Book Extract: Dragon Kin’s Choice by Jo Gatenby
I am beyond excited to be welcoming Jo Gatenby and the blog tour for her book, Dragon Kin’s Choice.
What do you do when your world expands, but your choices shrink?
When an orphaned dragon bonds with fourteen-year-old Tad, who never knew his parents, they believe they’ve finally found the family they’d never had. However, there’s more to them than they realize, and that might be the very thing which tears them apart.
Meanwhile, the duke’s daughter, Marian, struggles to avoid an arranged marriage. In trying to escape her fate, the truth is revealed, and she is forced to reconsider everything she thought she knew.
And although the prospective groom’s younger brother, Aldoran, is resigned to being the ‘spare heir’, he’s restless and bored. Drawn into a web of secrecy, he struggles to rise above his father’s expectations and complete his mission.
When these four lives converge, their choices reshape each other—and the world around them—in ways none of them could have predicted.
*****
Jo has shared an extract with us today. We hope you enjoy.
beginning of extract
While the main character of my novel is a newly hatched dragonet who doesn’t even know the names of things—or even how to speak—one of my favorite secondary characters is Tad, the teenager who will become her bondmate.
This excerpt takes place shortly after we meet him and his friends, and learn that he can sense the emotions of others. He’s just jumped into the quarry lake and is still underwater when he glimpses her.
I’ve also used square brackets and italics [like this] to indicate mind-speech throughout the novel. You’ll also notice Tad’s peasant dialect. I wanted this to bleed into the prose slightly, giving the narrative the flavor of his speech without becoming distracting. So you’ll notice the was/were grammatical reversals, along with expressions such as if’n, mayhap, or certain sure woven throughout.
I hope you enjoy their very first encounter!
*****
A flicker of movement caught his eye. His body gently rocked side to side, and he glimpsed a large black form racing below him. Startled, his open senses registered curiosity—and an alien wisp of loneliness—from a thing what certain sure weren’t human.
by 
Book Extract: Bob & Shirley’s Guide To Murder by Suzy K Quinn
Please join me in welcoming Suzy K Quinn to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, Bob and Shirley’s Guide to Murder.
Bob and Shirley run a lovely country pub. They also solve murders …
A warmly funny, gloriously British cozy crime and murder mystery series that can be read as standalones or part of a series. Set in a village where the pub is the heart of country life and served with warmth, wit and a very good Sunday roast.
“Murder? In our quiet, little English village?
Great Oakley is a place of hanging baskets, tearooms and riverside walks. We’ve won ‘Britain’s safest village’ 10 years running. I keep three pound coins, a box of toffees and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on my dashboard at all times, and I’ve never needed to lock my car.
Certainly, Bevvy Hogg was disliked. She ran the local Waist Watchers group, yet came to our pub for fish and chips, treacle tart and a bottle of Chardonnay every Friday. But I don’t think she was murdered …”
When Bevvy Hogg is found dead in the Goose and Gander pub garden, with an empty treacle tart plate beside her and several dress sizes slimmer than anyone remembers, Great Oakley’s winning streak as Britain’s safest village comes to an abrupt end.
Suzy has shared an extract with us today. We hope you enjoy.
*****beginning of extract*****
Bob and Shirley run the Goose and Gander pub in the Suffolk village of Great Oakley. When Bevvy Hogg, leader of the local Waist Watchers slimming group, is found dead in their pub garden, several dress sizes smaller than anyone remembers, the pair start investigating.
In this scene, Bob and Shirley go undercover at a Waist Watchers meeting. Bob is a fitness fanatic with absolutely no tact. Shirley is a larger lady who considers weighing scales the enemy of happiness. It goes about as well as you would expect.
Bob
The Waist Watchers meeting was certainly an experience. The logic baffled me. How do people think that sitting around, talking about food, will help them lose weight? It would be far better to spend their evenings having a long walk, which would not only burn off calories but also improve their moods.
Jade welcomed us with a ‘red light’ forbidden food list to stick on our fridge. It looked broadly similar to Shirley’s daily diet: beer, crisps, cider, wine, chips, butter, lard, pies and pastries.
Then we were ushered to a horseshoe of seats, semi-circling a table of weight-loss shakes, soups and chocolate bars.
We were supposed to ‘listen with two ears’ while others talked about their weekly food intake. But I soon cracked and demanded, ‘What’s this obsession with milky, frothy coffees from overpriced coffee shops? Milk is designed to help young animals put on weight. Obviously, it’s not a sensible choice for dieters. Why not just have a nice cup of tea? It’s much better for you, and also less expensive.’
On reflection, I shouldn’t have voiced my opinions so early on. It wasn’t the best way to build group rapport. In fact, Jade asked me to stop talking after I explained that the artificial sweeteners in her Glow Up shakes were scientifically proven to make you crave more sugary food.
by Book Review: Winter Magic at Hollybrae Castle by Jaimie Admans
It’s always so exciting to welcome Jaimie Admans to Novel Kicks as we shine a light on her latest book, Winter Magic at Hollybrae Castle.
A Scottish castle, a fake marriage… and one very real Christmas romance?
After a window display goes disastrously viral – thanks to a malfunctioning animatronic Santa and an unfortunate encounter with Paddington Bear – Lula Haines finds herself without a job just weeks before Christmas. So she jumps at the chance to decorate Hollybrae Castle in Scotland for the holidays.
There’s just one complication: her handsome new boss, Oliver Bracewell, needs a fake wife for the festive season. To secure a promotion that could save his family’s castle, Ollie has been pretending to be a married father-of-two to impress the family-focused firm where he works. Now his bosses are coming to stay at Hollybrae over Christmas… expecting to meet his non-existent wife and children.
At first, playing along is easy as Lula is swept up in the magic of turning Hollybrae into the perfect festive escape with Ollie. But as Christmas draws nearer and she and Ollie grow closer, Lula begins to wonder if Hollybrae could become more than a temporary escape… and if the man she’s only pretending to love might actually be the one she’s been waiting for all along.
With heaps of tartan, tinsel and Christmas magic, this uplifting romance is perfect for fans of Trisha Ashley, Heidi Swain, Cressida McLaughlin, Ellie Henderson or Jessica Redland!
*****
When a window display goes wrong and Lula loses her job weeks before Christmas, she isn’t sure what she is going to do.
When a job advert decorating a Scottish castle catches her eye, it seems too good to be true. Sure enough, Lula finds out that there is a big catch.
Long term visitors to this blog will already know that I am a HUGE fan of Jaime Admans. So, whenever the chance to take part in a blog tour that involves one of her novels comes up, my hand will go up and I will shout ‘me, me, me’ at the blog tour organiser.
Jaime Admans and Christmas. Absoflippinglutly. I couldn’t wait to get started.
On first glance, the plot of this novel may seem a little far-fetched. A woman agreeing to be a pretend wife to a total stranger whilst travelling to a remote castle sounds more like crime than romance. It didn’t take the author long to not only make me believe that it’s possible but that it was only ever going to be romantic.
by Book Review: A Christmas Proposal by Rose Warner
I am pleased to be welcoming Rose Warner to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, A Christmas Proposal.
She lost everything in the Great War – her brothers, her fiancé, her way of life. Will this new war bring back long-buried feelings?
Beatrice is settling into life in the countryside, along with Victoria and Nell, as a teacher evacuee. Her world is turned upside down again when she meets David, the new doctor at the military hospital, whose kindness and gentleness warm her frozen heart.
Her remaining defences crumble entirely when the family of one of her pupils is killed in an airstrike, and she can no longer deny her motherly affection for the child.
But is Beatrice willing to risk the loss and heartache that comes with love in wartime? When David volunteers for military service and history threatens to repeat itself, Beatrice must dig deep to find the courage to live the life she’s dreamed of…
A gripping, festive Second World War saga for fans of Daisy Styles, Katie Flynn and Elaine Everest.
*****
Having lost her brothers and fiancé in the Great War, Beatrice has accepted her life as a spinster. She has settled into the village of Hazelbury, having been brought in from London to teach Evacuee children. She now gets on well with her fellow teachers, Victoria and Nell, and is set on eventually becoming a headmistress of her own school once the war is over. What she doesn’t count on is the arrival of Dr. David Stanley. Can Beatrice allow herself to love again when there is a chance that she will once again lose all she holds dear?
It’s that time of year. The Christmas themed novels are beginning to appear. When I got invited onto the blog tour for A Christmas Proposal by Rose Warner, I jumped at it.
by NK Chats To… Julie Houston
Hi Julie. Thank you for joining me today. Can you tell us about The Way We Are Now and what inspired it?
The Way We Are Now is my seventeenth novel and published by Boldwood. Slightly different from my other books in that it is perhaps a bit more of a Saga rather than a Rom Com. Still hopefully humorous in places – Maggy, Anna’s Mum was a delight to write as she is so funny and full of Yorkshire grit – but concentrating on the passion in the book. I loved writing Anna and Theo’s passion for each other, as well as Anna’s passion for the underdog and women’s rights. The book was inspired by hearing, on the radio, that the 1984 Miners’ Strike was finally having a formal, independent statutory inquiry into the policing of the Battle of Orgreave.
Which scene do you find the hardest to write?
Any scene that gets me on to the good bit, if that makes sense!
What’s your favourite word and why?
Fertiliser! Can’t hear it or say it without compulsively saying “Fertiliser” in a broad Norfolk accent. (Sorry, was this what you wanted?? LOL!!)
NK: Perfect. LOL.
What’s your typical writing day like? Do you have any writing rituals like needing coffee, silence, a particular place to write?
I certainly need silence! I’m a lark and like to be at my desk by 8am. If I’m not in court or been called in to teach – both great distractions! – then I’ll aim for 2000 words. I’m a total pantser and never know what I’m going to write until I start. I don’t allow myself a coffee until I’ve done so many words, and then I can treat myself. Nothing like a coffee to get the brain cells going. I’ll break for a run or the gym – I started doing Yoga a year ago and now do 3-4 classes a week No idea if it’s doing me any good, but I like to show off my balancing to my 97-year-old mother-in-law! My writing is constantly interrupted by my prevaricating on Ancestry, eBay, Rightmove and Social Media as well as chatting to my writing friends on WhatsApp. I might go for a walk around 4pm – our 16-year-old dog died last year, and I miss having him with me – and I’ve usually finished by 5.30pm. Continue reading
by Book Club
