Book Blitz & Giveaway - Broken Cowboy by Jamie Schulz

Broken Cowboy

(The Montana Men, #1)

Author: Jamie Schulz

Publication Date: June 7th, 2021

Genre: Adult Romance / Western

Book Description:

Two lives cross in a fateful roadside encounter. When ranch life turns deadly, will their unexpected love survive?

Addie Malory is struggling to improve the rundown farm she bought. And though she knows she can’t do it alone, she won’t tolerate men who think they can just take advantage of a single woman. Worried all her hard work will amount to nothing, both her hopes and her heart lift when she hires a hunky capable ranch hand.

Cade Brody’s past has left him broken. Drifting between rodeos after a shocking betrayal, he’s grateful to the pretty farm girl and her offer of a job. But after thugs vandalize the property and harass his gorgeous new boss, he puts aside his wounded heart as his protective instincts ignite.

With Addie’s dream in danger under a barrage of financially damaging attacks, she wrestles with the risk of her red-hot feelings for her rugged employee. And when his own past returns to haunt him, Cade may have to choose between protecting the woman he loves and the healing reconciliation he’s wanted for years.

Buy Links:

Amazon US ¦ UK ¦ Barnes & Noble ¦ iBooks ¦ Kobo ¦ Google Play

Book Blitz & Giveaway - A Shifter's Sin by Debbie Cassidy

A Shifter’s Sin

(Wolves of Hawthorne Cove #1)

Author: Debbie Cassidy

Publication Date: June 3rd, 2021

Genre: Adult Reverse Harem / Romance / Urban Fantasy

Book Description:

A Lycan that can’t shift is no use to anyone.

I’ve made it my mission to be useful to my pack. As pack enforcer, I’m fast and strong, but when the time comes to bond with my mate, it isn’t enough.

Rejection means lone wolf status and isolation from the pack. But when a package arrives with an unexpected inheritance, the pack that wants to shun me, suddenly has a new use for me.

Turns out, I’m the proud owner of a house in mysterious territory, rumoured to be home to a pack of beautifully twisted shifters. Hawthorne Cove is Impregnable to Lycans, but not to a half human like me.

Now I have a second chance to be accepted by my pack.

All I have to do is infiltrate the Hawthorne pack, find the source of their power and steal it.

Easier said than done.

Because once I pass the mystical boundaries surrounding the town, I’ll be absolutely, and totally at the mercy of the wolves of Hawthorne Cove.

Buy Links:

Amazon US ¦ UK

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Blog Tour Spotlight - The Fire Inside: A Companion for the Creative Life

Wherever you are in your creative life---just tiptoeing in or fully immersed, The Fire Inside can be a source of encouragement and inspiration…

By Lucy Adkins & Becky Breed

The Fire Inside: A Companion for the Creative Life

Author: Lucy Adkins & Becky Breed

Publisher: WriteLife Publishing

Pages: 290

Genre: Creativity / Self-Help

Book Description:

The underlying principle of The Fire Inside is that we all have within us vast untapped reservoirs of creativity, and when we recognize and begin to connect with that potential, our lives will open in ways we cannot begin to imagine. Many books have been written about the art and craft of individual disciplines of creativity. Yet few are so inclusive, so welcoming as this book, offering insight not only for furthering ones abilities in the traditional arts, but also in our day to day creativity, which so enriches our lives.

Based on the authors’ combined fifty-five years of teaching, working with writing groups and providing workshops on writing and creativity, The Fire Inside is written in a spirit of warmth and generosity. It invites the reader to:

Say yes to creativity and the nurturing it provides

Choose to live a bigger life

Uncover inner sources of inspiration and discover how “the magic” happens

Become a part of the creative community

Let go of forces that try to limit you

Develop skills for what it takes to live more creatively

Locate the “sweet spot” needed to build your life as an artist and creative being

Wherever  one may be in his or her creative life—just tiptoeing in or fully immersed in the life of the imagination, The Fire Inside will be a companion in that life, a source of encouragement and inspiration. The manuscript is composed short essays designed to provide a daily dose of support and motivation. It includes anecdotes, inspirational quotations and end of chapter meditations and exercises which ask Why not me? What gets in my way of being creative? In what unknown ways am I waiting to blossom. 

More and more, we hunger for meaning and for opportunities of self-expression. The Fire Inside, in its bite-sized essays which can be read in five or ten minute increments, speaks to that hunger, and provides a source of the creative nourishment we all need.

Buy Links:

Indie Bound ¦ Amazon US ¦ UK ¦ iBooks ¦ B&N ¦ Kobo

Deep within us, we have a yearning, a passion, a desire to make and to do, to create something out of our hearts and imaginations that did not exist before. To bring forth something new upon the earth. It is innate in us, this intense wanting, and when we are engaged in the specific type of creativity we were meant to do—whether it be painting, writing, making music, or designing a new way to educate our children—we experience what Martha Graham calls “a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening.” It’s what puts the spark in our eyes, the skip in our steps. It is the fire inside.

         Do you know that fire? Sometimes it manifests itself as restlessness,a vague dissatisfaction, a feeling that there is something important you must do, you have to do, to be true to yourself. It is the little ache you feel when you read a story that is heartbreakingly true and think I want to do that, or when you see a painting that stuns you with its power, and your fingers itch to pick up a paintbrush. Maybe it isn’t exactly clear what is burning inside, what you want and are put on earth to do. Or perhaps you know in your bones that you must write poetry, you must dance or die, you must create gardens of incredible beauty, but maybe you’re afraid that if you try you will fall flat on your face. You doubt yourself and your abilities. This is the way we humans are, having an intense wanting on one hand, fear and doubt on the other. But let us accept as an essential truth that we are all creative, wildly creative, each and every one of us— that we have vast reserves of untapped talents and abilities—songs only we can write, sculptures waiting to be born from the unique spirit that is us; and when we accept that belief and act on it, oh, then! We wake each day with a new animation, a vibrancy and passion. We feel like children let out of a stuffy classroom into a blue-sky spring day, and we can’t wait to see what we can do with it.

         The fire inside is the “something” that fascinates you, intrigues you, so that you go to sleep and wake up thinking about it. You want to study it from all its interesting angles and make it central to your life, keep working at it, falling short in your aspirations at times, but trying and trying again. And if you are not currently involved with something that brings with it such zeal, if you’ve kept your fire tamped down, unable to act on your passion for whatever reason, know that it is still there—the beginning of days filled with intense purpose and meaning, waiting for you.

The Highest Kite

         Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.

         —Lauren Bacall, By Myself and Then Some          The human brain is a remarkable thing. It keeps the body going, stores knowledge, analyzes, remembers, puts two and two together to make sense of the world, and somehow allows for the miracle of imagination. When we were children, we lived in worlds rich in imagination, allowing us to transform a blanket draped over a chair into a cave, the tree-filled ditch behind the house into a secret forest. We carried out endless adventures in the worlds we created, the synapses in our brains sparking with delight and excitement.

         But when we become adults and take on duty and responsibility, we don’t invite imagination out to play as much as we used to. The good news—especially for those wanting to live more creative lives—is that we can become just as involved in flights of fancy as we used to be, rediscovering the world in all its beauty, its design as well as its asymmetrical magnificence. Ask yourself: if you were a little seed in the ground waiting for spring to warm you and pull the green livingness of you up to the sun, what would that be like? If you were a baby robin in a blue egg in a nest, how would it be pecking your way into the world? Crazy questions, maybe, but ones that can stimulate us to bursts of creativity, and as Lauren Bacall suggests, that is a joyous way of living in this world.

         So, if you haven’t exercised the muscles of your imagination lately, why not start now? Not that you have to embark on a novel, necessarily, or begin work on the next Mona Lisa; you can begin simply and joyfully as children do. Look at pictures of art and imagine stepping inside the frames. Who would you talk to and what would you see? Or look outside your window and take note of the different elements there. Maybe you see a bird flying or tree branches swaying in the breeze, then imagine a conversation with that bird or that tree. It may come haltingly at first, in fits and starts, but when you let whimsy back into your life, the brain begins to work in new ways, mapping out new neural pathways. And like muscles gradually becoming stronger as you exercise, so does the imagination become livelier and more free-wheeling. You will find your life opening up, becoming richer as your mind discovers ideas for your next artistic project in the pattern of the night sky or the sound of the wind before a storm. Imagination can be the be-all and end-all for you; it can be everything.

 

  

About the Authors:

Lucy Adkins earned her MFA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is a writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and her first poetry chapbook, One Life Shining, was published by Pudding House Press. She co-presents the Nebraska Humanities program “Diaries and Letters of Early Nebraska Settlers,” and is a frequent writing instructor for OLLI, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and the Larksong Writers’ Workshops. Her book, Two-Toned Dress, was the winner of the 2019 Blue Light Press poetry chapbook contest.

Author Links:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest

 

Becky Breed, a veteran educator, poet, and essayist, co-wrote and facilitated “Women at the Springs,” a Nebraska Humanities program empowering women to live more courageously, as well as “The Intergenerational Project” connecting elders and teens through stories to promote communication, writing, and use of the media. She has an Ed.D. in Education, and in addition to teaching at the university level, was the principal of a Gold Star School which was awarded recognition for significant improvements in reading, writing, and math. The students’ resiliency and drive to be the best they can be helped shape the fabric for several of the enclosed essays.

Together the two co-authored Writing in Community: Say Goodbye to Writer’s Block and Transform Your Life, which was awarded an “IPPY” in the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Writing in Community, the first book in their “Essential Writing and Creativity” series, along with the impact of Adkins’ and Breed’s many presentations and workshops led to their being named winners of the 2020 Lincoln, Nebraska Mayor’s Arts Award in Artistic Achievement in Literature.

Author Links:
Website | Twitter | Facebook

 

WRITING IN COMMUNITY: SAY GOODBYE TO WRITER’S BLOCK AND TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE 

Blog Tour Organised by:

June 2021 Book Releases

 Need some inspiration for your next read?

Check out these new June 2021 Book Releases.

Click on the images to go to the book page

  

  

  

  

BOOK REVIEW: Junk by Melvin Burgess

Junk

Author: Melvin Burgess

Genre: YA Contempporary Fiction / Coming of Age / Romance
Publication Date: 3rd April 2014 (First Published 1996)

Book Description:

This 20th Anniversary edition of the classic novel comes with an introduction from former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman and bonus content following its controversial history, from its writing to when it won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

It was a love story. Me, Gemma and junk. I thought it was going to last forever.

Tar loves Gemma, but Gemma doesn't want to be tied down. She wants to fly. But no one can fly forever. One day, finally, you have to come down. Melvin Burgess’ most ambitious and complex novel is a vivid depiction of a group of teenagers in the grip of addiction. Told from multiple viewpoints, Junk is a powerful, unflinching novel about heroin. Once you take a hit, you will never be the same again.

Buy Links:

Amazon US ¦ UK

MY REVIEW

Tar and Gemma are two teenagers from different backgrounds but both have the same urge to break free of their confined reality. Tar wants to escape from his abusive father while Gemma wants to escape her overly strict and controlling parents. When they decide to run away from home, they find that life on the streets comes with another set of demons they have to fight hard to evade. Battling homelessness and drugs might just be as bad or even worse than the life they so desperately wanted to escape. Survival has a new meaning in the new world they find themselves trapped in.

Love definitely comes in many different shapes and forms. The best thing about this novel was the characterisation and the authenticity of their portrayal. The plot was simple and straightforward, but there were times it dragged and got a little tedious, but I was so invested in the characters that I was encouraged to keep reading. Tar was my favourite character. His transformation from start to finish was intriguing. You couldn't help but love this character. Even though he was being physically abused by his father, he still had so much hope and still managed to see the beauty in the world. After running away from home and being taken in by an older group, that light inside him slowly started to fade once the addiction started to kick in. It was sad to experience, but quite an eye-opener and very moving. It took me a little longer to gravitate towards Gemma, I must admit. I didn't engage with her well throughout the first half of the book, but throughout the second half of the book, she went through her own transformation and became a character you're able to sympathise with more, which made her more likeable.

I wasn't too much a fan of the writing style, but it didn't bother me enough to make me put the book down. A lot of the times, it felt as if my outlook on the story and especially the characters were being overshadowed by the narrative voice, which somewhat hindered my desire to form my own impression of the characters and their stories. Having said that, I appreciated the fact that, even though I wasn't fully navigating my own interpretation, the portrayal I was presented with was so realistic that I could comprehend the difficulty and struggles the characters faced without even having no experience of the condition they lived in and the situation they found themselves trapped in. It goes to show that you don't have to experience something in order for it to feel real.

A very moving story about the struggles of heroine addiction and the many facets of love.

VERDICT:

Rating: 4 Star

Source: Netgalley

Book Blitz & Giveaway - His Billion-Dollar Takeover Temptation by Emmy Grayson

His Billion-Dollar Takeover Temptation

(The Infamous Cabrera Brothers, #1)

Author: Emmy Grayson

Published by: Harlequin Presents

Publication Date: May 25th, 2021

Genre: Adult Contemporary Romance

Book Description:

In debut author Emmy Grayson’s sexy workplace romance, will the Spanish CEO be able to resist giving in to desire?

He will claim her company

But can he claim her, too?

Everleigh Bradford won’t simply hand over control of the family vineyard she expected to inherit. She’s lost too much already. If she must confront internationally renowned new owner Adrian Cabrera, she will! Even if she has to fight her red-hot response to the brooding Spaniard.

Bringing Everleigh home to Grenada to prove he’ll protect her heritage is essential to their working relationship—but it’s dangerous. Innocent Everleigh is intoxicating. And she deserves everything that Adrian’s past and his iron self-control won’t let him give her. No matter how tempting it is…

From Harlequin Presents: Escape to exotic locations where passion knows no bounds.

Buy Links:

Amazon US ¦ UK ¦ Barnes & Noble ¦ iBooks ¦ Kobo ¦ Google Play

Book Blitz & Giveaway - The Devil I Don’t Know by L.K. Shaw

The Devil I Don’t Know

(Brooklyn Kings #1)

Author: L.K. Shaw

Publication Date: May 25th, 2021

Genre: Adult Mafia Romance

Book Description:

Jacob

Loyalty

My father is dying, and I’ve been called back to Brooklyn to take my place as the head of the Italian syndicate. After a seven year absence, my first test of loyalty is to marry the granddaughter of the Irish mob’s leader. I may not want a wife, but I’ll kill anyone who tries to harm her.

I only hope she doesn’t expect love in our marriage. I can’t–won’t–love her. Not ever. I don’t have it in me.

Brenna

Duty

That’s all my life has been. Then, my grandfather signs a marriage contract, and I become a pawn in an alliance between the Irish and the Italians. Once again I’m bound by duty.

I’ve always been invisible–the person who fades into the background–except soon my new husband begins to see me.

He’s a Brooklyn king, but will our enemies destroy my chance to become his queen?

Buy Links:

Amazon US ¦ UK ¦ Barnes & Noble ¦ iBooks ¦ Kobo ¦ Google Play