Blood And Bone - A Virtual Book Tour

Today is the first day of a virtual book tour for the book - Blood and Bone.  Author, Dawn Brown is not only presenting her latest novel but providing a give away of a $20 Amazon gift card to one lucky reader who leaves a comment over the course of the tour.

Blood and Bone - comes with a product warning.  I'm not sure if that means one is supposed to bring out a scotch warmed with the flavours of peat and all things Scottish before reading or...  But I digress, only because Dawn has been kind enough to tell us about Scotland.

So without further ado - here is Dawn Brown on the first day of her virtual tour with her recently released book, Blood and Bone. 

Dawn's first sojourn into storytelling began when she was nine.  She would rather invite neighborhood kids into her garage and regale them with ghost stories, believing even then that atmosphere played an important role in a good story.


Dawn has a diploma in journalism, but found herself pursuing a career in computer leasing.  After the birth of her son, she gave up the corporate world to be a mom and write full time, trading in her dreary cubicle for a dreary room in the attic.  Now Dawn spends her days creating dark, romantic mysteries with edgy heroes, clever heroines and villains she hopes will keep her readers sleeping with the light on.



I asked Dawn to tell us about a trip that changed her.  Any trip, across the globe or just a short jaunt to her local grocery story.  Here's Dawn's spin on -

Life hasn't been quite the same since...

When I was twenty-four, I went to Scotland with  my mother and grandmother.  Most people thought I was nuts making a trip like that with my grandmother.  I thought it was a great idea.  I was not well travelled, after all.  The only other time I'd been out of the country was a school trip to Washington DC when I was in eighth grade.  My grandmother made this trip Scotland, where she'd grown up, to visit her sisters every other year.  She would be able to show me everything I wanted to see.  Besides, I loved my grandmother.  She told funny stories and baked me a chocolate cake every year for my birthday.  

I was right.  My grandmother was great at making sure I got to see all the touristy sites.  Our first day in Edinburg, we climbed Arthur's Seat.  It's a small grass covered mountain in the middle of the city.  At the top, we took a rest looking out over the Firth of Forth, and she told me about playing on Arthur's Seat when she was a little girl, and how one of her friends turned up with her baby sister in a stroller.  All the kids playing there thought it would be a great idea to let the stroller go rolling down from the top--without baby sister in it, of course.  By the time the stroller hit the bottom it was just a crumpled ball.

We went to Edinburg Castle where my grandmother and her friends--who I was beginning to picture like the Little Rascals--would play hide and seek until security tossed them out.  Then Holyrood Palace where she and her friends stood on the fence trying to catch a glimpse of the future queen playing in the garden.

We passed the shop where my grandmother worked when she met my grandfather.  She was fifteen and he was fourteen.  We ate ice-cream at the parlor across from the church where grandparents were married just before the war ended.  

And then it hit me.  All these places we were visiting weren't merely tourist attractions, but places and moments from my grandmother's history.  I saw her differently then.  As a person.  She wasn't just a sweet old lady who baked and told stories.  For the first time, I saw her as a woman who had lived and loved and lost just like I had.  Just like I would.

She passed away seven years ago and I still miss her.  I imagine I always will.  But I will forever be grateful for that trip together.  I'm not sure I would have ever gained that same insight without it.

 

The deeper they dig into the past, the closer they come to a killer.  

Crime writer Shayne Reynolds is looking for the next book that'll get her out of her parents' basement and on track to rebuilding her life.  She's found it in Robert Anderson, a confessed murderer who's out on parole.  Something's never added up about that case. 

From the moment she sets foot in Dark Water, nothing goes as planned.  Anderson's family wants her to drop the story--especially surviving son Des.  A man who ignites sizzling heat even as he stands firmly in her way.

Laboring under his father's crushing legacy and his grandmother's iron resolve to get rid of the nosy writer at any cost, Des struggles to save the self-destructive sister who once saved him.  There's something honest and forthright about Shayne, though, that tempts him to help her get to the truth.  Even if it means double-crossing his powerful grandmother.

Despite their resolve to keep it strictly business, sexual sparks quickly set fire to tangled emotions.  And threads of a fragile bond that someone with a vendetta could use to weave their death shroud...

Product Warning:  This story contains a feisty writer, a sexy younger man and a 

mystery with enough twists and turns to cause vertigo.


Excerpt from Blood and Bone:
 The sucking slop of footsteps in wet mud rose from the surrounding black.  The hair on the back of her neck bristled, and a chill tickled along her spine.


Was it Hudson coming back to finish her off?  Tic?


What was she doing standing around here anyway?  A woman, alone, late at night, on a deserted country road, during a thunderstorm?  The scene had slasher flick written all over it.


She started for the driver's side door, but a low moan rose up from the darkness.  The wind?  Had to be.  Still, she picked up her pace.


The moan came again, louder this time.  Shayne stopped and turned.  A dark, hunched figure staggered toward her.


"Christ."  She gripped the door handle and yanked open the door.


The stooped outline lurched in front of her single headlight, and the glare illuminated the ugliest Hawaiian shirt she'd ever seen.  Relief swamped her like a tidal wave, turning her muscles soft for the second time in one night.  The feeling, however, was short-lived.  He might not have been the homicidal maniac she'd imagined, but the jerk had scared the life out of her.  And all because he was staggering drunk.  Even from this distance, the smell of beer was nearly overpowering.


As he pitched forward, the light cast a ghostly pallor over his face.  Dark smudges beneath his left eye, along his lip and circling the edges of each nostril stood out from the stark whiteness of his skin.


Blood.


He wasn't just drunk, he was hurt.



Are you as intrigued by Blood and Bone as I am?  Get to know the author, ask questions, or just leave your thoughts on the book or the author.  Each commenter will be entered for a chance to win a prize of a $20 Amazon gift card  that Dawn will provide on a random draw at the end of her tour.

And, if you still have questions about Dawn - head over to her website at www.dawnbrown.org
or follow her tour; next stop, Reading Romances on November 1.


Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com