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Wednesday, November 13, 2013

WRITER WEDNESDAY featuring ADRIENNE THOMPSON

Welcome to another WRITER WEDNESDAY. This week, I would like to introduce you to the amazing ADRIENNE THOMPSON and her latest release "YOUR LOVE IS KING."


Divorced nurse and single mom, Marli Meadows, finds herself stuck in a rut. She’s tired of her life and decides to leave it behind and embark on a search for change. What she finds instead, is love.


Excerpt:

From Chapter One: “You’re Not the Man

I rolled over in the bed after a short nap, opened my eyes, and nearly jumped out of my skin. For a brief moment, I’d forgotten that Darius was lying next to me. The sight of him lying there asleep with his mouth wide open startled me.
I eyed him with disgust as I tried to ease out of bed undetected. I slid and slid until my feet finally reached the floor, then I tiptoed through the cluttered efficiency apartment into the bathroom. I peered into the smudged mirror and wondered to myself, What are you doing, Marli Meadows? Why are you here with him? I shook my head as if the mere action could erase my relationship with Darius Cotton right out of my life.
I squatted over the toilet and relieved myself, afraid to sit on the seat. Knowing Darius, there was no telling how many other butts had been on that seat. I turned the water in the faucet on to a slow trickle, still not wanting to awaken Darius, and washed my hands. I dried them with some toilet paper and then quickly pulled my underwear and work uniform back on and slowly opened the creaky bathroom door.
I exited the bathroom and found Darius sitting on the side of the bed, lighting up a blunt. Dang! I thought, if I don’t get out of here quick, I’ll be smelling just like that stuff and probably get a contact high. It’d be my luck for them to pop up with a random drug test at work and that crap’ll show up.
“You leaving, baby?” he grunted between drags. He rubbed his hand across his bare chest and stretched. I eyed his nakedness as I walked back into the room.
“Yeah, it’s already eleven. I gotta go home and get some rest for work tonight,” I answered as I gathered up my purse and slipped on my shoes.
With a lopsided grin on his face, he revealed two rows of shiny gold teeth and said, “Yeah, cause you know if you stay here you gon’ have to put in some more work, huh?”
Ugh, I thought. “Yeah, well, I’ll talk to you later, Darius.”
“A’ight, come give me a kiss, boo.”
I swallowed hard. I know this sounds strange considering the fact that I’d just had sex with him, but the thought of kissing him really didn’t appeal to me. It took all I had in me to walk over to him, bend over, and plant a kiss on his dark lips.
He swatted my butt. “A’ight girl, I’ll holla at you later. Don’t work too hard tonight.”
I nodded. “I won’t. Bye, Darius.”
“Bye, Mar-lay.”
I shook my head as I closed the door behind me. We’d been “seeing” each other for nearly two years, and he still mispronounced my name. Well, it was either that or he was just so country that it sounded like he was mispronouncing it.  Whichever was the case, it was irritating.
I walked down the steep stairs from Darius’s apartment out onto the parking lot.  I unlocked and then climbed into my Toyota Camry which was parked right next to Darius’s souped-up Chevy Caprice. I rolled my eyes at the repeated Louis Vuitton logos covering his car. I backed out of my space and glanced at his license plate which read, SMOKONE. I sighed as I pulled off the lot.

    Purchase Links:
Amazon UK: http://ow.ly/qL1C3




Author Bio:
Adrienne Thompson has worn many titles in her lifetime–from teenage mother to teenage wife to divorcee to registered nurse to author. This mother of two young adults and one teenager currently resides in Arkansas with her daughter where she writes and publishes her stories full time.





You can connect with her on:

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Synopsis for WAR ANGEL II

***SPOILER ALERT***
IF YOU HAVE NOT READ WAR ANGEL PART 1, STOP READING NOW!

So, you've read "War Angel" and hoped that Jahaira and Lenox's lives might continue into an almost-perfect, Happily Ever After? Well, ahhhh, not exactly. Because YOU, the readers have pressured me for it, I've decided to continue the story of these two young lovers. The 2nd book picks up a few months after the events of the first book and at first, it sure does seem like they've found peace. Of course, we all know that THAT will certainly not last, especially with Jahaira's twin aunts, Anya and Anika still alive. If you thought Carmen was a villain worthy of well-deserved hatred...I've got news for you. You ain't seen nothin' yet! In "War Angel II: Where Angels Fear to Tread" I delve deeper into Jahaira's eerily mysterious family history and introduce some new, dangerous players on the chessboard. This book also has a darker feel to it and I promise you a whole different kind of deadly. No one will escape without scars. You'll have to read it to find out what's at stake.

Pre-orders begin on BLACK FRIDAY


Friday, November 8, 2013

War Angel II: Where Angels Fear to Tread - Sneak Peek

I couldn't have been more pleased than when I got a surprise from the amazingly talented A-Marie Walter of www.estetikaexposure.com late last night. She emailed the final cover for WAR ANGEL II: Where Angels Fear to Tread. (I actually woke my kids up to take a look) I haven't stopped working to finish the novel or smiling since. As promised, here's the sneak peek I promised for today and as a bonus, I'm also sharing the cover. As always, feel free to leave comments and feedback. (Please pardon any typos.) Enjoy.

WAR ANGEL II
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Copyright © 2013 Keith Kareem Williams
All rights reserved.


CHAPTER 1 – The 7th Month

Such secluded, charming, rustic tranquility was supposed to be relaxing but all it really did was make Jahaira ache for the familiar ruckus of the places she was used to. The gentle hush of the evening hours probably brought a certain kind of comfort to people who sought peace but she was more inclined to compare it to being trapped in a padded room. Only the muted symphony of insects and critters merrily making their noises disturbed the silence so as quiet as it was, her new home happened to be very crawly. They had purchased the country house in the dead of winter so they had no idea how alive the place would become because everything crawled, scampered, flew or slithered had been hiding from the bitter cold. Things were very different now that the summer heat had put its lips to the ground and kissed the countryside, as she liked to call the lonely suburbs where they lived now. After weeks of warm weather, it was still unsettling for a woman who had been raised in a much more urban environment, caged in by towering buildings and rocked to sleep by all of the sounds of insomniac streets since she was a baby. Never in her life would she have ever believed that she could desperately long for the screeching, twisted metal screams of traffic accidents, the violent swearing that accompanied a good street fight, or the wails of police cars and fire truck sirens. Trying to guess what types of bugs buzzed around was a sharp contrast to trying to tell the difference between cars backfiring, fireworks or gunshots. Living in such seclusion was way too strange for her to ever get used to. Country Life was not for her. She was slightly ashamed to admit that she missed walking down crowded streets, surrounded by people trying to keep up with the latest fashion and shopping til she dropped. In less than a New York City minute she would have traded the flying pests that constantly dined on her flesh for a fearless, subway rat or a super-sized cockroach or two. She guessed that city girl must have been a delicacy to them the way they attacked her. She imagined how messy she must have looked, caught outside in the cruel embrace of the sweltering heat, sitting on her porch in her sunflower-yellow summer dress, barefoot and pregnant with sweat trickling down the middle of her back.
“Ouch!” she cried out as some sneaky, flying thing bit her on the left side of her neck.
With a lightning-quick, heavy-handed slap, she flattened the bug’s body into a messy mangle of crushed wings and broken, spindly legs. That was your last meal buddy, she thought as she scraped what was left of it off of her neck. After wiping her hand clean of the bug goop on the hem of her dress, she turned her attention back to the huge, untidy front yard and the lonely road beyond it that led up to the house. The fireflies’ butts lit up, turning off and on in random intervals as they hovered like helicopters, just above the grass she kept asking Lenox to cut, in their beautiful aerial ballet. As she watched them, they reminded her of lazy afternoons spent in the backyard of her parents’ house in the summertime. Even in the middle of the city, the fireflies had danced there as well. She wondered if any still showed up to glow above the charred ruins that had once been her home. She was still conflicted and confused about how she should feel about her mother burning to death in that house. Carmen had done her fair share of wicked things but that was not the end Jahaira would have wished on her. The familiar sound of Lenox’s car coming up the road made her heart flutter and pulled her away from melancholy thoughts of that could not be undone.
She was sure that every mosquito for miles must have choked to death on the powder-white smoke that spewed from the old, black Mustang’s exhaust. After spending hours that actually felt like days alone, she was almost giddy that he was finally home. Lately, she had also had the unmistakable feeling of unseen eyes on her whenever she was outside the house. She sighed, relieved when he parked in front of the house.
“I still don’t see why you didn’t buy a better car than that old piece of shit on four wheels. You’re lucky that it even makes it down to the city and back without breaking down,” Jahaira coughed as he got out of the car and walked towards her.
“We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile out here. How inconspicuous would a young black guy in an eighty thousand-dollar car be? Our friendly neighbors would have the local cops pulling me over every night on my way home, searching my trunk for drugs or mistakin’ me for their kids’ favorite rapper and askin’ for my autograph,” he joked before he leaned down to playfully kiss her on the nose. He thought it was cute how chubby her face had become over the past few months.
“Neopolitan again?” she complained after she looked inside the plastic grocery store bag he handed her.
“Well, ‘round these here parts we only gots us a gas station convenience store lil lady and there ain’ts too much to choose from,” he answered in a fake hillbilly accent. “Now, if someone had asked for ice cream while I was still down in the city, before I was almost home, I might have been able to get that person whatever flavor they wanted from a real supermarket.”
“I know, I know…but I get my cravings at weird times,” she answered.
“No one knows that better than me.”
“Oh shut it. You love being my little errand boy,” she giggled.
“Let’s get off this porch before these bugs eat us alive,” he said as he swatted at a mosquito the size of a fighter jet that seemed intent on landing on his forehead.
He held her hand and helped her to her feet. Even under her loose-fitting dress, he saw that her belly was huge and loved her even more because she carried his unborn child. She groaned as she walked with her own palm pressed against her lower back because of the consistent discomfort and agonizing aches. Just before she waddled in side behind him, she could have sworn that someone was in the bushes, just beyond their front yard. She looked back over her shoulder before Lenox closed their front door but whatever, or whoever it might have been was gone.
“What’s wrong?” Lenox asked.
“Nothing,” she answered. “It’s this heat. I think it’s playing with my mind.”

***

“So, how’s business?” Jahaira asked as she used her spoon to carefully scoop out only the strawberry ice cream into her favorite, rainbow-colored bowl. She wasn’t in the mood for the chocolate or the vanilla.
“Business is good. Some music video vixen chick’s sugar daddy rented four limos for her birthday bash at one of the big strip clubs in Manhattan. The cheap, arrogant, dickhead felt like I didn’t give him a big enough discount so he was about to look for another company but Emily handled it. She worked out a deal on bottle service for him with the strip club owner so he changed his mind and stayed with us. You know, she sat behind that receptionist’s desk at the office for years but I probably could have let her run the whole place for me a long time ago. She’s good at it and people like her.”
“Well, that’s great. That means that once the baby comes you can be here with me and leave her in charge, at least for a little while.”
“Awww, you’re so sweet. You really do miss me when I’m gone don’t you?”
“I do,” she mumbled with a mouthful of the blandest strawberry ice cream she had ever tasted. “It’s lonely and boring being here by myself. It drives me crazy.”
“I’ve been thinking about hiring a nurse to stay with you.”
“I don’t need a nursemaid. I’m not an old lady,” she complained.
“But you ARE pregnant and you could use the help.”
“I already have help. I have you. I’m not sure about how I feel about a stranger living with us.”
“Yeah, I understand that but if the baby comes early, or something goes wrong, we’re really far from the hospital. I would feel much better if someone was here with you that could help out medically in case of an emergency.”
“Fine, but no creepy old ladies.”
“Definitely not!”
“And no hot, young chicks with big butts either. I know what you like Mister,” she said as she got up from the kitchen table, turned around and slapped her own butt.
“Dammit! I never get to have any fun. Why you gotta go and ruin my plans?” he joked.
“Shut up,” she laughed. “C’mon, let’s go take a bath.”

***

The enormous bathroom was one of the few things that Jahaira actually liked about their new home and she really loved the huge, white, antique, claw-footed bathtub which was a welcomed change from the tiny shower in the apartment in Brooklyn. The lovers fit together comfortably in the old-fashioned, vintage tub. She stretched her legs out all the way to Lenox’s chest so he could massage her swollen feet. Pregnancy had not been very kind to her and she suffered since she had discovered that she was with child. The nausea hadn’t gone away like her obstetrician had promised. Besides that, her feet and back ached constantly without mercy. Occasionally she would cry while looking in the mirror because of how round and bulbous her nose had become, almost as if it was trying to match her chunky, chipmunk cheeks. Lenox loved to pinch her face but she prayed that after the baby was born she could lose all of the weight she had grudgingly gained. It felt like wishful thinking because she didn’t see how her body could ever go back to being what it was. She was certain that the stretch marks were there to stay. She sighed, closed her eyes and concentrated on her foot massage. His hands caressing away the pain in the soles of her feet felt almost as good as sex. On most days, they hurt so badly that she tried not to walk anywhere unless she absolutely had to. If he kept making her feel as good as he was, she was going to give him some after their bath, big belly or not. Her engorged boobs had grown at least a whole cup size and it hurt when anything touched her nipples so, if they did have sex later on, she wasn’t going to let him suck on them.
Jon, Maragaret chance, Wolf, Caesar, Anna and Hector were the names on Lenox’s mind as he rubbed Jahaira’s feet, eternally written in red ink in his ledger. Some had deserved their final fate more than others. He didn’t include Carmen on that list because technically, he hadn’t been directly, or indirectly, involved in her death. No one was entirely sure how she met her fiery demise and mysteriously burned up in her own house but he was pretty damn sure that Hector had a hand in that bit of vicious business. As for as the others, he sometimes saw their faces in his dreams but he did not fear them. They were only ghosts that lived in the part of his mind that controlled guilt. The people who hadn’t been sent screaming to the afterlife were the ones that frightened him. Anya and Anika, Jahaira’s twin aunts were still very much alive and that concerned him a great deal. He was sure that somewhere, they were laying low, licking their wounds, concocting some unholy plan to take revenge for their older sister’s death. That was why he purchased a house so far outside of the city. It was thoughts of those two pale demons that kept him up at night. That pair of witches was responsible for every unexplained chill he felt. Inside the shadows of every dark corner, he thought he saw their eerie blue eyes watching him and half-expected their cold hands to claw at his ankles from under the bed like some horror concocted in a child’s nightmares. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he and Jahaira were safe, that they had escaped, deep down he believed that it was only a matter of time before the twins tracked them down. When they did, he would kill them before he let them harm Jahaira or the baby.
“I miss Granny,” said Jahaira as she rinsed the soap from her shoulder with her washcloth. “Did you get a chance to check on her today?”
“I did. She’s grateful that you wanted to give her the insurance money from the fire at your parents’ house but she said that you should keep it for the baby.”
“I don’t want any of that money.”
“That’s what I told her but she insisted. You know how stubborn your grandmother is. Anyway, I eventually got her to accept the check but she said that as soon as we decide on a name, she’s going to open a bank account for the baby.”
“And speaking of naming our little bundle of joy, when are we going to?” Jahaira asked.
“After he or she is born,” he answered.
“Well, I’ve been thinking of names and I’ve come up with the perfect one. I want to name the baby…” she started to say.
“Shush!” he cut her off.
“But why? I really want to tell you.”
“And I told you that I don’t want to know if it’s a boy or girl until AFTER you give birth. I understand that they already told you the baby’s sex after the sonogram but I want to be surprised.”
“You’re so stubborn, AND weird,” she growled, shaking her head, annoyed that he wouldn’t let her share the big secret with him.
“But that’s why you love me,” he answered and playfully splashed water in her face.
“Because of you, I have to be buying all of the baby stuff in duck yellow or that awful pistachio green.”
“Our little one is growing inside you. You’re connected to our child and you can feel the baby every day. I just want to be surprised when the day comes that I finally meet my son or daughter face-to-face. I want to hear the doctor say, ‘It’s a girl’ or ‘It’s a boy.’ I want to experience that, especially with my first child.”
“You can be so soft and sentimental sometimes.”
“But that’s another reason why you love me.”
“That’s true,” she answered, standing up and carefully stepping out of the tub. “Come, let’s go to bed,” she said as she wrapped herself in her favorite fluffy towel.

***

In the bedroom, Lenox started to step into one of the pairs of basketball shorts he usually slept in but Jahaira stopped him. She kissed him like a wild woman which totally caught him by surprise because for the last few weeks, she had been uncharacteristically, sexually passive. When she pulled her lips away from his, she climbed up on the mattress and bent over so that he could take her from behind. Her belly got in the way in most other positions but she didn’t mind doing it like that and as unladylike as it may have sounded, doggy-style was one of her favorite sexual positions anyway.
“Not too rough. Remember what the doctor said. I don’t want to go into labor,” she reminded him.

“I’ll be gentle,” he answered and then slowly worked his way inside her.