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I don't usually post promo on this blog, but today I'm making an exception (right, Sharon?). Please check out this fabulous new release by romance author Sharon Hamilton. It's Book 1 of her Golden Vampire series.
BLURB:
Anne caught her husband cheating with the maid of Honor
before their wedding cake was cut. She decided to take her planned and paid for
honeymoon in Tuscany, alone. On the evening of what was to be her wedding night,
she gets bitten by a female vampire.
Marcus Monteleone has waited three
hundred years to find his fated female, only to discover her dying in his arms.
He saves Anne's life by turning her, and then works to gain her trust, to cope
with being a newly-formed golden vampire.
But when Anne finds out Marcus
has not been completely truthful about his past, she vows to live as a human,
and shuns the vampire world. Alone and unprotected, she falls prey to the very
villainess who took her human soul, and who now takes the only man she’s ever
loved.
Which lover will have to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the
other before they both are lost?
BUY: Kindle|Nook
Sharon's website: http://www.sharonhamiltonauthor.com/home.html
Guest blogger: Maya DeLeina
I am at a time in my life where I am incredibly comfortable in my skin. I’ve learned to accept they way I look and appreciate who I am. Ok, so I am a bit weird, yet it hasn’t caused me to make a b-line for a darkened corner of a room in a social setting and I am far from being timid. This is me, like it or not.
But I haven’t always been this way.
If I had to pinpoint a time where I first started being uncomfortable with myself, it had to be the moment I got satellite equipment on my face- orthodontic headgear. This was the start to my very awkward-looking stage. I didn’t shy away from doing things completely, but I certainly had reservations that I never had before and I did everything in my power to blend in so I wouldn’t standout. And that is pretty dang hard to do with blinding metal on your face.
All in all, I wasn’t a cute kid. In fact, I remember my younger brother and I took photos together. He was so perfectly adorable in the foreground and then there I was, looming in the background and ruined the portrait. To really paint the picture, at one time, I donned braces with the rubber-band closures, the headgear, pimples and chin-length hair that was so extremely poofy, I looked like a walking mushroom. Then, my nose grew from a cute button as a baby into what looked like a freaky arrow. I remember one kid in school, Jason, would constantly call me “Wheel of Fortune”, you know, because my nose looked like that little white arrow on Pat Sajak’s wheel?
I can’t tell you how many times I heard “Free Spin”.
So this is where my shyness developed. Seems a bit shallow, but this had a real impact on my self esteem and confidence. I didn’t want to get teased, so I stayed low. Although a lot of the adolescent years experience this, for me, I was unable to shake it completely. Later in life, I was still enraptured with the thought of blending, taking it as far as fantasizing about the day I could afford plastic surgery so my nose would look like everyone else.
Then something just hit me like a flash.
If we all looked, thought, dressed like each other, what a boring world this would be. The headgear is gone now, but my nose ever present. The thought of plastic surgery for a new nose is no longer in my thoughts (boob lift, maybe). It’s me. It’s who I am. And suddenly, when I accepted this, everything else started to fall in place.
Acceptance is a powerful tool.
Today, I am an erotic vampire author of all things, unleashing my wicked, twisted and weird creativity in my writing. No reservations or shyness here! And it is all due to acceptance. This acceptance has given me an inner strength I never felt before. This inner strength promoted confidence. This confidence helped breakthrough that wall I built years ago that has allowed me to find my true voice.
It’s crazy when I think back on this.
In Tarot cards, the Wheel of Fortune is all about luck and change. The wheel symbolizes completeness, the rise and fall of fortunes and the message that what goes around comes around. The card indicates happiness and elevation; a change that just happens, and brings with it great joy.
This is where I am now.
Makes me wonder what Jason is up to these days.
***
You can learn more about Maya on her website
and Facebook. Her newest release, Flesh Fantasy
