No Matter What Happens Kelly Collins Publication date: May 5th 2022 Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Does marrying well mean marrying rich?
As a senator’s daughter, Kennedy Blackwell has everything, or so it seems. But on her wedding day, a shocking secret changes everything, and Kennedy’s fortunes turn on a dime. Instead of offering their unconditional support, her parents turn their backs on her, proving once and for all that her father’s goal of becoming president is more important than his own child. Forced to start over, Kennedy relies on a pact she and five friends made to each other back in junior high. She also enlists the help of the “entertainment” from her bachelorette party, a handsome handyman-by-day, exotic dancer-by-night.
Wade Roberts faces his existence one crisis at a time. Everything bad in his life has directly resulted from a poor decision or the actions of a member of the Blackwell family. So, when the senator’s daughter calls asking for help, he’s torn between assisting her or making her “pay.” Soon tangled up in the Blackwell family drama, he finds himself being framed for an unspeakable crime. Wade must step up and prove his innocence and his love for a woman who deserves more than he can offer.
Can two people who start with nothing end up with everything?
She blinked and focused on her future husband standing at the end of the aisle. He looked as nervous as she felt. There was even a green hue to his complexion, probably a side effect from his bachelor party. Unlike Emily, he could toss the booze back with little effect, but last night they must have really tied one on.
She made her way toward him with knocking knees and trembling hands.
When the minister asked who gave this woman and her father answered, a ball of emotions welled inside her. Who’d thought those words were a good idea? It was like she was being traded for political favors when the only exchange between father and future son-in-law was the promise of box seats for next year’s games.
She took Logan’s hand in front of the officiant, who talked about the sacred vow of marriage and what love meant. They recited traditional promises to love, honor, and cherish until death do they part, but neither met the other’s eyes. Logan looked past or through her to her bridesmaids. She stared at a piece of lint on his shoulder.
“Does anyone here have a reason to object to this marriage?” The minister’s voice boomed, leaving no doubt everyone heard him.
Kennedy ran through an entire list of reasons to object in her head. She still had time to change her mind, but when she looked at Logan and saw the same fear she felt, a small giggle escaped her mouth. They both had wedding jitters. That was normal.
At that moment, he looked at her the way he had when they first met. Despite the anxiety and feelings of doom, she was the luckiest woman in the world.
The congregation sat silently as the minister waited the obligatory several seconds for anyone to object. He cleared his throat. “I now pronounce you—”
“Wait!” Emily said loudly enough for everyone to hear, though her voice cracked. “I can’t let you marry him.”
Author Bio:
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International bestselling author of more than thirty novels, Kelly Collins writes with the intention of keeping love alive. Always a romantic, she blends real-life events with her vivid imagination to create characters and stories that lovers of contemporary romance, new adult, and romantic suspense will return to again and again.
Kelly has sold more than a quarter of a million books worldwide, and in 2021 she was awarded a Readers’ Favorite Award Gold Medal in the Contemporary Romance category for A Tablespoon of Temptation.
Bad Girls Drink Blood S.L. Choi Published by: City Owl Press Publication date: May 17th 2022 Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Part sun fae, part blood fae, all abomination.
There is only one hybrid fae in existence, and that dishonor goes to Lane Callaghan.
After a life spent dodging slurs, threats, and assassination attempts, Lane gave her past the one finger salute and ditched her former fae home for good. The detective agency she and her sisters run on the edge of Las Vegas continues to limp along, with Lane doing more debt collecting and intimidating than investigating, but anything to pay the bills. Between working for low-lifes to bring down even lower-lifes, eating cheesy poofs by the bucket, and flirting with the criminally attractive bartender where she conducts business, life is good.
That ends when a routine job goes sideways, leaving Lane with a sack full of stolen sun shards—the source of sun fae power. Without the shards, the sun fae face giving up their magic completely, or risk death if they use their power. Considering they would rather see her dead, good riddance, as far as Lane’s concerned—except her father and adopted sister are sun fae. Lane must choose—return home to save the fae bastards that almost killed her, or let them burn.
Fury roared through me. My ears burned and scalp tingled.
“What the hell is that?”
I spun with a snarl. My fangs elongated instantly, painfully.
Teddy’s tall, lean frame bent over my shoulder as he read the napkin. My body thrummed with the surge of unspent adrenaline and possibly the intimate proximity. I flexed my fingers, curled them, flexed again.
“It’s nothing.” I snatched the napkin and jammed it into my jacket pocket. I’d deal with how exactly that woman knew I was a hybrid later. That was a secret for me and my sisters, and I aimed to keep it that way.
There was only one hybrid, and I was the unlucky genetic winner. It wasn’t for lack of fae mixing, that was something they did often and copiously, but offspring were always of one race. It kept their magic powerful, and if fae worshiped anything, it was power. My existence wasn’t an exalted position.
“But—”
“It’s nothing,” I stressed, my gaze steady on his. I meant business.
“Okay, okay.” He tipped his forehead toward my face. “You should holster those things before you hurt someone besides yourself.”
Crap, not again. All at once my lip became a persistent throb, reminding me of the pain from my fangs punching out. I dragged a finger along the edge of my mouth. It came away sticky, warm, and wet. When startled, I had zero control of the things. It was embarrassing.
Teddy tucked a clean napkin into my palm and pulled me close to whisper, “You shouldn’t be wasting blood when you refuse to drink it.”
His hot breath warmed my neck and tickled my ear. The heady mixture of woods, earth, and vanilla—Teddy’s distinct scent—filled my nostrils, made me dizzy. Something melted and puddled in my core. My gaze fastened on the way my dark red hair danced with his bourbon-brown strands. The way they both brushed against the hard line of muscle leading from his neck to his shoulder.
Damn it.
That delicious scent shouldn’t be so strong. My olfactory sense was the same as any other fae, unless I’d smelled their blood. Then again, with the amount of brawls Teddy broke up in this joint, he was bound to have bled at some point.
I stepped away and scowled in a desperate attempt to hide my reaction. “And you should mind your own business.” What was wrong with me lately? I’d known the guy for years, but recently Teddy seemed more flirt than friend. I felt disgustingly girly when he got near.
“Whatever you say, sweet fangs.” He chucked a knuckle under my chin, letting it linger long enough to turn the gesture from playful to intimate.
I rubbed my chin on my shoulder. This was Teddy. He couldn’t possibly be flirting. He’d known me since I roared into Interlands at fifteen with way more balls and bravado than sense. More importantly, I wasn’t his type—empty headed and easy.
He swaggered toward the end of the bar, and some mysterious magnetic force pulled my appreciative gaze to the way he filled out his denim. My view disappeared as he stepped behind the counter. When I looked up, Teddy watched me with a knowing grin. I bared my fangs. He laughed.
I growled under my breath and turned to leave as he circled the bar and headed for the spot across the counter from me.
“Why take these jobs, Lane? They’re bad. You’re so much more than this.”
Teddy’s earnest words stopped me, and I looked back. His bottomless black gaze gripped mine.
My chest tightened. Teddy didn’t know how misplaced his faith in me was. I grabbed a freshly filled tumbler full of amber liquid from the bar.
“Hey!” The owner of the drink turned, opened his mouth to say more, and laid eyes on me. I raised my brows in a dare. The guy wisely spun to face the bar and tapped the counter, ordering a new drink for himself.
“Because I’m really, really good at it. Besides, haven’t you heard?” I slammed my confiscated drink. The taste of gasoline chasing cinnamon scorched a path down my throat. My nostrils burned and eyes watered. I shoved down the sensation and flashed a smile filled with a whole lot of fang. “I’m a bad girl.”
Author Bio:
S.L. Choi is an urban fantasy author with a deep love for humor, fast-paced action, and hit-you-in-the-heart feels. She grew up imagining goblins living in the rocks outside her bedroom window, while fairies flew through the flowers. Now she puts those stories to paper. When not writing, she is either photographing the beautiful New England area, hiking, gaming with her equally nerdy husband, or attending to the small furry overlords who rule them both.
I love a ‘morally grey protagonist’. I love villains. I think it makes it more interesting…and real. It’s not like we don’t need a little help and redemption at times. Besides, who are we to judge? So, let’s see what L T Getty has to share about her characters.
Morally Grey Protagonists?
I
grew up reading stories about heroes and villains, where things were not clear
cut that the hero was perfect but there were definitive light and dark sides. Somewhere
along the lines, the stories that claimed that they were for a more adult audience
started to blur the lines of hero and villain. I didn’t mind it, because so
long as the hero didn’t cross the line and had some redemptive qualities, I
could still cheer for them.
Suddenly
reading more ‘mature’ stories meant more nuanced themes and ideas. I didn’t
mind unreliable narrators, and even stories where there were no heroes. Perhaps
the most honest among these is William Makepeace Thackery’s Vanity Fair. Its subtitle is A Novel without a Hero. It’s satire but
not in the way you think.
But what makes a hero? I suppose we should define
some terms.
A Hero in the modern sense, is probably
a loaded term. For the sake of this article, I will define as someone who at
least attempts to do good. We’re not here to talk subversions, so I don’t want
to hear about how much Hero A sucks at it. A
Villain conversely, is someone who attempts to do bad. There are many, many
many subversions of these tropes, and there’s no way I can go over all of them
in any brief article. The fact that I had to define these terms speaks volumes,
but let’s focus.
A Protagonist is the center of the
story. The antagonist is the person
or force that opposes the actions of the protagonist.
Up
until recently, in most stories, we follow a heroic protagonist. Think of most renditions of Cinderella or The
Ugly Duckling. In more modern renditions of stories, we tend to flesh out the
characters, or tell the story from a different perspective. My favourite novel,
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis,
tells the story from a villain protagonist. Lewis also pinned The Screwtape Letters, which was
literally advice from one demon to another, whereas Till We Have Faces paints the character of Orual as incredibly
sympathetic, but also completely in the wrong by the end of the tale.
I’ve
done villain protagonists. Dreams of
Mariposa, Marie is a villain, and I didn’t want the audience to think she
was the victim or somehow loveable, so much as delve into an extremely
narcissistic mindset. I’ve written heroic characters; Daphne from The Mermaid and the Unicorns is jealous
and stubborn, but she’s also brave and loyal, and grows from her mistakes. I’d
say that Marie is a very flawed villain, and Daphne is a flawed heroine.
What
about the morally grey characters?
When
I was doing research for this article, I stumbled across why Heroic Fantasy
deviated from Sword and Sorcery. I always assumed that Sword and Sorcery were
referring to elements in the story, like sword and sandal (Vaguely historical
romanish stories) or Sword and Gun (John Carter Space Opera). Turns out it was
to deviate from the legacy of morally compromised protagonists common in sword
and sorcery. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_fantasy )
Although
comics, movies, and other adaptations didn’t always stay true to the original, I
grew up reading Conan the Barbarian shorts, and there’s plenty of stories where
Conan gets himself into a situation because he’s blatantly there to steal
something or do something that would land him up in the local jail. He takes up
with pirates, isn’t shy on killing, and has been attributed to an awful lot of
ravishing. He’s still an incredibly iconic hero that has stood the test of
time.
Why
the morally grey heroes in Sword and Sorcery tales? In my opinion, sometimes
stories lean better towards characters who might not be on the up and up in
their society. There are certain situations that have to get pretty convoluted
for a Lawful Good Hero go find himself in.
I
found this with my novel Tower of
Obsidian. Kale gets betrayed by his lord’s men and they set out to sea to
hide from the wrath of said lord, where they are attacked by drougr and Kale’s
captors become captive themselves, and thus the adventure truely kicks off. I’m
not calling Kale a morally perfect hero, far from it, but he’s also not the
sort of person who’d go sailing off into contested waters. The drougr are
looking for warriors and rough men to send to the tower; they don’t typically
have access to people like Kale.
I
for one don’t like to think of people as morally complex but inherently flawed
– even paragons of virtue probably should have a testing point or a weakness,
and it’s ultimately their actions, and not their motives, that make them heroes
or villains in the story. As a writer, I eventually have to take a side in a
conflict, even if it’s “Hey, you’re all awful”. That doesn’t mean that I have
to make the answers easy.
For
instance, in Witchslayer’s Scion, one
of the major issues in the growing empire of Tenagee is that these conquered
territories aren’t happy being ruled by people who aren’t from their island or
culture. Yes, the Imperium is conquering the islands and sometimes they treat
the natives pretty terribly. BUT they are also bringing in trade between the
communities, and establishing a form of law that protects women and children.
YES, the islanders are right to want to control their own futures, BUT the
people who tend to rise to power tend to be the sort who use people and will
sell their own people out to better their own positions.
To
me, the morally grey area is the situation which a given character is faced
with making a decision in which there is no right answer. I love well-written
characters who are upstanding moral citizens to which I inspire. The problem is
that, when I was a younger writer they were difficult to write well. I think it
depends on the audience, but in general most readers want a main character who
is relatable, and even if they’re not perfect, understandable, and if they’re a
villain, motivations that the reader can understand or even sympathize with.
In short, I don’t think a character has to be capable of stealing but not of murder to be morally grey. I think the vast majority of characters in fiction need to be realized, and that includes flaws. It’s not such a bad thing as the vast majority of characters in modern fiction overcome their flaws and grow as people. An upright person, with a teeny tiny tint of darkness, could still be considered grey by this standard, but it’s ultimately their actions in spite of of these flaws that differentiate the heroes from the villains.
I loved the article and it only makes me want to check out your characters more. Thanks so much, LT.
Witchslayer’s Scion by L.T. Getty
GENRE: Sword and Sorcery/Fantasy
BLURB
Koth’s
life was decided for him since before he was born, for his ability to heal
wounds by touch is rare even among his people. When an attempted kidnapping
turns to sacrificial murder, he embraces vengeance and the sword. As he
journeys far from his small isolated village in the north, he learns the truth
as to why his bloodline is targeted by strange magic, in a world still
rebuilding from a time when dark sorcerers didn’t bother with secrecy.
Koth thinks his quest is straightforward enough–find the men responsible, and
kill them–and any who aid them. He will soon learn that those who have both
privilege and power, there are few things they lack–and in the pursuit of
godhood, their allies can prove even more sinister as mere mortals seek to
advent empires and dynasties.
EXCERPT
“Something’s wrong,” Una said. “Koth, wait here.”
“Why?” If there was a problem, she should be waiting outside
for him.
He sensed inside, his aunt’s thoughts remained hidden from
him. Una shouted, and he ran inside the building. He thought there were lights
on inside, but he saw no candles.
The tea house was very dark, and he felt a sudden dread—he
wanted to leave. Baro barked from the outside. ~Una!~ he thought, before something hit his neck.
He knew at once it was a poison dart, and ripping it out he
tried to smell what it was. Seeing metal reflect moonlight and he moved his
hand, his skin cut. Moving instinctively out of the way, his next reaction was
to purge the toxin that coursed through his body and tried to understand the
wound. It was mostly his forearm, deep but he could still use it, the bone
unaffected. He’d do a better healing later. He focused on something not unlike
a burn before going for the knife at his hip. Striking 85 in the next liquid
motion, Koth realized he was attacking his aunt.
She grabbed onto his injured flesh and seared it,
destroying, weakening the sinew and the cartilage and causing it to age and
die, following up the bloodstream, to find the heart and kill. Koth tried to
brace; he couldn’t heal and keep her at bay. He was physically stronger and much
heavier, but she was weakening his muscles. He tried to wrench the knife from
her.
He knocked the blade to the ground then tried to lock minds
with her to find nothing short of blinding pain take him over, wrestling him to
the ground and making him drop his knife. She took the dagger and when he tried
to force himself up, a familiar sense washed over him. Magic, but not coming
from Una.
“Do not kill him yet,” Yeshbel said, “we will bleed him
first.”
AUTHOR Bio and Links
L.T.
Getty is a rural paramedic from Manitoba. She enjoys writing science fiction
and fantasy and generally being creative.
Book Details: Book Title: Unseen Arms: A Story about Cancer, Crisis, and Being Carried by Faithby Evelyn & Wayne Hausknecht Category: Adult Non-Fiction (18+), 168 pages Genre: Medical Memoir Publisher:Mascot Books Publication Date: May 3, 2022. Content Rating: PG-13 + M:Mature as it is a medical journal/novel.
Book Description:
Patient and Caregiver: the main characters in a drama that started in 2007 and is still unfolding for Evelyn and Wayne Hausknecht. In 2007, Evelyn was diagnosed with an aggressive, recurrent type of non-Hodgkin’s T-cell lymphoma. Although in Unseen Arms Evelyn and Wayne are as medically accurate as their memories and blog allow, the greatest purpose here is
to tell the story from a patient’s and caregiver’s perspectives.
Recently, while having an in-depth conversation with a lung doctor when Evelyn was in the hospital with pneumonia, Evelyn was thanked by the doctor for what she and Wayne were doing. She was in awe of his excitement for the book. The doctor saw the need for future patients to learn from experienced patients. Evelyn and Wayne were peer volunteers for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for years. The goal of that program was the same: an experienced caregiver and patient walk beside a person entering the transplant program to make their path smoother. Even though each diagnosis and circumstance is different, every patient has the same questions, fears, and needs. The greatest need is for someone understanding to talk to. When Evelyn was diagnosed, it was easy to find medical information, but caregiver and patient perspectives were limited.
Evelyn and Wayne had three purposes for writing this book. One was to give God the Glory for His faithfulness during this process. The second was to give hope to the patients and caregivers of today and the future. The third was to give some limited insights into the stem cell transplant process. The medical part of this process is rapidly changing, but the patients and caregivers still have the same needs.
Evelyn and Wayne Hausknecht have spent most of their careers in education. Evelyn has taught different subjects and ages in public and Christian schools. Wayne, a wood engineer, helped build the largest sawmill in Brazil and has managed mills in Michigan and North Carolina. They both enjoy motorcycle riding and rode their Harley Davidson Road King to Glacier National Park in 2006. Recently, they traded their motorcycle for a Model A truck and now enjoy going to car shows. They have two married children and six grandchildren and reside in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
