Smitten by Books

Hook me.

It’s like a dare isn’t it?

I’ve read your back cover blurb and it’s…oh, I don’t know, so-so. I’m not convinced I should spend my hard earned $4.99 – $13.95 on your book. Let me check   the inside excerpt. Darn, it doesn’t have one. I could read the first couple pages, but that usually doesn’t do me much good. I’ll always remember a certain perfume shop scene that began one of my all-time favourite reads. Oh look, the latest Anna Campbell…

This is exactly what authors don’t want to happen to their book. I mean with the bookshelves packed tight with a gazillion books competing for readers’ attention and dollars, it would be such a shame if the poor author had a cover attractive enough to catch readers’ eyes but their back cover blurb wasn’t quite enough to hook ’em. They need just one other thing to compel perspective readers to buy–a truly “hookable” excerpt.

What’s a hookable excerpt? It’s different for everyone, I imagine. I know what hooks me (serious sexual tension, great conflict) won’t be the be-all hook for everyone–though, I daresay, it will appeal to quite a few (Threw in a little Victorian speak). LOL.

Following are three excerpts meant to get readers to invest their time (reading) and part with a token amount of cash. In return, hopefully, they’ll have discovered another author to add to their “instant buy list”. 😉

~*~*~

Devil in a Kilt in Red Sage Secrets Volume 27 Untamed Pleasures – Nicole North

Length: Novella

Setup

Shauna MacRae has been having uncontrollable erotic daydreams about a certain Highlander for months. Determined to rid herself of these intrusive, overwhelming fantasies, she heads to the Highland Games to find a real kilted hottie. A mysterious older man compels her to hold a four-hundred-year-old, two-handed claymore. In the next instant, she finds herself in a Scottish castle bedchamber, though she doesn’t know at first that it’s 1621.

She gaped at the dangerous, heavily-muscled giant with long, dark hair standing before her. He was more than a foot taller than she.

“Omigod.”

A straight white scar ran from his forehead to his jaw on the right side of his face, but the injury hadn’t affected his eye. His gaze pinned her to the spot. She knew those eyes, pale aquamarine-blue with a darker rim around the outside of the irises, surrounded by thick, dark lashes. He studied her and frowned with a wicked, black slash of his brows.

Her fantasy lover was back.

“Not now! Very bad timing.” She shook her head, trying to escape her daydreams.

He glanced at the sword on the floor, then back to her. “Ye think to kill me with my own claidheamh dà làimh, do ye, lass?”

At first, she could hardly understand the words he’d rolled up in the thick Scottish burr, then finally decided most of them were English.

Huh? He never said things like that in her fantasies. In fact, he never spoke English, only purred those Gaelic phrases that sounded so exotic and arousing.

“Explain yourself!” he demanded, sending her a glare such as she’d never imagined.

“No, I—”

The candle’s light glinted off the blade of a dagger in his other hand, and warmed his sun-bronzed skin—dear God, he was completely naked just like in her dreams. So why was he being such a bastard?

“This is the worst fantasy I’ve ever had.”

~*~*~

THE CONQUEROR – Kensington/Zebra ~ Kris Kennedy

The bench thumped forward. “You’re hurt.” He ran a finger over the bruise on her shoulder, a soldier’s swift appraisal. A ripple of goosebumps sped under his hand. He froze.

She was blushing a pale shade of pink. Dark, wet hair hung in tangled locks across the red linen and her white shoulder, creating a startling contrast in colors. The combination of such an ethereal face and the sudden, innocent desire dawning there made him snatch his hand back as if burned.

“I’ll tend it when you’re done,” he said roughly.

She ducked her head and muttered some inaudible reply. She could have said Stephen’s army was marching for the inn and he wouldn’t have heard. Such a hard, hot pounding hadn’t surged through him in many a year.

“What did you say?” he asked, dimly aware she’d been speaking.

“I said, I did not expect such a thing as all this from my night.” She waved her hand. “Did you?”

He groaned audibly. This would never do. She could be swathed in sacks and buried under a haystack and it would not help. Already the image of her stretched out beneath him, black hair streaming over the pillows, was more vivid than the whole past year of his life.

“Nay, I never expected such a thing as you.”

She smiled faintly. “Fools, I think we agreed.”

“Without sense.”

“Entirely.”

He drew back, leveled his tone. “I would have you regain yours, ere something happens you’ll be sorry for.”

She paused, and he had a momentary thought he might escape unscathed. That she would do the prudent thing, save him from this rampaging desire. But her next words smashed the faint hope. “Sense is only one way to know a thing, Pagan,” she whispered. “I’m sure we could find another.”

In a single move he was up, around the table, pulling her to her feet.

~*~*~

MASTERING THE MARQUESS – Kensington/Zebra ~ Vanessa Kelly

Meredith jerked back, more stung by his words than she could have imagined. She drew herself up to her full height.

“Lord Silverton, I’m sure I do not deserve your insults. If you’re not willing to discuss this matter in a rational fashion, then I must ask you to leave my room. We can continue this conversation when we have both returned to London.”

The anger in his eyes slowly transmuted into something else. Meredith felt a warning chill shoot up her spine as his lips parted in a slow smile—the one that always made her knees grow so weak. She forced herself to move away from him, but he matched her step for step.

“As a matter of fact, Meredith, I’m not feeling rational at all. And I would like to point out this is my house, not yours. I have no intention of going anywhere.”

“My lord,” Meredith quavered. She swallowed, taking one more stab at fending him off. “When your mother and I spoke this morning …”

Silverton laughed. The unexpected, husky sound caused her heart to beat erratically against her breastbone.

“My sweet, there are two words no man wants to hear when he is about to make love to his woman, and they are, your mother!”

“But I’m not your woman,” she protested.

“After last night you are most certainly my woman.”

He advanced toward her with a dangerous gleam in his eye. Meredith retreated again, but he continued to stalk her across the room until she found herself backed against the wall. He quickly pinned her by placing his hands on either side of her shoulders as he pressed his lower body against her. With a sense of shock, she registered the heavy length of his arousal through her nightclothes.

“I’m not letting you go, so you might as well get used to it,” he said.

~*~*~

**For longer excerpts, click on the covers.

So are you hooked? Let me know.

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