Review: Eternity's Embrace by Ursula Istrati

From Amazon: This steamy 20,000+ word vampire book brings together three parts of the Eternity's Embrace series, with the following short stories: Discovered, Stolen, and Reclaimed.

Review: I won’t deny that I read the Twilight series. I won’t deny that I enjoyed the Twilight series, for what it was at least. I also won’t deny that I wanted more out of that series. Something that actually made me believe that Edward and Bella were that in love. I never got why he loved her, or vice versa. As much as I enjoyed it when I read it, it did put my off vampire romance books.

That said, I loved Eternity’s Embrace. It’s my first vampire book in a long time and am I very glad I gave it a chance. Ursula Istrati has crafted a sexy, seductive tale of a vampire and his star-crossed lover. The best part? It’s believable! I can see why these two love each other, why they long for each other. And the sex? H-O-T! Beautifully descriptive, passionate, and damn sexy.

Originally the books in this completed novella, Discovered, Stolen, and Reclaimed, were put out as individuals and each make for an enjoyable read on their own. Eternity’s Embrace makes for a sexy, seductive tale and I couldn’t put it down. Wonderfully written and highly recommended!

 

Rating: *****/*****

Where to find Eternity's Embrace

Amazon

Smashwords

Connect with Ursula Istrati

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Review: Spinning Heads Volume One by Forrest Young

 From Smashwords: A collection of erotic short stories. This volume includes the story of an ordinary housewife who, quite by chance, discovers she still has the power to seduce and entice, and a couple seeking another woman for a threesome who end up getting much more than they bargained for.

Spinning Heads is a collection of two short stories. The first centers on Anna and is broken up into several short chapters. Anna is a bored housewife who finds that she has a desire to sleep with as many men as possible, preferably all at once. The second is called Kirsty and is more of a bonus than a second short, though it’s still a complete story.

Anna has a lot of sex in a variety of scenarios with a lot of men. Passionate new experiences, gang bangs, all sorts of naughty fun. The scenes are hot, but often a bit short and lacking in detail. One of my pet peeves in all erotic fiction is when women have multiple orgasms at the drop of a hat, and Anna does this a lot. I love a good build up to a screaming orgasm, it’s more realistic in a fun way. Still, there is a lot of fun to be had and the story covers a lot of different kinks, which means there is wide audience appeal.

Kirsty is more focused on a new threesome and there is a lot of lesbian, hetero, cuckold, and three-way sex. It wasn’t quite as hot as Anna, but it makes for a nice bonus.

Overall, both stories were an enjoyable read. There were some grammar issues and a few punctuation errors, but mostly they didn’t detract from the story. It was fun, but not my most recommended read. You do get a lot more erotica than most for the $2.99 price point, which is a huge bonus.

My Rating: *** 1/2 / *****

Where to Find Spinning Heads

Smashwords

Barnes & Nobel

Diesel Ebooks

Connect with Forrest Young

Wordpress

Facebook

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New Book Announcement

Four days into January and I’m already wishing it was May. I’m not really much of a winter person. At least it’s been so cold that I cannot go outside. That means I’ve been writing a lot! Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been editing a lot is more accurate.

First I’ve started editing Lay Me Bare in hopes of a mid-February release date! I’m halfway done the first pass through, but I expect it will be a few more before it’s time to really hunker down and do the proof reading part.

As a more surprising bit of news, next week will bring the release of Instructed by an Officer! I’ve been working on this short since late November and then shelved it to release the first two parts of The Masquerade Affair. I’ve always loved sexy cops in uniform, so why not write about them? It’s probably going to be about 8000-8500 words long, about 50/50 when it comes to story vs. sexy times. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. A cover reveal is planned for this weekend as long as my designer gets to work in good time.

Hope everyone has had an excellent start to their new year!

24 Hours of Kindle Freebie

The Masquerade Affair Volume One: Welcome to the Black Room has been free on Amazon for just over 24 hours now and I can't deny that I'm pretty pleased with the results so far. In the first few hours I gave away around thirty books on Amazon and a few on the foreign sites. Pretty good.

Then I started advertising. I took to reddit, twitter, stumbledupon, and tumblr to advertise that the book was free until December 6th. I tried not to go overboard on twitter because I hate being sold to on twitter, so why would I expect anyone else to like it? Instead I did one sales post and then just posted my thoughts on how excited I was to see people buying my free ebook.

During the day I kept an eye on my sales. When I cracked the top 10,000 of the free ebooks on kindle I got really excited. Then Amazon started showing how far I was in subgenres. Then I saw I cracked the top 100 in erotica. Then the top 75. Before my husband left for work he checked too and texted me a picture that I had cracked the top 50. When I got to the computer (about an hour ago) I was at number 17 on the free erotica chart. That's the FRONT PAGE of erotica.

Not only that, but I've cracked the top 100 of genre fiction and the top 1000 of free ebooks overall. Without advertising over the last 12 hours those numbers are huge.

Now what has it done for sales? Yesterday I sold twice as many copies of Awake My Soul as I had the rest of the month. Not huge numbers, but a nice boost. Does this have anything to do with Welcome to the Black Room being free? I have no way of knowing. I have yet to receive a review on Welcome to the Black Room either, but I doubt most people who've downloaded it have had a chance to read it.

After the free period is over I plan to do a more in depth look at sales numbers and how things have been effected by my trial of KDP Select. Here's hoping it's worth it in the end!