Tag: romance

The Reviews Are (Coming) In!

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“…still loving Ashe” 

I am in love with this series and these characters… I loved the narration (his voice melts me like butter). Loved the twists in the storyline, the sweet romance and of course the HEA…

“Great voice brings the story to life” 

This book was the second in the series and the story takes up just where we left off in the first and didn’t disappoint. plus the narrator’s voice captured my mental image of Ashe perfectly and I can’t wait for the next in line in the series. 

“Riley and Ashe…”

Ashe and Riley have overcome so much. The secrets revealed in this book were so worth waiting for. I loved the characters determination. The storyline has heartbreak, perseverance, love, humor, and vengeful ex-lover. Martin John Hopkins is the perfect voice for this book told from Ashe’s point of view. I really enjoyed his sexy accent.

It’s been a few weeks since the audio narration of Loving Riley was released and the reviews are coming in. If you’ve left your review, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed the story. If you’d like a free copy to review, let me know in the comments and I’ll send you an Audible code which you can redeem.

You can listen to the sample here.

AUDIBLE ITUNES

by Liz

The Muse… Er, Loving Riley is LIVE !

Yup, Ashe Hunter, er, Loving Riley is finally live on Audible and Amazon.

I’m still waiting for the link to show up on iTunes (which I hear may not last too long – but only because Apple will be splitting it to three (Books, Music, and TV,  which I thought was the way the app was structured).

This is the third audio narration of my books, the other two being Loving Ashe and Everything She Ever Wanted. This was also the one that probably took the longest for me to find the right “voice” to be Ashe mainly because when I wrote the first book, I already had his “voice” inside my head and nothing else would do but something close to that voice. Deep, intense, and smooth as “chocolate drizzled… over a lover’s skin,” if I remember the first book correctly.

Talk about being too close to your muse, right?

If you’d like a promo code (good only for Audible US and UK) for Loving Ashe or Loving Riley (or both since you need to have read Loving Ashe to get Loving Riley), please let me know in the comments.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering if Loving Ashe and Loving Riley are romance, they fall more under the umbrella of Literary Fiction. It has drama, angst, romance, and mystery. So, no, it’s not a genre romance at all.

by Liz

It’s a New Release: Her Lucky Charm 🍀🍺


Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Her Lucky Charm, a lighthearted (though with a little bit of angst) is now LIVE!

I had originally written Falling for Jordan‘s Addison and Jordan’s St. Patrick’s Day wedding and honeymoon but before I knew it, Roxy and Kodi, (the bridesmaid and groomsman respectively) took over!

Suddenly, it was the morning after the wedding and Roxy’s alleged “walk of shame” from Kodi’s townhouse goes viral.

Oh, what to do, what to do, right?

So I kept going and Her Lucky Charm came to be. I hope you like it!

Here’s the blurb:

HER LUCKY CHARM
A St. Patrick’s Day Romance

Did we or didn’t we?
That’s the million-dollar question when I wake up next to Kodiak “Kodi” Donovan the morning after a mutual friend’s St. Patrick’s Day wedding.

Forget that he’s one of the hottest bachelors in Manhattan, a billionaire, and as the founder of the nonprofit ReBuild to Heal, a philanthropist to boot.

And so we agree to go on with our respective lives and pretend nothing happened.

Too bad my walk of shame ends up getting plastered all over social media and the next thing I know, I’ve become #walkofshameroxy.

As if that isn’t bad enough, my job as an ICU nurse is in jeopardy, too.

Suddenly whether we did it or not is the least of our worries. To save my reputation, the only other question becomes…

Should we or shouldn’t we just take it all the way?

Her Lucky Charm is also part of Steamy Sensations Holiday Love: 10 Authors. 10 Holidays. 10 Steamy Romances and please do check my fellow authors’ stories out, too!

by Liz

Bad Boy or Good Guy Love? #awritersfebruaryromance

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I’ve recently joined an Instagram challenge called #awritersfebruaryromance and what I like about it is that it’s geared toward authors. Most of the ones I’ve seen are usually for readers and so when I spotted this one two days late, I jumped right in.

Today, the challenge was Bad Boy or Good Guy Love? Based on what my Liz pen name writes, it’s all good guys with the exception of Gareth Roman (Loving Ashe/Loving Riley) who does some pretty bad things.

My naughty pen loves writing about rich bad guys and I’m about to dive into writing a Reverse Harem romance featuring some badass security guys. But most likely, I’ll probably end up giving them hearts of gold and have to stop myself from turning them into cinnamon roll heroes before I know it.

Did you know there’s even a term for that kind of hero? I sure didn’t but turns out, I write about them… a lot. There are five of them so far in one series alone!

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by Liz

Cover Reveal and Excerpt: Every Breath: Sarah and Benny

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EVERY BREATH
(SARAH AND BENNY)

by Liz Durano

Twelve years since he promised her his heart, can their love stay as strong as ever… even without that ring?

Twelve years since he promised her his heart, can their love stay as strong as ever… even without that ring?

For the last twelve years, Navajo environmental protection scientist Benny Turner has never missed spending a single Valentine’s Day with Sarah Drexel. But when a toxic waste spill in Colorado requires his presence, the unfortunate event couldn’t have happened at the worst time.

For the first time since they’ve been together, they’ll be spending Valentine’s Day apart.

But Benny has never been one to give up so easily. And he’s determined to give Sarah a Valentine’s Day she’ll never forget even if he has to move mountains to do it—or employ the help of a few friends…

This is a steamy Valentine’s Day novella featuring Dax’s sister Sarah Drexel and her longtime partner Benny Turner. It’s a slice-of-life story set in Taos, New Mexico where we first met Harlow and Dax in Everything She Ever Wanted. Featuring characters you’ve met in previous books in A Different Kind of Love series, this story is guaranteed with steamy feels and no cliffhanger!

AMAZON

EXCERPT

His phone buzzes from the bedside table and excusing himself, Benny reaches over me to retrieve it.

“Work?”

He shakes his head, returning the phone to the table and pulling me in an embrace. He buries his face in my hair. “My mother.”

I pull away, studying his face. “Why didn’t you answer?”

“Have you seen the time?”

“It could be an emergency.”

Benny doesn’t answer. He kisses my forehead and then my lips one more time before removing his arm from under my head and sits up. Now he really needs to get ready to go to the airport.

“Are you packed?” I ask instead, the silences growing longer between us again. It always happens when he’s about to leave for long periods of time. This is one of those times. Pipeline spills don’t get cleaned up in a day, certainly not when it happens on tribal land. There’s just too much red tape, even danger. The last time Benny was sent to consult at one of these things, someone shot at him with a rifle. Later, they claimed they thought he was trespassing. It didn’t even matter that he was driving a truck with official markings.

“Of course.” He gets up and heads to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. A few seconds later, I hear the shower running. I get up and take a peek at his phone which buzzes again. This time it’s a text message from his mother.

Call me. Noelle is in town.

My chest tightens, my throat turns dry. I know that name.

Noelle.

I get up and walk out of the bedroom, making my way to the guest bathroom so I can wash my face and brush my teeth. Twelve years since we first kissed, why on earth am I still letting Noelle bother me?

But then, why not? She and Benny grew up together on the reservation. She’s also the woman Benny’s mother had wanted him to marry. They’d started dating when they were teenagers, attending dances together whenever he returned home from college in the East Coast where he’d earned a scholarship. While he wasn’t the first in his mother’s family to earn a college degree—his mother has an Associate’s degree in Business—he’s the first to earn a Doctorate.

That’s where I come in, setting Benny’s path a totally different direction from the one his mother had hoped for. I was completing my Bachelor’s in Nursing and he was working on his dissertation on Environmental Biology for his Doctorate when we met and the next thing everyone knew, we were inseparable and I had Dyami, a strong and beautiful baby boy with Benny’s eyes and lustful cry that could wake up the neighbors.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror, droplets of water clinging to my skin. Blue eyes, creamy skin and dark-haired, I’m what people have always called a curvy girl. Broad shoulders, wide hips, big boobs. Far from the ideal woman that many men I’d met in New York held on to when I went back there for my first two years of college.

How I wanted so badly to leave the quiet of Taos then, flying back to New York ten years after Dad uprooted me from everything I knew so Mama could live in Taos again. I thought I’d fit right back in like I never left it.
Only I’d changed.

What I thought I wanted—the hustle and bustle of Manhattan along with the status that came with it as Daniel Drexel’s oldest daughter—had faded into the tired rumblings and exhaust fumes of the city that never slept and a father whose affection for his only daughter turned into an expectation of perfection in everything.

Too bad I was far from perfect, and still am.

But at least, Benny loves him a girl with something more than skin and bones to hold on to. You’re more than just curves I can’t stop thinking about, Sarah, he’d say teasingly. There’s a woman in this body. My woman.

Shi’áád.

He just hasn’t put a ring on it, not since he first kissed me twelve years ago and promised to be mine forever.

RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 8, 2019

Amazon US ➭ https://amzn.to/2T2Csec
Amazon UK ➭ https://amzn.to/2Cv458L
Amazon CA ➭ https://amzn.to/2FGNXEo
Amazon AU ➭ https://amzn.to/2FwJ6X3

by Liz

Bring It On, 2019!

It’s the 7th of January and although I’m running a bit behind on my resolutions, er, goals, it’s okay. It’s still January.

I’ve got a lot planned on my plate for 2019 and whether or not I get to check them off one by one remains to be seen. But what matters is that I have something to check off, first of all.

I have goals.

For most of 2018, I looked at the world with dread. Dread over current events. Dread over political rumblings. Dread over what’s going to happen next. Dread over someone reporting my books for the tiniest typo and I’d lose my Amazon account. Dread, dread, dread.

Basically, FEAR.

Suddenly the glass was half empty every damn day. There was nothing to refill it and why would there be if my social media diet consisted of checking Twitter every day and getting caught up in one political upheaval after another. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another and while I thought I’d emerge unscathed, I was wrong.

That fear spilled into my writing. I didn’t enjoy any of my releases until the last one, Friends with Benefits, when something inside me pleaded pleaded pleaded, please be happy. You made something beautiful.

I recognized that voice.

It was from the child who wrote her stories to save herself from a narcissistic mother. It was the child who did whatever she could to be seen by her equally narcissistic father. And when she wasn’t heard, she just wrote and wrote because she heard herself. She heard her words and they were beautiful. Full of hope. No judgment.

I heard her.

And who knows? Maybe my son heard her, too, because today, from the back seat, he said, “Mom, can you write a little boy in your story? Someone like me with a mom like you.”

So for 2019, I’m putting the blinders on. I’ve got stories to tell and until the day comes when I can’t tell them anymore, I’ll keep telling those stories, chugging along, giving the same stories that save me each and every day.

SO WHAT’S THE PLAN, LIZ?

The plan so far is to write three novels. Daniel Drexel’s story, Gareth’s, and Todd. There’s also a sequel with Sarah and Benny that’s been in the works for some time.

And then there is Love in Taos, ten steamy shorts that will correspond with certain holidays, slice-of-life stories that go between the books. They’ll have a lot of romance and maybe, steamy scenes.

It’s ambitious, yes, but they’re boxes I’ll check off every time I accomplish one of them. Boxes that will keep me busy.

And then there’s this:

Writing this book was one of the hardest things for me as a writer. I wanted to write so much but I never expected the pushback from alpha readers who hated their version of Ashe Hunter torn down word after word. I didn’t expect the vitriol with some of their reactions and so I gave up on the book, set it aside in my hard drive for a year and a half until my son’s school aide chanced upon it on the Kindle I had loaned her. She said she sat on the couch for all weekend until the Kindle ran out of charge, paced until the device had enough charge to show the book and continued reading.

Because of her, Loving Riley finally got dug out of the box I might as well label FEAR and it would become my biggest, most profitable launch ever, even bigger than all the other books that would come after it combined.

And now Ashe Hunter is coming to life on audio. In the book, he’s originally from northern England in a little town called Reeth close to Grassington and the Dales. Wuthering Heights country. I hope listeners won’t mind hearing the Northern accent in his deep voice but he’s the Ashe I’ve been waiting for all this time (with shades of Sean Bean, too) and I can’t wait to share him with you this year.

Happy New Year, everyone. It’ll be amazing.

by Liz

One More Day

… and Friends with Benefits will be live!

And from what I’ve heard from my ARC readers, they are loving it! Campbell has become the favorite right after Dax (sorry, but Dax, I guess is always first for many readers and I can’t blame them).

It’s also really steamy…

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Here’s an excerpt:

We stumble onto my bed, giggling as we land on the soft covers. I can’t get enough of her. My mouth travels along her cheek to the sensitive skin behind her ear, feeling her shiver against me as I continue my exploration down her neck. Her hands undo the buttons of my shirt, tugging it loose from my pants.

“Roll over,” she whispers and circling her waist with one arm, I roll onto my back while bringing her on top of me. As she straddles me, the lights from the neighboring buildings and the city below illuminate her exquisite form, casting her ginger hair in an ethereal glow.

I hold my breath, watching her slip off her dress in a slow striptease that makes me want to pull her down to the bed so I can take over. But I don’t. I like watching Caitlin take charge. I love watching her be herself with me, only this time, in a way that’s only meant for me.

Clad in only her bra and panties, she resumes her mission of getting my shirt off and with a little help from me, succeeds with a grin before blazing a trail of warm kisses on my neck and chest, all the way down my stomach. I’m so hard, her sex pressing against my erection not helping in any way. She’s determined to tease and undress me and by God, I’m letting her do it.

Until I can’t.

“You’re determined to tease me, aren’t you?” I murmur as she starts to unbuckle my belt, biting her lower lip in concentration.

“Maybe,” she whispers. “I never realized you worked out. You’re ripped.”

I trace her thigh with my fingers. “Thank you. But you never asked.”

“You never took your shirt off whenever you stopped by the house.”

“I didn’t have a reason to. Besides, it’s also been a year since I’ve seen you. I missed you last time, remember?”

My belt buckle forgotten, Caitlin slides up my body so we’re face to face again, her hair cascading along the sides of my face. I can smell her shampoo, sage and lavender. “Of course, I remember. I missed you. My partner in crime was MIA.”

“I was working, but I missed you, too.”

“No, you didn’t. You were traveling. Italy from what I heard.”

“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t working.” I gather her hair in my hand and push it to the side as we lapse into silence. I can feel her watching me, studying me. “What are you looking at?”

“You,” she replies, stroking my stubble with the back of her hand. “You’re all grown up.”

“I’m not the only one, Cait.”

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There are also two more days left to download Falling for Jordan for free. It’s where you get to meet Campbell and Caitlin for the first time before you get to dive into their story when it goes live on November 20.

Falling for Jordan ➭ http://getbook.at/jordan

Friends with Benefits ➭ http://getbook.at/campbell

Check out the series on Kindle Unlimited ➭ http://getbook.at/differentlove

 

 

by Liz