Read the Entire Unfinished Business Series for Under $3.00!

Read the Entire Unfinished Business Series for Under $3.00!
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Coffee Time Romance Review of Storm Watch

The Unfinished Business Series


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Monday, August 17, 2015

Welcoming Kate Rothwell, Author of The Detective's Dilemma


Kidnapped by his own target, this crooked cop is having one bad day.


Detective Caleb Walker is foiled by his own industriousness. Determined to capture a criminal, he plants evidence—and is discovered by his higher-ups. Now blackmailed into acting as the strong-arm for a corrupt politician, he visits a poor widow he must convince to surrender her son. Yet something about her stirs his memory, and long-submerged desires. When she pulls a gun on him and demands he switch sides, he’s stunned, annoyed…and intrigued.

No one will take her son from Julianna. Least of all her sinister ex-father-in-law whose abuse damaged her late husband. With the handsome detective smirking in her sights, Julianna must convince him to help her keep her baby safe from the very people holding Caleb in their powerful grip. In a desperate bid, she kidnaps the cynical Caleb—and struggles to ignore the heat sparking between them. 

As they pursue answers, secrets are uncovered—including Julianna’s and Caleb’s. Two imperfect hearts together may be enough to win the day. If their enemies don’t destroy them first.

Excerpt


Julianna should have slammed the door on his face, but when she’d opened the door, she had vaguely recognized the man on her doorstep. One of her partners from a long-ago debutante ball? A neighbor she might have seen while walking Peter?
She shouldn’t have allowed him in, but at least he seemed less awful than the other representatives sent by the Winthrops, the unpleasant insinuating lawyer and the sneering brute. She decided she’d address this call, since her letters were ignored. She’d answer his questions and hope he’d give an honest report to her late husband’s family.
Those stern words about Peter’s grandparents made it clear the detective wasn’t her ally. Something knowing in his sharp gaze told her that he’d heard a lot of stories he considered lies and piffle. Her stomach went queasy at the thought of the coming confrontation, and she wished she hadn’t eaten anything.
“We ought to go into another room. The drawing room is still furnished.” She turned and strode out of the kitchen without bothering to see if he followed. Brennan would herd him along if he should attempt to wander. She felt a surge of pleasure as she walked up the steps. On occasion, being able to drop her old role of hostess and polite young matron almost made up for the rest.
But he followed, so there was no need for anyone to nip at his heels.
This policeman seemed larger than her vague memory of him. He must have been quite young back then, almost a decade ago. She remembered his face and not just the uniform he’d worn, because that day eight years ago, he had given her a smile that wasn’t leering—or so she’d hoped and prayed at the time. She’d been desperate for a friendly face and stared back at him. He’d turned slightly red and looked away, and she’d thought how odd that a policeman could be embarrassed.

He might be wearing finer clothes today, but now his expression more resembled what she’d expect an officer of the law to wear: stony calm, impervious to emotion. Or perhaps he looked bored. Not a lawyer after all and she should have noticed his tanned face gave him the appearance of a man who spent time outside. His dark hair looked rumpled, a lock slid over his forehead, so he didn’t use oil.

Welcome, Kate! Gaslight historical is not a term I've heard before. How did you come to write this story?

The Detective’s Dilemma is the fourth historical romance I’ve written featuring a New York City cop hero. Caleb Walker, the detective of the title, is my first hero who’s actually connected to a corrupt politician.

My first book in that very specific sub-genre (Somebody Wonderful) was actually inspired by a throwaway line in Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks!  The comedians grew up in New York and Harpo described his life as a poor kid hanging around the streets, adding to the general mayhem of the city. He wrote, “If a patrolman came upon a gang fight or front-stoop crap game and needed reinforcements in a hurry, he’d bang his nightstick on the curb. This made a sharp whinnng that could be heard by cops on other beats throughout the precinct, and they’d come a-running from all directions…”

The 1880s are post-Boss Tweed, who was the worst of the crooked bosses of Tammany Hall, but even after his era, New York and its police department was still pretty corrupt. I wondered what it would be like to live in such a 1dishonest world, especially for a peace officer who took the duty to protect and serve seriously – but who also had to buy his way into his promotions.

This sounds wonderful. I am sucker for historicals in general, especially when they're based in New York in this time period.  That is an amazing anecdote. What project will you be working on next?

I write as Summer Devon and those stories are spicier than my Kate Rothwell titles. Lately Summer Devon books are also almost all historical male-male romances, usually set in England. Right now Bonnie Dee and I are co-writing a book about a smuggler in Cornwall. He’s supposed to scare off a slightly eccentric tourist who’s taking too many pictures and asking too many questions. I love co-writing. It’s like my favorite party game of all time.

Co-authoring is one thing that never worked out for me. I did try a couple of times, but our writing styles and visions for the book were not sync. 

Can you tell us one surprising or interesting fact about yourself?

 I just asked my kid what I should write and he suggested that I say I have the world’s largest collection of hand-made sex toys. He’s eighteen and male, so that sort of throw-away comment is second nature. Unfortunately, no, I don’t have any hand-made sex toys. He’s embarrassed that I transcribed what he said and is now hastily suggesting that I write that I am the owner of six chickens (not a lie, yet also not particularly interesting to anyone who hasn’t met the girls) …. I think I like his first suggestion better.

Love it! He sounds like my son who gets more and more outrageous in an attempt to fluster me. I keep telling him he's wasting his time but he still keeps at it. 


I’d love to do a give-away of my new book – The Detective’s Dilemma, or any of my New York set historicals! Comment below and win an ebook. Most are available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and All Romance Ebooks, a few are Amazon Select only.


My other titles that have at least a scene or two in New York City:
Somebody Wonderful
Somebody to Love
Someone to Cherish
The Earl, the Girl, and the Promise
Powder of Sin
Love Between the Lines 

Okay, you heard that folks. Comment away.

Connect with Kate

http://katerothwell.com

http://summerdevon.com


https://www.facebook.com/S.DevonAuthor

Kate also writes as Summer Devon.
Most of those stories are hotter than Kate Rothwell titles and many are m/m historicals written with Bonnie Dee.

You can find her at:
https://www.facebook.com/S.DevonAuthor
http://katerothwell.com
http://summerdevon.com

Monday, August 10, 2015

Welcoming Karina Fabian Talking About Her Most Recent Release Mind Over All

Buy Link
I am delighted to welcome back Karina Fabian today on her Mind Over All Book Tour.

 At last, Deryl has it all. He’s mastered his psychic abilities and escaped both the asylum on Earth where he was being studied and the influence of the alien Master who would use his powers as a weapon. He found acceptance among the psychic people of Kanaan and will soon be a father. However, the danger isn’t over.

The Master’s people plan to invade his new homeworld, but even worse, the planets are set to crash into each other. Deryl will have to accept his role as savior of both worlds and push his mind’s powers to the limit in order to save the people he loves most.


Excerpt:

Deryl braced his feet, splayed his hands palms downward, and sucked the energy from Barin. When Deryl had first been learning to control his abilities, particularly to deal with the legion of impressions coming at him from others around him, Joshua had taught him to shield himself from the mental/emotional aspects. Over the past year, he’d taught himself to filter those aspects out. It was energy, all energy, pure and neutral, like food once processed through the digestive tract. Now, he applied the same skills to Barin, stripping away the pain of the turmoil, taking the energy into himself, storing it, letting it build. The tremors under his feet stilled. The waves crashing against the rocks calmed. The wind that drove the poisonous air against his makeshift mask quieted. 

In response, Deryl’s breathing accelerated, his blood raced, his stomach churned. Adrenalin coursed through him, making him shake. He ignored it, pulling further on Barin, reaching into the ground, through the air, and to the ley lines that arched weakly overhead. A detached part of his mind worked physics problems of angles and forces. Barin needed shields, and he was just the man to do it. 

The key to his sanity lay in creating shields—barriers against unwanted thoughts and emotions, clumsily erected until Joshua and his neuro linguistic programming style of psychology had taken him at his word that he was truly psychic and helped him create stronger, more clever shields. He’d further honed his skills on Kanaan, training under Salgoud in anticipation of a Barin attack: manipulating energy to protect himself, then Tasmae, gradually expanding— He could do this. It was just a matter of size and energy. 

Two minutes to atmosphere. Deryl’s muscles strained as he lifted his hands over his head, palms still fat but now toward the sky. His hasty calculations complete enough, he released the power to meet the Miscria Storm.

Wow, Karina. This is really a cross genre book series. Can you tell us more about it?

I wanted an A in my science fiction class and had a long running story in my head about what would happen to Charles Wallace (Wrinkle in Time) when he grew up. I didn’t want to do fan fic, so I changed up the characters and wrote a story about a psychic who accidentally teleports to another world, falls in love and defeats the bad guy while trying to figure how to get himself and his best friend back home. The professor gave me an A and suggested I make it a novel. I did, but it never sold, so I put it away for 10 years, went into the military and had kids. When I wanted to start writing again, I pulled it out first to revise.

My more mature self realized it was tripe. The main character was a Mary Sue with no problems. The planet was interesting as was the heroine, so I needed to fix the hero – and by that, I mean tear him down. By the time I got done giving poor Deryl issues connected to his abilities, I had to put him in an asylum! Hence, Mind Over Mind, the first book in the trilogy.

Writing about crazy, tortured psychics is fun. Deryl’s problems spilled over to the heroine and even to the villain. Thanks to the fact that telepathy does not follow linear time, those problems in turn affect Deryl’s younger self. There’s a whole lotta crazy going on! The friend, Joshua, who was originally a strawman buddy, became a psychiatric intern with a strong storyline himself – so much so I had to write a novella to finish it. With Joshua’s help, Deryl helps the heroine and even the villain, and they save the worlds.

Mind Over All ends the Mind Over trilogy. I had originally intended a stand-alone book until I started driving Deryl insane and he needed more time to get himself and everyone else together before they could save the worlds. I have an idea for their kids, but it’s not fleshed out enough for a book. Besides I have other things I need to work on.


What projects will you be working on next?

I’m polishing up Shambling in a Winter Wonderland, a novel in the Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator series. Neeta and her fiancé go on vacation to Utah, but end up having to take out zombies who have returned from the dead to hit the slopes. It’s filled with slapstick, romance, political satire, and zombies on skis.

I’m also working on a DragonEye novel. I’m intending to relaunch the entire series myself in a couple of years, so I’m starting fresh with the origin story.

It sounds like you write full time.

I have written full time in the past, along with taking care of the family, but it doesn’t really pay the bills. Right about the time my husband retired, I got contacted out of the blue by a recruiter offering me a full-time writing job. (Moral here – keep that LinkedIn profile up to date and complete!). Now, I’m a content writer for Top Ten Reviews. I evaluate business products, everything from PDF software to online reputation management services and insurance, and write reviews to help people make the best buying decisions. It’s interesting work because I’m always learning something new, but the best part is the people I’m working with. They are creative, quirky and fun. There’s always a conversation about geeky movies or books, and lots of jokes. We have a Wednesday night D&D group and board games during lunch. In some ways, it’s like the perfect high school - everyone likes everyone, we work well together, and we can still be big adolescents at times.


Here’s a case in point. This is Robert Paulson, a medical skeleton we reviewed for a site and that the company let us keep. He’s posed on the Coke machine, sat at computers, draped himself fetchingly on desks waiting the return of someone on vacation, and now is enjoying some “me” time in private.






Tell us one  surprising or interesting fact about yourself.

I like getting older. Every year holds new adventures and I enjoy having learned from my past. I’m also more comfortable with myself, even in my saggy, pudding-bag shape. I wouldn’t mind having a younger body – the one from 2001-2002 would be ideal, thank you – but I’d like to keep the hair I have now. For some reason, it behaves better, and I like the silver coming in.

I used to have a skeleton in my exam room. I put different T shirts with health messaging on him, plus a pair of flip flops. Great ice breaker.

Tell us about your other books and your writing.

 I’ve written just about everything from devotionals to flash fiction to articles on generators to really bad poetry. My favorite things to write are science fiction and fantasy, although I was asked to write zombie fic a few years back, and people loved it (as do I), so now I have an ongoing series.

In fact, I have several series. Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator is about a young woman whose extermination business has an unusual sideline – zombies. She sprays for roaches and takes on the shambling undead in a world where zombies are pests and politics has gone nuts. DragonEye, PI is a series of stories and novels about a dragon who has come to our world to work as a private investigator, solving crimes and saving our world against magical mishaps. The Mind Over trilogy is about a psychic who must fight his way back to sanity, master his powers, and save two worlds from colliding. 


In addition, I have a couple of stand-alone novels. One is being shopped around, but Discovery comes out in 2016. It’s part of my Rescue Sisters storyline – nuns living and working in space.

I also teach writing live and via webinar. You can learn more and sign up for my classes at http://karinafabian.com/lectures-and-workshops/scheduled-webinars/

So tell me, do you still do book trailer classes? This is fantastic!






By day, Karina is a mild-mannered reviewer of business software and services for TopTenReviews.com. After hours, she’s a psychic intent on saving the world; a snarky dragon who thinks he saves the world all-too regularly, a zombie exterminator who just wants her world clear of undead vermin, and nuns whose callings have taken them off our world. Needless to say, her imagination is vast, her stories legion, and her brain crowded. When she’s not converting her wild tales to stories, she’s enjoying time with her husband, Rob, their four kids, and their two dogs.

Find Karina at:
Website: http://fabianspace.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karina.fabian
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/#!/KarinaFabian
Google +:  https://plus.google.com/103660024891826015212

Saturday, August 8, 2015

The Novel Fun in the Summer Sun Virtual Tour Continues-Sharing the Excitement of a New Contract!

Breakwater Beach, the prequel to The Widow's Walk, will be published by Soulmate Publishing in late 2015 or early 2016. I'm celebrating the realization of a ten year dream and continuing the wildly successful Novel Fun in the Summer Sun Tour in Brewster, Orleans and Chatham MA from July 27-29. Deborah Davis and I had a great time chatting with readers, adorable kids, and lots of doggies at the bookstores and Snow Library in Orleans and The Brewster Ladies Library. Thanks to all for hosting us.  Check out the Pinterest Board for Novel Fun and Kayaking with Kids





Stand by for a cover reveal, but if you'd like a preview of Breakwater Beach, subscribe to my newsletter and I'll send you a PDF download of Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts which contains the short story teaser version.



Both the Snow Library and the Brewster Ladies Library received gift copies of The Widow's Walk and Kayaking with Kids for loan.

I am honored that signed copies of The Widow's Walk are available for purchase at these fine establishments on Cape Cod:

The Brewster Bookstore
Yellow Umbrella Books (Chatham)
Booksmith (Orleans)

The Brewster Historical Society 

In gratitude for all the Society has done to help with my research for the series, all  proceeds will donated to the Society's New Home Fund for the restoration of the Elijah Cobb House.

Kayaking with Kids is available at the above shops as well as the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History gift shop and Rail Trail Bike and Kayak,

If purchased at the Brewster Visitor Center, $5.00 per copy will be donated to the Brewster Conservation Trust.



There are great giveaways on the Coffee Time Romance Facebook Page on August 8. All you have to do is leave a comment to be entered.











I will be appearing with other Soulmate Publishing Authors on the Summer Blogathon on August 8 as well.