Guest author: Mel Teshco with Taken By The Sheikh

Please welcome my buddy (and excellent author) Mel Tescho, with news of her new romance anthology TAKEN BY THE SHEIKH. 

Mel's books are always an exciting, intelligent and erotic read - if you want something tasty and well-written, check it out!

Three desert Sheikhs. Three captive brides…

Bound by duty to honor their father’s dying wish, three royal brothers must marry their destined brides… by whatever means necessary…

Book 1: Hostage to the Sheikh ~ Mel Teshco
Sheikh Shahzad Salah al Din doesn’t have time for hearts and flowers, not when his parents’ bodies are barely even cold in their graves and his country, Omana, is on the brink of revolt. He has to secure peace by honoring a long ago arrangement to make English rose, Lexi Galvin, his wife. The trouble is strong-willed Lexi isn’t aware of her royal Arab lineage let alone her destiny. There is only one way Shahzad can guarantee she will be his queen … and he isn’t above using force to get it.

Book 2: The Sheikh’s Mistaken Bride ~ Christina Phillips
In order to secure a powerful alliance for his country, Khalid has no choice but to marry a neighboring princess. It’s not what he wants, but duty must come before pleasure. Yet when he meets the beautiful Sanura he changes his mind… only to discover the virgin in his bed is not his destined bride.
You can check out an excerpt of this story.

Book 3: Sold to the Sheikh ~ Cathleen Ross
He’d paid a fortune for his bride and he was determined to collect, whether she liked it or not. Rafi Salah al Din doesn't trust easily. In charge of security for his country Omana, he devotes his life to duty. With his parents murdered it is his duty to stabilize his country by finding his parents' assassin, marry and produce a son to ensure the Salah al Din line lives on. So why does the wife he bought disagree?

Sounds awesome, eh? There's a special introductory price of $0.99. You can check out the buy links at Mel Teshco's website.

Guest author: D.A. Lascelles, on why it's all my fault

And now for something completely different...

This week's guest author writes fantasy and alternate worlds and all kinds of bizarre things, including the sexy stuff - and apparently it's all my fault. Including the state of world publishing and the Kennedy assassination. I do try.

But I dunno. I'll take the credit. Dave's stories are pretty cool. When you read a lot of romance, like I do, you tend to forget there are things other than heroic characters and endless happy endings. It's great to read from a different angle.


So, no doubt in order to make like the Royal Navy and give me my forty lashes - ooh, baby - and to say interesting things about publishing and erotica vs porn and why we can't all please everyone - please welcome small press and indie author D.A. Lascelles...


I blame Erica Hayes.

For everything (yes, she was there on that infamous grassy knoll some decades before she was born on a completely different hemisphere, she is cunning like that).

But in particular I blame her for the presence of two short stories I have recently published. If she hadn’t challenged publically on social media, if she hadn’t herself been so adept at writing erotica, then I probably wouldn’t have done it and the world may have been saved. Well, OK, I probably would have still done it but I wouldn’t have had anyone to blame but myself.

I’ve often teased Erica about her work being pretty much thinly veiled pornography. It’s one of the things we often discuss on social media along with the disparity between UK and Australian weather patterns. If you have ever read any of her excellent Shadowfae series you will see what I mean. It is the most glorious expression of erotica I have ever read – sheer poetry in its style, rich in visual description and gorgeously hot scenes. Or, as I once said on Facebook and which she promised to put on a book cover sometime: ‘Almost but not quite entirely unlike porn’. Paraphrasing Douglas Adams, of course… The standard she sets is enormously high.

So, I was challenged to do something to match the quality of Erica’s erotica. {ED: flattery will get you nowhere... actually, no, that's not true. See me later...}

I had previously worked with her on a Paranormal Romance anthology (the Shades of Love anthology) and in that I focussed on developing my writing of romance plots, though the sex scenes in my contribution (the novella Transitions) were of the ‘fade to soft candlelight’ style rather than explicit. To match her challenge, I realised I had to up my game. So, for my recent collection of shorts, Lurking Miscellany, I worked on two urban fantasy stories with a sexy theme.

One was a sequel to Transitions. Called Transformations it follows the characters on a night out to a Goth club where they encounter a very sexy person with unusual gender switching abilities. This was partly inspired by my own experiences in such a club, in fact the very one that is described (which is unfortunately no longer there). Our heroes face concepts of desirability and get into fights before saving the day.

The other, An Element of Desire, gets a little racier. In this, our hero Simon is an environmental activist with the ability to manipulate the elements through communication with the spirits that control them. He meets a woman for whom he feels the most immediate and insistent attraction. From their initial meeting it is not long before things get very hot and heavy… For some reason I decided to have the female character in this dressed in PVC. Well why on earth not?

Did I succeed in my challenge? Well, I will leave that to the readers to decide. I would however say that it is certainly worth a writer challenging themselves to do something outside their comfort zone. If you are finding the writing process too easy you may be slipping into familiar territory and while that may mean you are sticking to what you are good at, it can also mean you are boring your readers by retreading old ground. Rather than stick to this comfortable old armchair of the familiar, why not try to strike out into the unknown? If it gives you a gut wrenching feeling of fear as you consider this, even better. Often, when you get that feeling it means you are doing something right.

Self publishing has opened up the market to experimentation. I am quite fond of the traditional route of publishing, but it has one major flaw – each book published represents such a huge financial risk for the publisher that they tend to be very careful about their output. If something is not likely to sell they stay well away from it. The advance a publisher gives to an author on acceptance of a manuscript is basically what they are willing to bet on the success of that book. They are saying that the book will make at least this much in profit, so they can give that to the author and not lose any money themselves. Ditto the amounts they spend on advertising, cover design, distribution and printing. 

The more they invest the more convinced they are they have a winning concept. Books that are on the fringes of popularity, or attract only a niche audience or which are so radical they break conventions rarely if ever get published by this route. Similarly, books which might offend a majority of people such as those including the extremes of sex, drugs and rock and roll. However, they can be self published and when they are the financial risks are significantly smaller (although the profits can be equally small) meaning it is more viable to produce. This means that in the current book market, it is a good time to be radical and do something different.

So, why not push yourself to do something different? There will be an audience for you out there somewhere, even if it is one the big six don’t consider worth selling to.

D.A Lascelles is the author of Lurking Miscellany, Transitions (Mundania Press) and Gods of the Sea (Pulp Empires). He lives in Manchester UK. You can sometimes see him writing about Zombie porn on http://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ but he mostly blogs about books, vampires, science fiction and Terry Pratchett. He is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his Pratchett articles was referenced on the French version of the author’s Wikipedia page.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles
Twitter: @areteus
Buy links for Lurking Miscellany: Kindle ~ Paperback

Guest sci-fi author: Anna Hackett with In The Devil's Nebula

Please welcome Anna Hackett, author of action/adventure romance - and her new release IN THE DEVIL’S NEBULA.

Check out this cool cover! Love the colours and the starfield. This series is kind of a cross between sci-fi romance and treasure hunting.

"First there was AT STAR’S END and the treasure hunt to find the last remaining fragment of the Mona Lisa. Now travel to the heart of the Devil’s Nebula on the hunt for the gun used to assassinate Abraham Lincoln."

I don't know about you, but that sounds dead cool to me :)

Here's the cover copy:


He lost it all. His career, his woman, his sanity.

Two years ago, on a deadly mission to the lawless Devil’s Nebula, Commander Zayn Phoenix’s life imploded. Now the former Strike Wing pilot fills his days with dangerous adventures alongside his treasure hunter brothers.

But his nights are another story: haunted by nightmares of one unforgivable act.

Until an assassin lures him into a hunt. A hunt for her freedom from the Assassin’s Guild. A hunt for a derringer used in an ancient and infamous assassination—of old Earth president, Abraham Lincoln.

Zayn is compelled to join the perilous adventure with Ria Dante that will take them straight into the heart of the Devil’s Nebula, but not for money, fame or treasure. He joins because Ria has the face of the woman he left for dead in the Nebula years before.


Sounds cool? yeah. To read the first chapter or buy, you can check it out at Anna's website.

Author interview: Daniel de Lorne with Beckoning Blood

Welcome to Daniel de Lorne!
Author of the sexy M/M paranormal romance BECKONING BLOOD

I met Daniel briefly years ago at Romance Writers of Australia, where he was pretty much the only guy in the room who wasn't someone's husband or a waiter. But hey, men write romance too, and Daniel has this unique voice and cool paranormal ideas that I'm sure you'll love.

You can check out The Boys Are Coming, Daniel's free prequel story to Beckoning Blood. But first of all, this awesome cover!

Goggle. If this doesn't scream 'hot boy vampires', I don't know what does. That handprint is so cool. This dude will kick your ass.

Beckoning Blood

A gripping, blood‐drenched saga about twin brothers, the men they love, and the enduring truth that true love never dies – no matter how many times you kill it.
 
Thierry d’Arjou has but one escape from the daily misery of his work at a medieval abattoir – Etienne de Balthas. But keeping their love a secret triggers a bloody chain of events that condemns Thierry to a monstrous immortality. Thierry quickly learns that to survive his timeless exile, he must hide his sensitive heart from the man who both eases and ensures his loneliness...his twin brother. 

Shaped by the fists of a brutal father, Olivier d’Arjou cares for only two things: his own pleasure and his twin. But their sadistic path through centuries is littered with old rivals and new foes, and Olivier must fight for what is rightfully his – Thierry, made immortal just for him.

Nom nom. Okay, you lot, enough with the drooling. He had me at 'gripping, blood-drenched saga', but hey, I'm like that.

Here's a few questions I asked Daniel about his book. Leave him some comment love, ask some of your own. Go right ahead. He doesn't bite...

Why do you write about vampires—what's the attraction?

What’s not to love? Their immortality gets me the most. I find something comforting about a being (even a fictional one) having been present through so much of history. They’re also incredibly flexible – in the storytelling sense. You can do whatever you want with them because they exist on the edge of ‘normal’ humanity. Then there’s the power over life and death, and the intense meanings evoked when talking about blood. I could go on but I’m starting to sound like a groupie.

No, no. It's okay. We're all vampire groupies here...
Who's your favourite character in Beckoning Blood, and why?

Olivier. He’s the nastier of my twin vampires {ED: twin vampires, folks. You know you want this book} but he’s got a whole lot more going on than his killer instinct. He is a bit of a jerk but there’s just something about him that draws me in. Everyone loves a bad boy, right?

Totally :) Who would win a fight: your vampires, or Buffy? Explain.

Don’t make me choose! Picturing Buffy dead (again) is too horrible. If it were just Buffy on her lonesome, then I think my vamps would win – though they’d have to really want to fight her. And there wouldn’t be any of that standing around soliloquizing that bad guys always do. They’d get in and get the job done quick. If it’s her and all the sidekicks, then I think my boys would be in trouble.

Your vampire heroes walk into a bar, looking for a late-night snack. Whom do they choose to menace, and why?
a) Any human who smells good. They're not fussy.
b) That weak-ass sparkling vamp over there. He looks like a real loser.
c) A bike-chain-wearing, vodka-swilling vampire rival. Might as well eliminate the opposition while we feed.
d) Each other. Fight's on!

Again with the choosing! Olivier would go for that bike-chain-wearing, vodka-swilling vampire rival. Ain’t nobody going to intimidate him (and seriously, vodka? Is that vamp on a diet?). Thierry would go for a human and make it quick, then leave his brother to the fighting.

(And poor Edward…he’s never going to be able to live that sparkling thing down.)

No. {evil giggle} No, he never will.
Is Beckoning Blood part of a series – what's next from Daniel de Lorne?

I’m working on a sequel, which has a working title of Binding Spirit. I’ve got a first draft already but it’s still early days. Revisions ahead! It’s been fun writing about these characters again, spending more time with them and seeing what I can make them do.


Thanks for coming, Daniel. Sound awesome? Yes, yes it does. And guess what? You can get a free taste of these sexy boys at Daniel's website: www.danieldelorne.com/the-boys

Buy links for BECKONING BLOOD: Escape Publishing ~ Kindle ~ iBooks ~ Kobo ~ Nook

Links to Daniel's social media:
Facebook ~ Twitter ~  Google+

Any questions for Daniel? Tell us why you love vampires or M/M romance or anything with a bloody handprint on its chest? Let's hear it.

SCORCHED release day! Superheroes! Cool book giveaway!

Happy release day to SCORCHED!

Yes! My new urban fantasy book about superheroes and villains. First in a new series, published by HarperImpulse. And to celebrate, I'm giving away a pack of 4 cool Kindle books about superheroes. You know you want them, right?

First, behold the dark action-y awesomeness that is SCORCHED:

In a world where everyone wears a mask, you can't trust anyone… not even yourself.

Verity Fortune was once Sapphire City’s top crime-fighter, wielding her powers of telekinesis to battle the city’s most despicable villains.

Now, she’s consumed by a single burning desire: revenge. Against those who took away her mask, her memory, and nearly her life.

Having escaped from the asylum they left her to rot in, Verity dons her mask once again and becomes the Seeker, a vigilante warrior for truth.

But when she unwittingly uncovers an evil conspiracy deep within her own family, she’s suddenly on the run, alone and hunted by those she thought were on her side…




I totally love this book. I hope you will too! Go ahead and add it on GoodReads:

Done? Cool. Now for giveaway goodness!

Here are the Kindle books you can win:

The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M Campbell

Metawars: the complete series by Kelly Meding

Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines

Black and White by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge

  Cool, eh? Come and get your Rafflecopter on. Leave a comment and tell us your favorite superhero (or villain!) ~ and get more entries by doing the Rafflecopter thing.

Enjoy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Death! Betrayal! Vampire revolutionaries! Just in time for Valentine's Day...

A new release, yay! It's been a while, so I hope you enjoy this little piece of bloodthirstiness and heartbreak...

Unforgiven is a dark fantasy love story, and I'm stoked that it's been chosen as part of this cool anthology. Look at all these awesome authors.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

Eight cutting-edge stories

of the darker side of love.

Tiffinie Helmer ~ Heartless
Alex Bledsoe ~ Tantrabobus
V.R. Barkowski ~ Just A Lie
Erica Hayes ~ Unforgiven
Lizbeth Lipperman ~ Sweepers: A Kiss To Die For
Charlie Holmberg ~ Salt and Water
Coreene Callahan ~ Fury of Fate
S.G. Redling ~ The True Love of Sherry Papers

The premise of this antho was simple: the story had to begin with the words 'love hurts'.

So, y'know. Vampire revolutionaries. Bwahaha. Just in time for Valentine's Day…

Here's the first little snippet of my story, Unforgiven.

~

Love hurts, they say.

Still, I find it an impractical tool. In all my years, I've never extracted a traitor's confession with the threat of a broken heart, for the simple reason that on the subject of love, imagination fails us. We cannot conceive before the fact how excruciating its loss can be. Whereas any torturing scoundrel will tell you that the instinctive human dread of physical pain—a dagger pressed into the eye socket, for example—is often more persuasive than the pain itself.

I poke my blade in a little harder. "Give me a name, monsieur, or by Jupiter, I'll slice your eye in two."

"Don't know what you mean." The boy's in shirtsleeves, and sweat darkens his white linen. The pleasure den's warm gaslights slant my shadow across his face. He's bleeding all over his waistcoat, poor lad, his cupid's-bow lips split and swollen, and it isn't making my job any easier.

A few feet from us, behind the half-drawn curtain, the dance whirls on, oblivious, a riot of silk and brocade, paste jewelry, painted faces, dusty relics of the bad old days. When he approached me at these revels—me, a lady wearing a gentlemen's swallow-tailed coat and breeches, rapier and dirk at her belt, glossy brown curls twisted in a red ribbon—he had more erotic recreation in mind.

Perhaps, so did I. He's handsome, this minion of evil. Delicious. The eye I'm threatening to pierce is ocean blue, bright with belladonna, and the smell of his skin maddens me. Absinthe and fear and a succulent boy's sweat, a toxic reminder of days long gone, when truth and liberty were more important than tomorrow, and my blood raced wild and free.

But I'm a different woman now. A married woman. And though I worship my lord husband with my entire heart, on evenings such as this—with the prey trembling in my grip, warm night air sparkling on my skin, the scent of satisfaction inches from my reach—the interminable emptiness of that tomorrow stretches ahead of me, terrifying.

"Your coven master's name, villain." I slide my dirk under his chin. "Or perhaps you can do without the eyeball. Should I instead slice your throat asunder?"

"Please, don't hurt me. He'll kill me if I tell you." He's sobbing now, begging in the fashion I once enjoyed so ruthlessly, and sweat trickles between my breasts. I'm burning. Eager. Parched inside, as if my soul wastes away for want.

"Yet so shall I, if you remain silent. What a dilemma." I twist his hair in my damp fist. My mouth is dry. I want to lick his swollen lips, taste that shimmering moisture. "Give me his name, minion, or you'll know sorrow."

The boy's eyes harden, the besotted glitter of the Possessed. "His name is master," he rasps. "But he signs himself Charlot."

The syllables echo backwards in time.

I taste them. Mysterious, slightly bitter, like an old wine. Enticing. Just as he tasted, long ago in those restless days of revolution, when he and I were drunk on power and fury and the sheer brilliant bliss of being alive.

Charlot.

My heart beats faster. Fear or excitement? I ought to feel nothing.

I must feel nothing.

~

Cool, eh? You can read a bigger excerpt at my website.

Buy links for the antho: Amazon ~ B&N

Sci-fi book giveaway with Amanda Bridgeman

Please welcome new Aussie sci-fi author Amanda Bridgeman! At the bottom, you can get a chance to comment to your heart's content and win her fab new release, AURORA: DARWIN. Doesn't it look awesome?!?

A distress signal on the edge of inhabited space. A mission that is far outside normal parameters. Two very different people with one common goal – survival.

When a distress signal is received from a black-ops space station on the edge of inhabited space, Captain Saul Harris of the UNF Aurora is called in from leave to respond. But the mission is not what it seems. Female members of the United National Forces have not been allowed to travel into the outer zones before, but Harris is ordered to take three new female recruits.

For Corporal Carrie Welles, one of the Aurora’s new recruits, her first mission in space seems like a dream come true. Determined to achieve the success of her father before her, and suddenly thrust into a terrifying mission, she must work with her new captain and the strained Aurora crew to make it home alive.

When the Aurora arrives at the station, Harris and Welles soon find themselves caught up in a desperate fight for survival. Station Darwin is not what they expected.

The lights are off. But somebody is home.

Brr... spooky!! Welcome, Amanda!

Seeing as you're a new author on the scene, tell us about your path to publication. Did you consider self-publishing, or was a traditional publisher your ultimate aim?

I’d been working on my books (for the Aurora Series) for about five years before I had the confidence to seek publication. I always intended to approach a traditional publisher, mainly because I really didn’t know enough about the industry to go it alone. I also like the fact that being represented by a publishing house means they have confidence in me and my work, so it’s great to have that visible ‘backing’ in the industry. I think the expertise and contacts that a traditional publisher can provide is incredibly valuable and should never be dismissed. So far my experience with Momentum has been great, so I have no regrets.

Would I think about self-publishing in the future? Possibly. I certainly would’ve considered it as an option if the traditional publishing houses had rejected me. So, I guess never say never, but for now I’m all good.

Tell us how you came up with the idea for AURORA: DARWIN. Did the characters come first, or the scenario?

I tend to come up with key scenes in my head and develop my stories from there. With Aurora: Darwin, the character of Carrie was first to develop, as I pictured the desperate scenes she’s involved in during the climax of the story, and then developed the rest from there. I knew that Carrie couldn’t face the ordeal on her own, she was going to need back-up, and that was how Captain Saul Harris came to be.

So, I start with the key scenes and the characters, then backfill their stories and dream up the backdrop/settings, all the while drawing inspiration from the sci-fi and action films I grew up watching. It’s like baking a cake – you mix together your favourite ingredients, and a splash of yourself in there, mix it all around, and that’s how your own little story is born.

How would you describe the sub-genre: space opera? Military? Interstellar suspense? Do you think sub-genre matters to readers when they're choosing a book, or do they just want a good story?

I would describe Aurora: Darwin as a soft sci-fi thriller / military space opera. Ha ha! Too many sub-genres?

I aimed to write a book targeted at a unisex audience, that would hopefully appeal to sci-fi fans and non-sci-fi fans alike. In other words, it’s a mainstream sci-fi, not a niche. I think sub-genres help readers decide if this is the type of book for them. The book’s genre will class it for them, and the sub-genre will tell them what slant the book’s going to take. At the end of the day people want a good story, but I also think they want a ‘heads up’ as to what to expect from the novel.

The UNF. Securing the future. Uh huh. I bet they do... or not??

Sci-fi isn't all about space battles and death stars. The world-building in AURORA: DARWIN sounds intriguing – kind of like Aliens meets Riddick with a bit of spooky Event Horizon thrown in. Tell us about your world: what makes it stand out from others?

I think you’ve described it very well, actually! A:D is set in the future, but not eons away - it’s the near future, so there is a lot of familiarity to life nowadays. I’ve actually tried to make it as realistic a sci-fi as I could, so people don’t really need to stretch their imaginations too far to try and grasp what I’m trying to say.

The world-building elements of the military and space colonisation are important to provide that backdrop to the story, but the key focus of A:D are the characters and the plot. So hopefully it will stand out as the character-driven story, luring in potential readers that wouldn’t normally go for a sci-fi, yet at the same time, keeping the sci-fi fans happy.

The cover copy for AURORA:DARWIN sounds like you have more than one 'main' character. Were their stories difficult to handle? Did you use multiple points of view?

Yep, I always wanted two characters – one male pov, one female pov, as I always intended to write a unisex book. I didn’t find it too hard writing the Saul Harris character, as I have three older ‘blokey’ brothers and grew up watching ‘boys’ films, so I like to think I’ve been well-trained in the male action hero. I did use the occasional female phrase/word in his speech in earlier versions, but my brother (one of my beta readers) promptly picked me up on that. I basically just applied my tomboy side to Harris and my feminine/girly side to Carrie. Hopefully it worked!

Heroines in sf. Kick-ass is great, but as a reader I like to see other sides to the heroine, too. Tell us about your heroine, Corporal Carrie Welles: what are her strengths and weaknesses?

Carrie Welles is a bit of a loner. She’s a perfectionist, who’s driven, stubborn, fiery and determined to succeed. She’s somewhat estranged from her father, and is ultimately trying to follow in his footsteps to prove herself to him. So, being a sharp-shooter in the military, she has that tough element about her, but her emotional side is actually quite fragile (not as tough as she makes it out to be). She tries hard not to wear her heart on her sleeve, but at the end of the day she is only human, and she needs to learn that it’s ok to be weak sometimes.

Is there a romance plot in your book? How do you strike a balance between romance and action?

There may be….*she smiles coyly*. For someone as career driven as Carrie, there’d be nothing quite like falling for a guy to side-swipe you! For me, mixing romance and action can be a tricky fine line. Too much romance and you turn the male readers off, not enough romance and the female readers are left unsatisfied.

Again, I’ve gone for trying to keep things as real as possible. When you’re in a world of a shit-storm, the last thing you’re thinking about is shagging someone. But hey, if you make it through alive, that’s a different story… *winks*.

Are you planning to write more books featuring these characters or their world?

Definitely! This is the first book in a series, and hopefully book 2, tentatively titled Aurora: Pegasus will be out by year end!

You have a cool Pinterest page, with images related to AURORA: DARWIN. (Go on, everyone, go look. It's really cool!) Tell us how that came about: did you use these images as inspiration while writing, or collect them afterwards?

I actually collected these images afterwards! I’ve always been a photography fan, so when I stumbled across Pinterest I just started collecting nice images. But then I began gathering the world-building/inspirational images for sci-fi, fantasy and horror, etc. As they say, a picture tells a thousand words, so by collecting these images I’m drawing inspiration for future works.

I remember doing writing exercises at Uni whereby you’d be given a picture/s and then have to construct a story based on that images/s. They were my favourite exercises to do! From one picture you can develop a character, a setting, a plot, you name it. It all comes down to your imagination. But even your imagination needs to be jump-started from somewhere – so why not a cool picture?

What's next for you? Any more stories in the works?

I’ve got another four manuscripts ready for the editing process, and I’m dying to start work on some more! As far as I’m concerned, this is only the beginning. Fingers crossed you’ll be reading a lot more of me in the future!

We hope so too! Amanda's links:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmandaBridgemanAuthor
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AmandaBridgema1
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/ayjay76
Website: http://amandabridgeman.com.au

Right-y-o! Want to win an .epub or .mobi copy of AURORA: DARWIN? You bet. Just leave a comment, and answer this question:

You're a spaceship crew member. Would you rather be on the Enterprise D (ST:TNG), the Serenity (Firefly) or the Battlestar Galactica (BSG)? And why?**

**Special consideration if your answer has nothing to do with Captain Mal's tight pants. This is a family blog, people!

For extra entries: follow/Like/friend Amanda on FB, Twitter or Pinterest (links above) and let us know in your comment. One extra entry each. 

Giveaway is international and will run until Tues 7 May. Go to it!!

Cool Aussie authors

April is Aussie Author Month in celebration of AU/NZ authors of popular fiction.

Participating sites are BookThingo, A Writer Goes On A Journey, Fangtastic Books and Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, along with any Aussie authors and readers who want to have a go.

Seeing as the month's' half gone, I guess I'd better step up... here are a couple of cool books by Aussie authors that I've read and enjoyed this month.

Thief of Light by Denise Rossetti, second in the Four-Sided Pentacle fantasy/erotic romance series.

Denise is the author of the delightfully erotic Strongman (m/m) and The Gift of the Goddess (f/m/m) from Ellora's Cave, and The Flame and the Shadow from Berkley Sensation, which features (among other things) a menage/romance between a guy, a girl, and the guy's shadow. I shit you not.

Denise writes wonderfully realised fantasy, emotional romance and luscious eroticism. Her heroes are tough and sexy and real men without being assholes, and her fantasy heroines aren't wusses, but they're not leather-clad tramp-stamp bitches with annoyingly snarky mouths, either. Real people in fantasy, oyy.

The hero in this book is an opera singer, and he has a magical Voice that compels people to do his bidding, but he's sworn never to use it to control anyone, since once he gave a careless order and someone died. But he can't resist the challenge when the heroine seems to be the only one who's immune to his musical charms. It's fantastical, sweet and sexy. Check it out.

Endless Lust by Lexxie Couper, second in the Seven Deadly Daemons series.

Lexxie writes erotic romance for Ellora's Cave and others. Endless Lust is the lead novel-length title for EC's new Shivers line of erotic horror. And erotic horror is just what it is.

This is a spooky book about a woman who's visited by a persistent and deliciously violent ghostly lover she can't see. He gives her intense pleasure, but she's terrified -- who is he, and what does he want from her? And does her dark and sexy new colleague at work have anything to do with it? It's erotic and creepy and cool. It has stalkers and black magic and hot sex with an invisible dude. And it's a romance!

Next on my list of Aussie reads is Death's Sweet Embrace by Tracey O'Hara, book 2 in her Dark Brethren UF series. It has heart-eating serial killers and a snow-leopard shifter heroine. Also Power Unbound by Nicole Murphy, second in her Dream of Asarlai contemporary fantasy/romance series, about a secret society of magical beings who are hunting down their stolen sacred texts.

Oh, and in other news: I'm going to RWA national in New York! Apparently being half the world away wasn't a good enough excuse not to come. Hope to catch up with you all there.