Veiled Secrets Reviews.

About Dark Night of the Moon:

NOOK: http://bit.ly/rqnmTS

KINDLE: http://amzn.to/vVqrLB

Dark Night of the Moon is the second book in the series and the sequel to Holding on to Heaven.

Creed Gatlin flees to Arizona intent on eradicating the haunting memories of his brother’s wife. Brand Gatlin, presumed dead, resurfaces after a long absence and with his re-emergence, the destinies of those he loves is altered forever.

In a land rife with war and danger, Sage must travel to the village of her husband’s People. There, she is reunited with Crooked Back, the ancient healer. On the long trek back to Full Circle, devious plots are underfoot and peril lurks around every corner for Sage, Lauren and Peter Pa.

Dark Night of the Moon will take you on an unforgettable journey of war, violence, overwhelming grief, and finally, love.

* * *

Setup and Excerpt from Dark Night of the Moon: Lauren helps Sage bring her third child into the world.

“I’d like to hear about our mother.”

“Now? The contractions are closer together, and don’t tell me they’re not. I can tell by your breathing and the tightening of your abdomen.”

“Yes, it won’t be long now. But I still want you to tell me about her.”

Lauren covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, I almost forgot. I’ll be right back. I have something for you.” She returned moments later and placed Clarissa’s brooch into Sage’s hand. “This belonged to her and I want you to have it.”

Sage turned it over in her palm. “Oh, it’s lovely. I’ll treasure it always.”

Lauren eased into the chair again. “Now, you asked me what she was like. Well, she loved the South and flowers, thousands of blooms.”

Sage panted through a hard contraction. “What-what else?”

“Father, I think. Or I sensed this great love between them. Our mother was a fragile creature, soft and refined. She smelled like verbena. If I wanted to find her, I followed her scent.”

Sage rose to a sitting position and clutched Lauren’s hand. “Keep talking. What was her voice like?”

“Is it bad now? I can’t stand to see you in pain.”

“Her voice?” Sage rasped and dropped her head to the pillow.

“Gentle, soft as morning rain. It reminded me of dewdrops from heaven.”

Sage closed her eyes on a moan. “I picture her as petite, delicate-boned.”

“I imagine people thought so, yes, but as a child everyone looked tall to me. Years later, the day I rifled through her clothing in the trunk, I realized her frailty. I suppose that’s why she died in . . . .” Lauren clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

“Don’t be, darling. I won’t die in childbirth.”

“Tell me what I can do to ease your pain.”

“Get Nelly, it’s time.”

Lauren scrambled from the chair and called out to Nelly from the doorway. The girl hurried into the room and stood at the end of the bed.

“Hurry, Lauren. You should see the babe’s head now.”

With sweaty hands and racing heart, Lauren crawled onto the bed. “Yes, yes, I see it. Oh, Lord help me. Tell me what to do.”

Sage strained and pushed, wheezing out the words. “Pick the child up when you’re sure it’s all the way out and place it on my belly.”

Nelly gasped. “It’s a girl!”

The cry of an angry newborn sliced through the small bedchamber. Overcome with emotion, Lauren stared at the tiny being in her arms and took great care in placing her on her sister’s abdomen. “She’s beautiful and, see all her dark hair!”

Sage scooped the mucous from her daughter’s mouth, released an elongated sigh and smiled. “There’s a knife wrapped in muslin on the bureau.”

“Oh, dear, I can’t . . . .” Lauren stammered.

“Bring it here; I’ll cut the cord.”

Wanapaya rushed into the room, followed by Peter Pa and three wide-eyed children.

“You have a daughter, a beautiful baby girl.” Lauren peeked over the brave’s shoulder as he looked the baby over head to toe. “What will you name her?”

“Clare, after our mother,” Sage whispered, her voice hoarse.

“She’d be so proud.”

“Soon as you done feeding that child, I’ll watch over her while you rest, Miss Sage.”

“Thank you, Nelly. I believe I could sleep for hours.” Sage offered a weak smile, and within seconds, she and Clare drifted off to blessed forgetfulness.

* * *

Keta’s Bio:

Keta is a multi-published author of paranormal and historical romance and gay fiction. In 2009, her erotic romance Decadent Deceptions was a finalist in the RWA Molly contest. In 2010, Keta’s entry Phoenix Rising finaled in the Scarlet Boa contest and in 2011 Keta’s acclaimed paranormal shifter, Where The Rain is Made, was nominated by Authors After Dark for a Bookie Award and by Deep In The Heart of Romance for Best Romance of the Year.

Many of her books, including her gay fiction series CROSSROADS, have won numerous awards: Top Reviewer’s Pick, Recommended Read and Best Book of the Month.

Thank you so much for stopping by today! Please leave a comment and tell me what paranormal genre you read most. Two winners will be selected by the blog host and the winners will be notified by e-mail. You must be following KETA’S KEEP to be eligible. You can follow my blog here: http://ketaskeep.blogspot.com.

Good luck, and don’t forget to leave your email address in the comment section in case you win!”

If you’d like to know more about Keta and her latest releases, she haunts the Net here:

Keta’s Keep Blog, http://ketaskeep.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ketadiablo
Facebook Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/KetaDiablo.Author
Gay Fiction Blog: http://thestuffofmythandmen.blogspot.com

Today I’m lucky enough to interview brand Breathless Press Author Ric Bern.  For an excerpt of his new tittle Crimson and Steel (available now at Breathless Press) and details about how to win your very own copy have a look below the interview!

Crimson and Steel by Ric Burn

What do you think is the biggest misconception about erotic romance fiction?

That it is entirely cliché, bodice ripping, books-your-grandmother-would-read except for the addition of explicit penetration. There are so many sub genres that any reader can find a niche that is comfortable for their level of sexual interest.

Would you say there is an element of you in the characters you write?

Of course, both male and female characters. I don’t know how it could be otherwise.

What do you do to relax?

I’m pretty laid back, so relaxing comes naturally. I read, I play video games, I walk in the woods. I enjoy nature photography. You’ll often find me watching football and ice hockey on TV.

How do you get emotion into your writing?

I have to work at it, but I also have to rely on the reader having a tender heart. If I can see the characters falling in love/lust in just a few pages, I think the audience will as well. After all, isn’t that what we paid to read?

What is your writing day like?

I get up around eight. I’ll start tapping at the keyboard right away. After a couple of hours I take an hour break. I’ll write a couple more hours, then go do something, go the store, have lunch. I’ll have a nap. Then I’ll write a couple more hours before dinner. Then maybe three of four hours before bed. That is a perfect case scenario. I work an 8-5 job, so that would be a Saturday or Sunday.

Are you a pantster or plotter?

I don’t know what a panster is, so I suppose I am a plotter. I have a moleskin where I take notes throughout the week as ideas come to me at work. In the evenings I make outlines. Once I feel I have a complete outline and a good story arch, all character names and visuals of settings, I start. Then I realize my outline isn’t nearly as plush as I thought it was. (You are a plotter a panster is someone who flies by the seat of their pants)

How do you motivate yourself to write quickly? What do you do if you get stuck?

When I feel as though my head is buzzing and I absolutely have to get the story out of my head so I can stop thinking about it I need no further motivation. When I get stuck I have found that leaving the computer helps. Just standing up and watching TV for a few minutes gives me time to think. Sitting in front of the keyboard can feel like something is being demanded of you. Leaving that position can free you up. Or if it is really bad, go for a ride, go shopping. Take a lot of breaks during the day.

Who is your favorite fictional couple?

This is very difficult. I very much liked the depiction of Khal Drogo and Daenerys Targaryen on the HBO series Game of Thrones. Conan and Belit from Robert E. Howard. Uhtred and Iseult from The Pale Horseman, the second book in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Tales series.

What advice would you give a new writer?

I am a new writer, so I am open, nay, pleading for advice. I would like to say something to anyone who is writing and submitting and is feeling frustrated. If you are getting rejections it is not because you are a bad person. It is not because you are a failure. It is not because of any inner flaw that makes you different and worse than other people. Keep writing. And keep learning. Listen to what the rejection letters are telling you. Adjust accordingly. Attend workshops. Send your work to everyone you possibly can. So much of this is about chemistry. When your manuscript ends up in front of the right editor, it will happen.

Who would you turn gay for?

Viktor Kozlov. Look it up. He’s a good looking man.

I looked him up for all of us!

Excerpt

Kell stood in darkness as Marcus lit a candle. Her eyes adjusted as he ignited more. Then he kindled a bronze oil lamp as well as a similar little torch on the other side of the room and then several more candles. She looked on his bed and saw a finely-made, high-mounted mattress dressed in red and black silk. On the wall opposite his bed was a broad, circular mirror of polished bronze with a lion’s head adorning each point of the compass. The disc was so finely buffed that she could clearly see herself with a ruddy, aural complexion. Soon the room was blazing, and everything seemed to be bathed in an amber haze.

Kell stood at the foot of the bed and before the feline-crested imager. Marcus joined her, clothed in only his scarlet tunic. He cupped her heart-shaped face with his strong hands and stroked his thumbs across her cheeks, admiring her beauty. Kell closed her eyes and pressed into him as he kissed her, pursing his lips over her lower lip and tugging. He nuzzled his nose to her, and his stubbly chin scratched across her fair skin. The Nordic girl inhaled sharply at this contact and leaned into him all the more. His torso was like the trunk of an oak, and she pressed her breasts into him, her arms snaking around his waist. The Praetor tangled his long fingers in her shining locks and pulled her head to the side to expose the elegant tendon on the side of her neck. He kissed his way down the rounded cord, nibbling as he went, his breath a dragon’s flame on her winter-kissed flesh.

Calloused, sword-hardened hands slid down Kell’s linen-clad back and gripped her pert, supple ass. Her pitifully short tunic did nothing to cover her globes as they were mauled and rolled by Marcus’s seeking fingers. His lips continued downward, and she offered him all of herself, tossing back her head and curling her tapering leg around his hip as he clutched her closer. He bit her shoulder and kissed his way up the other side, stopping at her ear where he exhaled and whispered, “I’m going to fuck you so hard, little slave girl.”

Doesn’t that sound great!  If you are dying to get your hands on your very own copy and shout “Look what I won I am the happiest person in the world!” you’ll be glad to know we have a copy to give away.  To win simply post and tell us who you’d turn gay for!

The year before last my husband bought himself a set of golf clubs.

The beginning of the end

You'd have thought he'd have been playing with all these gifts

I say no more! No more hanging onto items until they are useless to everyone. Call a charity and reclaim your storage space by donating these unused gifts to a good cause, its not like your giving a gift away your just transmuting it into a wonderful feeling of happiness at having done the right thing. Isn’t happiness what the gift givers were trying to give us in the first place? This week I have the scouts coming for the unused camping supplies and the salvation army coming for the rest of it. After the floods in January I’m sure there will be plenty of people who would love to have our unused gifts, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. As a reward I will actually have enough room in the garage for the car to go in there! I challenge you to go look at your unused gifts (I know you all have them!) ask yourself how long have they been there unused? If the answer is a year or more donate it!

Last week we had the fiasco with Judy Mays coming under attack from a couple of parents and local media that proved two things. 1) The Romance community is huge and 2) The romance community will stand behind any member that comes under attack for reading/writing the genre. So you think it’d take a couple of weeks before some moron lashed out against the romance community saying something stupid that we would get defensive about right? Well you’d be wrong. PC Mag has published via its web blog the following highly insulting article. Amazon Thrusts into Romance Publishing

Far be it for one of these reporters to google and find out that romance makes up 57% of fiction sales in America. That works out to over a billion dollars a year in romance book sales alone! Why does the media continue to act like no one reads romance and therefore there is no chance of possibly insulting a large portion of the population? Do these people live without romance in their lives and therefore feel the need to insult our hobby? Let pretend that in a perfect world the folks writing these articles are average every day folks who live and love. How would they feel if romance readers/writers started bagging whatever it is they love? And people think we’re being touchy!

So lets have a look at the article shall we.

Strike one:- they make the RITA Awards sound like something Connie Brockway or Amazon made up to make themselves sound better. That’s like saying the Oscars don’t count. Every author I know who has managed to snag a RITA has been massively proud and wearing a pretty gown and prancing down a red carpet wouldn’t have made it more real!

Strike two:- There is possibly three sentences worth of actual information in this article surrounded by paragraphs of poorly written parody on the authors idea of what a romance novel is like. How dare they critique the romance industry when they can’t even manage to write concisely?

Strike three:- While the author of this article has stated that if he offended he’s sorry(like its possible he might not have offended). I cry bull, the article is still there if he was sorry he’d have it pulled. Clearly you shouldn’t try to parody a genre you’ve never read your just going to piss people off.

I couldn’t believe it when I found out the man who wrote this drivel had a wife who reads romance, hope he’s finding that couch comfortable. Yes we are the romance industry and we are fed up with being expected to hide our covers in shame! There are more people reading romance than reading religious AND inspirational books combined so if your not hiding your copy of seven habits of highly successful people then don’t expect me to hide my cover even if its a bodice ripper or a menage! What right does that pimply clerk at the bookstore have to look down his nose at us when we buy romance? Without us he wouldn’t have a job!

Fair warning world the romance industry has had enough of your sledges and jeers we will no longer sit quietly and take your taunts. We are many and we stand together, shoulder to shoulder against the barbs of the world!

I’ve had Disney moments before, times where everything worked out just so or I found myself looking at my pet dog thinking ‘No Way!’ but this weekend surpassed all that. If there was ever a real life weekend you were going to label as a Disney moment this one would have to be it. The commoner married Prince Charming in a wedding that you can only call fairy tale, the bad guy is dead and we all get to live happily ever after. Its enough to make you duck and cover while wildly looking around for cartoon mice and birds.

Look who stole their dress ideas from Disney!

The wedding was very pretty I hear, I didn’t watch it myself, just tuned in for the kiss on the balcony later on. I was hoping for a swoop

The romantic kind of kiss I was hoping for

The Kiss

Those cartoon mice must have worked their little fingers to the bone stitching up that dress, it was very elegant, I’ve noticed cartoon mice tend to have exceptional taste. Luckily for Kate she seemed to be without an evil step mother, although I did see two prime candidates for ugly step sisters (even if they were cousin-in-laws)

What is with that hat

fairy godmother

Now today we have heard about the death of the bad guy. A fitting wedding present for the young couple and quite possibly why they haven’t left on a honeymoon. Although with the number of places they can shack up and enjoy each others company in a place the size of Buckingham Palace its probably more private than a holiday away. Does anyone think this will actually end the war? Probably not, we all seem to be slightly more realistic than that.

Look who stole their dress ideas from Disney!

I’m sure that most, if not all of you have at the very least heard about the abhorrent news story put out by WNEP 16 about author Judy Mays. For those of you that have been living in a royal wedding cave or in some other way missed the brouhaha it seems that some of the parents of Snyder County discovered that the 10th grade teacher was a published author. While Deanna Stepp, Kelly Hornberger and Wendy Apple certainly look inbred and illiterate and would probably be first in line for a book burning the big news is that *Gasp* Judy Buranich tenth grade teacher is also Judy Mays, Paranormal Erotic author for Ellora’s Cave.

While It is clear that students at Midd-West don’t study Shakespeare, how could they when the first act of Romeo and Juliet shows Sampson and Gregory boasting about raping Montague women and the size of their genitalia. This seems the kind of town where reading Judy Blume would quickly cause you to be labeled a pedophile so one has to wonder at the fact that many of Mrs Burainich’s ex students (all whom seem well spoken and well adjusted) managed to grow up well in the first place. Many of the ex students have come out in favor of Judy claiming that her second career was no major secret but no big deal. She did, after all writer under a pen name until Deanna Stepp, Kelly Hornberger and Wendy Apple outed her, and its not like her books were required reading. In fact we have been assured that Judy never spoke about her books at school nor did she ever bring them to work with her.

In fact had WNEP bothered to do even minimal research they would have discovered that Judy Buranich/Mays has juggled both her loves, teaching and writing for twenty years. This appears to me to be a case of three parents and two of their adult children trying to a) cause trouble and b) return to the spotlight. Yes I say return because late last year Wendy Apple and Dr. Hornberger featured in another news story featuring Wendy more than her five year old son who was strangled on the school bus. I’d go read the article if I were you, I found it highly interesting that Wendy Apple didn’t think the marks on her sons neck were bad enough to take him to the emergency room right away but they were bad enough to get the news involved.

The absolute salaciousness displayed by Kelly Hornburger (I have many thoughts about the name that are probably better not said) as she speculates that her son may think Judy Buranich is looking at him in a ‘certain way‘ (seriously why not just come out and call her a pedophile you chicken shit cow?) suggests that, like Kelly herself, her son is fugly and getting some sort of Mrs Robinson thing is better than she ever hoped for (If only Mrs. Buranich wasn’t happily married with adult kids)

Wendy Apple says “Now my son knows so how is he thinking when he’s sitting in her class knowing what she does on the side,” here’s a clue, like every other teen boy in the world he’s probably thinking of sex. Not because of Mrs. Buranich, I mean unless he’s into seriously older women she’s probably not his type, but because your average teen boy thinks about sex all the freaking time.

Deanna Stepp claims to have done ‘a lot of research‘. One has to wonder however exactly how much research she had to do before she got to the bottom of it. How many of Judy’ books did she read, I can only hope she paid for them, although if anyone ever seemed the type to illegally download e books she does. Deanna is also reported to have said “She is teaching children that are under the age of 18 and definitely the books that she is writing are adult books. I think she needs to make a decision as to what she wants to do. Either be a school teacher or author,” Thank goodness no one forced such a choice on authors Seven King, J.R.R. Tolken, James Joyce, J.K. Rowling, Frank McCourt, Nick Hornby and Sir Bob Geldof to name a few. (If you don’t know who they are people don’t admit it and embarrass yourself just goggle)

As the romance world gathers to stand behind Judy Mays they find themselves surrounded by people who have probably never picked up a romance novel in their lives. It takes only intelligence to know that what WNEP16 has done is wrong, that without an opposing position this story is just the mean bitching of parents whose children are probably failing English. I found this ex students rebuttal highly entertaining and more intelligent than anything said on WNEP16. As Dakota Cassidy says I hope she sells a million books-gets an agent, gets an offer that’s Twighlight-ish and makes another million bucks! to aid that, go show your support in the very best way. Buy one of Judy’s books to spite those stupid narrow minded cows, who knows you might even enjoy it. There is also a Facebook group that is currently nearly 7,000 people deep. Clearly the ball is going to drop in favour of Judy Mays. Anyone believe that will cause WNEP16 to apologize?

Today I decided to make room for the books returning on the slow boat from RT. So I started pulling books of the bookshelf, big mistake, HUGE. Next thing I know I’m on the floor with a dusting rag surrounded by books reading. Yep not picking books to move off shelves and store and donate I was reading. Every I try to tidy my books, no matter how good my intentions I find myself ending up on the floor surrounded by a huge pile of books that only the treat of my husband throwing my books away has me hastily returning them to shelves unsorted of course.

Paranormal Books on one of many shelves

Unfortunately this seems to happen whenever any attempt is made to clear some shelf space in my house and slowly but surely the bookshelves are taking over the entire house.

One of many walls full of books

Yes its true I am a book hoarder and I’m raising more book hoarders, you will never find our preloved titles in a second hand bookstore as you’d have to pry our books from our cold dead hands. We can’t be trusted with library cards, once we have a book its really hard for us to let go. We always have a book on our person, and in this day and age we usually have fifty or more e titles on a reader. Investigating our library will usually turn up duplicate copies of both print and e titles because with so many books who can possibly remember what you’ve got in your TBR pile. Book hoarders are the favorite of authors everywhere and the bane of second hand book buyers. We are the book hoarder! and if this is your dream

full shelves to eternity