PROMO - Falling: Angels Among Us book 1 – Harper Impulse paranormal romance novella by Linn B Halton

Brook Cottage Books is thrilled to have the lovely talented author and my good friend Linn B Halton on the blog. She's here to tell us about why she's chosen the subject matter of paranormal romance. Thanks Linn.


'What I particularly love about having become a psychic romance writer, is that I talk to a lot of people about the very thing they often feel awkward telling anyone else! Psychic or unexplained experiences are often profoundly personal – although they can be amusing, scary, thought-provoking – sometimes all of those things wrapped up into one!

Some of my experiences are what I would call fairly common, for instance I often get ‘hugs’ from the spiritual helpers around me (loved ones). The pressure and warmth on my shoulders is something that I feel blessed to have experienced many times. Nothing can quite compare to it, because it has more meaning than simply a hug. It’s a hug from someone who is no longer here with you.

One of the most unusual experiences was when I was trying to format one of my self-published paperback books. I had spent about seven hours fiddling with it, because for some reason the page numbering just would not work. You can imagine that I was tired and a little grumpy. It was late in the evening and I was on my own. Suddenly, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and I can only describe it as a rugby ball shape of what appeared to be grey smoke. It was quite dense and it literally SHOT from over my right shoulder and between the laptop and my body. It was so real that I literally recoiled and nearly fell off my typing stool, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. It took me a few minutes to recover my composure and when I did, I realised that clearly the template I was using was flawed. I made myself a strong coffee, opened a new blank template and started again. Within an hour and a half my paperback was complete and on the way to the printers.

Divine intervention? No. Help from a loved one? I like to think so. I can imagine my mum watching me and saying ‘That poor girl! She needs to stop and start again before she goes mad!’ I was always a girl to my mum, even as a mum myself and after the incident it did make me laugh. However, I’ve had so many similarly ‘odd’ experiences that have made me stop and think, or alter the way I do something, and too often it’s happened at a really crucial time in my life. I really do believe our angels are around us constantly.'

About ‘Falling’ Angels Among Us series:

Ceri thinks she sees angels…everywhere. She struggles to keep separate what feels like two very different sides to her life. As a manager in an advertising company she’s been working with the gorgeous Alex for two years. The have a friendship based upon the image she portrays whilst she’s at work and it helps to keep her sane. One mad, crazy night spent sharing their secrets and a lot of wine result in them ending up in bed together and their relationship changes. When Alex explains that the reason he doesn’t date is because someone broke his heart, how can Ceri admit that she feels a deep connection to him?

Ceri knows she’s different. What she doesn’t fully appreciate is that her task in life is to correct a series of incidents that alter the course of many of the people's lives with whom she comes into contact. She’s simply putting right little errors that could ripple outwards and change the course of their destiny. However; when she finds herself getting pulled into things that happen around her, how can she prove that she really has made a difference? Is it all in her head?

She's alone for a reason; she's not meant to fall in love in her earthly life. Alex is supposed to cross paths with her and help Ceri during a phase where she begins to question the signs she’s being given. It's meant to be a turning point for them both—but in opposite directions. They are destined to travel very different paths…but Ceri doesn’t know that and neither does Alex…

“No one chooses to see angels, why would they?”

This is a romance story that explores the possibility of there being something more than just the ‘here and now’. If that were the case, how would it work? What keeps us on the path determined for us, when we have free will? How would the spirit world link with us as we go about our lives? Love is a powerful emotion, but can it change the course of someone’s destiny? Ceri is ‘Falling’...

Read chapter one http://linnbhalton.co.uk/falling/

MY REVIEW

Ceri can see Angels. They appear to give her warnings so that she can help other people. Although Ceri has been able to help many people, she is resentful of how her premonitions have impacted on her personal life. Whilst Ceri is saving other people her love life has suffered as a consequence. There are few people she trusts to share her secret and she is feeling alone and isolated.  Ceri is a twin and finds it incredible that her twin brother Seb neither shares her gift nor tries to understand it.  Ceri struggles with trusting someone close to her and telling them about the burden she carries.  What does life hold for Ceri and are things spiralling out of control for her?

Having read Linn B Halton’s book 'Never Alone', I was thrilled to be offered the opportunity to read Ceri’s Journey.  The subject matter interests me greatly and I was not disappointed with this great little book which I devoured in one sitting.  Linn B Halton has created such interesting characters and I love the way they develop throughout the course of the book.  The reader feels Ceri’s frustration about not being able to change the course of her own life when she has a hand in changing the destiny of others.  I can highly recommend this book for those of you who love a good paranormal romance. The book ended on a cliff-hanger and has me desperate for the next book. I just didn’t want it to end! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Linn B Halton is a fantastic writer and her writing style will have you hooked from page one. 

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Links:

Buy from Amazon: http://viewbook.at/FallingAngelsAmongUs
Website
Twitter: @LinnBHalton
Facebook: Linn B Halton and Author Linn B Halton

Pinterest
HarperImpulse author page
Romantic Novelists’ Association page
Editor of Loveahappyending Lifestyle emagazine

 

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Promo Post - Jenna's Journey by Julie Ryan

Book Blurb

When Jenna decides on a whim to go to Greece, she’s trying to escape her failing marriage.  Will Greg let her go so easily though? Can she make a new future for herself and how did she get involved in an antiques smuggling ring? Is fellow holidaymaker Tom all he seems and will it be happy ever after with Nikos?  It’s not until twenty-five years later that some of the questions are finally answered.

Julie Ryan Biography

I was born in a mining village in South Yorkshire and as a young child always seemed to have my head in a book. It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise then when I was told off at school for writing in the style of Enid Blyton as she was my primary influence. My love of reading and writing both stem from that time but in an attempt to broaden my literary horizons I did, albeit somewhat reluctantly at first, start reading books by other authors. As a writer today, I am convinced that what you write is due in no small part to what you enjoy reading. Nowadays I love reading crime, thrillers, historical fiction and novels set in foreign locations.

After leaving school it was time to broaden my horizons geographically although I didn’t go far, choosing to study French Language and Literature at Hull University. I did get to spend a year in the Auvergne region of France though, which helped to improve my cultural, linguistic and culinary sensibilities. After graduating I did a PGCE before more globetrotting. I worked in Greece, Poland and Thailand teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Returning to the UK, I taught French and German in various secondary schools around the country including York, Scarborough, Kent and London. Although I always wanted to write, life seemed to get in the way. Moving house and country about twenty times in twenty years I seemed to be forever packing or unpacking. It wasn’t until I eventually settled in rural Gloucestershire, got married, had a son and worked part time that the creative urge that had been lurking there for years resurfaced. Finally my lovely life has given me time to do all the things I wanted to do. No more excuses. I have finally written my debut novel and am now working on a second one too! Both these books have sprung from ideas that first germinated during my time in Greece but as they say ‘great oaks from little acorns spring’! I only hope that other people enjoy my books as much as I have done writing them. It has certainly been a journey for me as well as my characters.

Twitter  @julieryan18

Facebook  facebook.com/Julieryanauthor

Blog thegreekurn.wordpress.com

 

                                                                        

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The Illicit Love of a Courtesan by Jane Lark - Re-release!!!!

Brook Cottage Books is thrilled to welcome Jane Lark to the blog to talk about the re-release of The Illicit Love of a Courtesan. This is a book I can highly recommend with the sequel out on 7th November! You can read my original review for the book HERE.

'The inspiration for The Illicit Love of a Courtesan came from a real Regency Courtesan’s memoirs. Harriette Wilson published her memoirs in 1825, in a kiss and tell series. I have been telling her story on my history blogfor a little while. There was one man who she had a relationship with because she fell in love and it was this story that really captured my attention.

What I loved when I read this is how it mirrored what people might do today so well. At first she didn’t know his name, she’d just seen him in a park, and she kept going to the park and walking about it in the hope of bumping into him. Once she knew who he was and where he lived, she would walk past his house, and go and stand near it, in the hope of seeing him. If you didn’t do that as a teenager, my group of friends did.

Then one day she caught his eye in the park, and thought she saw him looking at her too. Then she saw him ride past her house and turn around and ride back again.

When they did finally meet, the tone of Harriette Wilson’s writing changes completely, you can hear the intensity of her feeling in her words.

Sadly for Harriette, it didn’t work out how she would have liked, but once I read this, I knew I wanted to give a courtesan a really passionate and intense love story, so I wrote this…

The Illicit Love of a Courtesan Blurb

In the eyes of the ton, Ellen Harding lives a charmed life – she is the beautiful, exquisitely adorned mistress of Lord Gainsborough. But on the inside, behind her glamorous façade, she is empty – a vessel – deaf to the voice of morality and blind to shame. Unable to escape the gilded cage she has been trapped within.

Kind, gentle Edward Marlow could prove to be her salvation… With one look he gives her hope. With one touch he sets her senses alight.'

Lose yourself in the passionate intensity of this stunning debut from exciting new talent Jane Lark.

An excerpt from The Illicit Love of a Courtesan

He’d been waiting ten minutes when he saw her. She was simply and elegantly dressed, her appearance nothing like that of a courtesan. The long dark navy pelisse she wore was to keep her warm in the chill, early March winds. Spring was still as yet unbroken. 

The demure garment hung to her ankles, with double breasted buttons across her chest, and an upturned fox fur collar framed her beautiful neck and face. Her hands were within a matching fox fur muff at her waist. The dark navy hat, sitting high on her ebony hair, was decorated with jay’s feathers that swept up from the brim above her left ear. And a narrow, navy veil, woven in a fine net, was drawn down over her eyes and nose.

His hands curled into fists inside the pockets of his thick, many-caped greatcoat as he watched her, waiting for her to notice him.

She had thought to hide herself, he guessed, but he would know the curve of her jaw, that mouth, the column of her neck, anywhere, even within a crowd. He had committed it to memory half a dozen times in recent weeks and lain awake night after night recalling every detail.

She looked over her shoulder, glancing back up the street, as if she half expected to be followed. Then she looked to the traffic in the road, waiting until it was clear before she crossed to the park gates. She’d still not seen him. 

Within her muff he imagined her hands clasped together, her thumbs circling one another. He’d seen her tendency to fiddle when she stood at Gainsborough’s back. She was forever twisting and turning her fan; never comfortable, nor secure. The other courtesans he’d seen in London were women of excessive confidence, bold, never meek and maidenly in their manner as Ellen always seemed. With Ellen he could not even lay her lack of confidence at the door of her age. She was older than him, and yet her nervous behaviour made her seem half a dozen years younger. 

She was on the path some distance before him now, her short, quick strides slicing at the skirt of her pelisse. Her gaze was on the pavement ahead of her, oblivious to the men who passed her and looked back, as nearly every man did, even with her beauty covered by a veil.

She looked up. 

The moment she saw him, he could tell she’d not thought he would come. It was in the sudden drop of tenseness in her shoulders and the smile opening her mouth as if she would speak and acknowledge him from afar. But such an outburst would be folly, even though he had come as asked without acquaintance or equipage, someone may know him. Her mouth closed on the exclamation as she increased her pace, weaving through people walking the other way. 

He silently cursed every man who looked at her twice. But then she was clearly a woman of standing, walking alone, the conclusion was obvious. A protective wave of masculine hormones ran through his blood, an instinctive need to defend his territory.

Angry at himself he turned to walk through the gates of the park, sensing her follow him. Fool,she isn’t yours. She was Gainsborough’s, and when he spoke to her he must not forget it. 

He’d walked nearly two hundred yards before she drew alongside, and when she spoke her voice was breathless but full of joy he’d not heard in it before. “You came. I didn’t think you would.”

Buy Jane’s books on Amazon USA

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Author Bio

I love writing authentic, passionate and emotional love stories. 

Ibegan my first novel, a historical, when I was sixteen, but life derailed me a bit when I started suffering with Ankylosing Spondylitis, so I didn’t complete a novel until after I was thirty when I put it on my to do before I’m forty list.

Now I love getting caught up in the lives and traumas of my characters, and I’m so thrilled to be giving my characters life in others’ imaginations, especially when readers tell me they’ve read the characters just as I’ve tried to portray them.

Released 7th November!!!!

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Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

As a young boy, desperate to impress his friends, William Bellman kills a rook with a slingshot. Little does William know that this act will have consequences for him far into his future.

Later, in Victorian England, William finds fortune and becomes a wealthy business man with a loving family. William appears to be untouchable and his business acumen is much sought after. He is dedicated in every way to ensuring the smooth running of his business. However, soon tragedy calls and a mysterious stranger dressed in black appears to be present during every sad event in William’s life. Soon the life that William had built begins to unravel and when he is in danger of losing his entire family, a business deal is struck with the stranger during a meeting in the graveyard. Although, what that deal was, William has trouble remembering. However, William is keen to honour the deal struck between himself and the man in black and soon the thriving business of Bellman and Black is born. Enjoying many more years of success, William is plagued by uncertainty and fear about the deal,  and is constantly waiting for Mr Black to make another appearance. William soon becomes a man obsessed with the elusive Mr Black.

Bellman and Black is a Victorian Ghost Story. Whilst the book was certainly creepy in places I did not feel that it was a frightening story and didn't really feel it was very ghostly. However, there was always an undercurrent of something lurking in the background and the reader is left to feel how William must have felt, waiting and wondering what, if anything was going to happen to him next. When would Mr Black make an appearance and tell William exactly what the deal was that they made many years previous. A good story, albeit a little slow for me. Very well written and a good read.

*I received an ARC of this book for an open and honest review. This review has also appeared in www.lovereading.co.uk

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