Roshanna O'Dare had the perfect life. Everything was as it should be until the day she wakes to finds her parents murdered in their own home. Roshanna doesn't have any other family in Cypress Hill so she has to leave her best friend Marissa behind to move in with her last living relative, Uncle Joe, who lives in Texas, Austin. It’s where she meets Bodhi, her uncle’s chauffeur and a kind loving man who understands her and helps her through her parents deaths. Before moving away, Roshanna is confronted with a shocking secret that Marissa has kept from her—a secret that changes how Shanna sees life and the people in it. A secret about Roshanna’s parent that makes her take a journey to free them from the fate they’re in. Will she succeed? And will she find love along the way?
Excerpt
“Bodhi, what we have is special to me. We have a sort of connection that for the life of me I cannot explain. I’ve told you before how your touch feels like a sort of gravity. As for your kisses, they give me butterflies in my tummy like you wouldn’t believe. When we’re alone together, I don’t think about anything except for us. I… care about you.” I faltered those last 3 words. It had come to feel like more than just caring about him, but I wasn’t willing to admit that yet.
“Wow. You really do care about me? I had hoped you did and what we had wasn’t just a bit of fun while you were figuring out where your head was at. I feel the same, you know?! When you kiss me, it sends shivers down my spine and when you touch me, it’s electric. I feel alive. Not just living but truly alive.” he confessed.
I looked at him and saw the smile on his face as he spoke. We had time to figure out exactly what we had, but for now, I knew he cared for me as much as I cared for him. That thought made me smile inside and out.
We got home and as we stepped out of the car, Bodhi took my hand and led me to the pergoda where we lay on the floor with the blanket underneath us. We lay encircled in each other’s arms and Bodhi kept trailing light kisses from my lips, to my jaw, to my arm.
As he came back up to my lips, I kissed him with such fervour. He drew me closer to him and the kiss deepened into something I had never felt before.
I couldn’t admit it to Bodhi but if I was falling in love with him, if this was what love felt like, I was happy to be feeling something so special for such a great guy. Not only was he hot as all Hell to look at, he was an amazing person underneath the surface too. If this really was love, then so be it.
About the author
Keren lives in the UK and is an avid bookworm; she has been since she read things like Black Beauty, What Katy Did and The Hobbit as a child. Her first real memories of reading are the summers she used to lie on her bed and re-read What Katy Did and What Katy Did Next.
Over the years she has come to realise that she is a bit OCD about books. They have to be in perfect condition without the slightest bit of damage.
She is a book reviewer and has been for the past 18 months or so.
The idea for Stolen came to her one day but she never thought she’d actually write it let alone publish it. If it wasn’t for her author friend Kira Saito, the idea would still be stuck in her head not on paper. But constant love and support from Kira is why you are now able to read Stolen.
Stolen is her first novel but now that she’s written one, she knows she needs to write more. There will be one sequel, called Freed which will be from Bodhi’s POV. This will be set a couple of years on.
Then, the plan is for her to write either NA or Adult Contemporary Romances. She has a big crush on Lady Antebellum’s music at the moment and their songs have inspired a few book ideas.
Keren loves hearing from her readers and if you want to contact her, you can do so at any of the following places:
Arnold Ruben has created a memory machine, a utopia housed in a picture palace, where the happiest memories replay forever, a haven in which he and his precious daughter can shelter from the war-clouds gathering over 1937 Britain. But on the day of her seventeenth birthday Amaryllis leaves Warlock Hall and the world she has known and wakes to find herself in a desolate and...moreArnold Ruben has created a memory machine, a utopia housed in a picture palace, where the happiest memories replay forever, a haven in which he and his precious daughter can shelter from the war-clouds gathering over 1937 Britain. But on the day of her seventeenth birthday Amaryllis leaves Warlock Hall and the world she has known and wakes to find herself in a desolate and disturbing place. Something has gone terribly wrong with her father's plan.
Introduction from the author.
The Double Shadow is a new kind of adventure novel - it's a Film Noir, Sci-fi family saga set against the backdrop of Second World War. It's about a man called Arnold Rueben who develops a memory machine as a gift for his troubled daughter Amaryllis - a machine where you can inhabit your past self and live out your memories again as if they were really happening. But only those that belong to our world have a double shadow, the rest are loop memories created by the machine. Amaryllis has to solve the riddle of her past and her present - who was her mother? And who is she in this place without time? What happened to her childhood? And who is really controlling the memory machine? It is also an epic love story.
Excerpt.
WASTELAND
Once there was a girl who asked of her reflection, ‘If all I have is fragments of memories and none of them fit together, tell me then, do I exist?’ There was no answer, only the silence of the room and the hum of the green light that oozed from the television in the corner. She had no idea how long she had been standing there, maybe an eternity. Her name, her age, beyond recall. All she knew was there would be no tomorrow if she couldn’t work out the riddle of yesterday. She wondered often if she was going crazy, but it was hard to remember what crazy looked like. In the apartment, on the windowsill before her, lay a dead butterfly. Its wings and its beauty disturbed her. It was familiar, it had an echo of another time.
Softly, she sang a few words, her breath misty on the cold night - time glass, her reflection the only silent proof of her existence.
If you go down in the woods today
You’re sure of a big surprise.
If you go down in the woods today
You’d better go in disguise.
She was certain there were more verses but, like so much, they twinkled on the brink of things lost. High up in a dark tenement block, the girl looked out of the window to a wasteland. In the middle stood one building. A picture palace. She imagined that once it must have been fabulous, with its mirrored facade built of thousands of reflective squares. How it came to fall into such decay was a mystery. As so much here was. The girl could see that the movie house had three grand silvered steps leading up to diamond-paned glass doors. Now all smeared with the grime of neglect. The place looked haunted, having scared away every other building that might have kept it company, leaving it isolated. There, at the very edge of the world, the other buildings formed a protective circle, shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm, joining with rows of tall houses and one black tower to make an impenetrable wall, a mix of apartment buildings and tenement blocks whose fronts were laced with a spider’s web of fire escapes, water tanks and balconies. Behind this barricade she could see skyscrapers turning their Venetian blinded eyes away. There was no way out. This was landscape with no colour, no trees to break the endless monotony of grainy black and white, just the ever-present eerie hum of the green light. It was this light that, in the darkness, filled her nightmares. Perhaps it was the sound of crazy, perhaps it was the end. How was she to know?
The wasteland was a rippling sea, its tides rushing in on waves of things remembered, sucked out by waves of things forgotten. Here, once, a city stood. All that was left was rubble. Here, once, a burning airship fell from the sky. Then the tide changed again and the wasteland was awash with mud and barbed wire, an empty pram that no one would ever collect. The flotsam and jetsam of memories.
It was now night in this eternal day, but there was no time here, no clocks to mark the passing hours. The dark a false promise of a future that would never come.
Snow started to fall, thick, fluqy, playful flakes. The girl watched a magic of sorts unfolding as the wasteland began to turn white.
From an adjoining room, a man said, ‘Do you want tea?’ She didn’t answer.
‘I always like my tea strong, builder’s tea, proper tea,’ he said. ‘I know it’s sweet enough when the teaspoon stands upright in the mug. Made two cups. I always make two cups. Made one for Bernie after they blew his arm off.’
The girl heard him come shuring into the room. He was wearing a dressing-gown over a soldier’s shirt and trousers of the Great War, his calves still wrapped in putties, his boots muddy. Carrying his tea to the armchair he sat down, quietened by the green flickering light from the television.
If he talked at all, he talked only of tea, toast and the trenches. He said he’d seen ghosts on the wasteland, seen the dead of Passchendaele rise, young men again.
The girl, too, had seen things on the wasteland, been tempted to go out there and investigate. But she was afraid the boy might not find her. She had searched one apartment, one tenement block after another. Now and again it struck her like a body blow that perhaps the boy wasn’t there. Only the child, and she would be happy never, ever to see her again.
Then something strange happened. The sign over the front of the picture palace lit up. It read:
Vervaine Fox starring in The Night of the Tiger
She turned to the man in the armchair.
‘Look, look,’ she said. ‘The picture palace is coming to life.’ The soldier said nothing, his tea untouched, the spoon still standing upright.
Now the girl stood in front of him, trying to get his attention. ‘Come and see, just once, look out.’ Still the soldier sat, hypnotised by the light from the television. She went back to the window. The picture palace had undergone another transformation. No longer derelict, its mirrored face reflected the snow, shimmering with a glamour that made her long to be a part of it.
She saw a man throw open the double doors. The foyer glowed, honeypot golden, the light spilling on to the carpet of virgin snow, all crisp, all even.
The girl’s heart beat faster.
A white tiger walked through the foyer, out of the picture palace, and moved languidly towards the apartment block.The closer the mighty animal came the more the girl felt alive,the more she was aware of a sensation beyond herself, within herself, a stirring, a clue of what yesterday might have been.
This majestic creature, conjured from an alchemist’s book of spells, walked with measured steps, its paws leaving a map of prints in the snow. The girl felt certain that if she were with the tiger she would be safe. Safe was not anything she remembered, safe was nothing she knew, except for a snapshot of brown stripes against white fur.
She left the apartment, closing the door carefully behind her so as not to disturb the soldier in his slumbers. The corridor was deserted, green light seeped from under each of the many front doors. She looked down the thirteen storeys of the stone stairwell and started walking. On the ground floor, by the entrance, she stood gazing at the white tiger, fascinated by its beauty. It prowled back and forth, weaving between long-deserted swings and roundabouts, stopping every now and again, its blue eyes seeing right into her.
She will never find the boy, it’s been too long, she’s sure it’s been too long. Only the child is waiting for her and she wishes she would leave her alone.
She pushes open the door. Snow flurries into the passageway and turns to water on the concrete.
She will follow the tiger, come what may. His tracks make stepping stones across the wasteland to the picture palace.
The man is waiting, watching.
He bows to Amaryllis. ‘I’m Silas. It’s good to see you again.’
Again?
At the top of the grand staircase stands an apparition dressed in a satin evening gown, a rippling waterfall of fabric.
The girl has seen her before. She has a name.
The white tiger prowls around this goddess of the silver screen.
Suddenly there is a noise, a sharp shaking of a door, a clattering of brooms and brushes, and from a small panel in the mirrored foyer a young man tumbles backwards into the light.
‘I’m Ezra Pascoe,’ he says, scrambling to his feet. ‘Do you remember me?’
How would you like to get your hands on a copy of the book?
Two lucky winners will win a hardback copy of The double shadow!
Deets
This giveaway is open to the UK ONLY, sorry international peeps.
Giveaway will end 27th November when two winners will be drawn randomly.
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Winners will be notified via email so please make sure you enter with an address you check often.
Thanks, Misty, for letting me guest post today! And hi Misty’s followers! I’ll be honest here, I’m not the best guest-poster-type person. I’ve done a few of these lately, and I’ve realize just how not entertaining I am. So . . . I’ve decided to do something a little special here. Since Misty has been such a wonderful support during the release of UNVEIELD, I’m giving her blog the first ever excerpt to release! Hope you guys enjoy it!
EXCEPT:
Xander slows his pace as he glances over at me. “I’ve shut down my communicator,” he says, showing me the small silver device, then he slides it into the vest of his uniform. “So we won’t be tracked.”
I nod. “You honestly don’t know anything about the Rebels?” I study his features, waiting to see his eyes shift—a muscle twitch. But he keeps his eyes trained on me, stoic.
“No.” He looks down at the ground then back at me. “How is it I’ve never been informed?” He kicks a rock with his boot. “Because I’ve just been knighted?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe. All members of the Force are aware of us, though. Destroying us is their . . . your priority.”
He slants his eyes at me. “As you can plainly see, it’s not mine. Though, you almost left me little choice.”
“Ha!” I halt walking and spin toward him. “You were as good as dead back there.”
He stops, too, facing me. “Yes, the ever-effective kiss your enemy to death tactic,” he says, a smile playing at his lips. “I have to admit, it’s my preferable way to die.”
My face heats. “You didn’t seem to mind the approach. You probably would’ve let me end you back there if I’d allowed you to continue.”
He laughs, then begins walking again, saying over his shoulder, “If I remember correctly, it was me who ended the kiss.”
I open my mouth to retort, but he continues. “But if my demise comes at your lips, you’re correct. I’d probably welcome it.”
My lips twitch as I try to keep from smiling. “And you call me mad.”
Amongst the wasteland lies the gleaming city of Karm. A Camelot-esque utopia built from the ashes of a dying world.
Seventeen-year-old Fallon is no daughter of Karm.
She's its assassin.
Raised by a secret society of rebels, she's bent on bringing down the king's sham of an existence. But her first mark, one of the king's top knights of ...moreAmongst the wasteland lies the gleaming city of Karm. A Camelot-esque utopia built from the ashes of a dying world.
Seventeen-year-old Fallon is no daughter of Karm.
She's its assassin.
Raised by a secret society of rebels, she's bent on bringing down the king's sham of an existence. But her first mark, one of the king's top knights of the Force, makes her question everything. Even her heart.
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About the author
