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Friday, May 17, 2013

Virtual Book Blast: Cream by Zenobia Renquist



Please welcome Zenobia Renquist and her new book, Cream, to the blog! Ready for a teaser of this fabulous interracial romance? 

Zenobia is giving away a $25 Starbucks gift card to a randomly drawn commenter!



CREAM
by Zenobia Renquist


She’s entered a world where blood, sex, and cash rules everything around her.

What do a four hundred-year-old vampire and a mid-level necromancer have in common? Money. Jeliyah needs it to pay off the people who trained her and Teaghan enjoys killing to get it. Together they hunt rogue vampires—assuming Teaghan can focus on something other than getting her in bed and Jeliyah doesn’t put a bullet in him first.

The uneasy partnership promises to be lucrative until Teaghan and Jeliyah get on the wrong side of a feud. Jeliyah is forced to use forbidden magic and finds herself bound to a man she should hate—but whom she can’t stop fantasizing about.

Every second they stay alive fuels a growing desire Jeliyah is unwilling to deny. Is it the magic? The danger? The only way to get the answers she craves is to outrun the enemy or kill them. She knows Teaghan’s preference but it’s Jeliyah who must put their mind-blowing sex aside and make the choice that will decide both their fates.

***

Did that whet your appetite? I bet this excerpt will!
***


Teaghan kicked the room door shut behind him and then laid her on the nearest bed. “At least this time you’re not glowing. Let’s not make a habit of this.”
“I feel the same.”
“Then again…” His gaze wandered to her breasts.
Images of Teaghan running his hands over her breasts and teasing her nipples entered her mind. She reared up and smacked him at the same time she brought her other arm up to guard her chest.
Teaghan didn’t react except to grin at her. “You’re flushed, necromancer. Your heart rate jumped too. My little idea get you all hot and bothered?”
She glared at him.
“No? How about this one?”
A mental picture of Teaghan yanking off her panties so he could run his tongue over her clit invaded her mind. The detail was so vivid Jeliyah felt her pussy twitch in anticipation. Damn the man and this stupid mental connection. It might be one way, but she had access to his thoughts and now he wasn’t trying to hide them. “You can’t do that without an invitation.”
“So invite me.”
“Shouldn’t you be going to sleep? The sun is up.”
“Sun’s got nothing to do with me.” He moved closer, planting his hands on either side of her legs and leaning into her. “Invite me.”
Jeliyah scooted back off the bed and away from him. Once on her feet, she said, “Don’t get all cocky just because I took some of your blood, vampire. I told you that was a one-time thing and not to get ideas.”
“Yeah, I heard you but,” he hopped the bed and crowded her against the wall, “here’s the thing. You could have gotten the same results by asking me to open a vein. A simple prick to the finger for a few drops of blood would have sufficed. You kissed me, necromancer.”
“It was a split-second decision. Back off.” She clutched the necrome at her throat and said, “Shield.”
Teaghan laughed as the shield expanded to include him. “Forget something important, did you? Your necromes recognize me now. I’m not a threat.”
Shit. She’d forgotten one of the major side effects of Recognize. Her necromes—and any others made from her blood—no longer worked against Teaghan. There was no way to deactivate Recognize either, just like an invitation once given.
She shoved at his chest but he kept leaning forward until his lips were close to hers.
He said, “Let’s talk about that kiss.”
“It was spur of the moment. It meant nothing.”
“Care to test that theory?”
“You can’t. I haven’t invited you.”
“Kissing is the one thing I don’t need an invitation to do.” He pushed his lips against hers as he forced her hands over her head and pressed his body closer.
Jeliyah couldn’t turn from the kiss, though she tried. This wasn’t fair. Vampires needed permission to enter a person’s body. Why didn’t that extend to kissing? And why was she giving in to his kiss?




Zenobia Renquist lives in her imagination. When not traveling through her fantasy worlds, she can be found in Hawaii living with her husband and two cats.

She is an Air Force brat turned Air Force wife, which means she’s accustomed to travel and does it whenever possible (so long as she doesn’t have to fly). Her favorite pastime is torturing her characters on their way to happily-ever-after for the enjoyment of her readers.

On the few occasions her muse flees the scene of the crime, Zenobia likes to read (comics, manga, and romance), go to the movies, play a few levels of whichever puzzle game has hijacked her interest or experiment with a new chain maille weave.


Thursday, May 16, 2013

Latest project.

Hey everyone! I haven't been talking about my latest project because it wasn't "ready" yet, but is there such a thing as "ready"?

I'm planning on a novella tentatively called, "Auntie Vamp", an erotic coming of age story of a young woman who is dumped (via text of all things) who then goes in search of her own sexual identity.  A sort of Cinderella meets Auntie Mame story. :)

http://justira.deviantart.com/art/DailyDoodle-Male-back-study-150952545
Here is a quick snippet:



Holly Shepherd was an engaged woman. And she was darn happy about it, she vowed. She would not stare at the man who stood in front of her on the bus. No. Absolutely not. Never. She would not look at the muscles in his arms as he clasped the stabilizing strap with one hand and dug a phone out of his back pocket....


That tight ass looked like he could fuck all day. Holly wiped the sweat off her collarbones. It would feel so good to have his hips between her thighs, his package rubbing against the crotch of her panties under her blue summer dress. His long arms would brace him above her, giving him a great view of her face and breasts as he teased her, promising he would enter her, but at his own pace. He would demand she fall apart underneath him….



Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The virtual book tour continues on!

Only a few more dates are left. Be sure to comment to win the very last of my sexy dragon necklaces.
 April 22:  Taylor Made Fiction
April 24:  Coffee and A Book Anytime
April 26: Racing To Read
April 30:  Today!! Shelley's Book Case
May 3:  Let's Get BOOKED!
May 7:  Long and Short Reviews
May 9:  Simply Ali
Today, today, today! May 14:  Welcome to My World of Dreams
May 15:  It's Raining Books
May 17:  Queen of the Night Reviews

And don't forget to check out my short horror story, Predator and Prey, now available at Amazon for a mere $.99.

As if living in a city called Normal, Illinois wasn't horrifying enough on its own. a serial killer is hunting the women of this Midwestern college town. And he has his next prey in sight...



Saturday, May 4, 2013

Best of...

Over the years, I've taken a look at criticism leveled at romance. For example, people couldn't wait to pile the nasty notes all over the Twilight series. In response, I created a serious of articles on the phenomena and this was one of them.

***
Today, I'm going swipe ideas from one of my favorite books about romance - Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, edited by Jayne Ann Krentz.

Several themes emerge from the essays in this book. First is the one discussed a couple of days ago: Twilight and other romances are fantasies. To quote Krentz's introduction:

[T]he readers are no more confused about this fact, nor any more likely to use their reading as a substitute for action in the real world , than readers of [Robert] Ludlum, [Robert] Parker, [Dick] Frances, and [Anne] McCaffrey. (p. 5)
'Nuff said.

The second theme of the book is a shameless song of female empowerment. In a romance, the woman lives. How many times do women die in male action movies because she found a man attractive and acted on it? How many great female characters in literature are punished for daring to act on her own ideas?

Not only do the women live, all of them win. Again, Krentz:
With courage, intelligence, and gentleness, she brings the most dangerous creature on earth, the human male, to his knees. More than that, she forces him to acknowledge her power as a woman.
A cursory glance at the statistics of the causes of female death reveal the radical nature of these ideas.


Finally, for me, the most outrageous theme of romance (and Twilight) is the discussion of Male and Female. Long before Twilight came out, Laura Kinsale discussed the real truth of romance.
[For] a woman, a romance may be a working-through of her own interior conflicts and passions, her own 'maleness' if you will, that resists and resists giving in to what is desired about all, and yet feared about all, and then, after the decisive climax. arrives at a resolution, a choice that carries with it the relief and pleasure of internal harmony. (p. 39)
Long before Edward came along, Linda Barlow described the romantic hero. Sound familiar?
Dark and brooding, writhing inside with all the residual anguish of his shadowed past, world-weary and cynical, quick-tempered and prone to fits of guilt and depression. He is strong, virile, powerful, and lost. Adept at many things that carry with them the respect and admiration of the world (especially the world of other males), he is not fully competent in the arena in which women excel- the arena of his emotions, which are violently out of control.

Is this the sort of woman most women want? Of course not....[A]lmost from the beginning, I identified with the hero. I saw him as Self, not Other. And I dimly recognized him as one of the archetypical figures in my own inner landscape.

The romantic hero is not the feminine ideal of what a man should be. The romantic hero, in fact, is not a man at all. He is a split-off portion of the heroine's own psyche which will be reintegrated at the end of the book. (p. 49)
This is why Twilight is popular. We are endlessly attempting to claim and integrate our power. It's not about falling in love with the endless git that is Edward.

It is about understanding the parts of ourselves that are dark, angry, and dangerous.