Friday, April 21, 2017

New Release - Sheltered Angel

Sheltered Angel is now out with Changeling Press and everyone else.

Get your copy today. 

BLURB:

Polly is running a fund raiser for the local animal shelter when she meets Vaughn, who wants nothing to do with what she's selling. Instead, he sends her to hell, believing she's a succubus.

But Polly's really a witch hybrid with a soul, and Vaughn's boss wants her alive. When Vaughn tracks her down again at the shelter, he discovers she's guarded by her faithful Corgi/Hellhound Sugar. Determined to get answers, Vaughn learns there's more to her than meets the eye, yet his resentment toward her grows until he discovers her ultimate secret.

Polly can't help her growing attraction to Vaughn, even if he's keeping something from her. As much as he doesn't want to protect her, he's forced to. Hell wants her back and will do anything to get her.

EXCERPT:

Polly knocked on the door. She tried to look cheerful while clutching a catalog of Christmas cards, gifts, and other assorted holiday gifts, to her chest. Raising money for the local pound so they could provide food and shelter for homeless animals was important to her. But she cringed every time someone slammed a door in her face.

Footsteps approached and the door opened. A jaw dropping, sexy, tall man stood there. Everything about him was solid. Polly was imagining herself licking him up and down to satisfy some of her inner cravings.

"Go away. I don't want any." The impatience in his baritone voice was evident.

"But I'm not selling anything."

He lifted a dark eyebrow. "Really?"

"That's right." She tried to sound upbeat and not come off like a plastic blonde with nothing going on between her ears.

"I doubt it. I can smell your desperation and cheap perfume."

Motherfucker. He might be sexy as hell, but he is not calling me cheap. Her blood boiled. Polly's fangs extended behind her pursed lips. She shoved them back up with her tongue so he wouldn't see them when she talked.

"It's not cheap. What I have is for a good cause. It's for the local --"

Big Sexy slammed the door in her face.

"Animal shelter. All proceeds go to feeding and providing healthcare." She finished her sentence and her smile dropped. Walk away and move on to the next door. You'll get someone eventually. Think positively.

The demon inside of her reared its head. "Show him who he's talking to. Make him buy shit for the cute, cuddly puppies."

Polly drew herself up and pushed the inner voices away. It got tiring fighting her dual nature. It felt like she had three people warring inside of her head. Her. The succubus and the angel. Polly thought of herself as the quintessential cartoon character with the miniature angel and devil sitting on either shoulder.

The more she thought about the man, the angrier she got. Fifteen doors she had knocked on so far. Not one of them hid a kooky cat lady who would spend all her money on the dozens of cat cards or rolls of wrapping paper sporting kittens batting at dangling ornaments. The day had been a bust. This guy is going to spend money for a good fucking cause.

Polly turned back around, took in a deep breath, trying to stay calm.

"I told you I would win," her dark half muttered.

The angelic side turned its back. Polly shoved them both back into their corners of her mind. She knocked on the door again and tapped into the succubus part of her.

The door opened. Big Sexy had a towel around his waist while he towel-dried his hair. "I told you I don't want any."

"Come on, sir." Polly put a hand on her hip and purred. She caught a whiff of him, like cloves mixed with the deep scent of the woods. Water droplets dribbled down his chest. His green eyes narrowed. Her otherworldly charm didn't seem to be working. This man should have been putty in her hands by now.

"I told you, I'm not interested in anything you're selling. Go away and buy a different perfume. Whatever you're wearing reeks like sulfur. What's it called, Ode de Rotten Eggs?" He waved his hand in front of his nose to remove the scent.

Shit. It's not working on him. Her sweet grin drooped. She clutched the catalog. Time to resort to other measures. She dropped her succubus powers. Her veins ran cold and energy crackled around her as she pulled it from the atmosphere. All sound fell away as she concentrated. With a flick of her fingers, the man's towel flew from his hand and wrapped around his neck. The ends twisted until his face reddened. Veins pulsated in his temples.

Polly stepped closer. The top of her head came to the center of his chest, making him at least six-eight. She poked him in the ribs. "It's because of you stuck-up assholes the shelters can't save all the animals they want. I'm trying to do something good here. I'm so sick of arrogant jerkoffs smashing doors in my face. You're going to buy something." She shoved the catalog under his nose.

The power of Big Sexy's will pulled on her control, but she maintained it. The key was keeping the intention. His burgundy face and bugged eyes showed the force he used to fight her influence. And she intended to bend him until he spent money. Instead, he ripped the catalog from her hands.

He glared at her. Polly didn't break their eye contact. This wasn't about the puppies anymore. This was personal. She balled her hands into fists and fixed her will on that towel staying around his throat. Big Sexy gripped the fabric and tried to pull it away again, but she kept it there. Her nails dug into her palms as he fought her until he gained the upper hand.

He pulled the towel far enough away from his neck and he whispered, "Ab angelis, mando vobis daemonia ire in gehennam." By the angels, I command you demon, go back to hell.

A flash of heat ripped through Polly...

BUY LINKS:

Changeling Press
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
KOBO
iBooks

Friday, April 14, 2017

Get Naked with Alexandra Christian



Let's welcome Alexandra Christian to the blog today with her new release Phoenix Rising: Naked 

BLURB:


Librarian at one of Earth's last paper libraries, Phoebe Addison is about to have a romantic and interplanetary adventure wilder than anything she's ever read.
OUT OF THE STACKS

Librarian Phoebe Addison has lived her entire life within a seventy-five mile radius of her small Louisiana town, but when she receives a strange medallion from her adventurous, off-world sister, reality tilts toward the bizarre. Everything Phoe thought she knew is…well, wrong. Dead wrong. But bone-numbing fear has no place in this brave new world—nor by the side of the dangerous, exquisite man who saves her life.

…AND INTO THE FIRE

Following the tragic slaughter of his family, operative Macijah “Cage” St. John understands evil in a way no man ever should. He traded happiness for a magnificent and terrible power, and fate isn’t done with him yet. He wasn’t looking for comfort. He didn’t need tenderness. But today he’ll play hero to a damsel in distress, and his quest will deliver him to the uncanny Martian colony of New London—and his heart to the demure Phoebe Addison. The bookish beauty’s hidden talents and deep abiding love just might save Cage from himself.




EXCERPTS:

Caught in the Rain (PG)--

There is no situation that can’t be made worse with the addition of heavy rain. Phoebe stumbled down the path behind St. John, her sensible pumps sinking into the squishy ground with every step. His long-legged strides weren’t particularly fast, but she was practically running to catch up. She was also trying to pull a bulky suitcase behind her without much luck. Finally she ran over a large rock, tipping the case over and taking her with it. She sat down hard on the wet ground, the standing water in the grass splashing up and peppering her with a spray of muddy freckles. “Damnit!” she cried, wanting to throw herself down and have a kicking and screaming tantrum. Instead she took off one of her shoes and threw it as hard as she could. It whizzed past St. John’s ear, and he finally turned.
“Problem?” he asked, strolling back toward where she sat in the grass.
“Can you slow down a minute, please?” Her tone was teetering on annoyance. Couldn’t he see that she was having trouble? So much for the politeness of the British.
He stared down at her, his arms crossed over his chest. “Actually, no. We need to get as far away from that crash site as soon as possible and you to that spaceport so I can be on my way.”  He looked over the assortment of items that had fallen out of the case as it tipped over. “Got any trainers in there?”
Phoebe looked up at him like he had suddenly lapsed into Chinese. “What?”
“Trainers. Shoes. Like shoes you wear for running.”
“Oh. Not really, no.”
“Jeans? A jumper?”
“No. I didn’t think I’d be trekking through the forest,” she replied, taking his offered hand and letting him pull her upright. She limped over to where she had thrown her shoe, searching the grass.
“Is there anything in there that’s helpful or important?”
“Well of course,” she replied. “My clothes and toothbrush… anti-bac hand lotion…” She continued listing off all of the things as she pulled her discarded shoe back on. Heaving a sigh, he grabbed the suitcase and slung it as hard as he could over the ravine.
“What are you doing?” She could feel the pressure of angry tears behind her eyes as she watched all of her worldly possessions take a header down the bank, spilling her delicates over the dirty ground. How dare he have such disregard for her personal property! Not to mention that the items in that suitcase were her security blankets. There might not be anything of value or anything “helpful,” but there were things she needed! A picture of her family, her allergy medicine… her copy of Gone With the Wind. Phoebe started to run after the case, but St. John held her back. She beat her fists against his arms and chest. “Let me go! That’s my stuff! I need it!”
“Your stuff is slowing us down. Look, I said I would help you, but I’m not a bellhop or a hero! If you’re going with me, you play by my rules.”  He looked up into the sky and let her go. “Come on… it’s nearly dawn.”
She watched him go, starting to reconsider her pleas for his help and then realizing that she had little choice but to follow him. They were now so far off the beaten path that she’d never find her way out. Steeling her jaw and giving a last glance back to where he’d thrown her suitcase, she started walking. Despite his growling, he did slow the pace a little so that she could keep up.
As they walked on and on, the trees rose up around them in an ominous canopy that nearly obliterated the early morning light of dawn. She could hear the stream that ran along beside them at the bottom of the ravine. It was hard to believe in their world that places such as this still even existed. It was almost desolate, but beautiful. Watching him as they walked, she slowly realized that St. John seemed almost as distressed as she felt. By now they’d been walking for hours, and in that time he’d become increasingly irritable. After several attempts at conversation, Phoebe had just given up and walked beside him silently. But his mood was starting to make her worry even more than she had been already.
“So… you don’t really seem like the normal space traveler,” he said, surprising her by breaking the silence. St. John shifted the backpack from one shoulder to the other. “What’s taking you to New London?”
“What? Oh… yes. My sister,” she replied. “I’m going to visit her.”
“Interesting,” he replied blandly.
Her heart pounded in her chest. She didn’t fully trust St. John and wasn’t sure that she should reveal her true intentions. Anyone could be working for Machine. Maybe he had been sent to keep an eye on her. Phoe was a fan of James Bond, so she had spent many an hour watching spy movies. He could be some kind of operative that was just waiting for an opportunity to steal the medallion and leave her broken body in the woods. And of course there was the werewolf thing. “Not really. I mean… it’s just a visit.”
“Well considering that no one really lives on the space colony unless they’re either filthy rich or a scientist of some sort. Judging by your clothes, you don’t appear to be particularly wealthy. So that leaves scientist.”
“She’s an archaeologist,” Phoebe answered. “She works for the Interplanetary Union, looking for natural resources and such. I’m a librarian.”
“I didn’t know those existed anymore. Libraries, I mean.”
“In small towns mostly, I suppose. I mean, I used to work for a digital archive in New Orleans, but I… I didn’t really like it there.” She bit down on her lip, wishing she could take it back. Her brain whirred, already constructing the story that she would tell him when he asked why she’d left New Orleans. Everyone asked why.
To her surprise, St. John just nodded, glancing toward the lightening sky again.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” he parroted.
“Well… what do you do?”
“I… I’m not really sure how to describe what I do. I’m a problem solver, I guess.”  Given the things Phoe saw in his backpack, his problem solving skills must involve heavy artillery. 


AUTHOR BIO:


Alexandra Christian is an author of mostly romance with a speculative slant. Her love of Stephen King and sweet tea has flavored her fiction with a Southern Gothic sensibility that reeks of Spanish moss and deep fried eccentricity. As one-half of the writing team at Little Red Hen Romance, she’s committed to bringing exciting stories and sapiosexual love monkeys to intelligent readers everywhere. Lexx also likes to keep her fingers in lots of different pies having written everything from sci-fi and horror to Sherlock Holmes adventures. Her alter-ego, A.C. Thompson, is also the editor of the highly successful Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series of anthologies.  

A self-proclaimed “Southern Belle from Hell,” Lexx is a native South Carolinian who lives with an epileptic wiener dog and her husband, author Tally Johnson. Her long-term aspirations are to one day be a best-selling authoress and part-time pinup girl. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America and Broad Universe—an organization that supports female authors of speculative fiction 


Social Media Contacts:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSouthernBellefromHell/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexxxchristian