Author Spotlight: Uprising, The Rose Warriors by Craig Kimber

Available from Amazon, Leap of Faith Publishing

Blurb:

In a small village over the mountains surrounding Kyoto, the villagers prepare for an annual tradition. All seems to go well until the village is stormed and all the inhabitants are taken prisoner, except one. Simple village girl, Osei, finds herself alone in the misty mountains on her way to the city. A run in with a near death experience brings her to Kilik, an extremely powerful samurai who vows to keep her safe. Their ventures pull them both into a war beyond imagination, and Osei finds herself gradually transforming into something that she grew up to fear...a samurai.

Excerpt:

“This is not going to end well,” Kota whispered to me. He placed his hand by his side and clutched onto the handle of something. “When I say so, I want you to run for the mountains. I will follow later when the situation has been handled.”

          

“You test my patience, Zhuge,” the samurai barked, drawing his sword and pointing it at Zhuge’s throat. “When I count to five, my men will burn this village to ashes.”

         

“You don’t frighten me, Oyodo,” Grand Master Zhuge hissed. “You are a coward hiding behind his pawns.”

          

“So you wish to bring destruction to your home...fine...” the man sighed. “One...two...”

          

“Run now, Osei!” Kota commanded, advancing toward the man, drawing a small blade.

          

“Three...four...!” the man continued. Just before he reached the final number, Kota hurled the knife towards him, impaling his shoulder. The silence was no more as the crowd began to panic and the ninjas began to advance toward Kota. Several villagers grabbed what weapons they could to defend him, but they were no match for the agile ninjas.

About Craig Kimber:

Start of Career: I started writing as a hobby at the beginning of February 2011, and my love for samurai stories led me to begin writing "The Rose Warriors: Uprising." Originally named "The Five Rose Warriors," its main influence was the video game, "Way of the Samurai." When playing the game I found that a single samurai building a faction to take down a vast empire was simply exhilarating, so I decided that I need to make that my aim. The story started as a simple village girl learning to be a samurai, but the idea just wasn't special enough. I asked myself "What will make this book different to every other book I have read?" So I did some research and I found that there were hardly any stories written about the historic fall of the samurai, which the movie "The Last Samurai (Tom Cruise)" is revolved around.

After the first four chapters I let my friend read it, and I was told it was the best story he had ever read. I passed it around to get some further opinions, and I was asked every time "What happens next?" with the upmost enthusiasm. I thought up some ideas for how to make the story different to every other samurai rebellion story, so I called upon another genre passion, fantasy. I took the end of the samurai era, and transformed it into a war filled with magic and supernatural beings.

I spent every single night coming up with ideas of how to make it better and all I could think about while living life was the story, and it was from that moment I discovered my calling was to make a living of my newfound passion. More ideas for stories started to fill my head and began to make plans for future novels, including the sequel to "Uprising," "Revival."

Spotlight: The Princess by Laura Tolomei

Bio:

Globetrotter author from Italy, Laura Tolomei has traveled the world from age five, and she hasn’t stopped since. After having read countless numbers of books, she decides, at age forty, to write her own stories for a change, instead of always having to read them from others. Now an acclaimed author with original borderline stories at the edge of accepted conventions, Laura Tolomei guarantees an erotic earthquake with each new novel.

Q. Does your family support your writing? Do they know….it’s spicy?

Laura: My family, my husband in particular, totally support me, and yes, they know it’s a hell of a lot more than spicy…mine is downright erotic. Fact is–I’m a very open person and don’t feel the need to hide anything about what I do or how I live. As a result, my family’s very supportive. My mate in particular bears the full weight of it since he’s my main reference for all my stories. Writing mostly MM, I ask him about how to make my characters more credible, also in their sex scenes. LOL I must admit, we have a lot of fun out of it. In addition, he helps me with plot and even reads the completed stories. We even found a new way to work together when I wrote Bloody Passion in first person. Since the speaker is a Druid, I wanted it to be credible so I asked him to review each chapter as I wrote it and his comments/suggestions were priceless. Ain’t he great?

Q. What describes the “heat” level in your writing?

Laura: My extremely HOT HOT HOT sex MM and MMF sex scenes! That’s why many of my books have five flames heat levels, like Divinitas, The Game and The Festival from my Virtus Saga. Most of my other books have a rating of four as heat levels, which is still scorching, particularly when it comes to my Soulmate and ReScue series.

Available from Extasy Books!
Blurb:
Alone. The future of his world on his shoulders, Prince Duncan Caldwell has to connect the dots. To pick up the pieces of broken love. Before the new edition of the Game. Before the terrible loss awaiting him at Black Rose. But not alone. Not without his angel. Certainly not without his princess. For only her power will save him.
Excerpt:
“Robin and I both had phases, but they were nothing like theirs…” Jeff frowned as though deep in memory. “No one could come between them, and you can ask Carl Strepton for confirmation.”
Yeah, good old Carl. No, she had not forgotten him, either.
“Carl tried separating them without success. They were as thick and tight as if they were one and understood each other even without words, like they had their own language or something. I’ve never seen anything like it, but it didn’t feel right then or much less now. Today that one is the leader and the other is pledged to you.”
No, Jeff just could not get it.
“And the leader reaffirming their love in such a public and dramatic way then nominating him as co-leader no less…makes me wonder where you fit in all this.”