Just a short note that my submission to Queer Sci Fi’s 2nd Annual Flash Fiction contest as been accepted as part of the upcoming anthology. Winners will be announced soon, next week probably.
However, I #amwriting and hope to have my LOR submission ready here soon. Here’s hoping.
Eloreen
I’m back over at Rainbow Gold Reviews!
TITLE – Star Crossed Shifters
SERIES – Pepper Valley Shifters (#4)
AUTHOR – C.A. Tibbitts
GENRE – Paranormal romance (18+)
PUBLICATION DATE – May, 2015
LENGTH (Pages/# Words) – 50k
PUBLISHER – C.A. Tibbitts
COVER ARTIST – C.A. Tibbitts
Nick Caputo is a wolf shifter, and the new clan enforcer. He knows with every fiber of his being that Violet Tago (a shifter that can’t shift) is his mate. One kiss. One simple taste and she’ll be his.
Since arriving in Pepper Valley, Violet has ignored any burgeoning attraction for Nick, and instead crushes big time on her brother’s best friend, Brody.
Brody Westwood, also a wolf shifter, has never thought twice about his best friend’s kid sister. The fact is, he wants nothing to do with any supernatural being. After seeing his best friend, Griffin, fall in love, marry, and have children, Brody decides it’s time to settle down with a family of his own. When a new curvacous beauty shows up in town, the attraction practically crackles the air between them. But Leah Cross isn’t human…or a shifter.
Two couples with undeniable attraction. Under the Colorado sky, they are Star Crossed Shifters.
AMAZON KINDLE US – AMAZON KINDLE CA – AMAZON KINDLE UK – AMAZON PAPERBACK
• A Shifter Christmas, #0, A Short Story Prequel (in Mystical Xmas Box Set)
• Shifted for Love, #1 (August, 2014)
• Healing A Shifter, #2 (October, 2014)
• Twice Fated Shifter, #2.5 (in Mystical New Love Box Set)
• Shifter Under Cover, #3 (February, 2015)
~~~Star Crossed Shifters #4 (2015) ~~~
She watched him glance around the living room before his eyes settled on hers again. Her panties dampened. She backed up against the door, her palms flat against the cold metal, and he stalked her, trapping her in place with his arms on either side of her head. Her heartbeat sped up as his eyes flashed yellow for one short moment, and she knew his wolf was close to the surface.
“Leah, I’m going to kiss you. After that, I’m going to lick your pussy until you come, and then I’ll flip you over and take you like my wolf demands.”
She whimpered at his words, her panties now thoroughly soaked. “‘Kay,” was all she managed to say before his lips descended on hers, hard and unyielding. She opened for his probing tongue and a shock coursed through her body, curling her toes, as she tasted him. He tasted of peppermint and coffee, but underneath that, home.
NOTE: Pepper Valley Shifters age at a much slower rate than humans.
Name: Nick (Nicholas) Caputo
Age: 30-something
Height: 5’9″
Eyes: dark blue-gray
Hair: Brown
Typical shift: wolf
Tattoed
Employment: Manager at Great Scotts Bar & Grill, clan enforcer
Since laying eyes on Violet Tago a few years back, he knew she was his fated mate. The only problem – she only has eyes for Brody Westwood.
Name: Brody Westwood
Age: 61
Height: 6’4″
Eyes: piercing blue
Hair: Blonde
Typical shift: wolf
Employment: auto/motorcycle mechanic
A veteran from Vietnam, Brody is ready to settle down with a family of his own after seeing his best friend, Griffin Tago, marry, mate, and become a father. He has no interest in Griffin’s baby sister, or any other shifter or paranormal being. But Fate has waylaid Brody’s plans for a human mate.
Name: Violet Marie Tago
50-something
Height: 5’7″
Eyes: Brown
Hair: black
can’t shift
Employment: yoga instructor
Violet has had a crush on Brody Westwood from day 1, after finding her brother after a 40+ year estrangement. So why is Nick so convinced that she should date him? And why does she spend most of her spare time hanging out with Nick?
An Oklahoma native, C.A. Tibbitts resides with her husband.
Writing has always been her passion, and she hopes to continue writing for many years to come in the paranormal romance genre, as well as other romance genres.
She loves to hear from her readers, and deeply appreciates honest reviews.
AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE – WEBSITE / BLOG – FACEBOOK – TWITTER – GOOGLE+ – GOODREADS – NEWSLETTER
$5 Amazon gift card
1 set of Pepper Valley Shifters books 1-3 (does not include anthologies)
1 autographed paperback Pepper Valley Shifters book of your choice (international)
This tour has been organized & hosted by
So.
It’s been a year since January. I did get that Flash Fiction Contest over at Queer Sci Fi. We’ll see how that turns out.
I haven’t finished my LOR story with the M/M Romance Group at Goodreads.com yet. But I did get someone to help me finish it. 🙂
I would like to welcome Adan DePiaz. She will co-write the story that will come out this summer. Probably will publish later summer, early fall at this point, in the Love is an Open Road event topic. I’ll post the title and a little blurb after we get it finished and submitted. The posted stories are here.
You must be a member to read the stories until they post it to the website.
Now, I’m not feeling so well. I think I might curl up with a good story or two and see if I can get some shut-eye.
Night.
Eloreen Moon
Welcome to Moonbeams over Atlanta, Eddy LeFey! This is a review book tour and there is a contest, so read on! A copy of the book was provided for the purpose of this review.
Title: Love Cubed
Author: Eddy LeFey
Length: novel
Genre: gay romance, contemporary, new adult, menage, MMM
Three very different young men meet at St-Frederick’s University.
Francis, haunted by his past and seeking a new life.
Andrew, the introverted football jock.
And Sebastian, the charismatic and confident hockey star.
Francis, wary and troubled, didn’t count on meeting anyone he could care for.
Andrew, closeted and lonely, didn’t think anything would matter more than his football career.
And Sebastian, content to float from conquest to conquest, never believed he’d meet someone who could hold his interest.
An encounter with a journalist causes consequences for all three.
Will they be able to take what they need from one another in order to cope?
WIP | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU | Amazon DE | ARe | B&N
Prizes: 1 x $20 WIP Gift Card and 1 x ebook copy of Love Cubed
The Review:
I saw the title for Love Cubed and was intrigued by it. I had to read more. It’s a ménage with jocks. Despite not being a follower of Sports-type events personally, I love to read about mm hockey players, football players, and swimmers finding love.
I’m all about three men together. That solidified it for me.
I had a month to read it. I said to myself, “I can do this.” For many that follow me here and on social media, I’ve had a heck of a year and this year is shaping up to be just as… interesting. 3 days ago I realized I hadn’t even started it and my post is on Monday. Crap. So, being my multitasking self, I read it last night while doing other things.
I had to finish it, and in the wee hours one day before my scheduled post day, I managed it.
I loved it. There were some point of view changes that I had to re-read a couple of times to catch who was talking/thinking. I like POV changes, but they were paragraph by paragraph changes in the early chapters, so a little different writing style that was difficult follow initially. There were a lot of description–rather than action. Since some of it was catching up with other secondary characters, it felt normal for the story. A misplaced period at the end of one sentence, but otherwise proofing/grammar was good. Loved Sebastian, Andrew, and Francis. Their growth, their rising love, and how they were woven together were great. Polyamory is hard to write well, and Eddy did a great job of building the characters, including several secondary characters to give it realism. It was easier later in the book, and hard to put down, which is why I managed to read it one sitting. 🙂 Being a mathematics geek, I did enjoy the reference. I will definitely have to look for more works.
With this, I give Love Cubed 4 stars.
Eloreen Moon
Francis was feeling hungry after a full day of sports, but he was also anxious to see if he could spot the photographer, who he now remembered was some kind of journalist for the National Herald. However, he didn’t want to spoil the camaraderie that had developed between him and the others—Andrew and Sebastian especially—so he decided to leave the photographer thing alone for now. He was enjoying the praise Andrew and Sebastian were pouring onto him, and the closeness. It felt good. Suddenly, he heard a shout. Someone was shouting a name he hadn’t heard in a long time. He panicked. He got loose from Andrew and he ran. He wouldn’t stop until he was safe in his room. He knew now he should never have left it.
Sebastian and Andrew saw John and Heather talking to the photographer guy, and tried to distract Francis from noticing him. Andrew put his arm around Francis, guiding him away. They would have succeeded if it weren’t for Francis hearing someone shouting. It wasn’t even his name, but all of a sudden, Francis bolted. Andrew’s and Sebastian’s instincts were telling them to run after him. However, they both stopped abruptly and turned back to the photographer when they heard John yell, “Are you telling us our Francis is really Robert Katz? The Robert Katz?”
Everyone had heard of Robert Katz. It was a scandal involving a young high school student from a very prestigious private school who had broken a sexual abuse ring involving a teacher. The accused had committed suicide. This caused a backlash toward the accuser, Robert Katz, who had then been bullied and harassed, accused of making up the whole thing. It culminated in Robert being physically abused by fellow students who were trying to torture the truth out of him. Charges had been laid. People had been found guilty and sentenced. An inquiry was started. There was a publication ban throughout the trials and the inquiry. No one was to publish pictures of Robert, to ensure he could at least try to live a normal life.
Andrew stomped his way to the journalist, followed closely by Sebastian. “That was Francis Hollingsworth who just ran off. Are you saying that he is really Robert Katz? You have proof?”
Denis sighed. “I didn’t mean for this to get out just yet, not like this. I should not have shouted his name. I could be fired for this. I know what Robert Katz looks like because I saw him at the trials. His full name is Robert Francis Katz. His mother’s maiden name is Hollingsworth. It’s him. I need to talk to him.”
Heather was the one who put a hand out to stop him. “You aren’t going anywhere near him. He didn’t deserve to be outed like this.” Heather turned to Sebastian and Andrew. “You two need to go to Francis. He’s probably locked himself in his room. God knows what he’ll do. He needs to know that people care about him—that he’s loved—before he does something stupid to himself. You both need to go and tell him how you each feel about him. Be honest with him and with yourselves for once. Do it. Now!”
Stunned, bewildered, and spurred on by the urgency of the situation, Andrew and Sebastian ran in the dorm’s direction.
Eddie LeFey started reading m/m romance fanfiction a few years ago. At one point, during a crucial point in the soap opera storyline of his favorite gay couple, the story went on hiatus. He needed a fix and decided to write his own version of what he wished would happen. Friends wanted to read it, so he plucked up his courage. Pressing the submission button was nerve-wracking, but he did it. People liked it. He wrote a few more.
Up until that point Eddy had tried his hand at writing many times. The delete button was his friend, as was starting over, and over, and over, but he could no longer do that if he wanted people to read his works.
A few of his writing friends decided to create original stories, and feeling brave, Eddy did the same. The stories were shared among a select few. They encouraged him to submit one of them. Low and behold, it is now being published.
Eddy lives in Canada with his husband Ken and his cat Oscar Wild. He is busy writing many more stories.
A human sacrifice throws vampires of two worlds, trueborn and baseborn, into an escalating conflict. One side pushes for revenge, the other for freedom. The trueborns stubbornly hunt for Anthony and Louis, pushed by Hesrah’s desire to avenge her human best friend, Alexa. The baseborns are divided between rallying with those challenging the rule of Ankhsis and obeying the trueborns.
What emerges from the portal between Earth and Ankhsis in the middle of the turmoil rocking both worlds is more dead than alive. Neither human, nor baseborn, and certainly not trueborn. This new being will either damn them all or be their race’s most powerful weapon. Will they trust it not to destroy them, or will Ankhsis decide putting it down is the only solution?
In the end, who is guilty? Who will pay? Will anyone survive its wrath?
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU | Amazon DE
Hesrah was growing impatient; she wanted to return to the portal, so she decided she needed to push them to finally share their information with her.
“What is it that you have discovered that needed my immediate attention?”
Anhubis took out an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and threw it on the table. She reached out to it and found a few photos in it. Louis, strapped down to a chair, all bloody and beaten. Good for him!
“What is this?” she asked, looking at Anhubis from under knitted eyebrows.
“One of our baseborn friends – we still have a few of those – followed Anthony after the events in Juliana Park. He managed to send these over before being caught.”
“Do you know where he was?”
“Yes, but they are long gone.”
“Why would Anthony do this to his partner in crime?” she asked, tilting her head.
“God knows,” Anukh stepped in. “Maybe they were never partners. Maybe he found out who Louis really was.”
“Can you find them again? Or do I have to bring an Inner Sanctum squad over here?”
“Don’t you dare!” Anhubis said in a thundering voice, pointing a threatening finger at her. “The Inner Sanctum will not meddle on Earth. I will find them again.”
“Make sure you let me know the moment you do,” Hesrah said, her eyes boring into him.
“Won’t you be too busy guarding the portals, waiting for your precious human friend?”
His mocking smirk, more so than his sarcastic words, got to her and in a blink of an eye her fist raced through the air, connecting to his face. As he fell to the ground, she lunged and got on top of him, her fangs piercing the skin of his neck. Her nostrils flared at the spicy cologne he was wearing and she managed to squeeze a few drops of his blood before Anhubis threw her off of him. The fight would have surely escalated if Anukh wouldn’t have stepped in to stop them.
“Are you both crazy?” he hissed, a deep frown line marring his forehead. “Anhubis, you are the head of the High Council. Surely you can tell how ill-advised being inconsiderate towards humans is. And you, Hesrah! You are a part of the Inner Sanctum and your mother’s daughter. You should both be ashamed.”
When they moved away from each other, Anukh, with a half sad, half disgusted smile, said a hurried good-bye and left the room.
“If you ever talk about her like that, I will kill you with my bare hands,” Hesrah said through clenched teeth. To her, that was not a threat, it was a promise, and she suspected Anhubis knew it, as he nodded quickly and took a step back.
Everyone she loved betrayed her. She felt lost and broken. Getting away from the pain and embracing a new path, Alexa decided to leave her old life behind and chase a long forgotten dream in Malta. There she met a gorgeous man, bearing the scent of fresh love. He led her to a new city to explore, Amsterdam. Is the tall, dark, and delicious man a dream come true or just a risky gamble?
Alexa chose hope and new beginnings over fear and warning signs only to be brutally dragged into a world she never really thought existed. Vampires, their feuds, and her future held tightly in their hands.
Trapped in a mysterious world, Alexa gives love chance after chance. Following her quest of self-discovery in a blood bound world, will she survive the journey?
Take advantage of the sale for book 1 – 99c on Amazon.
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble | CreateSpace
Writer, traveler, and coffee addict, Alina Popescu has been in love with books all her life. She started writing when she was ten and even won awards in local competitions. She has always been drawn to sci-fi, fantasy, and the supernatural realm, which explains her deep love for vampires and is also to blame for this trilogy.
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Thank you to all who participated in the Hop Against Homophobia, Biphobic and Transphobia!
I have replied to the lucky commentator.
Just to make sure, I’m posting it here too.
The Winner Is…
http://www.bookrevieweryellowpages.com
1. Authors and publishers must realize that a book reviewer is doing them a favor. Book reviews are some of the best publicity in the world, and reviewers perform a valuable service. If you don’t agree, go spend a few thousand dollars on print advertising and see what I mean. Above all else, respect the reviewer’s time and opinion.
2. Know your genre! And don’t be upset if the reviewer doesn’t accept your genre. We all have our likes and dislikes. For example, please don’t try to submit a BDSM book to a “clean romance” reviewer. Everyone is allowed to enjoy what they want. Just move on to the next reviewer. Use our genre index to easily find the reviewers who will accept your book.
3. Even if you get a negative review, you should accept it as valuable feedback. Not everyone is going to like your book. It is never appropriate to berate or attack a reviewer over a negative review. Google the negative publicity that author Alice Hoffman received when she decided to attack a Boston Globe critic by calling her a “moron” following a tepid review of her novel The Story Sisters. Do not stalk or harass a reviewer that gives you a bad review. It’s petty, and it may come back to haunt you.
4. If your book is unedited or full of typos, then you shouldn’t be contacting reviewers in the first place. Nobody wants to read an unedited manuscript.
5. Don’t expect a reviewer to pay for a review copy. They are giving you FREE publicity, and the least you can do is pay for the review copy and the postage.
6. If you would like the reviewer to host a giveaway or a contest, that’s fine, but the reviewer should NOT have to pay for postage or the giveaway copies. Once again, this is a book promotion tool, and the reviewer is doing you a favor. You can either reimburse the reviewer for the postage costs (via PayPal or some other method), or you can send the “contest winners” their copies yourself. And don’t be a flake—if you ask a reviewer to host a contest, make sure you have copies to give away. If the reviewer prefers to mail out the copies herself, then that is fine. Either way, give the reviewer the option and let her decide.
7. Don’t bug a reviewer endlessly about your review once you have sent the book. Reviewers are busy, and many of them get dozens of review requests every week. If they give you an estimate such as “five to six weeks,” then it is appropriate to ask politely after that time period has passed.
8. Many reviewers will request a synopsis of the book to see if they like the subject matter. Be prepared to provide this, and make sure the synopsis is free of typos or other grammatical errors. When I get an e‐mail from an author that is full of errors, I usually just delete it. Do need help crafting a review request? Check out our new review request letters section (next).
9. Always visit the reviewer’s website and read the submission guidelines before you submit your review request. All reviewers are different. Some want a chapter. Some want a few sentences. Some just want a link so they can review the description themselves. Tailor your review request to each reviewer, and you’ll have much better luck getting some free publicity. 10. A quick thank you note to the reviewer is a nice touch, whether the review is positive or not. Also, once a positive review is posted, make sure you visit the blog and leave a comment. Reviewers like followers, so mention that you’ve followed their blog. They also really enjoy hearing an author’s response. It shows professionalism and class.
Book Reviewer Yellow Pages
I wrote my first eBook in 1991. In those days, like today, it wasn’t hard to do if you had something to say and a computer to produce it. But what was hard, was marketing those early eBooks. Even if you advertised the book on a service like CompuServe, Prodigy or AOL, how would you ever find people willing to tell other people about your book? I “discovered” the Book Reviewer Yellow Pages more than five years ago; April 29, 2011 to be exact (then called The Indie Book Review Yellow Pages). Newspapers and magazines were still employing book reviewers and “book bloggers” were considered an anomaly, given the same respect that big publishers were giving the new-fangled eBook formats like Kindle. Fast forward to today and those same reviewers—if they are still writing reviews—most likely have started a blog (and in fact might even be in this book). An indie author trying to get reviewed by a traditional media outlet is an exercise in futility. It’s also fair to say that eBooks have made the big publishers huge profits and now form a permanent part of their publishing operations. Book blogging today has grown into a serious business. It is a necessary marketing tool to promote books and Christy Pinheiro-Silva’s Book Reviewer Yellow Pages—now in its sixth edition—is the definitive guide to this informal network of book reviewers. Collectively they rival the promotional power of the large circulation newspapers and magazines. Individually they can help niche books break-out to a wider audience. And that’s what book marketing is all about: helping thousands of small products in scores of categories seek and find their own passionate audience. How I met Christy is a testament to modern book marketing, itself a lesson for new publishers. As a long-time reader of the pioneering eBook news website Teleread.com, I came across an article saying that her second edition was available for free. Free is still a popular way to connect with readers but in 2011 it was the fastest, sure-fire way to get your name and book noticed. Everyone had Kindles to fill-up and as a book marketer and author, who couldn’t use a free directory? By the time the fourth edition was published in 2013 it had grown to a 778 page tome. Seeing an opportunity for constructive feedback, I took to Amazon reviews to voice my ideas about what makes this guide book so important for my clients, and where I thought it could be improved. I’m happy to say that Christy read that review, contacted me, and took many of those suggestions to heart. Here are the two things you should know about the Book Reviewer Yellow Pages:
But one thing still remains the same, as it did for me in 1991. You simply must get people talking about your book if you are ever going to be a successful author. A book no one talks about is even worse than a book that doesn’t make money. And that’s where this wonderful community of book bloggers comes into play. Let the Book Reviewer Yellow Pages be your Michelin Guide to the Wild West World of book review bloggers. David Wogahn President, Sellbox.com http://www.sellbox.com Publisher, PartnerPress.org Author, Successful eBook Publishing (978-0615710730)
TITLE – Liberty, second edition
AUTHOR – Kim Iverson Headlee
GENRE – Historical Romance (ancient Rome)
PUBLICATION DATE – Dec. 2014
LENGTH (Pages/# Words) – 462 pages/118K words
PUBLISHER – Pendragon Cove Press
COVER ARTIST – Natasha Brown
BOOK INFO – http://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/p/liberty.html
They hailed her “Liberty,” but she was free only to obey—or die.
Betrayed by her father and sold as payment of a Roman tax debt to fight in Londinium’s arena, gladiatrix-slave Rhyddes feels like a wild beast in a gilded cage. Celtic warrior blood flows in her veins, but Roman masters own her body. She clings to her vow that no man shall claim her soul, though Marcus Calpurnius Aquila, son of the Roman governor, makes her yearn for a love she believes impossible.
Groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps and trapped in a politically advantageous betrothal, Aquila prefers the purity of combat on the amphitheater sands to the sinister intrigues of imperial politics, and the raw power and athletic grace of the flame-haired Libertas to the adoring deference of Rome’s noblewomen.
When a plot to overthrow Caesar ensnares them as pawns in the dark design, Aquila must choose between the Celtic slave who has won his heart and the empire to which they both owe allegiance. Knowing the opposite of obedience is death, the only liberty offered to any slave, Rhyddes must embrace her arena name—and the love of a man willing to sacrifice everything to forge a future with her.
Kindle US – Kindle UK – Kindle CA – Kindle AU – Amazon Paperback – Nook – Inktera (Page Foundry) – iTunes – Kobo – Scribd – Smashwords – Goodreads
EXCERPTFINGERS CRAMPING AND shoulders aching from having wielded the pitchfork all day, Rhyddes ferch Rudd tossed another load of hay onto the wagon. Sweat trickled down her back, making the lash marks sting. Marks inflicted by her father, Rudd, the day before because eighteen summers of anguish had goaded her into speaking her mind.
Physical pain couldn’t compare with the ache wringing her heart.
She slid a glance toward the author of her mood. He stood a few paces away, leaning upon his pitchfork’s handle in the loaded wagon’s shade to escape the July heat as he conversed with her oldest brother, Eoghan. She couldn’t discern their words, but their camaraderie spoke volumes her envy didn’t want to hear.
Her father’s gaze met hers, and he lowered his eyebrows. “Back to work, Rhyddes!” On Rudd’s lips, her name sounded like an insult.
In a sense, it was.
Her name in the Celtic tongue meant “freedom,” but the horse hitched to the hay wagon enjoyed more freedom than she did. Her tribe, the Votadini, had been conquered by the thieving Romans, who demanded provisions for their troops, fodder for their mounts, women for their beds, and coin to fill the purses of every Roman who wasn’t a soldier.
If those conditions weren’t bad enough, for all the kindness her father had demonstrated during her first two decades, Rhyddes may as well have been born a slave.
She scooped up more hay. Resentment-fired anger sent wisps flying everywhere, much of it sailing over the wagon rather than landing upon it.
“Hey, mind what you’re doing!”
Owen, her closest brother in age and in spirit, emerged from the wagon’s far side, hay prickling his hair and tunic like a porcupine. Rhyddes couldn’t suppress her laugh. “’Tis an improvement. Just wait till the village lasses see you.”
“Village lasses, hah!” Sporting a wicked grin, Owen snatched up a golden fistful, flung it at her, and dived for her legs.
They landed in the fragrant hay and began vying for the upper hand, cackling like a pair of witless hens. When Owen thought he’d prevailed, Rhyddes twisted and rolled from underneath him. Her fresh welts stung, but she refused to let that deter her. He lost his balance and fell backward. She pounced, planting a knee on his chest and pinning his wrists to the ground over his head.
Victory’s sweetness lasted but a moment. Fingers dug into her shoulders, and she felt herself hauled to her feet and spun around. Owen’s face contorted to chagrin as he scrambled up.
“Didn’t get enough of the lash yestermorn, eh, girl?” Rudd, his broad hands clamped around her upper arms, gave her a teeth-rattling shake.
When she didn’t respond, he released her and rounded on Owen. “As for you—”
“Da, please, no!” Rhyddes stopped herself. Well she knew the futility of pleading with Rudd. Still, for Owen’s sake, she had to try. Her father’s scowl dared her to continue. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “’Twas not Owen’s fault. I—” Sweat freshened the sting on her back, and she winced. “The fault is naught but mine.”
“Aye, that I can well believe.” Rudd grasped each sibling by an arm and strode across the hayfield toward the family’s lodge. “Owen can watch you take his lashes as well as yours. We’ll see if that won’t mend his ways.” The thin linen of her ankle-length tunic failed to shield her from his fingers, which had to be leaving bruises. Rhyddes gritted her teeth. Rudd seemed disappointed. “I doubt anything in this world or the next will make you mend yours.”
“You don’t want me to change. You’d lose your excuse to beat me.” Sheer impertinence, she knew, but she no longer cared.
“I need no excuses, girl.”
The back of his hand collided with her cheek. Pain splintered into a thousand needles across her face. She reeled and dropped to her hands and knees, her hair obscuring her vision in a copper cascade. Hay pricked her palms. Owen would have helped her rise, but their father restrained him. Owen blistered the ground with his glare, not daring to direct it at Rudd for fear of earning the same punishment.
Not that Rhyddes could blame him.
Rudd yanked her up, cocked a fist… and froze. “Raiders!”
Rhyddes whirled about. Picts were charging from the north to converge upon their settlement, the battle cries growing louder under the merciless afternoon sun. One of the storage buildings had already been set ablaze, its roof thatch marring the sky with thick black smoke.
Rudd shed his shock and sprinted for the living compound, calling his children by name to help him defend their home: Eoghan, Ian, Bloeddwyn, Arden, Dinas, Gwydion, Owen.
Every child except Rhyddes.
She ran to the wagon, unhitched the horse, found her pitchfork, scrambled onto the animal’s back, and kicked him into a jolting canter. The stench of smoke strengthened with each stride. Her mount pinned back his ears and wrestled her for control of the bit, but she bent the frightened horse to her will. She understood how he felt.
As they loped past the cow byre, a Pict leaped at them, knocking Rhyddes from the horse’s back. The ground jarred the pitchfork from her grasp. The horse galloped toward the pastures as Rhyddes fumbled for her dagger. Although her brothers had taught her how to wield it in a fight, until now she’d used it only to ease dying animals from this world.
But the accursed blade wouldn’t come free of the hilt.
Sword aloft, the Pict closed on her.
Time distorted, assaulting Rhyddes with her attacker’s every detail: lime-spiked hair, weird blue symbols smothering the face and arms, long sharp sword, ebony leather boots and leggings, breastplate tooled to fit female curves . . .
Female?
The warrior-woman’s sword began its descent.
From the corner of her eye Rhyddes saw her pitchfork. Grunting, she rolled toward it, praying to avoid her attacker’s blow.
Her left arm stung where the sword grazed it, but she snagged her pitchfork and scrambled to her feet. Unexpected eagerness flooded her veins.
As the Pict freed her weapon from where it had embedded in the ground, Rhyddes aimed the pitchfork and lunged. The tines hooked the warrior-woman’s sword, and Rhyddes twisted with all her strength. The Pict yelped as the sword ripped from her hand to go flying over the sty’s fence. Squealing in alarm, the sow lumbered for cover, trying to wedge her bulk under the trough.
With a savage scream, the warrior-woman whipped out a dagger and charged. Rhyddes reversed the pitchfork and jammed its butt into the Pict’s gut, under the breastplate’s bottom edge, robbing her of breath. She reversed it again and caught the raider under the chin with the pitchfork’s tines. As the woman staggered backward, flailing her arms and flashing the red punctures that marred her white neck, Rhyddes struck hard and knocked her down.
The warrior-woman looked heavier by at least two stone, but Rhyddes pinned her chest with her knee. She dropped the pitchfork and grasped her dagger, yanking it free. Grabbing a fistful of limed hair, she wrestled the woman’s head to one side to expose her neck.
The Pict bucked and twisted, trying to break Rhyddes’s grip. ’Twas not much different than wrestling a fever-mad calf.
Rhyddes’s deft slice ended the threat.
Blood spurted from the woman’s neck in sickening pulses.
Rhyddes stood, panting, her stomach churning with the magnitude of what she’d done. ’Twas no suffering animal she’d killed—and it could have been her lying there, pumping her lifeblood into the mud.
Bile seared her throat, making her gag. Pain lanced her stomach. Bent double, she retched out the remains of her morning meal, spattering the corpse.
After spitting out the last bitter mouthful and wiping her lips with the back of her hand, she drew a deep breath and straightened. As she turned a slow circle, her senses taking in the sights and sounds and stench of the devastation surrounding her, she wished she had not prevailed.
The news grew worse as she sprinted toward the lodge.
Of her seven brothers, the Picts had left Ian and Gwydion dead, her father and Owen wounded, the lodge and three outbuildings torched. She ran a fingertip over the crusted blood of her scratch, and she couldn’t suppress a surge of guilt.
Mayhap, she thought through the blinding tears as she ran to help what was left of her family, ’twould have been better had she died in the Pict’s stead.
The surviving raiders were galloping toward the tree line with half the cattle. The remaining stock lay stiffening in the fields, already attracting carrion birds.
Three days later, the disaster attracted scavengers of an altogether different sort.
BOOK TRAILER
I am Rhyddes ferch Rudd, which in your tongue means Freedom daughter of Red. The blood of ancient Celtic warriors flows in my veins, though I am a farmer’s daughter by the circumstance of my birth. My life spans much of the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, one of a very few men ever to claim that title who did not abuse his power for personal gain—but I care not who rules and who dies in this gods-cursed empire.
More than anything—even more than my freedom—I yearn to be my lover Aquila’s equal. As a foreign slave in an empire where citizenship stands paramount, where an arena fighter such as I can only be considered the equal of other gladiators, actors, undertakers, and whores, this goal seems impossibly remote. Although Aquila is the son of a powerful Roman, he has declared that he would renounce his aristocratic status, wealth, and power for me, but I cannot in good conscience allow him to destroy himself on my account.
And yet the gods have granted the impossible to other mortals. I pray that I am worthy to receive such a boon from them, for surely divine assistance is the only way for Aquila and I to bridge the vast social chasm that separates us from enjoying a future together.
AUTHOR BIOKim Headlee lives on a farm in southwestern Virginia with her family, cats, goats, and assorted wildlife. People & creatures come and go, but the cave and the 250-year-old house ruins—the latter having been occupied as recently as the mid-20th century—seem to be sticking around for a while yet.
Kim is a Seattle native (when she used to live in the Metro DC area, she loved telling people she was from “the other Washington”) and a direct descendent of twentieth-century Russian nobility. Her grandmother was a childhood friend of the doomed Grand Duchess Anastasia, and the romantic yet tragic story of how Lydia escaped Communist Russia with the aid of her American husband will most certainly one day fuel one of Kim’s novels. Another novel in the queue will involve her husband’s ancestor, the seventh-century proto-Viking king of the Swedish colony in Russia.
For the time being, however, Kim has plenty of work to do in creating her projected 8-book Arthurian series, The Dragon’s Dove Chronicles, and other novels under her new imprint, Pendragon Cove Press.
YouTube video interview: http://youtu.be/DV5iKrEIROk
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– 5 e-copies of Liberty
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