Showing posts with label Arlene Webb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arlene Webb. Show all posts

Monday, April 8, 2013

Book Spotlight: Blood Alert by Arlene Webb

Born with a strange addiction, Cham needs a pint or two of blood on a regular basis to stay alive, healthy and solid. To make a miserable life worse, most everyone around him, except for his sister Kylee, overlook him as if he’s not clearly there. If not for the rage and questions pushing at him, he’d wonder if he really exists.
Cham’s mother died giving birth to him, leaving him and four-year-old Kylee in the hands of an angry, uncaring father. From the moment his infant fingers clutched hers, Kylee has been determined to protect him from the visible and invisible monsters.
After fleeing an abusive home, their lives revolve around stealing what Cham needs to survive. When he confides detail about a man from their past no one but he could see, Kylee refuses to leave him or let him fade into insanity. All is fine in their little world, until the cops arrest her for theft, and hallucinations do much worse than torment his memory.
They become so violently real, Cham wishes it was as simple as throwing himself in a padded cell. 

Blood Alert is a science fiction adventure novel for adult audience. Contains violence and some profanity. The timeline follows after Incoming Alert.
No vampires, weres, zombies, fey, or previously known supernaturals were used or otherwise harmed in the making of this novel.

Available at Amazon
Author Bio
Sci-fi, paranormal, thriller, sweet to spicy romance, indefinable, I’m an author who mixes up genres. Published with MuseitUp, Decadent Publishing, and I have a four book series inde-published, and am working on another series with two novels out of three released. 
I was born in upstate New York, land of cows, snow, drizzle and sometimes a ray of sun. I spent my childhood reading everything I could get my hands on. Adolescence found me questioning the validity of everything I read, along with acquiring the usual scars of high school.
Early twenties, I headed for the Pacific. A stop off to visit a friend in the desert turned into years in Tucson, Arizona. I worked as a waitress, bartender, greenhouse worker, greyhound trainer, while swapping a psych major for one in plant sciences at the University of Arizona. 

My late twenties found me running family owned greenhouses and florist shops in New York. When the reality of retail life became too mundane to handle, I began an obsessive love of creating more interesting worlds.
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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Covers reveal: Decadent Publishing's Preppers Romance series

If a disaster struck, would you be prepared?
If you had five minutes to leave your home with everything needed to re-start your life, could you?
If the world ended, would you?

Preppers are a growing and diverse group that some even call a ‘sub-culture’. But most preppers are just average Americans who simply have a plan for self-sufficiency and survival in case a minor or major disaster happens. They have extra food and water on hand and a bag packed in case they need to get away fast. Some convert old missile silos into bunkers in case of global pandemic or nuclear war, but most are more practical and simply learn or apply the basic skills of survival that our grandparents’ generation used in everyday life. Californians have earthquakes, New England and the Gulf coast have hurricanes, the Midwest—tornadoes. Are you prepared?

Decadent Publishing is tapping into that sub-culture to bring you a line of Prepper Romances. They are sexy, fun, sometimes suspenseful, and always entertaining stories with a little bit of ‘prepper’ thrown in for some added flavor.


The Princess and the Prepper
by Barbara Elsborg
Lili knows she shouldn’t accept a lift from a stranger, but as usual doesn’t open her eyes or use her brain before she leaps from one disaster to another. Consequences come with being stuck in the middle of a snowy nowhere wearing next to nothing, and being unprepared looks likely to kill her.
Grant lives in an isolated cabin for a reason, prepared for almost every eventuality. But he has no choice about carrying home a woman soon to freeze to death even though the last thing he wants is some needy person interfering with his ordered life. When he gets into bed with her to warm her up, Grant discovers something else he’s not prepared for. His heart opening.
A match made in heaven, until secrets come knocking. Lili is not who she seems, a simple woman in need of shelter, and unless she can survive dealing with her background, it doesn’t seem possible the happiness that’s fallen out of a blizzard can heal Grant’s own past.


Finding Mercy
by D.L. Jackson
Blurb
You’ll die in three minutes without oxygen, three hours without shelter, three days without water and three weeks without food. But could you live a lifetime with a broken heart? 
Mercy Evans has come to Evans Point hoping to collect herself and find a way to resurrect her career as an anchorwoman for Cheyenne’s news station. Sergeant Justin Redway has come to Evans Point to try to forget his past and survive what he’s done.

When two worlds collide, one of a battle damaged veteran, the other of a desperate woman who will go to any extreme to get his story, sparks fly and old wounds open. When the chasm between the fated lovers widens, it might be too big to cross.

One town, two lovers, and a second chance at finding mercy.

Excerpt
Fingers pressed against his throat, feeling for a pulse.
“This one’s alive.” Someone hoisted the weight of large chunk of wreckage from his torso. Two sets of hands slid under him. “On the count of three. One. Two. Three.”
They moved in unison, rolling him onto a stretcher.
“No,” he begged. He wasn’t alive. This couldn’t be real. Another protest gurgled from his throat and he began to convulse, unable to hold his limbs still.
“Hold him down so I can sedate him.” Hands grasped his wounded limbs. Bone cracked and shifted under their grip. He tried to arch up, but remained restrained by several soldiers. He yelled and thrashed his head side to side. They grabbed both sides of his face, holding him still.
Justin screamed. The sound was so inhuman, if he hadn’t been the one who’d made it, he wouldn’t have believed it came from a man. A stick with a needle. Burning.
As the seizure eased, they released their hold. He turned his head toward the medic who’d drugged him. The man blurred in and out. Justin’s vision came back into focus as a burnt picture of a woman and baby caught the breeze and tumbled across the baked earth next to where the medic kneeled. Justin swallowed and his eyes blurred with tears. Williams hadn’t even gotten to hold his daughter.
“You’re going to be okay.”
Let me die. Please. Let me die. Pain rode his nerves like an electrical wire, sending jolts of agony to the tips of his fingers and toes. He opened his mouth, but nothing came from his throat. Boom, boom, boom. His heartbeat slowed as the sedative did its job.
“Get him on the chopper.”
Regardless the drug, every step the medics took hurt as they hauled him toward reprieve. Broken bones, burns, but nothing compared to what played through his head. He’d killed them all and survived to see his handiwork. Nothing could be worse than that. 



Falling for Water
by Arlene Webb
Blurb

Water.
What Cassi thought was a simple obsession with clean water has taken over her life. When she orders a distiller online to replace the one smashed by her abusive boyfriend, she gets more than she bargained for.
Enter a man with a badge hunting a terrorist, and Cassi is his number one suspect. Not only is she struggling with her fixation on pure H2O, she has to prove she’s not the one he’s looking for—only she kind of wishes she was. Before she knows it, Cassi is in over her head.
Justice.
Ray had everything, until a random crime ends badly and he’s left to hold to his grief or make changes in his life, including becoming driven by a new profession. Charming his way into people’s personal business—slapping on the cuffs as needed—gives him reason to get up in the morning. When he falls headfirst into another chance at love, he must take the plunge without hesitation or risk losing more than his heart.

As the pair join hands, sparks fly as well as bullets, leaving Cassi and Ray to wonder if the universe could right itself, or will the past reach out and drown their chance for happiness.



Love in One Night
by Rebecca Royce

Monday, April 16, 2012

TBR welcomes Arlene Webb

TBR: Welcome to TBR, Arlene Webb. Will you share a little bit about yourself?
Arlene: Sweet to spicy, I love writing stories with an edge or bite to them.

TBR: Tell us about Rebel and where it's available.
Arlene: Rebel is a short novella that’s been branded as unique. It’s the story of a plant who’ll do anything to protect her offspring.
99 cents on amazon.

TBR: Please tantalize us with a story blurb or excerpt.
Arlene:
Eighty-one nights until December 24th, and Settia planned to impress upon Vinesun that she should be his one and only during every minute of every dark hour. She shivered with happiness. If dreams went well, he’d place binding tendrils round her stem while the lilies sang. The pompous palm, eldest plant in the ten acres, would call out his-her blessing. She-he’d oversee a vine and an ornamental pronouncing the sacred oath—two plants promise to stand as one until death do them mulch.
Then every marigold, petunia, rose…really, the grass even? Vinesun’s past would no longer matter. If he popped the question—not if, but when he asked to dew Settia and her alone, the multitudes Vinesun had relations with would learn he’d been bonded tight, forever hers.
She’d make him so happy. He’d laugh, weeping fat drops of sap she’d lick from his, you know, while her cuttings slumbered and paid his groans of joy no mind. Come daybreak, he’d tell them stories of his wanderings before he glued to one plant—me! They’d swallow Vinesun’s words along with the sun, and grow strong and straight.
Settia’s vine would never hire a scum-toad lawyer to chew him free, strangle her dead, or creep off in pursuit of petunia. She’d make him forget the cheap, double-blossomed plants ever existed. She’d mold her little branches into his thickest one, as wide as she could reach, big, swollen hunk that he is. Bonded in eternal bliss, they’d watch Hell-day dawn together. Without a biped alive, there’d be no one left to torture plants for some obscure, human holiday again.
A horrid noise, footsteps heavy and familiar, shattered Settia from her happy place. With a poof, her fantasy exploded into tiny fragments of get it together, or she’d never see Vinesun down on one tendril in front of her.

TBR: How do you develop your characters?
Arlene: Take psychological defects and expand the flaws. 

TBR: Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to share?
Arlene: Hard to pick favorites, so here’s opening line of Rebel: “It hurts, having your head cut off.” Settia
Settia. Rebel
Thousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’
Beni. AshesThousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’
Beni. Ashes
Thousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’
Beni. Ashes
 

TBR: Which of your characters would you most/least like to invite to dinner, and why?
Arlene: I’d like to have any of them from this story. Especially if I was in the mood for salad.

TBR: Tease us with one little thing about your fictional world that makes it different from others.
Arlene: Writing from different point of views makes them stand out.

TBR: What's next for you?
Arlene: The final book in my sci-fi-romance series is scheduled for release in May.
Check out the left hand column on this blog page, scroll down to click on my name and send me an email…arleneann1 at gmail dot com…TBR in the subject line, if you’d like a free e-copy of book one in the color series, Splintered Energy.

TBR: Any other published works?
Arlene: More than once with MuseitUp, Decadent Publishing, and Inde.

TBR: What’s the most challenging aspect of writing? Most rewarding?
Arlene: Finding the time of course. Holding a hard copy or a kindle/nook with your stories in it.

TBR: What’s the most interesting comment you have received about your books?
Arlene: Original. Wonderfully weird.

TBR: Where can readers find you on the web?
Arlene: 

Thank you, Cate, for hosting me. I seriously appreciate your friendship.

TBR: Likewise, Arlene! You are a gifted writer and good friend, a wonderful combination. :) Thanks for visiting TBR!

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Coming up on TBR

Three wonderful authors will visit TBR this week:

Monday, April 16  - Arlene Webb
Wednesday, April 18  - Sherri Fulmer Moorer
Friday, April 20  - S.G. Rogers

Wow, we're already in the latter half of April! Which means you have a limited time to check out the April Featured Author, Bonnie J. Doerr. Believe me, she'll hook you. :)

And thanks to all those who posted blurbs, or came to read them for the Mystery Blurb Fest. TBR had 35 visitors, so many were lurking. :)

Friday, January 13, 2012

TBR welcomes Arlene Webb

TBR: Welcome to TBR, Arlene Webb. Will you share a little bit about yourself?
Arlene: Sweet to spicy, I love writing stories with an edge or bite to them.

TBR: Tell us about Splintered Energy and where it's available. 
Arlene:
SE is the first in a series of four. Book 3, House of Seven, just released, but anyone who takes the plunge into this science fiction/ suspense/romance will appreciate the intense characterization if they start at the beginning.

Dawn breaks—literally. Energy sparks across the horizon, power grids go down, and the journey to understanding what, where, and why begins.
Energy splinters and a few hapless humans fall dead. A moment later, hearts regain their beat and the confused aliens witness their first sunrise through the eyes of the deceased. Sentient beings can't recall a past, other than a blissful haven. Nor do they have memories from the host whose body they unwittingly hijacked.

The above set up gave me the opportunity to explore 7 powerful aliens from dependent and naĂŻve, to pissed off and in love.

Available for $2.99 on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords. 

TBR: Please tantalize us with a story blurb or excerpt. 
Arlene: A short clip from chapter one:
Aaron kicked off his sandals, threw open the gate, and ran. Near the surf’s edge, David struggled to carry what looked like a woman with flowing green hair.
David halted, collapsing to his knees. A dark emerald dress clung to the motionless form. Shallow saltwater ebbed close to her bare, honest to God, green legs.
David gasped, “She’s breathing.”
“Good Lord, son, can’t you find pretty shells like normal people?” Aaron dropped to David’s side.
“She’s cold. She wasn’t completely in the water, but shouldn’t her skin be bluish? Why’s she green?”
“Maybe she’s an actress or something.”
Erotica no less, starring Aphrodite dipped in food coloring. The flush on Aaron’s face had to match his son’s. Her skin wasn’t Exorcist-vomit pea soup, nor gingerbread-trim lime, but a soft, immature apple—almost the same shade as the shirt David wore. Delicate emerald lashes curled against her cheekbones. Small breasts, flat stomach, and he could see the outline of her ribs through the silky dress.
Deserted beach, home less than a soccer field away, maybe he should carry her inside, and then make that phone call. Aaron scooped the delicate woman into his arms. She lifted like an intangible bundle and a tremulous sob escaped her lips. When her arm touched his sweatshirt, her moan grew louder, and her thin body arched away.
Aaron faced his son’s dumbfounded gaze. “Yep, she’s alive alright. Let’s get her inside.” He held her away from his chest and tried to touch her as little as possible as he ran. Her thin face wrenched in pain—not pain, but fear.
“Shh, I won’t hurt you.” His size, morning breath, what? Had she reacted like this when David carried her?

TBR: How do you develop your characters?
Arlene: Take psychological defects and expand the flaws into loveable but dangerous personalities.

TBR: Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to share?
Arlene: Hard to choose, but here’s one (snicker) off the top of my head: “It hurts, having your head cut off.” Settia, from Rebel.
Thousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’
Beni. Ashes
Thousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’
Beni. AshesThousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’
Beni. Ashes

TBR: Which of your characters would you most/least like to invite to dinner, and why?
Arlene: Five vibrant personalities in Splintered Energy and one’s committed to being a narcissistic sociopath, so I wouldn’t want to break bread with her. In fact, seeing as living light doesn’t consume food, I’d not like to have any of them. Food fight would be the least of my problems.

Beni. Ashes

TBR: While creating your books, what was one of the most surprising things you learned?
Arlene: My mind’s a sieve, always ready to tap into new ways to make a plot work. Googling is beyond cool. I check out Wikipedia a lot.

TBR: Tease us with one little thing about your fictional world that makes it different from others.
Arlene: I hope my stories are ones that stick with the reader. Writing from different point of views other than a vamp, were, human makes them stand out.

TBR: What's next for you?
Arlene: Finishing the final book. After 8-10 years, it’ll be wonderful to move on.

TBR: Any other published works?
Arlene: Novel and novellas with MuseitUp and Decadent Publishing. Book 2 and Book 3 of these series on Amazon, B&K, Smashwords. A novella called Rebel (poinsettia plant angling to take down the human race), as well.

TBR: What’s the most challenging aspect of writing? Most rewarding?
Arlene: Finding the time isn’t easy, and losing chunks of that time in other worlds is beyond cool.

TBR: What’s the most interesting comment you have received about your books?
Arlene: Original keeps coming up. Wonderfully weird is a comment a mentor and teacher once said. I do think the reader who skims, doesn’t follow the line to mean exactly what it says, can become confused.  The Color series is more like understanding a sitcom like Seinfeld or Lost, with interwoven plotlines, than a simplistic romance of boy meets girl.

TBR: Where can readers find you on the web?
Arlene:  http://www.arlenewebb.com/index.php
http://arlenewebb.blogspot.com/


TBR: Arlene will generously send commenters who include their email address an e-copy of Splintered Energy on Monday, Jan. 16th, so don't miss out! 
Thanks for visiting TBR, Arlene. All the best to you.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

This week on TBR

Thanks so much to Maria Zannini, Susan Gourley and Renee Field for helping me launch TBR last week! And special thanks to everyone who visited, followed, and helped spread the word. You guys rock. I'm looking forward to making this blog a go-to site for readers who love great books.

Another great lineup on TBR this week!

Monday: Jennie Marsland, who's also the TBR January Featured Author. Check it out here!

Wednesday: Julia Phillips Smith

Friday: Arlene Webb

All three are amazing authors. Bookmark TBR so you can keep up more easily, or better yet, subscribe to posts using the signup at right.