10 October 2013

{Book Blitz} Excerpt + Giveaway: If I Stay by Evan Reeves



BOOK DESCRIPTION
Breakups suck. Gemma Davies, at twenty-two, has just learned this. It was also not what she had expected from her long-time and only boyfriend - ever. So when her best friend and roommate drags her out in hopes to help Gemma come alive again, the last thing she expects is to meet someone who manages to do just that. In a passionate night (on so many levels) that leaves her rattled long after she sneaks out of his hotel room.

But because nothing in Gemma's whirl-wind life can ever go seamlessly, she soon runs into the man that she'd left naked and in bed just the evening before...in the most unexpected of places. The classroom. As her Professor.
...if only the surprises stopped there.


Excerpt 
As I stood there, hands in pockets and my eyes on the ground, looking at the little pieces of broken beer bottle glass that seemed to reflect the moonlight in a way that maybe Ben could write about, I heard the door open. I heard my name, although it seemed far away, and too soft to really grasp against the sound of the whipping air. But when his fingertips brushed against my chin, and I tilted my head (because he was tall, so ridiculously tall) up to meet his eyes, suddenly nothing that I was so busy heavily contemplating mattered anymore.


“Gemma,” Ben said, wrapped in a coat and scarf. Looking at him, he was shivering a little, which made me smile in a tender, endearing sort of way. “I'm sorry, I was worried. I swear to God that I'm not some sort of stalker or serial killer. I just...I had to find you.”


“I'm glad you did,” I said. In our shared gaze, I could see his eyes were searching for something. Sadness, anxiety, concern. His hands were at his sides; his body relaxed and yet totally prepared to jump at any time, like an animal waiting to pounce. I could read him so easily despite how little I really knew. He wore his desire like a caged demon, resting inside of him and bubbling up in his widening eyes. And I couldn't stop myself anymore.


His height proved to be a minor dilemma, given that I could only reach up and succeed in touching his torso. My fingers grazed over the back of his coat, up his spine, and over the barely-naked skin of his neck that I had to stand on my toes to reach as he leaned down to accommodate my stature. We locked eyes, his nose against mine, our breath like smoke in the cold air, our skin prickling from the single-digit temperatures and maybe something more.


Without waiting, for fear of suddenly losing him, I pulled him into the hardest kiss I've ever given anyone. His body froze, his hands fluttering nervously around my waist as I pulled away, his eyes hooded, unwavering. Completely locked into my own. Wordlessly, he moved my hair to the side, pressing my entire body against the brick wall, his lips on my neck as he tried to kiss softly, tenderly, his breath shallow and hands gripping me against him. With our difference in height leaving him leaning into me, he lifted me up so that my legs were around his waist, our hips pressed together, and with the softest of gasps he kissed me again. This time it was harder, more frantic, more panicked as if he knew, in his deepest core, that it was the only kiss we'd ever share. My hands were in his hair, around his neck, combing against his back as his mouth found that spot right below my chin, at the curve of my throat, where even the slightest brush of skin against skin sent me spiraling.


With his whole body against mine, our heat blocking out any wisp of cold air, I moaned into his hair and he responded with harder bites. He could bruise me all he wanted, I didn't care. In that small piece of perfection, I only wanted him.
 
About the Author
Evan Reeves, unrelated to Keanu although sometimes she likes to think they're married, is a debut New Adult Romance author of If I Stay and the upcoming Fall Into Me. Evan considers herself  to be living in the shire, while writing books just for fun. 
Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

{Cover Reveal} What Remains by Nicole R. Taylor

What Remains by Nicole R. Taylor
Publication date: October 15th 2013
Genres: Adult, Post-Apocalyptic
Cover Design: Paper and Sage Design

Synopsis

I’d never known true darkness until the lights went out.
I had never known what it was to be hungry.
Everyone I ever knew was dead. If they weren’t, then they wished they were.
I know I did.

Prue Ashford has been surviving alone in the Australian bush for the last three years. After an unknown virus wiped out most of the human population, she escaped the chaos and hid. Every town and city was locked down into quarantine, but that only led to the inevitable. Death.

Living off the land, avoiding other survivors turned bad, she’s led a lonely life, surviving on the edge of a very narrow cliff. The moment she begins to lose hope is when she meets the handsome and enigmatic, Shaw.
He’s the first human being she’s seen in three years that hasn’t tried to kill her and she doesn’t dare to hope. She’d given up finding anyone alive that still had goodness inside of them.

Her only option if she wants to live is to trust Shaw and he takes her to the isolated community he calls home. Being among people again is it’s own challenge and Prue finds herself tested on every front. Making friends was never easy for her and making them after an apocalypse is even harder.

Hannah, the town’s apprentice doctor, becomes the closest thing Prue has to a best friend and Nan fast becomes her surrogate mother. Shaw brings feelings to the surface that she would rather forget and Eva, the mayor’s daughter, seems hell bent on making her life a living hell.

In the end, Prue must make a decision. Stay in the town at the end of the world and learn how to love again, or go back into the wasteland of human civilisation and go it alone.

*
What Remains is a gritty story of human survival. When society crumbles and chaos reigns, people become desperate. They turn to violence and resort to extreme measures to go on living. Parts of this story may be confronting for some people. It contains violent situations staged by desperate people, the extremes that people go to to show their love and a dose of bad language. It’s recommended for readers 18 and up.


Teaser



 
Purchase
The book went live on these sites early!!
 
Smashwords:

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FOBSVRE
 
Nicole R. Taylor is a Paranormal, Urban Fantasy and Contemporary Romance author from country Victoria, Australia.

Previously, she has written for various small street press music and entertainment publications as a gig and album reviewer before publishing her first Urban Fantasy novel in early 2013.

When she isn't writing, Nicole likes to spend time curled up with a good book and her 3-year-old rescue cat, Burger. She gets itchy feet more often than not and has lived in three countries and travelled to three times as many.