A
Time Apart
Macauley
Series
Book
One
Rebecca
N. Caudill
Genre:
Paranormal Romance , Vampire
Date
of Publication: February 8, 2015
ISBN:
978-1508482666
ASIN:
B00TDR1O6U
Number
of pages: 211 (estimated)
Word
Count: 71,020
Cover
Artist: Rebecca N. Caudill
Book
Description:
A
love story that traverses the confines of time, life, and death,
uniting two passionate souls from different worlds and ages …
Olivia
Donnelly has spent her whole life obsessing about how she will die.
When tragedy strikes, reality comes crashing down and she’s forced
to confront her fears head on. Hoping that a move across the globe
will help her to cope with a devastating loss, she arrives in Ireland
a broken down shell of a woman looking for a second chance at life.
Almost
immediately Olivia is drawn to places she’s never been, and to a
man that she’s never met. When she crosses paths with the
mysterious and frustratingly private William Macauley, her life is
thrown into turmoil unlike any she has ever known. The two couldn’t
be more different – she’s human, he’s a vampire – but Olivia
can’t get him out of her mind. Having acknowledged her overwhelming
desire for William, now she must come to terms with how her feelings
for him will greatly alter her future.
Olivia’s
understanding of life – and death – take on new meaning as she
examines the truth of the person she once was, the woman she was born
to be, and how William is the key to her everlasting happiness.
Available
at Amazon
Excerpt
Sample
from Chapter 1
“Ladies and
gentlemen, welcome aboard Flight 716 with service from San Francisco
to Dublin. We ask that you please fasten your seat belts and secure
all baggage beneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead
compartments. At this time, please turn all personal electronic
devices to airplane mode so that they cannot transmit a signal. As
you know, smoking is prohibited for the duration of our journey to
Dublin, and that includes in the lavatories. Thank you for choosing
Aer Lingus. Enjoy your flight.”
It was usually at
this point in any flight where Olivia’s real panic kicked in.
Shortly – terrifyingly – the plane would be airborne with nothing
but land and sea below. While she knew statistically that airplanes
were safer than cars, she’d never known anyone – let alone two
anyones – who had been killed, their bodies never recovered, from a
freak accident on the freeway. Not to say that it didn’t happen
everyday; she just didn’t know anyone that it had happened to.
To distract her
mind, she listened to the crew outline the plane’s safety
procedures and then the Captain’s welcome, including the weather
forecast for Dublin – rainy and brisk, how shocking. Sipping the
champagne the flight attendant had offered her when she boarded,
Olivia felt the combination of the Valium and the alcohol take over
her body, but not quite enough that she gave up the death grip she
had on the arm rests. As she felt the tell tale tingle of the Valium
working its magic, she thought – not for the first time – that
maybe someday a plane crash wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen
to her. Maybe someday she’d just never wake up from the
self-induced drug and alcohol fueled nothingness she needed just to
fly.
Who am I kidding?
Sadly, more and more
frequently it wasn’t just plane rides that had her mixing booze and
pills. Most days she wrapped herself in a hazy blur of alcohol like a
security blanket, protecting her in a cocoon of mental fuzziness.
Olivia felt her
pulse beginning to race and her breathing accelerate, and she made a
conscious effort not to panic, not to look over at Judgy lest the
woman start advocating for professional psychiatric help. It wouldn’t
have been the first time some well-meaning motherly type had tried to
get Olivia into therapy. She stole a quick glance in Judgy’s
direction only to find that she was already engrossed in her novel,
Olivia’s neurosis and emotional paralysis the least of her
concerns.
Not too long after
she had fought back the near panic attack, the whirring of the
engines lulled Olivia into a stupor that soon resulted in a fitful
sleep. For the next ten hours she didn’t exactly fall into a deep
slumber, but she wasn’t fully awake either. Her mind seemed to
float between a dreaming and wakeful state, and she felt strangely
separated from her body. She’d see snippets of things in her head
but wasn’t sure if the images were of events or instances that she
was remembering, things she was imagining, or scenarios she was
concocting to be used in her novel.
And then Olivia saw,
quite clearly, the face of a man she had never met and yet she felt
like she had known him all of her life – blue eyes, sharp and
unnaturally piercing as if he could see deep into her soul. She saw a
field of green that stretched far and wide, rolling hills dotted with
sheep and lined with stacked stone walls. She saw herself as a child
chasing a puppy larger than she was down by a river while laughing
that high-pitched squeal that only a child can make as the dog raced
back toward her covered in mud and dripping with water. And then that
image changed as quickly as it came and she saw her mother as a young
woman, happy and carefree, in love with a man who was not Gerald
Donnelly.
And as she always
did when in one of her fitful states of sleep, Olivia saw all the
ways she could die – car accident; mugging gone horribly wrong
after having put up a brave fight; her house on fire, the flames
licking at her feet as she tried to run; her body weak and broken as
it was ravished by cancer; or her heart slowly stopping as she lay in
her bed, blind from old age and hunched with the rigors of time.
And in these dreams
she was ready for it – any of it – almost welcoming the vast
blackness that would follow whatever her death would be.
And then she saw
that face again – the man she didn’t know but felt so deeply that
she should. He whispered her name, longingly, “Olivia.”
About
the Author:
Rebecca
Caudill read her first novel when she was just four years old and has
been hooked on books ever since. When she wasn't writing her own
stories, she was sneaking copies of her mom's paperbacks to read late
into the night.
Fast
forward several years later and Rebecca graduated from the University
of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in Journalism and a minor in English Lit,
which gave her new insight into the written word. Following college,
Rebecca embarked on a career in tech PR in the famed Silicon Valley,
which eventually led to her leading Global R&D communications for
a Fortune 500 company that everyone knows by name. Finally, after
more than a decade of writing words ascribed to other people, in
December 2014 she quit her job to pursue writing full time.
Today
Rebecca lives with her husband and beautiful-but-neurotic cat in
Oakland, California. When not creating fictional worlds inhabited by
strong women, rakes, rogues, and dashing heroes, she is planning her
next vacation, trying out new recipes, or drinking Islay scotch.
Twitter
- @rebecca_caudill
Facebook
- https://www.facebook.com/rebeccancaudill
Tour Giveaway $25 Amazon gift card $10 Starbucks card 1 autographed paperback Embed code
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I enjoyed reading the excerpt. This book sounds like a fun and interesting read. I will totally have to add this book to my "to-read" list.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your support! Hope you enjoy the full book.
Deletethank you for the chance to win :)
ReplyDeleteSo he's literally the man of her dreams :D Love human-vampire romances. It's also interesting that she finds new life by finding death. Would love to check this one out
ReplyDeleteI love that you picked up on that! For someone as obsessed with death, the only way for her to find true happiness was to be reborn.
DeleteThis sounds really interesting and the vampire thing is fun to read!
ReplyDeleteHi Janet,
DeleteThanks for the comment. If you decide to read it I hope you enjoy the world I've created.
I liked the excerpt.
ReplyDeleteHi Rita - glad you liked it!
DeleteThanks for holding this giveaway, the excerpt was great.
ReplyDeleteHi Sara - so glad you enjoyed the excerpt. Thanks for commenting!
DeleteHi Debra,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for being the first stop on the blog tour for my debut novel, A Time Apart: Book One of the Macauley Series. I'm so happy to see that your readers have enjoyed the excerpt that you shared with them.
I wanted to let everyone know that I've reduced the price of my novel to $0.99 for the duration of the tour, and that it's currently free from Kindle Unlimited. I strongly encourage you all to check it out, especially as it contains a sneak peek for Blood of My Blood: Book Two of the Macauley series, out later this summer.
thank you for the chance to win- looks like a great read.
ReplyDeletei love the book's blurb..
ReplyDeletethx u for hosting :)
thank you for the excerpt and it does sound like a very good read. I will be adding to my to be read pile. thank you for hosting
ReplyDeleteThanks for the giveaway! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the giveaway :) The book sounds great! (Andrea Amy)
ReplyDeleteI love pondering the meaning of life and death so this sounds great
ReplyDeletethis sounds really good
ReplyDeleteThanks for the giveaway and this book Sounds FAB.
ReplyDeleteReading this excerpt leaves me wanting to read more! Looks like this will be a great read! Thanks for the giveaway
ReplyDelete