Monday, October 23, 2017

Hiatus Announcement

Hiatus Announcement

Effective today, I'm on hiatus from writing long-fiction for the foreseeable future. There will be at least one Love Hurts novel in 2018, but I don't know when. Books no longer pay the bills and I have to look after myself and my family.

Thank you for understanding.

Now....

Here's the icky part of this conversation - readers need to buy and read books or books don't get written. That's the facts.

At a traditional job, I'd be paid every week or two weeks or once a month as long as I did the job my employer required of me. That's the contract - you put in your hours, you get paid.

But anyone in business for themselves has to sell their product and/or service every day or there is no pay for anyone. Providers rely on consumers to participate in their end of the transaction every day. Hey, we all have to be prudent about where we put our dollars, but just know, you only get the entertainment you like as long as you participate in the support of it. The best thing you can do besides buying a product is telling someone else about it - and that's free!

So if there's any author you really love, tell anyone that might be remotely interested about how amazing you think those stories are. You get someone new to talk to about your fandom and you're doing a big favor for the author, too.



Carla Krae

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Earning It by Angela Quarles - release day! #romanticcomedy #romance #bookrelease #newbook


Book Info

Earning It
Romantic Comedy
Release Date: October 4, 2017
Length: Novel (46,000 words)
Ebook Price: $3.99
ISBN: 978-0-9905400-8-3
Content advisory: Adult language, explicit sex


Blurb

One blind date. One case of mistaken identity. One Navy SEAL faced with his high school crush. What could go wrong?

To Score…

Holy cow, my blind date is rawr-hot. Everything in me aches to explore more with this man, but I can’t. I’ve got too much on the line professionally, with me starting at my new medical practice on shaky ground. But I can’t deny that I want the sex. A fling is perfect. Bonus—I will prove my idiot ex-boyfriend wrong. I’m not cold.

Or Not to Score…

Once she mistakes me for her blind date, my plan is clear. Be this Rick the Lawyer she thinks I am. And for the space of this coffee date, talk to the only woman who’s ever made me feel any spark outside of combat. Best case scenario, I get to be outside my skin—free to be whatever the hell I want. Worst case—she recognizes me as we chat. She’ll be pissed, call me an asshole, but it won’t be anything she hasn’t called me in the past, so… Win/Win?

Book Links



Angela Quarles is a RWA RITA® award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary, time travel, and steampunk romance. Library Journal named her steampunk, Steam Me Up, Rawley, Best Self-Published Romance of 2015 and Must Love Chainmail won the 2016 RITA® Award in the paranormal category, the first indie to win in that category. Angela loves history, folklore, and family history and combined it with her active imagination to write stories of romance and adventure.

Author Links

Join my mailing list: http://bit.ly/1sde3Qi


Excerpt from Chapter 1 – Meets the hero

Pepper
ur 2 cold
I glare at the four-month-old text, barely glancing at the bearded hipster bumping past me on the sidewalk. The sender? That’d be my ex. The hockey goalie who slapped away our year-long relationship with a text. Well, a series of texts over a five-minute span.
I’m killing time, and like someone who keeps picking, picking, picking at a scab, I’d pulled up those texts to stare at that last one. Cold?
Ambitious. Driven. Yes.
But cold?
I shove the phone into its pocket in my purse. I am not my parents. Thinking of those two fills me with a familiar but fuzzy unease.
A searing wave of fuck-that-asshole follows. He’s still infecting my life—what I need is closure. I can’t let that infection spill into my new life here in my old hometown. I yank the phone back out, resigned at this point to looking like an idiot to anyone who might be watching.
An article on Facebook from yesterday waves at me—hello, perfect revenge!
Tap, tap, tap. A quick search, a phone call, and…Yes.
I mash the end call icon on my Samsung and do a tee-hee dance on the sunny sidewalk. I sheepishly glance around to see who witnessed my little bout of enthusiasm on Sarasota’s Main Street, but the locals and the few meandering tourists are preoccupied with their own lives this morning. Why should I care anyway, right?
Because thanks to my vengeance-driven donation, there’s now a Madagascar hissing cockroach at the Bronx Zoo graced with the name Phil Stoddart.
It might be a placebo, but damn, it feels fantastic.
That task hasn’t wasted enough time, so I pop under the barely cooler shade of one of the pin oaks lining the street and enter today’s tasks in my app. It’s my last day for errands before I start work with my new medical practice. Ha—look at me being all casual. My new medical practice.
Try first. Yesterday, seeing the nameplate next to my door—Dr. Rodgers—had brought goose bumps along my arms, making everything terrifyingly and excitingly real. I’m finally starting my career as a sports medicine doc. See, it’s that life I can’t wait to start after twelve grueling years of schooling, but instead, I’m five minutes early for a coffee date I’d rather not go on, much less be early to. So yeah, I’m stalling.
My high school best friend set me up with a colleague at her law firm. A lawyer? No, thanks—got enough of them growing up. (Read: my parents.) But since she’s the only old friend I still want to hang with here, I succumbed. What’s one morning?
All right. That’s as much as I can reasonably stall. Now to face Rick the Lawyer, make small talk, and sip overpriced coffee. Maybe he’ll surprise me. With the fresh reminder of Phil’s opinion of me, maybe it’ll be good to swim in the dating pool again. Live a little.
I dodge the sidewalk amblers and push through the door of the Mocha Cabana exactly one minute early. The rich scent of coffee and sweet pastries envelops me. Customers of all ages are bunched around the café-style tables. The population has definitely skewed younger since childhood. When I moved away, the realization that not everyone was seventy-plus years old was an eye-opener.
I do a quick scan—all I have to go on is that he’s my age, he’s got dark hair, and his name is Rick. And he’s a lawyer.
I paste on a smile.
My gaze latches onto the man by the corner window, whose unnervingly masculine face is bisected by the fluctuating shadow of a nodding palm frond outside. The table in front of him is practically Lilliputian, he’s so huge. He’s the only man in the place matching Rick’s description, though, and my heart does a tee-hee dance of its own. And I can tell, in that odd way that happens sometimes, that he knows I’ve arrived and is aware of me viscerally. That he’s watching without watching, because the air between us has that crackly, weighty anticipation that triggers my sixth sense. This guy will have significance in my life, it says.
Combined with a rush of attraction? Not the reaction I want for a lawyer—or for anyone right now. Shit.
But Lordy, he must work out in his off hours. He’s fit in a way you rarely see outside of movies and comic books. His hair is midnight black, and if it wasn’t just past his ears, I’d totally peg him for active military—but not in the way you might think. He doesn’t have those all-American good looks honed into sharp cheekbones and jaw like you associate with Marines. No. It’s in the posture, the confidence, the strength. He owns—dominates—the space around him.
He has sharp cheekbones, but they’re not part of an overall shiny, do-gooder package. Instead, they’re combined with an olive skin tone, five-o’clock shadow, and a commanding nose that all adds up to Devastating..
Yipes, this easily-six-foot-two stack of hunky muscle is a lawyer and—I swallow—my blind date.
Pulse stupidly racing and that weighty awareness tingling up my back, I shuffle into line to order my café mocha. Deep breath. Live a little, I remind myself.
Swim in the dating pool? Now I want to splash in it, and I can’t tell if it’s because I want to cause a distraction or revel in the sheer fun.
One thing I do know—this reaction is so not like me.

Excerpt Two – Steamy

We’re not going to make it to the credits for Deadpool. We started out innocently enough—popping popcorn (plain for me), fussing around looking for blankets, and arranging our pillows on the couch—but there was a quality to all the innocence, as if we knew more than watching a movie could happen here and were going through all these maneuvers to bide our time and see if the other was on board before fully committing.
First, we shared a blanket, a royal blue one with some kind of stitching in the corners. Pretty, if you like that kind of thing. Then we kept inching closer until I had my arm around her shoulder and she was snugged up against my side. Then I threaded my hand through hers.
Deadpool says, “Love is a beautiful thing. When you find it, the whole world tastes like Daffodil Daydream.”
We were both unmoving under the blanket, but now that stillness has more weight. Deadpool continues to seemingly talk straight to me by telling me to hold onto love and not to make mistakes.
Now each quiet pause in the movie amplifies our awareness. I can hear her heightened breathing. The anticipation tightening her muscles before the next crescendo of the music score drowns our breaths out. Not that there’s a lot of quiet pauses in this movie—it’s pretty kickass. Both action and dialogue, which would normally snag me, but it can’t compete with Pepper. Not even when the hot chick from Firefly pops onto the screen.
“Hey, it’s Inara.”
“Who?”
“Okay. We need to rectify this lack in your life. Firefly?”
“Never got a chance to see it.”
I make a mental note to change that.
Our conversation is like this, like we’re both glad to be talking about things other than the tension building between us. “Oh damn, nice hit,” or “Shit, what did he just say?” Things like that.
The tension skyrockets, though, when things get hot and heavy between Deadpool and the Inara chick. I shift under the blanket. I think her hand shifts closer.
Shit. I give in and lean down to her temple. I hold myself still, my lips just an inch away from her beauty mark. Her breath hitches. I brush my lips across that dot of temptation.
She’s rock still, and I’m psyching myself up to move away, pretend for her I’d misjudged the situation, when there’s movement under the blanket. Next, there’s a death clutch around my neck—her hand has my T-shirt twisted into a fierce grip. Then she’s yanking my head down to her, and our mouths bump into each other.
Oh yes.
I angle around and plant my elbow on the back of the couch and cradle her head with my other hand. With my fingers and my thumb resting against her cheek, I guide her in for a more controlled but no less desperate kiss, my heart pounding as if I’d just finished log PTs.
Just like the other day at my apartment, we’re attacking each other with our lips, our hands. I stroke my tongue inside and groan. God, she tastes…tastes like…I don’t know what, but it’s Pepper, and it’s intoxicating. And I want it. I want her.
But I hold back, taking my cue from her for how far she’s willing to take this.
She tugs on the snap at my jeans.
Well, okay then.