I've been spending quite a bit of time lately promoting other people's books. It's been fun, but I thought it might also be fun if I promote some of my own books as well. They're not going to be in any particular order. I'll choose them randomly so you'll never know which one you're getting.

This week's book is What About Him. It seems to be one of those books that you either love or you hate. It's had a lot of 4-5 star reviews and about the same number of 1-2 star reviews. The 1-2 star reviewers seem to be looking for something deep and meaningful within the story and they're disappointed when they don't find it. What About Him is just a bit of fun; it's a bit ridiculous and a bit sweet. It turned out exactly the way I felt when I was writing it. And I still absolutely love the cover. It's nothing like what I envisaged when I was completing the forms for Reese Dante, the cover artist, but it's perfect.

The story is also on sale this week: $3.74, so be quick. 
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3397&cPath=55_518 

Author Bio:
E E Montgomery wants the world to be a better place, with equality and acceptance for all. Her philosophy is: We can’t change the world but we can change our small part of it and, in that way, influence the whole. Writing stories that show people finding their own “better place” is part of E E Montgomery’s own small contribution.

Thankfully, there’s never a shortage of inspiration for stories that show people growing in their acceptance and love of themselves and others. A dedicated people-watcher, E E finds stories everywhere. In a cafe, a cemetery, a book on space exploration, or on the news, there’ll be a story of personal growth, love, and unconditional acceptance there somewhere.

You can contact E E Montgomery at eemontgomery11@gmail.com, at her blog and website: , on Twitter: @EEMontgomery1, or at her website:http://www.eemontgomery.com/.

Belinda McBride: Author Bio

Belinda is an award-winning, top selling author of erotic romance, speculative fiction and LGBTQ romance. She lives in far Northern California with her family and a pack of Siberian Huskies. 

A graduate of CSU Chico, she managed to attend the notorious party school without once getting drunk, arrested or appearing in a "Girls Gone Wild" video. Her main focus of study was classical and archival history, cultural anthropology and theatre arts.

After several years in the workforce. Belinda purchased a laptop computer and from there, knew that her childhood dream of being an author would come to life. 

Belinda's books are available at all the typical distributors as well as on the publisher's homepages. 

I asked Belinda about helpful tools and resources she depends on: 

One of the most frustrating and rewarding aspects of being a writer is that no two books are alike. Since writing is an art as well as a discipline, I find I’m sometimes slave to my moods, my physical health and to whatever happens to be going on at home when I’m working. In order to be consistently productive, I lean on a few resources, tips from my writer’s toolbox and the odd trick or two along the way.

First comes habit. Every day, I open the computer and follow a set routine. Generally I scan email and messages on social media. After that, I write. Even if it’s just for a few minutes, I write something new. I review what I did the prior day, evaluate the project I want to work on and then move on to other tasks. Setting a routine creates habits, like brushing your teeth and washing your face before bed.

Next, I make lists of tasks and prioritize them. I’m a terribly scattered person and have many non-writing responsibilities. Right now, I’m preparing for a convention. Before I really settled into my final tasks, I got bad news about a friend and that shook me emotionally. I lost a couple days of preparation so finally sat down and made my lists of what was necessary and what wasn’t. That allowed me to focus on what HAD to be done.

Many of my books are part of a series, and I find it a challenge to keep everything in order…from characters to plot lines, to alien planets and futuristic weapons. My solution is to keep a spreadsheet for each series as well as handwritten notes about each character. When I write, I keep the spreadsheet open as I work. If I have problems with small details, I use the header and footer of the document to note names, descriptions and other small details I don’t want to keep looking up.

My final secret weapon is to get up, walk away from the computer and go play with my dogs. J We all need to take breaks to refresh our bodies and minds. Though writing is largely discipline, that little nugget of inspiration takes some nurturing and that won’t happen with a tired mind and body.

Thanks for sharing, Belinda. I'm definitely going to try adding more to my headers and footers to help me keep track of things.

Author Contact:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Belinda-McBride/49209583129?ref=bookmarks
@Belinda_McBride

Publisher: Loose ID
Cover Artist: PL Nunn

Blurb(s):
Held captive in a whorehouse, Markus Dayspring wakes every morning with a thirst for revenge, and collapses every night with a prayer for strength. He lives on in spite of deadly addictions and a crippling, shameful secret. When he’s rescued by a man from his past, his reawakened love threatens to crush his damaged soul.

Caius also has a secret, one that could ultimately kill him. But his vow to rescue Markus is stronger than guilt, fear and even his loyalty to King Helios. Too many have died because of Caius and rescuing the missing prince might allow him to sleep without nightmares.

Old habits are hard to break and new pain threatens their growing love. Yet one gleaming ray of hope continues to guide them to safety, even in the face of an unexpected violation of trust. With the stakes growing higher by the hour, Markus and Caius must learn to have faith before they can heal and face the future together.

Categories: Fantasy, M/M Romance, Romance, Science Fiction
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22931220-prince-of-faith

Sales Links: http://www.loose-id.com/an-uncommon-whore-3-prince-of-faith.html

Tour Dates/Stops:
10/21: Rainbow Gold Reviews, Sinfully Sexy
10/22: Multitasking Mommas, Kimi-Chan
10/23: Prism Book Alliance, Cathy Brockman Romances
10/24: Hearts on Fire, SA McAuley
10/27: Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Tara Lain
10/28: Wake Up Your Wild Side, Dawn’s Reading Nook, Carly’s Book Reviews
10/29: Jade Crystal, EE Montgomery
10/30: Amanda C. Stone, The Novel Approach
10/31: The Hat Party, Romance the Night
11/3: MM Good Book Reviews, The Blogger Girls, Fallen Angel Reviews
11/4: Love Bytes, Angel Martinez

There are heaps of exciting things here today. Raine O'Tierney's Most Beautiful Words is out and you can now feast on the cover, the blurb, and extract, and... a brief interview with Raine herself. 

Author Bio:

Called "Queen of the Sweetness" (well, two or three people said it anyway!) Raine O'Tierney loves writing sweet stories about first loves, first times, fidelity, forever-endings and...friskiness?

Raine O'Tierney lives outside of Kansas City with her husband, fellow Dreamspinner Press author, Siôn O'Tierney. When she's not writing, she's either asleep, or fighting the good fight for intellectual freedom at her library day job. Raine believes the best thing we can do in life is be kind to one another, and she enjoys encouraging fellow writers. Writing for 20+ years (with the last 10 spent on M/M) Raine changes sub-genres to suit her mood and believes all good stories end sweetly. Contact her if you're interested in talking about point-and-click adventure games or about which dachshunds are the best kinds of dachshunds!

Author Contact:

Raineotierney.com | Dreamspinner Press Author Page | The Hat Party (LGBT Author Interviews!)

Facebook Fan Page | Twitter

Cover Artist: Brooke Albrecht

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Blurb:

Twelve-year-old Autumn's world is shattered when her beloved Great-Pop, Tommy Johnson, suffers a stroke that leaves him comatose. With everyone around her resigning themselves to the inevitable, Autumn is the only one not willing to give up. She and Great-Pop have more secret stories to share with each other, after all. More stories about Roy McMillan—the great love of Tommy's life whom he lost fifty years ago.

Autumn struggles to keep Great-Pop on this side of death's door. But how can she compete with the beautiful and mysterious Valley—a place of surreal magic where the sun never fully sets? Especially when there's someone familiar in the Valley who will do everything he can to keep Great-Pop from returning to her.

Excerpt:

But Rook had no interest in waiting for permission. He’d come forward, snaking his arms around Toren’s sheet-covered waist and pulling him hard against his body. “It’s just a kiss,” Rook breathed before he put his lips against Toren’s. Should he protest? Had he protested? Toren couldn’t remember. In that moment there was nothing but Rook’s firm lips, gently teasing his own apart. Toren kissed back, tasting the other man, sucking at his bottom lip. Rook’s mouth was intoxicating, and quite suddenly, Toren forgot why he’d ever resisted. He liked kissing Rook. But after only an appetizer’s worth of his mouth, Rook pulled away. The sensation of their mouths pressed together lingered, and Toren was dumb with the moment. Lost on it. Uncertain what they’d even been talking about.

“Do you remember me now?” Rook asked.

“Mmn,” Toren agreed, warmth lingering on his lips. “Rook.”

Silence was his reply. The arms around his waist fell away, leaving him feeling cold.

Toren slowly opened his eyes to find he was standing alone, clutching his sheet, as Rook walked away from him toward the staircase.

Here's a transcript of the interview:

1.      What is your favourite part of Most Beautiful Words, and why?
The last ten or so pages of the book. They make me cry every single time I read them.

2.      Where did the inspiration for Tommy Johnson come from?
While Tommy Johnson is not my Paw-Paw, his kindness, compassion, work ethic, and love of his family are traits the two men share. I based Tommy on what I observed a good man to be while Paw-Paw was still with us.

3.      What did your parents want you to be when you grew up?
I get the impression that my parents knew from a young age that I was going to be a wild handful with a stubborn streak that would make mules back off and say, “H-hey, I want no part of this.” and that having expectations of my future career would be dangerous. That said, I truly don’t think anyone expected me to write gay romance for a living. But both parents have been incredibly supportive of me and I’m so grateful to them.

4.      Name one thing you learned in high school and how it has helped you as an adult.
You will hurt people and people will hurt you, it’s unavoidable. Sometimes it’s on purpose, sometimes it’s on accident, sometimes you/they don’t even know it happened. But there is so much value in kindness and trying to bring kindness into the world to balance out the hurt.

5.      Do you buy a book because of the cover, the blurb, or some other reason?
Reviews! Totally, completely, because of the review. Or a recommendation from a fellow librarian. But I do stop and drool over pretty covers. I’m a cover-whore, I admit it.

Tour Dates/Stops:
October 10: Angel Martinez, My Fiction Nook, Up All Night, Read All Day, Fallen Angel Reviews
October 13: Amanda C. Stone, Decadent Delights
October 14: Jade Crystal, Nephylim
October 15: LeAnn’s Book Reviews, Velvet Panic
October 16: Full Moon Dreaming, Dawn’s Reading Nook
October 17: Wake Up Your Wild Side, Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words
October 20: Parker Williams, Inked Rainbow Reads
October 21: Cate Ashwood, Love Bytes, Book Reviews, Rants, and Raves
October 22: Regular Guys, Hot Romance, Emotion in Motion
October 23: EE Montgomery, MM Good Book Reviews
October 24: Iyana Jenna, Prism Book Alliance

It wasn't a deliberate decision, but I've spent most of the week offline - totally disconnected from the web. I've checked my email only once a day and only replied to urgent messages. I've checked my Facebook page only once during the week.

Every other time I've been offline has been because I've been somewhere with unreliable coverage. It hasn't been my choice, and I've felt disconnected and incomplete. This week was different. This week, I decided I'd become too reliant. It had become a habit that was impacting on my ability to enjoy other things in life, so I deliberately limited myself. 

I can't say I miraculously achieved all those things I haven't been doing because I've been trolling through Facebook and other peoples' blogs, but it gave me time to breathe. I feel more connected to me now; more self-reliant; calmer. 

I know it wouldn't be a healthy thing for promoting myself and my books, but I'd really like to keep my internet activity limited. I want to keep living my life, rather than spending it sitting in front of a screen, getting RSI from overuse of the mouse.

On that note, I have a vegetable garden in my back yard that is waiting for some soil and fertiliser to be dug into it before I plant the summer crop, and some roses in the front that need a quiet and gentle watering. After that, I'll finish writing the chapter I've been working on this week. 

No more time spent online today.

It was just a bare patch of hard-packed earth with a light dusting of fine gravel over it, my shoes crunching when I walked, the sound rippling across the hot ground. Overhead the cobalt sky faded to a soft baby blue at the horizon. The caw of invisible crows pierced the canopy of a nearby camphor-laurel tree and floated to me on the crisp spring breeze. I stared at that patch of ground and in my head I heard again the crack of bat on ball, the bark of a dog, delighted cries of children playing barefoot and dusty.

Every year Dad would pack my three sisters and me up for the four hour drive to Brisbane. The windows of the car would be down and the dusty wind whipped my hair across my face, stinging my cheeks and making my eyes water. The four hour trip often took longer than that. I suffered from travel sickness and we had to stop every half hour for me to get out and walk around until my stomach settled. No one minded the frequent stops – they had all experienced the alternative.


Our holiday never began straight away. I always needed the rest of the day sitting in one spot so my stomach would stop churning. The second day of the holiday we'd all walk down to the park. We stayed with my aunt and uncle and their family, so there was a tribe of us. We'd haul picnic baskets, blankets, bats and balls down the hill toward the river and set up under one of the huge jacaranda trees dotted over the lawn. By the end of the summer, the grass was patchy, the hard-packed dirt showing through.

Off to one side of the round picnic area, regulars had tamped out a rectangular patch of gravelly dirt as a cricket pitch. 

As I stood there, staring at the bare dirt in front of me, those days came rushing back. I felt again, the hot summer sun baking the back of my neck, the glare of the light glinting of the river, the smell of fresh-cut grass and newly dropped dog poo. The air is again scented with the innocent sweat of children, and the sounds of them chasing dogs and balls then flopping onto the blankets to suck thirstily at water bottles.

Author Bio:
Garrett Leigh is a British writer and book designer, currently working for Dreamspinner Press, Loose Id and Black Jazz Press. Her protagonists will always always be tortured, crippled, broken, and deeply flawed. Throw in a tale of enduring true love, some stubbly facial hair, and a bunch of tattoos, and you’ve got yourself a Garrett special.

When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible. That, and dreaming up new ways to torture her characters. Garrett believes in happy endings; she just likes to make her boys work for it.

Garrett also works as a freelance cover artist for various publishing houses and independent authors under the pseudonym G.D. Leigh. For cover art info, please visit blackjazzpress.com

Author Contact:
Social media:
Website: http://garrettleigh.com
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Garrett_Leigh
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/garrettleighbooks
Cover art enquiries: blackjazzdesign@gmail.com

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Cover Artist: G.D. Leigh
Categories: Gay Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, M/M Romance, Fiction

Blurb:
Don’t look back. Don’t you ever look back…

Shy tattoo artist Ash has a troubled past. Years of neglect, drug abuse, and life on the streets have taken their toll, and sometimes it seems the deep, unspoken bond with his lover is the only balm for wounds he doesn't quite understand.

Chicago paramedic Pete is warmth, love, and strength—things Ash never knew he could have, and never even knew he wanted until Pete showed him. But fate is a cruel, cruel mistress, and when nightmares collide with the present, their tentatively built world comes crashing down.

Traumatic events in Pete’s work life distance him from home, and he doesn't realize until it’s too late that Ash has slipped away. Betrayal, secrets, and lies unfold, and when a devastating coincidence takes hold, Pete must fight with all he has to save the love of his life.

Excerpt:

Ash was Texan by birth, but his southern roots only laced his speech when he was too tired to repress them… too tired to block out all the horrible shit that kept an invisible barrier between us.

He was just seventeen when his friend Ellie found him drawing on the streets of Philadelphia. He was homeless and drew comic book characters on the sidewalk for money. The way she told it, he was one of the best street artists in the city, but he said he just did it to survive. Ellie was in college at the time, and she spent the next three years trying to get him to go to a shelter. Eventually, she got her way, and when she moved back to Chicago a few months later, she asked him to come with her. It took him a year of procrastination and pulling his shit together, but after finishing his tattoo apprenticeship in Philly, he did just that.

Living together was a huge adjustment for both of us. Some days I thought we’d cracked it, but others….

I draped the comforter over us and tucked it around his shoulders. He settled against me with his arm stretched out across my torso. I ran my hand absently along his bicep and enjoyed the rare moment. Though he could be tactile when his mood was right, he rarely cuddled up to me so freely. Most times, he preferred our positions reversed—him on his back with his arms around me.

Curious, I pressed a kiss to the top of his sweat-dampened head. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just missed you.”

I smiled into the darkness. “I missed you too.”

A light hum was his only answer, so I held him a bit tighter and made the most of having him curled against me. After a while, I felt him shift. I opened my eyes and quirked an eyebrow, too mellow to speak. He just stared at me, but his blazing eyes told me what I knew he found so hard to articulate.

I put my hand to his head and nudged it back down with a sad smile.


Tour Dates/Stops:
9/12: Rainbow Gold Reviews, Nephylim, Iyana Jenna
9/19: Parker Williams, Velvet Panic, Jade Crystal
9/26: MM Good Book Reviews, Smoocher’s Voice, Cate Ashwood
10/3: EE Montgomery, Inked Rainbow Reads, Regular Guys, Hot Romance
10/10: My Fiction Nook, Book Reviews and More by Kathy, Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words
10/17: Emotion in Motion, Queer Town Abbey, Foxylutely Book Reviews
10/24: Fallen Angel Reviews, The Blogger Girls, Love Bytes
10/31: Amanda C. Stone, Prism Book Alliance, The Novel Approach