12 NA's of Christmas Sale: Warmth in Ice – A. Meredith Walters + Giveaway & excerpt!

The 12 NA's of Christmas
.99 CENT SALE!!!

Twelve authors. Twelve novellas. This Christmas!

The novellas written by the 12 NA's of Christmas will be on sale starting from December 1st! From the 1st to the 11th, each day one of the novellas will be highlighted around the book community. Today, the novella spotlight is Warmth in Ice (A Find You in the Dark novella) by A. Meredith Walters. Check out the excerpt and enter the giveaway!

You can buy any of the 12 NA's of Christmas titles on Amazon.

The 12 NA's of Christmas:

The 12 NA’s of Christmas authors are Marquita Valentine, Zoe Dawson, Chelsea M. Cameron, Tiffany King, Breena Wilde, Sawyer Bennett, Magan Vernon, Sarra Cannon, A. Meredith Walters, Shelly Crane, and Addison Moore.

WARMTH IN ICE

***Warmth in Ice is proud to be a part of The 12 NA's of Christmas***
12 New Adult Novellas. 12 Bestselling Authors. November 2013

***********

It’s Maggie and Clay’s first Christmas together…

***Spoilers for those who have not read Find You in the Dark or Light in the Shadows***

Clay and Maggie have gone through the dark and come out on the other side. For the first time, they are on this journey together. Fighting for something they both need and can’t live without…each other.

But a long distance relationship is hard. Particularly for two people who are still trying to build something solid on a shaky and troubled foundation. Clay is finally out of treatment and is living in an out patient halfway house. He struggles with what he wants to do and where he wants to go. Questions he worries he will never have the answers to. Maggie is trying to transition into college life and learning how to create a future with someone who is over a thousand miles away.

As the months pass and they struggle with being a part, old insecurities and fears take root and threaten a love that has come so far.

When Maggie decides to fly to Florida as a surprise for Clay on Christmas, she is unsure whether it will be the first step toward what they both desperately want or whether it could possibly be the end of it all.

But with the holidays approaching, Maggie and Clay are reminded that even when the days are coldest, you can still find the warmth and that hope and love are the greatest gifts of all.

~ ✻ ~ BUY LINK ABOVE!!! ~ ✻ ~

“Let’s not make each other any promises we can’t keep right now. I’m not sure I can handle the disappointment,” I said, laughing humorlessly. 

I was a trip wire set to detonate. These moments were a bitter reminder of the dark, twisted places my mind could go. Of where it still wanted to go. 

I picked at the skin around my thumb, drawing blood. Seeing the bright red against my skin I stilled, gripping my hands into fists. “I’d better go.” I strangled out.

“Clay…” Maggie began. She shook her head, her face hidden by a long curtain of hair.

“You know I love you, right?” she asked and I hated how it felt like she was trying to convince both of us. 

I nodded, still clenching my fists as tightly as they would go. 

“Yeah, Mags. I know. I love you too,” I replied, the words as brittle as glass between my teeth.

Maggie was distracted by a knock on her door and I heard voices that had become unwelcomingly familiar. 

“Just give me a minute to finish up and I’ll meet up with you,” Maggie was saying, her back to me as she spoke to the guy at her door.

The hateful coil of jealousy reared its head and without another word, and before Maggie could turn back around, I disconnected the call. I quickly logged out of my computer and slammed it closed with a decisive bang. I pulled the plug from the wall and then picked up the laptop and shoved it in my desk drawer as if I could shove away the ugly emotions burning a hole in my gut.

My breath came in painful bursts. 

I had come so far. Yet how easy it was for me to lose all of that at the thought of Maggie disappearing forever.

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Contemporary and New Adult Romance.

A. Meredith spent ten years as a counselor for at risk teens and children. First working at a Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault program and then later a program for children with severe emotional and mental health issues. Her former clients and their stories continue to influence every aspect of her writing.

When not writing (or being tortured with all manner of beauty products at the hand of her very imaginative and extremely girly 7 year old daughter), she is eating chocolate, watching reality television that could rot your brain and reading a smutty novel or two.

Check her out in these sites:

Website | Facebook | Twitter




HOLY CRAP!!! There will be two giveaways running on this post. One is international and the other is US Only.

International:
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US Only:
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To see the other books on this Christmas sale, click here.

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: Forget Me Not – Sarah Daltry + Giveaway, excerpt & book trailer!

Forget Me Not (Book #1)

This isn’t a sweet and innocent coming of age story. If dirty talk, bedroom toys, and threesomes offend you… this is not your book. There are also no billionaires, strippers, or virgins. This is just the story of typical college kids trying to connect to each other. 
“No one tells you when you start school just how homesick you will be, or how hard it will be to start life over with no direction and no friends or family. No one says that becoming your own person is terrifying.”

Lily had a crush on her brother’s best friend, Derek, for years – which led to their steamy night ten months ago in her bedroom. Now, she’s off to college and she and Derek are still going strong. However, when school starts, Lily realizes it’s hard to maintain a relationship, while also trying to live her own life. She and Derek find themselves falling apart and she has no idea where to turn.

Enter Jack. Everything about him is wrong for Lily and she knows it, but she can’t stop herself from being attracted to him. When things implode with Derek, it’s Jack who’s there to pick up the pieces – and to show Lily an entirely new set of experiences she didn’t know she was missing.

Of course, Jack has his own problems and once Lily gets to know him better, she starts to wonder if she can handle all of Jack. When Derek reappears on the scene, Lily is forced to decide between two guys and herself. Can she find herself without losing the people who matter in the process?

This is a work intended for readers 18+ as it features explicit sex between people in college. See where it began in the short story, "Her Brother’s Best Friend."

★ Amazon | B&N | Smashwords | Amazon Print ★

Book Trailer

Lily of the Valley (Book #1.5)

This isn't a sweet and innocent coming of age story. If dirty talk, bedroom toys, and threesomes offend you... this is not your book. There are also no billionaires, strippers, or virgins. This is just the story of typical college kids trying to connect to each other.  

"No one tells you about pain. They tell you that it hurts, that sometimes it's consuming. What they don't tell you is that it's not the pain that can kill you. It's the uncomfortable numbness that follows, the weakness in your body when you realize your lungs may stop taking in air and you just can't exert enough energy to care. It's the way taste and color and smell fade from the world and all you're left with is a sepia print of misery. That's when the shift starts - the movement from passive to active. I fall asleep, hoping that the morning will bring back the pain. At least the pain is a thing."

Plagued by a dark past, Jack sees college as a way out. Desperate to escape the area where he grew up, the people who know his secrets, and his own family, he deals with his problems through alcohol and meaningless sex.

When he first sees Lily, she's the epitome of everything he hates. Yet something about her makes Jack rethink everything he knows and assumes about other people. Now, with the help of his best friend and lover, Jack has to decide if he wants to pursue something that he knows will only end badly.

Can Lily be one of the few people who can see Jack for who he really is - or will his darkness be too much for her to handle?

★ Amazon | B&N | Smashwords | Amazon Print ★

Book Trailer

From Forget Me Not

He moves closer and already my body is responding. He smells like cigarettes and leather, two smells I never thought were sexy until now. I want to fall into his body, to be wrapped in his arms, and I fight it. It’s wrong and it makes no sense. I have everything I could ever want. Jack is just a distraction.

“I’m not that kind of girl,” I tell him.

He steps closer still and kisses my neck. His lips are soft, which is unexpected, and it sends a shiver through me. Jack brings me in to his chest. I can feel his heart beating; it’s quickening and it matches mine. I feel his tongue sliding down along my collarbone. There is nothing like this, but I need him to stop. And yet, I never want him to stop. “I’d love to know exactly what kind of girl you are.”

Almost as if they are not my own, my hands slip between his jacket and his shirt. The heat of his skin burns me even through the fabric of his clothes. His lips continue to travel downward, but as they reach the curve of my breasts, something in me wakes up. I tear myself away from him and back up a few inches.

“I have a boyfriend,” I repeat. “I can’t do this.”

“Where is he?” Jack asks. His eyes are burning.

“What?”

“Where is your boyfriend? You’ve mentioned him before, but you run into me a lot for someone who’s so in love.”

Sarah Daltry writes erotica and romance that ranges from sweet to steamy. She moves around a lot and has trouble committing to things. Forget Me Not is her second full length novel, although she also has several story collections and two novellas available. Her other novel, Bitter Fruits, was available shortly, but is now in the contract phase with a major publisher. When Sarah isn’t writing, she tends to waste a lot of time checking Facebook for pictures of cats, shooting virtual zombies, and simply staring out the window.

Check her out in these sites:

Website | Facebook | Twitter




First two Flowering Novels in Print
eBook copy of the first two Flowering Novels
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To see the rest of the spotlight posts, click here.

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: The Stoned Series – Kitty Berry + Review, giveaway & excerpt!

Sliding (Book #1)

In the first book of The Stone Series, Sliding, Brooklynn Adams is all grown up, married to her adolescent crush, Tate Taylor and living the high life. Tate is a wealthy and powerful music executive in New York City and Brook is a famous choreographer who works alongside Tate and his best friend at their entertainment company, Taylor Studios Inc. To the outside world Tate and Brook have it all, love, money, friendship, and power but looks can be deceiving. After Brook’s miscarriage that he blames himself for Tate flees to the West Coast with his best friend and business partner, Bobby, under the disguise of business. On the fateful morning Brook is scheduled to fly to meet her estranged husband of six months she finds herself looking into her mirror. She is faced with a decision, should she answer her phone and miss her flight to California or run like hell and head to Tate? Brook must decide the path her life is going to take and the focal point of the novel explores her options while she walks through each “door” to see where it will lead her. It’s the parallel tracking of two possible destinies, essentially the what-if scenario. Little moments in time when we question which decision is right and which is wrong, both can change your life forever, leading you down different avenues, times like these that are impossible to go back and change. We watch as Brook enters into the center of two significantly different trajectories.

Stoned (Book #2)

If you want to watch as Brook and Tate’s relationship continues look for the second novel in The Stone Series. In Stoned we will meet the charming Damian Stone, the quintessentially intense urban male, sexual Dominant and Tate’s younger cousin. He is wealthy, powerful, successful and painfully gorgeous; Damian dominates over everyone and everything both in his work and in his pleasures. Each semester for the past seven years he’s trained a young college girl to submit to his every sexual desire at the sex club he owns. Damian can have any woman he wants and for seven years that is what he has had. But the sexy, confident, and commanding Dominant is growing tired of the same old game. Shortly after telling his best friend that he is done with the life of submissives, Sydney Cooper falls at his feet. She is a strong, young interior designer despite her traumatic sexual past but Damian immediately senses her submissive tendencies. After meeting Sydney, Damian realizes that he only thought he had everything he wanted; now that he’s met Sydney he realizes that what he wants, what he needs is her. Damian seduces Sydney into a life of BDSM and finds himself falling in love for the first time. However, Sydney’s past is not all that stands in the way of their happiness, Damian’s past connects them in a way that may destroy them forever.

Siblings (Book #3)

In the third novel of The Stone Series, Tate Taylor will discover new talent in a young Sebastian Morrison and his band, Dominate. Sebastian is a musician who gets more than he bargained for when he sends a demo to the famous Tate Taylor at Taylor Studios Inc. After listening to the demo Tate flies to Sin City with his cousin, Damian in tow to see Sebastian perform with his band. When Sebastian takes the stage the resemblance is uncanny, Sebastian’s talent is obviously not the only thing he and Tate have in common, Sebastian is the brother Damian never knew he had. As Damian watches him perform he suspects he and Sebastian share more than just blood.

After signing a contract with Taylor Studios Inc., Sebastian and his band head to New York City with Tate and Damian. While in New York and struggling to write his own material, Sebastian finds a muse in Skyler, a beautiful model at Hot Stones, Damian’s agency. Skyler’s inspiration helps Sebastian launch his career but that's not all he wants or needs from her.

"You are my first, last and only."

BOOK REVIEW OF BOOK #1

**COPY PROVIDED BY AUTHOR**

The characters in Sliding were the perfect and ultimate representation of teenagers facing pressures put upon them from parents, friends, lovers, and the process of growing up and the complications that come with the package. It was an intense book about two lovers as they struggle to overcome their difficulties. Beautifully written and heart-wrenching.

I started this book today and thought that it was absolutely boring at first. I was wrong. I was stamped with a huge 'you were wrong'.

Brook and Tate's relationship was always rocky from the beginning with Brook and her insecurities and Tate with his possessiveness. The two try hard to jump over these hurdles in order to save what they have left.

The book is split into two parts. Door #1 shows her life if she takes that flight to meet Tate. I loved how the author structured the novel with two parts the two decisions she could make and they would both change her fate forever. And the way there were flashbacks back and forth to fill us in on the blanks of their relationship in the past and also what they were going through in the present.

But what pissed me off about the novel was how cocky and arrogant the characters were. I didn't get them sometimes.

"Look, I know the girls all like me, I know I'm good looking but I don't care. It means nothing to me. They can all get wet over me all they want. I don't want them, not any one of them."

And I'm never a fan of girls who were bulimic or did Botox but I was in no place to judge. Although, I understood her position at the time. She was piled with pressures and expectations from everyone. Tate was too and that was why he turned to drugs and booze.

Truth was, the problem in the first place was Brook's miscarriage. And the two ended up blaming themselves for it.

"I caused the miscarriage one way or another, Brook, and I hate myself for that as much as you hate me for it. I was just so fucking pissed off about you getting pregnant; I thought you did it on purpose to get your way. I know now that you didn't." 

It was heart-breaking to see him like that.

I think that the changes in the way they sent their messages was also a sign to show how their relationship has also changed, maybe for the worse or maybe for the better.

At first, they sent each other these sweet letters by hand when they were at each other's camps. But when it came to sending e-mails?

Don't u think 2 drinks are more than enough? U r not allowed 2 use cell in air… start following rules baby… u have never been a rule breaker… don't start now while on plane! Glad 2 hear u r wearing my fav dress.

Ugh, there is nothing worse than a guy who can't even type a proper e-mail. You're already typing this shit up, might as well make it look like you're actually trying.

Door #2 was shit though. Honestly. I didn't get what the hell was going on.

Plot twist in the end was A+. The only thing that probably saved what Door #2 ruined.

Minor Faults:

• Door #2 was just so fucked up it didn't make any sense at all
• The characters weren't too likable or relatable
• The texting/messaging language was ridiculous

MY RATING:

3 AND A HALF APPLES!!!!!

Links for Books:

Sliding (Book #1)
★ Amazon ★


Stoned (Book #2)
★ Goodreads | Amazon ★

Siblings (Book #3)
★ Goodreads | Amazon ★

We come to this secluded area of beach where I notice a large kind of hut with fire torches and fairy lights. Tate leads me to the hut and inside there are two massage tables, one for each of us side by side touching each other. There is also a king sized bed just beyond the tables and on each side of the room there are bamboo screens. As we step inside two women dressed all in white step in behind us and zip the front panel of the hut closed. They instruct us to each go behind a screen and remove our clothes, telling us there are robes waiting behind the screens. We do as we are told and meet back each on a table. We slide under the covers and remove our robes so we’re lying naked with a sheet over us.

Tate smirks and quietly asks me, “Is this all right? The girls? There is no way I can relax with some dude rubbing me or worse…you.” 

“Yes, it’s fine” I respond.

“I asked for a hot stone massage for you, I know it’s your favorite but if you want something different they can do anything you like” Tate informs me.

“No, I’m good with the hot stones, it is my favorite. This is amazing Tate, really you can be so romantic when you want to be” I say.

As my gaze is drawn upwards I notice that instead of a ceiling of material I am treated to a ceiling of stars as the hut is open to the California night sky. The masseuse begins to spread oil on my body and I hear the first cords of “I Won’t Give Up” by Jason Mraz begin to play. Tate reaches out and finds my hand. I feel the hot rocks as they are slid under my back one at a time. Tate squeezes my hand again on the last words of the song and I hear him sigh. I’m not sure if it’s caused by his masseuse or the words from the song he chose to play for me. There is no doubt that Tate has made yet another playlist to speak his words for him.

I drift off for a bit while the front of my legs, arms and chest are being massaged and when the masseuse starts on my face and head I rouse a little and hear Nelly Furtado’s “Try” playing. I wonder if Tate really means that he’s ready to try, ready to try to give me the one thing that has been missing in our lives. I glance over at him to find him looking at me with tears in his eyes and I know it’s true; when I hear “You’ll be Blessed” by Elton John.

I climb off the table not caring in the least that I am naked in front of two strange women; I lay on top of my husband and plant kisses all over his face. He wraps his arms around me, and kisses me gently on the lips.

“We need to talk about a lot of things first Brook…starting tomorrow. I think we need counseling but I want to try. I’m going to need a little time to process all of this but I promise we’ll make this work… you and I. I love you, Brooklynn Taylor” Tate chokes out through tears that are forming and threatening to fall from his eyes.

The Masseuses aren’t sure if they should stay or leave at this point and they keep alternating between looking at Tate and looking at the ground, they are very careful to avert their eyes from my naked body that is still lying atop my husband’s. I decide to climb back onto my table to finish my massage. I lay on my stomach and I hold Tate’s hand while my back, neck, head and feet are rubbed with hot rocks and oil. They are smooth as silk and the more I think about it this experience is actually very erotic. I’m being rubbed by another woman in front of Tate while yet another woman rubs him. All of a sudden I decide I don’t really like the idea of him getting any kind of pleasure from another woman rubbing him. When I turn to look at him he’s staring at me. He smiles, knowing exactly what I’m thinking about and he mouths, “Only you baby… forever.” It’s enough to get me through to the end of our massages and I have to admit I am a bit aroused.

I reside in the suburbs of Fairfield County, Connecticut with my husband and three sons. I am the only woman in a house of men! During any given evening you can find me curled up in bed reading while in the next room my men scream at a sporting event on the TV.

I am an only child who never wished for a sibling and I openly admit to being a spoiled brat. To this day the word “no” does not go over well with me.

I am the daughter of an avid reader, the “real” Kitty Berry. I decided to write under the pen name, Kitty Berry in honor of my late mother who passed away in 1998 from breast cancer. It was my late mother’s desire of becoming a writer that prompted me to create the characters that I place in worlds of wealth, power, seduction, dominance and submission.

My love for reading and discussing literature didn’t come to me until my late twenties. Angst-ridden romances, from the moment a man meets a woman and they fall into an unstoppable infatuation with each other, always mesmerized me and fast-paced entertaining mysteries as well as witty “chick lit” contributed to my desire to not only be a reader but also a writer. I recently found myself at a time in life when the busy balance of career and family made me crave an escape into the world of romance, but this time with an erotic twist. Multidimensional characters such as powerful dominant males who seek a woman who is submissive in their bed but who offers them a challenge in their life, spurred on my creative spark to write about seduction.

I love dark chocolate, music inspires my writing and the theater is a place I wish I could go to each and every night. I plan on enjoying all of those things with my husband and friends as soon as I’m done driving carpools, attending youth basketball games and coordinating the social life of my three adolescent children who have way better social lives than I do. 

Check her out in these sites:

Website | Facebook | Twitter




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