Forged in Smoke's Release is Delayed

For those readers who came here looking for more information on when Forged in Smoke is going to release, I regret to have to tell you that I have no idea at this point. Smoke, along with Ember, has been pushed back. I think Smoke will release sometime in the late spring, early summer of 2015--but I have no hard and fast release date yet, so I'm not completely sure. As soon as I'm given a hard release date I'll update this blog.

In the meantime, to tide my fans over, I'm going to publish a Red-Hot SEAL novella every two to three months, depending on time constraints. The first novella, Bound in Seduction, will release mid-December. My newsletter subscribers will get these novellas for free, so make sure you've signed up for my newsletter, if you haven't already.

Bound in Seduction focuses on the romance between Kait's brother Aidan and her best friend Demi. You might remember Demi from Forged in Ash, she was the coffee cart girl. Here's a sneak peak at the cover.

Forged in Ash Releases!!

Forged in Ash Releases!

After a long, long, long wait, my second Red-Hot SEALs romantic thriller (Forged in Ash) released on Tuesday.

  I have to admit I was really worried about how well it would be received. There’s this rumored second book curse thing, you know? Where the second book is often a disappointment, if people loved the first book. So far, knock on wood, the reception has been fantastic. Reader feedback has been completely awesome. Everyone seems to love Ash as much as Fire. There has been a lot of questions coming in, though, so I thought I’d answer the most common of them here.

But first, several people have pointed out what they believed were formatting errors in some of the Arapaho words. This involved the number 3 mixed in with the letters of the word. This is not a formatting error. The Arapaho language uses the number 3 as a letter.  So the words are spelled 

correctly. I should have written an author’s note to explain this.

Now for the most popular questions-

1/ Forged in Smoke, book three, will be Rawls’s story and it will release on October 28^th, 2014- nine months from now. Forged in Ember, which is Mac and Amy’s story will release on Jan 28^th, 2015.

2/ Ember will conclude this particular storyline and YES!! all the threads will be tied up, and everything will be explained. This particular four book set was conceived as an ongoing story arc, there is just too much happening to conclude the storyline in one or two books.  

3/ The next set of Red-Hot SEALs books will revolve around Zane’s brothers. They will be romantic thrillers as well, but they will be standalone books rather than a continuing storyline.

4/Yes, Mac and Amy will have their own HEA and yes, Amy brings Mac to his knees. J

5/ Yes, Wolf and Jillian will have their own HEA, although it will not take place in the Red-Hot SEALs series. While they will both show up in Smoke and then again in Ember, they will spin off a new series featuring Wolf’s mysterious and deadly Arapaho special ops team and their HEA will take place during this new series. This series (as yet untitled) will launch April of 2015.

6/ Yes, I still intend to release Yesterday’s Child, but there has been some problems with that book’s structure and characterization and I’m not completely happy with it and I won’t release anything I don’t think is ready for prime time.  However, I sent it to another developmental editor and got some great feedback and suggestions.  I’m hoping to have it revised and through copy edits by May, so it’s tentatively scheduled for a June release.

7/Yes, Kait’s brother will have his own HEA. He’ll hook up with Kait’s friend Demi.

8/ Yes, I am doing companion romance novella’s for each of the Red-Hot SEAL books. Zane’s will come first and I’m hoping to have it available in March.

9/ Yes, not only will Cosky’s mother show up more often through the series, but she’ll  have her own novella and HEA.

10/ Yes, Forged in Ash will be available as an audio book sometime in March.

The Official Blurb for Forged in Ash

Here's my official Montlake blurb for Forged in Ash! ( I have to admit-they do it sooooo much better than I do-:))

Kait Winchester inherited a special gift from her Arapaho ancestors: she can heal with her touch. And there is no one she would like to get her hands on more than the super-sexy SEAL who seems determined to ignore their off-the-charts chemistry. When the wounded warrior finally seeks her help, she’s ready to nurse him back to health…and into her bed.

Navy SEAL Lieutenant Marcus “Cosky” Simcosky is no stranger to hot water, but recent events have boiled over into one hell of a mess. His team is under investigation for a hostage rescue gone wrong, a crazy female stalker is on his trail, and the last few bullets he took just may sideline him for the rest of his career. The kicker? The one woman who can help him get back on his feet—and has haunted his fantasies for years—is his teammate’s sister. He’s looked but never touched. When his stalker targets Kait, though, Cosky will have no choice but to do whatever is necessary to keep her safe.

Forged in Ash's Blurb

For those of you asking about Cosky's book, here's an unofficial blurb. It will have to do until my Montlake Team whips me up a better one. 

Forged in Ash-- Release date of Jan 28th, 2014

Recovering from injuries sustained during the rescue of civilian hostages, Lieutenant Marcus Simcosky is facing medical retirement, as well as possible criminal charges pending a Federal Grand Jury Investigation. As if losing his SEAL team, and possibly his freedom isn’t bad enough, some batshit crazy woman is trying to kill him.

Things go from bad to worse when he discovers the only person who might be able to heal his leg, allowing him to re-qualify for the teams, is spiritual healer Kait Winchester. Kait’s the only woman to pierce Cosky’s legendary control. She’s also the daughter of a fallen comrade and the sister of a teammate—which puts her off limits to casual trysts. Kait’s attempted healing appears to fail miserably and sparks events that set the couple at odds. They separate, determined to avoid each other. A strategy Cosky is forced to abandon when his stalker goes after Kait. But in trying to protect Kait, Cosky ultimately drags her into the tornado surrounding him.

Once he captures the woman out to kill him, Cosky realizes she’s connected to the events under investigation. After three long months, he finally has an opportunity to identify the powerful men behind the conspiracy that has engulfed him. His stalker, however, comes with baggage of her own and men determined to silence her. As Cosky and his teammates mobilize, their shadowy adversaries ramp up the war, taking action to eliminate the SEALs, and the women they’re protecting, once and for all.

Guest Blogger Author Sofia Grey--with a book giveaway!

Let’s give a warm welcome to my guest blogger for today—author Sofia Grey!

Here's Sofia!

 Anxious Annies

 

I have a friend who gets anxious about not wearing matching undies. She’d run the risk of being late for work if she couldn’t find the right panties to go with her bra, yet in all other regards, she was sound and unflappable. Another friend freaks out if a pigeon flies near her. She’ll cross the road to avoid walking close to one, and Trafalgar Square with its vast colony of pigeons would be her private hell.

I guess we all have our personal fears, and just to show willing, I’m going to share mine with you. Slides. I get stressed about slides, about actually going on a slide. I’m not a big fan of ladders anyway, and the idea of climbing a ladder, and then sliding back to earth again is a big NO in my book. I think it dates back to a school trip to a local amusement park. One of the attractions was an old fashioned helter-skelter, you know, where you spiral up to the top, and slide back down on a coconut mat. I made it to the top ok, herded along by my friends and classmates and then had my WTF moment at the top. Until I got there, I’d been able to ignore that somehow, I had to get back down again. I eyed the coconut mat. I peered down the top of the slide and then looked at the ground, so very far away.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” said the attendant. “Take the mat, sit down and push off.”

“No,” I said (louder).

He was about to say ‘yes’ again, probably louder too, and then a well meaning friend shoved her way past me.

“Like this,” she said, grabbed the mat, and sailed down. I’d seen enough. I pushed my way back down the stairs, ignoring all the questions, right to the bottom and tried to get my breath back. It felt as though I’d done a 100m sprint. Ever since then, slides and me have not been on good terms.

In Obsession, Suki has to face up to her very private fears, anxieties buried so deep that her husband Gabe has no knowledge of them.

I poured myself a drink from the bottle Gabe had opened, and sat down at the table to flick through the newspaper abandoned at breakfast. My eyes may have been focused on the pages in front of me, but in my head I was remembering the guy in the café. I should have taken the ice after all; I didn’t realize I’d been scalded at the time. I was too embarrassed about throwing my drink all over him, too shocked at how I’d felt when he took my hand, and too scared that I’d spoken without realizing it. I’d swear I hadn’t said anything, yet he’d answered me.

I’m lucky with my anxiety trigger. I don’t get up close and personal with playgrounds every day, and it’s no big deal avoiding theme park rides as I almost never go to theme parks anyway. Tell me what freaks you out, and you’ll go into a draw to win a copy of Obsession.

 

Obsession is available June 12th, 2013, from Time & Tide Publishing.

Josh Delaney is the ideal honey trap.

His charm and model good looks would be enough for most women, but coupled with his psychic ability to read their thoughts, he’s impossible to resist. Suspicious husbands employ him to test their wives, to see if they can be tempted to stray.

High profile couple Suki and Gabe Bridgewater have the perfect marriage, or at least, that’s the image they portray to the world. Behind closed doors, Gabe’s dominance in the marriage is unravelling and he decides to test Suki, using Josh as bait.

 For Josh it should be just another easy job, but two things go horribly wrong.

One, Josh falls in love with Suki.

And two, Gabe refuses to let her go.

You can find Obsession through Amazon HERE! 

Check out Obsession's Trailer HERE

Blog tours are fun to take part in, these are my stops:

• 12 June - Layne Macadam (http://laynemacadam.blogspot.co.nz/)
• 13 June – Laura Kaye (http://laurakayeauthor.blogspot.co.nz/)
• 14 June – Lissa Matthews (http://lissamatthews.com/blog/)
• 15 June - Cover Reveals website (http://coverreveals.blogspot.co.nz/)
• 16 June –Ella Frank (http://ellafrank30.wordpress.com/)
• 17 June - Allyson Lindt (http://blog.apathyshero.com/)
• 18 June – Parker Kincade (http://parkerkincade.blogspot.co.nz/)
• 20 June –Trish McCallan (http://trishmccallan.blogspot.co.nz/)
• 21 June – Tina Carreiro (tinacarreiro.blogspot.com/)
• 23 June - Silken Sheets &Seduction (http://silkensheetsandseduction.wordpress.com/)
• 26 June – Sotia Lazu (http://justsotia.blogspot.co.nz/)
• 29 June - Love Lust & Laptops (http://lovelustandlaptops.wordpress.com/)

About Author
 

Romance author Sofia Grey spends her days managing projects in the corporate world and her nights hanging out with wolf shifters and alpha males. She devours pretty much anything in the fiction line, but she prefers her romances to be hot, and her heroes to have hidden depths. When writing, she enjoys peeling back the layers to expose her characters’ flaws and always makes them work hard for their happy endings.

Find her at: www.sofiagrey.com and on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/sofiagrey1, or on Twitter @SofiaGreyAuthor

* images courtesy of 123rf.com

Woot!! Big News!

Let me throw a couple of Woo-Hoos out there too!

It's with great excitement and more than a little disbelief, that I announce that Forged in Fire finaled in both the Best First Book and Best Romantic Suspense category of Romance Writers of America's 2013 RITA contest.

It's a double RITA finalist!!!

For those who don't know what the RITA is, let me educate you, or, I should say- let RWA educate you since I am pulling this directly from the organization's website--

"The purpose of the RITA contest is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas. The award itself is a golden statuette named after RWA's first president, Rita Clay Estrada, and has become the symbol for excellence in published romance fiction."

Which means that Forged in Fire is both outstanding and excellent. *preens*

At least to the five judges who read it during the first round of RITA judging.

Because winning any book/writing contest is all about the judges you draw and I happened to hit the jackpot for this year's RITA contest. 

So my thanks to the judges who scored FiF high enough to allow it to final. This double final made my day, heck--it made my week! :)

Cover Reveal. . . Here's Cosky! Forged in Ash!