Intimate Journeys by SS Hampton Sr (Spotlight, excerpt, and GIVEAWAY) GFT ADULT title

Intimate Journeys

by SS Hampton Sr

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GENRE: Erotic Sci-Fi Fantasy Romance

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BLURB:

The most intimate journeys, though they are polar opposites, involve the unparalleled pleasures of sex and the inevitable unknown of death. Both are an experience unlike anything else: one is sought by everyone, while the other is avoided by everyone - for as long as they can. Sometimes these polar opposites complement each other.

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Exclusive Excerpt:

“Rose Cliffs,” Intimate Journeys

“I’ll be damned,” Kyle Newcomb whispered in wide-eyed surprise when he emerged from his tent for his customary after-dinner pipe. He was so surprised that he almost dropped the woolly mammoth ivory figurine he intended to examine later in the laboratory tent. The finely carved figurine, badly weathered and damaged, was that of a nude woman straddling a nude reclining man.

He stared at the night sky where silent, rippling greenish curtains of the aurora borealis danced. Bright red aurora burst into life and spiraled like smoke among the greenish curtains that danced across the distant mountains and the sharply contoured sand dunes. The deep night faded to a pale shadow of itself and the colorful display overhead overwhelmed the twinkling stars. The campfires, the lanterns, and the tents all had a greenish sheen about them punctuated with tinges of red and blue.

It wasn’t that Kyle had never seen the aurora borealis, though he hadn’t, but to see those haunted, mysterious lights in the Taklamakan Desert of Xinjiang Province in far western China, north of Tibet, was new. He looked at the small camp to see who else shared the strange beauty, but he was alone. He decided against calling people from their tents so that he could savor the strange show alone; after lighting his pipe he trudged to the top of a nearby sand dune to see the lights and the surrounding land better.

Kyle sat on the crest of the sand dune and watched with awe as the silent billowing green sheets with bright bursts of red and blue slowly dimmed…

Amazon link

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Stan Hampton, Sr. is a full-blood Choctaw of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a divorced grandfather to 13 grandchildren, and a published author, photographer and photojournalist. He retired in 2013 from the Nevada Army National Guard with the rank of Sergeant First Class; he previously served in the active duty Army, and the Army Individual Ready Reserve (mobilized for the Persian Gulf War). He enlisted in the Nevada Army National Guard in October 2004, after which he was mobilized for Federal active duty for almost three years. Hampton is a veteran of Operations Noble Eagle and Iraqi Freedom, with deployment to northern Kuwait and several convoy security missions into Iraq.

He has had two solo photographic exhibitions and curated a multi-media exhibit. His writings have appeared as stand-alone stories and in anthologies from Dark Opus Press, Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy, Melange Books, Musa Publishing, MuseItUp Publishing, Ravenous Romance, and in Horror Bound Magazine, The Harrow, and River Walk Journal, among others.

As of April 2014, after being in a 2-year Veterans Administration program for Homeless Veterans, Hampton is officially no longer a homeless Iraq War veteran.

In May 2014 he graduated from the College of Southern Nevada with an Associate of Applied Science Degree in Photography – Commercial Photography Emphasis. He has been studying at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas with in a double major in Art and English. He recently returned from spending a cold, rainy Spring 2017 semester studying at a university in southwestern France in the shadow of the Pyrenees Mountains.

After 16 years of desert in the American Southwest, and Southwest Asia, he still misses the Rocky Mountains, yellow aspens in the fall, running rivers, and a warm fireplace during snowy winters.

Hampton can be found at:

Amazon.com Author Page

Amazon.com. UK Author Page 

Goodreads Author Page

His books can be found at:

Barnes and Noble

Dark Opus Press

Edge Science Fiction &Fantasy Publishing

Melange Books

MuseItUp Publishing

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The tour dates can be found here

Betrayer by Leslie D. Soule (VNBtM, guest post, excerpt, and GIVEAWAY) GFT

I have the pleasure of sharing a guest post by author Leslie D. Soule, who shares her answer to my question...

ELF: Which author(s) has/have been the most influential to you and how or why?

LDS: Well there are a lot of authors whose works I like, but I’d say that the one who has been the most influential to my work has been Orson Scott Card, because I often reference his book, How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy. This book has added a lot of depth to the Fallenwood series, and shows up in things like the Curse that each character has, as the price for doing magic. Orson Scott Card says that you should have a price for magic, like this, in order to avoid having your characters be uber-powerful. There have to be limitations to magic.

This book also really helped me when I wrote my first sci-fi novel, Hybrid Space. Orson Scott Card reminded me that I had to think about things like how fast the ship could go, whether it would be a “generation ship” where multiple generations have lived, and what the overall environment of the ship would be. For this sci-fi novel, I also wanted to get a basic understanding of how space itself worked. For that, I read Stephen Hawking’s novels The Universe In A Nutshell and A Brief History of Time. I’ve always believed that the mark of genius is when a person can explain a very complex idea in terms that anyone can understand, and this is what Hawking does, brilliantly. I’d suggest to anyone writing sci-fi, to start out reading Stephen Hawking’s novels. After I gained the basic ideas of ship environment and how I wanted space to work, I filled in the character details from a story I’d worked on previously, in high school, and the novel took form. Orson Scott Card gives practical advice that keeps you from making mistakes with your sci-fi work, too, such as “never refer to ‘warp speed’ in your fiction. It’s not only bad science, it also pegs you instantly as a writer who knows science fiction only through Star Trek.”

Orson Scott Card’s book also gives practical advice for inventing languages – that’s something I haven’t tried yet in my novels. Perhaps it’ll show up at some point in the future. At any rate, he also has a ton of information on the actual business of writing, and this has been extremely helpful as well.

And then finally, I got a chance to meet Seth Grahame-Smith, the author who wrote Pride& Prejudice & Zombies and AbrahamLincoln: Vampire Hunter. I asked him what the best way would be, to try and get my novels made into movies. He suggested that I write a screenplay, following the guidelines set out in the Screenplay book by Syd Field. So I did, and we’ll see if anything comes of that, but writing a screenplay was an interesting, new experience for me and I feel like that was helpful as well. At any rate, thanks to your readers, for joining me on this blog tour!

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Betrayer

by Leslie D. Soule

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GENRE:   Fantasy

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BLURB:

With five crystals to destroy, in order to rob the dark lord Malegaunt of his power, Ash Kensington's path is set. She begins a quest with the talking cat, Greymalkin, and her wyvern, Slick. But when she meets up with the handsome dragon slayer, Draeon, her senses overwhelm her, and she becomes distracted. Will she be able to destroy the crystals in time to challenge Malegaunt?

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EXCERPT

“What can I do for ya?”

She looked at the bartender and said sorrowfully, “Give me a spell to make me forget.” I’ve wasted so much time, she thought to herself, and now I don’t know if I can get back on track. Malegaunt is out there, and none of the crystals have been destroyed. It drove her mad.

He shook his head and pushed a pint of dark beer across the bar. “This is the best magic I know. That’s why I’m a bartender.” He pointed down the bar a ways to a man who looked to be in his forties, if not older. He was clothed in a black coat, and his stubbled face was hunched over a glass of what looked like whiskey on the rocks. “Now, that guy over there, on the other hand, he might be able to help ya. People call him the Oracle of the Oasis,” he informed her.

 Amazon

Melange Books

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Leslie D. Soule is a fantasy/sci-fi author from Sacramento, CA. She has an M.A. in English from National University, and is currently working on the final book of her fantasy series, The Fallenwood Chronicles.

Website

Twitter

Facebook

Links to the previous books in the series:

Fallenwood

Melange Books

Amazon

Book 2 – Forgetting Fallenwood:

Melange Books

Amazon

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GIVEAWAY

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The tour dates can be found here

 

Wind and Shadow (spotlight, excerpt and GIVEAWAY)

                                                


Tori L. Ridgewood’s new book Wind and Shadow: Book One of the Talbot Trilogy, published by Melange Books, was released on June 20, 2013.



Blurb:


After a series of misadventures including being accused of attempted murder in high school, Rayvin Woods, a photographer and natural witch, left her hometown of Talbot in Northeastern Ontario, hoping to start her life over and never return.

Ten years later, circumstances force her back to face her past and her former crush Grant Michaels. 
 


Malcolm de Sade, a cunning vampire, escapes from an underground prison looking for vengeance. His accidental release unleashes his hunger and ambition on a small, sleepy town.

Rayvin’s power is all that stands between de Sade and his domination of Talbot, and beyond.



Grant Michaels, a police officer, thought Rayvin was a murderer. He will do whatever it takes to protect the community he loves from danger... but will he learn to trust his heart, and the word of a witch, before it's too late?



Rayvin didn't count on rekindling a lost love or battling a malevolent vampire and his coven for her life when she came home to Talbot.

 Facing the past can be a nightmare… It’s worse when a vampire is stalking you.






Excerpt from Wind and Shadow: Book One of the Talbot Trilogy, by Tori L. Ridgewood

The pain in her eyes was tearing him apart. “You want to make amends?” She laughed, and looked away.

“You could put it that way . . . Rayvin. Look at me. We connected once, remember? When we were kids? I’ve missed that in my life. I didn’t realize, before you were gone, how much I needed you in my world.” He leaned forward and reached for her. “How can I make you believe me?”

“Why?” She jumped up, staring down at him. “What’s changed since yesterday that could possibly have reversed an opinion you’ve had of me for years? I don’t understand! You’re not making any sense.”

Grant’s face burned. “You don’t know what I think of you. You’re not a mind-reader, Rayvin.”
 
“I don’t have to be. I’ve seen how you look at me. Yesterday, you wanted to run me out of town, and now look around you.” She gestured wildly. “Candles, blankets. You don’t want to ‘start fresh’, you just want to get laid.”
 
Grant got to his feet. “Really? Is that what you think?”
 
“What else have men ever wanted from me?” she responded, wearily. “You know what, it was a noble gesture for you to drive me home, and help me with Andrea. But now I’d really like you to leave.”
 
“No. We need to talk; we have to figure this out.” Grant moved closer to her. Rayvin’s teeth were bared, but she held her ground as he approached. She infuriated him, she insulted him, but she didn’t back down, and by God he admired her for it. “I know you’ve been hurt, but I’m not him. Not all men are like that. I’m not like that.”
 
“I’ve felt your desire, Michaels. I know that you want me. Maybe we should just get it out of the way, so we can move on with our lives.” Her eyes glittering, she closed the distance between them and ran one finger down his chest. Behind her, in the fireplace, the flames on the candles flared and elongated. Grant’s body responded immediately to her touch; his breath quickened as his manhood swelled. Her laugh sounded like a sob. “But I have better things, more important things to do with my time. I’d rather not fulfill your adolescent fantasies tonight. I’m telling you again to please leave.”
 
Looking into her eyes, a breath apart, dozens of possibilities flashed through his mind, most of them involving the shedding of clothing and the quilt on the floor. Maybe they should fulfill their physical needs, and move on. But that wouldn’t leave him satisfied. Grant needed more from her, and he strongly suspected that she needed him, no matter how much she denied it. He saw the plea in her gaze, the sorrow and the anger. Taking a deep breath, he raised his chin and stepped back.
 
“Point taken. But there are a few things you should know.” He picked up his jacket from the edge of the couch. “Yes, I want you. I’ve fantasized about you for years, ever since we were in the tenth grade and you walked past me in your parka. It wasn’t your body that really caught me, though, Rayvin. It was the way you smiled when you pulled the furry hood up around your face. God, I wanted you to smile at me like that. I wanted to give you pleasure like that. So I guess the past does matter, in a way. I can’t let go of how I felt about you, and how I still feel. I don’t want to, because I have never felt for anyone the way I do for you.”
 
Grant put on his jacket. “That was the first thing. The second is this: I believe there is a reason for everything. You chose to come back here, no matter what you decide to tell people. You weren’t driven here, you could have gone anywhere. I think you might be punishing yourself for some reason. You want people to hate you, because that will justify rejecting them. So don’t blame the citizens of this town for making your life miserable. That’s all on you.”
 
He walked to the front door.
 
“Is that it, Michaels?” Rayvin called out. He turned around, his hand on the doorknob. She hadn’t moved, but the candles in the fireplace had almost completely burned to their stands. Her face was cast into shadow by their brilliance.
 
“No, there’s one more.”
 
Grant strode forward, crossing the room in three long steps to take her in his arms. Rayvin’s eyes burned into his for a moment, before he leaned down and tucked her into his chest. He held her close, feeling the beats of their hearts together, inhaling the scent of her hair, just breathing. Slowly, her hands moved to his back. They pressed gently. He sighed, moving a ticklish lock away from his face.
 
Behind them, the flames dwindled into tiny points of light, before they extinguished themselves.
 
“Whatever else you tell yourself, Rayvin Woods,” he whispered, kissing just above her ear. “You have to believe that everything will be okay.”
 
“I tell myself that all the time.” Her voice was muffled by his shoulder. “I’m just so tired of being alone. And now . . . there’s no other way. There just isn’t.”
 
He released her, letting his hands move down to clasp her fingers. “You’re wrong, Ray. There’s always a choice.”
 
Grant pressed his lips to her forehead, and went back to the front door.
 
He opened it, not expecting to step into madness.
 
Hands with sharp claws grabbed him by the neck and shoulder, hauling him forward and up; it was so sudden he couldn’t react. By chance, his right hand caught the doorframe as he was being pulled out. Impossibly, his assailant was on the roof. He gagged on a stench that invaded his nose and mouth, taking his breath away. Whoever had grabbed him had impressive gymnastic skill: he jumped down, flipping in the air, double-jointed arms maintaining their hold on him, and dug his heels into the lawn to gain purchase. Grant tried to call out, but his shirt collar was tightening around his throat, cutting off his air supply.


 
Rayvin’s mouth had opened in warning, too late. She watched, horrified, as filthy claw-like hands reached down and yanked Michaels nearly off his feet. A rage she did not know she possessed boiled up in her blood. She flew across the room in a heartbeat, grabbing Grant and holding on with all of her strength. She pressed the hand he’d wrapped around the jamb so hard that her nails scraped against the painted wall, and winced against the pain of ragged paint chips digging into the quick.
 
From her vantage point at the doorframe, the vampire’s bared fangs seemed only a few inches from Michaels’ face. He grunted, straining his neck to keep away from the snapping jaws. The creature had both arms around the policeman’s upper body in a tight grip. Rayvin reached out with her other hand and hauled back on Michaels’ shoulder, heaving with as much power as she could muster. The thing hissed at her, digging in with his heels. Michaels’ hand slipped under hers.
 
“Hold on!” she cried, bracing herself against the wall.
 
Time seemed to stop in her desperate tug of war. Sweat broke out on her body with the effort it took, helping Michaels resist the unnatural strength of the bloodsucker. Anger fuelled her reserves as it occurred to her that he was toying with them. Amid the grunts, Rayvin heard the distinctive rip of clothing being torn. 
Michaels’ hand slipped a little more; now, she was only anchoring his fingers. She’d lost hold of his shoulder when his jacket gave way under the vampire’s claws. She lunged forward to get another grip and felt her own sweater tear under an elongated canine as she found a handful of shirt. Michaels’ feet were leaving marks on the concrete step as he was dragged forward. The monster laughed at them, sneering, his black eyes narrowed and dirty, demonic face twisted in a maniacal grin.
 
Rayvin felt the fabric of Michaels’ shirt starting to give. In another moment, his fingers would slip out, lubricated by their combined sweat. Her heart broke as he ground out a command to her, between his teeth. “Let go, Rayvin! It’s okay, just get inside!”
 
“Yes, let go, Rayvin,” the creature mocked, using Michaels’ body to creep closer to her. He leaned over the big man’s back like a sinister gargoyle. She smelled his disgusting breath, the odours of dead things and rotting flesh making her gag. Michaels fell to one knee under the weight, which the vampire used to his advantage, moving towards Rayvin until only inches separated her panting lips from his malevolent grin. She couldn’t look away from the fathomless black eyes. In the back of her mind, she heard Michaels crying out for her again, ordering her to save herself, but she was losing herself in the chasm of the vampire’s gaze. She blinked, and the reality of the present disappeared . . .
 
 
Wind and Shadow (The Talbot Trilogy) (Amazon buy link)

Author bio:

After her first heartbreak, Tori found solace in two things: reading romance novels and listening to an after-dark radio program called Lovers and Other Strangers. Throughout the summer and fall of 1990, the new kid in town found reading fiction and writing her own short stories gave her a much needed creative outlet.

Determined to become a published author, Tori amassed stacks of notebooks and boxes of filed-away stories, most only half-finished before another idea would overtake her and demand to be written down. Then, while on parental leave with her second baby, one story formed and refused to be packed away.

Between teaching full-time, parenting, and life in general, it would take almost seven years before the first novel in her first trilogy would be completed. In the process, Tori finally found her stride as a writer.

At present, on her off-time, Tori not only enjoys reading, but also listening to an eclectic mix of music as she walks the family dog (Skittles), attempts to turn her thumb green, or makes needlework gifts for her friends and family members.

She loves to travel, collect and make miniature furniture, and a good cup of tea during a thunderstorm or a blizzard. Under it all, she is always intrigued by history, the supernatural, vampire and shapeshifter mythology, romance, and other dangers.

Links:

Website
Twitter


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GIVEAWAY

One lucky person will win a Kindle copy of this exciting book.  Please leave a comment with a valid e-address and tell me what you find most appealing about books with vampires.  A winner will be chosen after October 19, 2014 from those who comment and leave their e-mail address using random.org.   I always appreciate new followers so if you would like to be informed of other great titles or fun giveaways, please do join the blog.