How to Vote in the RONE Awards: An Embarrassment of Itches

Goodness, I’m late getting this post up! SO much has been going on. The Dog Days of Murder (Ginny Reese Mysteries Book 2) was released April 2, and your response has been delightful! If I didn’t tell you before, An Embarrassment of Itches (Ginny Reese Mysteries Book 1) won the Mystery Category in the PRG Reviewer’s Choice Awards, and has also won for Best Animal Story and Best Cozy Mystery in the Firebird Awards.

Kirkus Reviews enjoyed An Embarrassment of Itches as well, calling it “a well-paced and entertaining series opener with an appealing protagonist.”

And now I’ve been notified that An Embarrassment of Itches has been nominated for a RONE award! If you’re not familiar, this is a prestigious indie book award run by InD’Tale Magazine, and only those stories given a Crowned Heart of Excellence are candidates for a RONE award.

Here’s the thing. In order to move into the next round of judging, nominated books must pass a reader voting round. The truth is, as a debut cozy mystery author under a brand new pen name, I simply don’t have the following to make Itches a contender. That’s why I need your vote (and for you to spread the word too)!

Voting in the Mystery Category for the RONE Awards runs from May 2nd to May 8th. You may only vote ONE TIME and you must be logged in to the site to do so (to protect the voting process). If you don’t already have an account with InD’Tale Magazine, you must set up an account and have it verified before you can vote. I should have posted this ages ago because voting as already opened (and closed!) in other categories, but I got swamped and forgot all about it. So I’m posting about the registration process today and will send out a reminder when it comes closer to the Mystery week.

To log in or create an account with InD’Tale Magazine, click here.

Or if you know you already have an account, you can go to the home page and go to the upper right corner to log in. Once you are logged in (and verified if the account is new), the voting page is here. Or you can search for the RONE awards from the dropdown menu along the upper right tab where it says InDescribe/Rones and search for the 2022 Awards.

The competition is going to be fierce! I doubt seriously I will move into the next round of judging, but I would love to make a decent showing! So I would love it if you’d register to vote and/or spread the word! An Embarrassment of Itches could use your vote come May 2nd!

 

Does That Job Offer Come with a Pay Raise? Bishop Takes Knight #MFRWHooks

I’m so pleased to be sharing an excerpt of Bishop Takes Knight here today! This story is the first in the Redclaw Origins series. Set in the 1950s, it explores how Redclaw Security came into being. See, there have always been shifters out there: dragons, phoenixes, griffins… the stuff of legends. But after the advent of developing nuclear technology during WW2, dormant shifter genes in the general population became activated, resulting in a new wave of shifters: lions and tigers and bears, so to speak.

In this scene, Rhett has just helped take down an intruder into Redclaw’s offices, and is discussing the aftermath with her boss, Ryker. Be sure to read to the end to get the link for the blog hop and see who else is sharing book hooks today!

Excerpt:

“Sir, was it my imagination, or did this man start to…?” I wasn’t sure how to complete my sentence. Perhaps I was guilty of reading too many pulp magazines. They made a nice change from the classics, but they had a sad tendency to influence my dreams. Could they affect my waking thoughts as well?

No, I know what I saw.

Ryker didn’t make it easy for me, merely lifting his own questioning eyebrow.

“Just as he was about to attack me, his nails became claws and his face sprouted fur.” Before Ryker could call me crazy or tell me I was imaging things, I said in a quiet but firm voice, “I saw him change.”

“Ah. I was hoping you hadn’t noticed that.” With a heavy sigh, he went back to the sideboard and poured whiskey into two tumblers, returning to the desk to hand one to me.

I hesitated before accepting the glass. Given my father’s fate, more than most people, I had good reason to avoid alcohol. Yet, whiskey seemed like a better choice than tea right now, especially since tea didn’t seem to be forthcoming. When Ryker had taken his seat again, I continued, “I also noticed when you pressed the switch under Miss Climpson’s desk, you seemed confident Billy no longer posed a threat. Did you turn some kind of dampening field on him? What did he want? Was he after the mechanical spider?”

My questions caught Ryker as he took a sip and he choked. Setting the glass down, he looked at me with mild astonishment. “My word, Miss Bishop. In another century, they’d have burned you at the stake.” À propos of nothing, he added, “What do you go by? Henrietta?”

My eyes narrowed. In my experience, you couldn’t trust bosses who asked for personal information. “My friends call me Rhett,” I spoke each word with careful deliberation.

He nodded. If he sensed my wariness, he had chosen to ignore it. “Very nice, indeed. It suits you.” Something of my expression must have registered with him because he held up a hand. “Please believe me when I say I have no designs on your person. It’s just that I feel you’re wasted in a secretarial position, and I don’t want to keep ‘Miss Bishoping’ you. Unless, of course, you prefer it.”

“You may call me Bishop, if it’s easier.”

He seemed delighted by this. “Like I would Russo or the others? Except for Miss Climpson. She could never be anything other than that.” He leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile. “At least to her face.”

I coughed to conceal a small laugh. No one called Miss Climpson ‘Climmy’ in her presence. In fact, I’d chosen to do so when confronting the intruder solely to alert Miss Climpson I was aware something was wrong, had she been able to hear me.

Ryker picked up his tumbler again, staring into its amber depths. “How would you like to be a field agent, Bishop?”

Bishop Take Knight is a Top Pick at The Romance Reviews and a Crowned Heart of Excellence recipient at InD’Tale Magazine and has been nominated for a RONE Award! Bishop Takes Knight was recently voted Best Paranormal/SFF Romance in the 2020 New England Reader’s Choice Awards, too. So if you like light paranormal romance and bantering couples, check it out!

Follow the link to go to other blogs participating in Book Hooks this week and check out some great reads! 

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Bishop Takes Knight is a RONE Nominee–And I Need Your Help!

I hate asking for votes.

It feels pushy, for one. It also reminds me that being relatively unknown, my chances of winning anything based on my following is slim to none. But this time is a little different.

See, Bishop Takes Knight has been nominated for a RONE award! Voting in the subgenre division for Long Paranormal Romance opens Monday, May 18th and runs through Sunday, May 24th (though I’m told not to wait until the last minute as some people have been caught by time differences). The only way Bishop Takes Knight can advance to the finals is if it receives enough reader votes! So here I am, asking for your help to get to the next round…

Here are the instructions from InD’Tale Magazine:

It is extremely important that you let all your readers and fans know!  We would hate to think a superior quality book lost only because people were unaware of the time limit. Also, make sure that they understand they MUST be registered on our website at www.indtale.com in order to vote. Once they register, if they haven’t already, they will be required to click the verification link sent to them via email. If they do not verify their registration with this link, they will be unable to vote. This is very important to help ensure that the voting is fair and maintains the high-quality standards required for this top-tier award.

Once you’re logged in, you can go to the 2020 RONE Awards in the drop-down menu at the top right corner and scroll to the category (or date) Paranormal-Long. Or go to this link directly!

So you see, your vote is crucial to getting to the next step! I hope if you’ve read and enjoyed Bishop Takes Knight, you’ll consider voting for it in the Paranormal-Long category. If you haven’t read it, but you like my works, you can still vote for it, or spread the news among your friends. Your support is deeply appreciated!