Tag: historical fantasy

I am so excited that THROUGH THE VENEER OF TIME by Vera Bell is available now and that I get to share the news!

This blitz also includes a giveaway for a $10 Amazon GC courtesy of Alexis & Rockstar Book Tours. So if you’d like a chance to win, check out the giveaway info below.

Title: THROUGH THE VENEER OF TIME

Author: Vera Bell

Pub. Date: April 3, 2023

Publisher: Champagne Book Group

Formats: Paperback, eBook, audiobook

Pages: 470

Find it: Goodreads, books2read

 

How far would you go to fulfill your terrifying ancient vow?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets Outlander in this “hauntingly beautiful debut” (Julie McElwain, A Murder in Time). Take a plunge into this mind-blowing, genre-bending world of historical fantasy, suspense, romance, and time travel.

If not for “The Ghost”—her FBI husband’s gruesome case—Siena Forte’s life would have been perfect. But not when the D.C. serial killer is hunting women like her, and when her husband is so unsettled by this case, he refuses to discuss it. It’s a miracle her art career is thriving at all. And not only her career.

When Siena lands a medieval mural commission at the National Gallery of Art, she discovers a bizarre knack for astral projecting to her past life. In a lucky strike, her visions of love and prominence in medieval Ireland are just the creative inspiration she seeks.

What Siena doesn’t know is her vivid depiction of the past exposes her to someone she has met before—the serial killer, reborn in this century just like her. But when a vicious attack from the past reverberates into the present, Siena’s life unravels in a chilling parallel.

Silenced and alone, she discovers the true reason for her visions. They’re not the creative inspiration they seemed, but a harbinger of her centuries-old revenge vow, and the killer cannot be stopped until she fulfills it. But there is another person from the past with unfinished business—her husband. And another unwelcome déjà vu—their crumbling marriage, once again precipitated by the serial killer’s crime.

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EXCERPT ONE 

His words were a blast that made something inside me snap.
Why couldn’t I unlock my  eyes from his? Unclench my knees despite an unbearable compulsion to run? I dug my fingernails  into my sweaty palms to break the paralysis, drove the graphite shards into my flesh. 

“Do you ever wonder what becomes of your characters?” His vacuous smile didn’t reach  his eyes. “What comes after your painstaking freeze-frame? Your warrior—” He pointed his chin  at the mural. “He’s cocky, but he doesn’t know what he’s riding into. Yet hours from now, he could be lying in some field, stripped of his weapons, bleeding out into the ground as the vultures  peck at his baby blues.” His eyes widened.
“Leaving his beautiful young widow all alone.”  

His impossibly soft voice was a ringing blow in my ears. A tremor braced my throat. I drew  a frantic breath against it.  

“I’m sorry,” I squeezed out, “I’m not sure I follow.” 

“I’m sure you do.” He chuckled. “But don’t look so stricken,
Siena Forte. It’s only a  painting, a fantasy. Nothing more.” 

“Excuse me…” I edged past him, cold all over. 

I rushed into the nearest restroom, tossed the broken graphite into the trash can, and  locked myself in a stall. I hugged myself. Tight. Tighter. Gasped for air, not drawing any. My vision  swam at the edges. Flickering. Fading. My heart thudded, and breath came faster in my chest,  choking me. 

Fragments of his words whirred around me, and I grasped my head to stop the awful  cacophony. But it wouldn’t stop. The image he drew cut like a knife, piercing through something  soft and vulnerable inside.
Something I’d buried deep down and wished to keep that way. But  he’d driven it to the surface and laid it out in the open, raw and exposed. 

Someone entered the restroom, and I froze at the squeak of the adjoining stall door. But  it was only a pair of black pumps through the divider gap. Heartbeat in my ears, I dropped the  toilet lid and sat down. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. 

Worgen was a narcissistic egomaniac, pissed off at not getting his way. Certainly, he could  neither read my mind nor know anything about my visions. He was messing with me. Of course,  he was!
Pygmalion was a mythical sculptor, whose ivory creation came to life after he’d fallen in  love with her. And here I was, a female artist, painting a man.
As for the widow, it wasn’t a big  leap to imagine a handsome warrior leaving a young wife at home. Worgen didn’t have to know  about me to understand this mental image would upset me.  

I couldn’t tell how long I stayed in the restroom, but I emerged more determined than  ever to continue with my project. I only needed to go outside and get some fresh air first. But  Worgen was still there, talking to a visitor, and the only way out was past him. I clenched my jaw and went toward them.

All content subject to copyright © Vera Bell 2023. All rights reserved. 

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About Vera Bell:

Vera Bell is the author of the time-travel romance trilogy Always & Forever, set in sixteenth-century  Ireland and present-day United States. Book One, Through the Veneer of Time, is her debut novel.  Besides being a writer, she is a wife to her high-school sweetheart, a mother to two teenagers and  one fur baby, a former commercial artist and boutique owner, and a member of the Historical Novel  Society, Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and Romance Writers of America. Her favorite place  to write is on her porch, overlooking a pond lined with river birches and magnolias. The topics she  never tires of are Ireland, past lives, and love that transcends time and space.

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 Giveaway Details:

1 Winner will receive a $10 Amazon GC, International.

 

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Ends May 2nd, midnight EST.