Tag: Guest post

Guest Post | The Book Dragon’s Lair

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 1 Comment

FridayKiss

Hiya! I’m here as Holly today! I have a new book out called The Book Dragon’s Lair, and I’ve been looking forward to telling y’all about it! 😁

I wrote it to celebrate Bookstore Romance Day, and when I planned my year, it was one of the few days I’d decided I was gonna write. Normally, I don’t look too far ahead. My goal is to have one release a month, and while I have days I want to do, most months are open for changes. Not all. Like in December, we’ll have a story for Crossword Puzzle Day, I knew I was gonna do that back in the spring. Not because I solve a lot of crosswords, I don’t, but I had an idea 😊

It was the same thing with this story. I saw Bookstore Romance Day, and I instantly thought of a romance developing in a bookstore. I saw an evil dragon hoarding books – a book dragon 😆 – and then another more pleasant dragon taking over.

Ryu the Ravenous is a sought-after bachelor in the dragon realm. He’s close to royal and he has a lot of gemstones, but he’s jealous of Draken the Dreadful. Draken the Dreadful is a dreadful dragon, and he doesn’t appreciate what he has, so when he’s killed in battle, Ryu pretends to be him. He’s injured in the same battle Draken is, so he pretends he’s the one who was killed and takes Draken’s place in the human realm.

There he has to learn to be a book dragon, which isn’t easy since books aren’t really treasures – they don’t sparkle! And how is he to take over Draken’s human mate? The man does his best to avoid Ryu and he wants him to stop.

I had so much fun writing this one, sooo much fun! 😄

The Book Dragon’s Lair

thebookdragonslair

Egil Olsen is running The Book Dragon’s Lair, a bookstore on Dragon Row, while Draken the Dreadful, his mate, is away fighting a war on the other side of the veil. The relief of not having Draken around is great. For the first time in years, Egil doesn’t have to watch every move he makes. When word reaches him that Draken is on his way home after having been injured, he considers running away. 

The dragon stepping over the threshold to The Book Dragon’s Lair isn’t Draken, though. He claims to be, but Egil knows his mate, and while all dragons are dangerous, the male standing before him is nowhere near as cruel as his mate. Ryu never wanted to be a book dragon. Books don’t sparkle, but if it’s the price he has to pay to be in the human realm, he will pay it. He’ll take over Draken the Dreadful’s treasure, and he hopes he can take over his mate, too. Egil doesn’t want to be mated to a dragon, but without a mate, he’d be homeless and without a job. 

A few hours after having met Ryu, Egil thinks being mated to him might not be too bad, but how will they be able to fool the people around them into believing Ryu is Draken? And what will happen if the real Draken comes back? 

Buy links: 

Gay paranormal romance: 33,671 words 

JMS Book :: Amazon :: books2read.com/TheBookDragonsLair

Excerpt:

Ryu stared at the tall building. The old gray bricks reached toward the sky. The arched mullioned windows had to be from floor to ceiling on the ground level. On the other floors, the windows were smaller and sparser except for one in the tower room large enough for a dragon to get through. Ryu smiled. It was so he could shift and fly.

Filling his lungs, he focused on the bottom floor again. A large sign above the door announced he was looking at The Book Dragon’s Lair. He snorted. Book dragon. Pathetic. Then he shook himself. He was Draken now, which meant he was a book dragon.

The cold light of dawn gave the building a magical, almost sinister look. He stepped forward. The key burned in his pocket, and he longed to unlock the door and step inside.

He’d been terrified someone would’ve figured out he wasn’t who he claimed he was these last few months while he’d been treated for his burns. Wincing, he hesitated. What if he disgusted Draken’s mate? His mate. How would he fool him? The nurses back home had told him the scarring wasn’t too bad on his face. He stared at a monster whenever he looked into the mirror, but they claimed he still was handsome. Though they wouldn’t dare say anything else. No sane dragon would risk upsetting his mother. They didn’t know he was Wyvern the Wicked’s son, though. So why would they lie? Nurses tended to be kinder than other dragons.

Ryu snorted. More than once, he’d cursed his looks. Now he’d do anything to see the familiar face when he looked at his refection.

He walked up the wide stairs and noted a few green leaves on a vein planted in the gravel. The human realm lacked the lush greenery of his home, and if this was what the soil was like, he understood why everything was gray and dull instead of rich and fertile. How could anyone live here?

Doubt seized him. Perhaps this was a mistake. He’d given up his treasures and the beauty of the dragon realm in exchange for escape, but would his soul wither here?

Knocking on the door, he waited. When no one opened, he knocked again, harder this time.

Soon after, a small human man with hair the color of spun gold appeared on the other side of the window. His eyes widened, and he took a quick step back, fear visible in every line of his face before he looked down toward the floor. Ryu tried not to wince. He shouldn’t have listened to the nurses.

He looked like a monster.

The man on the other side of the glass straightened his back, unlocked the door, but didn’t look up from the floor. “Hello?”

“Egil?” Or was it Eskil? The last few minutes in the watchtower were a blur, but he believed Draken had said Egil. “I’m back.” His tongue was unwilling to form the lie, but when Egil only nodded, his gaze still locked on the floor, he believed it had sounded plausible.

A second or two went by before Ryu realized he was waiting for an invitation. A male didn’t need an invitation to his own home, so he took a step forward. Egil quickly scurried out of his way, which made Ryu frown. He might not be pretty to look at, and scars licked at his cheek and lower lip, so he understood if Egil was hesitant to kiss him, but didn’t you at least embrace your mate when he came home from war?

Ryu ached for a hug.

Apart from the impersonal touches of the medical staff, Ryu couldn’t remember when he had been touched last. He longed for closeness, needed it, but Egil increased the distance between them.

“Reverend Goodwin will be pleased to see you.”

Ryu blinked before focusing on Egil. He had yet to see his eyes properly.

Reverend was a profession unless Ryu was wrong—something to do with religion. He wasn’t sure which religion. Humans were funny beings, making up several deities instead of praising the old deity like normal people.

“He will?” Was he the right pronoun or was the reverend female?

“He’s been asking for you.”

Ryu nodded; glad he hadn’t made a mistake in assuming the reverend was male. “And what does he want?”

“The Bible, of course. I told him you won’t sell.” He flinched as if he’d been hit. “I mean, I’m not telling you what to do. I only meant… You’ll of course do whatever you want to do.” His voice grew softer and softer with each word, and he ended the sentence with a bow. Strange. Was it human custom?

He hummed in reply since he feared whatever he’d say would give him away.

“Had I known you’d arrive today, I’d made sure we had more food in the house.” He flinched again. Could it be nerve damage or something? Draken wouldn’t have told him if his mate was flawed. And he had hinted at something, hadn’t he? Ryu had suspected there was something wrong with Draken’s mate, but he’d been too eager to fill his place to consider what it might be.

He’d taken the place of a lowly dragon, and now he had to suffer the embarrassment of a poorly chosen mate despite not being the one who made the choice. With his disfigurement, they’d never be taken seriously among other dragons, but he didn’t plan on returning to his homeland, so it mattered little. Heaving a sigh, he repeated that to himself.

He couldn’t scent Draken on Egil, but the smell of books was strong, and he’d never been close to a human before. Since they had no flame of their own, the scent might fade if it wasn’t replenished regularly. It was most likely the explanation.

“There is coffee and… erm… toast.” The wince was there again as if it hurt him to speak.

Ryu didn’t know anything about human foods, so he nodded.

“I’ll go shop as soon as the market opens.”

“Okay.”

A spasm went through Egil—had to be some nerve damage—then wide blue eyes the color of his favorite topaz stared at him. Ryu couldn’t breathe. Magnificent. He’d had no idea eyes could come in that color. Heat filled him from within. The flame burst to life, and fire built in his veins. He reached for Egil, who quickly sidestepped his hand and dove in behind one of the many bookshelves.

A treasure. Pretty gemstone. His. Egil was his mate now. His precious. Ryu swallowed a purr.

Guest Post | The Twelve Coffins of Dr. Coffin by Amy Spector

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 2 Comments

Today, we have Amy Spector on a visit!!! She’s here to share her release day with us 🥳 Welcome, Amy!

Twelve Coffins FB Quote 1

Hello, everyone! And thank you to Ofelia for letting me stop by to share my new book. 

Today is release day for The Twelve Coffins of Dr. Coffin! Written to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of JMS Books, it’s about making a terrible movie on a tiny budget, while trying not to fall for the same man you made the mistake of falling for once before.

Second chance really does seem to be my trope of choice.

Director and film snob Leo Wayland has been hired to head the new horror unit of Maiden studios and given an impossible task. Three weeks to film, a tiny budget, and a scandal-laden leading man in Everett Reid. A leading man that has not only been linked to nearly every leading lady he’s worked with, but also a man Leo fell for at twenty-one while working for another studio. 

Fun! Fun! LOL

Because my parents are big horror fans, I grew up on the stuff. But they liked to show my siblings and me the old stuff, the not scary stuff, the stuff where you’re more likely to get bricked into a wall than held prisoner by a weirdo with a scalpel fetish. And The Twelve Coffins of Dr. Coffin is about those kinds of movies. Set in 1959, it steals a little from the life of Val Lewton, a little Victor Buono, with some Ed Wood thrown in for good measure.

And, for those who have read them, it includes Lee Hellstrom, the old horror actor from my Cold Fingers series. (http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/cold-fingers-series/) Oh, and I must admit; the title delights me to no end. LOL 

The Twelve Coffins of Dr. Coffin

The Twelve Coffins of Dr Coffin Cover

Blurb

When Leo Wayland accepts a job as head of the new horror unit at Maiden Studios, he knows what is expected. Make cheap movies that earn their money back fast. It doesn’t matter that he dislikes horror. He just needs to escape his assistant director’s position at a rival studio.

But he didn’t expect to be assigned a terrible title and a leading man, all before he even had a script, or that his leading man would be Everett Reid, the actor who rejected a very young Leo’s advances, only to disappear from movies altogether a few years later in a cloud of scandal.

Everett Reid will do anything for a chance to get back the career he lost and away from teaching at a theater camp for children. And if it means working with Leo Wayland again, he can do that too. Especially now that Leo is all grown up and not so untouchable.

With only three weeks, a flamboyant stage actor, twelve scantily clad women, and a sound stage full of coffins may not seem like the makings of something great. But really, that all depends on what you are hoping for.

 

Buy Link

1950’s Period, Romance – 13133 words

JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/dr-coffin

Excerpt

Everett let himself into the house and tossed the mail on the entry table already cluttered with bills. They’d been piling up the last few weeks since the money had finally run out.
Besides his ‘55 Corvette, the small bungalow nestled at the base of the hills was all that was left of nearly twenty years of work. It was enough to crush him if he let it.
He stared at the decanter left on the table from the night before when he and Taylor had toasted his contract with Maiden. But his brother had always been more of a drinker than he had. He didn’t want a drink. He wanted to fall into bed for a night of dreamless sleep.
He flipped the switch to the back patio light and pressed his head against the glass, watching the first drops of rain disturb the mirror-like surface of the pool.
It didn’t rain much in LA, but whenever it did, it reminded him of the years growing up down south with his mother and Taylor.
He unlatched the door, slid it open, and kicked out of his loafers as he pulled his shirt over his head. By the time he stood at the edge of the pool, he’d stripped completely, and dove in without hesitation.
It had yet to cool down much from the exceedingly hot day, but as Everett swam laps, the rain pelted him, hard and cold.
He swam back and forth, gliding almost soundlessly through the water, letting go of the day and clearing his mind. He ignored the tug at his thoughts of Leo Wayland and the memories they tried to conjure up. Ignored the chirp of crickets, and the distant hint of laughter from the houses on either side of his. He ignored everything until streaks of lightning across the sky forced him to drag himself out of the water again and go searching for a towel.
He left a trail of wet footprints back into the house, like the ghost of a murdered fisherman, through the living room and finally into his bedroom and the attached bath, where he grabbed one the of the white fluffy towels Steven had picked out when they had first moved in together. Before Steven had broken up with him the first time, the second time, and the third. Before Steven had come back that last time, needing a friend and someone to care for him as he worked through whatever he had to work through.
Everett had never understood what that was. Not at the time, and no better now, all these years later. It was enough to know that Steven had been unhappy, that Everett couldn’t make him happy, no matter how hard he had tried, continued to try, even when all he wanted was to move on and find his own happiness.
Once he was dry, he pulled on a pair of briefs and studied his reflection in the mirror. There’d be no more wrangling children at theater camp, or being flirted with by their mothers. Not this summer anyway. This summer he’d be back in front of the camera, doing what he loved.
Everett Reid had done his penance and now he was going to grab some happiness for himself.

Bio

Amy Spector grew up in the United States surviving on a steady diet of old horror movies, television reruns and mystery novels.

After years of blogging about comic books, vintage Gothic romance book cover illustrations, and a shameful amount about herself, she decided to try her hand at writing stories. She found it more than a little like talking about herself in third person, and that suited her just fine.

She blames Universal for her love of horror, Edward Gorey for her love of British drama and writing for awakening the romantic that was probably there all along.

Amy lives in the Midwest with her husband and children, and her cats Poe, Goji and Nekō. 

Links

Website http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/

Blog http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/blog

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/amy.spector.12/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/amy_spector/

Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8366028.Amy_Spector

Guest Post | Love in an Elevator by Holly Day

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 1 Comment

See outside elevator

Hello, everyone! I’m here as Holly today, and I thought I should tell you a little about my newest story, Love in an Elevator – yes, Aerosmith was part of my teenage soundtrack. And, okay, some of their songs are on some of my Spotify lists.

Love in an Elevator isn’t really about love in an elevator, more about falling in love in an elevator. I wrote it to celebrate National Talk in an Elevator Day and to make the talking a little harder, I made one of the characters have a fluency disorder. As if talking to strangers isn’t hard enough.

After years of speech therapy without success, Corey has given up on spoken language and communicates solely through sign language and written text.

Hayden doesn’t notice at first. He does his best to catch Corey in the elevator as often as he can, and since Corey nods and smiles, it takes a few rides before Hayden realises Corey hasn’t spoken to him.

I had a lot of fun writing this one, and while there is bullying, homophobia, discrimination and so on, I’ll still claim that it’s a light-hearted tale.

And if you have a thing for elevators, Ofelia’s Elevator Pitch is about two guys trapped in an elevator. So on Friday, Talk in an Elevator Day is celebrated on the last Friday of July, you can read two elevator stories. One is contemporary, and the other is paranormal 😊

Love in an Elevator

loveinanelevator

Corey Hope’s school years sucked. With a crippling stutter, he was easy prey, and despite being grown up, his bullies still haunt his nightmares. After he left school, he gave up on trying to talk, and communicates solely through sign language and written text. It works great even though he wished he could say something when Hayden flirts with him in the elevator. 

Hayden does his best to catch Corey in the elevator as often as he can, and he thinks they might have something, but it all comes crashing down when Corey sees him having lunch with his colleagues. Corey might be drawn to Hayden, but seeing him with his school bullies has old memories washing over him. He won’t let them hurt him ever again, and he’d rather forget about Hayden than risk Hayden hurting him. 

How will Hayden convince Corey he’s nothing like his colleagues when Corey refuses to see him? 

Buy links: 

Contemporary gay romance: 17,560 words 

JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/LoveinanElevator 

Excerpt:

The weekend had passed too damn fast. Corey liked his job, and he’d been lucky to get it, but he liked time off more. He worked from home for the most part and only went into the office for the occasional meeting, but those too were mostly conducted via Zoom these days.
His boss had sent him an email, listing the most urgent projects for him to have a look at. They had built several new websites for different clients, and as a front-end developer, it was his job to create the layout and make sure they ran smoothly.
Today, it didn’t run smoothly. He’d already spent three hours trying to find an error in the coding, and it was driving him insane when he couldn’t spot it.
Stretching, he went to put on more coffee. Once he’d pressed the button on the coffee maker, he stepped into his shoes and exited his apartment. The mail would’ve arrived. All mailboxes were on the ground floor of the building. Corey understood the mailman not wanting to run up all the floors, but sometimes he went weeks between checking his mail. He’d tried to make it routine to go down on his lunch break, but some days he didn’t have the energy. Now he needed a change of scenery.
He yawned and followed it up with another stretch while riding the elevator to the bottom floor. Once the doors slid open, he stepped out and rounded the corner to his left where the mailboxes covered an entire wall. Whisking his key out, he opened the metal door and grimaced at the stack of envelopes. The top one was the electricity bill.
He went back into the elevator while flicking through the letters. Nothing exciting. The door moved when a voice echoed through the lobby.
“Hold the elevator!”
Corey slid his foot out to halt the doors, and as he looked up, Hayden was hurrying toward him.
“Oh, hi.” He grinned, and Corey’s heart sped up. Hayden looked too good for his own good.
“How are you today?” He glanced at the top envelope in Corey’s hand. “Corey Hope?”
Corey smiled and nodded.
A scent of coffee filled the elevator, but this time Hayden didn’t carry a to-go cup. It had been hard to miss the cup he’d carried the last time—the bright green lime slices on an equally bright yellow background had made the cup light up the entire elevator.
Corey narrowed his eyes and breathed in deep. He wasn’t imagining the coffee scent, he couldn’t be.
“Smelling the coffee?”
Nodding, Corey glanced at him.
“Lucky, I wear black, right?” Hayden gestured at his chest, and the black fabric of his a little too tight T-shirt appeared wet. “It was so embarrassing you wouldn’t believe. I was meeting with a potential client, and I’d poured myself a cup of coffee when my asshole boss came through the door. I whirled around, spilled the coffee, and it was super-hot so in my haste to get the fabric away from my skin, I dropped the cup on the floor.”
Corey winced.
“It was a paper cup. What kind of office has paper cups?” He shook his head and sighed. “Tara will be horrified if I tell her. I haven’t decided if I should. It would lead to a ten-minute lecture.” He shrugged. “Could be an amusing one.”
Tara? Should Corey know who Tara was? Maybe she lived in the building too.
Then those dark eyes focused on Corey again. “Anyway, I turned back to the client to apologize for the mess and slipped on the coffee I’d spilled when I dropped the cup. One second, I was standing, the next I was crawling around on the floor. Most humiliating, I’ll have you know.”
Corey gasped and swept his gaze over him, searching for injuries.
“I’ll have a bruise on my hip for a week.” He grinned. “Or at least a couple of days.”
The elevator slowed and soon after the doors opened. Corey stepped out on his floor.
“Are you leaving me, Corey?” There was a sparkle of amusement in his eyes.
Corey nodded.
“But I’m injured. I’d hoped you’d at least offer to kiss it better.” He winked and heat rushed through Corey’s veins. Was Hayden flirting or was he making fun of him?
Corey shook his head, and Hayden exaggeratedly slumped his shoulders. “Maybe next time?”
Corey grinned but shook his head and hurried off toward his apartment. When he glanced over his shoulder, it was to find Hayden keeping the elevator doors from closing with his foot and watching Corey unlock his front door. He gave him a wave goodbye before entering.