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Monday, October 18, 2021

Smoke and Mirrors: A Vampire Romance by Elise Nelson

 

 


Smoke and Mirrors: A Vampire Romance
Elise Nelson 

Genres: PNR, Gothic Romance, Vampire Romance
Publisher: Shattered Glass Press
Date of Publication: May 25, 2021 
ISBN: 1777632935 
ASIN: B08ZT1JTF9 
Number of pages: 409 pages
Word Count: 120,857 words
Cover Artist: Covers and Cupcakes 

Tagline: In the shadows, nothing is ever what it seems

Book Description:

Caroline Blake is a young reporter with a past almost as cryptic as her future. She never put much stock into her late aunt’s eerie tales of monsters and demons until she takes an assignment to cover the elusive Ashdown family’s Harvest Festival. As part of her assignment, she must live at the family’s mansion for six weeks and help prepare for the event.

No one has seen the family since the tragedy that occurred at the last festival almost thirty years prior. As the only female reporter on-site, Caroline must hold her own while uncovering why the family closed their doors all those years ago.

Perhaps the most challenging part of her assignment is dealing with her working partner, William Ashdown. The handsome lord of the house seems bent on testing her patience every time they meet. Still, there is something intriguing about him that she can’t ignore.

Caroline is soon swept into a world of generational secrets, unsettling mysteries, and unexpected romance. Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is sure: in the shadows, nothing is ever what it seems. 




Excerpt 1:

I could never forget that day. There was an eerie stillness in the air as we stood there, waiting. Chills dimpled deep into my skin, and I swore it was watching me. It was watching all of us. A thing too far away for us to see but close enough to feel the slimy chill of its gaping stare. Like the unnerving lick of a wild animal. Or being scratched in that spot of your back that you can’t quite reach.

I could never forget how it all felt. The stale air clasping my skin, as if paralyzing me in place. The blind panic coursing through me. The sound of muffled breaths and stifled cries suffocating the air around us while we did our best not to make a sound.
None of us really knew what we were waiting for, and somehow that made it worse. Maybe we wouldn’t have been so utterly petrified if we’d known what we were up against. But we didn’t. We just stood there in the dark, the dewy mist of twilight teasing our tired eyes, and tried not to scream.

My aunt always told me to beware of the monsters in the closet. Of demons and shadows. Mythical beings she read stories about at bedtime. Creatures from the corners of our eyes and the echoes in our footsteps. She sang me eerie lullabies of cautionary tales, sinking in stories rich with disaster and fear so I would recognize any such creature if I ever saw one. When she’d speak these rehearsed sermons of the undead, her hands would tremble, and her eyes would go wide and far away—the shocking blue around her pupils turned into stagnant crystals ready to drop and shatter at any moment. It was as if she had left this world altogether and I had to wait for her to return.

I always wondered where these stories came from and why Maggie recited them to me every night before I went to bed. As a teenager, I thought she was simply out of touch with reality— that there was something about her that wasn’t quite right. I heard it when she spoke and saw it in those wide crystal eyes. Her lyrics never made their way into my mind, at least not until I was much older. They just swirled inside the little head that she cradled and brushed before bedtime.

I was a very protected child in a small home, in a small town, hidden deep within Western Europe.

When she died, I left the only place I’d ever known. I had no one else in Fairbrooke worth staying for.

So I moved to Brakerton Heights.

About the Author:

Elise Nelson is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, comics, and articles. She has published under a few different pen names since she was nineteen and has been published in literary periodicals, including The Nassau Review and Essig Magazine. She has also worked as an editorial intern for Christopher Matthews Publishing as well as a writer and editor for many other companies, magazines, and websites. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boise State University, where she studied English literature, creative writing, and multimedia storytelling. She is currently a writer and editor for Jotaku.net and enjoys writing Star Wars fan fiction in her spare time.







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Thursday, October 14, 2021

Halloween Dance Party Playlist

 



Halloween Dance Party Playlist 



Tranquil Heights
Book One
Megan Speece

Genre: Paranormal Suspense
Publisher: Megan Speece
Date of Publication: 10/15/2021
ISBN: 978-1-7374715-0-9
ASIN: B09B8WZDW1
Number of pages: 228
Word Count: 42,767
Cover Artist: Megan Speece

Book Description: 

Katie Edgecomb is questioning everything she thought she knew. 

She thought the family curse was fake, just a scary story her mom told her to keep her from misbehaving. The first-born daughters in each of the last three generations lost their lives on their twenty-fifth birthdays, a series of tragic accidents sending shock waves of grief through multiple generations. 

It isn't until Katie is faced with the real-time impacts of the curse that she starts to believe it may be more than a story and she sets out to discover the origins of the family's fabled curse. Her only clue lies in an exclusive girls' preparatory academy in Washington that was once an asylum. There, she must face heart-break, ugly truths, and events so terrifying that they threaten to sever her very ties to reality. 

She has no choice.

Katie is pregnant, and she won't let her child become another life claimed by the curse.


Google Books     Apple     Amazon    Kobo     BN     Signed Copies


About the Author:

Megan is a thriller author, horror buff, and dog person. She is currently writing books and helping authors navigate self publishing. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband and two dogs, and can be found spending her weekends at the beach, exploring everything Washington has to offer, or settling in with a good horror movie.


https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21389585.Megan_Speece



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5 Things NOT to Do While Ghost Hunting

 



5 Things NOT to Do While Ghost Hunting

By Louisa Bacio

Yes, I’ve done it – actually hunted for ghosts. I have no idea why it’s a thing when ghosts usually come to me. I’ve done tours in California, Savannah, San Antonio, Texas, and New Orleans. 

One hotspot that never fails to bring some spectral what-was-that moments is the Queen Mary in Long Beach. From slamming doors to words appearing on the mirror (yeah, I know it could have been the previous guest, but it’s still freaky) to that absolutely creepy empty pool below decks, the floating historical landmark is filled with potential for haunting.

So how about a what not to do while ghost hunting?

Here’s my list:

5) Wear Holy Water like eau de perfume, dabbed behind the ears. You are looking for ghosts, right? You don’t want to scare them away.

4) Sit in a darkened room, and inform the ghosts they’re allowed to “touch you” to let you know they’re there. (No joke! I went to an event with Amy from Ghost Hunters, and she actually called out this invitation!)

3) Invite the spectral inhabitants to travel home with you. My advice: Let them haunt wherever they currently live. Instead, I thank them for their presence, and actual say they are not welcomed to come with me.

2) Wear high heels. (Come on, we’ve all seen the horror movie. Sensible shoes, only, please!)

1) Duck under the sheets in a historical house. Probably frowned upon, and I expect the living will ask you to leave. 

Got any more tips? 

Sea Mage: The Nightshade Guild
Book 10 Multi-Author Series
Louisa Bacio

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Celtic Hearts Press
Date of Publication: October 14, 2021
ASIN: B08L9RGGVS
Number of pages:120
Word Count: 25K
Cover Artist: B Creative Designs

Tagline: Take a SPLASH into a new paranormal romance. 

Book Description:

Never stand down

Serena Moon treats life like a beach goer taking in the ocean’s tide. It’s all serene until you turn your back for a second, and an errant waves knocks you on your ass. 

Know when you’re in over your head

When she’s entrusted with the safekeeping of the child elven queen, she enlists the help of mysterious — complete understatement— Peder, leader of the shifter sea dragons. Serena’s not sure what’s happening off the coast of SoCal but he’s got his own tricks. 

It’s gotta be safe

It’ll take more than magic and mastery of the sea to take on the evil darkness determined to capture the world’s salvation. Serena and Peder must conquer unknown enemies and the complexity of love everlasting to save their hearts.



About the Author:

Since selling her first short story in 2010, Louisa Bacio has published more than 40 novels, novellas and short stories, including the paranormal The Vampire, The Witch & The Werewolf series and Winter Solstice Ménage. Watch for her upcoming Sea Mage in The Nightshade Guild series.

A Southern California native, Bacio can’t imagine living far away from the ocean. She shares her household with a supportive husband, two teenagers growing too fast, and a multitude pet craziness. In her other life, Bacio teaches college classes in English, journalism and popular culture.








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Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Urbantasm Book Three The Darkest Road by Connor

 


Urbantasm Book Three
The Darkest Road
Connor Coyne

Genre: General Fiction / Young Adult
Subgenres: Magical Realism, Teen Noir, Edgy YA
Publisher: Gothic Funk Press
Date of Publication: 9/22/2021
ISBN: 978-0989920292 (Print)
Page Count 639
Word Count: About 230,000
Cover Artist: Sam Perkins-Harbin

Urbantasm: The Empty Room is the third book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan. It will be published in September, 2021.

Junior high was hard. John Bridge has made and lost friends, experienced and forsaken love, and discovered his true passions. But after his harrowing experience on the roof of St. Christopher’s hospital, John has decided to turn the page of his own life and plan for his future. Now he has new friends, a new girlfriend, and a powerful new goal: to get into Chicago and leave Akawe forever.

But Akawe might not want to let John go. The city is full of memories and ghosts — urbantasms, according his former friend Selby — and they leave traces of questions that John cannot easily escape: What happened to his abducted classmate Cora Braille? How does the Chalks street gang keep replenishing its stock of O-Sugar, a drug with seemingly magical properties? And why is Selby suddenly hanging out with a notorious drug dealer? Does it have anything to do with a man with a knife or some mysterious blue sunglasses?

John has a feeling that the dreadful answers to these questions might take him to a place that he does not want to go: a dark road in a forgotten corner of his dying city. Possibly the darkest road of all.


As a serial novel, Urbantasm has to be read in order. 
New readers will want to start with Book One The Dying City.
 

Excerpt Book 3:

The summer dusk gave way to interstitial twilight. There was no sense in riding an hour back home in the dark just to turn around and come back the next morning. Instead, my friends and I bummed our way back to Camp Jellystone, where we got to camp in tents on the gravel and weeds off of the RV lot for five dollars a night. We sat around a fire and drank pop while the older actors – our mentors – went through six-packs of beer and homilized on their atheist Bibles. They quoted SNL routines, Monty Python, GURPS, Cthulhu, and the Digital Underground until we were all too tired to see straight. We all said goodnight and made our way back to our tents. But my tent had flooded during the week, and inside I found dead earwigs floating in slow circles.
            I didn’t mind.
            I was glad that this had happened.
            I gathered up my sleeping bag, which Eddie had dropped off in the morning before heading back to Akawe, and stumbled back through the purple dark to Omara’s tent.
            “Knock knock,” I said.
            I heard her sigh. “You got your own tent, John.”
            “Not tonight,” I said. “It’s flooded. Will you let me stay here?”
            “Fine,” she said. “If this ever gets back to my dad, he’ll murder you.”
            “I don’t think he will. I don’t think he’d murder a fly.”
            She didn’t argue. She knew that I was right. She unzipped the tent and beckoned me inside.
            In more than a year of going out, Omara and I hadn’t had sex. We hadn’t even been naked together. The driving thirst and curiosity that I had felt in seventh grade had been quenched by my confusing tumbles with Crystal. By my guilty nescience with Lucy. Still, here I was, sleeping bag in hand, stooped under the slope of the tent roof, wearing soccer shorts and a too-small t-shirt, and Omara stood before me, more stooped because she was taller than I was, her white panties and tank top bright against her dark skin. We unzipped our sleeping bags, made a bed between them, and lay down. Omara turned away from me, and I pressed into her back. I put my arm around her waist with my palm against her bare stomach. I could feel her shapes against mine, though there was still cloth between us.
            “It was a long day today,” she said.
            “Uh-huh,” I said.
            “We’d better get some sleep. It’s gonna be a long weekend. We got two more days to go. Then school. You know I got that job at the Olan Farm? It’s gonna be almost like this. I mean, I guess I’ll dress up like a milkmaid, like The Little House on the Prairie or something. But it’ll be acting, you know?”
            I sighed.
            “I’m not tired,” I said.
            “Me neither,” she said. And then, in a burst: “I can’t stop thinking about that woman on your block. Who murdered her baby.”
            I pushed myself against her. I held my breath. I said, “I can’t think about that. I mean. There’s nothing I can do about that. It makes me sick, but what does that even accomplish?”
            “But doesn’t it just stick with you? The idea of it? How awful it –”
            “I don’t want it to, okay? Anyway, it’s far away. We’re here now. Let’s stay here.”
            “We can’t stay here.” I felt the tenseness in Omara’s back.

“Yeah. But someday, we’ll leave Akawe for good. And anyway. We aren’t there now.”
            “Aren’t you afraid your dad’s gonna lose his job?”
            “My father? Yeah. He’s already driving two hours each day ever since they transferred him to Canton. Ever since that strike ended last year, it seems like X is closing everything fast as they can. You know? I mean, they closed the Benedict Main. Most of the Old Benedict. Probably RAN, too. ‘Course, my aunt says they were going to close them all anyway.”
            Omara laughed. A slight untensing. “Sounds like you have thought about it.”
            “I think about lots of things a lot. Some things I don’t want to think about and some things I do. I mean, I think about you a lot.”
            I was trying to move toward her. In, you know, ways. But she wasn’t taking the bait.
            “Aren’t you afraid they won’t be able to pay for college?”
            She’d finally succeeded. Omara’s fears had become my fears.
            “No,” I said. “I mean, my mother is working at that new job at XAI. And even if my father gets laid off, he’s got options. Right? Transfer to other plants. Stuff like that. What about you? Why are you worried? Didn’t your grandparents get you a savings bond or something?”
            “Yeah. But I keep thinking someone’s gonna open a trapdoor beneath me or something. I guess ... I guess I keep thinking I’ll believe in college when I get there. And not before. It just seems a bad idea to get my hopes up, you know?”
            “You don’t have to worry about it for a while. It’s still years off. I mean, we just have to keep working, don’t we? It’ll happen. We just need to be patient or some shit, you know?”
            The wind buffeted the tent over our heads. I could hear low talking outside. Low chuckles. Through the tent wall, I could see the embers of the fire flickering faintly. Some of the older actors would be slouching in their folding chairs until the sky started to gray with dawn. That was still several hours away. I listened to it for a long, slow minute.
            “I do worry,” I confided. “I worry that something will happen that I don’t expect, and I’ll get stuck. That I’ll fail a class, fail a test I need to pass ... and I won’t get into college in Chicago, or I won’t get into college anywhere. I worry that my parents are lying about everything, and they can’t pay for shit. I worry that I’m just being set up to fail. I even worry ...” I caught my breath. Saying this all out loud was hard. Trusting a human being was hard. But at least I wasn’t looking into her eyes. At least the darkness of a September tent wrapped us and kept our secrets from everyone else.
            “I worry,” I whispered, “that you’ll go away to college in Chicago, and I’ll be stuck in Akawe, and I’ll never get out.”
            I heard a deep breath from Omara. I felt her belly raise beneath my cupped palm. She had fallen asleep, and I was grateful.


Urbantasm Book Two
The Empty Room
Connor Coyne

Publisher: Gothic Funk Press
Date of Publication: September 2019      
Number of pages:
Word Count: 175,000      
Cover Artist: Sam Perkins-Harbin, Forge22 Design

Book Description:  

Urbantasm: The Empty Room is the second book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.

John Bridge is only two months into junior high and his previously boring life has already been turned upside-down. His best friend has gone missing, his father has been laid-off from the factory, and John keeps looking over his shoulder for a mysterious adversary: a man with a knife and some perfect blue sunglasses.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, John must now confront his complicated feelings for a classmate who has helped him out of one scrape after another, although he knows little about who she is and what she wants. What does it mean to want somebody? How can you want them if you don’t understand them? Does anybody understand anyone, ever? These are hard questions made harder in the struggling city of Akawe, where the factories are closing, the schools are closing, the schools are crumbling, and even the streetlights can’t be kept on all night.

John and his friends are only thirteen, but they are fighting for their lives and futures. Will they save Akawe, will they escape, or are they doomed? They might find their answers in an empty room… in a city with ten thousand abandoned houses, there will be plenty to choose from.

Amazon


Urbantasm Book One
The Dying City
Connor Coyne
            
Genre: YA, Magical Realism, New Adult, Teen Noir, Lit Fic
Publisher: Gothic Funk Press
Date of Publication: September 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0989920230
ASIN: 0989920232
Number of pages: 450 pages
Word Count: 85,000
Cover Artist: Sam Perkins-Harbin,
Forge22 Design

Book Description:

Urbantasm is a magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.

Thirteen-year-old John Bridge’s plans include hooking up with an eighth-grade girl and becoming one of the most popular kids at Radcliffe Junior High, but when he steals a pair of strange blue sunglasses from a homeless person, it drops him into the middle of a gang war overwhelming the once-great Rust Belt town of Akawe.

John doesn’t understand why the sunglasses are such a big deal, but everything, it seems, is on the table. Perhaps he accidentally offended the Chalks, a white supremacist gang trying to expand across the city. Maybe the feud involves his friend Selby, whose father died under mysterious circumstances. It could even have something to do with O-Sugar, a homegrown drug with the seeming ability to distort space. On the night before school began, a group of teenagers took O-Sugar and leapt to their deaths from an abandoned hospital.

John struggles to untangle these mysteries while adjusting to his new school, even as his parents confront looming unemployment and as his city fractures and burns.

 “A novel of wonder and horror.”— William Shunn, author of The Accidental Terrorist




About the Author:

Connor Coyne is a writer living and working in Flint, Michigan.

His serial novel Urbantasm is winner of numerous awards. Hugo- and Nebula-nominee William Shunn has praised Urbantasm as “a novel of wonder and horror.”
Connor has also authored two other celebrated novels, Hungry Rats and Shattering Glass, as well as Atlas, a collection of short stories.

Connor’s essay “Bathtime” was included in the Picador anthology Voices from the Rust Belt. His work has been published by Vox.com, Belt Magazine, Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere. 

Connor is Director of Gothic Funk Press.  He has served on the planning committee for the Flint Festival of Writers and represented Flint’s 7th Ward as its artist-in-residence for the National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town grant. In 2007, he earned his Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the New School.

Connor lives in Flint, Michigan less than a mile from the house where he grew up.

Urbantasm: http://urbantasm.com

Author Website: http://connorcoyne.com

Newsletter Signup: http://eepurl.com/bzZvb5

Blog: http://connorcoyne.com/blog

Twitter: https://twitter.com/connorcoyne

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@blueskiesfalling

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/connorcoyne

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connorryancoyne

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/connorcoyne

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4218298.Connor_Coyne

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Need by Madison Wentworth

 


Need
Madison Wentworth

Genre: Paranormal Erotic Romance
Publisher: Madison Crest
Date of Publication: Aug. 30, 2021
ISBN: 979-8468157046
ASIN: B09F3WVDZC
Number of pages: 165
Word Count: 24,000
Cover Artist: Bookcoverzone.com

Tagline: Sometimes you crave what’s good for you. Sometimes he craves you too.

Book Description:

Cherie just met the love of her life, but there’s a catch: He’s dead.

It’s not every day you find true love on an adult website, but that’s the most normal thing about Cherie’s new boyfriend, Evan.

To start with, he isn’t actually new. They’re engaged, or so he says. But she has no memory of planning their wedding, or even meeting him, for that matter, because for her, it hasn’t happened yet.

The bond is there, though. She can feel it. As a vampire of the soul, she can taste it, and she needs to taste more of it. It’s a bond so strong that it awakened his spirit in order to find her. Now, she must save him in order to free him from death... so she can have all of him. She needs that.

Need isn’t a word she uses lightly. She’s never truly needed anyone before. But she’s discovering she needs him now, even as their time together appears fated to be cut tragically short. And he needs her, too, more than she knows.

Yet their mutual craving is only just awakening. Can they find a way to cheat the fates and find a future together?

Time alone will tell.



Excerpt:

How are you supposed to feel when you find out the man you’ve fallen in love with, who you’ve never even met in person, reveals that the two of you were once engaged, and that you were—inadvertently or not—the cause of his death?

I try to plan for every contingency, but even super-prepared Cher hadn’t seen that one coming.

“Does that mean the whole thing has to happen all over again the same way?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Does it mean we’ll get to meet, after all? Or do I meet another version of you instead?”

“I don’t know.”

This was exasperating. The odd thing was, I found it almost impossible to be mad at him. It wasn’t his fault, anyway. He had no idea how to get out of the place where he was, wherever or whenever that might be, or what would happen if he did. I had no idea how to get him out, either, but I did know I had to find a way—and without him getting run over by a car again. I’d strap him to the bed if I had to.

“If we were engaged before, does that mean we still are?” I asked.

“I think so, unless you want to break it off. Do you?”

“No, I like being your fiancée.”

“Good. Because I like it, too.”

I still didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone else about Evan, or telling Layla anything more about him, because now it was even weirder than before. So, the only person I was left with as counselor was my inner voice.

I need to get him back here again. I need to see him.

Need. It was a word I’d hardly ever used before, and certainly not in connection with myself. But I seemed to be using it more and more with Even.

How do you think you’re going to do that if he’s dead?

It was a good question.

I could call my ghost-hunter friends.

You don’t need to hunt him. You already know where he is: In that smartphone screen of yours! You drew him to you through the internet. Now you just need to bring him the rest of the way.

How?

By being yourself. He hungers for you and can’t resist you. He will come.

Could it possibly be as simple as that? It couldn’t be. I remembered the voice had asked me once before who I was, and I’d answered that I was just me. But I was only that person when I was alone. Otherwise, I was always pretending—except when I was with Evan. I could be myself with him, too. So maybe it really was as simple as that, after all. It had to be, because I couldn’t think of anything else. But how could I be my true self, my vampire self, when the world was watching?

You can’t. You need to go someplace.

It didn’t help that I was having this conversation with myself at work.

“Cher, can you come over here for a sec?” Joy motioned toward me. “This customer needs his frames adjusted.”

“Coming.”

Fortunately for the eye clinic, and for my own job security, I was great at multitasking. I was able to keep brainstorming about how to get some privacy even while I was adjusting Mr. Thompson’s new glasses to fit him perfectly without pinching the bridge of his nose or pulling down too much behind the ear.

“Thank you,” he said. “You’re very good at that.”

I laughed easily. “I should be. I’ve been doing this long enough. But you’re very good at being a patient patient, and that makes all the difference.”

He nodded slightly and... was he blushing? So often, I found that the smallest kind word or gesture was appreciated beyond what I’d expected. People didn’t treat each other with kindness enough anymore. It had become rare enough that, when it happened, it was unexpected.

And they were grateful. It was sad that common courtesy had fallen so far out of style.

But being nice to people was how I’d been raised; it was part of who I was.

Vampires are known for their courtesy. They only enter where they’re invited.

That was it!

I had to be myself—my vampire self—to draw Evan back to the land of the living, but I had to invite him, too. That was the one thing I’d been missing. He might be dead, but he was also a vampire, and if I invited him, he would have no choice but to accept.


About the Author:

Madison Wentworth grew up on syndicated reruns of Dark Shadows and The Twilight Zone, coming of age not far from the Malibu surf. A job as a reporter for a small-town newspaper meant digging through police reports, gossip, rumor, and innuendo. And that led to more work as a writer, and a move east and northward to the opposite coast, a venue far more conducive to night-owl vampires and their felines.

An interest in cinema — and outings to see movies such as Ghost and The Sixth Sense — reignited a fascination with the paranormal, and stirred an interest in blending the mystical with the sensual.

The result is NEED, the author’s debut novella.




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War of the Sea - Kickstarter Olympian Wars Book One Dana Claire

  War of the Sea - Kickstarter Olympian Wars Book One Dana Claire Genre: Fantasy Romance Publisher: Chamberlain Publishing House ISBN: 97989...