Author Post and Giveaway: Hannah Fielding

 

 Delving into Spanish history

I have always been fascinated by history, and my favourite aspect of writing a new novel (aside from dreaming up a hero par excellence, of course!) is researching the era and setting for the story.

For my trilogy Andalusian Nights that meant a fantastic research trip to Spain, and immersing myself in books, films, music – even the cuisine. The challenge was to encapsulate the spirit and realities of different times in history. 

For Book 1, Indiscretion, that I enjoyed learning about what life was like in Andalusia in the 1950s. The story focuses on Alexandra, a half-English, half-Spanish girl who has grown up in England and comes to Spain to connect with her heritage. She steps into a world that is very different to that which she has known in England, more rustic, more impassioned and dramatic, and by far more steeped in customs and traditions. It is the latter which proves problematic for Alexandra: a woman in this time did not enjoy all the rights and freedoms we expect today – heaven forbid she commit an indiscretion. Machismo abounds, and Alexandra must struggle to assert herself as an independent woman in a society that demands women be good little wives and nothing more. 

Masquerade, Book 2, tells the story of the next generation, with Alexandra’s daughter Luz as the protagonist. The year is 1976, and a new and exciting climate has sprung up in Spain following the death of the dictator Franco. Luz is essentially a heroine of the sexual revolution that swept through Spain at this time, challenging long-accepted values, rules and behaviour with regard to sexuality and relationships. What had been taboo, like the use of contraception and sex outside of marriage, became more acceptable, and women discovered hugely important new freedoms: the right to work, to own property, to have a personal account, to travel, to divorce: in short, to carve their own destinies. Imagine how it feels to be Luz in the midst of this massive social change. She can build a career; she can live independently; she can explore her sexuality. And yet… change is not quick, and many prejudices remain. Spain may be breaking down barriers for women to be themselves and follow their passions, but the taboo about falling for a gypsy is still deeply entrenched. Can Luz follow her heart and be herself, or will she be locked in a masquerade?

The final book in the series, Legacy, shifts to the more recent generation, where Andalusia is once more transformed by the galloping pace of progress. But does a more modern heroine have any easier a time of it when it comes to matters of the heart? How does her legacy define her and the choices she makes?

In truth, no matter the historical era and no matter the conditions in which heroines and heroes fall in love, I think the foundations of the story are the same. Love is love, whenever it blossoms – it is timeless, the common experience with which we all identify. Adversities change form; love does not. It is the one beautiful, soulful constant across history. It is what drives us on, what lifts us up, what defines us… and what impels me to write romance novels!

Introducing… Hannah Fielding

Hannah Fielding is an incurable romantic. The seeds for her writing career were sown in early childhood, spent in Egypt, when she came to an agreement with her governess Zula: for each fairy story Zula told, Hannah would invent and relate one of her own. Years later – following a degree in French literature, several years of travelling in Europe, falling in love with an Englishman, the arrival of two beautiful children and a career in property development – Hannah decided after so many years of yearning to write that the time was now. Today, she lives the dream: writing full time at her homes in Kent, England, and the South of France, where she dreams up romances overlooking breath-taking views of the Mediterranean.  

To date, Hannah has published four passionate, evocative novels: Burning Embers, a ‘romance like Hollywood used to make’, set in Kenya; the award-winning Echoes of Love, ‘an epic love story that is beautifully told’, set in Italy; and books 1 and 2 of the Andalusian Nights trilogy, set in sultry Spain, entitled Indiscretion and Masquerade. She is currently working on her fifth book, Legacy, which will publish this spring.

http://hannahfielding.net/

https://twitter.com/fieldinghannah

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hannah-Fielding-Author-Page/340558735991910

 

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Author Post and giveaway: Sharon Sala

Today's post is by Sharon Sala as I asked her what makes the South so special.

There is also a giveaway at the end.

Post:
I think the South is special to the people who live there because it’s home. Anywhere or anything that represents where you were raised usually creates nostalgia.

One of the things that means a lot to me is family. Sometimes in the South a family becomes so tied together generationally that we think of them as a clan – a large group of people with similar beliefs and lifestyles who share blood and revere the aged and elderly among them as important, even necessary to how they live their lives.

My daddy’s mother, my paternal grandmother, came from the mountains above Sparta, Tennessee. Her mother was a healer. Some in the family used to say she was part Cree. My Daddy’s father, my grandfather, was from Indian Territory in Oklahoma before statehood. His mother, my great-grandmother was ¾ Cherokee.

My Grandma, my daddy’s mother, was a healer like her mother. I was always nervous about getting sick at her house because her theory was, if it didn’t kill a horse, it wouldn’t hurt a child. I’ve had herb teas that tasted like swamp water, been rubbed with balms that she made, and had a wart witched off my hand with a dishrag and a chant beneath a full moon. There are a thousand stories in any Southern family about the people who came before them, but there is a telling and continuing thread. They are the Don’t Quit people. The kind of people who would rather go hungry and miss a meal than leave the land that sustains them.

I am grateful for the Don’t Quit blood that runs in my veins.

About Sharon

Sharon Sala, who has also written under the name Dinah McCall, has 85-plus books in print, published in four different genres—Romance, Young Adult, Western, and Women’s Fiction, and her Young Adult books have been optioned for film. She has been named a RITA finalist seven times by Romance Writers of America, and in 2011 they named her the recipient of the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her books are New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly bestsellers and published in many different languages. She lives in Oklahoma, the state where she was born.

About You and Only You

Welcome to Book One in the Blessings, Georgia series of Southern contemporary romance from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Sharon Sala. With the support of her handsome, unassuming friend Mike Dalton, LilyAnne Bronte is finally ready to put the past in the past.

It’s never too late

Mike Dalton has secretly loved LilyAnn Bronte since they were all children together in the small town of Blessings, Georgia. But one fateful day T.J. Lachlan roars into town and starts showering LilyAnn with his charm, and Mike feels his dream of them being more than friends slipping away.

To find the love you missed

LilyAnn, as anyone in Blessings will tell you, let herself go after her fiancée was killed in Iraq. The attention of the handsome new guy shocks her into a revelation: she’s ready to live again, and maybe the best is yet to come. The thing is, everybody in Blessings is sure it’s Mike and LilyAnn who belong together—and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make LilyAnn realize the love of her life has been by her side all along.

(Originally published as The Curl Up and Dye.)

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Author Post: Beverley Eikli and giveaway

Today Beverley Eikli is on my blog with a post :)

Welcome!

I woke this morning to the silence of a world blanketed in snow, so familiar in this Norwegian home where I’ve spent such happy times, and so different from the summer noises I’ve grown used to in the children-filled street of our Australian country town.

Jetlagged, after jumping on a plane two days ago to cross the globe in the hopes of making it to my dear father-in-law’s side before he died, I lay in bed and thought how life is a series of circles, bringing one back to the same place at different phases of one’s life. I’m sad that my wonderful father-in-law has passed on, and that we were too late to say our good-byes, but at 96 he’d lived a rich and wonderful life.

He produced a daughter and four sons, the youngest of whom I married at Akershus Festning, the Oslo Castle chapel, twenty years ago. The connection forged a new dimension in my life, not only with a warm and wonderful family, but another country and culture. I’d spent my early years in southern Africa before emigrating to Australia. Then in my late twenties I discovered an album that would catapult me into a world of adventure. Catapult me right back where my family history picked up in the early years of last century. Catapult me into the arms of the handsome Norwegian bush pilot who changed the course of my life.

The album was my grandfather’s photographic diary detailing the extraordinary nature of his work as a young district commission in the British Colonial service in Botswana’s Okavango, between 1916 and 1922.

Intrigued, I persuaded my father to join me on holiday to the Okavango then, to my delight, was invited back to spend two months as relief manager for two of Okavango Wilderness Safaris’ luxury safari camps: Mombo and Jedibe Camps.

I took leave from my job as a journalist and for two months had the time of my life in a pristine environment, catering to guests in a 16-bedded camp, surrounded by predators who filled the nights with a music that thrilled me and which I knew I’d miss dreadfully as I prepared to return home to Australia.

That final night, a new group of tourists was due in camp. As was usual, one of the Motswana guides fetched them from the grassy airstrip and ferried them to the lodge in the small motorboat. As I stood on the rickety jetty beneath the waterberry trees, holding aloft a paraffin lantern to the light their way, I had no idea I was greeting my future husband.

Yes, the handsome bush pilot who’d flown the guests to Jedibe swept me off my feet as we spent the next few hours chatting around the campfire. Although I believed I would never see him again, our budding romance was sustained through eight months of hand-written letters. There was no internet in Botswana back then.

When Eivind took leave from his job as Chief Pilot of Ngami Air to fly to Australia with - I soon learned - the express purpose of proposing on the basis of four hours of conversation and eight months of letter-writing, I had absolutely no hesitation in saying yes. To my amusement, he took out a large advertisement in the Okavango Observer with the words: ‘She said YES!’ as so many people had been hanging out to know if he’d had any success across the globe.

So I gave up my newspaper job in Adelaide, South Australia, and joined Eivind in his little thatched cottage in the middle of a mopane forest by a flood plain 12 km out of Maun, in Botswana. Thus began my life as a ‘trailing spouse’, living in 12 cities and countries as we navigated the ups and downs of the world of aviation.

It’s been an exciting life. I’ve worked with my husband for several airborne geophysical survey companies, based in Canada and Australia, Eivind as the pilot and me working the computer equipment as we contoured the terrain at 250ft. It was a great way to see French Guiana, Greenland and Sweden for three-month contracts, and Namibia for a year. We went to the Solomon Islands for two years, and we lived in Japan for one.

And all the time I wrote exciting tales of romance, peppered with action or mystery, about women who lived in an era where they had no legal rights, their personalities dictating the means by which they gained the power needed to direct their lives and to find fulfilment and happiness – against the odds.

Despite my leap of faith and my determination to forge an exciting life, a pilot’s wife is as much at the mercy of the vagaries of world economics, facing uncertainties in the same way that a woman in historical times was dependant on external factors beyond her control for survival.

Two hundred years might separate me from my characters but I can empathise when the tides of fate pick them up and toss them into new and unfamiliar situations. I’ve been in foreign countries with young children, the rug pulled from under our feet as airline companies have folded – twice, actually. And I wondered what country might provide a haven when politics thrust us out of the Pacific. I’ve given birth, while my husband was still in rehabilitation after breaking his back three weeks earlier.

The uncertainties I’ve experienced are laid bare in My latest Choc Lit romance, The Maid of Milan, which has been described as a Regency-set ‘Dynasty’ with its drug addiction, love triangle and manipulation themes, its style - to my delight -compared with Anthony Trollope’s 'The Pallisers' ‘where beneath the waving fans it’s gritty intrigue’.

My wonderful husband was the inspiration for my hero, Tristan, whose worst moment comes near the end of the book when he discovers he’s unwittingly been a party to the three-year-long subtle manipulation of his once-vibrant wife. By this stage he’s already lost her, for though my heroine, Adelaide, had been ground down through years of being shackled to a lie, she still had her pride. And she could not live with a man whose respect she believed she’d lost.

Adversity and pain are like mirrors. They define a person’s true personality.

Right now, I feel I’m back where I was twenty years ago when, dressed in the traditional Norwegian bunad as a new bride, I looked to the future with such hope.

I’ve farewelled a wonderful man who distinguished himself as a resistance fighter during WWII, and my bonds to his son remain as strong as ever.

I believe there’s still a lot of love and adventure to look forward to in my life.

I've had so much of it already, and as long as I can recreate it in so many different forms in my historical romances and dramas, I’ll be happy.

 website: http://www.beverleyeikli.com

And you can buy The Maid of Milan in paperback, ebook and soon audiobook at Amazon US | Amazon UK | iTunes |  Barnes & Noble

Giveaway

1 copy of The Maid of Milan

1. Open to everyone

2. Ends March 15

3. To enter, comment on the post or ask a question :)

Have fun!

Blog Tour Author Post. Skyla Dawn Cameron

One Little Email – The Value of Readers

By Skyla Dawn Cameron

In 2010 I was in an odd spot. I had some books out and more under contract but wasn’t giving my work much focus—I had a full time job, working on the other side of publishing, and that drew a lot of my attention. I wrote, almost constantly, but everything remained on my hard drive—it wasn’t often I got to wear my “writer hat” in public.

[And, to digress for a second, if I could note something for writers: most of the time, this is how it is. No one cares if you don’t have your work published. There are a hell of a lot of books out there already. This is why we write for ourselves first and foremost—it’s the only place was can truly find validation.]

An email from a book blogger came to my work email in December 2010 asking about a newsletter—she had seen some books she wanted to purchase and was interested in keeping up to date about new ones. One of the books she planned to get was Bloodlines, by me.

The thing is, this book was originally written in 2004—the fifth or sixth novel I’d written—and released in 2008. The sequel was written, the rest of the books were under contract, but...I’d just not done much with them. Given that I now had a job at the publisher who had contracted my work many years earlier, I kept my attention on other people’s books. Conflict of interest and all that. Now, I’d already started rewriting Bloodlines for re-release—I’d grown a lot as a writer and I wanted my best work out there. So I told this book blogger I really appreciated her interest but she might want to wait for the Bloodlines re-release (which I had...no time table on).

Time passed. 

Another email came that January.

This one was titled “Curious on Bloodlines”, again from the same book blogger, mentioning she hadn’t been able to get the book’s description out of her head and wondered, again, if I had any kind of time frame.

Again, I did not. 

I also felt...weird. Here was someone asking about my work. People didn’t do that anymore. I didn’t get to be Author!Skyla these days—everyone I knew only saw me in my editor capacity, which was difficult as I’d only been editing for three years versus writing pretty much my entire life.

So I sent my apologies and said not yet, but I’d let her know.

But that blogger’s email hadn’t left my mind and a week later I wrote back and said I’d pulled out the doc, I hoped to have it out in another couple of months, and I would gladly send her a review copy if she was interested.

Bloodlines was re-released April 2011, Hunter finally came out after a three year delay in August 2011. 2012 saw the release of the third and fourth books.

That book blogger was Melissa Hayden of My World...in words and pages who put together this whole book tour.

My point is this: there is a lot of bullshit going on among readers and writers lately. I have seen immaturity and ridiculousness on both sides. There is infighting between two groups that should realize they have a symbiotic relationship: books without readers aren’t read, and books without writers aren’t written. We don’t have an industry without both. It’s easy for both to take the other for granted and I am certainly not immune to the frustrations plagued by many writers, as I’m sure no reader is immune to reader frustrations either.

But, readers, your interest matters. Your opinion counts. Had Melissa not reached out to me...Bloodlines might still be languishing in rewrites. Hunter might not have been released. Lineage and Exhumed certainly wouldn’t have been written. And I wouldn’t be in a position to write this guest post for you today.

It’s easy as a reader to become jaded when you see Jackass writer call a fan a name or send people to attack someone over a review. It’s easy for me to get jaded when I receive hate mail or review requests that leave me feeling like nothing more than a book and swag dispenser. 

But the more we reach out, the greater our chance of connecting with the right people. 

I know there were other readers waiting for the sequel to Bloodlines out there somewhere, but as a writer

your life is oddly...quiet. And lonely. You see numbers on your royalty reports saying people bought books, but did they read them? Did they enjoy them? Most of the time you have no idea.

Sometimes all it takes is one little email at the right time to remind you that someone’s listening. And it can make all the difference.

So, gentle readers. Book bloggers. Reviewers. Don’t let the current climate of reader-writer relations get you down. Don’t be afraid to reach out to authors whose work you love. If they act like a jackass, file them under “jackass” (obviously not at Goodreads *sigh*) and move on. 

As writers, we often have to have faith that what we write matters, that our words will reach the right person right when it’s needed in their life. And I’d say the same to readers. Don’t doubt that one little email can make a difference for the right person.

You might even be the push they need that day to keep them on their path.

Thank you for the post Skyla :=D 

And now everyone if you are curious about Bloodlines it is free right now! So go DL

If you're in her way, it sucks to be you.

After three hundred years of unlife, narcissistic vampire Zara Lain has seemingly done it all, and she's now making a living as a successful thief-turned-assassin. Her newest assignment seems simple enough: kill the aging leader of the O'Connor coven and his only heir, and she'll have another ten million in the bank.

But in the dangerous world of the supernatural, few things are ever “simple.”

When a massive assault decimates the continent's population of powerful witches and warlocks, and its orchestrator has vampires being hunted down and captured, Zara realizes the tables have turned and now she'll be playing the hero. Forced to join with a smart-mouthed fellow vampire, a demonologist who's also a fan of hers, a recently widowed—and frequently brooding—warlock, and her best friend's mom, Zara's grudgingly willing to do what she can to save the day.

If only people would stop ruining all her outfits...

An excerpt from Bloodlines...

Blue eyes shifted back to mine, dark smoke swirling in their centers, drawing me in. “So you haven’t seen the sun in three hundred years?”

Electricity danced along my skin, nerves hyperaware. I’d never admit it, but the magic freaked me out—I wasn’t used to someone stronger than me, better than me. I could kick his ass, sure, but he could fucking stop time. And a strange little thrill went through me when I felt the shift in the air, saw the haze over his eyes, and sensed a magical storm about to hit.

I swallowed dryly and pushed a snarky tone back into my voice, hoping he couldn’t tell precisely what effect he had on me. “Duh. What’s your—”

My lips snapped shut as he muttered words I couldn’t make out. The lights in the room went out, leaving us in darkness.

Um...what the hell?

A weak glow appeared to the upper left of me, on the wall by the windows. I gazed up and watched as the light burned brighter and brighter.

Jesus, he’s going to burn me alive... “Um...Nate?”

First the rounded edge of a fiery orange sphere peeked around from behind some unseen obstacle, then gradually it grew. My body tensed, ready to run, waiting for the hot burn on my skin, the agony pouring through me.

It didn’t happen. The sun stretched across the apartment ceiling until it illuminated the entire room, bathing us both in light. My bare skin warmed in the sunlight, my hair and dark clothes burned.

It was beautiful. So many years and I hadn’t really thought about the sun, hadn’t wondered about what I was missing. When I lived, the sun made for long days in the garden, harsh on skin and bearer of headaches in the summer. But this...this was glorious.

I closed my eyes for a moment, drinking in the heat and savoring the feeling. When I opened them again, Nate was watching me. I didn’t know whether it was the faux sunlight radiating from his taut skin, or perhaps that he had created the sunlight itself, but I was suddenly very aware of him—his breathing, his heartbeat, and the hot blood coursing through him. And in the light, he was gorgeous.

Too soon the sun had passed to the other side of the apartment and it perished behind another nonexistent horizon. As the last beams faded, part of me seemed to darken with it.

Moments later, Nate switched a couple of the lamps back on with a few magical words.

Holy fuck. I let out a breath—a very human gesture, I realized, but one I felt compelled to engage in anyway. “Well.”

“Well?”

I gave him a grin. “Is that all you can do?”

“No, but I was hoping it would leave you speechless for a while.” He gave me a sexy half-grin—a real, genuine smile with no boohoo I’m a brooding widow shadows behind it. “I guess I was mistaken.”

“There’s a much easier way to get me to stop talking.” I shifted, pulled myself in to a crouch, pressed my palms to the floor, and crawled the short distance to him. Already the guards were back up—smile gone, back stiff, but I’d be damned if I’d give up without a seductive fight.

He didn’t respond, which, though infuriating, was also mildly arousing. No better way to drive someone insane than to show absolutely no interest.

I wanted him. Wanted him in a way that made my chest ache. Because he was betrayed and damaged under all the guards he put up, because he just created a freakin’ sun knowing I hadn’t seen it in centuries, because I wanted to spend the next year unwrapping all his layers to see exactly what kind of man awaited me on the inside.

The intensity of that want scared me; I nearly hightailed it out of there just to escape it. But I’d never failed at seduction before and maybe if I got him out of my system—maybe if I confronted all that want—it would lessen a bit and I’d feel less terrified.

I tried a casual smile. “C’mon...you’re pretty. I’m pretty. We could be pretty together.”

“My wife was murdered two nights ago—”

Oh god, more brooding. “Yeah, after trying to kill you. Time to move on. Or...” I moved my lips to his throat and tasting his skin in a kiss. “...I could just bite you.”

His pulse quickened beneath my lips. Fear or lust? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I really don’t need your permission.”

“Well, you won’t be getting it, either.” Still, he didn’t move. Not to push me away, and not to take me in his arms either. Frozen solid, watching me. Weirdo.

I was close enough to taste his lips, his breath warm on my face; my gaze drifted up again to meet his eyes, voice went low and husky. “I’ve been around a long, long time, and I’ve invented positions you couldn’t dream of. I can take you right here hard and fast, sweet and slow, ride you to exhaustion until you’re empty but craving more, and then do it all again.”

His blood was rushing south—I could feel it, heat searing, burning in him. He leaned closer, eyes leveled at me, mouth nearly brushing mine. “And I could take you to the edge and keep you there for hours, quivering near madness, begging me to release you—and that’s even without bringing magic into it. But that will never happen. Ever.”

I swallowed. Hard. Tried not to let it sting. “’Cause I’m not blonde?”

“Because you’re self-absorbed, arrogant, childish, and I’m not interested.”

A flush infused my cheeks—real, genuine hurt, rejection feeling like a slap across my face. I swallowed dryly and fought to pick up my shattered pride.

But I could fake it. Pretend it didn’t bother me—that I didn’t take the whole thing too seriously. I pulled back to sit on my heels and pouted. “You’re no fun.”

“My apologies,” he said without smiling.

I rolled my eyes. “You can’t blame a girl for trying.” I stood and started for my room. “Whatever,” I called. “I’m going to bed. If you decide to stop being a killjoy, you’re welcome to join me.” I glanced back at him just as I stopped in my doorway, but he made no move to rise.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”