Friday, 20 June 2014

Book Spotlight: See You in Hell by Demelza Carlton

See You in Hell by Demelza Carlton
Book Excerpt

Mel carefully blew on her coffee as she returned to the lunchroom turned training room.

Luce reclined against the tiny bar in the corner, resting his arms on it so his hips were pushed into greater prominence.

Mel recognised his stance as one meant to draw attention to the bulge in his pants. The implied message was clear: the pants could be unzipped for the right girl or boy, if someone played their cards right. Mel had far more experience with such a stance than Luce probably realised – for she remembered a time in Russia when it had merely meant the man was rich enough to own a spare pair of socks to stuff in his pants against the frostbiting cold. Ah, Napoleon had been stubborn and arrogant, too, she recalled, but he'd been good for intelligent conversation. He'd also owned an ample supply of socks.

No one seemed game to speak to the CEO, so Mel took pity on him. Resting her elbow on the end of the bar, she asked, "Do you get bored, delivering the same orientation presentation every month?"

"Of course not," came the easy answer. "Every time I tell new staff about the achievements of the HELL Corporation, I see their pride in being part of my company, knowing the next team of new staff will be hearing about the achievements that they personally helped happen."

Mel laughed heartily. "That sounds like a rehearsed response if ever I heard one. Do you ever answer a question honestly?"

"Of course," Luce replied. Mel barely knew the man, yet she knew he was lying.

She pressed her lips together and gave a little smile in response, before turning her attention to her instant coffee. Attention it didn't deserve, but the muddy brew was an improvement to listening to the demon's rehearsed rhetoric.

Luce seemed to realise that he'd hit a wrong note. "It's Mel, right?"

"Yes," she acquiesced gracefully. "From the Helpful Angels Agency." A careful sip of coffee kept her eyes from meeting his as the cup hid her smile. She waited for the implied warning to sink in: far from being one of his demons, she played most emphatically for the other team.

"Ah. Ah, yes. I remember now. You're the new girl who's working under Lili, right?"

"I'm in the office beside her and I report to her, yes," Mel corrected. "I'm looking forward to seeing precisely which projects she has in mind for me. I understand the company's interests are quite diverse, so I expect the work to be different to anything I've done before, if nothing else."

"So what were you doing before deciding to be my angel?"

Mel gave him her serene smile, knowing Hell would freeze over before she'd ever be his angel. He evidently didn't know that yet, so she replied, "Other temporary assignments, as required. I go where I'm needed, that's all." She took a larger mouthful of her cooling coffee, trying not to grimace at the taste.

"I'm sure I'll need you for something. Lili does a lot of work for me. She may even delegate some of her more delicate tasks to you, if you're lucky. We could be working very closely together on some of my pet projects." Luce grinned. "You'll want to make sure you wear a skirt." He stared at her pants-clad legs hungrily.

Mel wondered what he'd say if she admitted the closest he'd get to her was precisely where he was now – just out of arm's reach. She chose to say nothing. Instead, she smiled and nodded, then excused herself so she could wash the sludge out of the bottom of her coffee mug. She wanted to wash her whole body – the sleazy CEO made her skin crawl – but she hardly had time before the next orientation session resumed.

She slipped back into the training room, relieved to see that Luce had left. Somehow, she suspected she'd be seeing him again soon, though she hoped the opposite. Slimy snake of a CEO…

About The Book

A devilishly hot CEO. The angelic new office temp. A match made in Heaven or Hell?

Melody Angel takes a job as a temp at the HELL Corporation. Surrounded by eternal bureaucracy gone mad, demons who love making life miserable, and dying for a decent coffee, it may take a miracle for Mel's mission to succeed. She must find out what evil plans Lucifer and his minions have in store and stop them, using any means necessary.

Adding trouble and temptation to Mel's job is Luce Iblis, the damnably hot CEO, who has set his smouldering eyes on the new office angel and he's determined to claim her, body and soul.

Can ultimate evil and angelic perfection escape a limbo of desire and find a paradise of their own?

A tiny taste of what's in store

"Do you know how long you've made me wait?" Luce lifted his chin. "Close the door."

Mel turned and kicked the door shut with the sole of one shoe. The click of it closing coincided with her eyes meeting Luce's once more.

"Now strip and get your arse on the desk," Luce instructed.

Mel stared at him. He couldn't be serious, could he?

"Every other girl in this building knows how to do as she's told. Do you know how many girls I've had on this desk? You should consider yourself lucky. The last one I had in here was so quick getting undressed that I managed to give her a full fifteen minutes of my time. At this rate, you'll be lucky to have five."

Mel became transfixed by the timber desktop. "Did you wipe it clean afterwards?"

"What?" Luce's face reddened.

Mel Goes to Hell series

• Welcome to Hell - A Short Story (#1 in the series) - Free Purchase Links

•See You in Hell (#2)

•Mel Goes to Hell (#3) - to be released in July 2014

About The Author

Demelza Carlton has always loved the ocean, but on her first snorkelling trip she found she was afraid of fish. She has since swum with sea lions, sharks and sea cucumbers and stood on spray-drenched cliffs over a seething sea as a seven-metre cyclonic swell surged in, shattering a shipwreck below.

Sensationalist spin? No - Demelza tends to take a camera with her so she can capture and share the moment later; shipwrecks, sharks and all.

Demelza now lives in Perth, Western Australia, the shark attack capital of the world.

The Ocean's Gift series was her first foray into fiction, followed by her suspense thriller Nightmares trilogy. She swears the Mel Goes to Hell series ambushed her on a crowded train and wouldn't leave her alone.

Author Links

Purchase Links

Saturday, 14 June 2014

Book Spotlight Box Set of Sizzling Thrillers only 99 cents today

Sizzling Thriller Hot Box Release: Get Yours Today

8 Sizzling Thrillers From 8 Best-Selling Authors

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Smashwords (99c)

Good Reads:

Steven Bannister – Fade to Black

John Paul Davis – The Cortes Enigma C R Hiatt – Sanctioned Kill David Leadbeater – The Razor’s Edge Andy Lucas – Race Amazon Karen Perkins – Dead Reckoning C K Raggio – Heron Park Mike Wells – Wild Child

Steven Bannister – Fade to Black Allie St Clair is young and brilliant and today she's been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector at New Scotland Yard. But the time for celebration is short. Something is wrong in rain-swept London. Very wrong.

John Paul Davis – The Cortes Enigma 1581: It appeared in the west as the sun was setting, a distant silhouette like a fire on the water. Twelve hours later it appeared again, this time much closer to the mainland . . . Who was on board or where they came from remained a mystery . . . No trace of the vessel was ever found . . . C R Hiatt – Sanctioned Kill Destined for Danger. Sanctioned to Kill. David Leadbeater – The Razor’s Edge Trent, Silk and Radford are the Razor’s Edge and the best spy team in the business – until the government they toiled, served and bled for, disavowed them. Andy Lucas – Race Amazon James Pace, ex-RAF helicopter pilot and amateur cameraman, is still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life when a child's bullet nearly kills him. Karen Perkins – Dead Reckoning A historical adventure of piracy, love and revenge in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. C K Raggio – Heron Park A small Long Island town erupts in a panic when a woman and her dog are found savagely murdered on a popular hiking trail. Mike Wells – Wild Child A fast, suspenseful thriller with an ending that you'll never see coming. Large Hot Box - cover - lr

Get it today:

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Good Reads:

Thursday, 5 June 2014

Guest Post: Dark Mountain by C.B. Pratt

Guest Post

Me and My Secret Identity
By C.B. Pratt

I’m a pleasant-faced fifty-something year old American woman. I’ve traveled a bit, lived in different places, been married to the same guy for 25 years, a mom. Fairly ordinary, really. But like Clark Kent or Diana Prince, I have an alter-ego.

My secret identity is a mighty man, a towering, brawny mass of muscles. He’s available to fight your battles, defeat your enemies, magical or mortal, and maybe seduce a maiden or two on the way out of town. He has a wry sense of humor and a slightly twisted sense of chivalry. He is Eno, a Thracian. He lives in the Ancient World, Greece, Egypt, Babylon, circa 1250 B.C.E.

I live in Orlando, circa 2014.

So how did we meet? Why does this ordinary woman write about Gods, monsters, and a mercenary hero with the motto ‘Swift Sword, Reasonable Rates’?

I’ve been fascinated with the myths of the Ancient World since I could read. But I always felt there was something not quite right about the versions we grow up on. The Greeks were especially fond of good living. Wine, cheese, parties, singing, dancing, drama, comedy…if the Greeks didn’t invent leisure activities, they certainly worked at perfecting them. So then why are so many of the myths dreary, quasi-Biblical, and, frankly, a bit boring?

I blame the interpreters. Most of the men who interpreted the Greek myths were in Holy Orders. They’d grown up on the Bible, the beautiful but not exactly laugh-a-minute King James’ Version. So when they began translating the Greeks, they adopted the same style of language. Besides, many of them were school-teachers and you didn’t want the fifth form breaking up every time Homer mentions Aphrodite’s glorious white breasts. So we wound up with much more serious stories than I think they were intended to be.

Some are serious. The story of Orestes’ torture by the Furies or Oedipus’ crimes (unwitting though they were) are not cheerful tales to pass an afternoon. But Hermes’ making off with older brother Apollo’s cattle? That’s funny! Odysseus’ adventures would be a primitive laugh riot. You can just imagine the guardhouse on a golden afternoon with a passing bard earning his supper telling the rough-necks all about Hephaestus catching his wife in bed with Ares and getting the worst of it.

When I started writing Eno’s adventures, I wanted to bring out the joyful, funny side of the stories and the ‘embrace the moment’ ethos of the Ancient World that lives and breathes throughout those stories, once you know where to look.

So much for the intellectual reason for writing my books. Now let me tell you about the emotional side.

For a couple of years, I had been suffering from writer’s block. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t write, I simply felt that nothing I was writing was worth pursuing. Then, one day, Eno came along and just wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I’m now three books into the series and can’t see running out of monsters for him to fight, Gods to meddle with his personal life, or jokes to tell. He made me a writer again. I’m very grateful and happy to be sharing Eno with readers through these e-books.

About The Author

C.B. Pratt is a multi-published author, both traditionally and independently. She lives in Orlando, Florida, not far from the Mouse Empire.

About The Book

Got monsters? You need Eno the Thracian! He's the guy with the answer to your problems, whether they're as small as a dragonet you need moved to the other side of the mountain or as big as a minotaur wreaking havoc in your palace. He can train your youth for battle, cure your vizier of fatal ambition, or slay hydras (up to seven heads only, please).

As you may know, there's a serious hero shortage in Greece at the moment. Most of the more famous heroes have heeded their ancient promises and gone to help out one side or the other in the Trojan War. But the need for heroes hasn't lessened since the war; if anything it has increased. More monsters than ever are appearing in our blessed islands. If you're one of the unlucky ones beset by strange beasts, summon Eno the Thracian.

Swift sword...reasonable rates.

Links

Author Annette Gisby