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Showing posts with label Dragonfire Series. Show all posts

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Blog Tour: Deborah Cooke's Ember's Kiss

DRAGONFIRE Series

Kiss of Fire
(Dragonfire #1)

One kiss can change the course of destiny...

For millennia, the shape-shifting dragon warriors known as the Pyr have commanded the four elements and guarded the earth's treasures. But now the final reckoning between the Pyr, who count humans among the earth's treasures, and the Slayers, who would eradicate both humans and the Pyr who protect them, is about to begin...
When Sara Keegan decides to settle down and run her quirky aunt's New Age bookstore, she's not looking for adventure. She doesn't believe in fate or the magic of the tarot-but when she's saved from a vicious attack by a man who has the ability to turn into a fire-breathing dragon, she questions whether she's losing her mind-or about to lose her heart...

Quinn Tyrrell has long been distrustful of his fellow Pyr and a self-reliant loner. So when he feels the firestorm that signals his destined mate, he's determined to protect and possess Sara, regardless of the cost to himself. Then Sara's true destiny is revealed-and Quinn realizes he must risk everything- even Sara's love-to fulfill their entwined fates...

But it now:

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Books A Million / Chapters Indigo / IndieBound / Powells

Kiss of Fury

(Dragonfire #2)

One act of passion can save the world...

Scientist Alexandra Madison was on the verge of unveiling an invention that would change the world. Then her partner was murdered, their lab was burned, and their prototype was destroyed. While Alex is in the hospital recovering from burns suffered in the fire, recurring dragon-haunted nightmares threaten to land her in the psychiatric ward, but she knows she has to escape to her lab to rebuild the Green Machine.

Handsome, daring, and impulsive, Donovan Shea is more than willing to do his part in the Pyr/Slayer war. Assigned to protect Alex, Donovan is shocked when her presence ignites his firestorm. He has no desire for a destined mate, but Alex's intelligence and determination inspire him to join the fight to save her invention. With the Slayers closing in, Donovan knows he would surrender his life for Alex...and lose his heart to possess her.

Buy it now!

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Kiss of Fate

(Dragonfire #3)

One foretold love deserves a second chance...

Haunted by dreams of a lover who takes the form of a mythical dragon, Eileen Grosvenor searches for the truth. She never expects to find a real dragon shape shifter, let alone one who awakens her passion and ignites memories of her own forgotten past.

Erik Sorensson is focused on leading the Pyr to triumph over theSlayers, even if it costs him his life. When an ancient relic that can turn the tide of the battle reveals itself, Erik knows he has to retrieve it from Eileen's possession. But when he tries to do so, he's shocked by an incredible firestorm that compels him to confront the truth about Eileen's identity. Her presence reminds him of mistakes he's determined not to repeat, and Erik is forced to make a choice: duty or love.

Only by unlocking the secrets of the past can Erik and Eileen fulfill the final prophecy of the Pyr. Can they face their deepest fears and claim their destined love in time to defeat the Slayers?

Buy it now!

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Winter Kiss

(Dragonfire #4)

A kiss can melt the coldest heart...

The mysterious Dragon's Blood Elixir gives immortality to Magnus, the Pyr's greatest enemy, and his minions. The Pyr must destroy this source of power, and outcast Delaney vows to complete the quest himself. Delaney was exiled because of his dangerous impulses, and success in eliminating the Elixir will either redeem him or end his suffering.

But his plans don't take into account his sudden firestorm - or fiery Ginger Sinclair. The firestorm revitalizes Delaney, restoring him to his old self. And when Ginger learns about Delaney's mission, she realizes she cannot resist a strong man with a noble agenda.

Buy it now!

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Whisper Kiss

(Dragonfire #5)

One man's mission ignites one woman's fire...

Niall Talbot has volunteered to hunt down and destroy all the remaining shadow dragons - who were weakened by the destruction of the Dragon's Blood Elixir - before they can wreak more havoc. Among them is his dead twin brother, making Niall's mission not only dangerous but personal.

Tattoo artist Rox believes the world is a canvas to be made more beautiful. An unconventional spirit who isn't afraid of anything, she doesn't even flinch when a shape-shifting dragon warrior suddenly appears on her doorstep. And as a woman who follows her heart in matters of passion, she makes the perfect mate for a firestorm with Niall...

Buy it now!

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Darkfire Kiss

(Dragonfire #6)

For one woman, he will risk more than his life...

Rafferty Powell has exchanged challenge coins with his arch-nemesis Magnus Montmorency, and their next battle will be their last. But Rafferty never expected to meet a woman whose desire for Magnus’ downfall matches his own—and whose presence sparks Rafferty’s long-awaited firestorm.

Since facing her own mortality, investigative reporter Melissa Smith has resolved to live without fear. She’s determined to make the seemingly untouchable Magnus pay for his role in ending her friend’s life – no matter the price to herself.

When her quest entwines with Rafferty’s, Melissa finds herself risking more than she ever thought possible. Because the heat between them unleashes the darkfire—an awesome force of Pyrlegend, one that won’t be sated until everything they know has been tested and remade.

Buy it now!

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Flashfire

(Dragonfire #7)

He's lost all hope...until she changes everything.

Master illusionist Lorenzo wants nothing to do with the Pyr. His dragon nature is just another secret to hide and another detail to juggle, like ensuring that each of his Las Vegas magic shows is a true spectacle. Until he feels the burn of his firestorm and his whole world shifts....

Cassie Redmond is tired of photographing celebrities. She wants to pursue her dream of serious photography—despite the lucrative offer for a shot of a dragon shifter. Las Vegas is the last place she wants to be, but Lorenzo arouses more than her curiosity when he shifts shape as the finale of his show. Instead of forcing him to reveal his secrets, Cassie gets swept away by this illusionist’s masterful touch.

Lorenzo wants to satisfy the firestorm and put it behind him. But Cassie is hard to forget—and he can’t ignore the danger whenSlayers target the mate Lorenzo didn’t believe he wanted...

Buy it now!

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Ember's Kiss

(Dragonfire #8)

Release Date: October 2, 2012

Only one woman can persuade him to embrace his powers.

Brandon Merrick is determined to banish his shifter nature forever. The charismatic tattooed surfer is on the cusp of the ultimate challenge - to prove himself on the whitecaps of Hawaii and secure his future as a pro surfer. But his dragon isn't prepared to be tamed so easily...

One look at marine biologist Liz Barrett ignites the spark of the firestorm: Liz is his destined mate and his chance for happiness. While Brandon sees their first night together as just the beginning, his dragon seizes the upper hand. Awakening in the company of a raging dragon challenges Liz's ability to believe her own eyes. Can Brandon accept his inner beast in time to make it work with Liz?

Neither one realizes that Brandon is caught in an ancient Slayer's scheme to enslave him. When the deadly plot ignites, the very island will be at risk...and Brandon and his mate could be the ultimate sacrifice.

Buy it now!

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Hi Deborah! Welcome to Book Lovin' Mamas! We are so excited to be a part of this blog tour!

Thanks for inviting me. It’s great to be in the company of fellow booklovers. :-)

1. Tell us 5 things about yourself that readers may not be able find out about you on the web.

Haha! I suspect that anything you can’t find on the web at this point is something I don’t want to share! Let’s go with five things that usually surprise people:

• I write romance under three names - as Claire Delacroix, Claire Cross and Deborah Cooke. (There’s another author named Claire Cross who writes history books. That’s not me.)

• My first love is medieval history and folklore, thus I wrote medieval romances first. (http://www.delacroix.net)

• I’m finishing a Claire Delacroix medieval romance series right now that I had to abandon in 2005, which is enormous fun. THE RENEGADE’S HEART is the first book in The True Love Brides series, which carries on from The Jewels of Kinfairlie series, and is available now. It’s my first new medieval since 2005. (And I love Murdoch.) More about that book right here: http://www.delacroix.net/trhX.html

• I fall in love with each and every one of my heroes, one after the other after the other. It’s completely predictable. Tupperman is in the midst of kicking Murdoch out of my heart, and I see Drake in the shadows, getting ready to take Tupperman’s place.

• I knit a lot but also have published some free knitting patterns. You can find them on Ravelry, right here:

http://www.ravelry.com/designers/deborah-cooke

2. What does a typical writing day look for you?

I prefer to write in the mornings, so an ideal writing day would begin with ducking my email and diving right into the story-in-progress. After lunch, I check in online, then usually do research, editing or take care of some promotion that needs doing. In the evenings, I tend to do research, unless I’m running behind. I tend to work most days and I try to write every day, because that keeps the story vivid in my mind.

3. Can you please tell the readers a little bit about this new release, Ember's Kiss?

EMBER’S KISS is the 8th Dragonfire novel - that’s my series of paranormal romances that feature dragon shape shifter heroes called the Pyr. Although there’s a story arc over the entire series (it takes place during the good dragon shifters, the Pyr, final fight against the bad dragon shifters, the Slayers) each book focuses on one dragon shifter hero. Although my dragon guys live a long time, they’re not immortal, and each has one chance in his life to conceive a son. When he meets the human woman who can bear his son, the dragon shifter (and the “mate”) experience a firestorm - sparks literally fly between the pair of them. I love that the dragon shifter has to romance and seduce the woman in question, while explaining to her what’s happening and defending her from bad dragon shifters. (The heroines in this series are practical and intelligent women who aren’t so hot to have a dragon baby, thanks very much.) The heat of the firestorm doesn’t just attract other dragon shifters but it continues to increase until it’s satisfied - and that son is conceived.

After a number of books in a series, though, the author needs to mix it up a bit. This year, the Dragonfire novels starred heroes who weren’t so interested in being dragon shifters. They were outsiders to the core group of Pyr. In January, FLASHFIRE featured Lorenzo, my bad boy Pyr who knew a lot about being a dragon shifter but wanted nothing to do with it. He actually had a plan to get rid of the dragon side of his nature - fortunately, for all of us, he had his firestorm and Cassie was the woman to change his mind. EMBER’S KISS stars Brandon, an aspiring surfer on the cusp of going pro and a dragon shifter who is estranged from his dad. Brandon doesn’t want anything in common with his dad, since he blames the older Pyr for his parents’ divorce and for his own dragon powers (the trait is passed from father to son). He has ignored his dragon powers all of his life. Brandon knows very little about being Pyr, which is just the way he wants it to be - until he is targeted by the evil Slayer Chen and has his firestorm, too. He has no knowledge of how to fight fire with fire, so to speak, but happily for Brandon, his mate Liz has some paranormal powers of her own. She’s the first of my Dragonfire heroines to be anything but a normal human woman, so I had a lot of fun introducing this element.

It gives me lots of ideas for future books, too.

4. What inspired you to write this series?

I wanted to write a paranormal romance series, but not one featuring vampires. They don’t really interest me that much and there are an awful lot of them out there. I love dragons, though, and I love the idea of shapeshifters. The idea of a hot guy who could also be a fire-breathing dragon really worked for me and still does. I like also that there is so much mythology and lore about dragons, which gives me a lot of story elements to explore.

5. If you could be any one of your characters (from the Dragonfire series) who would you want to be and why?

I’d like to be Eileen. We both knit, we both like witchy little black boots, but she’s the mother of the new Wyvern and the mate of Eric, leader of the Pyr. I think that would be a little bit of okay. ;-) I wouldn’t mind having heer acres of curly reddish gold hair either.

6. Do you ever base your characters on people you know in real life?

No. But I do think that the characters I create become more realistic because of my observations of people. I’m always asking myself questions like “what kind of person would immediately go after the Slayer, even knowing she could be fried alive? Well, she’d have to be impulsive; she’d be confident in her own powers; etc....and what other kinds of things would that kind of person do?” I think that writers who are observant of people can flesh out their fictional characters to make them more realistic as a result of those observations, without actually basing them on real individuals.

7. Who was the easiest character(s) to write and why?

Generally, I find heroes easier to write than heroines. That’s true in any subgenre of romance I write. I’m not sure why, but there you go. Maybe I just like to think about them more!

8. Can you give us a little peek at how you do your research for a new series?

Well, I’m right in the middle of writing a new novella so my process on it might be a good example. This novella is linked to my Prometheus Project, a trilogy of paranormal romances I wrote as Claire Delacroix. (http://www.delacroix.net/angels.html) The series features fallen angel heroes in a dystopian future - they volunteer to shed their wings in an attempt to save us from ourselves. The current books are FALLEN, GUARDIAN and REBEL, but there is one secondary character, Tupperman, who never had his HEA. He’s also a fallen angel but a bit solitary. I didn’t know his story until this year and am working on it now.

So, my research plan began by re-reading the trilogy and flagging all references to Tupperman in those books. Then I reviewed my notes about fallen angels and angelology, and my notes about this gritty future world. The series concludes with a major change for that world so I spent a few days speculating on other changes that might have occurred - these were the more unexpected ones. Every change for the better tends to make things a little worse for somebody, and I ended up with some rebels. They’re in the story now, making trouble, and I’m still not quite sure what to do with them. They’ll either have a bigger role or a smaller one by the time I’m done. In figuring that out, I ended up doing a lot of reading about the wall coming down between East and West Germany and the union of those two countries as one.

By this time, I had written several scenes of the actual novella and had a good sense of Tupperman’s voice and his mood, a glimpse of his conflict. I never write a synopsis until I have a couple of scenes down, because my characters tend to take my ideas in different directions. At that point, I wrote an outline for the novella, then critically reviewed it. It was set in New Gotham again, which was repetitive. To shake things up, I changed the setting of the main action to New Mexico, and needed to do a bunch of new research about that region. I also realized that my notion of the heroine did not work, so I needed a different heroine. (The women are always trouble, you see?) I had an idea and some superficial research revealed that I was on the right track. (no spoilers on that from me.) As a result, I did a lot more research for the heroine’s nature and occupation, working out her character and conflict. Ooo, I like her! And that exercise gave me the prologue and the meet, plus put the two of them on the path of the story. Once that happens, I write like mad, but still have to research bits and ends as I go.

I am a bit of a Luddite, so I do my first quick checks online, but then always delve into physical books for deeper research. The inhouse library gets a little more extensive with every book I write! When I’m writing, my office is a disaster. I have books stacked on my desk, on the floor and under the desk, some of them propped open. I have a map spread across the floor and an Excel spreadsheet of the timeline of the world in question including how the events of the story fit into it. I have a list of characters in a file for reference and in this case, the series guide I wrote for the Prometheus Project at hand. And, in the middle, is my computer and cup of tea, while I write away. This is the good stuff. I’m happy to shut the door and live in this universe for hours on end.

9. When you are not writing, what are your hobbies and interests?

I love to knit and I knit a lot. Knitting is relaxing and it results in something lovely at least some of the time. More importantly, I find that the rhythmic motion seems to encourage ideas to pop into my head. I solve lots of plot problems while I’m knitting.

10. Do you have anything specific you want to say to your readers?

Thank you for reading my books! There’s a post queued up on my blog for November 1 about the future of Dragonfire, so be sure to stop in to find out what’s coming in 2013.

http://www.delacroix.net/wordpress/?p=4306

Fun quick questions:

11. Coffee or Hot Tea

Hot tea, please.

12. Beach or Mountains

Mountains. I love rocks.

13. Sunrise or Sunset

Sunsets, because they’re more colourful.

14. Summer or Winter

Winter for me.

15. Country Music or Rock N' Roll

Rock and Roll, played very loud while I’m writing.

Thank you so much for giving us a little inside look! We hope you will come back in the future! :)

Thanks for inviting me!

Deborah Cooke has always been fascinated with dragons, although she has never understood why they have to be the bad guys. She has an honours degree in history, with a focus on medieval studies. She is an avid reader of medieval vernacular literature, fairy tales and fantasy novels, and has written over forty romance novels and novellas. She has also been published under the names Claire Cross andClaire Delacroix.

Deborah makes her home in Canada with her husband. When she isn't writing, she can be found knitting, sewing or hunting for vintage patterns.

Connect with Deborah:

Deborah's Blog / Deborah's Listserve / Deborah's Facebook Page / Deborah's Amazon Page

Deborah's Smashwords Page / Claire Delacroix website

EMBER'S KISS Blog Tour Giveaway

Deborah will be giving away a paperback of EMBER'S KISS for each blog stop - They will be coming straight from the publisher so it's

US and Canada winners only.

GRAND PRIZE:

There is a Grand Prize drawing of an autographed set of the DRAGONFIRE series, (that's all 8 Dragonfire novels) over on Deborah's blog. To enter, click the link below:

http://www.delacroix.net/wordpress/?p=4483

Deborah Cooke's Blog Tour for Ember's Kiss

Tour runs from September 24 - October 10

9/24 - RCJReZine Blog - http://rcjrezineblog.blogspot.com/

9/25 - Vampires, Werewolves & Fairies Oh My - http://vampireswerewolvesfairiesohmy.blogspot.com/

9/26 - Books-n-Kisses - http://www.books-n-kisses.com/

The Reading Café - - http://thereadingcafe.com/

9/27 - All The Fun Starts After Dark - http://allthefunstartsafterdark.blogspot.com/

9/28 - Riverina Romantics - http://riverinaromantics.blogspot.com/

9/29 - Reading Between The Wines - http://readingbetweenthewinesbookclub.blogspot.com/

9/30 - Book Lovin' Mamas - http://booklovinmamas.blogspot.com//

10/1 - My Keeper Shelf - http://mykeepershelf.blogspot.com/