Romance Novel Giveaways - Freebies and Giveaways of All Things Romance Romance Novel Giveaways: The Song That Seduced Paris by Cindy Irish ♥ Book Blitz & GIVEAWAY ♥ (Contemporary Romance)

Monday, December 7, 2015

The Song That Seduced Paris by Cindy Irish ♥ Book Blitz & GIVEAWAY ♥ (Contemporary Romance)




Opera gets sexy! American music mogul Teddy Wilson combines the beauty of opera with the marketability of pop and creates the pop-opera multinational singing group called “Bel Homme.” French for “Beautiful Man,” the four performers he chooses are much more than that.

Gabriel Grenier is already a huge celebrity in his native France, but even at the height of his career, he’s bored and lonely and still wants more, so he accepts Teddy’s offer, hoping it will become his redemption.

American music teacher Annie Morgan is brought into this venture by her Aunt Harriet, who’s Teddy’s executive assistant. Annie becomes Teddy’s special emissary in this new undertaking—but she’s not prepared for her instant attraction to the charismatic Gabriel. And he’s blindsided by the life-altering effect of Annie’s very first smile.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, because Teddy wants nothing personal mucking up this gig, and he forbids the two to get involved. Gabriel has never had to answer to anyone, and he’s not sure he wants to start now. Annie is still mourning her deceased husband’s memory, and she’s not sure of anything.

What happens when beautiful music meets predestined love? Seduction always wins.

Gabriel’s and Annie’s love story is the first book in this romantic, sexy Bel Homme Quartet. Don’t miss being there from the very beginning. Vive la France!







Annie held Gabriel’s hand as they strolled across the English countryside in the picturesque county of Kent. “What’s it like being one of the biggest celebrities in France?”

Gabriel answered without thinking. “Lonely.”

Annie softened. What an odd word to choose for the first one. “Is it fun?”

He watched his feet. She was going to do it. She was going to open him up and discover every answer she was looking for. “Usually.”

“Challenging?”

“Always. I don’t want a job that teaches me nothing.”

Illuminating, she thought. “So the easy choices don’t interest you.”

“Not at all. Even when I was young, I had an old man’s pride to balance a young man’s romantic spirit, and the belief I was given a gift that shouldn’t be squandered.”

“How old were you when you started acting?”

French chair and music...smaller
“Eight.”

Annie studied his profile. In this revealing light, he looked younger than his thirty-odd years, and a speck of that little boy was there behind the faint lines around his eyes. He was grown, but he still felt the weight of delivering the goods. “Did you go to a regular school?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Non, private tutors always.” 
“I want you to tell me what’s bothering you,” she said. They were getting closer to the trees. Out here, they were in the open. The forest would close them in. Maybe its cover would allow him to share his secrets, so she headed that way. “Don’t worry about how it looks or how it might sound.”

Gabriel watched a flock of birds flying overhead. This place really was soothing. So was the woman holding his hand. “How I look to the outside world and how I sound is all I always think about,” he admitted as she led him into the shade of the woods. Here it was different. Intimate and protected. The air was cooler, and everything smelled vibrant and fertile. He looked down at her. She was unlike any woman he knew. “I’m different with you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, feeling hot prickles climb up her back. When he aimed his charm and his energy at her, she found it hard to breathe.

je t'aime_Colleen Dietrich...cropped“I’m…normal,” he said. A leaf fell from a tree and landed on the rise of her breast. Good choice. That’s where he’d like to be. “I’m not my image or my reputation. I’m how I feel myself to be inside.” He couldn’t stop looking at that leaf. It fluttered with the rise and fall of her lungs, still clinging and unwilling to let go. “I’m accustomed to working with others in my acting, but with music it’s always been only me. I’m adjusting, Annie. This is entirely new to me, and I’m finding I still haven’t found that…is the American word pocket? You know, that place where I fit in.”

She smiled. “I think you mean niche.”

He stepped forward and smiled, too. “Yes, oui. My niche.” He moved closer, then closer, backing her up until she was against the tree trunk. He leaned a hand against the tree right next to her head, unable to stop looking down at her delicate, tempting body. He wanted to taste it. Assault it. Pleasure it. He wet his lips, then whispered her name, but she stuck to the business at hand.

“You know how it is when you sing?” she asked him, trying to maintain some semblance of control. “It’s physical, but you use your other senses, too?”

1-sensual-photo-of-man-and-woman-oleksiy-maksymenkosmallerHe did know. “Yes. I feel the music and the words before I let them out.”

“Precisely,” she said as he brought his hand down and reached. “Do…uh, that.” He stroked the slope of her breast. “Trust…your feelings…” Her eyes slid closed, and she saw sparkles of light: exploding stars. “What are…what are you doing?”

Gabriel’s voice was gruff. “I’ve been watching this leaf that fell on you and waiting for it to fall the rest of the way, but it likes you too much to leave.” He flicked the tip of his finger over her and it floated away in the air. “There. It’s free.” But he was captive, and now he knew: Annie was a battle he was losing. He leaned down and rested his forehead against hers…struggled to catch his breath. “We’d better go back.” He forced himself to lift away. “Make me go back.”

Annie’s awakening heart pounded with passion and desire, fear of her feelings making her move. Taking his hand again, she started them walking. “Do the job, Gabriel. There’s plenty of time for more.” Still, her eyes were drawn to his sculpted masculine profile. Beneath that cultured exterior beat the dark warning of an untamed beast, yet she craved to know that part of him. With him, she wanted it all. Oh yes, she may not have his worldly experience, but one thing she did know. If she unlocked that door, he’d sweep in and steal her heart away.





       









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Author Cindy Irish writes Contemporary, Paranormal, and Speculative romance fiction. She's a member of Romance Writers of America, as well as the Mid-Michigan and Greater Detroit chapters. Cindy lives in Michigan with her family. For more information about her work, visit her website at http://www.cindyirish.com


As you can see, I was a happy, carefree child.
ChildhoodPhoto IIObviously, I had a fabulous fashion sense
that touted the stunning charms
of short-sleeved patterned shirts
with earthy grime around the neckline. 
I completed my farm-girl assemble
with the practical flair of bib overalls.
It made for frustrating tinkle breaks,
I’m sure, but then it never bound me at the
waist, either. 
You’d think for that reason alone I could have at least unfurrowed my
brows and cracked a smile, wouldn’t you? 
Maybe it was that hideous hair.
My kinky hairstyle was totally fabricated by the application
of a very bad perm, as I have naturally straight locks.
The overall sweaty look of it was created by the hot and humid
temperatures of a sultry Michigan summer. My mother could
never trim my bangs in a straight line, and as a result,
to this day no one but me cuts my hair in front. 
Trust once betrayed leaves deep repercussions.
I don’t remember what happened to that bunny in my arms,
but I wouldn’t be surprised if my older devil-brother
buried him alive years ago.
Actually, I don’t remember being as testy
as I look up there, either, but the camera doesn’t lie. 
Nonetheless, this is my favorite photograph of myself
because it never fails to make me laugh—and I love to laugh.
There’s nothing more entertaining than human beings, is there? 
Not even puppies. 
Sam.jpg full size.jpg croppedWell, okay, except maybe puppies.
love puppies, especially Old English Sheepdogs.
This is our dearly-missed Sam,
or Lady Samantha Amber as she was formally titled.
I like Golden Retrievers, too.
I love cats—and, it seems, the mangier the better.
I’ve always adopted strays someone else has abandoned.

My childhood consisted of playing cars in the sand
and making up stories starring my paper dolls.
Even then, I was a Romance Writer-in-Training.  
Cindy's Kindergarten PictureBefore I turned five and posed for this equally giddy-looking
picture here, I’d sit at a table—any table—and play it
like a piano, so it was decided to get me a real one
(a piano, not my very own table) and see what I could do. 
I took piano lessons from Mrs. Draveling for many, many years.
She was a strict instructor who insisted I learn the classical composers only.
No Broadway show tunes for Cindy. 
For that I’m extremely grateful because today I love classical music.
In my pre-teens, I took organ lessons from Professor Romeo Fracalanza
whose home always smelled like garlic bread and Chianti. In retrospect,
I think that must have been when I fell in love with everything Italian.
I remember looking out his beautiful beveled glass windows as I played.
He was born in Piombino Bese, Italy, and his teacher was the organist
at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. How cool is that? I was a lucky little girl
to have him as my teacher, and I was blessed to have known him. 
piano lessons...smallMy first job was in fourth grade when I became a church organist. 
I wanted to become a nun, but I hate being told what to do, 
so I scratched that idea pretty fast.
(Don’t act so surprised. Look at those two pictures
above again. Is that the face of a peaceful, pious person?)
Anyway, music has always been a big part of my life. 
I sang and wrote music. I wrote poetry. 
I read all the time—the library was one of my favorite places.
Laced-hand-holding-pen___smallerNow, I write all the time. 

I honed a lot of my skills as a copywriter creating radio commercials. You think it’s easy coercing the public in sixty seconds or less to buy a product?
Think again, unaware consumers. 
That kind of writing sharpens the brain cells and focuses the mind to turn emotion
and need into a blur of mass shopping ejaculation. 
(Using snappy double entrendres is a given with romance writers.)  
Then in my late teens,
I picked up an astrology book,

and that’s all it took.

In a flash, 
 I was well and truly hooked.
I sound like a metaphysical Dr. Seuss
But this is sincerely true: I’m very serious about the subject of the stars and the planets, and how their magnetic energies affect and correlate with everything on our earth.
I’ve studied with the best astrologers in the business, and I’ve taught adult education astrology classes and had my own astrological radio program. I’m one of only a handful of astrologers who uses the INCARN program to calculatenatal charts. (This fact should tell you that the rest of them look on INCARNwith a mixture of patient humor, subtle skepticism, and thinly-veiled disdain.)
Astrologer's room...smallerThe theory of soul-based natal charts, rather than birthtime charts, is mentioned in some of Edgar Cayce’s readings,and the computer program toimplement them was created by my mentor, the late John Willner. The ancient algorithm itself can be traced back to a British woman who used it to formulate spiritual-birth charts at the turn of the 20th century, but beyond that, I have no further knowledge of its true origin. I only know that THIS is the astrology of the future.
So the music and the metaphysics in my background explain the subject matter in my writing today. My romantic heart, I attribute to being a water sign with a very heavy emphasis on Pisces.
For years, it never occurred to me to try writing romance.
Now it seems impossible not to.
Whether my setting is contemporary or paranormal, the tales are super sexy, witty, sentimental, and uplifting. I want you to smile and sigh when you finish the last page.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to have you read and enjoy the stories I’ve been privileged and honored to have come through me. See, although I reached up through the frail barrier of the collective imagination and claimed them as my own, they’re not really mine. 
But knowing that doesn’t keep me from joyfully passing them on to you… 
keywithribbonsmall



   


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@Cindy_Irish @NotebkBlogairy @DiiBylo http://goo.gl/7atK3M pic.twitter.com/gc8QV45NKB

20 comments :

  1. Question for the author: where is your favorite place to write and get ideas from?

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  2. My ideas appear like phantom gifts of energy. I have no idea where they come from.

    But once they do, I love research. I love to LIVE my research. I wrote the first book of a trilogy featuring psychic remote viewers and Pleiadians and UFOs. To prepare, I attended a class in Toronto, Canada about Remote Viewing, given by the laser physicist who helped develop the program for the U.S. government during the Cold War. Let me tell you, when you do it, you feel it. Then you write about what you felt. I also visited a well-known UFO ranch numerous times in Washington and saw for myself what is really up there.

    As for THE SONG THAT SEDUCED PARIS? Well, one question. Have you ever heard of the pop-opera group called Il Divo? I heard them sing for the first time about ten years ago. Their talent is inspiring. Then I met them. Up close and personal, their masculine charisma hits you in the face and makes your heart leap. I took all that energy and made up four stories (books) about characters who are even better than the real thing. And that's saying something!

    I can't write when I'm on vacation. I write a lot in my head before I get out of bed in the morning. I write at my keyboard just about every day in a tiny little room with no windows. I need quiet when I write. I also get great ideas in the shower, the grocery store, when I'm ironing, vacuuming, and driving.

    When I'm writing my love scenes, I drink. Not a lot. Just enough. Grey Goose. Chivas. Wine. Depends on my mood and the dude.

    Thank you for asking, Natalie. ~ Cindy

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  3. Sexy Santa... would be M.Shadows dressed in nothing but Santa's hat ;)

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  4. Which authors do you like to read?

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    Replies
    1. I have favorites that I read over and over again. LaVyrle Spencer never disappointed, except when she stopped writing.

      Check out Tom & Sharon Curtis. (Oldies out of the past, to be sure. You might have to search in the used book stores.) I read THE GOLDEN TOUCH (written as Robin James) and LIGHTENING THAT LINGERS (written as Laura London) over and over again.

      I re-read Linda Howard's THE MACKENZIE FAMILY SERIES a lot.

      One of my all-time favorite books: MARIAH by Sandra Canfield. She died many years ago.

      Nora Roberts is my idol. I worship her MacGregor books.

      I really enjoy JR Ward's Black Brotherhood books, especially Wrath's book and then Zsadist's story.

      For sheer writing poetry, I haven't read one of Carla Kelly's books that aren't excellent. She's a writer other romance writers appreciate.

      And Suzanne Brockmann's TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS Navy SEALs books are ones I pick up all the time to re-read.

      I lost my romance reader's virginity on Jude Deveraux's A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR. You never forget your first romance novel, do you? I bet you remember yours, too!

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  5. Thinking of sexy Santa brought "I Saw Mommy Kissin' Santa Claus" to mind.

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  6. My idea of a sexy Santa is if he has a great body, sensual voice and can also speak with his eyes. A little like George Clooney in his ER days.

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  7. My sexy Santa would be my hubby dressed in only a Santa hat laying in front of the fireplace waiting for me with a glass of spiced cider. ;)

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  8. What are your holiday plans?

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  9. Mine are cooking, eating, and drinking. And writing. I'll probably write something even on that day.

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  10. Hey there, Cindy! Those titles sound great. What went into constructing them, stringing the words together? (Did it take a bottle of wine? He he.) I know (most?) writers have working titles. Did your final ones come to you before, after, or while writing the books?

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    Replies
    1. Believe it or not, Kanoko, I didn't give titles to my four Bel Homme books for a couple years while I was writing them. Just I, II, III, IV. Kind of like the lead character in the movie HITMAN.

      Also, your character's name is all-important, I think. If you give a character the wrong name, they WILL tell you. It'll slow down your writing. Once you find out what their correct name is, though, the character blooms.

      I love picking out my own title name. I would hate to have someone from New York rename one of my book titles.

      Sometimes a string of words or hearing a random name will actually give you a story idea. An example: I was sitting at a lecture given by a UFO expert in Arizona a few years ago. His last name was Sprinkles. I totally stopped listening to what he was saying and started writing in my head. Her name became Daisy Sprinkles, and she took off from there. That's going to be one of my future books.

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  11. Do you ever base your characters on people you know in real life?

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    Replies
    1. Hi Shannon!
      My Bel Homme books were inspired by Il Divo. Do you know who they are? Simon Cowell formed the group. So my characters aren't the members, but they were inspired by the members.

      My romance book about Edgar Cayce (Mr. Cayce's Couch) was inspired by his legacy. The supermodel heroine in the book was inspired by Kathy Ireland. The hotel I feature was inspired by Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, which is the same hotel where SOMEWHERE IN TIME was filmed. For this book, I did use a real person, but the circumstances surrounding her are fictitious in many ways. Gladys Davis was Edgar Cayce's stenographer and a wonderful woman. A character is based directly on her reputation and persona.

      I'm publishing that completed book as soon as I'm done with my four Bel Homme books.

      My sixth book MALLY BLUE & BEAU will be published after that. It's already-written as well. That was inspired by my interest in Remote Viewing and UFOs. My characters aren't just one person, though. They're the result of many, many people I mix together to create new ones.

      Writers really are mad scientists when you get right down to it.

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  12. I loved Dean Cain on the Frazier episode where Roz fell in love with Santa.

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  13. What is your favorite genre to read? And what is your favorite to write? Thank you.

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  14. Hi Ree Dee,

    Thanks for this question. I like it.

    Am I the only reader who hates to be boxed in to a specific genre? What I mean by this is that I like a book that smashes boundaries. That has everything. Suspense, humor, angst, nostalgia, passion - OUT-OF-CONTROL PASSION - mundane circumstances. All rolled into one.

    It doesn't matter to me if the characters involved are vampires, soldiers, or cowboys. Their individual personas are all acceptable if the writing is good.

    I'll read anything. I don't look at a so-called genre. If a writer is good, she will grab me and take me on a ride that I'll love.

    As a writer, I feel the same way. I want my story to have a little of everything, just like real life.

    The exact type the character is means nothing to me.

    I HATE being compartmentalized as both a reader and a writer.

    I understand the logical reasoning, though. Where does the book fit on a shelf? But I fight it every step of the way.

    If I had to pick a favorite, it would be a genre that doesn't actually exist yet: real life with magical, mystical elements. See, my issue is that I don't believe esoteric happenings in life are unusual. I think they're common and happen to everyday people, so I write this type of story arc, but I do it in a way that's normal, not paranormal or fantasy.

    I think as we evolve in our spiritual development, our reading habits and outlooks will change with our inner growth. Books labeled paranormal won't jive with our inner opinions anymore. There won't be a need to create labels that hinder how we really are.

    My favorite genre to read and write is the unnamed genre of the future.

    I will share an aspect of genres I don't like and will never write. I don't care for stories that are dark and kill the spirit. I hate stories that leave you feeling sad, depressed, unfulfilled, angry. I really dislike authors who end their stories - even in a series - way too soon. I want them to take their time with their endings.

    I don't mind violent stories. However, the ending damn well better include justice for the victim and total punishment for the criminal.

    I want to live in light. I want to write in light. I want you to sigh when you turn my last page.

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  15. I'm not sure if I can think of Santa as sexy, so here goes my question:
    I've always wondered about this, since I love to reread my favourite books. Can you get any pleasure from reading your own books or does knowing the story so well ruin the fun for you?

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  16. I'm just like you, Freya. I have favorite books that I re-read all the time. If I'm flying, I take one of my old standbys. Linda Howard's Mackenzie family stories never get old. The same with Suzanne Brockmann's Navy SEALs series. Nora Roberts' MacGregor stories are longtime friends. I especially like her Ireland series.

    As for my books? I have read The Bel Homme series at least a hundred times each, mainly because I revise so much since I'm a perfectionist. That's a conservative estimate. Do I get tired of them? No. That's how I know they're special - at least, to me.

    My favorite books are those that offer something new every time you read them. Some books are like that. They're so multi-layered, you need to read them more than once to capture all their magic. Books - the ones that become old friends - may not be made of soft, snuggly material, but they can keep you feeling warm, safe, and secure just the same.

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  17. my idea of a sexy santa is a guy who is smart caring and genuinely interested in my and listens

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