Playing with Fire Series ~ Anne Conley

Series: Playing With Fire

Titles: Truth or Dare ~ Hide and Seek ~ Spin the Bottle ~ Hot Lava

Author: Anne Conley

Genre: Contemporary Romance Suspense

Publisher: Beyond DEF Publishing Services, LLC

Truth or Dare - Available NOW

Hide and Seek - Available NOW

Spin the Bottle - Releasing October 28, 2019 

Hot Lava - Releasing November 18, 2019

It's just a truth or a dare ... right? 

Some things never go as planned. Nannette’s artistic retreat began with disaster. She’s distracted by a blazing-hot firefighter who thinks she needs a knight in shining armor. And her precious masterpieces have turned into combustible images of her hero.

What is she supposed to do? 

Jude is rethinking everything he’s ever thought about love and desire, and Nannette is the ignition point. The colored swatches of their need are too brilliant to be contained on canvas, and neither of them know how to deal with the embers of desire when they burst into flames.

You can always run, but you can't hide. 

Joey is trapped in a backdraft. His relationship with Simone is going great—until she dumps him. His mother is marrying a younger man, and his station has him in a Santa suit for a fundraiser. Not exactly what he’d call the best lot in life, especially with an arsonist on the loose in Pamona Gulch. 

Things are heating up to dangerous levels. And then he sees her. 

Vivian is licking old wounds and trying to protect the precious heart of her four-year-old daughter. Her ex left her world in cinders, and starting something knew and full of promise leaves her wondering what will remain when the smoke clears.

It all started with a kiss. 

Zane can admit it was a disastrous one. But the odd case of Lettie is one he’s determined to explore. If the stubborn woman would just give him a second chance, she’d see they are explosive together. 

One kiss tells Lettie exactly how things are going to go in a relationship. The lip-lock with Zane is a non-starter, but he won’t take no for an answer. He even opens his home to the shelter animals as she struggles to clean up the smoke damage from the most recent arson fire. 

“Have dog, will love” has to count for something, right? But as Lettie fights to extinguish the sizzling attraction, Zane continues to show her just how well he can create an inferno.

Twice burned is sometimes the key. 

Logan doesn’t do repeats. Ever. It’s a cardinal rule he must live by. Katie was a mistake—one he never would have made if he knew she lived in Pamona Gulch. It would have saved him the slow and steady burn of his lust for the last two years. The need to take Katie back under hand … and command … is stronger than ever now.

With Logan, Katie learned things about herself she’d never known. How desire could be a precision-cut diamond forged in the hottest temperatures. How guided mastery could lead her to unattainable heights. And now she’s left in the cold, running to find that same high.

Into the arms of a dangerous blaze. 

Desire flares when Logan saves her. What’s between them is undeniable, but with the arsonist caught and anger sparking, will it snuff out what’s growing, or will it only add fuel to the fire?

Anne has written her entire life and has the boxes of angst-filled journals and poetry to prove it. She’s been writing for public consumption for the past several years. Currently, she has five romance series and one in the works. Stories of Serendipity explores real people living real lives in small-town Texas. The Four Winds chronicles God’s four closest archangels—Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael—falling in love and becoming human. Pierce Securities is comprised of nine books that follow a crew of misfits who come together to fight crime and also find love along the way. The Book B!tches is all about a group of women in Mystic, Texas, who get into all sorts of shenanigans while trying to dodge the serial killer targeting the town. Playing with Fire is filled with sizzling-hot firemen and plenty of suspense and mystery with an arsonist on the loose. Rocco Securities, a Pierce Securities spinoff, is coming soon. 

 She lives in rural East Texas with her husband and children in her own private oasis, where she prides herself in her complete lack of social skills, choosing instead to live with the people inside her head.

HOSTED BY:

GUEST AUTHOR ~ CIARA BALLINTYNE ~ TANGLED LIGHTS AND SILENT NIGHTS

Meet Alloran – the fantasy equivalent of a mad scientist, whose stock in trade is magic, not science.

I conceived of Alloran after reading The Accidental Sorcerer by K.E. Mills. The main character in that book has a friend, Monk Markham, who is a brilliant wizard constantly dabbling in things he shouldn’t—and getting away with it.

And I thought—but what if he didn’t? What if his hubris had consequences?

Poor Alloran has been plagued with mishaps, and in The Seven Circles of Hell he stumbles from disaster to disaster, in each book trying to put right what he made wrong in the last. Maybe he should just stop. Maybe it’s time to call it quits.

But he has itchy fingers, and he can’t put a puzzle down once he’s picked it up—and what’s a poor wizard to do when his best friend is on the loose, trying to destroy him, and, incidentally, the world?

Events all started a long time ago in a galaxy… I mean, just a long time ago. Alloran is more than a hundred years old, and when we meet him in Confronting the Demon, he’s abandoned his research and has committed himself to a life of carousing. Because if you don’t behave seriously, people can’t expect you to solve serious problems, right?

It seems like a sensible decision—if you are addicted to something bad, the general wisdom is to give it up. But Alloran gets sucked back in when he’s framed for summoning demons and winds up on the run while someone is murdering his friends.

So that’s how he got back into magic. But why did he quit in the first place?

Alloran was the man who discovered how to open gates into hell—which is why everyone thinks he summoned the one in Confronting the Demon. His research was burned and demon summoning banned, so who else could it be?

That first ill-fated foray into the hells, what was to be Alloran’s crowning glory, turned into a disaster that made him the man we meet in Confronting the Demon.

When I was asked to write a Christmas story for Tangled Lights and Silent Nights, my first thought was ‘how do you write a Christmas story in the epic fantasy genre?’ Then when I gave it some more thought, I realised I had a story that needed telling, that some readers had been asking for—the story of that first imp he summoned from hell, that started events in motion.

"Another Bloody Festival" is that story—how it all went terribly wrong for Alloran—set against the backdrop of the winter solstice—because is there a better time of year for a demon to be loose in the halls?

READ FOR FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED

Ciara Ballintyne grew up on a steady diet of adult epic fantasy from the age of nine, leaving her with a rather confused outlook on life – she believes the good guys should always win, but knows they often don’t. She is an oxymoron; an idealistic cynic.

She began her first attempts at the craft of writing in 1992, culminating in the publication of her debut work, Confronting the Demon, in 2013. Her first book to be published with Evolved Publishing is In the Company of the Dead.

She holds degrees in law and accounting, and is a practising financial services lawyer. In her spare time, she speculates about taking over the world – how hard can it really be? If she could be anything, she’d choose a dragon, but if she is honest she shares more in common with Dr. Gregory House of House M.D. – both the good and the bad. She is a browncoat, a saltgunner, a Whedonite, a Sherlockian, a Ringer and a Whovian… OK, most major geek fandoms. Her alignment is chaotic good. She is an INTJ.

Ciara lives in Sydney, Australia, with her two daughters and a growing menagerie of animals that unfortunately includes no dragons.

Links:

Twitter: @CiaraBallintyne

Facebook: http://facebook.com/CiaraBallintyne

Website: http://ciaraballintyne.com

OTHER BOOKS BY CIARA BALLINTYNE

The Seven Circles of Hell

Confronting the Demon

Stalking the Demon

Becoming the Demon

Being the Demon (coming soon)

The Sundered Oath

In the Company of the Dead

On the Edge of Death

To Make the Dead Weep

GUEST AUTHOR ~ BRENDA VICARS ~ TANGLED LIGHTS AND SILENT NIGHTS

Can you tell when it’s love and not just a passing crush?

Polarity, the main character in my novel Polarity in Motion, is only 16, and she’s in love with Ethan. He’s the character who helps her figure out how her nude picture showed up on the Internet—a photo that she has no memory of posing for.

Sometimes when teenagers say they’re in love, we think it’s just a crush or hormones.  But Polarity says, nope, it’s not a passing teen thing. She’s in love. 

When I want to get a deeper understanding of a character, I use a writers’ technique of interviewing the character. “Dear Polarity,” I wrote. “Why do you think you’re in love with Ethan?  Possibly you’re just grateful to him. After all, he helped you put your life back together after the nude picture fiasco. Or maybe you just have a crush on him—he is so hot!”

Polarity’s answer surprised me and warmed my heart. She not only explained why she loves him, but she went beyond the question I had posed, and described “the moment I knew I would love Ethan forever.” Her answer became the short story by the same title in Tangled Lights and Silent Nights. And the segment is also in the next Polarity book, Polarity in Love, which will be released in 2019.

What was the moment she knew she’d love him forever?  It happens during Christmas season in south Texas and involves a rattlesnake and a ten-year-old girl’s tears. In an incident that both horrifies and amazes Polarity, she sees deeper dimensions of Ethan.

To be notified of new releases and sales follow me:

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RELEASE ~ WHISPERS IN THE DARK (A DARK ROMANCE) ~ LETEISHA NEWTON

It's FREE if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited!

Amazon

I was captured ...

That’s just the beginning of my tale. I’ve survived Purgatory, abuse, and near death. In that abandoned farmhouse I nearly lost everything, but Jacob saved me. We were trapped in this hell together, giving each other the strength to hold on. I fell into darkness with my captor’s son.

Until I left him behind.

She was perfect, my Alana. Brilliant and full of pain. She understood my darkness and fueled the fire. When she left, I waited patiently to find her, and in her honor, I killed men who took away from innocents. 

Then I found her ...

She’s deadly now, a killer too, and perfectly mine. It was beautiful to behold, but she belongs in a cage. My cage. She’ll love me again, or I’ll expose her dirty secrets for the world to see while going down in flames with her. 

In darkness, it’s most definitely till death do us part.

Warning: This book is full of triggers. It’s wicked dark, with created evil falling in love. People die. They are hurt horribly. The bad guys get away, and there is no apology for it. Hardcore trigger within these pages.

Leaving me to my misery, Master and the doctor left the room to speak in harsh whispers in the hallway. Curling myself into a ball, I kept crying harder and harder until I was gasping for breath. Master threw a glare my way before leading the doctor far away from my room.
The pain, the loss, shot through me like I was taking a bullet to the heart. How could I have done this? How could I put my precious little one through something this awful? I was as bad as Master. I was a monster like him. Crying harder at my thoughts, my eyes caught on the doorway in time to see someone peeking in. My body relaxed in one great whoosh. Jacob was here. He slipped into the room and crept into the bed with me. Ignoring the blood and filth on the towels, for the first time, Jacob took me into his arms. I curled into his chest, inhaling his clean, crisp scent through the tears.
“I’m sorry, Alana. I couldn’t get here sooner, and I can’t stay here long. He’ll come back soon.”
It didn’t matter. He was here now, and I clung to him, curling my fingers into his shirt and holding on desperately. In his arms, the pain dulled, and I could handle it. I could cry into his chest and be held. I could be fragile, and he’d catch the broken pieces. His lips trailed up the side of my neck, soft kisses that pushed away the agony and warmed me.
“You can do it. You’re strong enough. Hold on a little longer,” he whispered into my skin. I believed it because he did too.
So I lifted my face so his lips could touch mine.
Soft and warm, his mouth was different. He slipped over the scars of my abuse and filled in the cervices left behind. Maybe it was the medicine making me fanciful, but I thought I could ask for this. That maybe I would ask him to take me. That I’d like to have him. But then, he was pulling away.
“I have to go. I’ll be with you later. Look for me.”
And as fast as he’d come, he was gone, but the pain was behind a wall, one he’d built high. He gave me strength, and I would use it to survive. I’d done the right thing, as horrible as it was, and I knew he didn’t judge me for it. We’d done this together, and it made the load easier to bear. Master stomped his way back into the room, face scarlet and chest heaving like a locomotive. I wanted to cringe at his bald fists, but I couldn’t move. I was too tired, or too resigned maybe, to care.

Writing professionally since 2008, LeTeisha Newton’s love of romance novels began long before it should have. After spending years sneaking reads from her grandmother’s stash, she finally decided to pen her own tales. As many will do during their youth, she bounced from fantasy, urban literature, mainstream, interracial, paranormal, heterosexual, and LGBT works until she finally rested in contemporary romance.

LeTeisha is all about deep angst and angry heroes who take a bit more loving to smooth their rough edges. Love comes in many sizes, shapes, and colors, as well as with—or without—absolute beauty and fairy tale sweetness. She writes the darker tales because life is hard … but love is harder.

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RELEASE ~ THE VAULT: A SINFULLY SEXY COLLECTION

The Vault is HERE!

What happens when you lock 22 authors in a vault and don’t let them come out until they’ve finished their books?

You get one sinfully sexy collection.

Sweet.

Devilish.

Dangerous.

Romantic.

Raw.

Funny.

Dark.

Powerful.

Unforgettable.

See what awaits you inside The Vault.

ALL NEW BOOKS!!!! 

Buy the e-book HERE.

See what reviewers are saying about The Vault.

"Extraordinary! Sexy, Funny, Angsty, and Swoon-worthy! Whatever you are looking for, you'll find it in The Vault!" --Taryn Plendl, USA Today Bestselling Author 

"Absolutely a must read. I enjoyed every story I read and have discovered new authors that I will be sure to one-click their books. An amazing anthology that you won't want to put down." -- Amazon reviewer 

"I am completely in love with this collection of stories. I have not read a bad story in the book yet. I'm loving everything about it." -- Ruby Red Romance Review 

"This is one of the BEST collections of stories I've ever read. This recommendation also goes for the ENTIRE collection! 22 thumbs up!" -- Amazon Reviewer 

"These are some delicious, tempting short stories written by fantastic authors. These are short stories for people who may not be familiar with these authors or if you are, you get brand new stories filled with something different for everyone. "-- Amazon Reviewer

"Honestly. This anthology has to be one of the best I've read in a while. And the authors who participated...so many of them are my "go to" authors. This is a steal for $2.99." ~ 5 Star Amazon Review (Chelle907)

Buy the Hardcover HERE.