Gwenan Haines

RISKING ETERNITY - FREE on amazon today

2012-02-23T09:28:00.001-08:00

Yep - RISKING ETERNITY is free today on Amazon. Ranked #1000 free in the US and #226 in the UK.

Check it out!

Vampires for Valentines Blog Hop - Thank You!

2012-02-17T19:25:00.001-08:00

Thanks to everyone who commented on the blog hop. Here are the winners (chosen via random.org):

Gift Certificate: Julianne (luvfuzzzeeefaces at yahoo dot com)

E-copies of RISKING ETERNITY:

DarkBloodyVamp aka Ollie (redfirewood888 at yahoo dot ca
Carrie (celjla212 at aol dot com)
Tara W (mizztuts at bellsouth dot net)

Congrats! I'll email you your prizes today.

Gwenan

Six Sentence Sunday #3

2012-02-12T05:17:00.000-08:00

Hayden fought the urge to do something stupid. Like punch his unearthly pale face. Or, even better, knee him in the groin and make a lunge for her weapon. Or kiss him.

She averted her gaze and tried to recall just how much she loathed alpha-male types. No such luck.

--from RISKING ETERNITY

For a chance to win this novel - or a $10 Amazon gift card, leave a comment on the Vampires for Valentines entry below. Thanks!

Happy Sunday,

Gwenan
(illustration by Miah Tankian)

Vampires for Valentines Blog Hop!

2012-02-10T05:27:00.000-08:00

February is the month of love and what do we love more than hot, sexy, dangerous and seductive vampires? Vampires For Valentines Giveaway Hop is all about spreading our love for these supernatural creatures.

Vampires For Valentines Giveaway Hop runs from 12:01am February 10th through to 11:59pm February 16th 2012, and is hosted by Felicity Heaton (Paranormal Romance Author) and Bitten by Paranormal Romance. Giveaway is international.

THE PRIZES

1 $10 dollar Amazon gift card

3 e-copies of Risking Eternity, my vampire novella (see description below)

To win, all you need to do is enter a comment below. I use random.org to pick the winners. Good luck!

Click here, or on list at the bottom of the page to enter other contests: http://www.indieparanormalromancebooks.com/p/vampires-for-valentines-giveaway-hop.html

Six Sentence Sunday #2

2012-01-29T04:42:00.000-08:00

Up above, the lights in Hayden’s apartment flicked off. Valentin stood watching her a few minutes longer, doing his damnedest not to contemplate the all-too-appealing image of his unwitting partner slipping unclothed into bed.

Partner. The word niggled at his impeccable sense of order. Because partner wasn’t quite the appropriate term, now was it? an insistent voice reminded him. Bait was more like it.

In My Mailbox

2012-01-22T05:13:00.000-08:00

Brought to you by The Story Siren.

Here's what I've got to read this week:

The Merzetti Effect by Norah Wilson

Ghost Walk by Heather Graham

Captain Andrew's Flying Christmas by Heather Hiestand

Wild Montana Sky by Debra Holland

Acquainted with The Night by Piper Maitland

Taltos by Anne Rice

Six Sentence Sunday

2012-01-22T04:46:00.000-08:00

From RISKING ETERNITY

If her death meant the end of the killings, wouldn’t that justify it? And if she knew all, wouldn’t Hayden herself be willing to die to stop the evil at last? He suspected she would.

Still, it troubled him.

As the cool night air washed over him Valentin remembered the postcard “Jack the Ripper” had sent to The London Times. The return address had read simply “from hell.”

Blogging at Lia Davis's Site Today

2012-01-20T08:24:00.000-08:00

And I'm giving away a copy of RISKING ETERNITY. If you're interested, check it out! http://www.authorliadavis.com/blog/

Risking Eternity got a 4-cup review recently at Coffee Beans & Loves Scenes. Will post the link soon.

Last but not least, my romantic suspense ms. is awaiting final approval. My editor emailed a couple of days ago that she loved the changes I made. I'm really, really hoping this works out. :)

Indie Hoopla!

2012-01-15T04:56:00.000-08:00

From the Indie Hoopla Site -

"Welcome readers to our first Indie Hoopla event. For eight days, Jan 15 – 22, you’ll get introduced to authors every single day who are sharing their worlds and stories for only 99 cents!

Not only will you get awesome reads, but, for each book you purchase, you will be entered for a chance to win a $25.00 Amazon gift card or $10.00 gift card from the Book Depository (international readers).

All you have to do is forward a copy of the receipt(s) for the books purchased to indiehoopla (at) yahoo (dot) com. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, January 24. A master list of all participating authors can be found HERE. Now, let’s get this party started!"

Click on the icon to the right to see the names of other participants. Hope you'll give these authors a try. Purchase RISKING ETERNITY and be entered for a chance to win.

Offbeat Vagabond Review of Risking Eternity

2012-01-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

Risking Eternity got a wonderful review yesterday on The Offbeat Vagabond

Here's an excerpt:

"I got a request to review this book a few weeks back and again I am so shocked that I get asked to do reviews. And even better, I come across some pretty amazing stuff and this was definitely one of them. This was a 96 page short story that was satisfying from beginning to end."

To read the full review, visit the link above. Thanks, Diana!

Risking Eternity Review

2012-01-07T00:04:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Laurie at Bitten by Paranormal Romance , who gave a 4-howl review to Risking Eternity. Here's what she has to say:

"This novella took me by surprise. I really enjoyed reading it and I liked how Jack the Ripper was tied into the story. Now, from a paranormal romance reader stand point there are some issues. This reads more like an Urban Fantasy because there’s no Happy Ever After (HEA) or a Happy for now (HFN) ending. The thing is this is a trilogy so I hope to see more romance grow between these two in future books because I'm not feeling the love from these two like I’d like too. Now, I have you asking why I rated this 4 right;) The biggest reason is I loved the writing style and it's a darker romance than most that you don't get in most romance books. There are some loose ends that I think will be fulfilled as the series continues. This author has a lot of talent and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.

While Valentin wants to deny his feelings and borderlines on hating Hayden he ends up getting all tied up with her while trying to catch the killer. When things get heated he just has to have her. Hayden is strong and wants to catch the killer, what she doesn’t know is she might be the one that is caught up in the middle more than she knows. I liked reading the characters even the villain. I recommend this to those who wants more hard core vampires."

I agree with what she says about the novella falling more into the urban fantasy genre. I'm not sure if I should be doing anything different in terms of publicizing the book....

New Year's Blog Hop Winners

2012-01-05T13:11:00.001-08:00

Below are the two winners commentators announced by Carrie Ann Ryan:

#192 from Malia Mallory's site - Lilaz won the Kindle Fire. I've already contacted her and her new Kindle should be on its way soon.

#2436 from VK Syke's site - June won the $80 Amazon GC. I've already sent it to her.

The winner of the e-book this blog offered is Orelukjpo. I will be emailing you shortly.

Thanks to everyone who participated. I loved reading about your memories.

Stop by again from February 10 to 16, when I'll be participating in the Vampires for Valentines Gift Hop, which also offers a Kindle as the grand prize.

New Year's Blog Hop

2012-01-04T02:12:00.000-08:00

Leave a comment about your favorite New Year's Memory and be entered to win a Kindle Fire or an $80 Amazon gift card, If you stop on all participating blogs and leave a comment, you'll be entered 65 times!

Here's the link to the list of participating authors. Thanks, Carrie Ann Ryan, for organizing this hop.

Okay...my favorite New Year's Memory...hmmm....when I tried to sit down last night and set down one memory I realized most of my good stories are about other holidays. There's the Halloween my friends and I followed the wrong car to a costume party. After driving down a creepy winding road that seemed to be leadng nowhere the car in front of us pulled over and the elderly driver got out. He took one look at our bizarre assortment of outfits in bewilderment and asked, "Why are you following me?" Then there was the Christmas Eve I spent on a bus with a crying baby when my plane flight got cancelled. Yep, definitely a keeper. Or the time a guy tried to pay me 10 bucks to stand on my blanket at the Hatshell on the Fourth of July. Last but not least is the Valentine's Day I spent in Paris....talking to a stranger who manufactured bras....long story, that one. And despite the fact that we talked about sexy lingerie, it was NOT romantic!

But New Year's? On New Year's things have usually been pretty tame. No Harry-Met-Sally-running-through-New-York declarations of love. No wild parties (okay, not recently). So I'll write about this one.

It was 1999, on the eve of the Millennium. I was three months pregnant, just past the point where I'd begun to show, and I knew my life would change completely in the not-too-distant future. My fiance and I were hanging out in our apartment, watching Dick Clark and drinking champagne. Scratch that. He was drinking champagne. I was drinking OJ and I hadn't had coffee for more than a month, so it was a miracle I wasn't already asleep. Even though I hadn't planned on getting pregnant, I was thrilled. I remember smiling as I heard my father's voice on the other end of the line. He was calling to ask if I'd bought the canned goods he'd told me to, if I had flashlights and spare batteries. It seems crazy now to remember all the hype that went on. But I remember having a little twinge of doubt....was it possible that everything would just stop?

So what's your memory? Leave one here - or just a comment - and be entered to win the grand prize! Look forward to hearing from you.

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-02T10:01:00.001-08:00

One of my top resolutions for the upcoming year is to post on this blog more. I'm a newbie to publishing and am finding it a bit challenging to balance blogging, twittering-and, last but not least, writing. Add to that the chaos of daily life...well, this sparse blog is the result.

But I do hope to write more here - and to post excerpts of my writing on a semi-regular basis. For the past week I've been busy editing my romantic suspense manuscript. The good news is that I heard from the editor of the line I submitted to and she "loved" my story. In fact, she wants to publish it. Hurray!

Sort of. :) She wants me to make a few changes this week before she passes it up the food chain for final contract approval. So for the past few days I've been poring through the manuscript in search of any discrepancies. I've also ended up adding a few scenes so the length is up to 70,000 words now. It was a complicated novel to plot - I'd never tried a mystery before - and I hope I've got all the little glitches worked out. If all goes well I should be done editing in another day or two and then I'll send it on...and wait. Fingers crossed.

After that, I'll return to the second in the vampire series I recently started. And I plan to start working seriously on the second book in the Rakes & Rogues series. The second Rakes & Rogues novella is significantly longer - and more involved - than the first story. There is a ton of research involved, too, which slows things up. But I love Victorian England; it's one of my favorite eras.

So that's the run down for my writing over the next few months. Thanks for stopping by my blog and best of luck with your own resolutions.

I'm off to walk my husky,

Gwen

New Year's Blog Hop

2012-01-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

To kick off 2012, I'm participating in Carrie Ann Ryan's New Year's blog hop! Please stop back by next Wednesday, Jan 4th.

There are more than 65 participants with prizes and giveaways. We'll all be posting our favorite New Year's memories - and giving away copies of our books. If you leave a comment on my New Year's post, you'll be eligible to win a free copy of Risking Eternity: A Paranormal Vampire Novella OR Rescued by a Rake, which is #3 in Regency Bestsellers on amazon.

There are TWO grand prizes:

First grand prize is a Kindle Fire

Second grand prize is an $80 Amazon GC

Hope to see you here. :)

Book Lovers' Buffet To Open December 1

2011-11-30T08:06:00.000-08:00

Check out this article on the Book Lovers' Buffet, which starts tomorrow. All books - including mine - are available for .99 cents. There are some great books listed at great prices.

http://www.examiner.com/romance-novel-in-national/book-lovers-buffet-photo

Enchanted Times

2011-11-30T07:57:00.000-08:00

Just got an acceptance from Enchanted Times.
"Glass," a flash fiction twist on the "Red Riding Hood" tale will appear in an upcoming issue.

Looks like an interesting little magazine.

Excerpt from Risking Eternity - 99 cents on Amazon

2011-11-26T04:28:00.000-08:00

“There were two distinct clean cuts on the left side of the spine. They were parallel with each other and separated by about half an inch. The muscular structures appeared as though an attempt had made to separate the bones of the neck. There were various other mutilations to the body, but he was of the opinion that they occurred subsequent to the death of the woman, and to the large escape of blood from the division of the neck.”—actual testimony of Dr.George Bagster Phillips, Inquest on the Death of Annie Chapman, London, 1888

Chapter 1

She wasn’t his type.

Valentin watched Hayden Farrell from the safety of his suite in the five-star hotel across the street from the crime scene. The room was untouched except for his dark coat laid out across the bed. He hadn’t even bothered to turn on a light. Why should he? He had checked in shortly after the murder occurred and would leave within the hour, long before the Boston P.D. detective finished what she had come to do. From the other side of the window came the sounds of the street, the distant wail of an ambulance.

A ragged group of onlookers had gathered around the perimeter of the yellow police tape. It was bitterly cold outside, even for December, but it was Saturday night in downtown Boston so there were plenty of people curious enough to put their plans on hold to get a glimpse of the body. Boston Common, with its lit trees and crowded skating rink, was just a few blocks away. But on this darkened street death had struck a less festive note.

The dead prostitute lay at the center of the roped-off sidewalk, her rail-thin body curled into a fetal position. Her black, low-cut outfit and unnaturally red hair—intended, no doubt, to add years and sophistication—made her seem even more like a child. Which, Valentin thought cynically, was exactly what she was. Or had been, until the man she’d taken for an easy mark had carved up her face then sunk his fangs into her neck and extricated every last drop of blood.

His spot behind the curtain gave Valentin a near-perfect view of the scene and though he couldn’t clearly make out individual faces, he had seen enough of tragedy to know their expressions would be an unsettling mix of sadness and barely suppressed excitement.

They were watching her too, Valentin knew. He was certain they couldn’t help but be impressed by her cool-headedness, the way she seemed to have been through this sort of thing before. Only he sensed that she hadn’t—that everything including the city itself was unfamiliar to her. Hayden Farrell was an outsider and that made her vulnerable, which pleased him.

He was counting on that vulnerability.

As Hayden bent toward the man photographing the dead girl and whispered something in his ear, Valentin wondered what it was she had tried to escape from and if she had succeeded. But his curiosity couldn’t be sated, at least not yet. She was too far beyond his ability to sense actual thoughts. All he could pick up on were her emotions and even that was surprising. Usually he couldn’t do it, not from this distance, not with someone he’d never spoken to before.

He studied Hayden closely in an effort to find something familiar about her – some overlooked detail that would reveal he had in fact known her at some point. She was slim, on the tall side, with pale blonde hair worn pulled back into a severe bun. Her clothes were simple to the point of being downright plain and she wore no jewelry. There was something tomboyish about her, the way she walked. Something cold as well, Valentin thought.

If he hadn’t known better he would have guessed that she was one of the undead—or even a Watcher—but that wasn’t possible. He would have picked up on any trace of that immediately. Valentin reached into his pocket and brought out a pair of small binoculars, focusing them on Hayden’s face. Delicate features, high cheekbones, porcelain skin.

She would be perfect. Or damned close to it. He wondered what color her eyes were.

It was odd nonetheless: the intensity with which he wasn’t attracted to her. Though on second thought, he supposed it did make sense. He had lived as a vampire for more than a century but it was the years before his transformation—not the present—that seemed most real to him.

Odd, too, that at the core of Hayden’s heart was a kind of blankness. He could feel even from this distance the cool fire that fueled her intellect. Even the sight of a teen-age prostitute lying dead on the street, her face mutilated beyond recognition, hadn’t phased the detective all that much. The fishnet stockings, black stilettos and leather mini-skirt weren’t sad for Hayden, they were merely details to be recorded and analyzed. Upon her arrival Valentin had sensed a flare of anger, followed by a mostly successful attempt to quell her sense of inadequacy, but that was all. Now Hayden was all business as she oversaw the crime scene, in control, like a maestro conducting a symphony.

She was a natural.

The crowd parted to allow the ambulance to inch its way slowly forward. Its lights still flashed though the siren had been turned off. He watched as the EMTs went around toward the back and lowered the gurney onto the pavement. There was no urgency in their movements, no race against time. They were simply doing what needed to be done. Carefully, they lifted the body onto the gurney and draped a sheet over her body. As they maneuvered their way back toward the ambulance the crowd fell silent. Valentin felt it too and shuddered at the ugliness of death, its finality.

Annika’s face flashed across memory. He closed his eyes and saw her death for the thousandth time: her body sprawled lifeless across the cobblestone street, her fiery hair illuminated by the flickering of a streetlamp. Valentin remembered how snow had swirled out of the blackness and settled lightly onto her corpse. A few drops of blood had trickled from the puncture marks on her neck, crimson against the white, and he had raised his eyes to find himself staring at Whitechapel Church. At the time it had meant nothing to him but later he realized Annika must have been running from her killer, running toward the only place she would be safe from him.

She had almost made it.

Almost, but not quite. He had never understood why the obvious hadn’t occurred to the police. After all, the pieces had been right there in front of them. Even the reputable London Times had reported on the curious lack of blood at “Jack’s” crime scenes, the way the victims’ throats had been slashed, their bodies mutilated. But instead of seeing the obvious investigators had grasped at any theory that would not require them to veer too close toward the supernatural. The lack of blood, they had told reporters, was due to the fact that the victims had been strangled before death. Because the dead don’t bleed. Everybody knows that.

But even he hadn’t guessed. Not right away.

Valentin pulled a chair up to the window and sat down. Down below, the ambulance was pulling away. The crowd had already begun to scatter and a few of the police officers were returning to their cars. Aside from a stray reporter who trailed an officer in hopes of getting more information, most of the press was gone. For now, the excitement was over.

Only she didn’t seem ready to leave. Hayden stood alone at the center of the crime scene, studying the plastic markers that outlined the body as if they could tell her something. Valentin watched her a few moments longer then lowered the binoculars. He was tempted to leave the suite in order to get a closer look at the crime scene but thought better of it. He had seen it earlier, in graphic detail, and he doubted there was anything new to be learned. The real temptation, of course, was her. To get a better look at her, to read her thoughts at close range. But he didn’t want to get too close, not yet.

Hayden Farrell definitely wasn’t his type. But he needed her. Or, to be precise, he needed to use her. And he didn’t have much time.

***

Hayden finished toweling herself dry and slipped into the red silk robe hanging on the back of her bathroom door. She gave her naked body a cursory glance in the steamy mirror as she tied the robe and ran a comb through her long, wet hair. She looked tired, pale, utterly worn out by what she had had to do earlier that night. Thirty isn’t so bad, she told her reflection with significantly less enthusiasm than usual.

She would feel better after a drink and some food, she thought, trying to remember when she had last eaten. Padding down the hallway of her Beacon Hill apartment toward the walk-in kitchen, she poured herself a glass of cheap wine and switched on the small t.v. on the counter. It was a little before 11 o’clock, so she was just in time to hear the local news. She grabbed a package of turkey out of the fridge and began making herself a sandwich as a local newscaster informed the world about the brutal murder of a high-priced call girl whose identity had not yet been released.

Hayden stopped what she was doing and turned toward the set, a little surprised that the station had run the death as its lead story. Probably because the girl hadn’t been the typical garden-variety type of prostitute, she concluded, wondering how many wealthy married men were watching the broadcast with more than casual interest. She waited to see whether the newscaster would say anything more. Aside from the name of the agency on the girl’s business card, which Hayden had deliberately leaked in hopes of gaining information about her identity, there was no other information.

She felt a twinge of relief. So they hadn’t seen anything.

As the newscaster moved on to the next story, Hayden downed the rest of her wine and contemplated pouring herself a second glass but decided against it. It had been a long, tedious night and she had gotten nowhere. The dead girl was young and, not surprisingly, had no identification on her other than an escort agency calling card with the name “Autumn Skye” embossed on it. Not her real name, Hayden guessed, but she had expected that. Teen-age girls who engaged in illegal activity usually had enough foresight not to carry anything that would give away their true identities. Still, she had hoped for something more—a cell phone with texts from friends, or at least from a couple of the Johns who were her regular customers. Ideally, there would have been something indicating where and who she planned to meet, but a thorough search of Autumn’s body hadn’t turned up even a receipt for cigarettes. And of course the agency listed on the card claimed the girl had never worked there.

Whoever Autumn Skye was, she hadn’t had a chance. Hayden still wasn’t sure how she had died—only the autopsy report would tell her that—but she kept going back to the two puncture wounds on the girl’s neck. Despite Hayden’s arrival just minutes after the murder, the girl’s slashed face had been deathly pale, the body already cold. Cold bodies were stiff, but Autumn’s corpse had been limp as a rag doll.

Almost as if

Hayden forced thought out of her mind. Clearly the wine had gone to her head. Because the word vampire had burned itself into her brain from the moment she had bent down over the corpse and seen the marks. She had purposely interrupted the police photographer before he had been able to take close-ups of the girl’s scarred face and neck. Then, when he had his back turned, Hayden had arranged the girl’s hair in such a way that no one but her had seen the twin punctures on the right side of the neck.

Hayden shouldn’t have done it and she wasn’t even sure what had driven her to do so. In fact, it was the first time in her fledgling career as a detective with the Boston P.D. that she had done anything that wasn’t strictly by the book. If it came out that she had deliberately concealed evidence Hayden would very likely be dismissed without so much as a handshake. All she knew was that she had felt she must not allow anyone else to learn about the puncture marks.

What the hell was I thinking, Hayden wondered as she switched off the t.v. Despite the fact that she had grown up in New Orleans—or maybe because of it—Hayden was a Skeptic with a capital S when it came to the paranormal. Ghosts, werewolves, vampires, shape shifters and anything else “supernatural” were nothing more than scams to make money as far as Hayden was concerned. She still felt the same rush of shame when she remembered the years of her childhood spent assisting her mother, a self-proclaimed psychic who raised “spirits” for grieving relatives in a darkened room at the back of their tiny apartment. Before she could even spell her own name, Hayden knew how to float objects using a fishing rod, how to pull on an invisible thread and fill a room with the eerie whine of a violin. Destiny Farrell made sure of that.

Hayden pushed the memories of her mother out of her mind. Wherever Destiny was, Hayden didn’t doubt she was still ripping off anybody gullible enough to pay her a few bucks. As for Autumn Skye, Hayden didn’t know what had pierced her neck but she did know it damn well wasn’t vampire fangs. It occurred to her that maybe the wounds weren’t even related to the death—that the only “evidence” she had tampered with was evidence relating some weird sexual game the girl had been a part of when she was doing business earlier that night. For some reason, that possibility was very appealing.

Because there was one thing that had been bothering her all evening. When she had prevented the photographer from seeing the girl’s neck Hayden had felt almost as if she weren’t acting of her own free will. The hand that reached down to cover the wounds with the girl’s long badly dyed hair had seemed to do so on its own, as if some greater force had momentarily overpowered her. At one point the feeling had grown so strong that Hayden had raised her gaze to the hotel across the street and scanned the windows. She remembered seeing the flicker of a curtain behind a window. There had been a glint of light. Binoculars?

The memory sent a stab of fear through her that was sharp enough to kick her logical side into high gear. Certainly there would have been someone watching, she told herself firmly. There had been lots of people watching. Wouldn’t it be only natural for some overly zealous tourist to be standing at his window training a pair of binoculars on the dead girl?

Only they hadn’t been focused on the dead girl. They had been focused on her. Hayden couldn’t say why she felt—knew—that. But she did. The word why formed in her mind.

Why her?

Hayden almost laughed out loud. God, she really was tired, if she was getting this paranoid her first night on the case. Definitely time for bed. She cleaned up her few dishes and turned off the lights. She was about to return to her bedroom when something made her hesitate. Hayden walked over to the large bay window that offered a glimpse of the Boston skyline. It wasn’t her skyline, not yet—the pull of New Orleans was still stronger than the allure of the wintry city—but it was beautiful. Lowering her gaze to the street below, Hayden assured herself that nothing was amiss. The neighborhood was quiet, empty.

So why did she have the impression she was being watched?

Flash Fiction in Next Issue of Mirror Dance

2011-11-26T04:26:00.000-08:00

Keep forgetting to mention I've got a short interview and retelling of the "Snow White" tale forthcoming in the winter issue of Mirror Dance. This is a great online fantasy magazine - check it out.

All Things Bronte

2011-10-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

Found this Bronte Blog this morning while researching my new novella. Not surprisingly, considering the setting of my first novella, I'm a huge Bronte fan. Emily is my favorite Bronte sister but I also love Charlotte's novels. Apparently Jane Eyre is a musical. Who knew?

Rescued by a Rake Available on Amazon

2011-10-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

My new e-novella, Rescued by a Rake, is available for .99 cents on Amazon. Check it out!

Enjoy!