Where’s Your Home Sweet Home?

Some say that home is where the heart is. My home sweet home is where ever I’m at with my honey. Married at an early age, we’ve grown up together. The house is empty when he’s not here and he feels the same when I’m away. It’s a blessing to be loved and appreciated. That’s what we all want. Jenna Myers has to solve a mystery, a murder and catch an arsonist before she can find her home sweet home. Where is your home sweet home?

Blurb:
Home Sweet Home

Jenna Myers inherits an apartment complex in Denver, Colorado after her father dies in a car crash. Even though there is evidence of foul play, the crime goes unsolved. She breaks off her engagement, sells her bookstore in Cedar Falls, and moves to Denver to manage her real estate investments. A few months later, a friend and tenant is murdered in her apartment complex. Jenna suspects the murder is related to her father’s death but it’s a case of mistaken identity. The killer is after her.  Read More

Wine and Romance

I’m A.L. Parks, and I have published two books, and working on a third to be released this summer (fingers crossed). The first two are contemporary romances, and the third will be my first foray into romantic suspense. So, since I am a new author, and many of you may not have heard of me, let alone my books, I was trying to come up with a more creative way to introduce you to them…and this is what I came up with. I love to read…and I love wine.

Wine that goes best with my books:

Strangers:
Bereaved bride Abby Clark is tortured by visions of the fatal crash that took her fiancé on their wedding day. She succumbs to a dark existence where loneliness, sadness and nightmares dwell; until handsome, brooding Bryce Holden walks through the door of her favorite coffee shop, wearing the same cloak of despair and grief. Abby discovers in Bryce someone who understands love and loss, and soon their close friendship grows into a deep love. But ghosts make strange bedfellows, and Abby is forced to battle the tormenting images that continue to haunt her, and confront the ethereal presence of a beloved wife to protect her future with Bryce. Read More

Synopsis
The girl with the curves! Sometimes life seems straightforward, but what happens when there are curves along the way. Does it seem fair that some get the straight road and others the winding road?

When curvy Harley finally gets the job of her dreams after twenty job applications, she’s in for a big surprise. Sebastian Forrest, her new boss is the man she’d love to hate. For a while Sebastian goes against her and makes her feel like she isn’t good enough, but there’s a reason, and soon Harley will find out why.

The road isn’t straightforward and the more Harley gets to know Sebastian the more her heart warms to him. But soon she finds out something that takes her back to her bitter past and forces her to ask some difficult questions.

The girl with the curves is the first in the series of Positive Curves.  Read More

Abused constantly by her husband, Elliana is determined to make her marriage work. As a daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher, divorce is unheard of in her family, not to mention that it could cause her father to disown her if she even discussed it.

When Elliana’s husband, Mark, who is a part of the Search and Rescue Team in the US Navy, is transferred from Pensacola, Florida, Elliana travels with him, leaving her mother and father behind.

Alone and afraid in a small California town of Mountain View, Elliana takes on a job as a receptionist at a well-known advertising firm. Shortly after her employment, her boss, Kate, notices Elliana coming to work wearing more makeup than usual and disengaging herself from her colleagues. Coming from an abusive marriage, Kate is familiar with the signs of domestic abuse and brings it to the attention of the Human Resources department in hopes to get Elliana some help. With Elliana being across country from her family, Kate knows exactly how hard it is to get out of that particular situation.
When Griffin Reid, the most eligible bachelor on the West Coast arrives at the advertising agency for a meeting with the company’s CEO, he is utterly shocked when he sees the battered receptionist seated behind the desk, trying her hardest to paste on a smile. When their eyes meet, Griffin if fully aware that he is looking at his soul mate. During his meeting, he asks the CEO of Elliana’s situation and is stunned of what Dave reveals to him. With tension settling in his gut, he is determined to rescue her from the hands of the monster who is hurting her, and Griffin stops at nothing to prove how much he loves her. Read More

Shurik is a dragon, not a shifter. At no point in this story does he change into a human form. Why? Most dragon stories feature shifters because dragons are traditionally much, much bigger than the average human, making intimacy an issue. Shurik is no exception. He's about the size of a two-story house. So why not make him a shifter? Because I love to make things difficult for my characters.

I wanted to explore a relationship beyond the cultural differences I get when I do my usual fish-out-of-water stories. A physical incompatibility was fun to work around and added a level of tension to the story I wouldn't have had if Shurik could turn human when he wanted.

My other reason for wanting Shurik to be a non-shifter was Dragonheart (fun movie and Sean Connery was great in it), Flight of Dragons, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1980s version). Yes, I am a He-Man fan. I was back then and still am. I didn't care if it was a "boy's cartoon." But I digress… Draco, Bryagh, and Granamyr (respectively)—they were the dragons I fell in love with. Because of them, I wanted to write a heroine who loved a dragon that was a dragon all the time, not just when it was convenient to the plot.  Read More

Excerpt

Brisk conversations stopped as I passed by and people scrunched their noses in disgust. I glanced down. Sewer water trailed in my wake; I was drawing far too much attention. Squelching the need for sustenance, I needed a place to check the manuscript and ascertain if anything was salvageable. If that place came with a shower and clean, dry clothes, I’d do months’ worth of penance to the gods. With this many people around, the less conspicuous I appeared, the better. Saving this world had to wait until then.

I ducked inside a store front with leather apparel in the display window. I completely ignored the clerk behind the counter with spiked blue hair and metal piercings in his eyebrows, nose, lip, ears and, frankly, I didn’t want to know where else. His bored eyes hardly noticed the state of my clothing as I perused the store.

I was more utilitarian when it came to clothes. They served a function but little else. I never much saw the point in it. Shirts of every color hung on display with crosses and symbols emblazoned across the chest. Leather pants and jeans in shades ranging from black to brown were stationed on round hanging units.

“Wot cha be wantin’?”  Read More

 Redeemed By A Rebel: Prologue

April 1876
St. Louis, Missouri

The iron pressed against Jake Anderson’s back was almost as cold as the
rain pouring out of the night sky.

“Knock on the door,” demanded his brother Zach, his voice angry and on edge.

Jake did as he was told and pounded on the front door, hard enough to be heard over the din of the rain.

“What the hell?” said his eldest brother, Liam, when he opened the door.

“Jake? Zach? What are you two doing here? It’s the middle of the night.”
 Read More

Unapologetically Romantic

I love to read romance and have ever since I read my first chaste, sweet, Harlequin as a young teenager in the 70’s. Way back then my favorite books were set in Australia and usually involved a wealthy widower and the nanny who won his heart. Sigh. Then somewhere along the way I chanced across a slightly steamier historical romance and was instantly hooked. I do read other genres as well, but historical romance, particularly those set in the Highlands, is my go-to when I want a relaxing, enjoyable, escape.
For years I dreamed of being an author and writing my own romantic novels. I even majored in English for a while at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) until I was overcome by a wave of practicality and transferred to Salisbury University for a BS in nursing. I was an oncology nurse for many years but eventually I was able to merge both skill sets and become a successful medical writer. While I dwelt in the world of early drug development, I still dreamed about my novels. I built plots and characters which were just waiting for me to breathe life into them.  Read More

New Release: Captivated (Book 2 in the Bruised Series)

Genre: Interracial Romantic Suspense

Release Date: March 1, 2014

Publisher: Sugar and Spice Press

Synopsis:

When she first lays eyes on Mya Riley’s slashed up body, Baltimore Detective Lisa Swanson is certain that the Sandman, a ruthless serial killer from her past has reemerged. Lisa dives headfirst into the case with her partner Dee, and lovesick Winston Lewis, a detective who grows more captivated with Lisa by the day.

The Sandman wreaks bloodthirsty havoc throughout the city, and this time he is determined to make Lisa his victim.

Armed with intense hatred for the Sandman and a stifling fear of who might end up dead next, Lisa struggles to solve the case by the book. But when the Sandman switches up his plan and goes after her lover Jake…Lisa ignores all the rules. Read More

When Dylan Kellerman enters Shannon’s life he changes its course in more ways than one. He gives her hope and promise of a future she was convinced wasn’t attainable. Just as she begins to believe she has finally turned her life into something she can build a future on…blackness takes over.

Blackness Takes Over centers on relationships as a whole, not just romantic involvement. How those relationships grow and develop lead to the love and desire found in Shannon and Dylan’s relationship. Here’s an excerpt where Shannon goes to her first college party at the home of three (soon to be) friends.

As I make my way gradually through the crowd I grip my clutch (hiding my gun) tightly to my side. My gun is my safety net…always has been. My Uncle Mick taught me to shoot when I was eight. That’s how he got me to talk after I went to live with him. It had been a month and I hadn’t said a word, so he took me out onto his land, maybe a few acres out and put a rifle in my hand. Told me to point and shoot at some targets off in the distance. I did. I hit the target on my first try.

I looked up at him smiling for the first time since my life stopped and asked, “Can I do it again?” That’s when my new life began. Read More

The technique whereby a person’s beliefs, or what they think they know to be true, are altered. People have been suspending disbelief ever since they could communicate. A hominid embellishing the story of taking down his prey; a tribal elder keeping alive the tale of his peoples’ origins; or a sixteenth century actor and playwright whose famous Sonnet 18 - compares a lady to a summer’s day. All edging out what our senses, or common sense, tells us is true.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, nineteenth century poet and philosopher used the term “a semblance of truth.” So if you tell me the hero of a contemporary romance lived in a building with four walls made of uncontained water, I would have to take my business elsewhere. Or not. True, it’s a contemporary romance and not sci-fi or paranormal, but maybe the hero is a scientist on the cutting edge of force field technology. Maybe the contemporary romance has elements that bleed into other sub-genres. Convince me. Some writers assume since they are writing fiction, it’s the reader’s responsibility to use his or her imagination when given a scenario that falls outside the realm of the five senses or the world of physics. The responsibility, as I see it, lies with the writer. He or she lays the groundwork, and if they’ve done a credible job, the reader suspends disbelief. Read More