Book Blitz & Excerpt: Wicked Coven + Giveaway

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Wicked Coven
by A.S. Green
(Cursed Descendants, #1)
Publication date: September 5th 2023
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy

Stella Aldren, a talented witch from Salem, has been chosen by her coven to fulfill a seventeenth-century curse that can only end in death.

If Stella doesn’t want to get herself killed, she needs to find Ethan Mather—the infamous witch hunter’s descendant who’s running for governor—pluck a hair from his head, make a poppet of his sexy-as-sin self, and…strike him dead.

No muss. No fuss. But when Stella stalks her prey at a political gala, sparks fly. And it’s more than their combustible sexual attraction. There’s an unforeseen and unknown magic swirling around the mysterious and devastatingly handsome candidate, and Stella can’t bring herself to kill him.

At least not until she discovers who Ethan Mather really is.

Unfortunately, Stella isn’t the only curious witch in town. A second coven from Boston’s underbelly has Ethan in their sights, putting Stella in the middle of a war between covens. One that wants him dead. And one that wants his power for their own dark deeds.

Now Stella is faced with an impossible choice: kill the enemy she’s falling for…or betray her coven by letting him live, putting herself in their crosshairs instead.

Fans of K.F. Breene, Kim Richardson, and Charissa Weaks will soon become obsessed with this enemies-to-lovers, steamy paranormal romance.

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On sale for 99¢ for a limited time!

**ALSO! There are 12 pop culture witches hidden in the book. Find all 12 (or as many as you can) and be entered to win prizes. Contest ends on Halloween. Details are inside the book cover!**


EXCERPT:

Ethan Mather spun Stella toward a corner of the dance floor, then suddenly stopped and pulled her so close she straddled his leg.

“The way you dance,” she said. “It should be criminal.”

Ethan’s eyes sparked with humor. “I’m surprised you think so.”

“I could surprise you in more ways than that,” Stella said, wishing she could think of a spell that would put him in his place without calling her out as a witch.

“Do you feel that?” he asked. His gaze bore into hers.

“People staring at us? Yeah, I feel it.” Not that she blamed anyone. Ethan in his tux. Her O.T.T. dress. The fact that they’d been holding this highly provocative pose for way too long… Who wouldn’t want to watch to see what happened next?

“No,” he said. “This. Do you feel this?”

He tightened his arm around her waist, and Stella’s magic surged, heating her chest and sizzling through her veins.

Oh, yeah. She felt it all right. The pulsing sense of power was impossible to ignore. She only wished she knew what it meant.

 

Author Bio:

USA Today bestselling author A.S. Green lives in chilly Minnesota and spends the all-too-short summers on Lake Superior, which is the muse for her paranormal and contemporary romances. She writes complex characters, action-packed plots, and snarky in-your-face banter. And, of course, loads of steamy love scenes.

When she’s not writing romance, she’s probably watching Outlander or pleading (unsuccessfully) with her husband to don the kilt she bought him last summer.

You can find her on most social platforms at @asgreenbooks. For the latest news – and to get your hands on exclusive content – subscribe to A.S. Green’s newsletter today (asgreenbooks.com)!

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Book Blitz & Excerpt: The Fall That Saved Us + Giveaway

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The Fall That Saved Us
by Tamara Jerée
Publication date: September 5th 2023
Genres: Adult, LGBTQ+, Paranormal, Romance

Nephilim—humans with direct lines to the angels—are natural demon hunters. All nephilim, it seems, except Cassiel. The weakest among a family touched by archangels, she’s abandoned her angelic inheritance for a mundane life as a bookseller. But even in the noise of the city, she remains burdened by the strict tenets of her old life. And recently, something far more sinister haunts her.

Avitue is a succubus out for revenge—though she has little say in the matter. As part of the greater demons’ plan to ruin Cassiel’s family for slaying a duke of Hell, Avitue’s been sent to claim a particular nephilim soul, one she’s told will pose little challenge. It should be an easy seduction. Quick, fatal. But Avitue is surprised to find her own pain reflected in Cassiel, a nephilim deemed fallen by her own family’s standards.

By choosing trust, they reveal the lies that bind them, but as unwilling participants in an eternal war, trusting each other is the most dangerous thing they can do.

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EXCERPT:

I try not to speak to the angels, but sometimes, I still hear their songs—when my mind is empty in the white noise of the shower, when I clumsily bloody my hands with the kitchen knife, when I stir sugar into my tea. These incidental joys and pains and nothings are the only times in my new life when I’ve been able to cry, compelled to do so as if by divine command. Their words course through me like molten gold, precious and searing. The world flashes white, then settles anew, unchanged but briefly brighter. Here’s the proof that they still turn their eyes to me. I wonder whether they see a wayward child.

The first time I heard their voices, I’d regained consciousness on the cold cellar floor of my childhood home, my face tear damp. It’s not so incapacitating as that anymore, but neither familiarity nor my angelic inheritance can fully diminish an encounter with the divine. I’m still human despite what my mother would like to believe about us.

Their songs are louder today, more frequent, as if the angels, too, have been keeping count.

Today marks the third anniversary of my leaving. I don’t know what the angel song means on this day, whether the chorus is passing judgment or merely observing with me. They sang the night I left, bright and clear. I took it as a sign.

Three years ago, at midnight, when my sister Zuriel caught me descending the stairs of our family estate, I begged her one more time to come with me out into the world. It’d been our secret for months that I planned to leave, to live in the city among regular people. I’d needed to tell someone, and she was the only one I could tell. My truth turned our relationship tense. We tried to be each other’s shelter as we always had, but it couldn’t last when I was trying at every turn to convince her to leave while she tried to convince me to stay.

“We can survive this if we have each other,” she’d say to me—when she braided my hair, when we traced protective sigils into each other’s skin. We sparred harder at the end as if winning meant the loser would have no choice but to adopt our perspective. I knew that as long as she would fight with me, she would fight for me.

But on those stairs, she’d stared too long at our clasped hands, and I doubted her. I couldn’t breathe. Two stairs separated us, she above, framed by the darkened stained-glass window on the landing. I, below, looking up. A terrible look crossed her face, as if this final meeting was a test of her devotion.

I’d wanted her to say something about us. Instead, she invoked duty and legacy.

“Don’t be like Gabriel,” I said.

We rarely called her mother. To us, she has always been Gabriel. For some, she’s a beacon.

Our records of all the angels and their nephilim are inconsistent, but the one most thoroughly documented through history is Gabriel. For the generation before my mother’s, there was no Gabriel born, no nephilim namesake of the great archangel. The reappearance seemed a sign for some. Other archangels, too, had claimed nephilim in our family. We’d clearly been blessed. When I was young, pilgrimages to our home were common—and also how our mother spread her philosophy of denial and restraint as the way. She was a beacon, and I should’ve been grateful to be her daughter. Our Aunt Raphael might’ve become a black sheep, but in Gabriel’s eyes, my siblings could make up for her lack. Because of their namesakes, Michael and Zuriel were burdened with more expectations, but Zuriel internalized the pressure the most. And suffered from it the most.

My sister gave me a tight smile. “You’ll come back,” she said, withdrawing her hand from mine to weave a familiar blessing in the air. For good fortune and protection, the one we drew before a hunt we knew would be especially dangerous. She pushed its energy toward me, and it settled into my skin with a light shimmer.

I wanted to tell her she had it wrong. I wasn’t the one entering a dangerous world. It was a wasted blessing, and we didn’t waste blessings.

I wanted her to say she’d miss me. I wanted an affirmation that we’d made this life less terrible for each other.

She retreated silently up the stairs, and I fought to breathe in her absence. Alone on the dark stairs, my bag cutting an ache into my shoulder, I considered scrambling after her, making one last bid for us. Together. As we’d always been.

But that had never been the way our family handled emotion. Big displays were anathema to us. For the last time, I followed her stoic lead, this time away from her.


Author Bio:

Tamara Jerée (they/them) is a graduate of the Purdue University MFA Program and the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Their short stories have appeared in the Shirley Jackson Award-winning anthologies Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness and Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology. Their poem “goddess in forced repose” in Uncanny Magazine was nominated for the inaugural Ignyte Award. They’ve worked as an indie bookseller and a writer in the video games industry. The Fall That Saved Us (out 9/5/2023) is their debut novel.

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Book Blitz & Excerpt: The Soothsayer + Giveaway

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The Soothsayer
by Glen Gabel
Publication date: July 1st 2023
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

★★Colin Devereaux is a teen in crisis. He’s an outcast at school, a target for bullies, and a helpless bystander as he watches his single mother wither from cancer. But those problems pale to the things he can’t explain – the dark creatures he’s spied lurking over his sleeping mother’s form, the strange old shopkeeper at the marina who seems to know Colin’s mind, and the mysterious puzzle box that the old man trades for Colin’s name. The line of reality blurs as the puzzle box opens, revealing a path to another world and a clue that may save his mother’s life. Stranded in a kingdom devastated by darkness and war, Colin joins a ragtag resistance against evil forces to find salvation for his mother and himself.★★

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EXCERPT:

Colin and Balaam burst past the dark creatures, knocking them over, and raced back down the lane. The serpents coiled and chased after them.

“They’re following us!” Colin yelled as Balaam veered down a narrow alley of gravestones. The demons flung themselves around the tombs and closed in to pinch off their escape.

“They’re cutting us off! We’re dead!” Colin shrieked as he kicked at Balaam’s sides frantically.

“Yes, wonderful! Keep saying such helpful things!” Balaam yelled back and veered again, running up the sagging side of a crumbling tomb to its roof and hopping to the next one and the next like they were stones on the water. The serpents hissed and raced forward at the bases of the tombs, slithering parallel to the donkey’s course.

Colin clutched Balaam’s mane as he stared, wide-eyed, ahead. They were charging towards the cemetery’s wall, several inches higher than the tombs themselves.

“Wall! Wall! Wall!” Colin screamed and pulled back on Balaam’s mane.

“Let’s see them try this!” Balaam yelled back as he ran across the last roof and, with a mighty jump, hurled them into the air, barely missing the wall’s ledge and crashing into a thatch cart on the other side. Colin held tight as they smashed through the cart and onto the street. Guards nearby ran forward, brandishing spears. “Halt!”

“New problem!” Colin yelled as he clung to Balaam, who darted past the guards, knocking them over in his wake.

“Always!” Balaam snorted as he careened down an alley and onto another street, then veered again onto the King’s Way leading to the royal courtyard.

“Okay, slow down!” Colin called. “We lost them.”

Balaam slowed his pace as they entered the great market. Stands, overhangs, and shops were littered with random goods. Crowds of people moved about, and merchants carried baskets of wares. “Let me have control here. Subtlety is key,” Colin whispered to the donkey.

A group of guards on horseback turned onto the street before them. The captain’s face went sour. “You! Boy! Halt!”

“Oh shit,” Colin moaned.

“Wonderful leadership, very subtle,” Balaam said and rushed to the right, knocking over a cart and sending pottery flying.

“After him!” yelled the captain, and his men gave chase.

Colin spun his head around as Balaam charged down another street. The guards rushed closer and closer. One soldier grimly eyed Colin, pushing his mount ahead to match Balaam’s speed. He thrust his spear at Colin, and Colin grabbed it. The two struggled with it as they hurtled down the lane, their mounts neck and neck. The onlookers screamed and ran as the two riders knocked over merchant carts and crates between them.

Without warning, a merchant pushed a cart out from a side alley in front of Colin’s opponent. Both man and horse collided with it and fell away. Two other guards replaced him within seconds.

“Go faster!” Colin yelled as he kicked Balaam’s side.

“I’m a donkey! Not a race horse!” Balaam called back.

The lane split to the left and the right ahead. “Pick one, great leader!” Balaam demanded.

“Uh, right! No, left!” Colin screamed.

Balaam dashed ahead, down the left lane, and into a caravan of garments.

Reams of fabric went flying, covering both Colin and the donkey.

“I can’t see!” Balaam screamed.

An unending ream of silk covered Colin’s face. He could hear the guards’ horses behind as he fumbled with it. “Just keep going!”

Balaam flew past scattering crowds, past screaming merchants, and right through a thatched wall.

 

Author Bio:

Glen Gabel learned to love storytelling at an early age, enlisting his friends in short films, plays, and anything he could jot down on paper. Later his passion turned to screenwriting and eventually into novels and short stories.

After graduating from The University of Southern California with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Film, Glen worked under Joss Whedon at Mutant Enemy/Fox as a production assistant before transitioning to education and earning an M.ed at Portland State University. He later accepted a lead instructor position in Pasadena, California, before moving on to professional copywriting.

Glen’s work includes selling his supernatural thriller screenplay, “The Harrow,” script doctoring on several independent films, and his latest YA fantasy novel, The Soothsayer. Glen’s most recent short story, “Where Light Has No Purchase” was shortlisted as a finalist in Reedsy’s Writing Contest in April 2022 and published in the 2022 Bardsy Character Anthology. He lives in Idaho with his wife and wonder-pup, Duke.

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