Category: eBooks

A Lila Review: Prophecy (The King and Alpha #1) by A.E. Via

Rating: 4.25 stars out of 5

 

An Enemies to Lovers
Shifter, Vampire True Mates story.

Justice Volkov is the youngest Alpha Zenith to ever lead the wolf shifters. Following in his father’s large paw prints was a responsibility he met head on. Now at age thirty-three, he is alpha of the alphas. As a direct descendant of the original Siberian pack, his wolf is bigger and stronger than Justice, himself is sometimes able to control.

His wolf howled long and hard but Justice kept it inside. It felt like a bass drum beating against his rib cage. The harsh breaths, angry snarls and the determined pacing inside him was overtaking him.

Justice takes his role of leadership and his legacy very seriously. He has little time for romance, not to mention a true mate. His packs are his priority. With a human government trying to regulate them, an uprising of rogue shifters, and a violent team of scientists trying to experiment on them, Justice has his hands way too full.

Chadwick ‘Wick’ Bentley is not enthusiastic when the captain of his escort tells him he has to leave his comfortable London home and go back to the States. As the Vampire King, he has no choice but to get his species back in line before they cause anymore chaos. At over one-hundred years old, Wick is no one to trifle with, but his smooth, charismatic manner makes him quite unique, despite the negative reputation vampires have. Wick has had nothing but time up to this point. He doesn’t feel the need to make issues pressing. Nothing is urgent in his life. Until he meets Justice. His beloved.

“Natural enemies can’t be mates.” Or so Justice thought. He knows his skepticism and rejection is hurting his mate, so while he fights their connection, Wick gets help from a source very close to Justice to help him win his beloved’s heart. Wick is a force all on his own, but when he’s blessed with a special gift from the Mother herself, not even Justice’s powerful wolf can prevent the prophesy from being fulfilled.

 

Prophesy is a different type of fated mates and paranormal tropes. The relationship between vampires and werewolves is also different. As well, as how human perceive them. Some traditional elements like vampires staying away from the sun, and werewolves sense of smell are present, but the author did a good job mixing them with her own point of view.

 

I like the way Justice and Wick met for the first time. I wish their trepidation had been a little longer, but it worked. Their relationship is a very slow burn, but the enemies-to-lovers part moves pretty fast. They do take the time to know each other, and in the end, it helps them to bring their worlds together.

 

This book is character driven. The plot line is minimal, mostly, an introduction to all the characters and fractions. It’s not as action pack and her previous books, but there’s enough to keep you reading. Some parts were a bit slow and the world-built took a big part of the story. I enjoyed the details, but I wanted a bit more of a plot.

 

There’s still a lot more to come in this series. I’m hoping to learn more about this world and the new couples. The potential is there and the story is interesting enough to let the reader wanting more.

 

The author’s writing style still evident on the take-action alpha male characters. Overall, it’s a nice start to a series.

 

The cover by Jay Aheer have Justice and Wick. It also gives the reader a small window into their origins.

 

Sale Links: Amazon | Smashwords | Nook

 

Book Details:

 

ebook, 294 pages
Published: September 23, 2017, by Via Star Wings Books
ISBN: 9781370354856
Edition Language: English

 

Series: The King & Alpha
Book #1: Prophesy

Review Tour and Giveaway for Prophecy (The King and Alpha #1) by A.E. Via

PROPHESY

by A.E. Via
The King & Alpha, #1
Publication Date: September 23, 2017
Genres: Adult, M/M, Romance, Paranormal

BUY NOW

Amazon:  http://amzn.to/2xzAoCB
B&N: http://bit.ly/2yiklWZ
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2xlapiB
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Smashwords: http://bit.ly/2wGTwzd

SYNOPSIS:

An Enemies to Lovers
Shifter, Vampire True Mates story.

Justice Volkov is the youngest Alpha Zenith to ever lead the wolf shifters. Following in his father’s large paw prints was a responsibility he met head on. Now at age thirty-three, he is alpha of the alphas. As a direct descendant of the original Siberian pack, his wolf is bigger and stronger than Justice, himself is sometimes able to control. 

“His wolf howled long and hard but Justice kept it inside. It felt like a bass drum beating against his rib cage. The harsh breaths, angry snarls and the determined pacing inside him was overtaking him. All the while… his mate kept calling.”

Justice takes his role of leadership and his legacy very seriously. He has little time for romance, not to mention a true mate. His packs are his priority. With a human government trying to regulate them, an uprising of rogue shifters, and a violent team of scientists trying to experiment on them, Justice has his hands way too full. 

Chadwick ‘Wick’ Bentley is not enthusiastic when the captain of his escort tells him he has to leave his comfortable London home and go back to the States. As the Vampire King, he has no choice but to get his species back in line before they cause anymore chaos. At over two-hundred years old, Wick is no one to trifle with, but his smooth, charismatic manner makes him quite unique, despite the negative reputation vampires have. Wick has had nothing but time up to this point. He doesn’t feel the need to make issues pressing. Nothing is urgent in his life. Until he meets Justice. His beloved.

“Natural enemies can’t be mates.” Or so Justice thought. He knows his skepticism and rejection is hurting his mate, so while he fights their connection, Wick gets help from a source very close to Justice to help him win his beloved’s heart. Wick is a force all on his own, but when he’s blessed with a special gift from the Mother herself, not even Justice’s powerful wolf can prevent the prophesy from being fulfilled. 

This story DOES NOT contain/mention MPREG. 
No multiple pairings. It does not end on a cliffhanger and has an HEA. 

Warning: This book is MM paranormal: If you DO NOT like hot, alpha men shifting into large wolves, or vampires feeding from their mates, this may not be your read.

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ABOUT A.E. VIA

A.E. Via has been a best-selling author in the beautiful gay romance genre for four years now, but she’s no stranger to MM. She’s been an avid reader of LGBTQ Romance for over fifteen years before she picked up her laptop to place her own kiss on this genre. She’s also the founder and owner of Via Star Wings Books, having published a couple great new up and coming MM authors.

A.E. has a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice from Virginia Wesleyan College that she used to start her own paralegal firm after she graduated in 2008. She spent five years preparing and filing bankruptcy petitions for struggling blue collar workers who couldn’t afford to file with a lawyer. It was a rewarding and satisfying career… but another path called to her. Writing.

A.E.’s writing embodies everything from hopelessly romantic to adventure, to scandalous. Stories that often include intriguing edges and twists that take readers to new, thought-provoking depths.

Now that she’s gotten over her 10 books published hump, she’s kind of known now for her hardcore, play rough and love hard, bad boy, alphas. However, she does like to push herself to step out of her comfort zone, exploring with different tropes, but she won’t push herself into a whole other genre. She’s head over heels for MM romance and has tons of more hot stories to tell.

Be sure to visit Adrienne on her social media pages and subscribe to her newsletter to never miss another release date! Go to A.E. Via’s official website http://authoraevia.com  for more detailed information on how to contact her, follow her, or a sneak peak on upcoming work, free reads, VSWB submissions, and where she’ll appear next.

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BOOK BLAST for Sweet Thing by Isobel Starling (NSFW Excerpt)

BOOK BLAST: OCTOBER 2 – 4

Book Title:  Sweet Thing

Author: Isobel Starling

Publisher:  Self Published

Book Release Date: September 8

Cover Artist: Isobel Starling

Length: Words: 83k words/No. of Pages: 237 pages

Genre:  Contemporary M/M Romance

Blurb

French male model Simeon Duchamp has a lot of explaining to do.
Two years after a breakdown Simeon is off drugs and booze and wants to stay that way.
On his road to reclaiming his life and modeling career, Sim first needs to apologize to the man he hurt the most -his ex-best friend and object of his unrequited affection Pieter Bayer. Pieter now has a long-term partner, artist Emily Raven, with whom he shares a baby son. Sim is amazed when Pieter accepts his apology, and invites him into his family.

Closeness to Pieter sees Simeon’s longing for his friend is rekindled. But then, when Simeon meets an attractive older man, Bastian Roth at an Art Exhibition, he realizes that there is a soul more broken than his, and Simeon feels compelled to help. Simeon’s connection with the troubled Bastian Roth turns his world upside down. He has to decide whether to allow himself to fall for the man who wants him or pine for the man he can never have.

***THIS BOOK CAN BE READ AS A STANDALONE***

Please note: This story contains graphic descriptions of gay sex.

Buy Links 

Available on KU

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Goodreads Link

 Excerpt (NSFW)

After three months as a patient at the Phoenix Clinic, the mask Simeon had worn of hedonistic, outrageous model dissolved with the drugs and alcohol that were purged from his system.  His camp, party boy façade hid a quieter, more introspective, sensitive young man—a man who felt everything too keenly, loved too deeply and could not cope with the pain of loss and rejection.

Sober for the first time since his late teens, Simeon was as fragile as a fledgling, bewildered by the colors, scents, and sounds of the big wide world.  He was unsure who the man that returned his stare in the bathroom mirror was.  Who was Simeon Duchamp without his mask, without the crutches of alcohol and drugs to give him the confidence to get through each day?

A gentle knock on the bedroom door startled Simeon from his introspection.  He looked away from the window toward the door to see his favorite young male nurse, Karl poke his head in.

“Your last session with Dr. Schroeder is in twenty minutes”, he informed. “One for the road?”  Karl’s brows waggled provocatively.  Simeon’s lips slid to a salacious smile.

“Lock the door.” he directed, swiftly moving to the bed.  Karl stepped into the room and as instructed he locked the door.  Simeon began by removing his t-shirt and then unbuttoning and sliding out of his jeans.  Karl kicked his soft soled white Croc clogs off, and the thin nurse’s uniform of white trousers and tunic shirt were discarded in seconds.  Simeon stood, his eyes appraising the slender, boyish form of the twenty-eight-year-old nurse.  Karl had offered a pleasing aside from the trauma of therapy.  He was Simeon’s type—blonde, blue-eyed, eager to please, and deliciously well-hung.  Karl approached and pulled Simeon into a deep, messy kiss.

At six foot, Simeon was taller than Karl’s five-foot-six, but what Karl lacked in height, he certainly made up for with his cock.  Simeon longed to devour all ten inches one last time before he left the clinic.  He ran his fingers through short-cropped blonde hair, his hard-on brushing urgently against Karl’s.  He then dragged the naked nurse to lie prone on the hospital bed.  Karl chuckled throatily.  Simeon clambered onto the bed, and long, willowy legs straddled his conquest so they were in the sixty-nine position, the head of his own erection directed at Karl’s willing mouth.

Sim took the man’s thickened, stout, uncut cock in hand and stroked, retracting the sheath of gossamer foreskin over the engorged head, and marveling at why Mother Nature had seen fit to bestow such a monster cock on such a slight man.  He smiled to himself and then directed the plump glans between his parted wet lips.  As much as Simeon would have loved to make a meal out of it, there was no time to play.  Simeon hummed with satisfaction, taking Karl down into his throat, the cock filling him to near gagging point.  Sim drew off, relaxed his muscles, and went back for more, working the cock between his lips like a porn star.  His self-esteem may have hit rock bottom, but with a dick in his mouth, there was at least one thing Simeon was sure he was still good at!

Karl offered preparatory licks and kisses to Simeon’s shaft before opening his warm, pliant mouth and swallowing him down.  The two young men writhed and rocked on the hospital bed, hands caressing desperately.

Simeon was enjoying the suction Karl’s mouth offered; his eyes rolled back in his head with the pleasure of being sucked and sucking in syncopation.  Simeon paused and used some of the saliva dribbling from his mouth to moisten his fingers.  Slowly, Sim eased a wet finger into Karl’s asshole and hooked up seeking his prostate.  The young man beneath him bucked and moaned, thrusting up into Simeon’s mouth, while nearly gagging on Sim’s cock.

When he had regained his faculties, Karl mirrored Sim’s action, giving Simeon the same intimate attention with his probing fingers.

They both pressed into each other’s holes, and their hips matched an undulating rhythm.  Fingers massaged deep inside, drawing mutual fevered moans of pleasure.  Simeon almost forgot he was still officially a patient in a Rehab Clinic until minutes later, when he and Karl spilled in warm bitter pulses down each other’s throats.

After a moment to catch their breaths, and final sensual kisses of thanks, both men dressed hurriedly.

“I cannot not be absent for too long.  I told the head nurse I was going for a bathroom break.” Karl admitted.  He made to leave the room, pausing only to blow a kiss to the effette young man with long dark hair sitting on the disheveled bed, licking the last of Karl’s spill from his lips.

Ten minutes later Karl returned.  “Dr. Schroeder is ready for you now Mr. Duchamp, and your car has arrived.”  He announced formally.

“Thank you, Karl; I’ll be out in a minute,” Simeon replied his soft camp French timbre sounding a little breathless as he rushed around packing the last of his belongings.  Karl nodded.

“And thank you for all of your… assistance during my stay Karl”, Sim added with a mischievous flash of his eyes and a grin.

“I wish you all the best with your continued recovery, Mr. Duchamp.”  Karl quirked a knowing smile and blew a kiss before closing the door.

©Isobel Starling 2017

 

About the Author

Born in Germany, Isobel Starling spent most of her twenty-year professional career making art in Ireland.  She relocated to the UK and, faced with the dreaded artist’s creative block, Isobel started to write and found she loved writing more than making art.

Isobel is currently working on her fifteenth book.  The Shatterproof Bond series is an Amazon Gay Romance bestseller and is being translated into French with Juno Publications, German with Deadsoft Verlag, and Italian with Quixote Edizioni.  The series is also available as audiobooks, narrated by Gary Furlong.

“Sweet Thing” will be translated into French by Rienes-Beaux Publishing, and Italian by Quixote Edizioni.

 

 

Social Media Links

Blog/Website 

Facebook

Twitter  

Goodreads  

Amazon Author Page

 

BOOK BLAST SCHEDULE

October 2

The Way She Reads, Tangents and Tissues, 

Millsy Loves Books, The Blogger Girls, 

MJ’s Book Blog and Reviews, We Three Queens,  Lily G Blunt

October 3

Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents,  

MM Book Escape, 

Love Unchained Book Reviews, 

Valerie Ullmer | Romance Author,  

Beautiful Book Corner, 

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words  

October 4

Zipper Rippers, A Book Lover’s Dream Book Blog, 

Megan’s Media Melange, 

Dirty Books Obsession,  Books Laid Bare Boys

October 23

Drops of Ink  

 

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An Alisa Review: Soul Bonds (Common Powers 1) by Lynn Lorenz

Rating:  4 stars out of 5

 

It’s not how big the power, it’s how you use it.

 

Mitchell’s tired of one night stands and casual encounters.

 

Sammi is a runaway sex slave who’ll do anything to stay free.

 

When they meet in a bar, Mitchell can’t believe his luck. Sammi is sex on two legs and seems to know just what Mitchell wants from a lover. But Sammi’s owner Donovan isn’t going to let him go so easily. He’s prepared to destroy anyone who stands in his way to get back his prized slave.

 

Is the bond between Mitchell and Sammi strong enough to stand up against the damage Donovan inflicts on their lives, or will it shatter?

 

This was such a sweet story.  Sammi and Mitchell’s connection is instant and it kind of scares Mitchell a bit but even with that he refuses to think of not having Sammi in his life.  Sammi has been abused and used his whole life and can’t wait to live his life for himself but he has to face his past first.

 

I loved Mitchell’s determination to keep Sammi even when Donovan does his best to ruin his life.  I loved the relationship he has with his best friend Brian and how he is fully supportive and willing to help both of them.

 

Even with the support of Brian and Mitchell it’s heartbreaking to see Sammi determine that he just needs to leave in order to keep Mitchell safe.  I loved Sammi’s openness and how willing he is to put others first and help someone.  I am looking forward to seeing Brian’s story in the next book.

 

The cover art by Posh Gosh is nice and give good visuals of the characters.

 

Sales Links: Pride Publishing | Amazon | B&N

 

Book Details:

ebook, 176 pages

Publication: 2nd edition, December 20, 2016 by Pride Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-78651-512-4

Edition Language: English

Series: Common Powers #1

A MelanieM Review: Earthly Concerns by Xavier Axelson

Rating: 4.25 stars out of 5

It was a peaceful night when Barrett and his daughter were driving home … then something happened. Something sinister.

Something took Barrett’s daughter from him.

Now the only person Barrett can turn to for help is Anson, a man gifted with psychic abilities beyond reason. But Anson is also his ex-boyfriend, a man whose heart he’d already broken.

As Anson delves deeper into the circumstances surrounding Barrett’s accident, he begins to realize he’s in a race against time. Whatever has taken Barrett’s daughter is a force of evil beyond anything either man has ever encountered.

Can both men put aside their heartaches and past to save Barrett’s daughter from an entity that has the power to destroy them all?

It was supposed to be a simple drive home for Barrett and his young daughter, Hilary.  But she was restless.  Kept saying there was something, a large black bird, on the roof of the car.  Then they crashed and when he came to his daughter was missing.  Not dead, not run away, gone.  In desperation and half out of his mind, Barrett turns to the man he rejected, whose heart he had broken because he could not accept his own sexuality, Anson.

Anson hears and sees things not of this earth.  Like his Aunt Cyn, those that dwell in the in between or beyond are visible, are tangible, and oh so very real.  When he answers Barrett’s call for help, he is plunged into emotional turmoil.  Anson is still reeling from Barrett’s rejection.  A Barrett that scoffed when Anson told him of his special abilities. Now Barrett wants him to use that very same gift to help him find his daughter and bring her back.  Anson wants to hang up on Barrett.  But the heart wants what the heart wants and he wants Barrett.  Beyond all logic, beyond all reason and in face of known heartache and despair, he still wants and desires him.  So Anson agrees because as his Aunt Cyn says “If you can see, then you must help…”   Even if the cost is beyond all earthly concerns.

Earthly Concerns has so many levels at which to appreciate it.  I love how Xavier Axelson builds our knowledge of Anson without resorting to physical descriptions of his person.    Anson uses ice trays and sleeps with his windows open, letting the night air and sounds reach him.  Bookshelves sit next to his bed along with crystal from his Aunt Cyn.  With each descriptive paintstroke, slowly a picture of Anson appears, that of a man living simply and in tune with his surroundings with all their layers.  For Anson, those layers go beyond our realities and into the darkness beyond.

Insects play a major role here, from the mundane to harbingers of the supernatural.  It is to the sound of a beetle banging against the screen that first awakens Anson, and then the featherly brushing of antennae, real or imagined, against his shin.  You know the feeling.  We have all had them.  We feel the hair on our skin move ever so slightly.  And we react violently running our hands over the offending section of skin, to no avail, not sure if anything was there to begin with.  The pages are full of such imagery.  Broken carapaces and the fluttering of moths wings, all portend the darkness that is coming.

And come it does, riding on vague shadows, crawling under the loose skin of wallpaper, flying on the wings of black crows, crawling from the broken cavity of a tree.  Xavier leaves you to fill in the dark spaces with your own imagination as Anson and Barrett seek to uncover the truth behind the accident and Hilary’s fate.

I love the way Xavier plays with words as he builds his story.  With lyrical sentences and imagery both beautiful and foreboding, we are alternately filled with anticipation and dread as the end draws near.  I find the sexual interludes, past and present, less successful as they break up the mood he has so carefully built.  They seem jarring, and out of character but perhaps that is his point.  I also found Barrett something of an enigma.  I could not get a handle on him, other than as a bereft father and emotionally unavailable man.  That inability made it hard for me to care what happens to him even as his daughter, Hilary, commands our empathy.  By the end of the story, that impression had not changed for me. He still came across as more of a user, someone less than trustworthy.

I think it is the ending that most readers will have issues with, especially given what I said above.  Xavier Axelson leaves us with a glimpse into second chances without telling us exactly how all the characters arrived at that path and what their final destination is. I find that it is in keeping with the story.  Fulfilling or terribly frustrating?  That will depend upon the reader.  If you must actually see a bird to know it there, then you will go away dissatisfied.  But if you can accept the existence of a bird by seeing a shadow or hearing its wings beat against the air, then you will love this. I think I hear the cawing of a crow and the skittering of a beetle nearby.  A perfect story for a October night.

Cover art is a nice update.  Dark, haunting and I liked the model chosen for Anson.

Sales Links:  JMS Books LLC | Amazon

Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 81 pages
Published September 2nd 2017 by JMS Books LLC (first published January 1st 2012)
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Julie Aitcheson on historical romance, young adult literature and her release Being Roy (guest blog)

Being Roy by Julie Aitcheson
Harmony Ink Press
Expected publication: October 3rd 2017

Cover Artist: Alexandria Corza

Available for Sales

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books-A-Million | Harmony Ink Press |

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Julie Aitcheson on her Being Roy tour. Welcome, Julie.

✒︎

~ Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words Interview with  Julie Aitcheson, author of Being Roy ~

What did you read as a young adult?

Honestly, I don’t remember “young adult literature” from my time spent inhabiting that demographic. It was the early nineties, before the genre was even properly defined. I was too busy reading The Great Gatsby to death in English class and writing papers about the significance of the green light at the end of the dock.  Then there was the copious required summer reading, which included Death Be Not Proud— the devastating memoir of a dad losing his beloved son to cancer. That book was beautiful. I can see that now, from the remove of many years and personal losses later. But at the time, it shattered me. It ruined every single day that it took me to read it, the pall of death dimming the summer sun. Every page was a heartbreak, and by the end I was seething with rage that I was forced to witness such horrendous pain as a tender, self-absorbed fifteen year-old.

This is not to say that I wasn’t reading beyond my academic requirements, but only that when moments of literary leisure presented themselves (usually around eleven p.m., after I was finished with homework, but before I’d found a way to manage my insomnia), I reached for something very different. You see, I come by my bookworm genes honestly. My mother was an English major in college, then an editor, and remains one of the most voracious readers I have ever known. She endured many more years of enforced reading lists than I, analyzing her way through most of the classics. She has had hundreds of Gatsbys and green lights in her past, and this is her justification for the contents of her personal library.  These days, it consists almost entirely of true crime novels and murder mysteries, but when I was in high school, her book stash was one hundred percent bodice-rippers.

Mom kept her historical romances stacked at her chairside, bedside, in the cabinets in the study, and in boxes down in the basement. I was given unfettered access, and the supply was endless. Authors like Johanna Lindsay and Catherine Coulter were my favorites. Their heroines were smart, feisty, and adventurous, and always in possession of some notable skill, like healing people with herbs or spear-throwing (despite the uniformly enormous size of their breasts). The heroes would usually start out as icy aristocrats or swashbuckling pirates. Rogues all, until a good woman’s love made them as docile as newborn kittens. 

I would stay up until three a.m. to finish “just one more chapter”, willing to suffer the gritty eyes and foggy brain of a sleepless night to find out how each story would end. It didn’t matter that they all ended the same. I needed to be there. I blew through three or four of these novels a week– more during vacations. I would bring the well-thumbed volumes to school once I’d finished and pass them on to my friends, going from one book to the next like a hamster pushing a lever for pellets. The only cure for the despond that came with watching my beloved characters ride off into the sunset without me was another book. And then another and another.

As I write this, the sheer mass of historical romance that I consumed during high school strikes me anew. These were formative years. Years during which I was indoctrinated by books with covers featuring Fabio in various guises. Given that I attended an all-girls high school, there were certain assumptions about the nature of male-female relations that went unchecked for an astounding length of time. For example, it was a while before I realized that sex did not have to happen under the cover of night in the stable behind a grand English manor house or down in the cramped hold of a storm-tossed ship. Clothes could simply be removed and placed neatly to the side rather than torn off in the throes of passion. My mouth could be gently kissed rather than “ravaged hungrily”, and love could bloom without having been first threatened by international intrigue, feuding families, or a murderous marquis.

I have since learned to love the books that break my heart, like Death Be Not Proud, and others that win prizes for the beauty of their prose or the insight of their commentary. But historical romances still hold a special place in my heart. They kept me company on the island of my angsty teenhood, and prevented me from kissing too many frogs on my way to becoming a woman. (What adolescent boy could compare to Fabio dressed like an aristocrat disguising himself as a pirate?)  They taught me how to lose myself in a book until everything around me disappeared, and planted the seed of a thought that maybe someday writing could feel the same way.

Being Roy (Fall 2017)- blurb

The greatest trial Roy Watkins faces isn’t deciding whether she’s gay or straight, male or female, West Virginia country mouse or prep school artistic prodigy. It isn’t even leaving behind her childhood sweetheart Oscar to attend uppity Winchester Academy in the hunt country of Virginia, or acclimating to a circle of friends that now includes privileged Imogen, her sharp but self-conscious sidekick Bugsy, and the tortured Hadley. No, the hardest thing for Roy to face is the world’s expectations about who and what she should be. 

As Roy’s journey of self-discovery forces her to cross one hurdle after another, her identity closes in fast. Sooner than she could have ever predicted, she’ll have to decide what that means for her, the people she’s coming to care about, and the life that lies ahead.

About the Author

Julie Aitcheson began her pursuit of writing as a screenwriter, then realized that a little exposition never hurt anyone and switched to books. She has had articles published in Echo Quarterly, Communities Magazine (formerly Talking Leaves Magazine), Isabella, and All Things Girl.  Most recently, she received a full fellowship to the 2013 Stowe StoryLabs and won second place in the 2014 San Miguel Writers’ Conference nonfiction writing competition.

Julie lives wherever her bohemian heart takes her, and wherever she can hit the hiking trails when her muse decides to take a personal day. She has worked extensively with young adults as an experiential educator, both across the United States and in India. After spearheading an initiative to assist at-risk youth in becoming trained for green jobs, Julie threw herself into writing stories for young adults that do justice to their intelligence and complex emotional lives. Her childhood growing up in West Virginia, subsequent matriculation at an exclusive all-girls boarding school in Virginia, and former incarnation as a truck driver inspired her to write Being Roy. Her next YA novel, First Girl, is a dystopian piece due out from Harmony Ink in Spring 2018.

Julie continues to seek out unique life experiences to provide grist for the mill of her imagination, including her work as a medical actress at a simulation laboratory. There, she indulged her love of the dramatic arts and her passion for health education while amassing enough writing material to sink a barge.

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