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★★ COVER REVEAL – FABIEN: A Christmas Tale ★★

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Centuries ago Fabien was thrown from his coven for betraying the queen who had claimed him as hers. Leticia chose him for his sexual prowess and never expected he would fall in love with a pathetic human, something she couldn’t forgive. Cursed to live alone, Fabien harbours a small hope he will one day encounter the reincarnation of his one true love.

One cold Christmas Eve Fabien bites a man who he believes could lead him to the one woman who might break the curse he’s been forced to bear for far too long.

The ancient vampire sets out to woo her in the only way he knows how but unfortunately for Fabien, love proves to be his constant undoing . . .

RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 15TH

To sign up for the blog tour, visit:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Mmlm7uCX3G3U_QvVkGRuIEh1_mYyhjrnza-ZZGvDR7E/viewform

This is a novella-length book, a read-in-one-sitting kind of zip-read. I’ve been told it is indeed very Christmassy.

I will provide purchase links on release day! Please get in touch with my promoter, AfterDark Online, to enquire about ARCs or any other questions you have!

Happy reading! (UNBIND is still only 99 cents but only for a little while longer!!!)

Posted on by sarahmichellelynch · 2 Comments

#NaNoWriMo – THE VERDICT!

I’ve been writing fiction for three years now and this is the first time I attempted November Writing Month. I admit I have been doing this unofficially because I have a couple of projects on the go and it was a test to myself to see what I could do when really pushed. Could I write 50,000 words in one month? That was the test.

Well, I have written at least 60,000 words this month… I’ll explain…

I am currently quite deep into my ninth novel, Unfurl, which is the sequel to Unbind. Unfurl had its claws in me before November 1st dawned so my first aim with November Writing Month was to see how many words I could add to the novel in one month. Well, I added around 39,000 words to that book.

At around 39,000 words I knew in myself I was burnt out. I knew I had reached a certain barrier and there was no going beyond that. Unfurl is a planned 120,000-word novel and yet when I reached 89,000 words… I knew that was it for me, for the time being. I am a writer who listens to my gut and my gut was telling me that if I continued on, I would be writing a load of air. The thing is, the novel in question is a slap-bang-wallop thriller and when you’re writing this kind of book, it is mind taxing on every page. Every sentence. The only other book I’ve written that was like this i.e. slap-bang-wallop… was Beneath the Veil, now The Radical. Unfurl will be the type of book where you simply cannot put it down… you simply have to know what evil lurks beneath the pages. It is an evil I was reluctant to explore in the first book, Unbind, but I have someone to do justice and their will is bidding me to tell their story.

So I gave up at 39,000 words and moved onto something else. I wrote a little vampirism (an Xmas novella) and because that was already pre-planned in my head and a lot less complex than Unfurl, it was easy to churn out and actually a great relief after the aforementioned block of stuff I had given to Unfurl. 60K words to two separate projects was being kinder to myself than forcing 50K words into a novel I knew I needed a break from. As a seasoned writer, you know your own strengths and limitations and gradually, you work out what works for you and what doesn’t. Be kind to yourself, sometimes, something just isn’t meant to be.

Writing, writing, writing… with just a wing and a prayer… is not a bad method. Sometimes writing freefall as I sometimes term it, or by the seat of your pants, can help spring an idea you never would have thought of. Writing with no onus other than to get the words out has its benefits, but also its drawbacks too. I know from those 39K I added to Unfurl, I will be scrapping around 10-15K or re-writing a hefty chunk of it. I have now had a period of reflection; I’ve given the editing side of my brain enough chance to absorb and consider – reflection is invaluable when creating a novel. If you have a period of reflection during which no regrets and no doubts emerge, then you know that work is done. If however you realise it all adds up but not as perfectly as you would like, you know you have more work to do.

I suppose what I am surmising here is that NaNoWriMo is good but only for experimentation purposes. Even a seasoned writer such as myself was tested to meet that 1,600+ words a day quota required to complete the task. Though what I often ended up doing was writing 500 words most days and on good days, when an idea was straining to get out, I might have written a healthy or indulgent 8,000. I am a mood writer, like some people are mood readers, and sometimes I have to wait all day to be able to get my precious writing time in. After working and looking after my husband and daughter, the idea has to be good for me to want to write, otherwise I am too tired to struggle with something that I am not quite feeling.

Word count is irrelevant, however. I firmly believe that. A story will be told in how ever few or many words it needs to be told in. I advise writers who take part in NaNoWriMo to step into the experience with the knowledge that what they write in one month is very likely to need plenty of work afterwards. You might even *shock horror* just want to put it in the bin. Yet the experience might have been worth it for exactly that – the experience. I also advise that if you don’t finish NaNoWriMo, it isn’t because you’re not good enough to be a novelist, it’s just that the story you were writing at the time wasn’t meant to be written so quickly or in so many words, or so few in my case. As I said, Unfurl will be around 120K when complete. If not a little less, maybe a little more! It will have as many words as it needs. I have said things in the past that my future self has disproved, so you know…

I can honestly say, I found the NaNoWriMo experience helpful but I won’t pressure myself to take part in this again. Especially when half the battle of being a writer is connecting to your readers and having enough time away from the laptop to actually generate the content and ideas that make your novel what it is… i.e. an enjoyable reading experience which doesn’t give away the fact that the writer rushed, struggled or compromised themselves during. Readers can tell, they can always tell.

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FIVE STAR #romantic #thriller… #FREE DOWNLOAD

freeWe should chase away from what we’re scared of, right? Run as fast as we can. Yet some of us seem to veer toward chaos and destruction…

Chloe sees anguish and despair lurking beneath the surface of Cai Matthews, the dark and dangerously handsome freelance photographer she meets on her first day in a new job. She can’t see straight in his presence—blinded by a blistering sexual attraction that has the potential to sweep her clean off her feet.

When Cai disappears from the workplace and doesn’t come back, Chloe tries to find out more about his life but all she knows is he’s set to inherit a ton of money and his aunt runs one of the most famous fashion magazines in the world.

Cai is running from a complicated past he doesn’t like talking about. Gossip columns rage with speculation concerning him and his aunt, who took guardianship of Cai after his parents died.

Conscientious journalist Chloe has a mind for details and once she gains access to his world, Cai realises she could undo every, single dirty little secret that he and his aunt have tried desperately to cover up.

Please check out the reviews and see what you think! http://mybook.to/unbind

Don’t forget I still have a paperback giveaway up and running over here.

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UNBIND CHAPTER 40 ‒ INSIGHT INTO CAI’S MIND

Guys and gals,

I am currently writing UNFURL, the sequel to UNBIND. #NaNoWriMo has so far helped me add 30,000 words to this WIP.

The following extract does NOT appear in UNBIND, neither will it appear in UNFURL. This is extra material, for those of you wondering about the content of UNFURL…

UNFURL is a dual POV novel that will take Chloe and Cai right up until present day. The tagline is “NO SECRET DIES”.

UNFURL will answer a ton of questions but also take Cai and Chloe’s relationship to another level… so here is a tiny, little *unedited* insight into the mind of CAI MATTHEWS…

***

I felt torn between maintaining composure and doing what she was trying to do earlier—rip the punch bag from the ceiling and then kick the stuffing from it until there was nothing left.

I wanted to smash something. Hard. Chloe didn’t know but I was an undefeated champion on the underground boxing circuit in New York. She didn’t know that all the stuff she was telling me—she used to compete and then gave up—made her more like me than even I could have guessed. I was stock still on my gallery floor just because I was terrified if I moved, I’d start punching and I wouldn’t be able to stop.

She’d just told me the horrific circumstances surrounding that scar on her head. Worse—she’d told me about the one man in the world who was meant to protect her no matter what—and he hadn’t.

“I have this memory,” she said pointing to her skull. “I can remember all the names and faces of people I’ve ever met. I remember when I fell from a rope swing into a stream when I was little, I was wearing some cheap high-top trainers I loved. They were ruined by the mud. I remember what top I wore to a school disco when I was 13, a thing I spent hours picking out. I remember the day Kay got her first tattoo,” she smiled such a sad smile it made me swell with love for her, “I remember how long she spent making sure the design was right, how faint she looked when the dude doing her ink brought the needle toward her skin. I remember the ringlets in Amanda’s hair and how innocent they were and I remember every, single moment of pure evil he ever wrought on us. You see I can’t forgive, Cai, not when I can’t forget.”

I shut my eyes, the red fury replaced by incensed, overprotective love. “I wish you’d told me all this sooner, tigress. I wish you had.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve spanked you and hit you. I didn’t know, Chlo.” I finally allowed myself to react and slammed my fist against the floor, the urge to keep hitting something there… but quelled by her resounding presence.

“Yes, you’ve spanked me lots of times and I never said stop because I like it that we’re open enough to do that. It’s not the same, Cai. It’s just not… you’re not spanking me to hurt me, you’re doing it because you’re expressing our bond, our passion… I love it when you spank me. I love you.”

I wanted to rip her father’s insides out, then my own. “Look… the truth is… I don’t like spanking, Chloe. I don’t fucking like it. I just do it because I think you want it.”

I didn’t like it. I didn’t. Yet I wanted it. Wanted it like I wanted to fight. Hated that aspect of myself, couldn’t caution myself enough about the danger of letting myself loose, yet all the ways she made me feel unleashed me. Set me free. Made me who I really was. It was just that, he was a man I didn’t like, wasn’t yet happy to be. I didn’t want to be ME.

“I do want it, but only if you want it too,” she said passionately, like she thought she was saying the right thing. She was saying what she thought I wanted to hear but it wasn’t her fault she didn’t know the whole of me—I’d tried to keep the dark away from her shining light.

I felt manic, shaking my head side to side. “I want to please you, I always said that. I want to give you everything you need.”

“I only want you to make love to me, how ever you need to make love to me. I don’t care how… I love you. I just need you holding me. I don’t care about the rest, Cai! I don’t care!”

She was yelling, trying to make me listen. I was listening. It was just she didn’t know… she needed to know… but she didn’t know about the real me.

The demons danced constantly on both my shoulders.

I had to divert this away from me, so I stood and started pacing the room rapidly. “You’ll fight everyday now, Chlo. I’m not having you hide who you really are anymore. You’ll fight me and I’ll teach you some better tricks than the ones you learned. I’ll teach you and protect you. I don’t care if you hurt me, you can hurt me because I can take it. Chlo, you have to be who you are, do you hear me? You don’t know how much I need that from you? Please… say you’ll fight again, for me? Please baby.”

Her soft, plump body captured mine from behind and pressed against my back to give me shelter. “I’ll do it for you, if you ask it of me.”

I turned and put my hands on her warm cheeks, asking, “Fight for me.”

“I’ll do it.”

She let the demons keep dancing by not asking any more, but I didn’t mind, I’d rather they danced on both my shoulders than touch a patch of hers. “Good. You’ll still keep your figure. I want breasts and my big ass, still.”

“Okay,” she said, and then to quell the conversation, I took her upstairs.

I had something to prove to myself, not just to her. I had to give over control. I could do it. I could be different, I could break the cycle. I removed my clothes and told Chloe, “Tie me up. Do whatever you want to do to me. I need this. Now, do it. Damn it. Tie me up, tigress and use me. I’m yours to use, baby.”

She proceeded to bind me and dominate me. I was hard for the touch and scent of her before she even began kissing my body, inch by inch. I begged for her soft layers to take me home and it was a temporary reprieve from the raging war inside my mind.

The man I wanted to be and the man I was didn’t much like one another.

BUY UNBIND ON AMAZON…

**IMPORTANT NOTE** UNBIND does not have a cliffhanger. It was originally intended to be a standalone. Readers said they wanted more answers, so….

99 cents

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Unofficial #NaNoWriMo Blog #2

What is it? Day #6?

AAAGGGHHHH!!!????

I think I’ve added about 5,000 words to the pot altogether since the start. Yesterday I had a client’s book to sign off and got derailed from a chain of thought I was on with my latest WIP. It’s funny how sometimes… you foresee yourself dedicating quite a lot of words to one scene and when it comes down to it, you realise you don’t actually need that many. I guess that’s the power of distance.

When I get brain clump (that thing where there are too many ideas and I need to decompress) I have to go for a long walk or have a bath or sit and talk to my hub about nonsense for a bit, just to switch off that writing part of my brain while it undergoes repair and de-clumps!

So although a routine of writing is great, I don’t always stick to a pattern. I know those periods of reflection are important and giving your writing brain healing time is so invaluable. I can easily knock out 8,000 words daily so maybe #NaNoWriMo is for me, hey? If I only need to do a little bit at a time, it’s giving me that space in between to direct my novel rather than letting it direct me.

So my target today is a thousand words and a lot of pre-planning!

in other news…

Woke up to discover a FIVE STAR review for A FINE PROFESSION today! Please visit … https://www.facebook.com/BooksandBeyondFiftyShades/photos/a.811098642240685.1073741828.810760315607851/995916467092234/?type=1&theater

www.facebook.com/SarahMLynch

www.twitter.com/SarahMichelleLy

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EXCERPT FROM THE SENTIENT…UNITY VOL.4

the sentient

It’s blackout and the streets are empty but I am running about like it’s the old days, a gun in each hand. Silencers on. I’m without any armor but we don’t use any. We’re invincible; that’s what we have been taught. I feel unnaturally strong and alert, aware. Yet deadened, somewhat. My lack of concern stems from some source I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s filling my veins with an erratic pulse of blood, potent with the need to move and perform. Meanwhile my thoughts are foggy but I am seeing things with clarity, if that’s possible. It’s as though I have been trained to not think, but still see. And see, I do.

I watch while a pair of nonentities scurry into a sewer. They’re no concern. They look like they could barely rub a penny together, if pennies were still in existence. Rats fill gutters at this time; it’s like they have evolved to know when humans are inside, and they can come out. They know the dark means safety. In what world do we live in, when the dark is more attractive than the light?

I am running still, the exertion nothing to me. My body was highly strung before they got hold of me, before they placed me in their program and made me their weapon.

I know my destination and what I’ll do when I get there but my thoughts have been dulled, like I said, and I can’t quite reconcile the meaning of this mission. Its priority doesn’t make sense to me, not in the back of my mind. I am just following orders.

Having made it to the building in question (my destination) I stow my guns away. I didn’t encounter any adversaries on the way which is strange. Usually there are a few dissidents out at this time of night, in wait, ready to take someone like me down. They know emissaries, oh, they recognize us. We’re the only ones without fear, without armor. We carry weapons and identities nobody else can get.

At street level, I take out my Clever-Grips and strap them on. I climb to the eighth floor and slide inside an open window. There in the apartment, I find a terrible scene waiting for me; a man beaten almost to death, laid sprawled on the carpeted floor; furniture tossed around and glass broken. I’m not sure what to do but thoughts that were suppressed come to the fore.

I see three others like me and they are stood over the target, who’s in a mess. The man’s wild eyes are darting though he can’t move his body. My eye registers several broken bones, wounds that won’t heal and the shock on his face when he sees it’s me. His eyes briefly dart to a photograph on a desk near the window and I see a woman’s face. I realize she may be in the room, or she may be on her way, or he may be trying to tell me she’s why he’s let them do this. She got away while he fought. I don’t know for sure but I see in his eyes, he only cares she’s safe. He is at peace to some extent. He is begging me to save him from more pain, and without thought, I hold out my weapon and shoot.

He’s not hurting, anymore. I know that.

The others register the kill and one of them mumbles into his radio, ‘Target down.’

Just like that.

My colleagues don’t rebuke me for ending a life before we got chance to interrogate him first. Neither do they bring it up that we could have shown him his own entrails – some of Officium’s dogs have done that before, for fun.

Killing is our business. So they don’t seem too unhappy. He’s dead, so what? I see that thought in their murky expressions.

We all pile out of the apartment together, heading for the stairs down.

I stand between these other men who bear no remorse, no emotion.

None of us speak. We’re all piles of meat employed to kill and perform.

Yet I know.

One thing, I know.

I am still sentient, to some extent.

In fact, I may the only sentient one amongst them.

THE OPERATOR

THE SENTIENT’S RELEASE TBC….

PLEASE NOTE THE SENTIENT IS VOLUME FOUR, VOLUME THREE THE OPERATOR IS OUT… TOMORROW!!!

VISIT UNITYNOVELS.COM OR AMAZON TO PURCHASE

Posted on by sarahmichellelynch

NEWS and a FREEBIE….from the UNITY series

the radicalthe informantTHE OPERATORthe sentient

FREE

 

I’m releasing the third instalment in this DYSTOPIAN ADULT ROMANCE series, THE OPERATOR, on Friday, 23rd May. In celebration, THE RADICAL (vol.1) will be free from Monday through Friday. Yay! Please take this opportunity to download and sample this series. VOLUME FOUR, THE SENTIENT, is currently undergoing something of an overhaul. It’s the explosive conclusion to the series which sparked my writing journey.

This is a futuristic story but it doesn’t alienate non-scifi fans. Journey from New York and beyond… discover the world post-outbreak… unitynovels.com

IN OTHER NEWS… I am currently writing a romance alongside my editing duties. It’s going to be pretty suspenseful and is shaping up well. The title I have is UNBIND and I want to wait until I’ve got the nuts and bolts of the plot sorted before I reveal anything more. It’s exciting though!!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

S

Posted on by sarahmichellelynch

Prologue for THE OPERATOR, UNITY VOL.3

This book has been the undoing of me, I have to tell you that. Anyways, here’s a snippet you might like…

This is from the third book in the UNITY series and you can purchase the first two by visiting unitynovels.com

The following is unedited, subject to change etc, but I can tell you this book is the best thing I’ve written yet…

So here we are…

PROLOGUE

When you grow up being told that people are either good or evil, you don’t ever know any different. You can’t distinguish any middle ground. You are told most are evil, though you don’t really know what evil is until evil does. A childhood knowing only that people are to be mistrusted ‒ it stays with you forever and ever. Eighty-odd years of life didn’t convince me that I will ever get over what happened to me both then, and afterwards. What I learned over time, however, was that people and their individuality make everything better, more wholesome. Lots of people along the way smoothed out my rough edges and wore away at my hard shell.

I used to think it was enough to take succor from small things. Perhaps that was my way of coping. Beach walks, strolling around markets, a street stall jacket potato still in its foil wrapper and a plastic fork… those things still seem pretty great, even though I can’t have any of them, not anymore. That is not the world in which we live now.

I used to look at other people and envy them their ignorance, their naivety, their carefree ways. I’d assess them within a heartbeat and know everything about them and their needs, their desires. The stressed-out girl on a delicatessen was only concerned with getting out of there so she could spend her pennies at the local pub with her scruffy boyfriend. The man power-walking the streets with fury was only doing so because his wife wouldn’t put out and he had no other way of sweating off some steam. That paper boy who never spoke… that businesswoman who wore gray suits with such swagger that she convinced herself we didn’t all know it was just High Street clobber and not designer, not at all. That bus driver who always gave me the eye and complained when I didn’t have the right change. All those people, those beautiful people, made the pattern of what was once our world.

Oh we all see the outsides of people. We see the outlines of shapes and images, but do we see their essence, their souls? Their real story? Everyone has a story so they say. Some are possibly better left unsaid.

When you get to the end of my tale, you might wish you’d never heard my story. Sometimes I wished I’d never heard my story. However, it is what made me, me. What shaped me and formed me into the person I became.

Somebody made me realize that surviving wasn’t enough. This person challenged me. Really changed me. Whatever you believe about love, I might show you otherwise. Whatever you think love is, I may prove to the contrary.

You know the basics… now to get to the grit of this tale of UNITY.

You know who I am…

I am the Operator.

 

RELEASE DATE TBC

Posted on by sarahmichellelynch

99 cents each…

the radicalIn the first instalment of S.M. Lynch’s dystopian adult romance series…

The year is 2063 and Big Brother has control; 40 years previously Officium took over global intelligence, government, supply and policing. In the wake of viral disaster they offered to return the world to order, but at a cost.

New York journalist Seraph Maddon has been trying to link the death of her British parents to the group that has rinsed the world of all hope – but more than ten years of investigations have turned up nothing. It is only when she leaves her job behind to travel to England for a funeral that she starts to unpick her family’s involvement in a movement known as UNITY.

Someone intends Seraph to cross paths with Dr Ryken Hardy and when they meet, it is not long before they are running for their lives – their combination a significant threat to those who believe themselves beyond surveillance.

Seraph’s rollercoaster journey of reawakening and newfound love is a battle to finally break free of the shackles of oppression. Secrets and lies are the norm amongst a frightened population and the truth may be best kept hidden.

But someone is determined… the truth will out, for better or worse…

The story continues in UNITY Vol.2, THE INFORMANT

EXCERPT

“All we know is that we were born into corruption and madness and that nothing can move forward until the veil is lifted. Knowledge is freedom, and if the world knew the truth for a certainty, I’m sure people would rise up against Officium finally. But without definitive proof, we can do nothing. We need hard evidence otherwise anything else might send panic through the population again. I know one thing for sure at least, they will stop at nothing to keep the truth hidden…”

 

the informantIn the second instalment of S.M. Lynch’s dystopian adult romance series…

Exploding the secrets of 2023 was just the beginning. The Operator’s legacy has yet to be fully realized and there are those among the resistance who are having a hard time following orders…

Camille knows a few secrets guaranteed to create havoc if they escaped. While she watches two families come together to prevent Officium’s resurgence, she hovers on the brink of despair, desperate to be released of her responsibilities once and for all.

Meanwhile Seraph starts a new life in Paris, hoping to leave all her ghosts in the past. However, dark truths threaten to tear her world apart and a dramatic confrontation in the Catacombs spells tragedy for one UNITY member.

Still the journalist, Seraph is always listening… and always watching… and dark secrets seem abundant…

EXCERPT

I was both the Principal and me, needing to suffuse the two to become something more powerful than I had ever been before. I saw the images of all I loved and ran at the group, holding a hand out for Mara to stay where she was. As I neared the pack, I reached down for the instrument hidden within my knee-high boot. It swished and gleamed against the twinkling skies overheard. I heard the emissaries take a quick intake of breath and licked my lips at the sight of their fear.

 

 

 

 

Posted on by sarahmichellelynch

Another instalment in the saga…

Two years ago when I was pondering whether or not to self-publish my first book, I had no idea how my work would be received. No idea. When people texted/emailed me to say they couldn’t put it down and were in love with the characters, I just didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. To me, writing was just something I enjoyed and that others enjoyed it was such a bonus. I didn’t know it would lead me on to write a book like A Fine Profession, nor A Fine Pursuit or Angel Avenue, which have been so well received since then. And the journey continues, the development is ongoing…

Today THE INFORMANT went live on Amazon. I am not going mad promoting it yet. I will do however when Volume 4 comes out. Then I will go mad. The reversions of what was the Ravage Trilogy, to me, signal the end of this stage of my creative development and the beginning of something new. It was only today I went to give a talk on self-publishing and had a potential pack of ten or more writers ready to put their work in my hands to edit and publish. I owe a lot to that first novel. I wouldn’t be here now without it.

Anyway, what I can tell you (without spoiling the plot) is that when I was writing these sci-fi novels, I was a new mum. Many of you know that. I was writing for the first time and it is only natural that a lot of my new concerns in life came to the fore in those novels. Also, a lot of people that came and went in my life, and those still with me, manifested in some respects in those early works that were more me than I think anything else ever will be.

It is sci-fi. Yet it has such a romantic edge. These are just stories that can take you away from this place. One major theme in the UNITY series is motherhood. I guess that will always stand prominent in any work of mine. You see my own mother was fostered when she was four and didn’t have it easy. My husband’s mum lost her mother when she was eight. That wasn’t the beginning of it for either of our mums. Both my mum and Andy’s mum strived so hard to give us what they never had. When I had a child too, so much hit me. I am sure so many other mums here and elsewhere can relate to that. UNITY is not only about a virus attack – it is about friendships, lovers, connections, relationships… it’s about alcoholism, abuse and how our imbedded personalities define us – all against this mad background of threat and suspicion, fear and longing. Dive in. I dare you!

Click covers to buy or visit unitynovels.com to find out more!!!

the radicalthe informant