Off The Shelf: Hunting The Hero by Heather Boyd

Today’s book I’m taking off the bookshelf to talk about is HUNTING THE HERO, the latest and final sizzling regency romance novel in author Heather Boyd’s Wild Randalls Series.

Here’s a brief synopsis of HUNTING THE HERO:

    She can lose her birthright, but not her heart!
    Meredith Clark wants no part of her long-ago identity as Rosemary Randall. She's created a more exciting life as the courtesan, Calista, and her newest lover is both intriguing and rugged enough to capture her fancy.
    But the widowed Earl of Grayling craves more than this woman's dazzling intelligence and fiery passion. He wants her as his mistress, and if she won't agree to that, he'll settle for taking her home as his daughters' governess.

   Determined never to be tied down to one person or place, Meredith prepares to run again. Yet something deep inside her yearns to stay -- until she discovers Constantine’s real identity.
    Now she's faced with the hardest choice of her life. Should she trust the man she's coming to love with the secrets of her past, or flee to save them both from an even greater heartbreak?

HUNTING THE HERO is available in print (ISBN: 978-0987561411) and digital (ASIN: B00EWQ1VDI) formats. Published by LLD Publishing last month, the paperback book consists of 254 pages and 439 KB for digital. 

Here’s what one reviewer had to say about the book, “Well developed characters, rich description of background and situations.”

As I mentioned earlier, HUNTING THE HERO is the final installment in the Wild Randalls Series. The other books in the series include:

ENGAGING THE ENEMY:
 
A duchess should be regal, aloof and the image of calm elegance. But those words have never applied to Mercy, Duchess of Romsey. A widow and mother of a young duke, Mercy is lonely and floundering to keep the estate afloat. When she discovers the existence of Leopold Randall, her husband’s estranged cousin, Mercy commits to help him locate his missing siblings if he’ll return the estate to order. Although cautioned against trusting a man who would inherit everything should her son die, she impetuously hands over the estate to Leopold’s care in the hope of keeping him near.

Leopold Randall, heir to the young duke, has returned to Hampshire to demand information regarding the fate of his missing siblings. Unfortunately, the Duchess of Romsey is clueless about them, yet her struggle to maintain the estate tugs at Leopold’s sense of duty. At her insistence, he steps in to bring order to chaos while searching for hints to his family’s whereabouts amongst the old duke’s papers. Yet the duchess tempts him in ways best unspoken. He fights to hide his  weakness for her and a shameful past that could see him banished again. But when Leopold discovers a threat against the duchess and young duke’s life, he must join forces with the temptress to protect his last known  relative. 

FORSAKING THE PRIZE: 

She was a faithful widow until… 

Abducted at fourteen and sent away to sea, rough and ready sailor Tobias Randall endured exile and cruelty only to have his plans for revenge crumble. He may have made a terrible first impression upon his return to Romsey Abbey, but he has a plan to reclaim his place—he’ll marry  quickly and marry a woman of wealth. Yet the perils of life at sea are nothing compared to the danger of attempting polite conversation with a proper lady.

… he reawakened her heart
Blythe, Lady Venables, may be revered as a faithful, proper widow, but a cruel misunderstanding has placed her sanity in doubt. Determined to clear her name, she forms an uneasy truce with the wildest Randall of all, Tobias—a man shamelessly willing to seduce her—to uncover the mystery plaguing Romsey Abbey. With doubts and fears against them, Tobias and Blythe each venture into uncharted territory – love and scandal.

GUARDING THE SPOILS:
  Elizabeth Turner once loved Oliver Randall, but was blind to his desire to travel without the encumbrance of a wife weighing him down. When she learned the truth, Beth settled for the security of a loveless marriage. Now a widow with a son to support, desperation has driven her into service at Romsey Abbey and directly into the path of the man she’d loved and lost.

Oliver has no intention of letting his dream of travel slip away again, even for a pretty face from his past. Since his return to the abbey, he’s planned a grand tour to the continent even while examining the astonishing emotional changes a decade apart from his brothers has wrought. The last thing Oliver wanted was stronger ties to the people living at Romsey. But then fate offers him both an affair and an unexpected friendship. Is it curiosity alone that stirs him, or the beginning of an unexpected adventure?

THE SERIES….
For more on each book in this tantalizing series, connect with the author on Wattpad. There she share an excerpt from each of the books to tempt your reading taste buds even more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Bestselling historical author Heather Boyd believes every character she creates deserves their own happily-ever-after, no matter how much trouble

she puts them through. 


With that goal in mind, she weaves sizzling English set love stories that push the boundaries of regency era propriety to keep readers enthralled until the
wee hours of the morning. Brimming with new ideas, she frequently wishes she could type as fast as she conjures new storylines. 

While writing full time north of Sydney, Australia, Heather collects dust bunnies in all corners of the house and does her best to wrangle her testosterone-fuelled family into submission.

For more on Heather and her writing, visit her website, connect with her on Facebook and look for her on Wattpad.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. I hope I’ve entice you a bit to try a regency romance novel or two, if you don’t already enjoy them. Do you have a favorite era to read about?

Author David Mark Brown: Power to the Wattpad

Please join me in welcoming author David Mark Brown as the special guest blogger as he tours blogdom with his current release, FISTFUL OF REEFER.

Those who visit here know I read books in various genres, but David has a new one on me. His book is a dieselpunk, weird Western pulp featuring goats, guns and the camaraderie of outcasts. Marijuana was the plan, liberty the dream, revolution the result. Viva this! This debut novel is the first in a series David calls Reeferpunk -- an alternate history that explores the ramifications of an industrial revolution sans cheap oil.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the book: Set along the Texas Mexico border during the waning years of the Mexican revolution, FISTFUL OF REEFER focuses on a group of unlikely heroes and their equally unlikely foe as they stumble upon the fringes of a cabal bent on nothing short of redrawing geopolitical boundaries and world domination.

The anticipated release of this eBook exclusive is July 31st.

David is here today to talk about ‘Power to the Wattpad! (I hate you).’

Nothing beats sitting in front of a liquid crystal display all day long jamming my fingertips repetitively into alphameric and numeric buttons creating a splay of digital information from here to timbuk-twitter. Working in my pajamas. Rejecting routine hygienics. Watching matinees for research. It's the perfect life.

Except now I'm supposed to forgo compensation. That's right. And I blame Wattpad. If WP still stands for the Washington Post or the Workers' Party of Singapore in your antiquated mind, then it is time for me to introduce you to the world's largest electronic reading application.

Reader, meet Wattpad
So what does it mean to be the world's most popular e-reader? Well, you've no doubt heard of a little thing called Kindle. Kindle is Amazon's electronic reader device. It is also an electronic reader application which can be downloaded on iPads or most other electronic readers. It allows you to read fiction on your device. Wattpad is bigger. Wattpad's application has more downloads than any other, including Kindle.

Wattpad.com is a social sight for writers and readers. With the flick of a wrist and click of a mouse a wattpadian can access one of millions of works of short fiction, poetry and novels -- all for free. Granted 75% of those works tend to fall in the vampire or werewolf genres recently created to unburden the rest of the genres of these more nuanced brands of speculative fiction (that is the vampirc and werific).

Snobs and Critics
Some snobbish novelists and critical readers may denounce Wattpad as an amateurish cloister of narcissistic wannabes of the sort that gain airtime during the first round of American Idol (for the love of all things holy, tell your friends they have a horrible singing voice before they make national fools out of themselves).

To this I say two things: 1.) these amateurish wannabes represent a large portion of the world's readers (as well as future professional writers). 2.) the majority of Wattpad users are strictly readers--voracious readers.

And the whole dang system is free. This is great for readers, but what about writers?

As For Me?
I write dieselpunk, weird-West pulps called Reeferpunk (novels and shorts). Will making my fiction available on Wattpad for free increase my sales, buy my children the wine the so desperately need? I don't know, but I'm giving it a shot. (Full disclosure: as of October, 2010 I officially became a Wattpadian @hachebrown.) Ten days before the official launch (Today!) of my novel, FISTFUL OF REEFER, I started making it available for free on Wattpad.

In the years to follow this trend will only increase. Soon most readers will expect to find their fill of juicy beach romances for free. I can't feed my family on free. But maybe the free reads will result in paying customers. If not, the solution: return to a system of patrons supporting the arts. And I'm getting in before all the best ones are gone. I hear Oprah likes to read.

David, thanks for guest blogging. Thanks also for introducing me to dieselpunk and Wattpad. You have definitely given us something to ponder. Best of luck with your launch of FISTFUL OF REEFER.

Now a little background on David. As a little scamp he wrote his first award-winning story in 4th Grade, titled “The human bean.” It wasn’t a play on words. His profound piece about the human condition blundered into a mutant story about a human/legume crossbreed. (Curse you, phonics! But hello, commercial fiction!)

All grown up his first book, TAINTED LOVE: GOD, SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS FOR THE NOT-SO-PURE-AT-HEART (inspired by his soiled experiences) was published in 2002 by InterVarsity Press. After several years of retooling himself as a novelist (by drinking more and making less money), David reemerged in 2009 with two separate projects: GRIS-GRIS DAUGHTER and FISTFUL OF REEFER.

He and his lovely wife adopted their first child from Vietnam before producing a second through more traditional means.

For more on David and his writing, check out his websites http://www.reeferpunk.com/ and http://www.thegreenporch.com/ You can also find his profile on Wattpad @hachebrown.

Have you heard of dieselpunk before? What about Wattpad? Share your thoughts and help David launch his latest release. Thanks, as always for stopping by.