Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts

Monday, August 9, 2010

The Interview: Part Eight

Stephanie swiped the tears from her cheeks and put the car into gear, she had to get home and take a nap, the only thing to make a day like this any better is to turn off the lights close the curtains and crawl into bed with a cup of hot cocoa and a heating pad.

She drove slowly home, all the while thinking of her daughter and the situation she now found herself in. How in the hell was she going to manage to juggle Keith, the new job, grief and her reaction to Mr. Sutherland all without cracking under the pressure?

Ten minutes later she pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex, the little dilapidated building sat nestled in between a major high way and shopping center. It wasn't a desirable place to live but she had called it home for more than three years. Grabbing her purse from the car seat next to her she locked the doors and began climbing the three flights to her apartment.

Once she was inside her apartment she placed her purse on the hall table and strode straight into the kitchen to turn on her Senseo for hot water. She definitely needed that warmness coursing through her veins, she went into her room and stripped down, and slide into her fuzzy robe. She made her way back to the kitchen to check on her hot water, it had already started to pour into her Care Bears mug. She smiled as she added spoonfuls of cocoa the hot water. The smell of chocolate wafted through the air.

She slowly stirred her chocolate as she made her way back to her room. She turned down the bed, set the chocolate on her nightstand and was about to climb in when she heard her purse start to sing about girls just wanting to have fun, she hurried down the hall, dug through her purse and answered breathily "Hello?"

The number had been unrecognizable.She had no clue who would call her, usually, the only people she heard from were Bill Collectors and her mom. "Ramy? This is Sutherland here. I just heard about the unfortunate incident that is Keith in HR." Stephanie's heart stopped in her chest, please God don't let her lose this opportunity. "It's not a problem, Mr. Sutherland-" He cut her off like he had in the office.

"It damn well is a problem, I can't have my employees at odds with one another. So this is how this is going to go down. You new HR handler is going to be Rose, Rose is about 70 if she's a day and I doubt you have a past relationship with her. If so, then please let me know." Stephanie looked at the phone like it was a snake, was that a joke? Should she laugh?

"Um, thank you, Mr. Sutherland." She heard him sigh.

"You are welcome, I just want you to be comfortable here at T&A. See you bright and early, Stephanie." He hung up without waiting for her goodbye. She closed her phone with shaking hands and slowly made her way back to her room, as she crawled into bed, she sent up a thank you to whoever was listening. Not having to deal with Keith was definitely a blessing, and not losing the opportunity was a gift.

Her eyes fluttered down and she fell into an exhausted sleep.

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Read the next installments:

Part Nine
Part Ten

Friday, June 25, 2010

Romance, EROTICA, Ebooks, OH MY!

Ladies, we have hit the Ebook motherload! There is a website All Romance Ebooks that has an ENTIRE freebie section for ebooks, and they are available in the formats of Adobe Acrobat, HTML, Mobipocket, Epub and pretty much any device you can read an ebook on listed here.


There are erotica, romance, all kinds of free ebooks, over 150 listed. Ellora's Cave is prominent among what is listed (Ellora's Cave is a publisher of Romantic Erotica.)

Anyway if you are a carnisour of books, this site is definitely for you! Enjoy!

All Romance Ebooks

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Catherine Anderson's Early Dawn: A Review





Early Dawn last night but didn't get a chance to post the review until today, but I definitely wanted to get this out while the novel was fresh in my mind. I picked it up at Walmart for a pretty good price and since I have read a few of Ms. Anderson's books I knew it would be a good read, even though I had never read one of her historical romance novels. I was not disappointed.
I finished Catherine Anderson's

Early Dawn re-introduces us to the Coulter family, if you are familiar with any of Anderson's work you will recognize the name as she has written a several contemporary novels (Sweet Nothings, My Sunshine, Bright Eyes, Sun Kissed, Blue Skies and Phantom Waltz) featuring the family and also the Paxton family which she has written her historical novels around (Keegan's Lady, Summer Breeze)

The story begins with our hero tragically losing his wife when, after coming home from a picnic by a lake, he and his wife are brutally attacked by outlaws. Matthew Coulter almost dies however his mother nursed him back to health. He makes a vow to chase the outlaws down and avenge his wife.

Three years later, enter our Heroine. Eden Paxton is on a train heading towards Colorado from California when her train is held up by the same band of outlaws that attacked Matthew Coulter, and in the middle of the hold up she saves a child's life but the outlaws take her prisoner. She is with them for almost a week as they sexually abuse her (this will be hard for any woman who has ever been sexually abused I feel, it was a little graphic at times and can be slight uncomfortable, but don't worry ladies, Eden exacts her revenge!!) Matthew rescues Eden and they set out on a month long journey to escape the crazy gang of outlaws.

I thought the book was well written, it did drag on just a little bit while they were in the woods, but I licked the heroine and thought she had a backbone which is rare in romance novels. How many times can a lady swoon in some cases, however there was no swooning for Eden. I liked the hero too and the small comedy as he tried to figure out how to be more proper for Eden.

Even thought this is one novel in a series I didn't feel like I was lost for having not read the other two novels, I did read a few things at the end that made me want to read the other two of course (I think I'm in love with Eden's gunslinger brother). Early Dawn was a fantastic read and even though it is 417 pages I flew through the book in about three days.

If you are into books that have more drama then comedy and you love a good historical romance novel where their is no bodice rippers then definitely pick it up and give it a try. The characters were well developed and you get a good sense by the descriptions of exactly what everything looks like. I definitely am going to put the other two novels on my reading list/Find list. So pick up Early Dawn today and don't forget to tell me if you agree with my small review!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Music of the Night: A Review


I picked up Music of the Night in a local Goodwill store (I LOVE Goodwill stores, you can get awesome books for a fraction of the price and you can find some real gems there). This is a historical novel, and basically, the story is about a former prostitute who gets caught up in a man's quest for revenge. I read a few reviews online that proclaimed this novel a winner and that it was a fantastic read, I have to beg to differ. It felt like it drug on forever, and Sarah Connolly, the heroine of the book is pretty much treated like crap through the entire book.

To be titled Music of the Night, there really was no music in the night. Maybe fifty pages before the end you fight out that the hero plays the piano, but really there was no music. Go figure.

Sarah finally got her life on track somehow, she wound up going to some school for girls, she had began prostituting at age 13 after being raped in a back ally. At age 16 she starts attending some school for girls (the book never really explains this satisfactorily) and then she gets a pretty nifty job as a companion to an old lady who doesn't make any demands on her.

In walks our Hero. I use that term loosely, trust me. Apparently he had an illegitimate daughter who was living with him (again not explained satisfactorily) and Sebastian Grimsthorpe, the Earl, was a pretty wild guy. He had a party at his house and his 12 year old daughter is raped by a friend, he belives. The villain, Bertrand de Lint laughs it off and denies doing it, but Sebastian is sure he's the culprit and sets out to exact revenge.

And this where the entire story moves from England to Venice. And Sebastian becomes de Lint's pimp and we learn the different vices of the villain. The daughter's tutor said that a woman with a scared face helped the rapist and Sebastian sees Sarah with de Lint's party in Venice and assumes it's her. (Oh another oddity, Sarah has a pock marked face, which she thinks makes her extremely ugly). This is where you start seeing Sebastian play mind games with everyone in the book.

In the end Sarah winds up losing her cushy job with de Lint's mother, almost gets raped AGAIN by de Lint, and winds up Sebastian's mistress.

All in all, Sarah was boring, Sebastian was kinda nutty, and de Lint grossed me out. Not what I was expecting after reading all the reviews online.

You can tell that Lydia is a good writer, she was very descriptive and I could imagine everything happening exactly as she describes, but the characters just sucked!

I'm starting a new book today. Susan Anderson's Early Dawn. I'll let you guys know how this one goes!

Monday, June 7, 2010

What's a Ghoul to Do? Quick Review


The quote of the day("Welcome to the gay man's one night stand!) made me smile when when I read the line in the book What's a Ghoul to Do? by Victoria Laurie, interesting book as well.

Quick review: Pretty much about a heroine who is a medium and can speak with the dead, she has a business where she is a ghost buster. The heroine, whose name is M.J and her gay business partner Giley take on a client whose grandfather is haunting his house where he supposedly committed suicide. Dr. Delicious (as they call him) is from Germany and there's a lot of skeletons in his family closet.

It was an interesting book, can't say it was one of the best I've read but it was a break from the Vampire mania that most novelists seem intent upon. (I'm not bashing the Vampires, trust me gimme a Katie Macalister or a Maryjanice Davidson any day!)

One thing I did notice was that although the story was pretty good, we never got much in the order of character developement for Dr. Delicioius other than that he was a hot dude with an awesome accent who butchers American slang. I wish we could have gotten a better feel for him in this book.

I did like M.J. she's a determined Heroine. Giley was a cool character as well.

The cover to the book is cute, however has absolutely NOTHING to do with the story, she doesn't dress like that at all. She dresses pretty normal in jeans and stuff.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

The Interview: Part One

Here is a newer story I'm working on, the first few paragraphs, of course, any comments are welcome!

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Just sitting in the car wasn’t going to get the job done. Stephanie knew this, she knew if she didn’t have the guts to get out of the damn car and walk into the shiny windowed building she would never forgive herself.

If she smoked she’d be puffing away right now, she thought silently to herself. She pressed her hot face to the cool pane of the car window. She glanced up at the high rise and sighed. She sat up straight, lifted her chin and shoved open the car door. Only to smack the meter pole, with a loud clang. A dark man yapping on a cell phone glared daggers at her. She could imagine the conversation on the phone.

“Oh, really, Buffy,” her imagined name for his trophy wife on the phone “It was a horrible little red-haired girl crashing into a non-offending meter pole!”

“Biff, please stay away from her!” The imagined wife would intone. He looked like a Biff. Biff and Buffy. She silently snickered at her own sense of humor. Well, at least she amused herself. She straightened her knee-length navy skirt, tugged on her white blouse and marched purposely towards the front door of the building. She pushed open the surprisingly heavy door.

“Welcome to Thongs and Accessories International, how may I assist you?” a chirpy little blond said from behind the mirrored receptionist's desk.

“Hi! I’m Stephanie Ramy, I have an appointment with the design department.” She put on a fake smile when inside her stomach was knotting. She couldn’t believe she had an appointment with the T&A design team.

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Don't other installments!
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten