I am very pleased to be here among all these terrific authors and being able to discover some fantastic new reads. There is a wonderful grand prize up for grabs...but you must visit each blog on the hop and leave a comment WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. Here are some of the items up for grabs:
1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet
2nd Grand Prize: A $130 Amazon or B&N Gift Card
3rd Grand Prize: A Large Swag Pack
What better way to celebrate this hop than to be discussing romance? Romancing the Hop. Hmmm...the name of this hop really got me thinking. We all love romance, that's why we're here. We all long to swept away in an epic saga that tugs at our heartstrings, takes us to new places and makes us fall hopelessly in love with swaggering Alpha heroes.
Can you all remember your first romance? Can you still picture the color of your first love's eyes, or the scent of him? I have to admit, this hop made me think of some of my first loves.
My first, in kindergarten (yes, I started young) was a little boy named Sammy. He had a bright smile and his eyes crinkled with it. There was a climber in our classroom. At nap time, Sammy and I would lie down on either side of the climber, and smile at each other, invariably exploding into giggles.
One of my next loves was a boy named Brian. I was 8. He was 12. It was doomed from the start. However, young Rosanna was smitten with him. He was a jock, had winged brown hair (this was the 70's), and pretty eyes. I used to follow him all over the schoolyard, just to be near him. His friends, also older boys, used to tease him and make fun of his "little girlfriend." Brian, to his credit, just laughed it off and was very kind to a love-struck kid.
Once in high school, I fell in love for the first time with my first real boyfriend, a nice young man named Shawn. With Shawn, I had my sexual awakening, and there nothing quite so sweet as "parking" with him and exploring!
Years later, I'm a happily married mom of two sons. My husband is the love of my life. He does sweet things for me like always filling my car with gas, and bringing me flowers on unexpected days. He tells me he loves me every day and every night, and I love it when he gets that look in his eye, even after 20 years together. I know I'll go to my grave adoring him.
Please read on and I'll give you a glimpse of my latest love story, Sweet Hell. It is a sexy paranormal about the randy god Dionysus and his very unexpected lover. And as you go through the hop, I hope you remember all your romances, and smile.
To find some more terrific authors in the hop, click on the rose pic up top!
Blurb:
Dionysus, Greek god of wine and theater, is the world’s original playboy. But lately, he has been restless, moody, and he knows something is wrong. His carefree and bacchanal lifestyle is starting to feel like one long string of meaningless, sexual escapades. Even worse, he is suddenly aroused by the idea of marriage. And to top it all off, Josie Marino, the mouthy, disheveled, and eternally annoying woman who serves him coffee at the local bakery, sets him on fire.
Josie, a Toronto baker of Italian heritage, is not looking for love or lust. Especially not with Dionysus Iros, the most aggravating, demanding customer she'd ever had to serve. With his rippling muscles and sexy, knowing eyes, he's obviously trouble with a capital T. Unfortunately, he's also the star of her every X-rated dream. She’s known players like Dionysus before, and one of them almost got the better of her. Josie determines she will not fall for his considerable physical charms, come hell or high water.
But Dionysus turns strangely protective when a sinister character arrives at Josie's bakery, and they can no longer deny their unwanted feelings for one another. They are forced to embark on a bizarre, sexually-charged journey to hell itself, which threatens to either change them for the better, or destroy them.
Excerpt:
There were usually two men Josie Marino had contact with at the ungodly hour of five in the morning. Not good contact. Certainly not sweaty, chest-heaving, “take me, take me” contact. And definitely not contact with Petter, the Norwegian male model who lived next door.
Nah. That would have been too perfect, wouldn’t it?
Instead, most mornings, Josie had to settle for haggling with her two least favorite men on the planet. Nelson Tate, the deliveryman from her most important supplier. And Dionysus Iros. Worst. Customer. Ever.
Because of the business, she just had to put up with Nelson. He’d been delivering dry goods to her family bakery for years. Had known her parents, schmoozed with her brothers, and basically enjoyed making life hell for her. Not that he was a vicious sort. He was just far too handsy for her liking.
In the case of Dionysus, he was just an early bird and a womanizer. And couldn’t function without the coffee she brewed first thing in the morning. Invariably, he was already waiting for her when she got to the bakery each day.
Oh, joy of joys.
Not that he was a horrible person either. He just intimidated her with his unearthly good looks. Men like him, not that most men came close to looking like him, rattled her. They were best kept at a distance.
Dionysus was so bloody perfect; Josie wanted to shake him to see if she could muss his seemingly unmussable hair. Most days, though, she just contented herself with a lot of grumbling in his presence. He unnerved her, with his sexy brown eyes and long, dark waves of hair any woman would die for. To say nothing of his body… No, it was best not to say anything about that smoking body at all. She couldn’t help hating him, just a little. No man should look so divine at dawn, when she felt about as put together as a cavewoman.
To makes things worse, the man acted as if he were a Greek god. His parents, in a tragic case of bad judgment, had even named him after one. It was no wonder he was so obnoxious.
On this morning, too, he was waiting at the door when she got there. Looking as if he’d just tumbled off the cover of GQ, and the birds weren’t even up yet. At least today he didn’t have a sleepy bimbo on his arm, like he often did.
“Mr. Iros,” Josie drawled, yawning, as she unlatched the bakery door. “You’re losing your touch. I haven’t seen you with a woman in, what, forty-eight hours?” She pushed ahead of him into the bakery, catching the scent of wine on him.
God, how much did the man drink? She was sure he dabbed a little bit of the stuff behind his ears, and splashed it on his face instead of aftershave.
On any other man, the strange cologne would have been a red flag. An indication he drank more than coffee in the morning. But on this man, it just smelled delicious. As if the scent were his pheromone, oozing out of every pore, inviting her to mate with him. In very dirty ways.
He chuckled, low and deep, and sauntered in after her as if he owned the place. Within seconds, he was seated at his usual spot at Josie’s counter. “Just be a good girl and fetch my coffee.” He lowered his shades and peered at her through sensuous dark eyes that should have been bloodshot at that time of the morning, but weren’t. “And don’t forget. Make it a tall, half-skinny, half-one percent, extra hot, two shots decaf, two shots regular latte with whip. And exactly…”
“I know, I know,” she interrupted. “One hundred fifty degrees. Has it ever been anything less, Your Highness?” She pasted on her sweetest of smiles and turned to prepare the elixir of the gods. She heard him huff as he flipped open the day’s newspaper.
“No need to call me that, Josie. ‘My Lord’ or ‘He From Whom All Good Things Come’ will do just fine.”
She reached for the one percent milk, and contemplated tossing in some heavy, artery-clogging cream just to soften up some of his sculpted muscles. A man with that kind of body had to be on some sort of special diet. With that brawny physique he must spend hours a day at the gym and ingest copious amounts of protein powders.
She snuck a peek at the bulges rippling under his sleeves, turning her head sharply when he grinned.
It was one thing to look like God’s gift to women. It was another thing to act like it.
Available at www.liquidsilverbooks.com/books/sweethell.htm
Rosanna Leo has her degree in history and literature, as well as in classical singing. She currently resides in Toronto, Canada. Her favorite things are her family, libraries, and her mother's gnocchi. Rosanna loves it when the geeky, awkward girl gets the hot guy, and has made it her mission to see this happen in her books as much as possible. Sweet Hell is her third book published with Liquid Silver Books. She is also the author of For the Love of a God and Up in Flames. Her newest, The Selkie, releases Sept. 3!
