Made For Us - Samantha Chase + Guest Post + Giveaway!!!

Guest Post: Top 10 Interior Design Tips by Samantha Chase

Hey, Everyone!  I’m Samantha Chase and it is a pleasure to be here with Ella talking about my new contemporary romance Made for Us book one in my new family series The Shaughnessy Brothers.  And I have to tell you, this series is one that I know you are going to fall in love with as much as I have.

There are six siblings and at the point that you’re going to be meeting them seventeen years has gone by since they lost their mother, and we see how this affects who they currently are.  Each book will not only introduce you to an individual Shaughnessy as they navigate through their life and eventually find love, you get to spend a lot of time getting to know the rest of the family, as well. 

My heroine in Made for Us is Zoe Dalton and she is an interior designer – that’s how she meets Aidan.  Sparks fly from the get-go and a lot of it is over his ideas for the designs in a home and how Zoe feels they should look.  Here are her top ten interior design tips for you!

10.  Wall Art.  It doesn’t all have to match but it does need to be hung at eye level.  These can add interest to a room and really change up your space.

9.   Mirrors are great for giving the illusion of more space.  If you have a small room, adding mirrors in some capacity can really help it feel bigger.

8.  Choose your paint color last.  Furniture and accessories first – because you’ll be keeping them longer than you have to keep color on your walls. 

7.  Pillows – more, more, more!  Throw pillows are a great accessory – don’t skimp on them.  Pile them on!

6.  Measure your space BEFORE you purchase anything.  Nothing ruins a room more than having furniture that doesn’t fit the space – either too big or too small. 

5.  Rugs.  The days of wall-to-wall carpeting are kind of going away.  Hardwood floors are all the rage but you can use area rugs to define a space.  Even in an open floor plan, you can use multiple ones and they don’t all have to match!

4.  Don’t be afraid to try something new!  Color can be your friend!  Not every room has to be white or beige.  If you’re afraid to go all-out with a bold color, try doing it as a feature wall.

3.  Be comfortable.  It won’t matter how beautiful a room is if nothing in it is comfortable.  It’s your home and you’re going to be living in it so make sure you’re picking pieces that you actually want to sit on and use.

2.   Lighting.  Natural lighting.  Supplemental lighting.  It’s all important.  Natural lighting is always best, but you need to make sure you’re utilizing all of your options to make your space bright and inviting.  Chandeliers, can lights, table lamps, candles…so many options! 

1.  Make the space your own.  Believe me, I can come in and design a room for you and decorate it like no one’s business, but unless you add your own personal touches, it’s always going to lack warmth.  Put out the things that have memories for you and let others see it.

***

Book Information

Title: Made For Us

Author: Samantha Chase

Release Date: August 4, 2015

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Series: The Shaughnessy Brothers, Book 1

Summary

Can't make time for love?

The Shaughnessy brothers have spent the years since their mother's untimely death taking care of each other and trying to make their father proud. Oldest son Aidan is hard-working, handsome, successful-and still single. Sure, he'd like to have his own family someday, but who has the time?

She'll show him how to find it

Zoe Dalton, a stunning designer Aidan meets on one of his construction jobs, has the beauty and heart to make Aidan realize how much he could be missing. But it's not easy to break down walls you've spent years building up. Now there's a major storm bearing down on the North Carolina coast, and it could be catalyst enough to force Aidan and Zoe into some major decisions of the heart.

Buy Links

Amazon | B&N | iBooks | IndieBound

Author Biography

New York Times and USA Today Bestseller/contemporary romance writer Samantha Chase released her debut novel,Jordan's Return, in November 2011. Although she waited until she was in her 40's to publish for the first time, writing has been a lifelong passion. Her motivation to take that step was her students: teaching creative writing to elementary age students all the way up through high school and encouraging those students to follow their writing dreams gave Samantha the confidence to take that step as well. 

When she's not working on a new story, she spends her time reading contemporary romances, playing way too many games of Scrabble or Solitaire on Facebook and spending time with her husband of 25 years and their two sons in North Carolina.

Social Networking Links

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

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BOOK BLITZ: The Single Game - Amanda Black + Guest Post + Q & A + Giveaway!

Book & Author Details:

The Single Game by Amanda Black
Publication date: July 15th 2015
Genres: New Adult, Romance

Synopsis:

In this third, stand-alone installment of Amanda Black’s Apartment Novels series, sparks fly during a sexy party game.

When Eden Foster’s parents tell her they’re moving from Chicago to the Illinois suburb of Aledo, Eden is crushed. That is, until she runs crying to her jock boyfriend, who she finds on top of her so-called best friend. Moving’s not looking so bad anymore.

Now a senior at Mercer County High, Eden is ready to re-enter the dating scene. Still burned over the betrayal of her ex, she’s looking for someone sweet and innocent. With the help of her two new friends, Zoe and Amy, Eden makes a list of what she’s looking for: an eager virgin, ready for training—and no jocks.

Eden thinks she’s found what she’s looking for in Logan Black, a shy and geeky classmate. But why are Zoe and Amy convinced that the answer to her search is a party game…with kissing?

Eden better get ready, because she’s about to play the Single Game.

The Single Game is the latest addition to the erotic Apartment Novels series, which began with Lily and Ethan in The Apartment and The Blank Canvas.

Goodreads

Purchase:

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Guest Blog Post

I’m so excited for the release of my new book The Single Game! It’s my first venture into NA territory and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. While it is a continuation of my Apartment series that gives us a glimpse into the future of some of the main characters, it can easily be read as a standalone novel featuring the next generation of the Foster family. So if you haven’t read the first two books but this one sounds interesting to you, go ahead and jump on in! If you really like this one you can always go back and see how it all began.

The idea for this story actually came to me in a dream a while ago. It was just a fleeting image of two random teenagers making out for the first time in a dark closet during a party game that was sort of like spin the bottle. The boy was very nervous and the girl was the one putting him at ease. For some reason that one scene kept replaying in my mind over and over again after I woke up, which I found totally weird because I can never remember my dreams. I always feel like they must have been awesome, but damn if I can ever recall one single detail the next morning. That’s why when I realized that I was building on that scenario in my head the more that I thought about it, I knew I had to write it down or it would drive me crazy. As the story unfolded, I realized that I was drawing on a lot of my own experiences from when I started dating my husband, so this one ended up being very near and dear to my heart.

I really hope you check out this sweet and sexy story and let me know what you think! -Amanda Black

Q&A

1.                What elements of your own love life influenced this story? 


More than I should probably admit! My husband and I were both very young when we started dating. Not quite as young as Eden and Logan, but there were still plenty of bets that we would never make it.

2.                There is less angst in The Single Game than in your previous books (The Apartment and The Blank Canvas), can you talk about that a little bit more? 


That was most definitely on purpose. By the time I finished writing those books I was absolutely drained from all of the emotions I had dredged up, both personal and fictional. Once I started getting the idea for The Single Game I saw that as an opportunity to just sit back and have some fun. It sounds funny to say that I was avoiding melodrama while also writing about teenagers, but I just wanted it to feel genuine, sweet and loving. Life has enough angst. I wanted to give me and my readers a small break.

3.                What motivated you to write a New Adult Erotica? 


I was already used to writing erotic romance after the last two books, but I was just really drawn to the story that was growing in my mind of these two teenagers on the verge of graduating high school. It’s such a big milestone in everyone’s life and I wanted to see how this couple would deal with a budding relationship in the middle of all of that.

4.                I was so intrigued by the characters in this story. Logan is a shy, geeky, male virgin whereas Eden is a beautiful, confident, and sexually active HS senior girl. What made you reverse these typically male/female roles? 


I’m always up for a good role reversal! Honestly, some details of their relationship were drawn right from my own and other people I’ve known. There were plenty of girls who got burned by dating a player and they were much happier once they gave the shy guy another look. Plus, how many of us have said at one time, “I’d love to find a guy with no relationship baggage who I could teach exactly what I like.” Eden takes that idea and runs with it, exploring and discovering brand new things that she and Logan both like.

5.                What character in The Single Game is most like you and why?

Definitely Eden. I had the proverbial burning by the ex. Not quite as dramatic as hers was, but that scene came from my ugliest high school memories. I wasn’t back in the saddle until early college but by then I knew what a treasure I had when I found my own shy guy.

AUTHOR BIO:

Amanda Black was born and raised in the Midwest, where she still lives with her husband and spoiled-rotten dogs. She earned a bachelor's degree in Studio Art before deciding that she actually needed to pay some bills, which is when she took a position as an ophthalmic technician.

For the past few years she's been a closet romance writer in her spare time and would love nothing more than to make it a full-time career. When she's not writing her next steamy love scene, her interests include reading, sketching, and annihilating her friends and family in movie trivia.

Author links:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

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BOOK BLITZ: The V Girl - Mya Robarts + Excerpt + Guest Post + Giveaway!

Book & Author Details:

The V Girl by Mya Robarts
Publication date: June 20th 2014
Genres: Dystopia, Young Adult

Synopsis:

ROMANTIC DYSTOPIA FOR MATURE YA READERS YOUNG NA READERS

In post-apocalyptic North America, rape and sexual slavery are legal. Lila Velez, desperately wants to lose her virginity before the troops visit her town, and can take it away by force. She makes plans to seduce her only friend, Rey, the most attractive man in her town. Lila does not love him, but he is the only man who has shown her true affection, an affection she is willing to take as a substitute of love.

Lila’s coping mechanism to her mother’s violent attack is her secret. A secret that will bring her closer to Aleksey Fürst, a foreign, broody man that she distrusts because his links to the troops and his rough, yet irresistible appearance. He offers Lila an alternative to her plans, a possibility that terrifies her…and tempts her in spite of herself.

All the while Lila will have to find a way to live in the constant company of death, slavery, starvation, sexual abuse and the danger of losing the people she loves the most.

Due to strong language, violent scenes and sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18.

Goodreads

Purchase:

Amazon | Kobo

Excerpt: 

Prologue

In the barely lit room, there are only some gym mattresses and a couple of mirrors. I’ve set the mirrors so I can watch myself losing the V of my nickname.

 My “one-hour stand” climbs onto the mattresses and touches my naked, trembling body. His breathing becomes ragged; his eyes are dark.

I never imagined my first time would be like this. In my imagination, when I had my first time, I would be in love.

I always thought I would only allow myself to be with someone in that way if I really, really, loved that person. He would also be unconditionally in love with me. He would be someone who would look at me as though I was his sun.

I wanted to lose my virginity to someone who adores me. Preferably someone who would had said the five magic words: “Lila, will you marry me?” I wanted to have sex for the first time with someone I’d consider worthy enough to spend the rest of my life with. If I only had more time. Eighteen is too young in my book to have met the person to whom I want to commit my life.

I wish this occasion could have been a romantic spur of the moment situation. One thing leading to other in a natural manner and then ... I wouldn’t be a V-girl anymore.

That would have been an ideal situation. But I don’t live in an ideal world; I live in a world defined by a civil war.

My deflowering can’t be romantic or spontaneous. I’ve been preparing my first sexual encounter since I heard the troops were on their way to Starville.

I don’t love my sexual partner. He doesn’t love me, either. But it has to be him, or it’s going to be a random guy from the troops … through force.

My “lover” hesitates for a moment. I feel his weight pressing me into the mattress. His body tenses. I wait for him to make the next move, but I’m afraid he has changed his mind.

 Guest Post: 

Ebook vs. Printed books.

Today I wanted to share with all of you my opinion about a dilemma that every bookaholic faces once in a while. The never ending debate: E-books vs. Printed books.

Some believe that e-readers are going to dominate the reading world.  A more conservative group of people think that the traditional book will remain the favorite choice among a huge portion of book lovers. 

As recent as four years ago, I was an enthusiast part of this second side. I used to believe that a book, to be “real” had to come to life in printed form.  The flipping of pages, the smell, and the texture were all irreplaceable for me and a huge part of what my reading experience have to include. And who doesn’t love to take a look at shelves full of books?

Eventually, I discovered the advantages of e-book readers. Portability; more books, less money,  you can read covertly when you’re not supposed to do it (let’s say a boring lecture). E-books have advantages that I never thought I’d enjoy since I was so reluctant to change the way I have always read.

You are not less of a book lover if you prefer e-books over printed books. Recently I saw a video in which Kat O’Keeffe  from  Katytastic admits she prefers e-books. Kat, owns the most beautiful shelves I’ve ever seen, and even so she prefers e-books.  Plenty of booklovers , who have a kind of physical impediment will prefer e-book, too.  And carrying a thousand books with you wherever you go, has its advantages.

Why not combine the two? I read in electronic format the books that I think won’t be among my favorites. When my favorite authors have a new release, I end up buying the same book twice. I order the e-book the day of release and even so I order the printed version.

As a book addict who enjoys her addiction, I’ll always want more books in whatever format I can get them: Electronic, Audio, Paperback, Hardcovers, etc. I want them all. The format doesn’t demerit the value of a book. A great book will always be great not matter what format meet our eyes. And whether your book collection is nicely stacked on shelves or available to you with just a few clicks on your e-reader, the very fact that we have options to choose is something to feel grateful for. It means more reading opportunities to discover our next favorite reading.

AUTHOR BIO:

I am a bookaholic and regret nothing.

I spent years trying to become a contemporary dance choreographer. Eventually I realized that I enjoyed writing my stories rather than creating dances for them.

I am obsessed with books that present damaged characters, swoon worthy guys, controversial topics and happy endings.

Author links: 

MyaRobarts.com | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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BLOG TOUR: He & She - Wayne Clark + Author Guest Post!!

SYNOPSIS

*** 5-star Silver Medal winner in the 2014 Readers' Favorite Annual International Award Contest ***

Growing numb to life, to his on-and-off girlfriend of many years, his career, even Scotch, a man turns fifty. He is a translator who can no longer dream of translating beautiful works of fiction. He is an amateur musician who can no longer dream of expressing his life on a higher plane, without words. As he glares inside himself he sees little but his declining sexuality, his crumbling hold on life, a growing list of failed relationships, and a darkening well of loneliness.

Stumbling upon an image on the Internet one night, he suddenly hears cell doors sliding open. He stares at a young woman, in profile, beautiful, unblinking, regal. Instinctively he knows that by lingering on that image he will shatter a relationship that has kept him on the sane side of loneliness as surely as if he stepped in front of a speeding eighteen-wheeler. But desperate to feel alive again before time runs out, he knows he must see the stranger behind the pixels on his laptop screen.

Although it is her image that first transfixes him, his eye afterwards chances on a handful of words on the Internet page. She is a dominatrix. The word triggers something inside him, blows the dust off fantasies trickling back to adolescence, and slowly begins to re-choreograph his decades of sexual memories. Was he ever really the dominant male he thought he was? Did he have a sexual alter-ego? Was this the last card he had to play in life? The face on the screen held the answer. He would find out even if it killed him.

PURCHASE

Paperback
AbeBooks
Alibris
Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.in
Barnes & Noble
Biblio
CreateSpace
Goodreads
Tower

eBooks
Amazon.com – Kindle
Amazon.ca – Kindle
Amazon.co.uk – Kindle
Amazon – Kindle
Barnes & Noble – Nook
Chapters / Indigo – Kobo
Goodreads
Google Play
iBooks – iPad, iPhone, desktop
Smashwords – all formats

The Author's Inspiration

Let me start of by saying that in the case of he & She I didn’t start out to write a book.

Several years before I started writing the book I met a woman who was dominatrix, a young woman who was very curious about life, adventurous, and I think like a lot of young people today she was just not interested in sitting in an office and working 9 to 5, or working in  a store for a paltry sum.

She read an ad somewhere for a dominatrix that promised training. Her response was: “What the hell. Why not?” Her decision was quite courageous, I thought, considering that she’d never tried something like that, before she knew much of anything about it. Afterwards, she told me that she really loved it and was absolutely amazed at the number of fantasies there were in this world. I remember her saying there seem to be as many fantasies as there are people.

She got pleasure out it and she realized that certainly some her clients did, too. This resulted in the belief that if more people integrated their fantasies  — whatever they may be, they might have nothing to do with domination —into their real life situations, their lives as couples, the happier they would be.

So this book was inspired by an account, an event, meeting this dominatrix. Prior to that encounter, I had always interested in fantasies and wondered whether it would be foolhardy to make them real. whether doing so risked destroying them. Daydreams and sexual fantasies are like that. They live in their own world, and if you're not careful they can go up in smoke and you’re left with nothing.

Going ahead  a number of years, it’s always been my habit when I had time, to sit down and see where my fingers go. Often it leads to nothing, but there are other days when there are surprises and the whole day has gone by without me noticing. It’s marvellous and I love it.

Over the next year or two, I noticed that while writing like this — both times I was riding on trains, where I love to write — I had twice tried to write about her, just scenes, not in a dramatic context. I had no idea of writing a book or a short story. I was just writing for the duration of my train trip. Over time, I added things here and there, and took some away. I kept writing. Some of it was attempts at writing the same scene.

Flash forward again, quite some months later, I had set myself a challenge, namely for 21 days to making writing the very first thing I did every morning. I would make my usual big pot of coffee and when it was empty the writing stopped. At the outset next to nothing came to my fingers, maybe seven or eight words, or two hundred, then 20. Then days went by and I was starting to write more and more each morning. Then one day, I was chugging along all right when I suddenly realized one of the little scenes I’d written on the train about the dominatrix might fit in just where I was that morning. I stuck it in, I copied and pasted it in and said, “Let's see where that goes.” Then, in very short order, another scene that I had written about her sort of fit in. Of course I had to adjust it to make it work with what I had written before. Any, I just keep writing, and I would say that within about a month I started to have a feeling that I had a book there, although I would have been hard-pressed to describe it at that time. It’s hard to describe how exciting that feels.

The Author

Wayne's  Website / Goodreads / Twitter / Facebook

Award-winning author Wayne Clark was born in 1946 in Ottawa, Ont., but has called Montreal home since 1968. Woven through that time frame in no particular order have been interludes in Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver, Germany, Holland and Mexico.

By far the biggest slice in a pie chart of his career would be labelled journalism, including newspapers and magazines, as a reporter, editor and freelance writer. The other, smaller slices of the pie would also represent words in one form or another, in advertising as a copywriter and as  a freelance translator. However, unquantifiable in a pie chart would be the slivers and shreds of time stolen over the years to write fiction.

 Follow the entire He & She Blog Tour HERE

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BLOG TOUR: Part Time Cowboy - Maisey Yates + Guest Post + GIVEAWAY!

Book & Author details:

Part Time Cowboy by Maisey Yates
(Copper Ridge #1)
Published by: Harlequin
Publication date: March 31st 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Romance

Follow the rest of the tour here! 

Synopsis:

A one-time bad girl comes home to small-town Oregon in the first in a sexy, heartfelt new series from USA TODAY bestselling author Maisey Yates…

Sadie Miller isn’t expecting any welcome-home parades on her return to Copper Ridge. Least of all from part-time rancher, full-time lawman Eli Garrett. The straight-laced, impossibly hot deputy sheriff glares at her like she’s the same teenage hoodlum who fled town ten years ago. But running from her demons has brought Sadie full circle, ready to make a commitment at last. Not to a man, but to a B and B. On Garrett land. Okay, so her plan has a tiny flaw…
Eli works too hard to let a blonde ball of trouble mess up his town. But keeping an eye on Sadie makes it tough to keep his hands off her. And if she’s so wrong for him, why does being with her feel so right?

Goodreads

Purchase: 

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Author Inspiration: The Hero

Inspiration comes from a lot of different places. I've gotten story ideas from the strangest places. From articles in the news, to Disney cartoons, the smallest, most seemingly innocuous moments have spawned whole books.

But one of the most important pieces of inspiration? The hero.

For me, hero inspiration works in a couple of different ways. It doesn’t usually start with his looks. Though, I love a devastatingly handsome man with a great set of abs as much as the next person. Maybe even more. But for me, the heart of the hero is the most important thing.

I write very strong men. Alpha heroes. No matter what kind of book I’m writing I know before I start that’s the kind of man he’ll be. I've written a lot of different hero types, from billionaires, to bikers, to cowboys, but they all have a few things in common.

No matter how rough their exterior, they have good hearts. No matter how broken, they can definitely be saved. And no matter what they do, whether it's kidnapping a woman to make their bride, or keeping the heroine at arm’s length by acting like a prickly cuss, they do it because they firmly believe it’s the right thing to do. Even if they don’t have a moral code most of us would recognize, they definitely have one.

I often arrive at conflict for my heroes thanks to tragic headlines. I really, really like a damaged hero. I'm also a thwarted fixer and a control freak and a world I can’t control. So very often when I read about those circumstances I want to find ways to fix them. That often means applying bits and pieces of what I see in the headlines, and in real life, to fictional characters so that I can try to give them their happy ending.

But of course, in my estimation, a romance hero is best when he's tall, hot and broken. I rely a lot on Pinterest for visual inspiration. I tend to favor pictures of male models, or pictures of more than one guy who kind of have the vibe I’m looking for in my hero versus casting a celebrity.

While I’m often inspired by headlines, I am sometimes inspired by pictures first. My first cowboy series came to me because I saw a picture of a cowboy and wanted to know his story. I write cowboys now because of that picture. That one picture led to six books and three novellas all about cowboys. It was a picture that was worth a whole lot more than a thousand words.

I’m a writer and reader who’s kind of all about the hero, torturing him, healing him, falling a little bit in love with him. I hope you enjoy reading about my heroes as much as I enjoy writing them.

 And if you want to check out some of my visual hero inspiration come and find me on Pinterest!

AUTHOR BIO:

USA Today Bestselling author Maisey Yates lives in rural Oregon with her three children and her husband, whose chiseled jaw and arresting features continue to make her swoon. She feels the epic trek she takes several times a day from her office to her coffee maker is a true example of her pioneer spirit.

In 2009, at the age of twenty-three Maisey sold her first book. Since then it’s been a whirlwind of sexy alpha males and happily ever afters, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Maisey divides her writing time between dark, passionate category romances set just about everywhere on earth and light sexy contemporary romances set practically in her back yard. She believes that she clearly has the best job in the world.

Author links:

MaiseyYates.com

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