Audiobook Review: A Solitary Man by Shira Anthony and Aisling Mancy (Giveaway)

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Blurb:

Sparks fly when Chance meets tall, sexy Xav at a Wilmington bar and they have the hottest one-nighter of their lives. But Chance doesn’t do repeats, Xav seems detached, and they go their separate ways without a word. Later, when closeted Assistant District Attorney C. Evan “Chance” Fairchild meets Dare's Landing’s newest deputy sheriff, Xavier “Xav” Constantine, Evan isn’t only wary. He’s irritated as hell.

Xavier is a former FBI agent turned deputy sheriff who is hot on the trail of a South American child prostitution ring. Evan is fighting to put an end to rampant cocaine trafficking and chafing under the thumb of an election-hungry boss. When someone tries to kill the eleven-year-old witness who holds the key to both their investigations, they’re forced to work together as they put their lives on the line to protect him. As Chance and Xav collide in the heat of a sweltering North Carolina summer, dodging bullets and chasing bad guys isn’t the only action going on.

Blog Tour: Heartifact by Aisling Mancy (Exclusive Excerpt + Giveaway)

Blog Tour: Heartifact by Aisling Mancy (Exclusive Excerpt + Giveaway)

Join me in welcoming Ash Mancy to our blog today with his newest novella, Heartifact!

Net proceeds benefit the The Trevor Project in the US,

le Refuge in France, and Arcigay in Italy

Heartifact is available from

Men Over the Rainbow

Amazon, Amazon UK, All Romance eBooks, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords

DEADLY AMBITION

One of the mysteries surrounding the ominous archaeological dive that Harper and Stick agree to undertake in Heartifact is that two divers died during the expedition’s last attempt to raise the ancient ship. The business men behind the venture aren’t being entirely forthright and it’s up to Harper, as chief archaeologist, to determine whether the marine expedition is safe to pursue. During their initial meeting with Areleous, the financier of the expedition, and representatives of the Greek Cultural Ministry, Harper and Stick learn that UXO, or unexploded ordnance, from the conflicts in the Middle East was discovered at the site.

PART 1 EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT:

Harper knew Liviko Pelagos was the Libyan Sea and he brightened. “We’re going on a treasure hunt?”

“With complications,” Areleous interjected.

“Those complications wouldn’t have anything to do with the two divers you lost, would they?” Stick asked in all seriousness.

Captain Dimitris looked pained.

“We encountered UXO,” Areleous said briefly.

Stick’s jaw dropped. “Unexploded ordnance?”

Areleous nodded gravely. “Libya’s detonation teams are not thorough, and ocean currents have carried cluster munitions from their shoreline to the southern coast of Gavdos.”

Harper pursed his lips and glanced at Stick before turning back to Areleous. “No ordnance survey was performed before the dive?”

“We had no reason to perform an ordnance survey.” He gestured to Michael Thompson who’d been silent through the brief history lesson. “Mr. Thompson is a specialist in this area. A survey has since been performed and he and his company have removed all unexploded ordnance within five kilometers of the southern coast of Gavdos.”

Harper looked directly at Michael. “Then why are you still here?”

Michael was undaunted by the direct question. “Gavdos sits at the junction of the Eurasian and African continental plates and there is considerable seismic activity in this region. We have no way of knowing whether UXO may have become buried in undersea ruins, shipwrecks, and the like.”

Harper met Michael’s eyes. “Thank you for the honesty.”

While Harper is satisfied that the leaders of the expedition have been reasonably honest with him, he remains skeptical. He’s been in business far too long to be fooled by platitudes offered from those who only have financial gain in mind. As the marine dig progresses, Harper and Stick discover a strange energy associated with the archaeological site. Though they are expert scientists and archaeologists, they are unable to identify the source of the joules that register in the research ship’s equipment. Harper can’t help but suspect it has something to do with the death of the two divers on the previous expedition.

PART II EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT:

Foster An Author hosted by Isa&Jo Loves Books Day Five ~ Thanks to Aisling Mancy for being here this week!!

Foster An Author hosted by Isa&Jo Loves Books Day Five ~ Thanks to Aisling Mancy for being here this week!!

Hi, I’m Aisling “Ash” Mancy! I’m lucky enough to have been adopted by Bayou Book Junkie this week for Jo&Isa Love Books Foster an Author week! I love my new parents! I’m headed to Gay Rom Lit Retreat this week and I’ll be sharing these posts every day. Be sure to scroll down and enter the giveaway!

Many people ask who my favorite author is and it’s an impossible question to answer. Setting aside my grandfather, a most versatile author and screenplay writer, I can name three of my favorites. Isaac Asimov has always fascinated me. I often spend hours immersed in his stories. One of my all time favorites is “The Last Question” wherein the titular question is “How do we stop the universe from ending? Or, How can we conquer death?” In addition to Asimov, two other authors who fascinate me are Michael Crichton and Carl Sagan. Their abilities to weave science and the salient questions of ‘who are we and what are we made up of’ into fiction is extraordinary and impressive. Intrigued by the advents of cloning, stem cell research, genetic engineering (gene splicing), eugenics, and the human genome project, I often delve into the ethical, legal, and social implications associated with these sciences.

In my upcoming novel, Shooting Star, set a millennium from now, a human-Jupitarian hybrid avoids destruction by the human government by hunting down and assassinating his kind. He secretly defies the human government in a number of ways and is able to keep his subversive endeavors clandestine until he needs the help of a human geneticist to save a young hybrid’s life. It’s a hot, sexy love story. Honest!

In my upcoming novel, Aeromancer, book two in the Morality of Magick Series, set far off into the future, a wraith is tasked with saving illegal cargo of the most unique kind.

Then, I’ll be writing some serious steampunkery and am scheduled to write for Dreamspinner’s Order of the Black Knights! All of it with an element of romance. Because.... well, ROMANCE!

Each of my books contains action, suspense, and romance, no matter the genre! 2017 is an action-packed year for me!

Foster An Author hosted by Jo&Isa Love Books Day Four ~ Grotesque by Aisling Mancy ~ (Giveaway)

Foster An Author hosted by Jo&Isa Love Books Day Four ~ Grotesque by Aisling Mancy ~ (Giveaway)

Hi, I’m Aisling “Ash” Mancy! I’m lucky enough to have been adopted by Bayou Book Junkie this week for Jo&Isa Love Books Foster an Author week! I love my new parents! I’m headed to Gay Rom Lit Retreat this week and I’ll be sharing these posts every day. Be sure to scroll down and enter the giveaway!

I write for adults, and I also write for youth under C. Kennedy. My favorite part of going to any convention is spending time with readers. The love, laughter, and warmth shared with readers is the very essence of living life to the fullest. I learn a lot from readers, and readers allow me to let down my hair (and I have a lot of it!) and allow me to relax. I love you guys!

One of my favorite things to do is to put fans in my books! Yes, you! Michael Thompson being the latest. He makes an appearance in Heartifact. In fact, Michael insists that each of my books include a Michael who resembles him. If you’d like to be in one of my books, don’t be shy! Email me and tell me who you’d like to be!

My obsessive curiosity has influenced my writing more than anything else. I have an absolute desire to know things. Doesn’t matter what things. Simply to know as many things as possible... no matter how useless the information may be. This has proven only to enhance imagination in my writing. If you’re looking to be in one of my books, be prepared. You never know who or what you’ll end up as!

While I do write contemporary stories, I prefer to write paranormal/fantasy and science fiction. Grotesque is a short story that originally appeared in the 2015 GayRomLit Anthology “From San Diego with Love.” It’s a contemporary story of a grotesque (commonly referred to as a gargoyle) who battles ancient enemies in present-day society. After reading the short story, fans clamored for more, and I’ll be turning it into a novel scheduled for release in 2017!

Thanks for joining us in celebrating Foster an Author week on Bayou Book Junkie!

Foster An Author hosted by Jo&Isa Love Books Day Three ~ A Solitary Man by Shira Anthony and Aisling Mancy ~ (Excerpt + Giveaway)

Foster An Author hosted by Jo&Isa Love Books Day Three ~ A Solitary Man by Shira Anthony and Aisling Mancy ~ (Excerpt + Giveaway)

Hi, I’m Aisling “Ash” Mancy! I’m lucky enough to have been adopted by Bayou Book Junkie this week for Jo&Isa Love Books Foster an Author week! I love my new parents! I’m headed to Gay Rom Lit Retreat this week and I’ll be sharing these posts every day. Be sure to scroll down and enter the giveaway!

Any of you who know me and my writing, know that I place a tremendous value on humor. We’re familiar with the adage that laughter is the best medicine. Taking nothing away from it, it’s only a symptom. The true best medicine is good humor. Good humor is the motivation for laughter. It allows us to feel camaraderie, to identify with others, to see things from new perspectives, and to tease good-naturedly—ourselves and others. But most importantly, good humor is a new experience for a victim of abuse, and usually the first happy experience they have; the first good feelings they feel.

Xav is a conservative ex-FBI agent having moved from California to North Carolina to become a deputy sheriff. He and Chance (Mr. Fairchild), an assistant district attorney, are hot on the trail of drug and child sex traffickers determined to put them away for good. In A Solitary Man, Xav teases almost constantly, makes fun of things and people, he isn’t afraid to do the inane, all while he maintains calm and aplomb. Xav not only has trouble with southern ways, but the vernacular has him laughing his ass off most of the time. And it goes to show each of us that we can be fun and funny no matter how serious life is or we may need to be at times. I hope you enjoy the below excerpt as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Thanks for joining us in celebrating Foster an Author week on Bayou Book Junkie!

Foster An Author hosted by Jo&Isa Love Books Day Two ~ Sleight of Heart by Aisling Mancy ~ (Giveaway)

Foster An Author hosted by Jo&Isa Love Books Day Two ~ Sleight of Heart by Aisling Mancy ~ (Giveaway)

Hi, I’m Aisling “Ash” Mancy! I’m lucky enough to have been adopted by Bayou Book Junkie this week for Jo&Isa Love Books Foster an Author week! I love my new parents! I’m headed to Gay Rom Lit Retreat this week and I’ll be sharing these posts every day. Be sure to scroll down and enter the giveaway!

The Morality of Magick Series is a series of stand-alone books (Yes, it’s true! No waiting for the next book!) about different sorts of magick. My newest book, Sleight of Heart, is the first book in the series and comes to you from CoolDudes Publishing.

Sleight of Heart is an enchanting romance about a palm-reading gypsy and a vampire mage who fall in love against all odds. The story combines the primordial phantasy of the preternatural with the ancient superstition of the Romani—set against a backdrop of present day reality. The penultimate question: How would humans treat preternatural creatures in society today?

The story includes Romani lore, and I tell a true story of my experience in Paris with a Romani young man here. Pesha is largely based on this young man and, in Sleight of Heart, he is a mysterious gypsy who lives under the tyranny of his father, the ruler of a compania (band, tribe, clan) in Wales. Lord Taliesin Solitaire has been alone for two hundred years and, having been betrayed in the worst way, has sworn never to fall in love again.

This story tells of broken hearts and second chances for both Pesha and Taliesin. We’ve all been there: our hearts broken so deeply that we vow never to love again. Then someone comes along that piques our interest and we begin to think about love again. Love has a way of wending itself into our hearts even when we don’t want it to be there—and it causes us to reassess ourselves, our lives, and where we’d like to be. Some of those reassessments might involve:

Foster An Author hosted by Jo&Isa Love Books Day One ~ Heartifact by Aisling Mancy ~ (Author Introduction + Giveaway)

Foster An Author hosted by Jo&Isa Love Books Day One ~ Heartifact by Aisling Mancy ~ (Author Introduction + Giveaway)

Hi, I’m Aisling “Ash” Mancy! I’m lucky enough to have been adopted by Bayou Book Junkie this week for Jo&Isa Love Books Foster an Author week! I love my new parents! I’m headed to Gay Rom Lit Retreat this week and I’ll be sharing these posts every day. Be sure to scroll down and enter the giveaway!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my books and me, here is a little about me:

Raised on the mean streets and back lots of Hollywood by a Yoda-look-alike grandfather, Ash doesn’t conform, doesn’t fit in, is epic awkward, and lives to perfect a deep-seated oppositional defiance disorder. In a constant state of fascination with the trivial, Ash contemplates such weighty questions as If time and space are curved, then where do all the straight people come from? When not writing, Ash can be found taming waves on western shores, pondering the nutritional value of sunsets, appreciating the much-maligned dandelion, unhooking guide ropes from stanchions, and marveling at all things ordinary. 

ALL.OF.IT.IS.TRUE. Raised in Hollywood, I spent way too much time on film sets growing up, but it gave me a unique perspective on storytelling. Read some of my posts on growing up in Hollywood and film writing here and here. You’ll find more dialogue and action in my books than narrative. I also like to give readers a thrill. You’ll find twists and turns in my stories, the periodic Boo!, and at least one ‘are you freakin’ kidding me?’ moment. I have a wild imagination and look to bring imagination to life and give readers the best possible reading experience. You’ll also find three other things in my books. Romance, hope, and a happily ever after. I also write books for young adults under C. Kennedy.

Without readers, we authors are nothing. Thank you for reading my books!

Find Ash on blog, Twitter @AislingMancy, Facebook, Google+,

Goodreads, Booklikes, Dreamspinner Press Author Page, and Amazon!