Day: May 9, 2022
Witchhunter
Witchhunter
Witchhunter Book 1
by Quinn Blackbird
Genre: Dark Paranormal Romance
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Witchhunter Book 2
Witchhunter Box Set
(Full Collection)
All of Quinn’s box sets cost the same as a latte-to-go and will remain that way! You’ll find the paperbacks on the box set product pages. 🙂
Quinn Blackbird loves an anti-hero.
All of her villains stay submerged in ‘dark’ so expect little redemption. She thinks them up over hot coffees and warm cups of tea on the porch.
When not writing, Quinn is either tackling a new face mask or snuggling with a book on the couch with her two pups.
In particular terms of Quinn’s process:
1. Quinn prefers to write in mini-series or novella format and release as such. These rapid release novellas are best for KU readers
2. Quinn releases box sets of these novellas, combining them into two full-sized novels, at a discounted price. These are best for purchase-to-read readers
Website* Facebook* Twitter* Instagram* Bookbub* Amazon* Goodreads
The Ones He Left Behind by H. D’Agostino
Save Me by Taylor K. Scott
“Rebel Rage MC Drummer.”
USA Today bestselling author Esther E. Schmidt and her husband have teamed up as Addy Archer and are releasing an all new, standalone, Biker/Rockstar romance. Preorder:
RebelRageMCDrummer
Genre: Biker/Rockstar romance
Author: Addy Archer
Cover Design: Esther E. Schmidt
Model: Scott Benton
Photographer: Golden Czermak, FuriousFotog
Release Day: June 28, 2022
My eating disorder has forced my hand–and those of my brothers–to a point where I have no choice but to submit to a live-in nanny to watch over me twenty-four seven. The nanny in question turns out to be a blast from the past, unexpectedly bringing things full circle.
When I’ve finally found the much needed balance in my life, a chain of events disrupts the brotherhood as well as the band. I’m the drummer, the one who provides the beat, the backbone of a song by keeping everything entwined. Though, when the beat fades, the lights come on, and the screams are silenced, all there might be left is the crimson drenching the floor.
Add to Goodreads:
goodreads.com/book/show/61058683-rebel-rage-mc-drummer
The Oni’s Shamisen
The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow Boy Series, Book 9
Historical Fantasy, Japan, Paranormal
Date Published: April 2022
Publisher: American I Publishing
Japan, 1877. Toki-Girl Azuki revels in her new-found freedom. But now what will she do with it?
Using her patterns and the looms Western Dragon Prince Iyrtsh makes for Eastern Dragon Princess Otohime’s ambitious project—resettling refugees displaced by the failed Satsuma Rebellion—anyone can make her fabulous fabric designs! But what of Azuki herself? Then the Oni, Kukanko, who is sure she’s not a demon, calls on the Toki-Girl for help.
Can Azuki, Sparrow-Boy Shota, Dragon Princess Renko and Eagle-Boy Akira find a way to help the Oni? What will a blind musician accomplish using their results? How can they help Uncle Yuta and Aunt Noriko find places for newly freed mill workers with no place left to go? Or help Lady Anko and Lord Toshio defy convention and save their unlucky twins from potentially lethal superstition? What’s going to happen to a very special horse?
Eastern Dragon King Ryuujin and Western Dragon Queen Rizantona contemplate the future of their species and the planet, and infant Dragon Prince Susu’s inability to keep a secret has catastrophic results.
Will Azuki and her friends find a way to help others while saving themselves, their friends, and their future? Can Azuki find a new path?
The Oni’s Shamisen is the ninth in the groundbreaking Toki-girl and Sparrow-boy series where History and fantasy and magical realism collide in this latest tale from the Meiji Era, a time and place where anything could happen and probably did!
Get the latest novel in this exhilarating series today!
Other Books in the The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy Series:
The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy, Book 1: Coming Home
The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy, Book 2: Chasing Dreams
The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy, Book 3: Together
The Toki Girl and the Sparrow-Boy, Book 4: Uncle Yuta has an Adventure
The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy, Book 5: Noriko’s Journey
The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy, Book 6: The Dragon Sisters
The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy, Book 7: The Eagle and the Sparrow
The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy, Book 8: The Shadows of War
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
Azuki, the girl who became a toki, laughed as she soared in the thermal. In her form as a Japanese Crested Ibis, she rode the wind. Her powerful white wings, touched with stunning peach accents, worked to carry her far above the mountainous northern Kyushu landscape.
Laughing with her, Akira, the boy who became an eagle, matched her stroke for stroke as they circled each other, dancing in the air. They were close in size, for Steller’s Sea Eagles are proud of being the largest among eagles—no matter what those Harpy Eagles might think—and the Japanese Crested Ibis isn’t much smaller.
Dancing in the air wasn’t limited to birds, Akira thought as the wind softened beneath his wings—only to those who could fly. The Western Dragon Prince Irtysh and the Eastern Dragon Princess Otohime, though divergent in form, had learned to dance together, and Otohime had first learned to do it with her younger and smaller half-sister, their friend, Renko.
But nobody did it like eagles!
“Let’s dive,” Akira cried to Azuki. She didn’t answer, but slowed to nearly stall before tipping her long black beak downward and tucking in her wings. Akira drove the air with his own muscular wings to catch her, and they spiraled downwards, twisting closely around each other, racing towards the land.
They learned this from the dragons, who rejoiced in flight as much as the birds, and were smart enough and playful enough to take any airborne idea and expand on it. They all learned from each other.
As they approached the treetops, Azuki called, “Crossover!” and they changed their courses to hurtle past each other before starting the upward curve of their next ascent. Careful to keep exact pace with each other, they curved their angles inward so they would meet at the top of their arc. Akira thought they might cross over again and descend in lazy twining circles before landing.
Suddenly, right between them, a dragon appeared.
Akira and Azuki both dodged to avoid this obstacle, who was small for a dragon, though large compared to them. He was bronze, brown and gold, and in the classic European fashion, his hide was studded with jewels. When he was a human, he looked Japanese.
“Nice flight, you two,” the dragon said.
“Susu-chan!” Azuki called. “What are you doing here? Don’t pop in like that! It’s dangerous!”
“I wasn’t in your way!” Susu objected. Youngest of the dual-natured dragons, Susu was Renko’s full brother. Otohime was his much older half-sister, child of the Eastern Dragon King Ryuujin. Irtysh was his much older half-brother, child of the Western Dragon Queen Rizantona. Susu was a child prodigy who was afraid of nothing except his fierce and royal parents, and sometimes his grown-up siblings, who could be quite fierce themselves. Renko was young like him and would usually not only let him get away with tricks but teach him new ones. She’d been a child prodigy herself.
“That’s only because we’re good,” Akira said with a mental laugh as the two big birds circled around the hovering dragon. They all spoke in mental speech, convenient for times when their physical beings or their circumstances didn’t accommodate physical, audible speech.
“You did spoil our descent, though,” Azuki added. “Isn’t it good manners for dragons to announce themselves to avoid interrupting others?” Susu looked abashed.
“I should have,” Susu said. “I’m sorry. I forgot. I guess I did come in right in the middle. Is it convenient?” That was a popular dragon greeting. Dragons frequently spontaneously appeared in each other’s presences without announcing themselves in advance, which few of them could manage all the time.
Mental speech did not always work for any- and every-one or at different distances. Dragons vanished promptly if they were told to come back later. They enjoyed spontaneity and were sometimes impulsive. Susu, formally His Royal Highness Prince Suoh-Sugaar, certainly was.
“No, but as long as you’re here,” Akira said with a grin that forgave the dragon child too much and too often, “what can we do for you?”
“Not for me, but for Brother.” In the Japanese fashion, Susu usually referred to his relatives by relationship rather than name. He did have other brothers–both his parents had other children–but when he said “Brother,” as though it were a name, he invariably meant the one he was closest to: Prince Irtysh.
“How can we serve His Royal Highness today?” Azuki asked formally. She’d had just about enough of this childish nonsense. Susu was old enough to use proper manners!
“Did you know Brother has children?” Susu swiveled to try to follow the birds’ line of sight. Birds couldn’t hover like dragons could. “Come land on me!”
Azuki and Akira glanced at each other, then swooped in to circle before landing on Susu’s broad back.
“I didn’t,” Akira said as he banked, “No.”
“I never thought about it,” Azuki admitted. “They don’t live with him.”
“They’re kind of old,” Susu told them. “Grown-ups. They all have their own caverns and their own mountains. All over the place. Galina’s mountain is north of here, really close to Hokkaido! She’s a princess, too. She’s older than me, but we like to swim together. I think I’m her uncle.” Susu frowned at this. That didn’t make sense to him emotionally, though if he worked it out, intellectually, it did. His brother’s children….
“So Prince Irtysh has children?” Akira decided to move the original conversation back on track. He positioned himself to land near where Azuki would light down. While the prince was, by rank, His Royal Highness, he preferred a lower level of formality from those among the dual-natured and humans he seemed to consider part of his social circle, if not his friends. Akira didn’t know if he would ever be able to truly claim friendship with the suave and sophisticated dragon prince, though he admired him enormously.
“Five!” Susu said. “He’s talking to them about those machines he’s building for your refugees! He wants to know how many you’ll need, so I need to get Tsuruko-san. Then she and Kichiro-san can come back with us and we can all talk about going to the Exhibition! It starts in just a few days!”
Susu was a jump ahead of everybody, as he often was, Azuki thought, though he was frequently misdirected. Tsuruko-san, the Crane-Woman, was working closely with Her Royal Highness, the Eastern Dragon Princess Otohime. Both of them joined the fully human Lady Satsuki, her very pregnant daughter, Anko-sama, and all the rest of them, in helping to resettle refugees displaced by the Satsuma Rebellion. Azuki didn’t want to think about that. The Rebellion was coming to its end, and its end would be, inevitably, tragic.
“That’s where we’ll find out about the cotton spinning machine.” Akira nodded. “I want to go, too.”
About the Author
Claire Youmans was captivated the first time she set foot in the Land of the Rising Sun. After many years of travel to this magical place, the retired lawyer now lives in Tokyo, exploring and writing fiction and poetry. During the Meiji Era, Japan leapt from a decaying feudalism to a modern first world power. How’d they do that? This history holds a key to understanding Japanese culture and character. Like the ocean, Japan changes only on the surface while the depths remain the same. Using folklore and fantasy, Youmans tells this story in an accessible, fun, and exciting way that reveals and explores the true nature of Japan, a culture that is unique, quirkly and one she has ultimately come to love.
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A Trip on the Tundra Explorer
An Alaskan Adventure Story
Middle-Grade / Action / Adventure
Date Published: November 19, 2021
Publisher: MindStir Media
The new school year is here, and Sean is worried about starting the fourth grade. When his grandmother organizes a trip to meet Sean’s new teacher, we learn that Mr. Simmons is nervous, too. Will their adventure into the Alaskan tundra build their confidence, or will it end in disaster?
Jacob Deskins had just graduated Cincinnati Christian University in 2020 when he saw an ad that said, “Teach in rural bush Alaska!” Three weeks later, he and his wife left everything they knew behind in Columbus, Ohio, population 1.2 million, to start his teaching career and an adventurous new life in Kwigillingok, Alaska, population 320. A Trip on the Tundra Explorer is the first of the author’s forthcoming series inspired by his adventures in Alaska, and in the classroom.
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Evil Empire by Kristen Luciani
The Shifting Sands Beneath Us by Giulia Lagomarsino



“So, did you really come all the way down here just to fix up a house?”
He took a sip of his whiskey, his throat working as he swallowed. “Well, that and to steal cabs from unsuspecting tourists.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Hey, I could be native to this area.”
“I highly doubt that,” he grinned.
“Give me one good reason why not.”
“I’ll give you three. One, a native from this area would have already known about the cab thief and ordered a car to pick her up instead.”
“Maybe I like watching cab thieves in action.”
The amusement on his face grew. “Two, you’re staying at a nice resort. If you lived here, why would you stay at the resort?”
“Obviously, to catch cab thieves in action.”
“But if you really lived here, you’d see them all the time.”
Well, he had me there. “I concede to your point.”
“So, why does a beautiful woman like yourself come on vacation all alone?”
I couldn’t tell him that I was here to escape my loveless marriage. But he didn’t seem to want to talk about anything personal either, so I continued our ruse. “You seemed to have some interesting opinions on why I’m not a tourist. I’m sure you can guess why I would come here on my own.”
He nodded, studying me in the dim light. “Well, clearly you’re here because you heard The Piña Colada Song, and you thought you would meet the love of your life here.”
I shook my head. “That’s a good guess, but I didn’t answer any advertisements in the paper.”
“Hmm, so you’re not a writer.”
“Not by nature.”
“Good to know. Well, if you didn’t come here for romance, I would say…you’re dying of some horrible disease and you came to live out your final days in peace.”
I made a sad face, staring down at the table like I was on the verge of tears, just to fuck with him.
“Oh, shit. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
But I was never very good at lying to someone. A grin split my lips as I snorted in laughter. Covering my face, I shook my head.
“You’re fucking with me? Aw, that’s just mean.”
I finally looked up at him, thankful he wasn’t actually pissed at me. He blew out a relieved laugh, pressing his hand to his chest. “You really had me going there. Fuck, I think I was about to throw up.”
“I’m sorry.” The laughter in my voice couldn’t be stopped. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d just sat and joked with someone. “But you set it up so perfectly.”
“Well, now I know better for next time. I definitely shouldn’t fuck with gorgeous women.”
That was the second time he’d made a comment like that, and I couldn’t help but blush under his scrutiny. Was this what it was like for normal people that lived ordinary lives? They just had fun and teased each other? If so, I definitely wanted more of it in my life.
“Since you clearly suck at guessing why I’m here, how about I give it a shot.”
“Challenge accepted,” he nodded, taking another drink.
I sipped on my margarita as I stared at him. I checked out his left hand—no ring on his finger. He was building a house down here, but he made it sound like he had to get away.
“You committed a heinous crime against a landowner down here. And as punishment, you were forced to buy and rehab a home.”
“What heinous crime was this?” he asked, leaning forward on the table.
“You were pulling starfish from the ocean and laying them on his front lawn to die.”
“That is a heinous crime indeed.”
“Exactly, and on top of that, you forked his yard.”
He looked at me funny. “I’m sorry, what is forking a yard?”
“You know, when you take plastic forks and stick them in the ground. Then you break off the piece sticking out of the ground. It’s impossible to remove.”
“I’m guessing you have experience in this.”
I shrugged, taking another sip of my drink.
“A product of your misspent youth,” he chuckled.
“What is a yout?” I said in a southern accent.
His eyebrows shot up in confusion. “A what?”
“Never mind,” I said, brushing him off. He obviously didn’t get it.
“Any other crimes you committed as a teenager? We could compare notes.”
I pretended to think about it. “Well, I never stole a cab.”

This is an interesting topic. Thanks for the ideas.