Entangled: Brazen | August 11, 2015 | Contemporary Romance
Gamers, book 2
★★★★1/2
SOURCE: PUBLISHER
TOUR HOST: TASTY BOOK TOURS
Grant Osprey just had the hottest sex of his life. Sure, they were both in costume, and yes, it was anonymous, but he never expected her to bolt in the middle of the night without so much as a good bye, let alone exchanging numbers. Or names. All he’s left with are her panties and some seriously X-rated memories...until he meets his business partner's little sister.
Only Chloe Talley isn't the bold, sexy vixen he remembers. And she wants nothing to do with him.
Cosplay is Chloe’s only chance to leave her boring, socially awkward world behind. To forget that she’s failing at life and can’t be with anyone, let alone a single-father like Grant. But the raw hunger between them is undeniable. With him, she can be a misbehaving maid. A sexy call girl for hire. Each scene pushes Chloe beyond her strict boundaries, until Grant demands the one character she can't play.
Herself.
{ about megan erickson } .
Megan worked as a journalist covering real-life dramas before she decided she liked writing her own endings better and switched to fiction.
She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two kids and two cats. When she's not tapping away on her laptop, she's probably listening to the characters in her head who won't stop talking.
{ guest post : day in the life -- writing }
I have three “work days” a week, which is when I send my kids off to the sitter and sit around in my pajamas and write. Sounds simple right? Yeah, no. By the time I wrangle my kids in the car and drop them off, I already need a nap. So I start on my second cup of coffee, check my email, and waste time on Twitter and Facebook. Before I know it, it’s eleven a.m. and I’ve written zero words.
But I’m hungry now, so I have to eat lunch, which I do. Then I’m tired because I just ate, but I resist a nap. I turn on Freedom, which is an app that turns off my wi-fi and is honestly, truly, the only way I get books written. I write best in sprints. Where I focus for a solid hour and write straight through. If I’m really focused, I can get 2-2.5K words in an hour. If I’m focused. Sometimes, I lose focus after 1,700 words and check my email from my phone.
I usually take another short break then and do random things like pet my cats or put in a load of laundry. I then buckle down for another sprint before I have to go pick up my kids.
I then often write at night after they go to bed, until I have blog posts to write which is what I’m doing right now, haha.
On my work days, I aim for 3K words. I’ll settle for 2.5K, but anything less and I beat myself up. Because I know I can do better. But that’s kind of my own personal issue. I should really cut myself slack, huh?
So that’s how I manage to finish the number of books I do. It’s really not anything fancy. I just… write. I don’t edit as I go, so my first drafts are horrendously full of typos. But the magic of books is in the editing.
But I’m hungry now, so I have to eat lunch, which I do. Then I’m tired because I just ate, but I resist a nap. I turn on Freedom, which is an app that turns off my wi-fi and is honestly, truly, the only way I get books written. I write best in sprints. Where I focus for a solid hour and write straight through. If I’m really focused, I can get 2-2.5K words in an hour. If I’m focused. Sometimes, I lose focus after 1,700 words and check my email from my phone.
I usually take another short break then and do random things like pet my cats or put in a load of laundry. I then buckle down for another sprint before I have to go pick up my kids.
I then often write at night after they go to bed, until I have blog posts to write which is what I’m doing right now, haha.
On my work days, I aim for 3K words. I’ll settle for 2.5K, but anything less and I beat myself up. Because I know I can do better. But that’s kind of my own personal issue. I should really cut myself slack, huh?
So that’s how I manage to finish the number of books I do. It’s really not anything fancy. I just… write. I don’t edit as I go, so my first drafts are horrendously full of typos. But the magic of books is in the editing.
{ excerpt } .
Chloe craned her neck and moved to go around the man, but the he sidestepped, right into her path. She glared at him. Or rather, she glared at…Doc Ock.A Doc Ock who was leering at her.
For God’s sake.
He twisted at the waist, so his metal octopus arms clanged together. Leaning into her, he pulled a string near his head so a claw snapped in her face. “Need a hand untying that corset, baby?” He held out his hands so that all four of his metal arms lifted. “Because I got six.”
This was what was keeping her from Breck? A Spider-Man villain? She raised her eyebrows, emboldened by her costume so she could say what she never could without it.
“Seriously? That’s your come on?”
He blinked at her. “Uh, yeah I guess so.”
“That’s the best you could come up with?”
His lips twisted to the side. “Well, uh, how about, are you afraid of spiders? Because I can protect you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Spiderman already beat you once and—”
And then her world tilted as someone gripped her waist and slung her over a hard shoulder. Then she was moving as the body who held her began walking. She protested with an umph and raised her head, watching Doc Ock stare after them with wide eyes, his metal arms clanking.
Chloe tried to get her wits together, remembering this was cosplay and she was Sari and how dare this guy pick her up? She turned her attention to her kidnapper. Or rather, his back. His blue-shirt-clad back. “Hey, put me down.”
He did with a thunk, and once she righted her skirt and brushed her hair out of her face, she got a good look at Breck. Her Breck.
Her incredibly hot rescuer.
She placed her hand on her hips and tried to keep the breathiness out of her voice, because damn. “I was doing just fine back there.”
“I know you were,” he said in a deep voice that skittered down her spine like fingers. “But I wasn’t. Had enough of watching that guy trying to hit on you.” Those full lips, so full they were almost feminine, twisted into a smile. “I wanted your attention. Because you’re the best Sari I’ve seen today.”
Chloe sucked in a breath. Oh yes, he’d do.
{ review } .
Have you ever ended up at a gamers convention? Surely you've at least seen pictures of Comic-Con... This is how our leads meet -- in disguise (cosplay) as two characters from a wildly popular game.
Chloe was one of those characters that you wanted to force in front of a mirror and yell, "Look at yourself, woman!" A terribly introverted "nerd", she enjoyed the one night a year she could dress up as some video game vixen or another, and let go. She gives herself one night to take on a brave persona, and the other 363 days of the year, she's just the plain Jane, "There’s no place like 127.0.0.1" shirt wearing, Chloe. Grant owned a gaming magazine and enjoyed his Comic-Con nights, sure, but who he truly was was a geeky single dad -- and he was OK with it. Watching him try to coax Chloe, his business partner's little sister, out of her shell, to just be Chloe, was enjoyable. He had quite the (almost never ending) battle.
Chloe and Grant were so perfect together, but Chloe had a hard time realizing she could be that role-playing vixen yet still be her normal self, and I think Grant was definitely the man to help her. Her vulnerability as she purposely puts the change in front of him was, in a sense, heart breaking simply because it was so difficult for her -- but it was something she knew she needed to do.
I haven't read the first book in this series, but I loved the Marley and Austin glimpses, so I'll have to go back and read their story. And then there's Ethan, Chloe's brother. I so want to watch him as he becomes whole, because that man has broken my heart.
Chloe was one of those characters that you wanted to force in front of a mirror and yell, "Look at yourself, woman!" A terribly introverted "nerd", she enjoyed the one night a year she could dress up as some video game vixen or another, and let go. She gives herself one night to take on a brave persona, and the other 363 days of the year, she's just the plain Jane, "There’s no place like 127.0.0.1" shirt wearing, Chloe. Grant owned a gaming magazine and enjoyed his Comic-Con nights, sure, but who he truly was was a geeky single dad -- and he was OK with it. Watching him try to coax Chloe, his business partner's little sister, out of her shell, to just be Chloe, was enjoyable. He had quite the (almost never ending) battle.
Chloe and Grant were so perfect together, but Chloe had a hard time realizing she could be that role-playing vixen yet still be her normal self, and I think Grant was definitely the man to help her. Her vulnerability as she purposely puts the change in front of him was, in a sense, heart breaking simply because it was so difficult for her -- but it was something she knew she needed to do.
I haven't read the first book in this series, but I loved the Marley and Austin glimpses, so I'll have to go back and read their story. And then there's Ethan, Chloe's brother. I so want to watch him as he becomes whole, because that man has broken my heart.
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