Vampires and demon hunting, oh my!

Another new short story release! It's been a big week…

Hunter's Heart is what you might call a good, old-fashioned vampire romance. With demons and violence and juicy smexxin'. You know you want one, right?

Here's the cover copy:

A reckless young demon-huntress longs for the ultimate excitement—but is a powerful shadow demon more than she can handle?

For vampire Colleen O’Hara, work is also play. She hunts demons not just for the paycheck, but also for the thrill of the fight. It’s better than sex, at least the sex she’s had so far. But then she meets Seth, a smoldering-hot shadow demon. With him she feels an undeniable, untamable urge to blur the lines between ally and enemy, predator and prey.

Meanwhile, as the barrier between hell and earth grows weaker, threatening thousands of human souls, Colleen must track down the traitor who opened the rift. Only with Seth at her side can she defeat the villain. Colleen must risk everything—including her soul—to both follow her desire and save her city from impending damnation.

For those of you familiar with my books: Hunter's Heart is in the same series as Hunter's Blood, but with a new romantic couple. The heroine is Colleen, Gina's sassy BFF. The hero… well, he's kinda bad… :D

You can feed it cookies on Goodreads. Or, here's the Kindle link.

Here's a teaser; you can read a bigger excerpt on my website.

~

Such a beautiful enemy.

In his shadow form, Seth drifted above Colleen’s head, a silent breath of blackness in the night. Invisible. Deadly.

And fascinated. The fiery glint of her spell-wreathed knives mesmerized him. Her lean shadow slipped along the moonlit alley wall like a ghost. The power that flashed in the magical bloodstone at her throat made him tingle. If he’d had a mouth right now, it would have watered.

He’d been watching this Hunter every night for a week. Stalking the stalker, tracking her sweet vampire scent through midnight streets, as she killed imps and fleshcrushers, her lethal blades flashing. Her victims were lower-level minions, hell’s dross, mere lumps of flesh and hatred. Expendable, easily replaced . . . yet her grim taste for death intrigued him.

He drifted closer, whispering his shadowy fingers over her braided red hair, and his particles shimmered, aroused. Hellfire, she smelled good, of strawberries and female sweat. She hadn’t detected Seth—but this was no reflection on her fighting prowess. Seth was a shadow demon, ancient and powerful. Just a strange shiver down your spine, a warm whisper on your shoulder, a coil of blacker darkness in the night. It was pitifully easy for Seth to drink human and vampire souls.

Warm weariness washed through him. Soon, it’d be Yule, when the hellflux would be at its lowest ebb. His mistress—Jezebel, cruel demon empress, curse her oily hide to eternities of agony—was amassing her forces for a frontal assault. And these helldamned Hunters were just getting in the way.

Which was where Colleen came in. Her powerful magic-user’s soul would strengthen Seth. Feed him. Sustain his power, make him invincible, and so on and so forth. As Jezebel’s consort—and yeah, that was about as much fun as it sounded—he’d eaten countless souls in his time, both human and vampire. It was getting old, the excitement wearing thin.

Seth sighed, a stirring of shadow. Hells, he was getting old. Couldn’t recall when he’d last properly relished a meal. He didn’t even bother taking corporeal form anymore. Just dived down their throats and sucked the soul from their fleshbags.

But this prey—this juicy lady Hunter—woke something inside him that he hadn’t felt for . . . Mmm. Would she taste as good as she looked?

~

OMG. The suspense is killing you, right? What will happen? Will there be blood? More importantly, will there be nakedness and hot smexxin'?

Well, what do you think?

You can buy this cute little sucker at Amazon. $1.99. What a bargain!

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

Dragonfly release day!!

My new romantic sci-fi adventure, DRAGONFLY, is live! I'm excited. My first ever sci-fi novel! If you love space opera, secret agents, cool gadgets, adventure, tough heroines and a splash of hot romance, this one's for you. If you're a romance reader, and you like scienc-y beta heroes? I think you'll like this this guy :)

To celebrate, I'll be having a raucous sci-fi romance party on my blog this week. There'll be champagne and canapes and waiters named Sven... well, maybe not... but I'll be giving away some cool books by my fave sf-rom authors. If Sven doesn't show up, that's his loss.

So keep an eye out for some fab giveaways in the next few days -- and check the bottom of this post for today's little bonus prize!

In case you've somehow missed me going on about it for the last few weeks:

Carrie Thatcher is a tough Imperial counter-terrorism agent. Her mission: pose as a sexy cyber-thief to entrap the notorious rebel Dragonfly, who’s planning a heist on the space station Casa de Esperanza – an orbital casino on the fringe of Imperial space.

And this assignment’s personal: Dragonfly murdered her closest friend, and she’s in no mood to show him mercy. Even getting stuck with the partner from hell—Malachite, her sociopathic ex-lover and the Empire’s most dangerous agent—can’t dampen her relish for the kill.

With Carrie’s expert weapons skills and penchant for cracking codes, insinuating herself into Dragonfly’s confidence should be easy. But is he the ruthless killer she was led to believe? Or has her precious Empire deceived her? With Malachite watching her every move, the slightest flinch in loyalty means death.

Carrie is soon racing to uncover an audacious treachery that will shock the Empire to its core … if she can stay alive for long enough to expose it.


Awesome, huh? Thanks to the folks at Momentum Books/Pan Macmillan for doing such a brilliant job!

You can buy or download free samples from Amazon US, Amazon UK, iBooks or Booki-sh. The iBooks sample is the longest.

There'll also be a PoD version (yay! paperback!) sometime soon. And DRAGONFLY is on Goodreads -- do check it out! Add it to your shelf! Shower it in love and anticipation!


Also, while I'm here: a few new shorts out today from the Hot Down Under series at my publisher, Momentum. If you're looking for some sexy shorts for $0.99 to while away a few minutes, check 'em out (and check out the cool covers -- nice, eh?)



Today's bonus prize? I'm giving away a Kindle copy of any one of these three hot little stories to one lucky commenter. For a chance to win: let's talk sci-fi romance! Do you like sci-fi romance? Why/why not? What's your favourite romantic sci-fi movie/book/tv show? 

I'll finish this giveaway on Sunday night, so jump in quick!

New release: Hunter's Blood, a short and tasty vampire romance

Demon-hunting vampires, slaying and hot sex. What more do you want?

HUNTER'S BLOOD, a vampire romance short story.

A powerful young vampire demon-huntress teams up with a legendary slayer to rid their city of soul-munching demons – but he's already broken her heart once. Will he betray her again in his burning quest for revenge?

Gina Santangelo is the toughest huntress in the Guild, unmatched with blade and vampire blood-magic as she keeps the city safe from soul-munching demons. Until she crosses swords with Luka Dragovic, a legendary slayer, the only man who can help her save the city from a fresh demon incursion. But he's also the man who broke her heart five years ago, when he defected to the enemy—and Gina vows that this demon-loving traitor will never best her, either in battle or in love.

Luka can't resist this fiery, defiant adversary—the very woman whose memory kept him alive through five years shackled in hell, tortured by a sadistic demon. Now Luka burns for revenge—but to kill this demon, he'll need Gina's rare brand of magic, which she's sworn never to share, least of all with the man she despises for a traitor. A power Luka can gain only by possessing her, body and blood…


Cool, huh? My first new release in ages! You can buy for Kindle here -- it's only $2.99! What a bargain! -- or download the first Kindle chapter for free. A Nook version is coming soon.

And if you enjoy it? I'd be stoked if you could Like it, tag it, review it, recommend it to your friends. You'd be doing me a favour. Thanks!

poison kissed release day

 Yay! POISON KISSED is in stores today! I hope you all enjoy it. This is the one I've enjoyed writing the most so far. It has a banshee heroine, and a ravenous newly-made vampire and a rusty ironfairy as the villains.

A few FAQ: Yes, it has a new cover, different from the others. But it's the same series, the same world, the same everything. The cover and the new mass market format are a new look, but that's the only change.

And yes, Kane is in it :) he and his demon rival, Delilah, have a confrontation in this one. It's messy :)

Remember, you can check out Chapter One online at my website here. And the trailer is here. Enjoy!

Blog tour news: today, I'm at Bitten by Books for a bit of release day madness!! I'm talking a bit about the book, and you'll get an exclusive snippet from Chapter 2. Also giving away some gift certificates for prizes! So you can expand that book collection.

And on Thursday, I'm at Sidhe Vicious, talking about banshees, and why Mina, my banshee heroine, is a bit different.