🌟BOOK BLITZ:🌟 Things She’s Seen by Pat Esden {EXCERPT + GIVEAWAY!}

Things She’s Seen by Pat Esden

Release Date: October 22nd 2019 by Kensington Publishing Corp.

Series: Northern Circle Coven #2

Pages: 304

Genres: Adult, Paranormal

The coven’s under investigation. Its future is in peril. And for one troubled young psychic, the coming battle will threaten her newfound freedom—and brings back a dangerous desire . . .

Exploited as a child medium, Emily Adams escaped to grow up on the streets—and hit rock-bottom. She took shelter with the prestigious Northern Circle, intent on staying only long enough to get back on her feet. But the Circle is still reeling from a devastating supernatural attack and betrayal. And vengeful High Council of Witches investigator Gar Remillard is determined to make Em surrender the truth—and disband the Circle forever.

When Em’s psychic ability allows her to see Gar is haunted by a formidable ghost, her attempts to free him challenge Gar’s rugged French Canadian heart and rancorous loup-garou instincts. But even as their new alliance and past connection kindles into raging desire, a malevolent force rises up to destroy them—the Circle and even the High Council.

With all she’s grown to love on the line, Em must draw on her darkest nightmares and alliances with the dead to outwit and out magic a force who can imprison souls with a flick of the fingers and command legions of wraiths with one word. . .

Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play

{EXCERPT}

Em is the main character in THINGS SHE’S SEEN (Northern Circle Coven #2). Em was exploited as a child psychic medium, but escaped as a teenager to live on the streets. While on the run, she and her lover, Alice, hung out behind the scenes at the Royal Palm Theater in Tampa. Em made spare cash by giving the actors messages from their deceased mentors and grandparents. Alice read cards for a living. Often times, they’d spend the night in the closed theater, drinking and goofing around on the stage.

Late one Halloween night, after the actors and employees had left the theater, Alice got out her tarot cards and did a one card reading for Em. Just a single card, drawn as they sat centerstage with a bottle of cheap wine, a bag of candy corn, and only a candle for light.

The drawn card depicted a woman petting a lion, controlling it with compassion and composure rather than force. An infinity symbol floated in the air above the woman’s head.

“The Strength Card,” Alice said. “It symbolizes courage, confidence, and passion. The triumph of intelligence over brute strength, and morality over evil. Calming inner storms of doubt, leads to becoming the true master of your own mind and abilities, and control over all aspects of your world. Heroic. Just and righteous.”

Em laughed. “The cards sure missed the mark this time. Heroic? Confident? Definitely, not me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. The card is you—on all levels.” Alice’s eyes brightened, glistening and full of innuendo. “The card also indicates a person who has an adventurous and unconventional romantic life.”

Heat washed Em’s face. She leaned in, pushed back a stray curl of dark hair from Alice’s face, and kissed her cheek gently. “That part is true, for sure.”

As Alice put the tarot cards away and they then finished the bottle of wine, Em didn’t begin to realize just how true the reading would prove to be. But years later she would recall it, when a haunted man returned to her life and she received a very different one card draw from Alice. A card revealed to her in a nightmare. 

The Death card.

AUTHOR BIO:

Pat Esden would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts.

She is the author of the contemporary fantasy Dark Heart series from Kensington Books, and the Northern Circle Coven series. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society's Mythic Circle, George Scither's Cat Tales Anthology, and the Fragments of Darkness anthology.

Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads

{GIVEAWAY!}

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for stopping by! 🍂

✯BOOK BLITZ:✯ Reach for You by Pat Esden {EXCERPT + GIVEAWAY!}

Reach for You by Pat Esden

Release Date: June 27th 2017 by Kensington Publishing Corporation

Series: The Dark Heart #3

Genres: New Adult, Paranormal, Romance

Her passion is her greatest weakness.

His legacy is his prison.

To reunite, both must fight the demons within.

A world of deception and danger separates Annie Fremont from her mother--and from Chase, the enigmatic half ifrit with whom Annie's fallen in love. But she vows to find her way back to them, before Chase succumbs to the madness that threatens his freedom. The only person who can help is the magical seductress, Lotli, a beautiful, manipulative woman . . . a woman who has disappeared.

Annie must stay strong, even as the future she imagined is slipping away. With the help of family and friends, she discovers that Lotli is being held against her will, by those who want to exploit her powers. But though weakened, Lotli remains a powerful ally and adversary. A bargain is struck. And now Annie's only chance to rescue Chase could also tear them apart . . .

Loyalties will be tested, walls will be breached, and enemies will be fought, yet Annie's greatest battle lies within her own heart--to trust her love for Chase to overcome its greatest enemy, and to save those she holds most dear from the terrifying realm of the djinn. For all of their lives depend on it.

Purchase: Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iBooks

{EXCERPT}

Chapter 1

We journey. Ceaseless and hungry.

Carved into stone tablet. Tenerife, Spain

The campsite was ominously silent. Then a breeze lifted and my ear caught the faint clank and rattle of the bones and knives hanging in the pine trees behind us.

“You don’t think they’re both dead, do you?” Selena whispered.

I scanned the dilapidated camper ahead of us, a do-it-yourself RV created out of an old bread truck. Despite the midafternoon warmth, the doors were shut tight. The tent behind it, barely visible from our angle, bowed under the weight of rain that had pooled in its canopy. There was no campfire smoke. No trampled grass. In comparison to when we’d come here last week, the place looked deserted.

Goose bumps pebbled my skin. I gave the camper another once-over. “Zea was really old and sickly. He could have died—or if the kidnappers came here first looking for Lotli, they could have found him. They might have—”

Selena cut me off with a glower. “You mean, supposed kidnappers.”

My jaw clenched. Yeah, that was exactly what I meant. I understood why my cousin didn’t like that everything we’d discovered pointed to her boyfriend, Newt, being involved in Lotli’s disappearance, and perhaps Zea’s as well. But I thought we’d gotten past that, like a bunch of times already.

I swiveled toward where we’d parked our Land Rover. The Professor stood rooted next to it, a mixture of disgust and apprehension crinkling his face. From his scholarly glasses and sandy brown hair all the way down to his polished loafers, he looked anything but ready for our reconnaissance trip out here on the back roads of Down East Maine. An afternoon of research at Oxford University would have been more appropriate. “You want to check inside the tent while we look in the camper?”

His gaze flicked to the soggy tarps. He cleared his throat, then—as posh as ever—said, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally against the idea. But the thought of discovering a rotting corpse is a teensy bit abhorrent.”

“Would you rather discover one in a closed-up camper?” I snapped. It was lucky we’d driven into the campsite from the main road instead of walking like we’d done the last time. I’d assumed the Professor had an adventuresome spirit to go with his young Indiana Jones good looks. Especially since he was an archaeologist, though this summer he was tutoring Selena’s eleven-year-old brother as a favor. Still, and despite how eager he’d seemed to come with us, the Professor had freaked the second we started past the creepy stuff Zea and Lotli hung in the trees to scare people off: the knives and bones, pieces of copper pipe, broken mirrors, and doll parts. Frankly, I was surprised he’d even gotten out of the Land Rover at all.

I pasted on a smile. “Sorry. I don’t much care for the idea myself. Let’s just hope he’s napping or something.”

The Professor wiped his hands down the sides of his chinos. “I truly hope you’re right.”

As he headed for the tent, I tramped toward the camper with Selena close behind. If only Chase were here now. The creepy stuff hadn’t bothered him at all, and the fear of Zea being dead would have only driven him forward faster.

My chest tightened, my longing for Chase aching inside me, raw and unrelenting. If it weren’t for me, he would be here now. Instead, both he and my mother were trapped in the djinn realm, prisoners of his father, Malphic. If it weren’t for me, Lotli wouldn’t be missing either.

“Well?” Selena jerked her head at the camper door. “Are you going to just stand there?”

I raised my hand and knocked. One second passed. Two seconds. I rapped harder. Nothing. I tried the doorknob. It turned beneath my grip. I opened the door a crack, hesitated, and took a deep breath before pushing it open all the way.

A wave of hot, musty air rushed past me as if the camper had been closed up for days.

“Hello?” I said, sticking my head inside. I gave the air a cautious sniff. No dangerous odors, like a leaky gas stove, permeated the air. No rotting-trash smell—or decomp.

Selena nudged my shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”

I swallowed hard and stepped forward.

The place was cramped, a gypsy wagon on steroids. Tassels and prisms curtained the windows, letting only faint streaks of light inside. Miles of fuchsia and turquoise fabric draped the ceiling and walls. Animal skulls, feathers, and nubby candles clustered inside miniature altars. The fridge, table, and chairs, every surface that wasn’t fabric covered, was painted purple or black. Stars decorated the ceiling. An antique bed piled with crimson quilts and an avalanche of pillows took up the camper’s entire backend. It was cozy enough, I supposed. But I couldn’t begin to imagine what life had been like for Lotli, apprenticed to Zea as a child because of her magic abilities, essentially indentured. Not that I thought a devout shaman like Zea would have been cruel to her. It was just so different from anything I’d experienced.

“Zea, are you here?” I called out. “We need to talk to you about Lotli.”

I minced my way deeper into the cramped space, working my way toward the back of the camper. Cold sweat carved a trail down my spine. I crept past a tiny kitchen and dining nook, then the bathroom—one toothbrush in the holder, a washcloth draped over the edge of a yellowed sink.

I returned to the front of the camper and pulled aside the curtain that divided the living area from the bread truck’s cab. Seats for the driver and a passenger, seashells glued to the dash, insulated coffee cups in the holders—

Something brushed the back of my neck.

I yelped and jumped sideways, whipping around to see what it was and smacking my elbow against the wall. Pain zinged up my arm. I glared at Selena, standing barely an inch behind me.

“Shit,” I said, rubbing the sting from my arm. “You scared the hell out of me.”

She gave me a sheepish pout. “Sorry. I thought you knew I was there.”

“I didn’t think you were that close.” It wouldn’t have hurt half as bad, except I was already sore and bruised from being thrown out of the djinn realm earlier in the day.

Her pout transformed into a smug smile and she flipped her blond hair over one shoulder. “Looks to me like Zea and Lotli might have pulled a vanishing act after all. Huh?”

I stopped rubbing. “Or the Professor’s about to find something disgusting in the tent.”

“Want to bet?”

I closed my eyes, struggling to regain my composure. We couldn’t afford to waste time discussing the same thing over and over again, any more than I could have afforded the luxury of staying home to nurse my aches and pains. Chase and Mother were in danger. And I couldn’t go back to the realm and rescue them until we found Lotli. Without her and her flute-magic, it would be too risky, perhaps even impossible to enter or escape from the realm.

I shoved past Selena and strode to the tiny bathroom. “While we’re here, we should find something personal of Lotli’s that you can use to scry and see where they’re holding her.”

Glancing around, I spotted a scruffy hairbrush. You couldn’t get much more personal than that. I grabbed it and brandished it toward Selena.

She stood just inside the bathroom doorway, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “Cut it out, Annie, I’ve had enough of you talking like Newt kidnapped Lotli, the innuendos and little jabs. Maybe his family’s hiding something, but Newt doesn’t have anything to do with it. So quit acting like he’s evil, okay?”

I mirrored her stance. “He told you his dad was a stockbroker, that they owned their summer home. Those were lies. His brother is a registered creep. No matter what you want to think: Newt’s not innocent.”

She turned her back on me, her voice bordering on hysteria. “I don’t know why I bothered coming. You’re so, so . . . You always have to be right—” Her voice died and she slowly faced me. Angry red blotches mottled her face. But tears rimmed her eyes.

My anger drained. She didn’t look pissed. She was trembling like she was about to fall apart. Earlier today, when we’d first heard about the lies Newt and his family had been telling, I’d seen something in Selena’s eyes, something beneath her disbelief.

“What is it? Tell me,” I asked gently.

She raked her hands over her face. “Nothing. You just need to trust me. I know Newt couldn’t be involved. And he wouldn’t have let his brother do it either.”

I leveled my gaze with hers and toughened my voice. “What makes you so certain? Tell me the truth, Selena.”

Her chin quivered. “I just know.”

Tucking the hairbrush handle first into my hip pocket, I stepped closer. I pushed her hair back from her face. “You’re my cousin. Please. Tell me.”

“Nothing. He just wouldn’t do it. He loves me.”

“I get that. But—”

She shoved my hand away. “No, you don’t get it. I know he loves me. Like forever.” Her eyes pleaded for me to understand what she couldn’t bring herself to say.

A possibility seeped into my head. My hands went to my mouth, covering a horrified gasp. She couldn’t mean. She couldn’t have. “What did you do?”

“I kind of—I put a . . .” Her voice faded and she looked down at the floor.

“A spell?” A month ago, the idea of witchcraft being involved would never have occurred to me. Now it seemed more than likely.

“You can’t tell anyone. Mom, Dad, Grandfather—they’d kill me.” She curled her arms over her head, her shoulders shaking as she crumpled down against the wall.

I crouched and put my arms around her. “Whatever it is, it’ll be fine. It can’t be that bad.”

“It is,” she sobbed. 

AUTHOR BIO:

PAT ESDEN would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts. An antique-dealing florist by trade, she’s also a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the League of Vermont Writers. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle literary magazine, and George H. Scither’s anthology Cat Tales.

Website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads

{GIVEAWAY!}

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for stopping by! :)

✯COVER REVEAL!✯ Reach for You by Pat Esden

Reach for You by Pat Esden

Release Date: June 27th 2017 by Kensington Publishing Corporation

Series: The Dark Heart #3

Genres: New Adult, Paranormal, Romance

Her passion is her greatest weakness.

His legacy is his prison.

To reunite, both must fight the demons within.

A world of deception and danger separates Annie Fremont from her mother and from Chase, the enigmatic groundskeeper with whom Annie s fallen in love. But she vows to find her way back to them, before Chase succumbs to the madness that threatens his freedom. The only person who can help is the magical seductress, Lotli, a beautiful, manipulative woman . . . a woman who has disappeared.

Annie must stay strong, even as the future she imagined is slipping away. With the help of family and friends, she discovers that Lotli is being held against her will, by those who want to exploit her powers. But though weakened, Lotli remains a powerful ally and adversary. A bargain is struck. And now Annie s only chance to rescue Chase could also tear them apart . . .

Loyalties will be tested, walls will be breached, and enemies will be fought, yet Annie s greatest battle lies within her own heart to trust her love for Chase to overcome its greatest enemy, and to save those she holds most dear from the terrifying realm of the djinn. For all of their lives depend on it.

Purchase: Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo

AUTHOR BIO:

PAT ESDEN would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts. An antique-dealing florist by trade, she’s also a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the League of Vermont Writers. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle literary magazine, and George H. Scither’s anthology Cat Tales. 

Website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads

Thanks for stopping by! :)

✯BLOG TOUR:✯ A Hold on Me by Pat Esden {PLAYLIST + GIVEAWAY!}

A Hold on Me by Pat Esden

Release Date: February 23rd 2016 by Kensington

Series: Dark Heart Book 1

Pages: 320

Genres: New Adult, Paranormal, Romance

She never wanted to return.

He wants nothing more than for her to leave.

But the fire between them is as strong as the past that haunts them.

Annie Freemont grew up on the road, immersed in the romance of rare things, cultivating an eye for artifacts and a spirit for bargaining. It's a freewheeling life she loves and plans to continue--until her dad is diagnosed with dementia. His illness forces them to return to Moonhill, their ancestral home on the coast of Maine--and to the family they left behind fifteen years ago, after Annie's mother died in a suspicious accident. 

Once at Moonhill, Annie is shocked when her aunt separates her from her father. The next time Annie sees him, he's a bizarre, violent shadow of his former self. Confused, she turns to an unlikely ally for support--Chase, the dangerously seductive young groundskeeper. With his dark good looks and powerful presence, Chase has an air of mystery that Annie is irresistibly drawn to. But she also senses that behind his penetrating eyes are secrets she can't even begin to imagine. Secrets that hold the key to the past, to Annie's own longings--and to all of their futures. Now, to unlock them, she'll have to face her greatest fears and embrace her legacy… 

Purchase: Amazon, B&N

{PLAYLIST}

A HOLD ON ME: my playlist!

This is a playlist of songs I listened to while writing A HOLD ON ME. Some of them like Dance in the Graveyard and Kiss Me helped me get into Annie’s head. Others like Full Circle, Before I Sleep, and Freaks put me in the right place for writing specific scenes. Sun On My Side reminded me of Annie’s determination. Siren’s Song speaks to the hurt Annie is moving past. And, Tiny Little Flashlights? Well, it was the lyrics that made me chose that song. And Dynggyldai is because every story has its secrets.

Full Circle—Half Moon Run

Dance in the Graveyard—Delta Rae

Kiss Me—Ed Sheeran

Before I Sleep—Joy Williams

Sun On My Side—Gogol Bordello

Freaks—The Hawk in Paris

Let It Be—Blackmill Veela

Siren Song—Moe & Tom

Demons—Imagine Dragons

Tiny Little Flashlights—Darren Hayes

Dynggykdau—Alash Esemble

Hide—Joy Williams

Listen to the A HOLD ON ME playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/22iwtf6o2fwo6rnjkhyq4bv5q/playlist/3KvNpddpCzxAR1rHanUcR3

Visit my Pinterest playlist board for additional songs:

https://www.pinterest.com/patesden/a-hold-on-me-playlist/

AUTHOR BIO:

PAT ESDEN would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts. An antique-dealing florist by trade, she’s also a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the League of Vermont Writers. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle literary magazine, and George H. Scither’s anthology Cat Tales. 

Website, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter

{GIVEAWAY!}

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for stopping by! :)