Six Sentence Sunday 11-4-12 - Release Day Eve for An Infamous Marriage!

An Infamous Marriage releases tomorrow, so this is the last excerpt I'll be posting on Six Sentence Sunday. I've enjoyed sharing some teasers from this story with you, and I hope to see some of you on my blog tour, which started Friday and continues through December 3. (Today I'm at Risky Regencies.) At most of the stops I'll be giving away a copy of the book, and at the end of the tour I'll be giving out a grand prize of a $50 bookstore gift certificate.

Without further ado, here's this week's six. Jack and Elizabeth are finally spending the night together...bundled up in their warmest clothing in a barn in northern England in February, waiting for a mare to foal. But one thing has led to another, and...

He broke the kiss but stayed close, nose to nose, breathing hard. “Oh, God, Elizabeth. Is it really that cold?” 

Some distant part of her murmured she might regret this in the morning, but she ignored it. “I’ve never been warmer,” she gasped. 

She kissed him again and he began to work at the buttons on her pelisse. 

Six Sentence Sunday 10-28-12 - An Infamous Marriage

Just one more week now till release day! In this week's excerpt, Jack has just tried to convince insecure Elizabeth that he really does want her, because certain indications of male desire are difficult to fake. She almost accepts this, then points out that plenty of marriages that are far from love matches manage to produce heirs. He replies that those men probably bed their wives in the dark, the better to imagine themselves with someone else, but that's not what he wants with her:

“Oh.” She wished her face didn’t feel so hot, or that at least she could get her breathing to slow down to its normal rhythm. 

“With you,” he continued, “I want daylight, or at least candles burning. So I can see you, and know you see me.” 

“Oh,” she said again, and turned her head to look outside the window. She couldn’t seem to summon any better eloquence than that, just then.

I'm at the Emerald City Writers Conference this weekend, so I'll be late responding to any comments. But please do let me know what you think, and stop by the Six Sentence Sunday website to view other writers' excerpts.

Six Sentence Sunday 10-21-12 - An Infamous Marriage

Just two weeks now till An Infamous Marriage releases, so this week things get a bit hot and heavy when Jack gets distracted during a perfectly innocent conversation:

His ready imagination clothed her in green silk, with nothing under it, and then laid her on the bed with the luxurious wrapping untied to reveal her creamy, pale skin bared for him to feast upon. How the silk would slide and rustle beneath them as he came into her, and how soft the skin of her inner thighs would be against his hips… 

“That would be fine,” he heard her say. 

“Yes, very,” he agreed fervently. 

She blinked at him, and he wondered what she’d say if she knew what he was thinking. Best not to test it, not yet.

As always, visit the Six Sentence Sunday site to check out other writers' excerpts.

Six Sentence Sunday 10-14-12 - An Infamous Marriage

With my release date just three weeks a way, I'm continuing with another excerpt from An Infamous Marriage.  This week Elizabeth has just shocked Jack by bursting into laughter in the middle of a serious conversation, the most cordial they've had since their reunion, in which she assures him she's glad he didn't die of the wounds he received at the Battle of Queenston Heights:

“What,” he ground out, dropping her hand, “is so amusing?” 

With difficulty she calmed herself enough to speak. “We’ve established we don’t wish each other dead. I suppose it’s a beginning.”

He stared at her, blinked, then laughed along with her. “An excellent beginning.” 

Leave a comment, if you'd like, and stop by the Six Sentence Sunday website to check out other authors' excerpts.

 

Six Sentence Sunday 10-7-12: An Infamous Marriage

As I continue to count down the weeks until my new historical romance, An Infamous Marriage, releases, today we visit with our heroine, Elizabeth, a few hours after her husband, Jack, has returned home from military service in Canada. As revenge for his adultery and the embarrassment it's caused her, she's announced her intent of barring him from her bed* until he finds a way to earn her forgiveness. (Their marriage wasn't consummated during the few days they had before he left for Canada five years ago because both of them were so deeply grieved over the lost of her first husband and his best friend.) However, she can't help but waver a little bit.

She’d had one week with Giles before he fell ill, just enough to whet her appetite for the pleasures of the flesh. Before she’d learned of Jack’s adultery, she’d begun to imagine what it would feel like to lie with him, but she hadn’t allowed herself such a fantasy in three years. Instead, night after night she’d raged against fate for being so cruel, so unfair, as to give her only one week of bliss when other women had years and years of happiness. And now already some traitorous part of her called out, See how handsome Jack is! And he wants you.

He wants an heir, her wiser self told her foolish body. 

*Yes, Elizabeth and I both know that according to the legalities of the day, her husband has rights to her body. However, she judges, correctly, that he'd be unwilling to force himself upon a woman who was actively resisting him even if didn't legally count as rape.

Six Sentence Sunday 9-30-12: An Infamous Marriage

Here's excerpt #4 from my upcoming release, An Infamous Marriage. This week we're in February 1815, and our hero and heroine are seeing each other again for the first time in five years. (They've been married all that time, but Jack has been in Canada with the army.)

“Is Lady Armstrong at home?” Jack asked with careful carelessness. 

“I’m right here.” 

Jack spun on his heel and almost tumbled on his backside into the wintry muck. So much for the element of surprise. She’d got the advantage of him after all. 

The woman who stood ten feet away at the edge of the stable yard was nothing at all like he’d spent the last five years imagining.

Six Sentence Sunday 9-23-12 - An Infamous Marriage

Here's Six Sentence Sunday excerpt #3 from my upcoming historical romance, An Infamous Marriage. This week our heroine, Elizabeth, having married the hero, Jack, to fulfill a deathbed promise to her first husband, is at home in Northumberland taking care of Jack's elderly mother and his lands while he serves with his regiment in Canada. His uncle and mentor, Sir Richard Armstrong, has arrived seeking an explanation for his favorite nephew's surprise marriage:

“Ah, now it all becomes clear. Jack has always been persuadable when it comes to his friends. So you gained a settled home, which I daresay you needed, for it isn’t as though a curate would’ve married a woman with a fortune or had one of his own to leave her. And Jack gained both a caretaker for his mother and a comfortable sense of his own heroism and generosity to his friend.” 

It was so accurate Elizabeth wanted to smash something. Possibly the jasperware vase on the mantel, and probably over Sir Richard’s head.

Six Sentence Sunday 9-16-12 - An Infamous Marriage

Here's another Six Sentence Sunday excerpt from An Infamous Marriage, my November 5 release, which is now available for preorder at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

This week we flash back five years from the prologue to visit our hero and heroine during their first meal as husband and wife in February 1810. They marry to fulfill a deathbed promise to Elizabeth's first husband, who was Jack's childhood best friend. Because Jack has to rejoin his regiment almost immediately, their wedding is a hasty, unromantic elopement just over the border from their Northumberland home to Scotland:

“Was there someone else?” she asked. “Someone you wanted to carry to Scotland?” 

“What would be the point of telling you if there was?” he snapped. “It can’t be, now.” 

She sighed. None of this was his fault, but she couldn’t help envisioning some perfect, golden-haired young beauty, perhaps a general’s daughter, who had danced with Colonel Armstrong and dreamed of becoming his bride.

Six Sentence Sunday 9-9-12 - An Infamous Marriage

An Infamous Marriage releases November 5 from Carina Press, so between now and then I'm posting weekly Six Sentence Sunday excerpts. This week, the last six sentences of the prologue:

He would close his eyes, think of Sarah or Marie-Rose or Hannah, and get Elizabeth with child. With any luck she’d bear a son on the first attempt and they could go back to avoiding each other. He’d wager Elizabeth would be as glad to see the back of him as he would to be quit of her. 

He’d been a fool to marry her on such a slight acquaintance. A deathbed promise was no way to choose a wife, and he had been ten thousand kinds of a fool to agree to it. Yet it had seemed such an excellent notion at the time…

No Six Sentence Sunday today

The Six Sentence Sunday blog is on hiatus this week as the site migrates to a new platform, so I took a break from posting excerpts.

And I think I'm going to take a longer break from Six Sentence Sunday, just because it was so relaxing today to not compulsively check my blog every time I had a spare moment to see how my comment count was going. Also, while I enjoy reading others' excerpts and there are several stories I plan to continue to follow, I found it was taking me hours just to go through each week's author list.

Don't get me wrong, I think SSS is a great idea. But between writing, my day job, and family, I don't have a lot of spare time, and I need to reclaim those Sunday hours for writing, researching, hanging out with my husband and daughter...or even today's activity, which was taking my Brand! New! Car! (yes, I say it like that--I only got it yesterday) out to try its paces on the open road while listening to my Mariners pull off a come-from-behind victory.

I still plan to talk about my writing and post the occasional excerpt from a work-in-progress. And maybe I'll drop in on SSS on occasion.

Six Sentence Sunday 5-29-11

This week at last we're back in my historical fantasy, Wolf & Huntress. Cass Macdonald, our heroine, is remembering an incident from when she was thirteen and in the middle of the night sneaked out of the lodgings she shared with her sister and grandfather:

Grandda had been waiting for her when she climbed back in through the window just before dawn. Before she could think of an explanation, he’d slapped her hard across the face. “Just what were you thinking you were about, foolish lass?”

“I was hunting vampires,” she said stoutly. “And I was killing three of them.”

“Hunting vampires by yourself?”

Comments and feedback always welcome, and check out other authors' excerpts at the Six Sentence Sunday blog.

Six Sentence Sunday 5-22-11

I finished the rough draft of my novella, Jane's Second Soldier, on Friday, and I'll be setting it aside for at least several weeks. I know it's not ready to submit as it stands, and I need some space before I can decide how much work it needs and whether I'm willing to commit to it.

Now I'm working on both my historical fantasy, Wolf & Huntress, and a new historical romance whose working title is The General's Mouse. Since none of the new sections from W&H made a nice SSS post, I'm posting the first six sentences of my newest manuscript. It's January 1815, and the scene is on a Royal Navy frigate returning from North America. They've just met a ship bound in the opposite direction bearing news of the treaty ending the War of 1812. My hero, a young general whose entire career has been based on his prowess at war, isn't sure what to think of peace:

-----

“To peace!”

Dutifully Jack lifted his glass. “To peace,” he echoed, along with the rest of the officers dining at Captain Tizley’s table.

How many of them truly want peace? Jack wondered as he downed his wine. He couldn’t honestly say he did. After the debacle at Plattsburgh, he had intended to plead with Horse Guards for an independent command.

-----

Comments and feedback always appreciated (keeping in mind that this is the rough draft of something I just started yesterday!). And visit the Six Sunday blog to view other authors' contributions.

Six Sentence Sunday - back to Jane's Second Soldier

Taking a couple weeks away from Wolf & Huntress to finish my first draft of Jane's Second Soldier, which I'd been neglecting, since it's so much more fun to play with a brand new manuscript you won't have to edit for MONTHS than to write the last chapter or two of one you know is going to need serious editing before you can send it out.

Anyway, here's a scene from early in Jane's Second Soldier. Her new husband, Ben, doesn't have a lot of experience with women, but he has fine instincts:

And then she began to sob. After a moment’s hesitation Ben set his bowl down, removed hers from her unresisting hands, and pulled her into his arms—though not without a covert glance to see if they were making a spectacle for the whole camp. The twilight seemed to be hiding them, or at least everyone was polite enough to pretend, so he turned his attention to his wife. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He had never held a crying woman before. But he rocked her, and patted her shoulders, and smoothed her hair, and murmured things about how sorry he was, and that she should cry all she wanted, and he was there and he’d take care of her.

Six Sentence Sunday is a weekly blog event where authors post brief excerpts from their work. Comments and feedback are always welcome, and do visit the home blog to see what others are posting.

Six Sentence Sunday - Wolf & Huntress

I'll keep posting from my historical fantasy WIP, Wolf & Huntress, as long as y'all are enjoying it, but I'm deliberately leaving gaps in the story, trying to play it more like a movie preview and less like a synopsis or a serialization. At least in this, I want to be a tease!

Anyway, this week Cass is breaking up with the fiance who had the nerve to save her life by pulling her out of a fight (on the instructions of another character who has the Sight and sees big things in the future for Cass):

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“I am not your lass!” she cried, her voice echoing off the hillside. “Just...go. Help the others. I’ll take Shonnie, and get safe away, but not so I can save Scotland. I’ll use Caitriona’s money to buy silver shot, and I’ll bide my time. I’ll find the Campbell werewolf when he’s not looking for me, and not expecting my scent, and I will avenge my sister.”

-----

Six Sentence Sunday is a weekly blog feature where writers post six sentences of their work, whether a WIP or a published book. Stop by the main blog to check out other authors' contributions.

NOTE: I won't be commenting much myself this week, as I'm having a pinched nerve flareup that's limiting my screen time.

Six Sentence Sunday - more Wolf & Huntress

Since y'all liked last week's excerpt from my historical fantasy WIP, Wolf & Huntress, so much, I figured I'd give you a little more from the first chapter. Cass Macdonald, our heroine and point-of-view character, is being forcibly restrained from going to her sister's aid in a fight. As I mentioned last week, she's just discovered she can hear werewolf telepathy, though she has no idea such a thing should be possible (it's an extremely rare ability in this world, maybe one or two people per generation) and doesn't understand why she has such a strong sense of this particular enemy's intentions:

-----

Mary’s head rolled to the side, and for a second the sisters’ eyes met. Then the light of life died, and Mary’s eyes went still and empty as glass.

The wolf raised his head, dripping with gore. Your turn.

Cass swallowed down her grief and shock, breathing hard. Revenge first, then mourning.

-----

Comments and feedback always appreciated, and be sure to check out other authors' contributions.

Six Sentence Sunday - Wolf & Huntress

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! I'll be late on reading others' posts today, because I have three services to sing the Hallelujah Chorus at. But I'll get to them, once I'm all sung out. (I'm on the West Coast, so I always set up my Six Sentence Sunday posts the day before rather than getting up before 6 AM my time to meet the East Coast deadline for getting them live.)

This week we're returning to my historical fantasy WIP, Wolf & Huntress. In this scene from the opening chapter, our heroine, Cass, gets the first hint that she has the ability to hear werewolf telepathy.
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The wolf was at least as big as the largest dog Cass had ever seen, fully waist-high on the tall Campbell who marched at his side. The beast’s fur gleamed silver in the moonlight, solid but for the black tips of his ears and tail. He bared his teeth, sharp and white, and in the near-silence Cass could hear him snarl.

And more than snarl. A voice she’d never heard before echoed in her mind. Sealgair bitches...murderers...smell their blood.

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(Sealgair is Gaelic for hunter. As for why that's what the wolf calls Cass and her sister, well, hopefully someday I'll sell the book and y'all can read it. :-) )

Feedback and comments always appreciated, and please visit the Six Sentence Sunday blog to see the wide range of contributions.

Six Sentence Sunday - more from Jane's Second Soldier

This week we're back in my historical romance novella WIP (1812 Spain, with the British army fighting Napoleon's forces), working title Jane's Second Soldier. Jane is with her new husband, Ben, who rescued her from the bully who was assaulting her when the story opened. He had to marry her right away to protect her, and they've had the problems you might expect from a couple who marry as near-strangers while one of them is still mourning her first love. But here they're having a moment of pure fun together for a change:

“That girl there–she’s offering kisses to every soldier who marches by!”

Ben turned and saw a pretty, dark-haired girl in a doorway, giggling and indeed bestowing mostly chaste kisses upon a line of happy redcoats.

“She’s well enough,” he said, “but you’re prettier.” And he set his hands on either side of Jane’s face and kissed her, there in the crowded, sunlit street. She stood stock-still for a moment, then melted against him, her hands coming up to span his shoulders.

For several precious seconds she leaned into him, and Ben forgot the noisy crowd around them, forgot the war, forgot his duties, forgot everything but the woman in his arms, her lips warm and soft under his, her hair sweet-smelling in the hot August sun.

Just to offer a little eye candy, I picture Ben as looking a bit like Sean Maher:



Comments and feedback always welcome--though please keep in mind that this is still in rough draft stage. Also, drop by the Six Sentence Sunday mothership to view other authors' work.

Six Sentence Sunday - Release Day Eve

Since A Marriage of Inconvenience releases tomorrow (and can be purchased from Carina, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or All Romance, just to name a few), it seemed only fitting to post six more sentences from it before moving on to my current works-in-progress.

This week, something from James and Lucy's wedding night. Lucy's nerves are at war with her desires:

Freeing her hair was not the work of an instant, and Lucy was captured in the circle of his arms as James gently, carefully unwound the braid. His breath was warm against her neck, and after a tense moment she sighed and rested her cheek against his. Her nerves seemed heightened somehow; she was exquisitely aware of the contrast between the skin along his cheekbones, almost as soft as her own, and the faint rasp of beard stubble too short to see.

Still unbraiding her hair, James rested his face more closely against hers, then drew back to nuzzle her, nose to nose, and kiss her again. It was a gentle yet probing kiss, their tongues in a sort of leisurely, playful duel, and it did not end until he leaned back to fan her long hair around her, running his fingers through it.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since the day I met you,” he said.

As always, comments are welcome, and stop by the Six Sunday mothership for links to other authors' posts. Also, my blog tour for this book just started, and I'm giving away two copies this weekend. Stop by Romancing the Past to read a longer excerpt or by Risky Regencies, where I talk about my inspiration for the story and what makes A Marriage of Inconvenience a risky book. Leave a comment at either or both for a chance to win.

Six Sentence Sunday revisits A Marriage of Inconvenience

This week we're back in my April 11 release, A Marriage of Inconvenience. Last week we saw the hero, James, through his sister's eyes, and this week James gives us his perspective on Lucy, the heroine. (This is from a bit earlier in the story, before James and Lucy are engaged.)

“So, brother,” she said with unconvincing casualness, “what’s the trouble between you and Miss Jones?”

“Nothing,” he said. “She’s a very sweet girl.” Now, that was damning with faint praise. The more he knew Lucy Jones, the less he would describe her as anything so insipid as “sweet.” No, her flavor was sharp and complex, with the faint bitterness of fine wine.

Comments and feedback are always welcome, and do stop by the main blog and check out other writers' excerpts.

Six Sentence Sunday - more from A Marriage of Inconvenience

For this week's Six Sentence Sunday, I'm returning to A Marriage of Inconvenience, my upcoming Regency historical romance from Carina. It releases April 11 and is available for preorder now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and directly from Carina.

Here my hero, James, has recently been caught in a compromising situation with the heroine, Lucy, and has done the proper gentlemanly thing by agreeing to marry her even though she has no money whatsoever and is several rungs below his rich, viscountly self on the social ladder. His bride-to-be has two younger brothers, aged 13 and 17, and rather than being daunted he can hardly wait to meet his new brothers-in-law so he can start dictating their educations and planning their lives, all for their own good, of course. His sister, on learning this, sums up his character as follows:

“Come, James, surely you admit that nothing brings you greater delight than managing people’s lives for them. That’s why you’re so active in Parliament, and half the reason you love this estate—so much scope for giving orders and telling everyone how the world should be. You do your best to manage ME. It’s wonderful for you that Lucy has younger brothers and no parents living. You won’t have to wait till your own children are of a rational age to have someone to bring up according to your dictates. Though I’m sure you’ll have opinions on the proper dimensions of a cradle and when a child should have its first taste of pap by the time your firstborn enters the world.”

Comments are always welcome, and please stop by the Six Sentence Sunday blog to view other authors' contributions.