Excerpt & Giveaway: Red August by HL Brooks

Today's excerpt & second giveaway of the day (woot!) comes from Red August, by HL Brooks. Though the excerpt we have here is completely SFW, the book itself is a steamier one, so please keep that in mind before you enter the giveaway. (But I promise, there's nothing in the excerpt below that will make you blush!)  Take a read, enter to win, and let us know what you think in the comments!

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On the second floor August found a wide hall with several rooms, including the one her mother had already claimed. Nice, but Mom could have it. At the opposite end she tried a door, and the entire hall flooded with sunlight. Still blinking, she realized that this was the room with the turret on this floor, and she dropped her bags on the dark pine boards. No question, this was the room she was going to have. Standing in the windowed alcove, she could see more than half of the property, from the tree line to a sloping ridge, and a stream trailing off into the distance. There was a window seat running all the way around the turret, and she curled up on it and watched the trees starting to gently sway, and ominous looking clouds roll in over the ridge. The air was changing. August realized she was feeling somewhat detached from everything, as though there were a veil between her and the rest of the world, like she was looking at a photo, rather than out of her new window. Despite that, she had a sense that she had come home, even though she had not been to this house or this town since she was a baby.

There was only one other house in sight, up the hill to the north, with the stream tumbling down past it in a small cascade. It didn't look anything like their Victorian grande dame with its turrets and wrap-around porches; instead it was modern with clean straight lines and big windows. There was a man pacing on the deck, and his shadowy silhouette was somewhat hunched and lean. Then he looked over at their house, like he wasn't sure what to make of new neighbors, and went inside. What's eating him, August wondered.

She sighed and grabbed the seat edge as she rolled off of it, and it moved. She looked closer, tried lifting the seat up, and found a hollow beneath it. The whole thing was like a big trunk, she guessed, and this hinged part of the seat was the lid. It was stiff and it stuck, probably due to moisture and about fifteen layers of paint, but eventually August managed to pry it open. The only thing she saw inside was an old, stale-smelling quilt, so she pulled it out and set it aside to be laundered, then grabbed her treasure box and tucked it inside the window seat. She smiled as she closed the lid--this was the best hiding place she'd found yet. Then she ran down to the car and came back up with her father's cloak. She folded it carefully and tucked it into the window seat as well. She gazed at her treasures for a moment, and lowered the lid with a sense of satisfaction.

****GIVEAWAY****
To celebrate the upcoming release of Red August, HL Brooks has offered up an ebook copy for five (5!) lucky FTF readers!
This giveaway is INTERNATIONAL* and ends April 22nd at midnight EST
To enter, make sure you are registered on the FTF giveaway registry, and then fill out the Rafflecopter form below.
Good luck!
*Please note: this book is an EROTIC fairy tale retelling, and as such, may not be suitable for all readers. If receiving erotic works is not permitted in your area, or you are underage, please do not enter. Winner copies will become available after the book is released later this summer. And because this extract is from the unfinished proof, all quotes are subject to change.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

ABOUT RED AUGUST by HL BROOKS:

What if you found out that you were descended from a long line of clandestine fighters, and that your family was still at war? Or that the love of your life was something other than human? August Archer thinks she's a normal teenage girl—even though she has been having disturbing and erotic dreams about wolves lately. Still grieving over the loss of her bookish, charming father, and wondering over his final gift of a red hooded cloak, August is uprooted from her New York City apartment to a tiny town in Maryland, and the rambling Victorian house where he grew up. There she meets a wise woman with a gift for herbal medicine, the gentle old man who keeps the house in repair and the grounds thriving, and her new neighbor: an enigmatic, irresistibly fascinating man who refuses to talk to her, yet who seems to know her better than she knows herself, and fuels her most intense romantic fantasies. But it's when August begins to coax her feisty Scottish grandmother out of her self-imposed catatonia that a strange tale of werewolves and hunters emerges—one in which the man of her dreams may be her family's oldest enemy—in this modern-day telling of the Red Riding Hood story.

ABOUT HL BROOKS
H.L. writes contemporary erotic fairytale romances with an emphasis on strong female characters of various ages and body types.

She is an artist, photographer and long-time blogger, as well as an award-nominated set decorator for DC-area community theatres.

She lives in Maryland with writer William Hardy and two cats.

Want more fairy tales? Return to the main schedules
by clicking here for The Book Rat or here for A Backwards Story