Love Bytes is excited to have joining us today author Adira August!

Adira is here to talk about her newest release “Forever”the long awaited 8th book in her succesful Hunt&Cam series.

She is talking about the series, shares an exclusive excerpt and brought a wonderful giveaway of the first book in the series for 5! winners!

Welcome Adira 🙂

As people who follow Hunt&Cam4Ever know by now, Forever is the last book in the H&C4E series. I have cautioned, and Hunt&Cam’s readers have also said, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE SERIES. That’s no reverse psychology ad ploy, which is why I’m giving away book 1 Matchstick Men and putting it on sale.

Readers. 

I rarely think about readers when writing until one of my editors gets confused or lost which means I messed up and other readers will get lost, too.

But writing Forever, I thought about them all the time. See, I’m blessed with these amazing, intelligent, insightful readers. And sometimes they say I’m a 1-click writer for them. As wonderful as that is to hear, I know they have other 1-click authors. So I asked them, and maybe people who read this would like to share here: What makes an author 1-click for you?

• Characters with depth.
• A good tale well-told.
• Professional standards in editing.

Not necessarily in this order, but often mentioned together. From my FB group:

 

“A book that is an auto-click for me, is a story that flows, development of the characters and is edited properly. There needs to be interaction between the characters that makes sense. … The story has [to] have purpose … The author has to know how to tell a story.” Debbie Rardin

“With a couple of MM authors I enjoy, it’s because of the snark. Lily Morton, for example, and Daryl Banner. The stories are enjoyable, the characters ring true, and the snarky interactions are fun. … It’s also a way of revealing to the reader what the character is really feeling, whether because the snarky words convey those feelings, or are an attempt to do the opposite and hide them. And knowing what the character is feeling, of course, makes a character more real.

Granted, not all characters are snarky, and not all stories are best served with a side of attitude on steroids – but when it’s right, and done right, it’s one of the things I really enjoy about that book.” David Piper

“I have a few authors that are auto read for me and that is because they know how to write a good and interesting story. … The story has to flow well and be descriptive. I would think these are things all authors aspire to but you may be amazed at how many books I start and don’t finish.” Linda Manter

Some readers are more about engagement with a narrative line, some are more about being entertained, some are more about characters who seem like real people they relate to, some are about angst and some (of mine, anyway) really like the hot sex.

Any book has as many versions as it has readers. But all those books need to be written keeping in mind we are asking for your time, even more important than your money. 

We are asking you to give us part of your lives. 

I wanted very much to acknowledge that.

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT HUNT&CAM4EVER?

• Three editors responsible for any professionalism because my raw text is a dyslexic nightmare.
• A neurotic adherence to one basic idea: “Good enough, isn’t.”
• And Hunter Dane, my character Dom, who is uncompromising in telling the story and insisting I tell it all to you.

But for me, the best thing about Hunt&Cam4Ever is the reader, the reactions shared of the moment they discovered a world they believed. A world they can live in for a little while with me and Hunt and Cam and Twee and Mike and … a black dog we haven’t met yet.

It’s like magic. 

Thank you, readers, for making that magic happen for so many of us who write. 

addi

THEY’LL BE BACK!

What’s coming up? An m/f romance that has no connection to Hunt&Cam. The second in the Hunter Dane Investigations series. Then Book ONE of the UNNAMED new H&C series which should begin with Flight.

86K WORDS – 397 PAGES

AMAZON  SALES PAGE FOREVER

AMAZON SALES PAGE MATCHSTICK

Blurb:

….turn around…

---

“Lieutenant?” Woodward was there as if he’d materialized out of the lush greenery beyond the strip of grass. “Did you injure your left arm?”

Hunter looked down at his hand on his arm.

“Have you been feeling light-headed at all?” Wood asked.

“Yes,” Cam answered for him.

“Oh, God.” Avia started to rise.

“Please stay where you are,” Wood said, pulling his open collar aside, revealing a mic he spoke into. “I have a code xray ten at bungalow seventeen. Direct evac to Oceanside, cardiac teams in place asap.”

Cam was on his feet looking to Woodward for instructions.

“Get his I.D. and any medications he’s on.”

Cam shoved the chair back and ran for the door.

“I’m sorry. Don’t leave me,” Hunter’s voice was thick. A tear slid down from the outside corner of one eye.

Sirens sounded in the near distance.

Avia was next to his chair with her arms around his shoulders. “He’ll never leave you, Hunter, he just went to get something.”

Panicked, Hunt tried to rise. “No! I don’t need it. Don’t let him go to the store!” He knocked the table over trying to get up, to follow Cam.

Woodward caught him as he slumped to the floor.

……………..from Shadow Men, Hunt&Cam4Ever Book 7

---

This is what happened next.

---

“…forever’s gonna start tonight…”

 

EXCERPT FROM FOREVER

 

“Would you like me to wait to begin until Mister Woodward comes out of the bathroom?” I asked, my patient regarding me solemnly from sunken eyes the color of Cleveland’s overcast sky. 

No response.

“I’ll get settled in the chair, then, and we’ll wait.”

He relaxed. Shoulders and arms loosened visibly, his knees moved apart slightly. 

Kevin Woodward went to pee.

 

THERE WAS A DARK gray swath that met a lighter gray one in a straight horizontal line Hunter could see in the far distance. He hadn’t thought about what it was before. Waiting for Wood to come back and the woman to start talking, it occurred to him that the line was where the horizon met the black waters of Lake … Erie. He was in Cleveland, that made it Erie. 

There were five Great Lakes. He used to know all the names, a long time ago. 

“Hunter?”

He looked at her. Ceretti was her name. He’d talked to her before, when he’d first come here. About something … his family. Wood was back, standing to the side. He’d take care of it if anything happened.

“I’d like you to tell me about Cam,” she said.

“You’re keeping him from me.”

She had short dark hair combed back. Streak of gray. No make-up. Sweater, blouse, pants. Simple. No glasses, but too old for perfect vision. Recorder, pad, pen. She must be short, her feet barely touched the ground. But the eyes were sharp. The lines in her face came from laughing often. Smiling.

She didn’t smile now. Neutral. But interested. Not a poker face. “I’m not allowing visitors for a few days. Except Mister Woodward.”

“Hart pay you to do that?”

“Mister Snow hired me. And your vitals told me what you need,  they spike under stress. You react to Mister Woodward’s presence with calm. You are in a strange place among strangers while you are also incapcitated. You need someone here you can trust.”

“I trust my husband.” The words sounded dull to his ears, at odds with his rage.

“I believe you. He also stresses you. So let’s figure that out. How did it start?”

“What?”

“The two of you.”

Hunter sought the gray empty world outside. “We met at the club. You know about the club.”

They’d been so close, passing each other in the doorway. Hunt had felt Cam’s power like heat off his body. He’d put one hand on the side of Hunter’s neck, thumb moving along his jawline and down, coming to rest across his larynx.

Hunter wasn’t aware his hand traced the movements he described.

“And did you get together then?” 

“He said ‘Kneel for me when you’re ready.’ And then he was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Inside.”

“You followed?”

“I went home.”

“Why?”

“So I wouldn’t follow.” He didn’t have to look at her to know she was confused. 

“This was a year ago?” she asked.

“Three.”

“Three years?”

I’m tired.

“You were first together as Dom and sub, when?”

Relentless bitch. He looked at her. She didn’t recoil, but he knew she wanted to. He felt Woodward’s heightened attention, like a cat that pricks its ears, bright-eyed and very still.

Ceretti shifted in her chair and made a note before putting the notebook and pen on the side table. She didn’t shy away from looking at him. “Correct what I get wrong, all I have are accounts from witnesses. About a year ago you knelt for Camden Snow in the BDSM club you both belong to in front of perhaps thirty witnesses. Your scene started in public—”

“It wasn’t a scene.”

“What was it?”

“Real.”

“All the time?”

“We’re real all the time.”

“Several days after that first night, you began a relationship outside the club. You had sex with Cam at his home.”

Where was she going with this? He couldn’t get ahead of her.

She went on as if he’d confirmed it. “But you never had sex with any of the other Doms. They used you for sex, but according to them, they’d never seen you with an erection.”

“It wasn’t about that.”

“It was with Cam.”

“I’m not talking about this.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “How about we cut this short and jump to the part I need to understand. You define the beginning of your relationship as the first time you saw each other. So the years of avoidance simply delayed the inevitable?”

Hunter shrugged.

“Or were you afraid of something?”

Silence.

She went on. “No one knows what happened in that room in your club. But you stayed with him all night. You slept there. According to the club owner that was unprecedented. For anyone. What motivated you to do this thing that you never did before with anyone else?”

Hunter’s hand went to his chest. Woodward’s eyes flicked to the monitors.

Ceretti went on. “Cam said you offered him anal sex in gratitude for his actions with you when you were in extreme stress from a very difficult case. But he also said you initially only went to his home for dinner. You wanted something from him. It’s why you let him drive you off to a remote hideaway. What did you really want?”

Cam’s bed, vast under a white sheet. His rough warm hands—strong, safe. The weight of him. Hunter had wanted to feel the weight of him again. The surety, the surrender, the … miracle of being known.

“I know you had sex with him. He said it was your first time.”

He looked away. Outside.

“We can salvage this if you tell me the truth,” she said. “It’s your choice. This thing went wrong from the beginning. Didn’t it? What was it, Hunter, that very first time, what went wrong?”

His eyes slid back to her. “Get out.”

Adira August writes because she hasn’t got any choice. She was first published when she was twenty and wrote (for money or for free) all kinds of things during a lifetime of various jobs—all of it non-fiction. And she freakin’ hates talking about herself in third person….

Hello. I’m Addi: sub to fictional characters. Or, “character,” I should say. Singular. I wrote nonfiction until Fifty Shades came out. As a BDSM switch it was simply appalling to me. So I started writing a novel for a more realistic m/f series I’ve since taken offline for a massive rewrite.

But in that series, Hunter Dane appeared. The greatest gift an author can receive is a character this real, this complex, this fascinating. Later came Camden Snow, the greatest gift Hunt could receive.

I don’t write romance, in the classic sense. But there are such things as commitments kept, caring unreservedly for another and never walking away. Which means everything is part of a love story, including murder investigations and really explicit BDSM sex. 

My characters are paramount. Hunt and Cam, Ben and Avia, Twee and Mike and Natani are vibrant, passionate people. And they are as real to me as my readers are.

addi- 

my online home: https://adiraaugust.wordpress.com

Have a chance to win an ecopy of Matchstick the first book in the Hunt&Cam4ever series.

a Rafflecopter giveaway