Goodbye and Hello!

So ends 2013. It's been a year of travel, of trials, challenges, illnesses and the all important value of family. Not just the one I have by blood but family formed of very dear and very understanding friends. I can't entirely say goodbye to the year without a brief look over the works I committed to screen and when Hank wasn't playing ball, I committed to paper. Variety is the spice of life, eh? I thought I'd been a bit lazy this year, but giving it a second, cursory glance, it seems I have spent rather a lot of time typing...

First came Vintage Pleasures - a little whipping a little burlesque and snappy talk. I brought out toys. Canes, harnesses, clothes pegs and several strands of pearls. Baby making work apparently!

http://www.sharaazod.com/ebook/vinatge-pleasures.html

Then quite conveniently considering the first release, The Baby Gift came along - my personal surprise of the year. All it takes is a piña colada and I'm all about gay best friends, IVF, sexy sperm donors and the trouble with abstinence! I haven't had so much fun with a story in a long time!

http://www.sharaazod.com/ebook/baby-gift.html

Shibah's Monster arrived next, echoing my eternal desire to just talk to people I've lost. Marek Kaszinski is the bad boy given every resource to turn good and very nearly loses his battle to stay on the side of what's right. He needs Shibah to do that. And to rise from his untimely grave to give her what she's always needed - Him. Dark and light, sad and funny, from Poland to France, London to Rio the story travels physically and emotionally. That and I got several martinis out of friends getting medical and legal information from people!

http://beautifultroublepublishing.com/genres/new-releases-home-page/shibah-s-monster-ebook.html

Army of Me and You, delivered to you in June, established a previously unknown skill of typing through tears as I told the story of Madeline and Cain - the refugee and the soldier who guide each other to a well deserved happy ending. Mostly on a green in Dulwich... I've never wanted to give a heroine a HEA more than Madeline. She embodies friends whom I've done my best to help and represents the best of this country in welcoming those escaping war to find peace. 

http://www.sharaazod.com/ebook/army-you-me.html

Then at last I was able to release A Life Sublime, the fifth in the Italian knights series (well technically IK3 just a bit delayed see this blog entry http://sobillysaysshesays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/blurred-lines.html?m=0 for an explanation!) Family interferes with everything. Absolutely everything but sometimes, family can lead you to everything you've ever wanted. Weddings, funerals, blessings, churches, nunneries, restaurants, clinics, opera and one yacht ride to remember in the Neapolitan Riviera features in this mature reveal.

http://beautifultroublepublishing.com/genres/new-releases-home-page/a-life-sublime-ebook.html

With the falling leaves of October came the sequel to Said the Demon to Little Miss Eva. Manoeuvring around with a baby attached to my hip (not my own!) I became quite adept at typing one handed whenever ideas came to me. Sleep deprivation and being an empath would never be a good combination but for someone who is a paranormal magnet, Evangeline Mensah struggles. Motherhood isn't easy by a long shot. It would have been wrong for me to write it otherwise. http://www.amazon.com/Angels-Baby-ebook/dp/B00G4U69AU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1382607414&sr=1-1&keywords=Angel%27s+baby

In November I completed Sweet Child of Mine. Single dad, his confused daughter and a wary cafe owner form their own family and find their own happiness together. This just reminded me on how much of a treasure I must have been aged thirteen. Parentals! You have my apologies. It was mostly fascinating to write about a relationship that's confused me, but as Abigail admits, if you love the man, you should love the child. http://www.sharaazod.com/ebook/sweet-child-mine.html

Finally, Nights of Roshan ended a trial of a year with a luscious Egyptian dentist recalling an ancient ritual for the fertility of a very male, very alpha white tiger. Those ancient Egyptians. They didn't skimp on the rituals... And what's nice is to share the holidays with people who care about you. Enough to move your Christmas tree to your exact specifications. http://www.sharaazod.com/ebook/nights-roshan.html

There we are. I hope you all enjoyed my literary year as much as I did. It's been a bit of mental torture combined with the excited joy of connecting with you the reader. I know I'm not particularly all here on the same planet as you but trust me - it works out better this way. 

Happy New Year and all the best for 2014! It's about to get crazy... 

Coming up in 2014

Addicted to Witch

Kissing the Canvas

Murano

And a few more surprises...

Demon Heart

You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? No, I love my musical influences too much to not collate a soundtrack list for any of my stories.

This is a lucky number thirteen soundtrack to Angel's Baby for your delectation. It's as varied and random as my emotions writing this story.

1. Jack White - Love is Blindness
2. Faithless - Insomnia 
3. Gotye - Heart's A Mess
4. Foals - My Number 
5. Keaton Henson - To Your Health
6. The xx - Missing
7. Florence and the Machine - Seven Devils 
8. Keaton Henson - Charon
9. Olafur Arnalds - Broken (Broadchurch Soundtrack) 
10. Gemma Hayes - Wicked Game
11. The xx - Fantasy
12. Jay-Z - Holy Grail ft Justin Timberlake 
13. Tom Odell - Can't Pretend 

Devil In A New Dress

And look what I woke up to this cold and frosty morn! A brand spanking new sequel to where all my apparent issues stem from! You can find the book, Angel's Baby, right here: http://www.amazon.com/Angels-Baby-ebook


Blurb:

Eva Mensah isn’t happy. To the outside world, she has the perfect life; a gorgeous musically talented husband and a beautiful little boy. But Gabriel Walker happens to be half way across the world on tour in Australia. And her five month old baby boy is evidently displeased by her parenting skills. She can’t do anything right by little Elijah. A world of emotion keeps her from admitting to her husband and her family that past events of two years ago are threatening to swallow her sanity whole. Eva can’t help but feel overwhelmed by being a new mother and inadequate to cope alone. 

Especially when she can still see bad things. 

Really bad things. 

Definitely not when they happen to her and certainly not when they start happening to her son. Unable to decide what’s real and what’s imagined, Eva struggles to keep the life she so desperately wanted, from dissolving into hell.



Excerpt:

The phone rang in the house. She needed to go now. No, to having another argument with her husband and definitely no, to having an argument with her husband in front of his parents. Malgosia stood up to answer it, and Eva collected all of their belongings. 

“Evangeline, it’s your husband. Come and talk to him.”

“I’ll call him later. I need to get Elijah home.” At the car, she tucked her baby into the car seat. “Thank you for today. I appreciate it.”

“Evangeline,” Isaak said softly. “You can trust us. With anything.”

“I know,” she lied.

The seat fit perfectly into the car for once and she and Elijah made their way back to Maida Vale. Feeling little more than super-efficient, she marched Elijah back into the house and gave him a brisk but thorough bath. The phone rang and rang. Infuriated, she put Elijah into his crib and snatched it up. “You are disturbing my child.”

“You’re disturbing me, Evangeline. What the hell is going on?”

“Look, everyone, every single person is weighing in on what I do. If it wasn’t that my arse had the audacity to marry you, it’s that I had the temerity to get pregnant. And now I have a child, I’m not looking after him right. He’s too thin. I’m not feeding him enough. I’m not showing him that I love him. And there’s you, halfway across the fucking world again when you’re needed. I know, it’s a contract and if you don’t honour it we lose everything, we can’t support our child. But I really, really could have done without the accusation of you cheating on me and if I don’t joke about it, I will cry. That’s all I do these days. Cry. And not fucking sleep.”

Silence ruled the telephone line for so long, Eva called out “hello” down the line.

“I’m still here.”

“That’s what’s up, honestly.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“You should know,” Eva said, her voice breaking. “I shouldn’t have to tell you.”

“Yeah, you get that you’re the only empath in this relationship, right? So, you need to talk to me.” He exhaled heavily. “Look. Let me sort out some nannies on my side for you at least. And maybe...”

“What?”

“See a doctor.”

“To tell me that I’m what? Depressed? I know I am. How do I breastfeed on antidepressants?”

Gabriel sucked in a breath. “Angel, if you can’t look after yourself, you can’t look after Elijah. I’ll book an appointment for you.”

“Then what happens if I’m too depressed to look after Elijah at all?”

“He’ll be with me, until you’re better. Small steps, Angel.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“I love you, so much. You know that, don’t you?”

It took her several swallows to push back the tears clogging her throat. “I do. And I’m sorry for yelling at you.”

“Try and sleep. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“Night.”

Not feeling much more reassured by the talk, she returned to her son’s room. She turned on his crib mobile and “Rock-a-Bye Baby” played in delicate notes above him. He watched her action and reached out to her. She kissed both his starfished hands and left the room, to feel anything other than the weight of her responsibility to that child. Fuck. There definitely was something wrong with her.

Return of the Mack

I know what triggered it and I owe the kid a new outfit or trainers or something, but babysitting caused me to start a sequel to Said the Demon. I didn't mean to. I wasn't going to go back there, believe me, I was done with demons and their ilk. But I saw a programme that nudged me and then I had to babysit and THEN I couldn't wait to get rid of the little treasure so I could start typing away. 

I've been doing my familial duty in babysitting one of the most gorgeous little boys I've ever come across and I'm freaking Mary Poppins most of the time, babies LOVE me. So me and the Little Man were playing with his mobile and I accidentally gave him a hi five. He laughed and laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen in his entire life and for the rest of the evening, until he passed out, he was thoroughly obsessed with his own hand. He. Is. Awesome! I like him because I can hand him back and mostly because he kicked me out of a dry patch with writing. 

So my time in the last few months with my new chum, I've channelled my services into creating something mental. And thus Angel's Baby was born. It's thoroughly out of control and I had no clue that it would turn out the way it has, but such is Hank's plans. Devious, male of the species, aren't they? 

http://mochamemoirspress.com/said-the-demon-to-little-miss-eva/