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8.30.2013
Call for Submissions - 12 Days of Solstice
PWP would like to acquire 12 novellas with Christmas/Winter/Holiday themes to be released in eBook format on the 12 days leading up to the Winter Solstice (December 21, 2013), one per day.
All genres of fiction welcome, but no BDSM please.
Word count must be 10 to 30k.
All submissions must be received on or before October 1, 2013.
Celebrate the 12 days of Solstice with Pagan Writers Press.
Please use our submissions manager to submit your stories for consideration!
8.29.2013
Giveaway - Pacifically You
Excerpt
I threw my bags on deck and jumped up. Although the ship was big, sleeping quarters would be tight with only one main cabin. I headed down to make sure I claimed my bunk. Jason lived on the PY, so his was the largest bed. That left four small bunks, and I wanted to grab the top one. I guess I liked it on top. I made myself giggle again.
Once I marked my territory with my things, I rushed back up to the deck to watch them load my shiny new toy and make sure all the baitfish and chum I had ordered were in check.
“Please tell me that’s not our food for this trip?” the geeky weatherman whispered under his breath as he watched Tad and Jason load all my bait.
“Don’t worry. Tad can make anything taste great, right, Tad?” I chided.
“Lizzy, if he leaves before we set sail, this expedition isn’t happening. Remember who’s funding you. No, Doc Logan, this is for Lizzy’s beasties. They’ll come from miles around for a taste of what she has to offer.” Jason and Tad exchanged smiles and continued their task.
Chase’s Adam’s apple moved with a large gulp. He side-eyed me with a peculiar look on his face, so I shot him a devilish grin and winked at him. His Adam’s apple saluted me again.
When all our goodies were on board, Jason and Tad set sail. I sat on the bow enjoying the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. I took deep breaths of the salt air and let it cleanse my soul. This is where I felt most at home and at peace, on the open ocean doing what I loved best.
I glanced over at the geek who was a beautiful shade of green and slightly doubled over. Great. He was seasick. I knew I had to help him get it under control or this trip wasn’t going to be a bit of fun.
“You okay, Doc? Look at the horizon or something that isn’t moving. Just stare at something that takes your mind off the movement. You’ll be fine, I promise. Do you get seasick often? Maybe this wasn’t the best idea for you, if being on a boat isn’t your thing.”
“I’ll be fine. Really. This always happens. It’s been awhile, so my head just needs to get used to it. Get my sea legs, so to speak. Or sea head? No, no that sounds all wrong.” He shook his head and I saw his eyes settle on my chest, and his complexion went from green to a lovely shade of red.
“Okay, if my buoys make it better, by all means, have at ‘em.”
He cleared his throat and raised his eyes to mine and stared at me through his round glasses.
“I’m so sorry. They were the first things I saw that weren’t moving. It worked. I’m feeling better now. Thank you.” And his face turned a much deeper hue of red.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of face time with them since we’re in such close quarters,” I said as I jumped down and put them right back in his line of view. I patted his cheek placatingly and headed over to Jason for some hang time.
Giveaway
Enter to win one of five copies of "Pacifically You" by Christie A.C. Gucker.a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Available at Amazon, B&N, All Romance eBooks, and Smashwords. Also available in print at Amazon and CreateSpace.
8.27.2013
Giveaway - Fire Driven
Excerpt
Terrwyn lay on the flat of her back looking up at the glowing full moon that had risen high in the night sky. Her breath rasped in and out in foggy bursts as the icy salt water lapped at her boot covered feet. She knew she needed to move and make her way inland to build a fire. But she couldn’t.Not yet, she thought. Just let me lie here a moment longer.
She had spent more than two days rowing and drifting in the waters between her homeland and where she lay now. Her eyes were gritty and her lids heavy from lack of sleep. Her stomach felt hollow from having to ration the little food she carried and the drinking water she had brought had been washed into the sea the first day. Terrwyn sucked the insides of her cheeks in an attempt to generate enough saliva to help ease the dryness of her throat. The chill wetness of her journey hung about her so tightly, that it was hard to move. She flexed her fingers and dug into the cold sand under her palms as she forced her breathing to slow and her thoughts to steady.
Ireland, she thought wistfully, letting the wet grains squish through her fingers. Ireland... the land across the water, and the home of Brighid.
She smiled as she thought of the Goddess. The image of the auburn-haired deity gave her a spark of energy, and she pushed herself into a sitting position. Squinting to see into the moon splashed waves, Terrwyn watched as her small boat drifted back out into the currents.
I won’t be needing it anyway, she thought without regret.
There was no way that she would be going back home. With the help of the moon, stars, and currents, she had made it across the water to Ireland. Terrwyn had arrived in the place to which her father had vehemently refused to send her. He had bellowed and turned red when Terrwyn first told him about the dreams. He refused to believe the Brighid of old was speaking to her, calling her to come and be one of the Guardians of her Flame. He swore the Goddess no longer existed and her Flame now belonged to a Christian Saint. He insisted Terrwyn was being selfish and lying in order to avoid what was planned for her… shirking her duties and responsibilities as a daughter of his house. With the approach of her twentieth birthday, she was to be married to whoever would take her. After all, it wasn’t right for a girl her age to be unmarried. A good Welsh woman should have had at least two children running about her ankles by her twentieth birthday.
“Who’ll be marrying old Master Bowen now, father?” She laughed into the moonlit filled sky. “Not I… not this girl!”
Giveaway
Enter to win one of three copies of "Fire Driven" by Tracy Palmer.a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Giveaway - Heart of the Storm
Excerpt
It was good to be home despite the storm, because the last two weeks had been a bitch!
I’d been working for Ross/Young Oil Corporation as their Chief Marine Geologist for the last two years. What started off as a match made in heaven sadly deteriorated into a bickering, quarrelsome nightmare as the months went by. But hey, that was my job.
The oil rig circuit of the North Sea offers one of the harshest settings in the world. And the working environment for the more than one hundred souls usually found aboard the combined drilling and production platforms, presents some of the most perpetually hazardous conditions you’ll ever find.
Drawing extremely flammable fluids and gases out of the earth is perilous enough under the best of circumstances. But when you deliberately set light to it and begin a process of separating the highly poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas away from the extracted petroleum, well, you’re asking for trouble. Especially when you insist on conducting those procedures during storms that produce hurricane force winds with waves in excess of two hundred feet!
Talk about work involving a high pucker factor.
But it’s a multi-trillion dollar industry. The proportionally few number of deaths each year are always considered worth the risk of keeping that precious black gold flowing. And the risk was becoming ever more present. For as each year passed, companies drilled ever deeper into the earth to find what they craved.
As a workaholic, I’d operated out of the Geiger Four rig, one hundred and ten miles northeast of the Shetland Isles. She was a brand new design when it came to combined platforms. Capable of reaching over twenty thousand feet down into late Jurassic strata, she was the deepest working seaborne rig in existence.
Simply put, my job involved assessing the stability of local plate tectonics, and the impact drilling procedures would have on the existing local biosphere. I also had to calculate what to do to avoid obvious dangers. I would then make recommendations as to the best way operations could be conducted to reduce hazards, and minimize the harm inflicted on local flora and fauna.
I was one of the most highly, qualified experts in my field. My views and standards ensured I was always a royal pain in the ass.
But I’d never apologize for that. To me, the environment and safety were of paramount importance, and short cuts were a vulgarity never to be practiced in my presence.
It was a major factor as to why Ross/Young and I had fallen out.
The latest platform was cutting too deeply, too quickly.
Although the strata in that area had been relatively stable for millions of years and had formed a sizeable sedimentary crust, you still had to be careful piercing pockets of highly pressurized gas and oil. Especially one the size of the Geiger Four!
During my initial survey, I had assessed she would be capable of producing in excess of one hundred thousand barrels of oil daily, for the next twenty-five to thirty years. A colossal amount!
But she was deep. The highest pockets lay at nearly eighteen thousand feet. Too deep for my liking, with too much pressure potential to be safe. And much too risky when you considered the tenuous foothold nature had managed to gain in such an extreme environment.
Giveaway
Enter to win one of three copies of "Heart of the Storm" by Andrew P Weston.a Rafflecopter giveaway
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8.21.2013
Giveaway - Stealing Polina
Excerpt
You wouldn’t think it from looking at me—a glimpse of a thousand dollar business suit, a whiff of French cologne, and a flash of a platinum credit card—but honestly, sometimes my life is hell. I deal with idiots on a daily basis—those thickheaded simpletons of the underbelly who don’t truly appreciate the care that goes into crafting a beautiful Cuban cigar—and it taxes and wears me down.Some days I think, I’ll quit. I could easily sell my share of the family business for a couple billion dollars and move far, far away. I could easily damn myself, turn myself into the authorities for conducting shady deals for fifteen plus years. I do have a conscience somewhere deep down, although my brothers joke that I sold that a long time ago. I could right the wrongs of all my past deals, take the wealth away from the mob and bestow it back to the people, where it technically belongs—like some kind of urban Robin Hood.
I could do all of these things, if I cared to. Yet at the end of the day when I’m unwinding in my monstrous office with a glass of brandy and tying up the strings of a particularly satisfying business deal, I realize I don’t want to. Why should I stop getting what I want? Why should I stop luxuriating in the fact that I am a chosen one, a god of the skyscrapers? Yes, the path to success may be hell, but I know I’ll always get what I want in the end.
I am the youngest of three well-off brothers, spoiled from birth. Upon my father’s passing my brothers, Zach and Patrick, and I were bequeathed the entirety of his company. Cronus Industries—what a gift to behold! Cronus, which has been in my family for generations, has now expanded to owning the majority of the city. And its bounds seem to be limitless!
Being the oldest and favorite, Zach was given the largest share of my father’s legacy. Honestly, the whole “bigwig executive” routine works for him. Zach has the office with the best view. Zach has the penthouse. He’s married to Hera, an absolute stunner, and he’s fooling around with multiple gorgeous women. He plays the part well, with his blond hair, tan skin, and a megawatt-caliber smile of a two-bit game show host. He’s lightning quick with a witty comeback, and reporters love him. Zach physically represents the company, assuring that Cronus Industries is always presented in a positive light.
When Patrick took over his division of Cronus Industries, I was almost certain he had gotten the short straw in the deal. However, as the world plummeted blindly into a new millennium—the Y2K bug had scared the daylights out of the poor plebian masses—everyone seemed to grasp onto the idea of uniting in camaraderie, and the international division of our father’s company began to show promise. Under Patrick’s watchful gaze from his yacht, Neptune—he rarely conducts business from his office on land—our father’s dream has become a reality. One family can truly begin to “run” the world and its oceans.
Giveaway
Enter to win one of three copies of "Stealing Polina" by Danielle Villano.a Rafflecopter giveaway
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8.19.2013
Giveaway - From Dusk 'Til Dawn
Excerpt
The late afternoon sun slanted through the high windows of the silent Thraya, setting motes of dust aglow like tiny stars as they floated through the air and settled on the silken and velvet cushions and draperies. The single occupant of the enormous room ignored the finery around him. He shook his dark hair back off his shoulders, focusing on the book settled on his folded legs. He read in silence, the quiet broken only by an occasional faintly musical jingle. The source of the sound was the reader himself, as he shifted to turn pages, moving one hand forward and tucking the other behind his back with the ease of long practice. His movements made the jeweled chains that bound his wrists sparkle in the sunlight, casting blood-red shadows across the pages as he returned his palms to his thighs, fingertips just resting on the edges of the large tome.From somewhere overhead, a deep gong sounded. The reader looked up, his expression one of mild surprise. He took hold of the volume in both hands as he unfolded his legs and stood, his long silken loincloth fluttering down around his knees as he moved. He set the book down and turned away from the couch in time to see the heavy doors swing open, revealing an armored woman and a man carrying a tray.
“Lyander, I’m sorry I’m so late,” the man called as the guard pulled the door closed behind him. He moved toward a table, revealing a pronounced limp as he walked. He set the tray down on the table and started setting up the meal. “I hope you’re not too hungry?”
“Starved,” Lyander answered, smiling and coming over to the table. “I was starting to think I’d mislaid my days again and it was a fast day. Delan, what is happening out there? I could hear shouting from the garden when I went out to feed the birds, but nothing was clear and I don’t like to stay out there for very long.”
“Ah, never you mind it, Holiness.” Delan turned and leaned against the table. “It’s nothing. Some upstart warlady, the Holy Mother says.”
“A warlady marching against the Temple?” Lyander gasped. “Is she insane? Eldest Sister will take her apart!”
“So the Holy Mother says. So the Warrior grant. Eat now, while it’s still hot. Then perhaps we’ll see to other things...” Delan smiled, reaching out to brush his fingers over Lyander’s cheek. “There’s time before the sunset meditations.”
Giveaway
Enter to win one of three copies of "From Dusk 'Til Dawn" by Elizabeth Schechter.
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