Alexandra Ivy's Blood Lust Blog Tour with a Spotlight, Excerpt and Giveaway

 

 

I am so excited to have Alexandra Ivy' here at Paranormal and Romantic Suspense Reviews with a Spotlight, Excerpt and Giveaway.

Thanks Alexandra and Tasty Book Tours for allowing me to join your Blood Lust Blog Tour!

Please take it away, Alexandra!

Blood Lust
The Sentinels #3
By: Alexandra Ivy
Releasing May 31, 2016
Zebra

Blurb

Blessed and cursed by their hidden abilities, the Sentinels have no choice but to live, and love, on the edge of humanity.

The Sentinel assassin, Bas, is facing the greatest challenge of his outcast existence. His young daughter, Molly, has been kidnapped. But her disappearance has brought the return of her mother, Myst, whom Bas has never forgotten -- or forgiven.

Haunted by a vision that she's destined to create a weapon that will destroy thousands, Myst was never impulsive -- until she met the irresistibly handsome Bas. But with the Brotherhood, the enemy of the high-bloods hunting for her, Myst had to stay on the run, to keep her child, and the world, safe. Now, with the most important thing in both their lives at stake, she and Bas must embark on a treacherous journey to save Molly, to confront the truth of Myst's fate -- and to face their fierce desire for one another.

Link to Follow Tour: http://www.tastybooktours.com/2016/05/blood-lust-sentinels-3-by-alexandra-ivy.html

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26236860-blood-lust

Goodreads Series Link: https://www.goodreads.com/series/90308-the-sentinels

Buy Links: Amazon | B & N | Google| iTunes | Kobo

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=9781420137590

B and N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/blood-lust-alexandra-ivy/1122624815?ean=9781420137590

Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Alexandra_Ivy_
Blood_Lust?id=eIKCCgAAQBAJ

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781420137606

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/blood-lust-30

He looked . . . offended.

“You didn’t tell me you were a telepath.”

She shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

“You applied for a job. I assumed you would have shared your complete resume.” He leaned down, wrapping her in the scent of clean male skin and scotch. “Or were you keeping secrets even back then?”

His lips brushed the top of her ear, sending streaks of lightning through her body.

Danger, excitement, and pure lust twisted her stomach into a knot.

Dammit. She’d spent the past four years isolated in the bowels of a Russian monastery. She wasn’t prepared to deal with the cascade of sensations.

She struggled to suck air into her lungs. “I wasn’t a telepath when I applied for the job,” she said in hoarse tones.

He frowned, his fingers resuming their absent path up and down her arm. Was he even aware of what he was doing?

Her skin shivered with delight.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” he demanded.

She grimaced, understanding his annoyance. High-bloods were born with their mutations, even if some didn’t reveal themselves until after puberty. Most people only had one, but a rare few could claim a combination.

Like Bas, who’d been born with both the magic of a witch and the superior strength of a Sentinel. And even more rare were those powers that appeared later in life, seemingly out of nowhere.

None of the healers had an explanation.

It simply happened.

“The talent didn’t reveal itself until I was pregnant,” she grudgingly confessed.

He lifted his head, genuine amazement in his eyes. “A spontaneous manifestation?”

“Yes.”

He studied her with a searing intensity. “Fine. You should have told me you were in contact with Molly.”

She forced herself to hold that raptor gaze. Bas was a natural leader with a male confidence that easily intimidated others.

In other words . . . an arrogant ass.

He would run her over completely if she didn’t try to stand her ground.

“As I said, you’re not my boss.”

“No, but I am Molly’s father.”

“I know that—” she started to snap, only to bite her tongue. Well, hell.

He was right.

“And?” he prompted.

She grimaced. It was true he was an arrogant ass, but he’d taken in a baby that he hadn’t known existed, without question and without hesitation, and surrounded her with the sort of love every little girl deserved.

As much as it might pain her to stroke his bloated ego, she owed him her eternal gratitude.

“I’m truly appreciative that you’ve done such a wonderful job with Molly.” She managed to force the words past her stiff lips. “She’s a very special little girl and I know that you had a very large part in that.”

He blinked, a flare of color staining the sharp line of his cheekbones.

Had she managed to knock him off guard?

Amazing.

Then his lips abruptly thinned. “You’re very good at deflecting my questions,” he accused.

She dropped her gaze to his thousand-dollar Italian shoes. “Then stop asking them.”

“Myst.” His finger curled beneath her chin, tilting her head up. “Why didn’t you let me know you were in contact with my daughter?”

A fresh pain sliced through her heart. “Our daughter,” she corrected in fierce tones.

His lips parted, but before he could deny her right to be a mother, Molly’s plaintive voice interrupted their tense confrontation.

“Daddy, I want Mommy to tell the story.”

Myst glanced toward the tiny girl who was perched on the edge of the bed before returning her wary gaze to the predator who was nearly vibrating with the urge to toss her through the nearest window.

“Let me go to her, Bas,” she said in low tones. “Please.”

Frustration tightened his stark features, but dropping his hands, he forced himself to take a step back.

“Tell her the story. Then we talk,” he warned, turning his head to send his daughter a smile that held uncomplicated affection. “Good night, pet.”

Bas stalked from the room, his phone pressed to his ear as he reached the main room of the suite.

“Kaede,” he snapped as soon as his enforcer picked up. “I need you in Kansas City. I’ll explain when you get here.”

He shoved the phone back into his pocket and paced to the bank of windows that overlooked the Kansas City skyline.

Unfucking believable.

After five years of paying a fortune to trackers, witches, and even a human private investigator to hunt down Myst, she waltzes into his penthouse as if she had every right to be there.

Worse, he discovered that she’d been in constant contact with Molly.

A short, humorless laugh was wrenched from his throat.

No, that wasn’t the worst.

The worst was the undeniable fact that he found her just as damned exquisite as the first time she’d sashayed that tiny body into his office.

His fingers had twitched with the urge to run through the moonlit silk of her hair. To yank off her pretty sundress and explore the pale ivory skin that had haunted his dreams. To crush the soft curve of her lips until they parted in help-less surrender.

Emotions are the enemy.

He’d been taught that by the monks who’d honed him into the perfect killer.

But Myst managed to shatter a lifetime of training, stir-ring his passions with an ease that was frankly terrifying.

He needed her gone.

Now.

Author Info

Alexandra Ivy graduated from Truman University with a degree in theatre before deciding she preferred to bring her characters to life on paper rather than stage. She currently lives in Missouri with her extraordinarily patient husband and teenage sons. To stay updated on Alexandra’s Guardian series or to chat with other readers, please visit her website at www.alexandraivy.com.

Author Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Website: http://www.alexandraivy.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexandraivyfanpage

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlexandraIvy

GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/40881.Alexandra_Ivy

Rafflecopter Giveaway (3 print copies of BLOOD LUST)

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/521ac4c81063/?

Paige Tyler's To Love a Wolf Blog Tour with a Spotlight and Excerpt

I am so excited to have Paige Tyler here at Paranormal and Romantic Suspense Reviews with a Spotlight and Excerpt.

Thanks Paige and Sourcebooks for allowing me to join your To Love a Wolf Blog Tour!

Please take it away, Paige!

Title: To Love a Wolf
Series: SWAT, #4
Author: Paige Tyler
Pubdate: June 6th, 2016
ISBN: 9781492638742

HE’S FOUND THE ONE

SWAT officer Landry Cooper is certain Everly Danu is The One. The problem is, she has no idea what Cooper really is. And as much as he wants to trust her, he’s not sure he can share his deepest secret.

When Everly’s family discovers Cooper’s a werewolf, her brothers will do anything to keep them apart — they’ll kill him if they have to. Everly is falling hard for the ridiculously handsome SWAT officer, and she’s not about to let her brothers tell her who she can love… Until Cooper’s secret is exposed and she discovers the man she thought she knew is a monster in disguise.

BUT CAN HE KEEP HER?

Paige Tyler is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of sexy, romantic fiction. Paige writes books about hunky alpha males and the kick-butt heroines they fall in love with. She lives with her very own military hero (a.k.a. her husband) and their adorable dog on the beautiful Florida coast. Visit http://paigetylertheauthor.com/.

Buy Links:

Amazon
Apple
Books-A-Million
Barnes & Noble
Chapters
Indiebound

Paige Tyler releases TO LOVE A WOLF, the fourth in her high-octane SWAT series, this June. To celebrate, we’re giving you the first SIX chapters to read FOR FREE!

Download the first six chapters here.

To get you started, we’ve included the first few pages below.

Outside Samarra City, Iraq, 2009

Staff Sergeant Landry Cooper moved carefully through the rubble covering the floor of the partially demolished building, inching his way closer to the target. The maze of shattered brick and broken pieces of wood weren’t the biggest reason he was moving slowly, though. That had more to do with the hundred-degree temperature and the seventy-five-pound Kevlar bomb suit he was wearing. He despised the army’s suit with a passion that few people outside the Explosive Ordnance Disposal community could understand.

It wasn’t simply that it was hot and heavy. No, what he hated most about the suit was the nearly complete sensory deprivation that came with wearing it. Inside the claustrophobic helmet surrounded by a neck gusset designed to keep your head from getting ripped off your body during an explosion, you couldn’t hear much of anything, your line of sight was distorted by the thick, curved face piece, and your peripheral vision was non­existent. Having to make a manual approach—better known in EOD circles as the long walk—on a suspected improvised explosive device, or IED, was bad enough. Doing it when you had an armor-plated pillow wrapped around your head?

That sucked.

But he didn’t have a choice. Local construction workers had come in this morning and found a sus­pected IED half buried in the dirt between two build­ings. Cooper and his team had been able to use a robot to drop a small demolition charge near the device, but his disposal charge, combined with a bang from the IED, had caused part of the surrounding buildings to collapse, pissing off the locals and making it impossible to get the robot back in to clear the area.

If there was one cardinal rule in EOD, it was that you never released an incident location back to the good guys without being one hundred percent sure all hazards had been cleared. That meant doing a manual approach in the bomb suit to make sure there weren’t any explo­sive materials or secondary devices around.

Cooper wasn’t too worried about walking up to the package he’d just blown in place. While the relation­ship between the city’s Sunni population and ruling Shiite government forces would never be described as anything other than tense, lately things had been better. IED responses were way down, and they hadn’t seen a secondary explosive device, typically planted to target police and other first responders, in months.

Still, he played everything by the book, keeping the protected front of his suit facing the spot where the IED had been, and using the building’s structure for protec­tion as much as possible. At the same time, he kept his head on a swivel, looking for anything that seemed out of place.

“I’m about twenty feet from where we blew the IED,” he murmured over his suit’s radio to his team members waiting in the safe area three hundred yards away, and then remembered he was wasting his breath. The damn radio had stopped working about a month ago, and a replacement wasn’t due for weeks. He was on his own.

Sweat trickled down his nose as he stepped over a low wall and moved toward the crater where the IED had been. He automatically lifted a hand to wipe the sweat from his face and thumped against the plastic face piece.

“Shit, I hate this suit,” he muttered, forced to make due with wiggling his nose.

He reached the edge of the shallow crater and looked down. Two feet deep and six across, it looked like a big soup bowl. There were some rusty nails the bomb maker had added for fun, but the IED itself was long gone. Even better, his demo shot hadn’t exposed another one buried underneath.

Cooper pulled a sharpened fiberglass rod out of his pocket, then jumped into the crater. If there was any­thing here, the blast from the disposal shot would have uncovered it, but it didn’t hurt to check. Unfortunately, the heavy spine protector in the suit that helped keep an EOD tech’s back from being crushed if blown backward against something hard meant he had to squat down like a sumo wrestler to stick the probe into the dirt. He ignored the sweat and aggravation and made it work.

He’d moved almost all the way around the shot hole and was about to climb out to walk around the rest of the area when his probe hit something hard. He tensed, but then relaxed. He was still here, so it couldn’t be that bad. Dropping to one knee, he used his hand to slowly uncover what he’d found. When a horizontal, cylindri­cal pipe took shape, he assumed it was a water or sewer line.

They weren’t exactly common in structures as old as this one, but it could have been placed here to supply another building nearby. As he uncovered it, the pipe began to get smaller on one end. His gut clenched as realization dawned on him. He brushed off more dirt, revealing the nose of the 155-millimeter artillery round, as well as the metal electrical conduit extending out of it and running underground.

Fuck.

Cooper pushed himself to his feet and backpedaled toward the edge of the crater as fast as he could. An artillery round didn’t usually have a conduit sticking out the end. This one had been booby-trapped so the bomber could set it off manually whenever he wanted. The conduit was there so the IED wouldn’t cut the line if an EOD tech like him destroyed it. And with the conduit there, Cooper couldn’t cut the line either.

This device was an EOD killer put there because somebody knew a bomb tech would come down and look around before turning the site over to the local police.

His mind raced. A projectile this size carried fifteen pounds of high explosive. When it went off, even a bomb suit as good as the one he had on was unlikely to stop all the frag that came off it.

He reached the top of the crater and backed away as fast as he could. He would have been able to run faster if he turned around, but the weakest part of a bomb suit was the rear. If this thing went off when his back was to it, he’d have no chance.

Time slowed as a thousand thoughts zipped through his head. How he seriously didn’t want to die. How maybe the bomber on the other end of that firing line might have needed to go take a piss, and the 155 wouldn’t go off. How his parents and brothers were going to be crushed when they found out. How he should have gone to the prom with that cute girl in his math class back in high school. How one of the junior members on his team was going to be forced to step up and take over his job. How the new unit lieutenant was going to have to write a condolence letter on his first fucking day on the job.

Cooper pushed those thoughts away, yanking his hands inside the arms of the suit to keep them from get­ting ripped off in the blast as he focused his attention on moving backward as fast as he could.

Just get twenty feet away. Then you might have a chance.

He didn’t make it ten.

The blast threw him backward before his head even registered the flash of the projectile exploding. Luckily, he was so close that the wave took out the brick wall behind him before he could smash into it. But that luck ran out, and he slammed into the one behind it.

He felt a sharp stab in his back, then nothing from the middle of his chest down. The suit’s spine support had broken — and so had his back.

He hit the ground hard, tumbling like a kid’s toy until he came to a sudden stop against a pile of bricks. He felt pain — lots of it — at least from the chest up. He wasn’t sure how he was able to, but he lifted his head enough to look down, and saw long, jagged fragments from the 155 sticking out of him like he was a damn pincushion.

Cooper let his head drop to the ground and swore long and hard. He was so fucked.

A detached part of his mind noticed that pieces of the building were burning around him. That was interesting, considering how little flammable material was in the area. The flames weren’t too bad, but the smoke would probably choke him to death sooner or later. Not that he was likely to live long enough for that to happen. The frag had penetrated the bomb suit. He’d bleed out fast enough. He’d just be too numb to feel it.

Then someone was at his side, roughly prying up his face, telling him to hold on. That’s when he realized his ears weren’t working right. He could barely hear the person speaking. No shock there. The blast had blown out his eardrums.

He opened his eyes, expecting to see one of his junior teammates, and was shocked when he saw that it was Jim Wainwright, a fellow senior team leader and the best friend he’d ever had. Cooper hadn’t even known another team had arrived.

“Get the hell out of here!” Cooper shouted. Or at least he tried to. The words came out as nothing but a gurgling whisper. “Jim, you know this is stupid. There could be another device down here.”

Jim didn’t answer, but simply shoved his arms under the bomb suit, as if he thought he could pick up Cooper and carry him out of here. He didn’t bother to tell his friend how stupid that was. Besides all the frag sticking out of his body, making the task of picking him up akin to hugging a porcupine, Cooper and the bomb suit he wore weighed nearly three hundred pounds combined.

There was no way in hell Jim could pick him up.

“Go!” he ordered again. “You know I’m done anyway.”

Jim ignored him. Tears running down his face, he tried grabbing the heavy-duty rescue strap at the suit’s shoulder and dragged him across the rubble.

“Shit!” Cooper wailed in agony, white-hot fire shooting through his neck and shoulders. “Just fucking leave me alone and let me die!”

Jim disregarded that request too, grunting like a crazy man as he dragged Cooper over, around, and through the obstacles that separated them from the dilapidated building’s exit. Cooper was stunned his friend could actually move him at all. He’d heard of soldiers doing some insane shit in battle to save a buddy, but this had to be the craziest. Too bad he was already a goner. Cooper only hoped Jim would get a medal out of it. Then, at least, one good thing would come out of this day.

Cooper didn’t get much time to think about what the award write-up would sound like because the pain climbing up his neck like a wave of water drowned him until everything went black.

Download the first six chapters of To Love a Wolf here!

Christine Hartmann's WILD WITHIN Blog Tour with a Spotlight, Excerpt and Giveaway

 

I am so excited to have Christine Hartmann here at Paranormal and Romantic Suspense Reviews with a Spotlight, Excerpt and Guest Post.

Thanks Christine and Pump Up your Book Promotions for allowing me to join your Wild Within Blog Tour!

Please take it away, Christine !

About the Author

Christine Hartmann grew up in Ohio and Delaware and loves traveling to exotic, romantic settings. After a college semester in Kathmandu, her first three “real” jobs were all in northern Japan, where she lived for almost 10 years. She currently splits her career between her daytime occupation (improving the quality of veterans’ nursing home care) and her nights/weekend avocation (writing both fiction and non-fiction books). Her husband Ron Strickland is a well-known long-distance hiker and trail guide writer and the founder of the 1,200-mile Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail. Christine loves reading, pilates, bicycling, and snorkeling, and health foods that taste like they’re bad for you. You will often find her at a keyboard, a German shepherd at her side, and Ron whispering sweet edits over her shoulder.

Her latest book is book one of the Wild at Heart series, Wild Within.

For More Information 

Visit Christine Hartmann’s website.
Connect with Christine on Facebook and Twitter.
Find out more about Christine at Goodreads.

About the Book

Title: WILD WITHIN
Author: Christine Hartmann
Publisher: Limitless Publishing
Pages: 274
Genre: Romantic Suspense

A year after a family tragedy, Grace Mori embarks on the journey of a lifetime.

Two thousand, six hundred miles of blistering heat, wilderness, and soul searching — that’s what Grace signed up for when she decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s not a voyage for beginners, but with no husband and her family still recovering from her brother’s death, Grace is more alone than ever.

This trail meant something to her brother, and she’ll hike it in his memory, but she can’t do it alone. So with her brother’s gear and a small group, Grace takes the most important first steps of her life.

Grace finds something more than peace and magic on the trail.

When her first day of hiking ends in heat stroke, Grace is rescued by a handsome, red-haired hiker who calls himself Lone Star. Grace has an immediate connection with him, and their brief encounter leaves her fearing her soul mate has slipped through her fingers. Although he vows to keep in touch, Grace doubts she’ll ever see him again.

When fears become reality, the only people Grace can rely on may be killers.

Grace is surprised to find notes left at supply posts along the trail. Lone Star’s eloquent letters keep Grace going, clinging to the hope she’ll find him — and happiness — at the end of her journey. But as the trail becomes more perilous, menace grows within the group. And when Lone Star’s letters mysteriously stop coming, Grace fears the worst.

As tensions flare and a killer emerges, Grace must battle to survive and reunite with the man she’s sure is her future.

For More Information 

Wild Within is available at Amazon.

Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

Book Excerpt

Later, after sharing a hearty dinner with the RV couple, Lone Star and Grace pitched their tents in adjacent campsites. For Grace, tent poles went into wrong grommets, stakes came loose, and clips misaligned. Lone Star set his up in a flash and sat in the entrance, watching her struggle.

“I wouldn’t mind a little help here, if you’ve got the time.”

“I’ve got the time. But you have to learn this for yourself, darlin’. Soon it’ll be as easy as pie. But not if I do it for you. Besides, I enjoy watching you. You clean up real nice.”

“Thanks.” Grace curtsied. Her foot caught in a tent line and she fell. Lone Star chuckled so long he had to hold his sides.

“From where I’m sitting, Lone Star, you’re not living up to Southern gentleman standards.” She brushed herself off. “What’s the Texas expression for go jump in a lake?”

“What I think you’re trying to say is that you think I’m about as fine as cream gravy.”

Grace used a rock to pound in her final tent stake and attached its guy-line. “Yes, that’s what I meant.” She tossed a pine cone at his head. “You’re as fine as clean gravy. So is my tent. Not bad for a first try.”

“Not clean gravy. Cream gravy. And it’s a fine tent indeed.”

Once inside her shelter, Grace was too tired to crawl into her sleeping bag. She pulled it over her like a blanket, thought for a second of Lone Star’s blue eyes, and fell asleep before the cover reached her chin.

Cheerful whistling roused her when dawn was still a light orange glow on the horizon. She pushed the tent flap aside and made out Lone Star breaking camp.

“Didn’t mean to wake you, darlin’.”

“You’re leaving? Already?” Sudden anxiety prickled in her.

“Sure am. Today’s supposed to be cooler, they say. Still, it’s good to start early in the desert, no matter what the prediction.”

“Wait.” Grace scrambled out. “I can pack up and go with you. Quick as a caterpillar in heat. Or whatever you’d say.” She wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm in the crisp morning air.

Lone Star’s face shone with affection. “Just Grace, your coming with me is a sweet thought.” He took gentle hold of her shoulders and turned her around. “But you crawl right back in your bag. You’re staying put today.”

Her attention focused on his hands as he gently pushed her toward her tent. Warm, firm, comforting hands. A sudden longing enveloped her. She struggled out of his grip. “I don’t need any more rest. I’m fine.”

“You don’t know how tired you are.”

“I’m okay. Really.” She jumped up and down. “See?”

“No arguing.” He again ushered her to the tent and waited until she was tightly wrapped and zippered inside. His thighs appeared at the entrance as he folded his long body until his head was level with his knees.

“I loved hiking with you yesterday, Just Grace. My heart is saying stay here with you. But I’ve got 2,600 miles to hike before snow lands in Canada. And my law practice isn’t going to be there forever if I don’t get back to it as soon as I can. I’ve just got to skedaddle.”

He cares more about his work than he does about me.

She fought back tears and willed her voice not to crack. “Okay. I understand. You’ve got your priorities.”

Lone Star reached for her chin but she jerked it away.

He let his hand drop. “Don’t be that way, Just Grace. You’ve got to have a little faith.”

“Faith in what?”

“Faith in us.” He rubbed his hand against her cheek. This time she leaned into it.

“There’s an us?”

Giveaway!

Christine is giving away 2 $25 Amazon Gift Cards & 20 Wild Within Coffee Mugs!

Terms and Conditions:

• By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.

• Two winners will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive one $25 Amazon Gift Card & twenty

winners will be chosen to receive one Wild Within Coffee Mug

• This giveaway starts April 4 and ends June 30

• Winner will be contacted via email on July 1.

• Winner has 48 hours to reply.

Good luck everyone!

ENTER TO WIN!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/1a49cf61161

Mark Spivak's Friend of the Devil Blog Tour with a Spotlight, Excerpt, Guest Post and Giveaway

 

I am so excited to have Mark Spivak here at Paranormal and Romantic Suspense Reviews with a Spotlight, Excerpt, Guest Post and Giveaway.

Thanks Mark and Pump Up your Book Promotions for allowing me to join your Friend of the Devil Blog Tour!

Please take it away, Mark!

Guest Post

Criticism and rejection are the two toughest parts of being a writer. No one likes either of them, unless they are a confirmed masochist, but there are ways to deal effectively with both.

I’ll separate criticism into two types. The first consists of legitimate observations about weaknesses in your work. However true these criticisms might be, they tend to be depressing, but the key to becoming a better writer is listening closely and taking them to heart when the criticism is on target. During the period when you’re learning your craft, and particularly if you’re involved in a creative writing program (whether in or out of a university), you’ll be inundated with criticism---most of it probably correct. The quicker you develop the skill of assimilating it and learning from it, the quicker you’ll get to your goal.

I’m saying this as if the process is easy, and of course it’s not. When I showed the early drafts of Friend of the Devil to my wife, a voracious reader of pop fiction, she felt that the book had shortcomings and was incomplete. I was furious and resisted her advice for quite a while, but she turned out to be right. Remember that we often tend to be too close to our material to see it clearly, particularly if that material is autobiographical.

The second type of criticism occurs after publication, and unfortunately a great deal of it is gratuitous. People who criticize your work are typically not writers themselves, and their comments often spring from envy rather than incisive thinking. If you’re not self-published, and you have gone through the long and painful process of crafting a book until it is as good as it can be, the odds are that your book is well written and worth reading---but remember that it won’t appeal to everyone. The way to handle negative criticism at that stage of your career is to ignore it completely and never respond.

Friend of the Devil
by Mark Spivak
GENRE: Thriller (Culinary)

BLURB:

In 1990 some critics believe that America’s most celebrated chef, Joseph Soderini di Avenzano, cut a deal with the Devil to achieve fame and fortune. Whether he is actually Bocuse or Beelzebub, Avenzano is approaching the 25th anniversary of his glittering Palm Beach restaurant, Chateau de la Mer, patterned after the Michelin-starred palaces of Europe.

Journalist David Fox arrives in Palm Beach to interview the chef for a story on the restaurant’s silver jubilee. He quickly becomes involved with Chateau de la Mer’s hostess, unwittingly transforming himself into a romantic rival of Avenzano. The chef invites Fox to winter in Florida and write his authorized biography. David gradually becomes sucked into the restaurant’s vortex: shipments of cocaine coming up from the Caribbean; the Mafia connections and unexplained murder of the chef’s original partner; the chef’s ravenous ex-wives, swirling in the background like a hidden coven. As his lover plots the demise of the chef, Fox tries to sort out hallucination and reality while Avenzano treats him like a feline’s catnip-stuffed toy.

Excerpt

He perused Chateau de la Mer’s large and mostly incomprehensible menu. Changed every few weeks, handwritten in Avenzano’s elaborate cursive before being photocopied, it closely resembled an annotated Medieval manuscript. Finally, he acceded to the staff’s offer to prepare a tasting menu for him, accompanied by the appropriate wines.

He was presented with a sculpture of dried vegetables in the shape of a bird’s nest, filled with a combination of wild mushrooms and chopped truffles, bathed in an intensely reduced demi-glaze. The carrots, zucchini and peppers had been cut into paper-thin strips, intertwined and allowed to dry, yet retained a surprising intensity of flavor.

He consumed a dish of tomato, basil and egg noodles, bathed in a light cream sauce, perfumed with fresh sage and studded with veal sweetbreads.

He ate an astonishing dish of butter-poached lobster, remarkably sweet and perfectly underdone, flavored with sweet English peas and garnished with a ring of authentic Genoese pesto.

He was served a slice of Avenzano’s signature Bedouin-stuffed poussin --- a turkey stuffed with a goose, in turn stuffed with a duckling, in turn stuffed with a poussin, or baby chicken, with a core of truffled foie gras at its center, covered with an Etruscan sauce of chopped capers,

raisins and pine nuts. This dish had been the source of much controversy over the years, since it bore a close resemblance to a Louisiana terducken. It predated the terducken, however, and was supposedly inspired by a creation first served to the French royal court. For good measure, Avenzano had added influences from the cuisine of the Middle East.

AUTHOR Bio and Links

Mark Spivak is an award-winning writer specializing in wine, spirits, food, restaurants and culinary travel. He was the wine writer for the Palm Beach Post from 1994-1999, and was honored by the Academy of Wine Communications for excellence in wine coverage “in a graceful and approachable style.” Since 2001 has been the Wine and Spirits Editor for the Palm Beach Media Group; his running commentary on the world of food, wine and spirits is available at the Global Gourmet blog on www.palmbeachillustrated.com. He is the holder of the Certificate and Advanced diplomas from the Court of Master Sommeliers.

Mark’s work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Robb Report, Men’s Journal, Art and  Antiques, the Continental and Ritz-Carlton magazines, Arizona Highways and Newsmax. He is the author of Iconic Spirits: An Intoxicating History (Lyons Press, 2012) and Moonshine Nation: The Art of Creating Cornbread in a Bottle (Lyons Press, 2014). His first novel, Friend of the Devil, is published by Black Opal Books.

Website: http://www.markspivakbooks.com 

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