Exclusive Excerpt from "God Attacks!" by J.R. Kiefer

God Attacks! is a daring horror tale by J.R. Kiefer. This first novel in a two books series envisions a very ominous version of God. Check out an exclusive excerpt from God Attacks! below then get your copy of the occult thriller at Amazon.

 

Summary

God is not dead; it has merely slept. It stirs from its enforced slumber and its dreams of annihilating that which created it in its own image, that which drove it mad—a blinded mankind.

Two ancient secret societies guard the secret of God. One of these occult orders wishes to enslave and control the abominable thought form that is God. The other wishes to destroy it and to free humanity from the fetters of beliefs capable of creating such monsters of unholy destruction. Their directive: What Man created, Man must destroy.

Caught in the midst of these turbulent cosmic forces is the sleeper incarnation of Kirt Tucker, a neurotic, semi-suicidal used-car salesman, and his companions: Roland, the country club golf pro, and Celia, the talented psychic. Join them on a non-stop, page-turning race to stay alive in the face of a psychotic deity and its God-awful minions.

God Attacks! is the first of two volumes of a tale where the world is turned upside down; where good and evil, and the shades of gray in between, blur in a belief-bending thrill-ride of a read.
 

Exclusive Excerpt from God Attacks!

“Listen, my uncle used to sell cars,” Brian said. “He told me never to sign up for any of the crap you guys try to sell. So, we don’t want it. Let’s just get the rest of this done. I gotta get my kid home.”

Kirt knew where this was going and felt his face heat in a blush of anger. His customer had switched from easy-going to grade-A asshole in seconds. He had to repair his rapport with the customers before it was beyond salvaging.

“At least let me tell you. . .”

A sharp pain along his inner thigh forestalled his words. He felt something pinching him—pinching hard. He pushed his chair away from his desk and looked down to his lap.

What the hell is that?

There was motion in his pocket. In dawning horror and disbelief he saw the fabric of his thin, brown slacks moving. However, it was the intense pain he felt cutting into his inner right leg that set off the shrieking cacophony in his head.

“What’s the matter?”

Kirt barely heard Brian’s words.

The baby in Tina’s arms suddenly emptied his lungs in a piercing wail that bounced around Kirt’s tiny office like an ambulance siren in an echo chamber.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Startled, wide-eyed, and mouth agape, Tina held her infant son in front of her, grasping him under both of his armpits.

The baby screamed and peddled it legs, trying to run from something, but instead only kicked the air helpless and panicked.

Kirt rocketed out of his chair, which careened backwards on its rollers and collided with the credenza behind him in a loud Thwump Bang! The credenza wobbled from the impact and a Buick golf clock, given him by the General Motors rep, fell from its perch atop the credenza to the floor by Kirt’s foot, shattering its plastic frame and faceplate upon the thin carpet.

 “You’re scaring my baby.” Brian shot to his feet with balled fists and such immediacy that Kirt thought he was going to take a poke at him. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

But even this was not enough to distract Kirt from the red hot needling pain hammering at his senses—from down there where the baby’s “toy” was.

“I’ll be back,” Kirt hissed through clenched teeth; he had to get somewhere private and extricate the stuffed animal from his pocket. It was the only thing he could think of that could be causing the stabbing agony so uncomfortably close to his groin.

Oh my God! What’s going on?

He maintained enough reason to realize if he pulled the thing out here, in his office, he’d have difficult questions to answer. He tore out of his office awkwardly contorted, hand clamped over the still moving lump in his pocket. Out of the corner of his vision he glimpsed Brian snatch the baby out of Tina’s hands and caught snippets of angry words and more of the baby’s wailing; but his brain couldn’t translate these sounds into anything coherent. He had to get to the restroom and stop whatever was causing the terrible stinging hurt along his right inner-thigh. It was more than just the pain now; it was also Kirt’s fear of the unknown—what was causing the pain—that drove him to panic.

“Hey, you ok, Kirt?” Isaac asked, turning the corner toward Kirt’s office and unwittingly blocking Kirt’s path to the sanctuary of the restroom. “I heard some yelling.”

“Can’t...talk...now.”

Words were difficult and felt like a wheelbarrow of rocks to be pushed up a mountain. Kirt’s vision narrowed, but his purpose was clear and burning. Oh, did it burn. All he saw was Isaac’s chest. He had to go through him; a detour around him was unthinkable, because he had to know what was happening and right NOW!

“Move!” Kirt put his arms forward, intending them to move Isaac aside, but instead, with his momentum, he ended up body-slamming the salesman. Isaac’s body fell to Kirt’s left and out of his sight. Kirt saw the opening to the bathroom door and he bolted for it; bent at an angle and hobbling, he reached it. With his free hand he pawed at the door handle and pushed it down and thrust the door open and flung his body into the bathroom.

Once inside, Kirt spun around and locked the door. Now, at last, he plunged his hand into his pocket and wrapped it around the pliable stuffed toy, yanked it from his pocket and held it at arm’s length in front of him.

In a surreal moment of disbelief he saw it had again transformed into the hideous prophet doll. He stared aghast at the thing gripped in his fist. It moved; its mouth opened and closed. Kirt smelled a terrible odor and realized it was the thing’s breath, rancid and existing in a measure beyond any sane proportion of what should be able to issue from an orifice as small as that of the plastic prophet’s mouth. He gawked at what he guessed had caused his pain. The prophet’s staff had transformed into a wriggling serpent.

The snake was dark and marked with virulent green patches. It sprang at Kirt’s hand, but was unable to strike him due to his fierce grip about the prophet doll’s lower half. If the prophet let go of its own grip on the serpent’s scaly thickness, the snake would have been able to strike downward and sink its thumbtack-sized fangs into his hand; but some law of reality appeared to still apply. The prophet doll, it seemed, could not move anything but its mouth. Kirt felt the reptile’s lower half trying to slither from his fist. Its touch was wet and revolting; it felt more earthworm than snake, the cold slimy feel of something that fed in the damp, beneath fetid and rotting corpses.

I’ll squeeze the shit out of you, you son-of-a-bitch!

He contracted his grip and squeezed until the muscles in his arm ached and the tendons in his wrist stood out like steel cables beneath the skin. He bared his teeth and a primitive grunt escaped his strained wild-eyed face. When he could take no more of the intense exertion, after he thought there was not another ounce of grip pressure left to him, he raised the doll above his head and hurled it to the floor with such force that it leapt off the hard ceramic tile and almost landed in the commode, before bouncing off the toilet’s rim and coming to rest upon the bathroom’s tiled floor.

Now only a doll lay there on the floor. A doll made of plastic, cloth and white fibrous stuffing. No blood spewed, no bones protruded from torn flesh.

Unsatisfied with the lack of gore he needed to see and still caught in the survival-mode panic of a person who opts to fight rather than to take flight, Kirt raised his right foot and aimed the heel of his polished, brown leather Doc Martin shoe at the prophet doll’s head. When his raised leg had reached its apex, just before he began the downward thrust of his foot to smash the horrid thing, he froze and stared incomprehensibly at the doll. The doll’s mouth had moved as he had wound his leg up to stomp it. He’d heard its voice, soft, yet menacing, a whisper of cockroach legs scuttling behind derelict walls. Icicles formed in Kirt’s shriveling testicles and he could taste his fear. The doll’s speech invoked an elemental dread in him, an unfamiliar primitive and jagged trepidation generated by an atrophied part of his brain that evolution had softened after humans had become ‘civilized’ and no longer had to fear being ripped apart, chewed, and eaten on a daily basis.

Kirt lowered his leg. In opposition to his brain’s command that he should now take flight, that horrible danger was present—that he was food—he knelt next to the thing, ready to spring away the instant the doll moved anything more than its mouth. Its smell swelled around him and infected his palate, which caused him to gag dryly. He swallowed and stopped breathing to avoid its reeking stench. Now that he was closer, he could make out its whispery words:

“Come near to hear and hearken: Let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats.”

Something else there was there, too. Beneath the words that Kirt distinctly heard spoken, another voice spoke in his head at the same time. This voice was not, however, a part of his catalog of internal voices that he’d become familiar with of late. This was utterly different, independent of his routine self-bashing and the reliving of the trauma of his Divorce or his Depression.

This was not him remembering the cold exactness of Beverley’s words, when she’d sat on the edge of the bed, prior to them turning in for the evening, and said in a matter-of-fact tone:

“I’ve got something to tell you: I don’t want to be married anymore.”

As if ending their fifteen years together was on par with the news that she needed to go to the grocery store in the morning to buy milk. No. Nor was this the constant rehashing of her words and rationales behind the Divorce—most he never knew existed, but she drove home with fierce, hurtful intensity—and her need to be free from him; to reject him.

It wasn’t the usual replay of that particularly dastardly internal tape; the really bad one.

“I have thought about coming back to you—but I don’t want to settle.”

Kirt was well familiar with his own internal hell-alogue and the constant berating drone in his head. What he heard now was not the product of his thoughts. That much was crystal clear. In this instance Kirt couldn’t push away, nor diminish this occupation of his mind by simply yell-thinking:

“Get out of my head! Leave me alone! Just chill, Bill.”

 The words he heard the doll utter, the sword of the lord and all that, and the words he heard in his mind but did not own, overlapped and intertwined, but he could understand them nonetheless and the underlying message was:

“Enemy of God! You must pay for your Godmaking sin. Your death and unending torment will please God. You cannot defeat Him!”

“Nooo!” Kirt yelled. “WHAT…ARE…YOU?”

He surged to his feet to distance himself from the prophet’s ghoulish double sermon. Now he did bring his foot down upon the thing. He worked his leg like a piston and stomped the horrid toy, which transformed into a walrus again somewhere between the fourth and fifth blow of his heel, until the jarring action of his stomps made his shin scream in protest and demanded he stop. Panting, he left the doll there and stared with disbelief at its torn, shredded and misshapen form. It was no longer something a child should play with, if ever it had been. Now it was silent and still.

What the hell did I just kill?

Keeping one eye on the thing, Kirt undid his belt and fumbled with the button and zipper of his slacks until he had them undone as well. He lowered his slacks and inspected the area of his thigh that continued to sting, though the pain had abated since he’d fled his office. He gasped when he saw that a large, purplish blotch covered the affected quarter-sized area like a bad grape juice stain. At the center of the discolored skin he poked his index finger gingerly at two tiny puncture marks. The holes oozed a small amount of blood mixed with some clear fluid he could not identify. He winced and pulled his finger back.

Damned thing bit me!

Kirt’s head began to spin. He steadied himself with his left hand on the sink’s white porcelain coolness and with the other turned on the faucet. The hiss and burble of flowing water comforted Kirt in a strange way; the simple, everyday sound brought normalcy to his senses. He ran his fingers under the tap. Cupping his hands, he filled them—almost prayerfully—with cold water and bent forward to splash his face and wash away something he couldn’t define.

Face dripping, he looked up and into the mirror.

Kirt didn’t see the familiar self that greeted him every morning when he shaved. He didn’t see the small scar under his full bottom lip he’d acquired when at ten–years old he’d fallen out of the old oak tree his dad had told him not to climb, and for which he received the strappin’ he’d been told he’d get if he disobeyed.

His bottom lip wasn’t full now either; it was thinner, stronger.

Kirt’s nose now appeared a little wider than it should be, no longer bent at that familiar soft angle in the middle where a Marine had clocked him years ago in the Navy, when Kirt had defended a guy from one of the Marine’s drunken buddies.

His complexion now appeared in the mirror to be tanned, rough, weathered. Kirt burned in the sun, he did not tan. And, his face didn’t have the mileage that was reflecting back…on his face! And the beard—that coarse, bristling, black thickness hadn’t been there this morning when he’d looked in the mirror wishing he was headed anywhere except to work. Kirt’s red tie was also transformed, now a red design of some sort, familiar, yet unremembered, a shape splayed across a. . .

. . .tunic?

. . .covering some type of chain mail that, Kirt noticed with not a little anxiety, appeared to have actually been used at some point for what it had been fashioned for: Armor.

But, it was the eyes that stared back at him that sent his mind reeling. Those eyes were his eyes: Blue-gray, familiar, self-reflecting, they didn’t belong to the face of the man in the mirror. Kirt Tucker’s eyes shouldn’t be in someone else’s face. That was fundamentally wrong.

Yes, there was something definitely wrong with the Universe.

Kirt’s mental circuitry chose that moment to protect him and blew a breaker: His world began to turn into gray speckling. Before he fell and his head hit the rim of the toilet, on his way down into the darkness, Kirt heard a voice. It was at once his voice, but not his voice. The authoritative voice spoke to him in accent-cloaked words that Kirt heard, but did not understand:

“Min' me; min' ye.”
 

    Then the world turned at a right angle and there was a blinding flash of light.

 

 ************************************************************

Follow J.R. at his website, Twitter, and Goodreads.

"Dark Grace" by M. Lauryl Lewis is FREE from Aug. 16-18

Dark Grace is FREE at Amazon  from August 16-18! Get your copy before it's too late!
 
Summary
The dead rose overnight, claiming the world as their own. A small group of survivors continue to struggle day to day. Now running from both the dead and the living, they will travel from the shores of Puget Sound to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Death and destruction will constantly be at their heels. Trusts have been broken, and the group separated.

Intended for mature audiences due to graphic gore, explicit sexual situations, and language.

Book Three of THE GRACE SERIES

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Find the Grace books at Amazon.

Follow M. Lauryl Lewis at her website, blog, Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter.

"Fallen From Grace" Excerpt

The badass zombie series by M. Lauryl Lewis is sexy and scary in one sizzling bloody headshot. Dark Grace was released in June and continues the erotic horror series' trend of awesome. While Fallen From Grace won't be published until late autumn/early winter, Lauryl has been kind enough to share an excerpt with her fans.

 

FALLEN FROM GRACE

I was unable to unlock my eyes from those of the creature staring back at me. All I could hear in the background were Susan’s sobs, and Abbey screaming. I was unable to make out her words. Gunfire brought me out of the trance I was in, and within a split second the tall creature before me was slumped to the ground. It wasn’t dead, just maimed. I aimed my pistol at its head and fired. It was, oddly, a clean kill. There was no splatter as a result of its head wound. The large maggot-like creature unattached itself from the Runner and began crawling across the asphalt toward me. It was slow and silent as it made its way forward. Not wanting to waste ammo on it, I kicked at its head until it stopped heaving itself toward me. A thick yellow-brown substance seeped from the wound I had inflicted upon its head. The resulting ammonia-like odor was unbearable. I covered my mouth and nose and began coughing. More gunfire in the background caused me to look around. Abbey was kneeling next to Susan. I hadn’t seen such look of despair on her face since the day her sister, Kelsey, had died. Susan looked pale and I knew she was in shock. Her face was bruising and her arm hung limply at her side.

 

As badly as I wanted to rush to her side, my head was buzzing with more of the dead. “Ring around the Rosie” filled the air around us once again with the occasional giggle. There were at least five of them, running around in the shadows of the building and a few stray vehicles. I joined the men and Bobby in taking a stance and quietly guardian the perimeter. There was an ominous feeling heavy in the air around us. It sat heavily upon my shoulders and seemed to fill my lungs. Aside from the children’s song being chanted sporadically and Abbey crying, even the waves from the ocean seemed quiet.

 

“We need to get Sue back into the safe room!” yelled Boggs. “Now!”

 

“They’re all around us,” I said as loudly as I dared.

************************************************

 

Find the Grace books at Amazon.

Follow M. Lauryl Lewis at her website, blog, Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter.

Book Showcase: Ice Cream & Aesop by Keir McCabe

A stunning new book by indie author Keir McCabe. Ice Cream & Aesop is a frank and beautiful journey into the human condition. Get your copy today. Also, follow Keir at Goodreads.

Summary
Solomon McGrath is 29 years old, homeless, and living on the former grounds of Jacobs Ice Cream; a haven for the Rough Sleepers and Street Drinkers of a small town. Based on real events, Ice Cream & Aesop is Solomon’s story; the story of one man’s descent into the gutter, told through the fables of Aesop.

Second Book in the Christian Romantic Fantasy Series

Micah by Dakota Shepherd is now available at Amazon for 2.99. The second book in the Angelic Redemption series follows the fallen angels as they work to reunite Lila's pack and free their lost leader, Micah. 

The first book The Fallen is now .99.

Two more Angelic Redemption novels are expected in 2013. Keep an eye out for Scattered in October and Wounded Soul in December.

Follow Dakota at her blog.

Interview with author Anne Whitney

Anne Whitney is a new indie author who recently published The Art of Love. The New Adult romance has already enchanted readers. Let's learn more about Anne and her writing...

Q: How long have you been writing and when did you decide to indie publish? What was the biggest hurdle in going it alone?

A: I’ve been writing silly little stories for as long as I can remember. The only problem was I never really finished any of them. I’m a bit of a flake plus I had no idea how to actually write a book. You think it’s really easy when you start but suddenly you’re panicking and wondering why the hell you let yourself get into this mess. With this story, I just had an urge to give it a real ending and I pushed myself until it happened. I’ve been fascinated with the rise of self-publishing lately and how it’s opened up reading and writing for so many people. I wanted to get involved. Luckily, I have an amazing friend/publicist who steered me in the right direction and got me through this process. She deserves the Nobel Prize for Patience!

Q: In June, you published your first novel The Art of Love. Can you explain the idea behind the romance? Where did the inspiration come from?

A: I’m a huge geek for modern art and performance art. I’m totally fascinated by it. One night I was watching a documentary called “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present”, which is about one of my favourite artists, the grandmother of performance art. I was totally obsessed with the film and Abramovic’s relationship with her ex-partner and fellow artist Ulay. I wondered what kind of person you had to be to dedicate yourself to the kind of art she does (which includes slicing pentagrams onto her stomach, stabbing at her fingers with knives and standing naked in public). I also wondered what kind of person would fall in love with an artist like that, so I wrote one. I also wanted a romance that wasn’t instant love, one where the heroine had her own struggles to deal with and one where love and lust aren’t the same thing. They’re both awesome but different!

Q: Marina is the heroine in The Art of Love. Can you tell us about her?

A: Marina is messed up and shy, but stronger than she, or anyone else, thinks she is. After a lifetime of abuse and neglect from her dad, she decides one day that enough is enough and she runs away to the one city where she feels she can completely lose herself, New York. Of course, it doesn’t work that way.

Q: The hero is a playboy named Fitz. What makes his character tick?

A: Fitz is that classic artistic mix of internalized parental issues, creative angst, irresistible charm, genuine sweetness and just enough ego to pull off public nudity and call it art. He’s been described as a bad boy but I don’t think he really is. He’s a touch self-absorbed and doesn’t entirely understand how privileged he is, but he loves the people in his life and when he meets Marina, he senses a kindred spirit who he might have more in common with than he cares to admit. I wanted a hero who was charming and far from perfect, because that’s just boring.

Q: What drew you to romance as a genre? Do you plan to branch out to other genres as your career progresses?

A: I love romance and laugh in the face of anyone who sneers at it. It is ridiculously hard to write a great and believable romance novel. Human relationships are tough to capture and even though my book is kinda ridiculous at points with its jumps in plot, I wanted the evolution of Fitz & Marina’s romance to feel authentic. Marina has no idea if she’s even capable of loving someone, much less falling hard and fast after only a couple of weeks. I would love to write in other genres, especially sci-fi, which I’m a total nerd for. I also have a few ideas for other genres, including a psychological thriller in the vein of Gone Girl with a touch of Bond. But my lips are sealed on that front for now!

Q: How do you come up with the names for your characters?

A: Marina was named after Marina Abramovic so that one was pretty easy. For Fitz, I needed something that screamed “privilege” but wasn’t too ridiculous (his full name, however, is totally over the top posh boy because it was just too good to resist!) Names are hard for me. They’re like titles in that I always struggle to find something that fits. Sometimes I ask a friend for help. With Derek, I just stuck that name there as a place-filler until I could come up with something better and it stuck!

Q: Chicken or the egg question. Do you create a character and build around him/her? Or do you imagine a concept and create characters which fit the idea?

A: It depends on the story. For The Art of Love, the concept came first, but with other stuff, I get an image in my head of a certain character and I just have to know what happens to them. I think creating characters is my favourite part of writing.

Q: How do you avoid writing a Mary Sue or Marty Stu when most writers can’t help falling desperately in love with their creations?

A: Oh man, we all struggle with that one! I can safely say that, while the main four characters do share a couple of characteristics with me, I am nothing like my heroine. It’s all about making sure she’s a well-rounded human being, one who is relatable but imperfect and whose decisions make sense, even when they frustrate me or the reader. I’m attached to Marina and Fitz and all my characters, but they’re not my babies. If I can’t control my characters then I’m not doing my job properly.

Q: Do you use anything to inspire you while you’re writing? Music, visual aids, etc? Also have you found ideas come to you more freely in particular places or at certain times of the day?

A: I’m a total geek for research. It’s helpful to have such stuff nearby for certain scenes. Since modern art features prominently in the story, I had an opportunity to go nuts and fuel my art love! There are a few references to modern art pieces and artists in the book. If you spot them, I’ll give you a prize! I can’t write to silence. I need music and I’m obsessed with making playlists for each book (yep, I’m one of those writers!) I actually have a playlist for The Art of Love here, which is made up of music that fits the mood of the story, or stuff I could imagine the characters listening to. When your cast includes a nude performance artist and a drag queen, that list can get pretty eclectic!

Q: When an idea hits you, do you start writing immediately or plot it out first?

A: I like to have at least a vague plot in mind – I also need an ending set out, otherwise it’ll just drag on and go off the rails – but I do like to give myself some wriggle room in case the story spontaneously takes a new turn.

Q: When you read less than fawning reviews, how do you know when to use the critique to improve your future writing and when do you chalk up the criticism as different strokes for different folks?

A: I don’t read all my reviews because I just don’t have the time for it but I try to take something from every review, be it good or bad. Everyone has their own opinion but no one view renders another null and void. I’m keen to grow as a writer and need reviews to help me. Anyone who took the time to buy my book, read it and put their thoughts into a review deserves my respect, even if they loathed every word I wrote. I have no time for those writers who dismiss all forms of criticism as the words of “bitter haters”. No, not haters, just readers, and if they were respectful of you then you owe them your respect. There’s a world of difference between bad reviews and bullying.

Q: I’ve read criticism from particular bloggers (Fangs for the Fantasy being one) about the lack of people of color and different sexual orientations in fiction. Do you take this lack of diversity into consideration when creating plots and characters?

A: As a white author, I am very aware of how privileged I am, and I think it’s hugely important to diversify your fiction. I would be a terrible writer if I wrote a story set in New York and populated it with nothing but straight white people. Fitz’s brother is gay, their best friend is half-Cuban and half-black, and I tried to diversify the side characters as much as possible. I didn’t want their race or sexual orientation to be their sole characteristic, and I didn’t want to resort to tokenism. It’s something that’s always in my mind when I write. If your stories don’t reflect the world in which we live in, even if they’re high fantasy or sci-fi, then there’s a big problem there.

Q: Do word counts mean anything to you? Do you find your books top out at around the same lengths?

A: I try to avoid worrying about my overall word count – I’d rather have quality over quantity – but I do try to keep to a daily word target when writing. My contemporary stuff tends to all come in at roughly the same length. One day I would love to go all out Victor Hugo and write a brick of a novel that you could use to prop your door open on hot days, but for now, I’m just all about the story and not the length.

Q: How big a deal is writer’s block for you and what do you do to shake it off?

A: I’m just getting over a huge bout of block, right in the middle of two projects which I’m writing simultaneously. It sucks! I try not to let myself go too crazy when in the funk of block because then it just becomes a vicious circle. My usual tactic is to walk away from the manuscript and just immerse myself in something that makes me happy, usually DVD boxsets of TV shows (I’m currently going through Game of Thrones). I know in the back of my head that the block will eventually go away. Once it’s gone, I just get back in the saddle.

Q: What books did you enjoy most in 2012?

A: Gone Girl basically consumed my soul. Seriously, I forced about half of my family and co-workers to read that book just so I could have someone to talk about it with! I didn’t read it until this year but a 2012 release I also loved was Easy by Tammara Webber.

Q: What trends do you hope die in 2013? Are there any you hope take off?

A: I’d like to see more non-contemporary romance NA take off (yeah yeah, I know, rich coming from someone who writes contemporary romance NA). New Adult’s still so shiny and new, and we’re all excitedly keeping up with the trends. I think once this strange creature that came out of nowhere settles down a bit, we’ll see some more risks being taken. Everyone has trends, tropes and elements they dislike but if they work for other readers then I can’t judge much. As well as diversity in the work itself, I hope we see more diversity in the discussion of the work. We as authors should be listening to our readers, even the ones who hate our work, because sometimes one person will spot something a hundred others didn’t and their view is just as important.

Q: What are you plans for 2013 as an indie writer?

A: I’m hoping to publish some more stories, including a sequel to The Art of Love and a novella centred on Derek and his life as well as a new book, which I’m currently billing as a New Adult version of Abbi Glines meets Two Broke Girls (but without the tacky racism of the latter). I’m also hoping to write something sci-fi since that’s my real love. Fingers crossed!

Find The Art of Love at Amazon and Smashwords.

Follow Anne at her blog, Twitter, and Goodreads.
 

Damaged and the Knight Now Available!

Now on sale at Amazon, the romance Damaged and the Knight by Bijou Hunter.

Summary
After he saves her from certain death, Tawny Smith falls for her knight in shining armor.

Judd O'Keefe isn't an easy man to love. As an enforcer for the Johansson family business, he hides his heart behind cold walls built from a lifetime of pain. Yet, his angel Tawny awakens a desire in Judd more powerful than he ever imagined possible.

Can a man with blood on his hands heal the damaged girl of his dreams?

Damaged and the Knight is the second book in the Damaged series. It is a full length novel with a HEA. Damaged and the Outlaw is scheduled for release in early autumn.

***Warning: This novel contains scenes of a sexual nature, violent themes, and coarse language. It is intended for mature readers.***