Friday, October 2, 2015

Always Have and Always Will by Stella McLeod Guest Post


Always Have and Always Will
The Omega Series
Book 1
Stella McLeod

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Date of Publication: October 1, 2015

ISBN: 1500270598
ASIN: 978-1500270599

Number of pages: 264
Word Count: 70,000

Formats available:         pdf

Cover Artist: Hang Le

Book Description:        

Reincarnation is easy until you have to face being murdered a second time. A life destroyed 2000 years in the past, a buried Greek temple with the secret to Immortality, ancient families torn apart by betrayal and a modern reincarnated woman who holds the key.

Ana Black thinks a villa on a Greek Island will be the perfect summer holiday but her plans don’t include Alexander Petrakis. He’s an ancient warrior who thinks he’s Immortal, says he’s waited 2000 years for her to return and claims she’s his reincarnated lover, a woman he freely admits he failed to protect in her past life. Even if she believes him and gives him a second chance, what hope he won’t fail her again?

With a past she cannot escape and a future he cannot accept, all they have is the present. Will they find a way or are they both out of time?

Available at Amazon



Chapter 1. Island of Monemvasia, Greece. Present day.

“I would rather be tied to the soil as another man’s serf ...than be King of all these dead and destroyed.” ~ HOMER, The Odyssey

When the last shutters close nothing moves but the wind in the trees and the thin fabric of my dress as it drums and billows in the air.
I knew it was a mistake, like my hair. When I’d left it had been neatly arranged in a loose knot and now it’s unraveling out of control. Like my life.
The streets are quiet and everyone is inside but I try not to think about the shitty weather, try to pretend it’s not a bad omen. The oppressive summer heat has given way to warm autumn days that gave no hint of the winter to come, the blue skies were bluer, the air cleaner.
Until today. Today the grey started and rain threatened.

About the Author:

McLeod’s books deliver exotic and interesting locations with characters flawed in quirky everyday ways and as a Clinical Psychologist, she draws on psychological insights into human behaviour and motivation to bring her story and characters to life. Published for over twenty years in a variety of media including television, books, electronic and print media, with additional qualifications as a London trained chef, food writer and lecturer means her readers will always find psychological complexity, tension and food written into her books. Stella McLeod is a member of the Australian Romance Writers Association.

Guest Post
Have you ever read about the ancient Greek God’s and wondered where they came from? Well the new paranormal romance released this week, Always Have and Always Will has the answer. This luscious romance set in the Greek Islands unveils the secret to Immortality discovered in Antiquity, reveals a young ancient warrior who has waited for over 2000 years for his lover to return to him and a modern reincarnated woman who cannot remember her past-life or him. Throw in his sinister twin brother, her best friend Menander, some living God’s and the murderer and you have a plot to die for.

McLeod brings her experience as a psychologist to bear in the creation of her characters and story, making them challenging, flawed and deliciously vulnerable. Her hero is a warrior who wants to be a lover and her heroine, a lover who wants to be a warrior. With a past she cannot escape and a future he cannot accept does love find a way?  Of course it does! This is a romance after all, and like all good therapists or romance writers, and despite a twisted plot, McLeod delivers that perfect happy ending.

We put some questions to Stella McLeod about her new book and being an Author.

How did you become a writer?
Some people say authors are born not made, I think authors are just people who decide they want to write. I decided I wanted to write when I was a teenager, mainly because I was abysmal at Maths, Physics and Chemistry but good at English. I entered competitions, started winning awards and the positive reinforcement strengthened my behaviour. What I didn’t know and wasn’t to learn until I became a Clinical Psychologist was that intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful force in determining human behaviour and writers get plenty of that with rejections/acceptances, fans who love you and others not so much. Like the majority of writers I’ve managed to keep writing and getting published consistently, while being a mother and working in a full time occupation but a few years ago I decided to retire early from private full time practice as a Psychologist and that writing was going to be my full time, instead of part-time career. It wasn’t so much a leap of faith, rather just a reaching of a crossroad and deciding one path gave me more joy, more fulfilment. All the clues were all there anyway, like signposts, showing me which way to go; most of my friends were writers, I spent all my free time either writing, thinking about writing or reading other peoples writing.

What types of books do you like writing the best?
Over the years I’d written everything from Medico-legal reports for the courts, professional journal articles and conference papers for Psychologists, scripts for pre-school TV shows, children’s picture books and cook books, YA and teenage fiction, a series of technical cookbooks for The Culinary Library and novel length romances. When I committed to writing full time I knew, both consciously and subconsciously, it was Romance novels I wanted to focus on. One of the things I’d learned as a Psychologist was that, although every one’s stories and pain seem different there are common universal threads of humanity and we are more similar than we know.  For most people it is the complexities of human relationships that they seek to unravel, understand and master. We may all start off on different roads but they are all heading in the same direction, hoping for the same destination. Romance writing is the genre that, to me, best explores the many facets of human relationship, but in the end it is the ONLY genre that absolutely delivers what most people are ultimately looking for throughout all stages of their life from childhood to death, acceptance, love and a place of peace and acceptance where they feel good about themselves and the world. (or as my heroine in Always Have and Always Will says, she just wants to feel beloved on the earth.)




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