnelly walked into the small shop as his Uncle's truck sped off behind him. Going to work with his uncle hadn't necessarily been his plan, but it was a hell of a lot better than being at loose ends. Having too much time to think just left him in a bad way. Surveying his surroundings, he frowned. 
Searching his vocabulary for a word to describe the pastry shop, the only thing he could come up with was ‘girly’. The hot pink walls and white wrought iron tables were bad enough, but the delicate crystal chandelier was just too much. He tried to play it cool, as if being in such places didn't make him feel horribly out of place. Setting his toolbox down, he resisted the urge to rub his thigh. 
His leg wasn’t hurting. Not too badly, at any rate. Though never pain free, he did have some good days to counteract the bad. It’d become habit, massaging those muscles throughout the course of the day, so they didn’t seize on him. The shrapnel was gone, but the scar tissue and nerve damage was something he’d be living with forever. 
That was the easy part. It was the loss of his military career, of being forced into an early retirement that made him cringe. He felt old, used up and put out to pasture. At forty two, he’d spent more of his life in the military than out. During the past year, having surgery after surgery, with more physical therapy than any one person should have to endure, he’d tolerated the other kind of therapy too. 
Of course, his medical leave would be ending soon, and it would be decision time. Go back and ride a desk, pushing papers around while other men, no more than kids, went headlong into danger. Or…he could embrace civilian life. Those were the choices he'd been given. It wasn't much of a choice. 
Initially, he’d resented it. After a time, he’d come to see its purpose. Being out in the world, things worked differently than they did in the military, and he was adjusting to it. It wasn’t easy though. 
Without fatigues and a gun, it was like walking naked into a room full of strangers. He’d spent the entirety of his twenties and most of his thirties on army bases or in war zones. The fluffy pastry shop seemed foreign to him, but that was only one of the reasons he’d avoided it. He had a few more. 
A woman emerged from the back of the shop then, her red hair pinned up in some elaborate style that reminded him of old movies. He took one look at her and was instantly, painfully hard. With the physical toll of the surgeries and the painkillers, the exhaustion of therapy and, he was willing to admit it, a raging pity party, his libido had tanked. He’d accepted this as just a part of it, until he came back to Falls Creek and ran into Lexi Flynn. 

One look at her and his libido had come back to raging life. It happened every time he saw her. He couldn’t even look at her without feeling all the blood rush south. War zones he could handle. Bullets, bombs, screaming superiors and an entire country wanting his head on a plate, that he could cope with and not even raise a sweat. One curvy redhead and he felt ready to run for the hills. 



Hot Soldier Boxed set is available at Amazon for only $0.99. Get your copy today!  



Thursday, March 20, 2014

My Paranormal Romances

Wicked Fairy Tales Box Set

TEN HOT AND EXCITING RETELLINGS OF CLASSIC FAIRYTALES

ALL RE-IMAGINED BY MANY OF THE SAME BESTSELLING AUTHORS WHO BROUGHT YOU STRANDED WITH A BILLIONAIRE AND HOT SOLDIER!

Not everyone is what they appear to be and magic happens in the strangest places. What do you get when you mix a boozy fairy godmother, an overly dramatic Cinderella, a not so wicked stepsister and hot giant waiting at the top of the Beanstalk? You get BIG LOVE by Seraphina Donavan.

Ettie Stewart is such a nice, good girl, that she doesn’t even balk when her parents ship her off to a fat camp. But what if being everyone’s good little girl can have unexpected benefits in the form of the fat camp’s hot chef, Henry? Find out in CLEVER GIRL by Kate Baum. 

Petra is hiding a deep, dark secret...That she’s the big bad wolf. But the past always demands a reckoning. Will Petra be able to hold onto the man she loves, Argon Quinn, when he finds out the truth about their mingled pasts? The truth comes out in CRIMSON MEMORIES by Yvonne Nicolas. 

Princess Skye Luna must choose a husband, and the array of princes and kings presented to her all have one thing in common. They’re not the man she loves. He’s lost forever. So, why is King Michel so achingly familiar? THE SKYE’S THE LIMIT by Siobhan MacKenzie. 

Princess Tonya leads a lonely, isolated and painfully celibate existence. Tad, cursed into the form of a frog, isn’t faring any better. When the two cross paths, Tonya’s response to his sexy voice is incendiary. It’s also the key to breaking Tad’s curse in CONTINUUM by Sheri Fredricks. 

Horribly scarred by an enemy from his past, Lord Norcross lives in a world of darkness and shadows, until he rescues Lady Thessaly Shade. To keep her safe, he must claim her as his own. Can she possibly see him for the man he truly is and not the scars he bears in the BEAST OF BATH by Chasity Bowlin. 

Cursed by an evil witch, Meesh and her brother Shawn will crave sweets forever. But as she walks into the new sweet shop in their town, Meesh encounters something that she craves more than sugar. SWEETEST TREAT by AR Von will satisfy all your cravings.

Rose has devoted herself to being a warrior, only to be told her best service to her family, is by becoming someone’s wife. Can a man like Prince Nicolai be happy with a wife who cares more for weapons than wiles? As they battle against an evil witch trying to capture their kingdom, he’ll discover her worth in BUY ME A ROSE by Brand Gillilan. 

Samantha Goldi leaves her worthless, cheating boyfriend and finds herself lost in the woods. Taking the only refuge she can find, her safe haven is invaded by three hot, hunky brothers demanding to know who has been sleeping in their bed...and asking to join her in GOLDI’S THREE BEARS by Leigh Savage. 


Angela Darling landed her dream job, but when she meets two hot, dynamic executives…Angela begins to realize she might have actually landed in a dream. Things are not what they appear to be, as magic and lust swirl around her. Leaving her dreary life behind, Angela gives herself up to the land of NEVER NEVER by Leanore Elliott.

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Dragon's Lair Book 1

Lilly Montague has spent her life caring for others. Free of her responsibilities, she moves to New Orleans and takes the only job she can get—waiting tables in a sex club. Hopelessly attracted to both Phillipe, the doorman, and to Remy, the club’s very dangerous owner, she can’t hide her disappointment in realizing they are a couple.

But one night changes everything, and Lilly is confronted with her deepest, darkest desire—to have them both. Remy and Phillipe are far from mere mortal men; however, and indulging her desire garners Lilly more than she bargained for.

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The Summoning Dragon's Lair Book 2

As dragon shifters, Remy and Philippe had spent their lives searching for their perfect mate, and in Lilly Montague, they found her. But enemies from their past are threatening their happiness. Dragon law dictates that they must meet the issued challenge and face their enemies in battle. But when Lilly sees them in Dragon form, will she be able to accept them?

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Hybrid's Love

Kyr Nivarre has devoted his life to the Core 7 Alliance despite the fact that the genetically engineered mate who had been destined solely for him had been taken from him. When he finds Wren, he knows instantly that she is the one he has been searching for, and he will do whatever is necessary to protect her and make her his. 

Wren Marlow is suddenly thrust into the unusual situation of not being the crazy one. Her whole life she's seen and known things that she shouldn't have and all it had ever done was get her slapped with a bunch of labels by shrinks. Now, a gorgeous alien, calling himself a hybrid, tells her that not only is she not crazy, she's like him... that they were genetically engineered to be perfect for one another. 

The threats are coming from all sides and all they can do is cling to one another. But can Wren really accept this life that seems so foreign to her and this man who claims to be her destiny? What will happen when Wren discovers that Kyr's former lovers are not women, but the very men he serves with? 


Warning: This book is intended for audiences 18 and older. It features explicit sexual content including anal play, menage (MMF) and some MM situations.

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