Tuesday 2 December 2014

Guest Blogger ~ Hunter Frost: Angel In Eyeliner

First, I’d like to thank NJ for the opportunity to share my newest release with all of you. An Angel in Eyeliner is my contribution to Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology that celebrates the season with a diverse collection of stories by a wonderful group of authors promoting hope and love.
My story revolves around Mitch, a lonely former combat medic who just so happens to love to decorate for Christmas. Growing up, my mother never went as far Mitch when it came to the extent of his decorating, but she did have a few traditional pieces that were always displayed. And most of them still are come mid-December. I pay homage to one of those pieces in An Angel in Eyeliner—the ceramic Santa statue.

If any of you grew up in the seventies or eighties your family may have the winking Santa
pictured here. Apparently, it was extremely popular. I can never quite remember the story, but I believe either my mother or my grandmother purchased the ceramic statue unpainted. They decided to paint it themselves one fateful Christmas Eve, making sure Santa’s cheeks were perfectly rosy and his mittens shiny and black. Come Christmas morning it was finished and there at the foot of my parents’ fireplace. It has been displayed during the holiday ever since. It really wouldn’t be Christmas if Santa wasn’t there watching over the festivities.
Does your family have any traditional pieces that make your holidays come to life?
Or maybe an item Mitch displays reminds you of something you have in your decoration collection?
Check out An Angel in Eyeliner and let me know!    

An Angel in Eyeliner
Buy Links:

Blurb:
All Mitch wants for Christmas is a quiet holiday free from grief. Patching up the face of the target of a mugging in the back alley of his bar seems to throw that wish right out into the cold Chicago night. But the tatted, pierced, and skinny-jean wearing Keller Graham is fearless and proves to be more than a pair of icy blue eyes lined in black. Keller may be a thief, but Mitch never expected him to steal his lonely heart.

Excerpt:
“Hey!” he barked at the group of men crowding around the chain-link fence across the alleyway. None of them must have heard, for they carried on with their shoving and cussing. Light was scarce except for the multi-colored glow above Mitch’s back door, but he squinted toward the group’s kicking feet, down among the soot-tinged snow and puddles.

Someone was on the ground.

Mitch held the gun up and racked the slide.

They heard that. He hadn’t seen heads turn that fast since the tank backfired at camp in Fallujah.

“Get the hell out of here!” Mitch yelled as he stalked toward the group, the gun held high.
The guys instantly took off in all directions, cursing and scrambling through the snow, slicks, and refuse. Nothing like a shotgun to scatter a mob. It was too easy.

Once the last of the men had cleared out and he could only hear distant footfalls, Mitch’s gaze landed on what the jerks had been crowding. A lanky man wearing all black, lay on his back amid the trash, most of his face hidden behind his long hair.

As Mitch moved closer, the cracked streetlight cast a shimmering halo in the pool of water around the man’s head. An angel…with a bruised cheek and a bloody cut under his eye. But an angel nonetheless.

Author Bio:
Hunter lost a bet at a blackjack table and begrudgingly traded temperate Southern California for the sweltering heat of Las Vegas. There she resides with an extremely tolerant boyfriend and two cats named after her favorite beverage, Latte and Java.

When she's not dreaming of returning to coastal living, Hunter works at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, from where she recently received her Master’s in British history. In order to appease her muse, she writes the kind of fiction that keeps her sane. She adores romance in all forms, but prefers her stories with two heroes that find their happily-ever-after with each other.

Find Hunter Here



Language: English
Published: 21st November, 2014
Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
Category: Fiction


BOOK DESCRIPTION
Boughs of Evergreen is a two-volume collection of short stories celebrating the holiday season in all its diversity. Penned by authors from the UK, the USA, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, these are tales of the young and the not-so-young from many different walks of life.

Themes of family, friendship and romance take readers on a journey through some of the major holidays, both past and present, including Thanksgiving, Advent, St. Lucia Day, Hanukkah, Eid, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Yule, Christmas and New Year. In each we find at the very least hope, and often love, peace and happiness.

Each story will also be published individually as ebooks on 1st December, 2014.

Proceeds from sales of this anthology will be donated to The Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is the leading national organization [USA] providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24. For more information, visit: www.thetrevorproject.org.

THE STORIES: (links go to samples and author biographies)
Volume One

Volume Two

Video trailers




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