Welcome to Howloween! Got Treats for You.

Hi everyone--
Happy Howloween and welcome to our fantastic Hop with over 300 authors participating. Don't panic! You have four days to get to all of us and enter to win great prizes.

I'm Tara Lain, and i'm not only celebrating our spookiest holiday, i'm also happy dancing about my newest release, Brush with Catastrophe. This new novel releases this coming Tuesday, October 30th. It's MM paranormal--witches!--and the sequel to the very popular, Spell Cat.

Here is the Link to all the participants in the HOP!
http://thebloghopspot.com/event-page/ 

First, let me tell you what you can win here on my Blog --

• a $10 Amazon GC
• An ecopy of Halloween Heat IV which contains my sexy short story, Trex or Treat

Here's what you should do to win:

• Leave me a comment WITH YOUR EMAIL and tell me your favorite kind of paranormal novels -- like vamps, witches, shifters, zombies, other stuff
• Follow this BLOG if you don't already
• Like my Amazon Page 
• If you feel like it, LIKE my Facebook Page
• And put No in your comment if you don't want to be on my mail list. 

If you read my books, you know i don't write much paranormal (yet). Spell Cat was my first ever paranormal and even it is set in contemporary New York and the witches powers are integrated into their daily lives as professors and students. The same with my new novel releasing October 30th, Brush with Catastrophe. It is the extraordinary occurring in a perfectly ordinary setting. 

I love all kinds of paranormal creatures (although i haven't really gotten into the zombie craze as yet). And to tell you a secret, i keep wanting to write a snake shifter book but everyone tells me that readers will hate it. Sigh. How do you feel about it? Would a long, slithery hero be fun or repulsive?

In Brush with Catastrophe, my young college student hero is a witch. Here's a scene from my new book:

College art student Sammy Raphael is a crappy witch. And he can’t get a boyfriend. Sammy’s had a passion for his BFF, Ryder McMasters, for years, but Ryder is straight and human. Talk about hopeless causes! And where other supernaturals can bring down lightning and manifest wealth, all Sammy can do is paint. True, the “prophetic” paintings he does at night always come true, but they never predict anything important -- until he paints a picture of a gorgeous man who turns out to be Ryder but so changed he’s barely recognizable. Then Sammy paints an angel --who turns out to be a devil that threatens Sammy’s community and the man he loves. With the black cat familiar, Aloysius, at his side Sammy steps up to save the world--with a paint brush.

Ouch. Sammy rolled over and winced. Bony hips pressed into the hardwood. Not again.

What had he painted this time? He started to open his eyes to look at the easel but shook his head and settled back on the floor. No need. He didn’t want to see. He’d probably drawn Mrs. Henderson from the guidance department dying her panties blue or a local softball team winning the state finals. Sure, his picture would come true—it always did—but no witch would be impressed, and it wouldn’t help anyone. One more useless prophetic painting from good old Sammy.

He was so sick of waking up nude and shivering on the old wood floor in front of his easel to find some dumb painting done in a style different from his own. The prophecies were realistic to the last detail. If they were going to be useless, couldn’t they be in his style? Maybe at least he could turn them in as assignments.

Oh crap. Sammy might as well look. He rolled up on hands and knees, head hanging, then did the yoga cat pose a couple of times to get the kinks out and managed to make it to his feet. He wobbled. Jimmy once said Sammy was constantly surprised by his own height. Must be true. He stretched his slim frame to its full six feet two and looked over his shoulder at the easel.

Wow. At least the subject matter was an improvement. The large canvas on the easel that he’d stretched yesterday for a new expressionistic composition now featured a lifelike picture of a stunningly gorgeous man. “Edible” was the word that came to mind. Tall and lean with long, glistening brown hair that hung nearly to his shoulders. Strange, though; the guy looked really familiar. And yet Sammy knew he’d never forget that face with the high-bridged nose, deep green eyes, and perfectly carved mouth. In the picture, the man was walking forward with a smile, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

This prophecy would happen to someone somewhere, the lucky duck. Who wouldn’t want to meet this dude? Why didn’t his prophecies ever happen to Sammy?

He glanced at the clock. School. He didn’t want to be late for the first day of his new semester at the university, even if he did feel like somebody had beaten him with a stick. He took one last look at the painting. Man, gorgeous.

The hot water felt good on his back. Spending half the night on the floor was not fun but increasingly regular. Maybe he should go talk to Killian about what it all meant. But the Witch Master had his hands full trying to integrate the pure-blooded witches and the half-breeds like himself.

Sammy turned to the front and let the water hit his face. What would his life have been like if he had gone on thinking he was a human freak, not knowing he was a witch? It was amazing, the chances Killian had taken to prove that mixing human and witch blood had made the children more powerful, not less. Now most of their community was made up of half-human witches. Of course, Killian was the most powerful male witch in ten generations. Sammy? Not so much. Sammy’s so-called power didn’t seem to have any significance at all, so it wasn’t fair to bother Killian about it. The predictions of his paintings were so damned mundane.

But Mr. Gorgeous over there could show up on his easel anytime.

Sammy pulled on his jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and scarfed down a hard-boiled egg to hold him until he could get coffee. His tackle box full of art supplies sat on the wooden chair by the door. He grabbed it and headed out, down the stairs of the three-story walk-up, and onto the busy street, still hot from leftover summer in New York City.

A quick three-block walk and he pushed into the coffee shop he and his friends favored.

“Hey, Sammy.”

Sammy looked toward the back booth where they usually hung out and saw Chen—nobody dared call him Marvin except his father—waving at him. Seeing that handsome face made Sammy think about last night. At least Arnold had good taste.

“Hey, Chen.”

Sammy got into the order line, and Chen came over, carrying his coffee. “I’ve hardly seen you. How was summer?”

Sammy stepped forward as the man in front of him reached the cashier. “I worked like a crazy man. I wanted to save enough to afford the rent while I was in school.” He got to the front of the line, ordered a latte, then looked at Chen as they walked toward the pickup counter. “How was yours?”

Chen sipped his coffee. “My father had me in math tutoring all summer.”

“Hell, you’re already the best math student at Manhattan University. What does he want?”

Chen gave a tight smile. “He wants me to be the best math student at MIT.”

“MIT? Gods, are you transferring in your senior year?”

“No. PhD. I’m supposed to go straight into an MIT doctoral program at the end of the year.” Chen’s dark eyes gazed into space.

The counter guy served up Sammy’s drink, and he grabbed it like a lifeline. Caffeine. Drug of choice. He took a sip, closed his eyes as the bitter flavor slipped down his throat, and walked out of the shop with Chen. “MIT. Is that what you want?”

“Doesn’t matter what I want. My father’s a tough witch to move. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that. What’s up?”

Sammy grinned and took another swig of latte. “Arnold asked me about you last night. He sure was disappointed when I told him you’re straight.”

Chen frowned. “I heard you were going on a date with Arnold.”

So had Sammy. “No. It was just hanging out.” He’d had a nonexistent date and a nonexistent night’s sleep. 

Oh yeah, the painting. “Hey, have you seen any new guys around? Really handsome. Tall with long hair.”

Chen started to laugh. “You have been out of it, haven’t you?”

Sammy stared at his friend. “What do you mean?”

“Speak of the devil.” Chen nodded down the sidewalk.

Sammy turned. Coming toward him, smiling exactly like the painting, was a guy. Mr. Gorgeous. In the painting, he’d been tall and lean, but in motion, his walk was like music in human form. His baggy jeans tightened over hard thighs as he moved, and they outlined a package that looked better than a birthday present to Sammy. How-dy.

The guy waved. “Hey, Sam. Hi, Chen.”

What?

The painting guy got closer, and the wind caught the nearly shoulder-length hair and tossed it back from his perfect face. Ears! Pointed ears. Only one guy had ’em. “Alvish?” It couldn’t be. But those ears didn’t lie.

Alvish, the BFF who only two months before had been inches shorter than Sammy, now looked down on him by an inch or more. “Hi, guys. How was summer?”

Sammy knew his mouth was hanging open. “Summer, hells! What happened to you?”

Alvish shrugged, flexing his muscular shoulders. “I kind of had a growth spurt.”

That was an understatement. “I didn’t recognize you. I mean, aren’t you twenty? Who grows that much at twenty? You only came up to my chin last semester. And”—Sammy waved at the masterpiece in front of him—“and weren’t your eyes brown?”

Alvish smiled. “I know. Weird, huh?”

No damned fair. Sammy had fought his attraction to his friend every day of their acquaintance, but Alvish used to be a skinny, short guy with big pointed ears. Hence the nickname. Now Sammy wanted to start at Alvish’s toes and lick his way to the tops of those ears in one huge orgy of oral gratification. This new Alvish was so hot Sammy held his art case in front of his crotch, trying not to spill the beans…or whatever else was inclined to spill. And this transformation was also damned strange.

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Here's the Link! http://thebloghopspot.com/event-page/