Fresh Pick for Thursday, April 24th, 2014 is BIRTHMARKED by Maria Violante #SupernaturalThursday It’s not what it seems The Markers: Book One Author Self-Published March 2014 On Sale: March 13, 2014 186 pages ISBN: 1497341264 EAN: 9781497341265 Kindle: B00FLKR6XI Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Add to Wish List Fantasy Urban, Paranormal – Supernatural Buy A Copy Amazon.com Kindle BN.com Powell’s Books Indiebound Birthmarked by Maria Violante Charlie Kale knows life isn’t easy. But for the first time, this truck driver might have finally found her little piece of happiness. She’s got it all—her big rig, friends, a great mentor, and a man about to join her on the road. That is, until the good things in Charlie’s life all fall apart, and she finds herself at the mercy of a sexy but mysterious gunman who claims to be a member of a secret order dedicated to fighting the supernatural monsters that filter over into our world. She’s given a choice—join up or die, and while the gunman might be insane, Charlie’s hell-bent on not dying. Too bad it looks like that might not be an option. A Compelling New Series which Will Leave You Ready for More! Previous Picks

Kick-Ass heroines and Alpha heroes take on outlaws, gunfights, crooked card games . . . and the supernatural with rockin’ love scenes, rowdy bad boys and good girls gone bad. That’s my Gone Bad Series set in Texas and Indian Territory. How did I get there? I combined Native American Old West with American New West. Old World beliefs, such as Epona, Celtic Goddess of Horses, were brought to the New World. Native Nation mysticism and empowered women shared similarities with Victorian Spiritualism’s belief in free love, abolition, suffrage and ghosts. (Journals). All came together in the ancient land of Turtle Island. As the United States rolled relentlessly westward gobbling up nation after nation, the remnants of sixty-seven sovereign states were stuffed into Indian Territory (Indian Territory) with Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Colorado and New Mexico Territory as borders. By the 1880s, I.T. was an outlaw’s paradise due to U.S. legal jurisdictional nightmares. Deputy U.S. Marshals, Indian Lighthorsemen), bounty hunters and Anti-Horse Thief Association Detectives put their lives on the line to bring justice to Indian Territory. In Lady Gone Bad (Amazon), a saloon singer called Lady hears Epona’s warning cries when she’s in danger. Rafe, Deputy U.S. Marshal, tries…

I’m so glad to be back at Fresh Fiction celebrating the release of my fourteenth book, EAST OF ECSTASY! This is the final book in my Greek-mythology-inspired Hearts of the Anemoi series, which includes: NORTH OF NEED, WEST OF WANT, and SOUTH OF SURRENDER. The Anemoi were wind gods the Greek associated with controlling the wind, weather, and seasons. In EAST OF ECSTASY, hero Devlin Eston is the heir to the East Wind which has long been associated with unluckiness, misfortune, and, thanks to Devlin’s father, even evil. Devlin himself has been the victim of father’s evil, and thereby finds himself an outcast among his own divine family. Devlin is the epitome of the tortured, bad boy hero, and he was incredibly fun and heartbreaking to write. Today, I wanted to talk about what I learned from finishing my first fiction series. I currently have four series underway, but the Hearts of the Anemoi is the first of them that I’ve seen all the way through to the publication of the final book. Here are the things I learned from that experience: 1. Finishing a series is scary. This might be a funny place to start, but I cannot exaggerate…

I’m sure, that like me, you probably do. How else could it be possible that out of 7 billion people in the world, you could manage to meet your soul mate? And how else would you explain the birth of a child? It might even be a miracle that you managed to get to work on time today. Or find a parking space up close at the grocery store, when you least expected to. Except…those aren’t really miracles, are they? They might restore our hope in humanity and warm even the coldest of hearts, but if we can be honest with ourselves, those kinds of things happen all the time to all kinds of people, don’t they? Miracles, by definition, are special. They are physical manifestations of divine intervention. To believe in real, honest-to-goodness miracles, you have to believe that the rules of physics and the laws of science can be altered and you also have to believe in God. Both are concepts that our modern age sometimes–many times–finds laughable. Except that it would be rather sad to believe they ever couldn’t happen. It would feel like slamming the door on the bedrock beliefs that were incorporated into…well…much of the…