Cover Reveal - Colorless by Rita Stradling

Colorless by Rita Stradling
Publication date: August 2017
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

In Domengrad, there are rules all must live by: Fear the Gods. Worship the Magicians. Forsake the Iconoclasts.

To Annabelle Klein, the rules laid down by the Magicians are the mere ramblings of stuffy old men. As far as she’s concerned, the historic Iconoclasts, heretics who nearly destroyed the Magicians so long ago, are nothing but myth. She has much more important matters to worry about.

Heiress to a manor mortgaged down to its candlesticks and betrothed to her loathsome, lecherous cousin, sixteen-year-old Annabelle doubts the gods could forsake her more.

Then Annabelle is informed of her parents’ sudden and simultaneous deaths, and all of the pigment drips out of her skin and hair, leaving her colorless. Within moments, Annabelle is invisible and forgotten by all who know her.

Living like a wraith in her own home, Annabelle discovers that to regain her color she must solve the mystery behind her parents’ murders and her strange transformation.

Meanwhile, hundreds of the Magicians’ monks, with their all-black eyes and conjoined minds, have usurped control of Annabelle’s family manor. An Iconoclast is rumored to be about—a person who they claim goes unseen, unheard, and lost to memory, yet is the greatest threat to all of Domengrad. For the first time in a hundred years, the monks plan to unleash the dire wolves of old.

Their only target: Annabelle.

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Author Bio

 

Rita Stradling is the author of The Deception Dance series, the Dakota Kekoa series and The Fourteen Day Soul Detox Novella Serial. She has a BA in Art History and a particular love for modern and medieval art.

Rita lives with her husband and son in Northern California.

She has an insatiable novel addiction and mostly reads young adult and adult: romance, paranormal, urban fantasy and high fantasy.

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Book Blitz + Giveaway - Painting Sky (Painting Sky #1) by Rita Branches

Painting Sky by Rita Branches
(Painting Sky #1)
Publication date: April 25th 2016
Genres: New Adult, Romance

Nobody ever said life was easy…

People pleaser, Jane Skylar wants nothing more than to earn her art degree, start her life, and bask in the bliss of living with her boyfriend.

But things don’t always go as planned…

Struggling with her creative side, Jane finds herself in turmoil, often confiding in her roommate – another, more talented art student, Keith Hale. Keith just so happens to be her boyfriend’s older, brooding brother. After a devastating breakup, Jane turns to Keith for comfort. But when the lines blur between roommate and lover, Jane’s life becomes more complicated than ever before.

When Keith’s past comes back to haunt him, their lives all get turned upside down, forcing the truth to surface. Now Jane must fight for what she wants–even if it hurts everyone she loves.

*It’s a Stand-alone*

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EXCERPT:

The next towels were easier. I was getting colder and so tired that my eyes started to shut and I dozed off. When the towel on my stomach was removed, the breeze on my skin made me shiver and woke me up.

“Just one more time, and then we’ll check if the fever has lowered.” He changed the towels again. I had stopped feeling awkward about the lack of clothes a long time ago: maybe between the cold towel or the scared look on Keith’s face.

My shivering never stopped. After Keith took all the towels from my body, I just wanted to curl up and sleep. The sheets were wet, though, as well as my clothes. Keith left for a minute and I opened one eye to see him standing at the door, frowning.

“What is it now?”

“I can’t find any clean sheets,” he answered. I wasn’t feeling good enough today to do laundry, so the other set was dirty.

“Come on. Try sitting up.” Keith opened one of my drawers.

“What are you doing?” It was where I kept my underwear. He ignored my protests and took some black cotton panties and a matching tank top and placed them on the bed.

“I’ll be in the hallway. Call me when you’re done—unless you want my help.” His smirk was weak, but I knew he was trying to make me smile. I shooed him out of my room with a wave of my hand and took my time changing out of my clothes. My body hurt, especially my ribs.

“I’m coming in,” Keith warned, as soon as I pulled the tank top down. “Can you get up?” I obeyed him, unsure of why he wanted me to get up if I didn’t have any clean sheets to change the bed with. My bedroom swung around me and I had to sit back down again. I was too weak to stand. Keith sighed and put his arms under me. I stiffened instantly, not just at the gesture, but also at my lack of clothing. He picked me up and left my room.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think? I’m taking you to my room. The sheets are clean, I haven’t slept there this week, and they are dry, at least.” He winked while pushing open his bedroom door with his shoulder. I had been in his room once or twice to bring him his clean clothes, but I’d never taken the time to look around. I wouldn’t do so this time, either, as the only light on was from the lamp on his bedside table.

The space was clean and tidy. I imagined all his clutter was in the attic, where he spent most of his time.

I whimpered against his cold sheets. “Come on, scoot over,” he said, as soon as he laid me down. I did what he asked and the next thing I felt was his warm body against mine. I gasped at the contact, but scooted back against his chest. I tried to ignore the chuckle that came from him, which shook my body slightly.

His hand came to rest on my stomach for a second before he pulled my tank top up. I was prepared to turn and punch him in the face when I realized what he was trying to do. He lifted his own shirt and hugged my bare back. I sighed, trying not to moan. For the second time tonight, I wasn’t cold, as his body was warmer than mine.

“Just so we’re clear, in the morning, we go back to not caring much for the other, right?” I asked, more to try and clear the air. I felt him tense before answering me with a weird shrug.

“I guess,” he mumbled.

“Why do you hate me?” I whispered.

Author Bio:

 

Rita Branches is an independent YA (young adult) author who enjoys spending every free moment (when she´s not reading) writing emotional stories. Visit: http://ritabranches.wordpress.com/

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Guest Post - Grace Coleman, Author of Walking Barefoot

Today I am hosting a guest post from Grace Coleman, the author of Walking Barefoot.

My Third-Life Crisis by Grace Coleman

I recently turned thirty. There is something about traversing a decade that makes you question what you're doing. Whilst I'm lucky in the career I've chosen (it has the unusual perk that I can watch TV and claim 'I'm working'); I can't help but feel like 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year is a lot of time spent working so that I can 'live' at the weekend. It's not just me who seems to be having an existential crisis: a lot of my friends are considering a change of direction. Creative lovies chucking it in to go Corporate in search of a better pay cheque. Accountants that have been playing it sensible since graduation quitting without a safety net to take up teaching, or join a start up, or just not-do-what-they've-been-doing-everyday.

An article recently published in the Guardian predicted that my generation will have to work into their seventies, maybe eighties, if we’re to have the same standard of retirement as our parents. Fifty more years of this? Of course I will get a mid-race break if I decide to have children, but it still seems like a rough deal when I look at how technologically advanced we're meant to be becoming. Meeting my partner a little over a year ago and the recent addition of my first nephew just exacerbated the problem – time at work is time away from loved ones.

In the quieter moments of life I search myself for answers. Should I take up meditation and wheatgrass? Do I need to spend more time with my parents – even if I can barely manage a weekend in the family home before itching to return to London? Or is this dull, dissatisfied ache just part of my DNA - as much as a sunny disposition might be part of yours? It's out of this internal tussle that the protagonist of my debut novel – Will Balston was born.

The world he inhabits in Walking Barefoot is a futuristic London, ravaged by war, but unlike traditional dystopian fiction it isn't that different from the city you'd find yourself in today. The truth is that when you turn on the news and see disturbed individuals running trucks into crowds, governments passing laws that will take away our privacy and international relationships to rival the Cold war - dystopian fiction can feel like an outdated genre.

The question that I attempt to unpick in my novel, and would like to see more fiction exploring, is how we should navigate the society we've built. I'm not sure our biological hardwiring is meant for the world we're creating – what will the consequence be? In my melancholy moments I chew this particular piece of fat. I'm yet to find any answers. Instead a poem by Philip Larkin springs to mind, and I smile:

To put one brick upon another, Add a third and then a forth, Leaves no time to wonder whether What you do has any worth.

But to sit with bricks around you While the winds of heaven bawl Weighing what you should or can do Leaves no doubt of it at all.

About Walking Barefoot:

Blurb:

Set in a futuristic London in a world ravaged by war, Walking Barefoot explores the life of Will, past and present. The cocksure eighteen year old who goes travelling in a bid to find himself. The city-living adult who struggles to be happy despite his well paid job, upper quadrant apartment and sexy girlfriend. When nightmares begin to haunt his sleeping and waking life Will is unsure whether he is suffering from the illness that killed his father or being led by unseen forces to uncover a city-wide conspiracy. As his paranoia heightens he must ask himself - is he willing to lose himself to find the truth?

Goodreads | Amazon UK |  Smashwords

 

Author Bio

I'm a thirty year old Londoner who works in the business side of TV. Writing has always been a part of my life but discipline and distraction are an issue.  When not pretending to be an author or TV hotshot, I like country walks, visiting the zoo and sitting in pubs.

www.gracecoleman.co.uk | @grace05087