Monday 23 June 2014

BLOG TOUR STOP: Freedom by S.A. Wolfe




Freedom by S.A. Wolfe
(Fearsome #2)
Publication date: April 7th 2014
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance

Synopsis:
*This is a stand-alone sequel to Fearsome. No cliffhanger!

Dylan Blackard is back in town and certain everyone knows his secrets.

Putting away his notorious reputation as the wild guy with a womanizing past, he’s now on a new path, wanting to be the good guy his brother can stop worrying over. As long as he gives up his old vices—including women—he can keep himself on the straight and narrow and finally live up to everyone’s expectations.

However, obsessing about his lack of self-control is making Dylan one humorless, cranky hermit. That all changes, though, when his brother hires a new employee, the stunning Emma Keller, who will be sharing an office with him and all of his tightly wound nerves.

Emma, a spunky young woman from New Jersey, isn’t about to feel sorry for Dylan and his situation. She is beyond distracting to him, and that is enough to turn his emotional balancing act upside down. Not only is she intelligent, and a smart aleck, she’s also very determined to pull the sexy Dylan Blackard out of his self-imposed isolation.

From the moment he meets her, he feels alive again, but Emma doesn’t come as a gift with a pretty bow; she comes with major baggage—a family embedded in its own tumultuous history.

Will Emma be the tipping point that causes Dylan to regress into his past destructive behaviors…or will he actually pursue her for keeps?

*Due to adult language and sexual content, this New Adult Contemporary Romance is intended for readers over the age of 18.

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AUTHOR BIO
(No author photo)
S. A. Wolfe lives with her very loud, opinionated children and husband. She is a voracious reader and passionate about writing, and when those two activities don’t keep her locked away in her room, she loves roaming the streets of New York City. Sometimes she even hikes mountains, but most of the time she finds excellent ways to procrastinate.

Author links: 

AUTHOR INTERVIEW


    1.    Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

    2.    When did you first start writing and when did you finish your first book?

    3.    How did you choose the genre you write in?

    4.    Is there any particular author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?

    5.    Can you tell us about your challenges in getting your first book published?

    6.    If you had to go back and do it all over, is there any aspect of your novel or getting it published that you would change?

    7.    Have you written a book you love that you have not been able to get published?

    8.    Is anything in your book based on real life experiences or purely all imagination

    9.    What has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author? What has been the best compliment?

    10.    Is there anything that you would like to say to your readers and fans?

1. 

I’m married with children and live in New York City. I’ve had a pretty rich life, full of adventure, because of my father’s career, so I’ve lived all over the United States. (No, I’m not an army brat - the question I’ve been asked on my first day of school since I was six.) When I was young, I always thought of my middle class upbringing as perfectly normal, but as an adult, I now see how very different my childhood was from other people's experiences. Some of it was very unique and truly wonderful, other parts were very difficult and I didn’t realize how much I coveted the more conventional families of my friends. However, my parents did instill the joy of reading at an early age. I was a proficient reader at age four, and an obsessive reader by age eight.


As an adult, my career path started in corporate finance, and then I moved into television advertising with an emphasis on a heavy sales background. Once I quit my corporate job to raise our children, I was supposed to write full time, however, life and relevant public issues got in the way and I got involved in non-profit work for several causes that are important to my family, so the writing was put on hold for a bit. At one point a couple of years ago, I decided our public life and the non-profit work was consuming my life, and I really wanted to go into a cave and be a hermit and just write stories. My friends laugh when they hear that, I suppose because people who know me in person consider me to be very outgoing and outspoken. I think this is a persona I created and cultivated since I was a child as a way to cope with my family’s nomadic lifestyle - I’ve lived in 36 homes and attended 28 schools including college. I became very resilient and good at making friends wherever we moved to. I guess I felt my life depended on it, so sometimes I felt like an actress. My siblings were less successful at this.


Today, I’ve made it a point to make sure my children’s lives have stability so they’ve only lived in three homes all within the same city, and they’ve had the same friends since nursery school, something I never had. And now I say NO to most people so I can have my privacy and my writing time.


2. & 3.

I first started writing comprehensive stories as a teenager. I wrote my first full-length novel (over 400 pages) when I was twenty, and another when I was twenty-two. I did get the attention of two NY agents and the books were shopped around along with movie options. I didn’t write romance at the time; these were mainstream fiction novels. I did not have success with publication at that time. 


I had never read a romance novel until 2005, and I remember this well because it happened after my family suffered through my brother’s suicide. A friend who lived in the apartment below me appeared at my door with a box full of romance novels. She said, “You need to change your soundtrack.” I was always reading a lot of dark “literary” novels, and she wanted me to read something more fun and happy. The first romance I read was a Karen Marie Moning novel from her Highlander series - and it was fun, and helped to get me out of a very dark place. That’s when I started thinking about writing romance, too.


4. 

As a child, it was the voice of the character Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird that influenced me heavily in storytelling and how to present a character to the reader. As an adult, I’ve read thousands of books across many genres. Anne Tyler’s and Jhumpa Lahiri’s books taught me how to take ordinary characters and show them dealing with everyday life. Stephen King’s novels taught me how to take risks with your characters and subject matter. Karen Marie Moning and other romance writers taught me how to create the happiness everyone dreams about.


5.

Since I was only seeking traditional paths, the novels I wrote in my twenties were not published. When I decided to publish my romance novels, I didn’t even consider going back to my old agents since they don’t handle the romance genre. I had been following the self-publishing industry for several years and decided that’s how I would publish my romance novels.  So the challenges in that were very new to me. Instead of dealing with my agent and having my book shopped around to publishing houses, I had to learn about book promotion for indie authors which is more than one platform and it’s constantly changing. Visibility in a very large market and reaching new readers is an ongoing challenge.


6.

I guess the only thing I would do differently is that I would have started self-publishing in 2010 rather than waiting until 2013. Since I can’t change that, I don’t dwell on it.


7.

I loved the books I wrote in my early twenties and so did my agents and the editor who discovered one of my books in the infamous slush pile. However, when I read the books now, I love them less and I have no interest in publishing them. I watched an interview of one of my favorite authors, Ann Patchett, where she said she can’t even go back and read what she wrote in her twenties which is funny since I have those early books of hers and I love them.


I wrote a book in 2010 which is not a straight romance. It’s loaded with political intrigue and small-town shenanigans. It was a difficult book to write and required a lot of historical research. I did add two characters that fall in love among this great divide of their townspeople, however, I’ve kept the novel under wraps all this time. It’s a modern day Romeo & Juliet Meets Lord of the Flies and Pride and Prejudice rolled into one. It’s loaded. I have since decided I will write another version that is completely a romance, and the political conflict will be secondary to the romance between my two favorite characters in the novel.


8.

ALL of my novels have characters that are based on real life people, either in my family, friends, or people I’ve met, and the experiences are mostly taken from real events. In FEARSOME, Jessica’s genius academics paired with her social awkwardness are based on a friend who has an amazing career in academia but it took her years to find the right man. She’s beautiful and brilliant and kept making the same mistakes with men over and over - I guess I was taking notes on her for years. In FREEDOM, Dylan is based on my brothers who were both diagnosed as bipolar. Their experiences were vastly different. I even add in OCD (obsessive compulsive behaviors) and behaviors on the autism spectrum since these are prevalent in my family tree.


I do have to create the plot and the conflict so my characters can have their HEA. However, even Emma from FREEDOM is based on a real person I knew as a teenager (daughter of an actual mobster), and I had to put her into some mob-related incidents that occurred in the New York City area over the last year.


9.

The toughest criticism is when a reader doesn’t think my portrayal of people with certain disorders is authentic or they find them unnecessary to the story. I can only write flawed characters and I have to care about them to make their story meaningful to me, so that’s why I add many elements from my life who have to live with autism, bipolar, OCD, suicide, and in Emma’s case, the mob. 


As a writer I know there’s one fact that is true for every writer: I will never write a book that every single person loves. That’s okay because for the one person who doesn’t care for my story, I’ve received over a hundred emails from women who tell me they were that child prodigy like Jess and they suffered from not being able to read social cues very well, but now they embrace their genius IQs. I’ve also received so many messages from readers telling me they love how Dylan’s bipolar behavior was portrayed, and they or a family member has struggled with it for years. 


One of my most humbling messages was from a woman who was sitting by her husband’s hospital bed post-surgery, and it was touch and go. She said reading FEARSOME helped her get through that very dark time when she felt alone and terrified. If my books can make someone feel good, even for that day, that’s good enough for me.


10.

I would love for my readers and fans to know that they can always reach out to me, either by email (sawolfe24@gmail.com) or on Facebook. I love hearing from individuals whether they want to ask me a question, say hello, or share their opinions on my books and what they’d like to see from me in the future. One reader said she was embarrassed to email me because she thought it was stalkerish - HA! Hardly! I love connecting with readers! If people weren’t reading my books I’d be pretty miserable.









My rating: 5 of 5 stars

*I received a free ARC of Freedom from Xpresso Booktours for my participation of the blogtour, in exchange of my honest and unbiased review.*

A fantastic book that deals with mental illness and how a couple overcome their illness in life and stay together.

It's nice to a book where these issues are dealt with as we don't see it in romance books.

The author draws you in so you just want to keep on reading.

An excellent read

View all my reviews


TOUR STOPS

June 23rd
-Books Unhinged Book Blog >> Review
-The Bookish Owl >> Guest Post
-Obsessed by Books >> Review + Interview
-Sarit Yahalomi >> Review

June 24th
-My Daily Romance >> Review + Playlist
-Book Boyfriend Hangover >>  Review
-Cheekypee reads and reviews  >> Review
-books are love >> Review

June 25th
-Devilishly Delicious Book Reviews >> Review
-DJ’s Book Corner >> Review
-Bookoholic Anom >> Excerpt

June 26th
-Romance Novel Giveaways >> Review
-Worth Reading It? >> Review
-Trulee V’s Spot  >> Excerpt
-Bookworm Brandee >> Review

June 27th
-Book Gossip >> Review
-Home Is Where the Wine Is Book Blog >> Review
-Books and Friendz >> Review
-Shayna Varadeaux Books & Reviews >> Review


*********RELEASE DAY BLITZ*********

Cover Me releasebanner
Title: Cover Me
Author: Carrie Elliott
Release date: June 23rd, 2014
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About Cover Me:

cover meDerek Bast, always has the final say. In business and in his personal life, things are done his way, or not at all. So when a scathing review of his new band is published in The Scene and has his record producer second guessing his artistic choices, his band mate trying to call the shots, and Bast’s manager convinced he’s impossible to work with, it’s time to hunt down the source of his problems: Bess Halprin, reviewer for The Scene, the girl next door growing up, and his ex-best friend since senior year when she decided to hate him for no reason.

The last person Bess Halprin wants to see standing in the lobby of The Scene is Derek Bast. Unfortunately, she can’t deny that the last nine years look damn good on him. She expected to hate him. She didn’t expect the way he can still tug at her emotions, or the way his kiss—and his hands—set her on fire. Bess should’ve kept her distance, because Bast was right when he guessed her review was written for revenge. The problem is, to this day he has no idea what he did—how he screwed her over their senior year. The bigger problem? She’s giving him the opportunity to do it again, because she never could resist him.

When circumstances bring them both home to Santa Cruz, Bast earns his way into the heart of the girl next door, but when they return to L.A. and real life rushes in, will he be able to keep her this time or are the mistakes in their past destined to be repeated?

Amazon | B&N

Excerpt

When the hell did Bess get so feisty? I thought I had her there for a minute. She was so close to giving in. Jesus, with any other woman, I’d already be in a room upstairs, naked and sweaty.
That wasn’t something I’d ever wanted before with Bess, so it was a strange thought. There was the one time we kissed and it was as much a shock to me as it was to her. I didn’t even remember who initiated it, but both of us agreed it wasn’t something that should happen again, so that couldn’t be what she was pissed about.
Why had we agreed it shouldn’t happen again?
Oh, right, because she wasn’t whoever she was now. This Bess was a temptress, intentional or not. Her hair was silky soft, her scent somewhere on the side of floral, but with hints of vanilla that made me want to lick her like an ice cream cone. And those freaking glasses. My God, I wanted to fuck her in her thigh highs, red heels and black-rimmed glasses.
I downed half my Jameson to settle down. The point of this meeting was to get her to retract her review, not to get her out of her skirt. She’d already shot down my attempt at that anyway.
I hadn’t planned on the word vomit that came out about the day she left for college or Christmas Eve. It pissed me off, though. No matter what happened between us, no matter that we didn’t talk all senior year, she was leaving—going away—and I figured whatever went wrong between us would be put aside to say goodbye. Apparently, she’d ridded herself of me long before then.
Too bad for her, I was back and not going anywhere until I had answers and a retraction of the review she admitted had a personal slant to it.
I slammed back the rest of my drink, heard her heels clicking on the tile floor toward me, spun around and stood up.
“Ready?” she asked.
“For dinner. I’m starving.”
She heaved a sigh and gave me an exaggerated blink. “It’s been nice catching up. Good luck to you, Derek.” Then she turned and headed for the lobby. “Where do you want to eat?” I asked, not letting her off the hook. I glanced down at my jeans and t-shirt. “I’m not really dressed for anything too fancy, but I remember you love a good burger.”
She stopped and faced me, let her eyes wander over my face, then down to my chest, my waist, my legs. When she looked back up her expression was odd, almost sorrowful. “What?” I asked.
Bess shook her head slightly. “I don’t want to regret this.”
Her words were heavy with meaning. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that much meaning. “It’s only dinner.”
She reached up and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s never only anything with you.”
I wasn’t sure she meant that in a good way or a bad way. Maybe she didn’t know either. “Burgers then?”
Bess let her shoulders relax and her mouth shift into a smile. “Burgers.”
She turned and strode toward the doors. “Forgiveness?” I asked.
“Not on the menu,” she said, flinging the words over her shoulder.
“Maybe not tonight…” I said.
“Maybe not ever.” She smiled at the doorman as we passed.


About Carrie Elliot:
Carrie Elliott is the author of the rock star romance, Cover Me and its follow-up, the short story Listen To Me (available free to newsletter subscribers after July 23: http://eepurl.com/SYvZD). She lives in Ohio with her husband and two kids, is forever remodeling and undergoing a DIY projects, loves to read and hates to cook. Coffee and dark chocolate are her writing fuel and she’s stocking up! Look for more hot guys and feisty women to come!

 
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********* RELEASE DAY BLITZ*********

LOVE, LAUGHTER, AND HAPPILY EVER AFTERS Cover
Title: Love, Laughter, And Happily Ever Afters Boxed Set
Authors: Violet Duke, Melanie Shawn, Melody Grace , Marilyn Brant, Erin Nicholas, Jessie Evans, Marquita Valentine, Beth Michele
Release date: June 24th, 2014
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About Love, Laughter, And Happily Ever Afters:
ON ANY GIVEN SUNDAE by USA Today Bestselling Author Marilyn Brant -- A shy dessert cookbook writer reconnects with her longtime crush--an ex-football star turned businessman--when they run an ice cream shop together.
 
FINDING THE RIGHT GIRL by NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Author Violet Duke -- Tessa Daniels has no idea why she told her friend's brother she was some sort of fling expert. She's never been flung before and she sure as heck doesn't know where or how to begin flinging a guy like Brian Sullivan. The man's got the body of a football god straight off a billboard, as many skeletons in the closet as she does, and worst of all, he's got her thinking of the one thing she stopped letting herself hope for years ago. A happily-ever-after.

SWEET TO YOU by iTunes & Barnes and Noble Bestselling Author Jessie Evans -- Where there's smoke, there's fire... When s'mores and whiskey shots lead to skinny-dipping at a singles' camping retreat, Maddie Whitehouse knows she won't be able to resist another steamy encounter with the sexy firefighter her childhood friend, Jamison, has become...even if he is off limits.

UNAFRAID by USA Today Bestselling Author Melody Grace -- Brittany Ray's learned the hard way that some dreams aren't meant for girls like her. Handsome, charming Hunter Covington is one of those dreams. Years ago, they shared one life-changing night together, but Brit walked away before he could break her heart. Now Hunter's back in Beachwood Bay, their reckless passion can't be ignored. But will dark secrets tear apart their new beginning?

LOVE LOVE by Amazon Bestselling Author Beth Michele -- Gabrielle Willis is smart. She's funny. And oh yes, she's a bit klutzy. But she's also running. When she meets Brad Dixon, the sweet guy with the crooked smile, can he make her see that the very thing she is trying to run from is the very thing that just may push her to see the light?

GETTING OUT OF HAND, the brand new novel by Samhain Bestselling Author Erin Nicholas -- Genius scientist Mason Riley can cure world hunger, impress the media and piss off the Vice President of the United States all before breakfast. But he's not sure he can get through his high school class reunion. Then he meets the new girl in town. Adrianne Scott loves the sleepy little town of Sapphire Falls--the perfect place to open her candy shop and live a quiet, drama-free life. Until Mason Riley bids four hundred dollars just to dance with her.

TEMPTING LOVE by Amazon Bestselling Author Melanie Shawn -- Haley Sloan knows exactly what she wants out of life. With her designer lingerie business booming, her career is moving forward, but her heart is still in the same place it had been for four long years...hopelessly in love with the former wild boy turned responsible adoring father, Eddie Thomas. Will this self-sacrificing single father finally realize that accepting his love for Haley may be just what his little girl needs to get the family they both deserve?

NOT OVER YOU by NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Author Marquita Valentine -- Summer Holland is set on one thing--convincing her childhood sweetheart *and* local preacher's son, Gabriel Edwards, to marry her so she can get back the daughter she gave up for adoption. She's always been able to count on him rescuing her when she needed it most, but this time is different... there's a new woman in Gabriel's life. Only, Summer's not going to let that get in her way.
 

Get your copy today! This limited edition collection is available until July only - you don't want to miss out on this deal!

 

Eight full-length romantic love stories for only 99c!

Amazon | iBooks | B&N

 
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