A Queen’s Pride is a coming of age story for Asha, my eighteen-year-old heroine from the Kingdom of Shona. She isn’t yet ready to step into the role of alpha female of her people. Yet, circumstances beyond her control thrusts her into that role. But wrongs must be righted, loved ones avenged, and justice served. But there’s a fine line between justice and retribution, which Asha learns but not before Sekhmet’s bloodlust has been quenched.
In Shona, the lion shifters believe in many gods. The most powerful of them all is Sekhmet, a lion-headed goddess of war, destruction, and healing. It is this goddess, with ten thousand names, who Asha calls on in her time of need.
Lady of Enchantments
Ruler of Serpents and Dragons
Devouring One
Powerful of Heart
These are a few of Sekhmet’s ten thousand names. To utter them all will invoke her spirit. Will you dare? Are you up for the challenge? No? Well, divine retribution requires a worthy vessel. Asha wants to be that vessel. But first, she must discover all of Sekhmet’s ten thousand names.
Can you help her? Perhaps the A Queen’s Pride Pinterest board can aid our young heroine. https://pin.it/2qt3jtkqqhv7zn
Shifted
into Love: Hotel California
Shifted
into Love
Book Three
Phoenix
Williams, Shai August, Alexis D Craig, ND Jones
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Three Fortnights Press
Date of Publication: October 8,
2019
ASIN: B07XLHVP38
Number of pages: 271
Word Count: 72,000
Cover Artist: Covers in Color
Book Description:
Welcome
to the Hotel...you know the rest. It's a lovely place but these paranormal
romance writers are taking you on spine tingling adventures with shifters and
fantasy creatures that will keep you wishing that you never have to leave.
From
paranormal and erotica author, Phoenix Williams -The Haunted and The Hunted
Isabella Robertson is being
haunted and that’s the least of her problems.
Shai
August’s The Case of the Lost Opera Singer
Special Agent Shifter Colt Landry
is going undercover with the unfriendliest Steward Agent he's ever met: Special
Agent Witch Theresa 'Reese' Freeman.
Paranormal
and thriller author Alexis D. Craig offers No Good Deed
Pallas is a prisoner of his own
devices. A veteran of the Fairy Wars, between his PTSD and his curse from the
Fae Winter Court, his nightmares leave him trapped within himself and within
the hotel he runs, The Presidio. At least, until she arrived.
USA
Today bestselling author N.D. Jones brings you A Queen's Pride
For eighteen-year-old Asha,
traveling to Vumaris with her parents, alphas of the Kingdom of Shona,
should’ve been a simple matter. Yet, greed and corruption know no boundaries of
time and place, turning a family trip into the bloodiest night of Asha’s life.
Will Asha and her boyfriend bodyguard, Ekon, survive the night of terror at
Hotel California?
Book Trailer:
http://bit.ly/2mmvrK7
A
Queen’s Pride by ND Jones
Excerpt:
Asha grasped his
hand again, tugging him away from the closed door and to a circular pit in the
center of the room. With her urging, they sat on a plush, leather couch in the
shape of a semi-circle. The burgundy color complimented Asha’s white-and-gold
dress.
Picking up the
remote from the table in front of them, the television in an open cabinet
opposite the pit, Asha clicked the unit on. Sound blared but was quickly
lowered.
“I thought we
could watch a show. I like funny ones. But you can choose whichever one you
want.” Kicking off her sandals and scooting close, Asha handed him the remote control
and leaned her head against his shoulder.
Ekon had never
met a more even-tempered, sweet girl. She could be mischievous, sure, and a
little obstinate, but nothing more than what was typical for an
eighteen-year-old with a strict mother. At twenty, Ekon was little better, and
he had far fewer responsibilities than Asha.
“Mom only wants
what’s best for me.”
“I know.”
Lowering his face, he sniffed her gorgeous mane of hair, tempted to run his
hands through the dark, curly locks. She smelled of the countryside of his
birth—lavender, moss, and with a hint of mint. “What do you want?”
“For you to hold
me while we watch some awful but humorous television sitcom. Then for you to
kiss me.”
“I shouldn’t
have ever kissed you.”
“You don’t mean
that.”
No, Ekon could
never regret crossing the line with Asha ten months ago. “You’re right. I’m
sorry, I shouldn’t have said it. It’s just, I don’t want to mess up.”
“You won’t.”
“You only say
that because I’m the first boy you kissed.”
Asha patted his
chest. “You aren’t the first boy I’ve kissed.”
“Wait. What?” He
shoved her until she sat up. “I’m not?”
“I never said
you were.”
True but—
“You are,
however, the first boy I’ve wanted to do more with than kissing.”
That stopped his
mind from whirling and started his heart racing again. “You can’t go around
saying stuff like that.”
Her smirk
reminded him of what he already knew. “Okay, fine, we’re the only ones in your
suite. But you know what I mean.”
“Actually, I don’t.
It’s not as if I asked you to have sex with me right here and now.” A sure hand
found his thigh and rubbed. “Unless, you know. We could. No one would know but
us.”
“And your mate,
if your parents don’t approve of our union.”
“They won’t
choose my mate. They’ll weigh in on my choice, but they would never force me
into an alliance not of my own choosing. Besides, I don’t have to be a virgin
when I take a mate. I only need to be faithful to him, which I will be.” She
patted his chest again. “You aren’t ready for us to become lovers, so this
conversation is moot.”
Affronted, his
eyebrow winged up. “Not ready? Who’s twenty and who’s eighteen?”
“Being twenty
doesn’t make you ready. It just makes you two years older than me.” She nodded
to the remote. “If you don’t intend on selecting a show, I’ll do the picking.
Or,” she kissed his cheek, “we could kiss and touch and pretend we’re going to
go all the way but know we really won’t.”
Ekon liked that
idea, but her statement about him not being ready, despite his age, had pricked
his pride a bit. The sad truth was that she wasn’t wrong. Him not being ready
had nothing to do with Ekon having had sexual experience with only one person—a
high school girlfriend who broke up with him before beginning college. His feelings had been hurt, but she’d
warranted no stronger emotion, certainly not anger or even disappointment.
Asha, on the
other hand, had a way of turning him into knots. Worse, she managed the act
with unconscious effort like calling him on his unvoiced fears, while also
making herself vulnerable to him by revealing her own desires.
Ekon kissed her,
lips gentle, tongue patient. When she opened for him, her moan a scratch behind
the ears of his inner lion, Ekon slid inside.
Licking.
Tasting.
Exploring.
About
N.D. Jones:
N. D. Jones is a USA Today
bestselling author who lives in Maryland with her husband and two children. She
is a dedicated educator, committed to equitable and excellent education for all
students. N.D. has served in the role as teacher, department chair, and
professional development teacher specialist, supporting the learning of
students and the professional growth of teachers .
She writes what she sees as a
dearth in the romance genre--African/African American love with a paranormal
twist. She spends a lot of time developing the mythology of her novels, as well
as the execution of the paranormal element. When she writes a book with witches
and shapeshifters, for example, she thinks it's important to show what it means
to be a witch and shapeshifter. That's one thing a reader of books by N.D. can
look forward to. The paranormal is not a sidebar in her novels. It's center stage
and critical to the plot.
The
Haunted and The Hunted by Phoenix Williams
Excerpt:
I was running.
That should have
been my first clue that something wasn’t right. My fat ass didn’t run for fun.
Yet, here I was, breasts jumping in the cheap Walmart bra, long thick legs
burning as I ran down a never-ending foggy corridor. Bright magenta, gold, and
teal lights swirled in the smoky mist that surrounded me. Numbered doors passed
by in a blur.
Screams echoed
all around me so loudly that I could barely make out the snarl in my own
throat. Every muscle in my body ached. My mouth was filled with the salty tasteof
my tears. My soul felt like it was being ripped in half and, yet, I continued
to run.
“Bella.”
The smoke and
whiskey voice had my heart pounding harder than it was already. My legs pumped
faster. Sucking in gulps of the fog, the bright colored lights swirled faster
before my eyes. Rounding a corner, I slammed face-first into a solid body. Arms
like steel bands wrapped around my thick waist.
“Bella,” the
voice groaned. “You’re mine.”
Sitting up
straight in my bed, I placed a shaking hand on my pounding heart. I glanced at
the clock and groaned. Three thirty-one in the morning. I had less than ninety
minutes of sleep left but I knew there would be no going back to dreamland.
This was the
fifteenth night in a row that I’d had the same dream. Each time I got closer to
the voice, the details of the hallway were clearer. I had tried everything to
get rid of it. Meditation. Exercise. No sweets after sundown. Getting pissy
drunk. None of it worked.
“Three more
weeks,” I assured myself.
In three weeks,
I would have answers.
In three weeks,
I would meet with the Seer in Hell Fire Valley.
I just hoped I
could survive until then.
About
Phoenix Williams:
Based out of Illinois, Phoenix
Williams is an erotic romance, paranormal romance, and street lit author and
lover of all things quirky.
She is a Jane of all trades.
Award-nominated author. CEO. Producer. Screenwriter. AAMBC Journal contributor.
As an author, she has built a brand that specializes in romance and self-acceptance.
She has been an author for
Delphine Publishing since July 2015. Phoenix has created several series, the
award-nominated Bird Family series, her bestselling Sex, Lies, and Friendship
series, the Phoenix After Dark collection, and her first paranormal series,
Queens of Beasts.
Phoenix Williams is currently
creating two new series, Club Sugar and The Celestials. She is also working on
adapting her Bird Family series into a Motion Picture.
No
Good Deed by Alexis D. Craig
Excerpt:
His rifle felt
heavy in his hands, fingers numb, palms sore from firing and climbing, finding
places to hide from the unrelenting onslaught of Goblin troops. The air was too
warm, his feet hurt from walking, and the smell, all the fucking gods and
saints, the smell. A mix of crushed lily of the valley and powdery iris
overlaid with the metallic tang of blood and ichor, never failed to turn his
stomach and make his teeth sweat.
Around the
corner, he knew, was the ambush that would end the lives of the five fae with
him. Why and how he survived was still a mystery that had no answer. Especially
considering it led to him losing his wings not a week later. He wasn’t even
supposed to have a gun, not really. He was a medic by training and had been en
route to the mobile field hospital when their convoy had been ambushed, leaving
him stranded with the remnants of his escort.
There’s a
certain heartrending irony about the medic surviving and being unable to save
anyone else.
Pallas could
almost count down to the moment when the whole scene would erupt in a fountain
of gunpowder, lead, iron, and blood. The fact he knew it was coming didn’t make
the pounding of his pulse in his ears slow or still the shaking in his hands,
but it gave him a little bit of comfort for when the time came.
“What
are we hiding from?”
“Fook me!” The
soft, feminine voice over his shoulder scared the soul out of him and sent him
flailing, crab-walking backwards away from her sudden appearance.
She was… new.
Not part of the dream. With her mane of long black curls, mocha skin, and incongruously
cute white tank top and blue starfish pajama pants, she’d just appeared out of
nowhere with her strange smile and sharp eyes. Dropped whole cloth into this
theatre of combat without a weapon, wings, or any kind of protection
whatsoever.
“Who the… how
the… I...” Pulling a hand down his face,
Pallas blew out a deep breath as he tried to collect himself, his mind’s
internal clock screaming that they needed to take cover because the assault was
inbound. “Who are you… how did you…”
The explosion
that took out a large part of the wall next to them killed his questions, his
escorts, and rocked both of them off their feet.
“Holy hell!” The
woman, barefoot and wide-eyed, was on her feet and yanking him away from the
site before his mind had a chance to kick in gear. “You coulda warned me!”
He could have
done nothing of the kind because the moment she touched him, her soft, delicate
hand warm on his forearm, his brain did a hard reboot. It would have been
easier to ask him to speak the language of butterflies—he could, but it would
take a minute for him to think about it. The power rolling off her was immense,
and natural, so far as he could tell, and so heavy it was like she cast no
shadow. It clouded his thoughts, overwhelmed his senses. It made no sense.
Once his mind
came back online, he yanked her down the block and posted up behind the cover
of an old delivery van.
“Who are you?”
Pallas demanded as he rounded on her. He kept a hand on his rifle but didn’t
raise it against her. “How did you get here?”
Her eyes were
dark, fathomless like black coffee and just as warm. Back straight, shoulders
back, she was a tiny little thing, very slight of frame, that barely came up to
his armpit but carried herself like she could take him and three of his friends,
too, with little to no resistance. “I
could ask you the same thing.”
“You first.” The
breeze was hot and oily like car exhaust as it rushed over his skin, the scent
of approaching Goblins and the rumble of associated heavy artillery. They
needed to move out, now. To his amazement, she touched her wrist and a black
hairband materialized for her to remove and tie back her unruly locks into a
thick braid. There was heavy magic in play here, and frighteningly enough, he
had no idea as to its origins. Last thing he needed was to cross another member
of the Fae Legion.
“I’m a Bishop,”
she murmured as she looked around, her eyes taking in every single detail from
the rooftops of the buildings along the bombed-out streets to the varying
abandoned cars.
“By name or
profession?”
She squinted at
him for what seemed like a long damn time before quirking an eyebrow. Whatever
scrutiny she’d given him, he’d apparently passed because she offered him her
hand. “Syta Bishop, of the Sedona Bishops. And I don’t know how I got here.
Where’s here?”
Pallas couldn’t
help the way his eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. Aside from Sedona
being maybe 250 miles from his physical body’s location, there was no way for
this to be happening. Right? Was this just a trick of his mind? His
subconscious or the curse finding a new way to fuck with his equilibrium and
mental health?
About
Alexis Craig:
Alexis Craig was born in Tucson,
Arizona and moved to Indiana when she was eleven. She's been there ever since,
not counting the three-year stint in New York for college.
She is an avid reader of romance
novels and forensic science manuals, a wife, a godmother to many, a loving
aunt, avid ghost hunter, and collector of rescued pets.
In her free time, she tends to
wander through haunted houses, bike along the Indianapolis Canal downtown, and
travel to new places.
The
Case of the Lost Opera Singer by Shai August
Excerpt:
Plainview, Texas
was almost the exact place where the landscape of deciduous trees started to
recede to the land of desolate scrub brush, and the tires of the luxury sport
utility vehicle rode like a dream over the miles of broken blacktop of West
Texas. Opera music, Magda Olivera’s nineteen ninety-three recording of a
selection of Adriana Lecouvreur blasted through the custom speakers. The opera
singer’s unusual voice and singing style was still controversial even after her
death.
She chose to be
surprised by his choice of music, but she shouldn’t have been deceived by the
golden boy persona that he cultivated. Her regular partner, Artis Patterson was
fascinated by Special Agent Shifter Colt Landry, ‘Mr. Perfect’ she called him
sighing like a preteen whenever she said it. Reportedly, he’d never broken a
single rule and there were so many rules, which is why her service record
looked like triptych of ink splatters. She’d had moments to study Agent Landry
through her friend’s eyes and her own. He was too everything; too handsome, too
sexy, too by the book, too perfect from his brown speckled green eyes to his
blemish free butterscotch skin to his spotless Agency record.
She fanned
herself, October should never be this hot. The dog days of summer were indeed
real as the heat wave was on outside the SUV as evidenced by the waves bouncing
off the blacktop. Inside, Colt Landry’s brooding had raised the temperature of
the SUV with his smoldering good looks and the waves of heat that emanated from
his hard body or maybe it was just her own body temperature that was soaring.
The air conditioner was blowing full blast, but it didn’t seem to cool her in
the least.
Colt
The scent of her
was everywhere. They’d only been driving for eight hours, but mentally it felt
like they’d been together for eight days. In his twelve years as a Steward
Agent never had he wanted to quit a mission before it started, she was a quiet,
non-communicative distraction. If they’d shared more than twenty words the whole
drive, he’d be dismayed.
He’d seen
Special Agent Witch Theresa ‘Reese’ Freeman and her partner several times at
Headquarters, he’d just never been in close sniffing range. Now he could feel
his beast prowling the perimeter of their mind, pushing him. No, urging him to
lean over the console and breathe in a nose full of her scents. Her natural
body scent was that of apricots and honey, but the scent of her magic was warm
brandy. Combined, the trio of smells were a heady intoxicant that had him
partially drunk and ready to sink his teeth and manhood into her.
He needed to
distract himself from the glorious smells. “Want to review our cover story one
last time? Before we get too close to prying eyes and listening ears?” They
were still an hour from their destination according to the in-dash navigation
system.
“How do you know
we aren’t being observed already?” she challenged, her Alabama accent was
thick, like her hair and her lips and her hips and her thighs, which was visual
eye candy to him. His gaze could barely stay on the road with her leaned back
in the passenger seat with one perfect thigh crossed over the other in a tight
white romper.
Stifling a groan
as his mind and that of the beast began undressing her for the hundredth time
since they’d left Headquarters in Houston. “I’d assume that you would have
informed me if you suspected surveillance. Was I incorrect in my assumption?”
“No.” That no
dropped from her lips with the force of a bomb. That no felt like a curse word,
she didn’t seem pleased to be around him at all and it made the beast want her
more. They loved a short chase, but Reese was more of a big game hunt.
“I’m Troy
Wilmington the Third,” Assuming his poshest, oil and gas money had greased the
skis of his whole life Texas accent, he practiced, “and you are my blushing
bride, Felice Wilmington.”
She looked down
on the French-set diamond banded ring with the four-karat emerald cut diamond
sparkling in the middle, courtesy of the property room. Every woman on the
floor had inhaled dramatically when the Special Agent Warlock in charge of the
Property Room brought it out.
“You’re a
stockbroker or some type of finance guy. I, Felice can’t be bothered to know
the details, just as long as you keep me in pretty baubles.” She flashed her
left hand, showing the ring and the matching tennis bracelet that dangled
beautifully from her slim wrist, against her creamy dark skin. Skin he wanted
to lick to see if it tasted of apricots and honey.
“You’re a
classically trained opera singer,” he started in the posh accent, but dropped
back to his own natural one. “Can you really sing opera?” he asked skeptically.
“Do you really
believe Zosime would send an Agent undercover who couldn’t do the assignment?”
she countered, referring to the centaur head of the Shifter and Magic Task
Wardens.
The paranormal
version of the Federal Bureau of Investigations that they worked for, even
though the Stewards were older than the FBI, CIA and MI-6 combined. The
Stewards were the police force shifters and witches called when the regular
human police wouldn’t do. You didn’t want human cops trying to arrest a pack of
werebears, that’s how you got massacres.
“You’re a witch
who sings opera? More than that, you’re a Freeman witch, given that thick
Alabama accent means more than likely, you hail from Freemanville, Alabama, and
as far as I know, Alabama is not a hot spot on the opera touring companies.”
The woman was a fascinating mix of contradictions and he wanted to undo the
knot. He chuckled. More than her scent had gotten to him, she was invading his
psyche more every minute. He should turn this SUV around and head back to
Houston.
About
Shai August:
Shai August is a country girl
with a big imagination, more than a touch of wanderlust and a never-ending
desire to live in both an RV traveling the world and a library. Her love
language is words of affirmations followed by books, bacon and bourbon.
She's a born and bred Louisiana
native, but is currently doing an impression of a yellow rose of Texas. She is
fluent in English, sarcasm and memes. Her goal is to write fast paced,
character driven paranormal fiction for women of color.
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2 comments:
Wonderful. Thank you very much for spotlighting Shifted into Love on our release day. We appreciate the opportunity to meet your subscribers and to share our anthology with them. Enter the giveaway for a chance to win great prizes from excellent authors.
My first time here and I kind of love it. Thanks for showcasing our Halloween anthology!
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