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giveaway – Page 242 – Luv Saving Money

Home Town Girl Again Book Tour & Giveaway

 

 


Hometown
Girl Again
Hometown
Series Book 5
by
Kirsten Fullmer
Genre:
Romance
 
How
did I end up so broken? It’s a question Katherine can’t answer.
First, a surprise inheritance tipped her life upside-down, and now
her new RV park is a muddy mess of half-restored trailers. To make
matters worse, she’s falling for her first crush all over again.
The only thing she’s sure of at this point is a full-blown identity
crisis. 

 

 

 

Alex
came home after a life-threatening wound ended his Army career. Now
Katie is back too, and she’s building something called a glamping
park? He feels like he let her down years ago, can he make it up to
her now? Or are his own problems too much to handle?

 

 

Fate
brought Katherine and Alex back to Smithville, and the town-folk want
to see them together again. Will the couple be able to cope with the
locals well-intentioned meddling, or did their chance at love
disappear a long time ago…

 

 

 


Other
Books in the Series:

Hometown
Girl at Heart
Hometown
Series Book 1

Hometown
Girl After All
Hometown Series Book 2

Hometown
Girl Forever
Hometown Series Book 3

Christmas
in Smithville
The Hometown Series
Book 4
 
 
Kirsten
grew up in the Western US and graduated from high school in
1984. She married soon there after and quickly built a family.
With three young children and number four on the way, she returned to
college in 1992. Her career as a draftsman included many settings
ranging from a steel fabrication shops to prestigious engineering
firms. Balancing family life with the workplace forced her to
become the queen of multitasking. In 2001, bored with the cubical
life, she moved on to teach drafting in technical college, then to
opening her own consulting firm teaching 3D engineering software. Due
to health problems, Kirsten retired in 2012 to travel with her
husband for his job. She now works writing romance novels and enjoys
spoiling her three grandchildren. Since 2017 Kirsten has lived and
worked full time in a 40′ travel trailer with her husband and her
little dog Bingo.
 
Relieved to have found all the items on her list, Katherine offered the clerk a
shy smile and collected her bags. The place was really more of a small town
mercantile than a hardware store, being the only store in town that offered more
than groceries, and she was glad they saw fit to carry a bit of everything.
When she reached the door, lugging her supplies, she was surprised to see
Alex through the glass. He was heading across the parking lot toward her, carrying a
small black and white dog, and his characteristic swagger looked more like a limp as
he wrestled with the puppy.
Jumping back, her head whipped from one side to the other, looking for a
place to hide.
Alex marched into the store, and she ducked behind a rack of men’s overalls.
Holding her breath, she crouched and peeked between the overall straps. The little
black dog had an adorable smiling face, and her heart melted, but then she noticed
Alex’s blustery expression. The puppy wriggled in his grip, and he turned her way.
Her arm shot out to grab a straw hat from the rack, and she plopped it on her
head, hoping it would hide her sweaty, lopsided bun.
The dog barked and squirmed, and it was obvious that Alex needed help, but
Katherine knew she was a sweaty mess, and she probably looked like she’d just
rolled out of bed, since she had, not to mention she smelled like gasoline after
spilling on her grubby pants when she filled her can at the gas station earlier.She’d made a big enough fool of herself already, and she wasn’t eager to
repeat the disgrace, so she hunched lower behind the rack, watching with only one
eye showing from under the hat
Alex was far too busy wrestling the dog to notice her, so she stayed silent,
watching as they passed. Before she could make her move toward the door,
however, the dog escaped Alex’s arms and bound down the aisle. Alex reached out,
scrambling for the puppy, but lost his balance and fell sideways into a rack of garden
trowels that clattered and crashed to the floor.
Dropping her bags, Katherine hurried to his side to see if he was okay. When
she reached him, his expression was dark as the devil, so she hesitated, pulling her
hand back. “Want me to get the dog?” she asked timidly, and he nodded, so she
turned away. Worried about Alex, she glanced nervously over her shoulder, but he
was already back on his feet, righting the rack, so she hurried after the puppy.
The little dog hadn’t gone far when she spotted him assaulting a display of
chips and other snacks. By the time she reached his side, the puppy had a package of
jerky in his mouth.
She scooped up the dog, unable to keep from laughing at his antics. “You’re a
naughty one, aren’t you!” she chided, watching the puppy chew on jerky. As cute as
he was, she had to wonder why Alex had brought him to the store, and without a
leash. “I didn’t take Alex for the dog type,” she mumbled to herself.
“I’m not,” Alex growled, from behind her, causing her to whirl around in
surprise. He reached for the dog.She handed over the puppy, appraising Alex’s face and mood. “Can I help?”
she asked before her brain clicked into gear. Here she’d been relieved that he hadn’t
seen her, and now she couldn’t help but jump square into his business.
“You don’t— need to do that,” he assured her, his words jarred and
interrupted by the wriggling dog. Then over the dog, he eyed her in question with
one brow raised.
She squared her shoulders. She knew she looked a sight, but he was being flat
out rude. “Would he sit in a shopping cart?” she wondered out loud.
Alex glanced toward the front of the store, then back. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll grab you one,” she offered, then hurried away without waiting for his
reply. By the time she returned, Alex looked ready to strangle the puppy with his
bare hands, so Katherine reached out and took the dog, and put him in the cart.
At first, the little dog seemed confused and frightened, but once he got his
bearings and put his front paws on the end of the cart, he seemed happy enough. His
oversized ears perked with curiosity and his tongue lolled from the side of his
mouth, accentuating his goofy grin.
Alex stared at the dog, obviously unhappy, then his gaze turned to her. “Nice
hat.”
Horrified that she was still wearing the stupid straw hat, she yanked it off her
head and tossed it onto a shelf. “How old is he?” she asked, motioning toward the
dog, hoping to take Alex’s attention away from her.
“Hell if I know,” he grumbled, glaring down at the puppy.
Her questioning glance swung from the puppy back to his face.

“I just got him yesterday. From my nieces.”
“Oh,” she replied, wondering why someone would give a dog to a person who
didn’t want one.
For a moment it looked as if Alex would explain, but his mouth clamped
closed, and his brows lowered into a glower, so she left it alone. Taking a step back,
she motioned toward the door. “I better get moving, but…” she hesitated, then
continued. “Feel free to bring him out to the RV park if you need to. I’m sure we can
find a place for him to play while you work.”
“I’m here to get him a leash and a play yard, but,” Alex ‘s gaze came to hers,
and her discomfort caused his expression to soften, “I appreciate the offer. I wasn’t
sure what to do with him, to be honest.”
She was relieved to see him calm down. “It’s not a problem; I’ll see you in a
while then.” With a wave she turned away and headed toward the door, hoping he
didn’t see her collect her things from behind the overalls.

 

Followthe tour HERE

for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!

 

 

 

 

Addictarium Book Tour & Giveaway

ADDICTarium
The
War Stories Chronicles 1
by
Nicole D’Settemi
Genre:
Memoir
 
Drugs.
Sex. Detox. Art. Recovery. Prostitution. Music. Street life. Poetry.
Toxic love. And, those are just on the surface. The layers and
complexities of Addictarium will shock and enthrall you…

 

 

When
wild-child, and south Florida escapee, Danielle Martino finds herself
curled in a ball on the cold tile floors of her filthy rank bathroom
in the tiny studio she rents with her fiancé and partner-in-crime,
she knows it’s time to quit abusing heroin. Severely impaired from
shooting a bad batch of black tar heroin, and already partially blindfrom the infection that the muddy poison has caused, she is forced to
hitch a greyhound bus to New York City, and to abandon her care-free,
American-bohemian, drug infested life-style.

 

Hailed
everywhere as a beautiful, unique, honest, raw and poetic account of
recovery, Addictarium takes readers on a compelling journey through
the life and eyes of the narrator; a creative, nomadic, deep–but,
incidentally broken–young woman, and underlines the contributing
factors to what it’s really like to suffer from addiction. With
magnificent candor–and sometimes emotionally crippling
descriptions–we witness Danielle’s fight towards recovery from more
than just heroin, as Addictarium brings the readers on a fascinating
and harrowing, brutal tale of a young women’s recovery from total and
mass self-destruction.

 

–Addictarium
highlights in the starkest of lights, why it is so difficult for
addicts to receive the recovery they seek, when they finally do
decide to put the drug down.

 

 

 
 

 

 
 
Author
Nicole D’Settēmi is
a 33 year old writer, currently living in upstate New York. She has
lived in five regions nationally, including South Florida and New
York City. She has always been a self-described “poetic,
nomadic, creative soul,” and is an enthusiast of a variety of
artistic mediums, but considers writing her number one form of art,
and feels everything else is just an extension of that passion and
creative outlet.
Nicole
was raised in Niagara Falls, a tiny town bordering Canada, and can
remember being as young as six, when writing her first lyrical, and
philosophical poems. She specifically pin-points two pieces during
those years, titled “If I Ruled the World,” and “If
the World Ended.” She also points out being selected at 6, for the
“Young Authors Club,” which was a city-wide project.
Nicole
won two city-wide essay contests between the ages 9-11, which was
when she received her first typewriter and then she started a
fan-club and newsletter for her childhood hero, as well as penning
letters to over 30 pen-pals internationally. She also had a poem
named “And So It Begins” published which was written at 12.
Though
Nicole (who was an honor student) rebelled by 15, and was
incidentally expelled from school, she still wrote habitually. She
once showed her “alternative-school” teacher a poem titled:
“That’s Life,” which she penned at 14. He was so impressed
with the piece; he had it faxed to every school in the city.
At
16 Nicole was uprooted from her small town and moved to Boca Raton,
where she felt displaced and started to deal with depression.
Hereditarily, mental illness and substance abuse ran rapid in her
family tree, and by 20 she experimented with a plethora of chemical
substances. By 23, she became addicted to shooting heroin, and was
engaged to her co-conspirator and partner-in-crime. She attended an
art school for photo journalism, but withdrew half-way through the
year, due to a devastating addiction to injecting various drugs.
Addictarium
was written while she spent two years in a therapeutic community for
seriously addicted, and mentally ill, patrons. The author outlines
her experiences, including the tale of losing her eyesight due to
shooting a poisoned bag of heroin, which is when she was forced to
hitch a greyhound bus from South Florida to Manhattan, and after
several weeks of surgeries, was admitted to Daytop Village for
long-term treatment, and drug addiction recovery. The book outlines
many of the experiences she went through in the second phase of
treatment, which she dubbed “the village,” because of its
extreme and eccentric melting pot of personalities.
During
her tenure at Daytop, Nicole separated with her fiancé, and while in
her stay at the recovery program in Queens New York, met her current
fiancé, who was initially her substance abuse counselor. The book is
also highly reflective of their relationship and its roots.
Nicole credits the Latin, Brooklyn-bred counselor, 18 years her
senior, with “saving her from herself.”
Nicole can now be found
residing in the Poughkeepsie area with her fiancé, Miguel. They are
both artists, and run a modest side business creatively assisting
those in need of artistic direction digitally. Nicole is currently
planning to eventually pen a prequel to Addictarium. She is also
outlining a third individual novel, Narssitopia, which she
claims will be a “psycho-dramatic thriller.”
 

Follow
the tour HEREfor exclusive content and a giveaway!







 



 

Bad Romance The Enforcer Book Tour & Giveaway

The
Enforcer
Bad
Romance Book 2
by
Shanna Bell
Genre:
Contemporary Mafia Romance
 
HIM…

 

In
real life, the Beast doesn’t end up with Beauty. 

 

So
I have to stay away from her.

 

 

Even
if it will kill me to see her with another man.

 

 

HER…

 

He
thinks I can’t handle him.

 

 

But
I know what I want.

 

 

I
will wear him down if it’s the last thing I do.

 

 

Game
on…

 

 

Disclaimer:

 

*
contains adult language and (explicit) steamy scenes

 

*
the male mc loves to swear (the female mc is working on his
f-bombs)

 

*
can be read as a standalone

 

**On
Sale Now!!**
 
I
like reading and writing about sassy women who can save themselves
and alpha men with a heart of gold (sometimes). Yay to insta-lust,
nay to insta-love.

 

 

If
you’re into romantic suspense, happily ever afters, and some steam
(ok, sometimes a LOT of steam) try one of my books!

 

 
 

Follow
the tour HERE

for exclusive content and a giveaway!







 



All Systems Down Book Tour & Giveaway

All
Systems Down
by
Sam Boush
Genre:
Cyber Thriller
 
24
hours.

 

That’s all it takes.

 

A new kind of war has begun.

 

 

Pak
Han-Yong’s day is here. An elite hacker with Unit 101 of the North
Korean military, he’s labored for years to launch 

Project
Sonnimne
:
a series of deadly viruses set to cripple Imperialist
infrastructure.

 

 

And
with one tap of his keyboard, the rewards are immediate.

 

 

Brendan
Chogan isn’t a hero. He’s an out-of-work parking enforcement officer
and one-time collegiate boxer trying to support his wife and
children. But now there’s a foreign enemy on the shore, a blackout
that extends across America, and an unseen menace targeting
him.

 

 

Brendan
will do whatever it takes to keep his family safe.

 

 

In
the wake of the cyber attacks, electrical grids fail, satellites
crash to earth, and the destinies of nine strangers
collide.

 

 

Strangers
whose survival depends upon each other’s skills and courage.
 

 

For
fans of Tom Clancy, ALL SYSTEMS DOWN is a riveting cyber war thriller
which presents a threat so credible you’ll be questioning reality.

 





Sam
Boush is a novelist and award-winning journalist.

 

 

He
has worked as a wildland firefighter, journalist, and owner of a
mid-sized marketing agency. Though he’s lived in France and Spain,
his heart belongs to Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife,
Tehra, two wonderful children, and a messy cat that keeps them from
owning anything nice.

 

 

He
is a member of the Center for Internet Security, International
Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, and Cloud
Security Alliance.

 

 

ALL
SYSTEMS DOWN is his first novel, with more to come.

 



Chapter 1
Sirens blared across all twenty-five decks of the USS Gerald R. Ford.
Lieutenant Kelly Seong grabbed her flight suit from the wall and slipped inside, practiced hands
buckling the straps of her Aramid coveralls. “A goddamned drill at 4 a.m.,” she mumbled as she
attached her flotation vest and checked her oxygen mask and survival gear. Not that she really
needed to. The equipment hadn’t changed since her last flight five hours earlier. But protocol
kept her alive.
Red lights flashed, and the boing, boing, boing of the alarm ricocheted along the corridors of the
ship. Sailors ran to stations. A petty officer shouted orders to passing swabbies. Despite the
cacophony, men and women hurried through the upper decks with purpose. General Quarters
drills occurred frequently. Every Jack and Jill on the Ford supercarrier had an assigned station
and knew where to be.
Well, nearly everyone. Kelly exhaled sharply. Where the fuck was Orion?
“You seen Beetlejuice?” she asked a cadre of her squadron mates. The men shrugged and
raced on, a playing-card spade peeking out from the back of the flight helmets they carried
under their arms. They were Black Aces. First to fight, first to strike.
Orion, as far as she was concerned, hadn’t yet earned the ace on his helmet. He was what they
called a “nugget,” a first-tour aviator fresh from naval flight training. Technically, he was her
weapons systems officer. The wizzo. In the cockpit of their Super Hornet, he engaged air-to-air
or ground targets and operated the laser- and satellite-guided ordnance. In a “turn and burn,”
Kelly would make the turn while he dropped the burn. She would if he were any good.
Unfortunately, he was as green as a grasshopper’s right nut. And here she was, expected to
mentor the bastard.
She checked his bunk then the hangar deck. Alarms blasted too loudly to call for him, and the
rush of hundreds of sailors made it hard to spot his little cornbread head. The other airmen of
the Black Aces beat feet to the ready room. GQ brought the supercarrier alive, even in the dead
of night.
Not that the ship ever really slept; 24 hours a day, the “Jerry” hummed with activity. At any given
time, two-thirds of the four thousand souls aboard would be awake, working on the floating
fortress currently cruising two hundred miles east of Honolulu.
Kelly beelined past the flight lockers toward the ready room where the rest of the squadron
would already be waiting. If her wizzo couldn’t get his ass in the saddle he’d suffer the
consequence. Over her career, she’d seen better pilots than him wash out.
She peered in the ready room. Not there. Then back to the lockers.
“Jesus, what time is it?” Orion Bether shouted above the din, in that whiny voice that set Kelly’s
fist to balling up all on its own.He slinked over to his locker and was now making a hash of getting into his flight suit. Just like a
fucking nugget.
She punched him in the shoulder. “Beetlejuice!” she shouted. “Where the fuck you been? You
look like shit, by the way.”
“Ouch!” He groaned, massaging his shoulder.
Like Kelly, Orion had been pulling twelve-hour shifts, though that was no excuse for the bags
under his eyes and his generally un-shipshape appearance. His sandy blonde hair, short and
squared, still managed to stand up like a sailor’s happy sock after a six-month deployment. He
dropped one of his Nomex flight gloves, revealing, most glaringly, that his flight suit hadn’t been
fastened at the crotch.
“It’s balls thirty. And for fuck’s sake, if you’re going to button salute a boat goat, at least get her
to buckle you up at the end.”
Orion reached down and cursed, fumbling to pull the strap closed while juggling his helmet and
flotation vest. Kelly didn’t wait for him, leading the way to the ready room. He hopped after her.
“She’s no boat goat, Moonshot. She’s a 2-10-2 if I’ve ever seen one.” Then he laughed that
obnoxious cackle of his. A girl who was just a two on a scale of ten when on land could easily
be a ten out on deployment, where the ratio of men to women was forty-to-one. When they got
back to land she’d be a two again. Few Navy men were below fucking an ugly girl at sea.
“Listen up!” The call spun them around in salute. Mike Montez stepped into the room right
behind Kelly and Orion. The squadron commander was a short guy, black hair, usually calm as
a pickle in a salt bath. But in the light of the hangar deck, his dark cheeks were flushed, eyes
excited. “Black Aces,” he said, “this is not a drill. I’m going to repeat myself. This is not a drill.”
“Sir,” Kelly said. “The call on-speakers sounds a lot like a training exercise.” During a true GQ,
loudspeakers would call all hands to man their battle stations. Tonight, there’d been nothing but
sirens.
“Chrissakes, Lieutenant Seong. I know what I know, and we’re buns to our guns. Maybe they’re
having some technical difficulties up on the island.”
That drew some laughter. The Admiral sat up in the island—the control tower rising above the
flight deck—and wherever he went, clusterfucks seemed to follow.
“I don’t know much, but here’s what I got,” Montez continued, sweeping his gaze across the
eighteen pilots in front of him. He bit his lip and smiled, like he was about to give them some
good news. “Ten minutes ago, at zero-four-hundred hours, our radar sweeps caught more blips
than your collective wives have boyfriends. And they’re moving in on our position. It might be
nothing. Might be seagulls or flying peckers. But, sonafabitch, it looks a lot like bogies. I don’t
have more details than that. So get in your birds and beat wings west. Stand by for orders when
you’re airborne.” He clapped his hands. “To stations!”Halle-fuckin’-lujah. It wasn’t a drill. Maybe she’d actually get to see some real action, for the first
time in years.
“Lieutenant Seong. Lieutenant Bether.” Commander Montez stopped Kelly as she advanced on
the exit. “Hold up.” While the other pilots, flight engineers, and wizzos ran out of the ready room,
Kelly and Orion pressed in close to their commander. “Brush and Wildfire are coming off a
training run. Their bird is hitting the trap in two minutes. She’s got live ordnance and half a tank
of fuel, at most. I want you two to take her up the minute she lands.”
“A hot switch?” Orion asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant. Now get your asses up and aft.” He tore out of the ready room, leaving them
alone.
“I’ve never done a hot switch,” Orion confessed.
“Then this is on-the-job training.” Kelly helped Orion into his flotation vest, then handed him his
helmet. “How fast can you run, sailor?” The question was rhetorical, and she didn’t wait for him
to answer before dashing up to the hangar deck. Orion fell in, close behind.
Kelly had performed hot switches many times and didn’t feel any nerves. It meant that she and
Orion would have just three minutes to switch out with the landing flight team. They’d forgo the
normal preflight checks and would have less fuel. The bonus was they’d be lead jet in this foray
—and Kelly loved to lead.
Sprinting through a narrow corridor on the hangar deck, she located the ladder to the flight deck.
A sailor, running the opposite direction, clipped her with his shoulder. Dozens more men pushed
past. The siren wobbled and shifted. A grinding noise now.
Why had the general quarters alarm changed? It didn’t matter. With both hands she grabbed the
rails and ascended to the surface of the supercarrier, into the October night.
The flight deck of the Jerry shone through the darkness, illuminated with a thousand bulbs. A
vibrant city. A red-light district at night. Officers and mates hopped over the lighted pathways.
Adrenaline seeped through her, pulsing in her veins. She hoped, as she slowed to a safer
speed, that the fight would last long enough for her to get in a few good hits.
Starboard, the six-story island dominated the landscape, the most prominent structure on an
otherwise flat surface. From there, the air boss and mini boss would direct the dozens of F-35C
Lightning II and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet aircraft that shuttled across the deck, ready to catapult
into the sky. She scooted past the island, around munitions in large, white bins and over cables,
following markings to where she’d rendezvous with her own multirole fighter jet.
Sweat dripped down her face, though whether from the heat or anticipation she couldn’t tell.
Even two days before Halloween, the North Pacific sizzled. In a lot of ways, it felt like her
hometown, only hotter. And muggier.

What time is it back in Duluth, anyway? It had to be early afternoon. Mom would be working the
phones to sell combines and tillage equipment to small-acreage Georgia farmers. Pop would be
out buying sweet plum candy for the trick-or-treaters.
Kelly forced away thoughts of home. She needed to focus.
More sailors swarmed the deck of the supercarrier, like a thousand bees in a shook-up Coke
can, zipping to stations. Every man had a purpose, his role indicated by his shirt. Maintenance
guys, hook runners, and catapult crews wore a forest green vest over a somewhat lighter green
shirt. Chock and chains wore blue. Purples supplied fuel. Red shirts loaded bombs. But to Kelly,
they were all faceless nobodies that existed for the sole purpose of getting her bird ready to fly.
There was only one thing Kelly liked about the Navy. Flying.
Everything else about this service branch sucked. Two weeks out of port and the food started to
taste like preservatives and powder. The racks stunk. The showers were so small the crew
called them “rain lockers.” And then there were the shower bunnies—clusters of hair, grime, and
semen that stopped up the drains.
But flight was life.
Nothing on earth compared to soaring at eleven-thousand feet and watching the target
approach in an instant. Flights were long, and the payoff was short. But nothing made her feel
alive like rolling in over the bad guys at Mach One, pushing that button, and watching ordnance
erupt below.
Of course, it had been years since her last active duty combat. The world was quiet. Too quiet.
No wars or even military conflicts. Maybe America had just fucking won. Maybe there would
never be another world war. Her gut yawed at the thought.
Up ahead she saw her carrier-capable Super Hornet on approach to land, fourteen feet above
the deck, tailhook out to snag the arresting wire—the trap.
The Super Hornet landed flawlessly, catching the trap and accelerating. The pilot brought it to
full power at the end, just in case the wire broke and he had to pull up to get off the carrier. It
had been known to happen, and this kind of accident killed men on the flight deck as well as in
the plane.
Fortunately, the wire held and the jet jolted to a stop.
Kelly didn’t have time to celebrate the other pilot’s safe night landing. The flight crew ran to the
plane and hauled out the boarding ladder from a jigsaw-shaped door on the side of the
fuselage. As soon as the pilot and his weapons systems officer climbed down, Orion scampered
up the ladder. Kelly followed.
Buckling into her seat, calmness filled her. Everything was routine. She punched in her
coordinates and performed a quick inspection of her flight controls. “Beetlejuice, systems

check?”
His reply came in through her helmet. “Systems a-go.”
“LSO, this is Bravo-60 on a hot switch. Gimme a CAT. Over.”
The landing signal officer, a white shirt, waved a pair of traffic wands, incandescent red,
signaling her toward the bow. “Bravo-60, you’re on CAT Two. First in line. Over.”
There were four “CATs”—short for catapult—on the Jerry, like the starting blocks at a track
meet. Once fired, they could launch a thirty-three-ton aircraft off the deck in seconds. And when

the Jerry really got going, she’d be launching birds off all four CATs at once, sending a death-
dealing warhawk into the sky every twenty seconds.

Kelly obeyed the white shirt’s signals across the deck until she rolled to a stop at CAT Two. The
magnet clicked below. The white shirt indicated the go-ahead with his traffic wands. The air
boss shouted a confirmation. Her catapult was cleared for takeoff.
“Bravo-60 is ready,” she said through her radio.
“Full shhhszzshhsshhshszzzshzz,” a reply came from the tower.
“Tower, I’m getting a lot of static on your end. Repeat the command.”
“They acknowledged ‘full tension,’” Orion said over her shoulder.
It went against protocol not to have heard the command herself, but she could see the white
shirt flagging her forward. And hadn’t her squadron commander required haste? Fucking
Navy. Pay a billion dollars for a plane, can’t maintain a working radio.
“Whatever,” she said. “Full tension is go. Military power is go.”
A yellow shirt, the plane director, touched his helmet, nodding to the shooter. And with that, the
shooter fired the CAT, launching Kelly’s Super Hornet forward.
The G-forces of the catapult slammed her back in her seat, head and neck straining to stay
upright. The combat fighter broke free down the stroke, accelerating to more than 160 mph in
mere seconds. The CAT threw her jet off the flight deck and over the open sea, in starlit
darkness, ascending, and the punch of acceleration knocked into Kelly like a body blow, as it
did every time. Violent. Loud. The catapult could launch her a thousand times over the ocean
and she’d never get used to it.
She pulled the aircraft away from the water and brought the wheels up into the fuselage. They
soared, airborne.

“Beetlejuice, I’m going to take this bird west. Radio the carrier to see if you can get us specifics
on these radar blips.”
“10-4.”
The darkness outside stretched into eternity, ocean and horizon melding together, both black
and indistinct. At night, she always tried to take it slow and let her flight tools do their job. They
called it “flying the instruments.” She called it common sense.
Down in the void of the Pacific, her strike group would be at battle stations. The guided missile
cruiser and two destroyers would be circling the Jerry, protecting her. A nuclear sub patrolled
the waters a quarter-mile below the surface. Even the combat support ship provided a defensive
flank for the supercarrier, their flagship.
Kelly swiveled back toward the vertical red and horizontal blue lights of the optical landing
system that pilots called “the ball.” Beyond, white lights dotted the deck, illuminating the runway.
Otherwise the carrier sat in obscurity. Quiet.
“Beetlejuice, do you have a copy from the island?”
“Negative, Moonshot. They’re radio silent over there.”
“Try the emergency channel.”
She could hear him clicking through stations. “Nah-nothing.” His voice caught like a deer mouse
in a snap trap. “Our, uh, our radio must be out. With the fucking hot switch, we didn’t catch it.”
“That’s crazy. It was working a minute ago. I’m gonna give it a try.”
Kelly moved her dial to the emergency channel. “Bravo-Bravo, this is Bravo-60. Come in.” On
the other end, the shush of static. “Come in, Bravo-Bravo.” Nothing.
“Try one of the other birds,” Orion suggested.
“Who’s in the air?”
Orion craned his head around. “I don’t have a visual on any others. Do you see any on radar?”
Kelly tapped her cockpit radar display. “I’m not picking up any birds. We’re on lead. They should
be right behind us.”
That pissed her off. It was just like the fucking Navy to send her out in the darkness against an
unknown threat without anyone on her six for backup. “I’m circling back. We’re no good to
anyone with a tits-up radio.” A hard turn of the stick brought the plane windward and back to the
east.

“Jesus, Moonshot. We need orders to head back, right?”
“You wanna radio in for new orders?”
“Radio’s busted.”
She rolled her eyes and continued to follow the protocol that prioritized the safety of the plane
and its pilots. They flew back toward the supercarrier.
As they neared, Kelly fixed her gaze on the flight deck, a half-mile away but still clearly visible.
Bathed in moonlight. Beautiful.
One by one, the lights on the USS Gerald R. Ford blinked out. First the red lights of the landing
strip. Then the white deck lights. Then the optical landing system, the ball. All out. Gone in less
than a second.
Kelly gasped. Sweat collected on her palms and between her fingers. This was impossible. In
the eight years she’d flown for the goddamned US Navy she’d been in some hairy situations,
seen some real crazy things. But no one she’d ever flown with had ever seen the lights of their
carrier turn off. Wasn’t supposed to fucking happen.
“Beetlejuice, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Motherfuuhh … we’re gonna crash.” His voice held an edge of panic.
“Anything from the island?” Blood beat at the back of her eyes. “Anything from the Jerry at all?”
He didn’t reply at first. Then a prolonged exhale of “Craaaap.”
The only light on deck came from a lone F-35 shooting forward on the catapult, down the stroke.
She could tell even from here it wouldn’t be fast enough. The CAT hadn’t been correctly
calibrated. Or it had lost power.
In slow motion, the catapult propelled the jet until it flipped lifelessly off the bow and toward the
sea. At the final second, the pilot ejected—an explosion from the cockpit that sent him vertically
into the sky. Then the last light winked out as the jet disappeared into the Pacific.
With her world now illuminated only by moonlight, Kelly never saw the pilot land. Never even
saw the splash of the F-35 hitting the water.
But it didn’t matter. A fellow pilot losing a plane into the ocean didn’t matter. The blackout on the
Jerry didn’t matter. At least not compared to what was happening inside her plane.
“Was that Tater’s bird?” Orion said over her shoulder.

Kelly didn’t reply. Instead, she stared at her cockpit controls. The systems on the Super Hornet
were failing. The Navigation Forward Looking Infrared—the advanced sensors that let her see—
dropped offline. The Doppler ground mapping radar followed. Then the target designator that
delivered laser-guided bombs.
Even those system failures paled in comparison to the reading from the fuel gauge. Where the
hell are we going to land? Her hand shook on the stick.
And the dial moved steadily toward empty.

 

Follow
the tour HEREfor exclusive excerpts and a giveaway!








Westbrook Knights Book Tour & Giveaway

Knights
After My Heart
Westbrook
Knights Book 1
by
Sonya Jesus
Genre:
NA Romantic Suspense
 
Amelia’s
past issues and personal time limits propel her into a relationship
that alters her normal life at Westbrook University. Connor, her new
potential boyfriend, triggers jealousy, rehashes old relationships,
sparks new ones, and ignites a rage in others that will devastate her
ordinary life. As she desperately tries to hold on to her pre-Connor
life, she struggles to balance the new-found attention while trying
to follow her heart. Something she realizes is complicated… very
complicated – because her heart has no idea where it’s
going. 

 

 

 

Connor
may be the change Lia is looking for, but he is certainly not the
ending Hawk wants for his Queen. Hawk’s invested too much time in
planning his future to let some random guy walk away with his happily
ever after. He will do anything to protect her virtue, even if it
means protecting her from herself because Amelia belongs to him.

 

He’s
chosen her…

 

He’s
watched her…

 

He’s
studied her…

 

He
knows everything there is to learn about her…

 

And
when the time is right she will reign his heart.

 

 
 
 

 
 

 

 
Knights
Who Stole My Heart
Westbrook
Knights Book 2
 
Amelia’s
heart is torn between the new, the old and the familiar but when her
heart screams out what it wants, Amelia listens. It’s not always
easy since a conflicted heart wants different things on different
days, but she finds a way to work around her indecisiveness and focus
on what she needs- what she thinks she can’t live without. 

 

 

 

The
closer Amelia gets to figuring out her love life, the more Hawk
unravels. While he deals with loose ends and new threats, his
strategic plans start to fall into place. Pawns advance, the King’s
in the ideal position and the Rook hosts the Mad Lib Auction. What he
doesn’t expect is for his Queen to be in danger and for Knights to
steal hearts.

 

 

 
 

Knights
Who Broke My Heart
Westbrook
Knights Book 3
 
They
were out to break my heart…

 

 

 

Amelia
finally figures out exactly who her heart wants, and she is
determined to go for it. She is willing to give the knight who stole
her heart everything. She owns up to her mistakes and truly attempts
to change, but just because her mind is made up, doesn’t mean her
love is reciprocated. Will she choose the best-friend who learned her
by heart, or the soccer god who ignored her for the longest time? One
of them will win her heart, the other will break it… But neither of
them are safe from the guy who will stop at nothing to protect
her.

 

 

Murder
isn’t something Hawk shies away from. Actually, he prefers to use
it as a last recourse, but he’s unravelling. The closer Amelia getsto achieving happiness, the more his control disintegrates. And when
one of his carefully laid plans turns on him, he loses it. Realizing
he’s the reason behind Amelia’s attack, plagues him with guilt.
In all his attempts to protect her, he was the one who put her in
danger- a failure he isn’t willing to have looming over him… But
what happens when his Queen fails him in ways she can never take
back?

 

 

New
Adult, Romantic Suspense. Contains sexual content that may not be
appropriate for younger audiences.

 

 
 
Sonya ́s
a science nerd who decided to give into her creative fictional side
in order to balance out the non-fictional scientific side of her PhD.
She doesn ́t have much free time, but she spends it enjoying her
family and friends, watching Netflix and playing with her dogs.

 
 
Followthe tour HERE

for exclusive content, guest posts and a giveaway!