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science fiction, fantasy & paranormal romance

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9 Days to Beyond Ruin…

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Feb 14

9 Days to Beyond Ruin

 

Welcome, and join us as we count down the final 10 days before Beyond Ruin by revisiting some of our favorite Mad, Dylan, Scarlet & Jade moments from the past six books! We’ll be posting an image each day on social media, but here on the blog we’ll be doing a longer excerpt and maybe even a few notes about the scene.  🙂  And today is…

Jade asks Lex to help her escape Sector Two.
Beyond Control

Okay, I cheated a little bit with this graphic to condense the dialogue, and now I’m going to get caught out by posting the full excerpt. But I had to get the most important part–that Lex isn’t the only legend who looms large in Sector Two.

We meet Jade at the lowest moment of her life in Beyond Control, but for years she was the undisputed star of Sector Two, second only to Cerys herself when it came to influence and (as we saw in Beyond Solitude when she lends Mia the money necessary to pay her debts) second to no one when it came to wealth.  She worked within the system as best she could, but learned a hard lesson about the dangers of pushing back too much against corruption when you stand on your own.  Luckily, she’s an O’Kane now, and she’ll never be alone again.

I’m including the whole excerpt here, even the part with Mad, because we get so many questions about what happened between Mad and Jade in this scene and why she refused to sleep with him. (And she did. He would have gotten around to nobly turning her down, of course…but Jade didn’t give him the chance.)  Mad has always wondered why, too… and in Beyond Ruin, he finally gets his answer.

* * *

They turned a corner, and Mad jerked to a stop as a brunette stepped out of an alcove in front of them. She was pretty, in a soft sort of way, with a flowing robe that hugged her curves but hung modestly to the floor.

Mad recognized her. He didn’t release his grip on Lex, but he nodded. “Jade.”

“Maddox.” She turned to Lex and bowed as low as most initiates bowed to the head of their house. “You must be Lex.”

“Yeah.” Lex tipped the girl’s face up with two fingers under her chin. “But I’m not in the mood right now. Sorry, honey.”

She didn’t flinch, but her suddenly slumped shoulders screamed disappointment, along with something worse. Resignation. Jade straightened her back but lowered her gaze. “I only want a few moments. Could I walk with you?”

Damn it. “Five minutes, okay?”

“Thank you.” Even her smile, wide as it was, couldn’t chase the shadows from her eyes. Mad released Lex and fell back half a dozen paces, and Jade took his place. After a few steps, she glanced at Lex again. “You look so much like her. Avery, I mean. She was my dearest friend while I was in training.”

This woman looked years older than Avery. “And you chose to come here instead of taking on a patron?”

“Chose is always an interesting word in this place, isn’t it?” Jade stared ahead, but her voice turned wry. “I chose to excel at my training. I chose to devote every waking moment to becoming extraordinary, thinking it would bring me more latitude. I miscalculated.”

“Let me guess—instead, it turned you into me.” Lex smiled a little. “Overachiever and pariah, all rolled into one.”

Jade laughed softly. “Your greatest sin isn’t that you’re a pariah. It’s that you’re a legend. Legends are dangerous. They have power over people’s imaginations.”

“Then the smart thing would be to stay away from me, right?”

“It’s too late for me.” She lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug. “I’m a legend, too.”

“Kindred spirits, then.” Lex stopped and leaned against the wall. “Are we chatting, or are you getting around to asking me something?”

Jade folded her hands together with another nervous glance at Mad. He’d stopped, far enough back to be out of easy listening range, but he made no attempt at hiding the fact that he was watching them both.

Wetting her lips nervously, she turned back to Lex. “I know that he helps women escape sometimes. The ones who are pregnant and want to stay that way, or who’ve been hurt.”

The ones no one bothered to go after because they weren’t important or notorious enough to be legends. “If you’re talking to me, it must mean you think Mad can’t help you.”

“When I was seventeen, Cerys needed influence within Eden to keep Sector Two whole. And one of Eden’s councilmen needed…” Jade laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “He needed his ego stroked by a virginal whore. The Rose House specialty, and I have stroked his sad little ego very thoroughly.” She looked away. “Every other weekend, for the past seven years.”

And she wanted out. “That’s a slightly stickier situation than normal. But you know that.”

“I do,” she agreed, still staring at some invisible spot on the wall beside Lex’s head. “Especially since he had me leashed.”

Drugs, the kind meant to keep her compliant. Obedient and helpless. That sort of thing would make a piss-poor leash if getting clean was easy—or even likely. “Your chances are slim, then. You want to try anyway?”

Jade met her gaze, and there was steel in those brown eyes. “I can give Dallas O’Kane plenty of incriminating information. In return, I want a safe place to fight and protection if I make it. I know you can’t answer now, but I need to ask. I need to know.”

It could be a trap, Cerys’s backup plan in case Lex threw her offer back in her face—literally. Or it could have been her way of getting rid of Dallas all along. Spiriting away some councilman’s drug-addicted fuck toy guaranteed trouble for him and his sector. Cerys wouldn’t have to lift a finger to have Dallas out of the picture forever.

But Jade could also simply need help. For every trainee out of the Flower District who was happy with her patron, there were a dozen more who wound up miserable and desperate, and it was that possibility that had Lex whispering, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.” Jade stepped back with a sad little smile. “You do look like her. Maybe that makes it easier to trust you. I miss her.”

“So do I.” Lex caught Mad’s gaze and nodded.

Mad swept in, rescuing Lex from further conversation by inserting himself carefully between them. “I’ve got to get you back to Dallas before he skins me,” he murmured. “Jade, a pleasure to see you again.”

“And you, Maddox.” She inclined her head with a teasing smile. “Give my regards to Bren, would you? He’s a fascinating man.”

“I’ll do that.” He sounded almost grumpy, and Mad bustled Lex away with Jade’s soft laughter following them around the corner.

Lex caught his hand and held it tight. “Tried to be noble, huh? No screwing women who can’t say no?”

He scowled. “I’ve got no problem with women who sell sex, but it’s different when they’re groomed to think it’s their only fucking purpose. Hell, you know that.”

“Course I do. So why the long face?”

“She gave me a once-over, said, ‘I suppose that was inevitable,’ and jumped on Bren’s dick.” He huffed out a laugh. “Maybe. God knows what they actually did.”

“Yeah.” Lex brushed back an unruly lock of hair that had fallen over his brow. “If she winds up in Four, you’ll have plenty of time to get to know her. If that’s what you want.”

He snorted. “C’mon, Lex. Not even one joke about my hero complex?”

“Not in the mood,” she said again, smoothing his shirt as they reached the guest quarters. “I’ve decided we need a few more heroes.”

He stopped abruptly and tugged her around to face him, his voice deadly serious. “Shit, Lex. Are you all right? I know it’s been a long day, but…”

Things had gone fucking downhill when she started scaring people with positivity. “I’m ready to go home.”

* * *

Sign up for the release day announcement list to find out when Beyond Ruin is available!

10 Days to Beyond Ruin…

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Feb 13

day10

Welcome, and join us as we count down the final 10 days before Beyond Ruin by revisiting some of our favorite Mad, Dylan, Scarlet & Jade moments from the past six books! We’ll be posting an image each day on social media, but here on the blog we’ll be doing a longer excerpt and maybe even a few notes about the scene.  🙂  And today is…

Day 10 – Jade Getting her O’Kane Ink
Beyond Jealousy

Jade’s introduction to the series was pretty dramatic back in Beyond Control (and we’ll get to that later!) and it took until book #4 before she was recovered enough to commit to membership. This scene is from Ace’s POV, and shows one of my favorite things–Ace’s process for deciding how he’s going to customize each person’s wrist cuffs.  (Obviously they don’t get any say in the matter–Ace is an artist, damn it.)

Ace can be perceptive about people. In this scene, he’s damn near prescient.

* * *

Jade didn’t like the needles.

Not that she gave any sign—she endured being tattooed with a quiet stoicism practiced enough to be depressing—but Ace knew women. He knew their bodies and all the ways they could tense and tremble, especially when pain was involved.

Jade didn’t like the needles, and he didn’t like putting the hurt on a woman who already seemed terrifyingly fragile. “You still with me, honey? Last thing I want is a gorgeous lady bursting into tears in my chair.”

The corners of her mouth twitched in a whisper of a smile. “You’re right, Trix. He’s a flirt.”

“Told you.” The redhead leaned over, bracing her elbows on the table. “It looks good, Jade. Real good.”

Usually Trix leaning over anything made for a banner day. The redhead had a killer rack and a wardrobe meant to show it off, and Ace had always enjoyed ogling her tits.

Today, he was too hung over to summon more than a sad echo of his usual grin. “So, you two like to talk about me, huh?”

“Don’t start,” Trix advised. “You were drunk as shit last night. Even if we wanted to bask in your attentions today, you’d be no good to either of us.”

“Baby, I’m an O’Kane. My drunk attentions would still rock your world.”

“So I hear.”

It was Trix at her sultriest, flashing a knowing gaze and a teasing pout, and he supposed he was lucky she was still talking to him at all. The O’Kane women were harder to get between than an Eden virgin’s thighs, which meant he’d been getting a lot of cold shoulders since he’d pissed off Rachel.

Last night sure as hell wasn’t gonna fix that.

Swiping the spot he’d just been working on, Ace spent a moment admiring the clean lines swirling across Jade’s brown skin. The O’Kane emblem was always the centerpiece of a member’s cuffs, but the framing had to fit the person. Trix’s were among his favorite—lace and swooping curves, just like her—but something sassy and flirty wouldn’t work with Jade.

She was elegant, and she was tough. Lex had hauled the woman out of Sector Five, drugged out of her skull and so past addicted that even Doc hadn’t thought she’d pull through. Her fragility was skin-deep at best, an illusion that would fade as her health came back.

No lace for her. Nothing delicate. Strong roots twining around the emblem and twisting down, forming an unshakable base. Strong branches rising above, dotted by tiny leaves. He’d spent most of a sleepless night sketching it, and a good part of the morning refining it.

Yeah, he’d been drunk off his ass, but he was still a fucking genius.

Jade tensed as he started the next line, her stoicism wavering, and Ace filled the silence quickly. “So, there must be a party in the offing. Noah and Six haven’t had their big O’Kane welcome yet, and now you’ll be needing one, too.” He shot Trix a meaningful look—Help me distract her—before resuming his work.

Trix winked and stroked Jade’s hair back from her forehead. “You and Ace should help me convince Scarlet to get her band out here for it. Her bass player’s delicious.”

“She’s delicious,” Ace replied, flashing Trix a teasing grin. “Better watch out, Trixie-girl. I bet you’re just her type. I heard she likes her girls all pretty and curvy.”

Trix blushed. “She’s too into power games for me, thanks.”

“Everything’s a power game,” Jade murmured. “Sometimes we don’t realize we’re playing, and sometimes we’re not playing the game we thought…but if there’s trust, there’s power. And if there’s no trust, it’s just a more dangerous version of the game.”

Trix propped her chin on one hand. “Do you really believe that?”

“Mmm. That’s all my training was, at the heart of it. Learning to recognize what game a person wanted to play, even if he didn’t know it himself.”

An elegant way to put it, but Sector Two trained their courtesans to be refined and clever. Ace’s mentor had tailored his lessons to his student, and Ace had learned the blunt version. Almost nobody knows what they really want. Figure it out before they do, and you own them.

Great advice, if you could follow it. The two people he’d trained with had. Jared and Gia could spend five minutes with anyone, man or woman, and know a half-dozen paths straight to their soul. Ace had always preferred games where the rules were set in advance—games where they had to be set in advance, because you couldn’t play them if everyone wasn’t on board.

Maybe if he’d studied better, he’d know what games Rachel wanted to play.

“What if you love someone?”

Jade hesitated, and Ace glanced up in time to catch a flicker of sadness before she schooled her features again. “I imagine it’s a much scarier game with far higher stakes.”

He had blunt words for that concept, too—too fucking much to lose.

* * *

Sign up for the release day announcement list to find out when Beyond Ruin is available!

Beyond Happily Ever After with Rachel, Cruz and Ace

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Jan 24

While we work on production for Beyond Ruin, we have something to make the final few weeks of waiting a little easier!  The latest Beyond Happily Ever After short story featuring everyone’s favorite three lovers.

As with previous Beyond HEAs, you can download this one for free or, if you’re lazy, buy it for 99 cents from your favorite retailer. It’s short–just over 6,000 words–and dirty (it is Ace, guys, c’mon) and hopefully a little sweet, too.  We hope you enjoy!

Blank CanvasBlank Canvas

There are a lot of different ways to take care of the people you claimed as your own. In this short story, Cruz has a surprise for Ace that results in a road trip, a hot night with Rachel, and a new hope for their future.

Length: 6,300 words
Characters: Ace, Cruz & Rachel
Timeline: Set between Beyond Innocence and Beyond Ruin.

Download Free: http://krocha.link/blank-canvas-free
Buy: Amazon (99 cents), iBooks (99 cents), B&N (99 cents), Kobo (99 cents), Scribd

Review Copies of Beyond Ruin

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Jan 18

Hey guys! Since the book is officially D-O-N-E done, we’re getting ourselves organized for all the fun things that follow, like edits and ARCs and hiding in a cave until everyone’s read it.

Just kidding. Maybe.

We’re doing things a little differently this time. We’ll be posting this form, as usual, but at the bottom you’ll find a place where you can request to be on our permanent review list. This will be kind of like what we’ve got going on now, only you won’t have to keep filling out this form, our assistant will just make ARCs fall from the sky into your hands. Magic! The secret password to join is a link to the last Beyond book you reviewed. Easy-peasy!

Giant red text of warning: this is the seventh book in a series (as I will continue to warn you, repeatedly!) and is probably not the best place to start reading these books. If you want to start the series at the beginning, Book #1 is free at all vendors! Starting here may leave you confused!

And if you understand all that… here’s the form! We’re hoping to have review copies ready early-ish in February, so plan accordingly. 😀

FORM HAS CLOSED. ARCs WILL BE GOING OUT BETWEEN 2/9/2016 and 2/12/2016

Happy 2016!

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Jan 10

Okay, it’s been a while since we posted an update, but we had a good excuse: we were writing a really, really, really long book.

Beyond Ruin is already longer than all but 2 of the current novels, and as we settle in to write the final chapters over the next few days, I anticipate it will eventually take the crown.  It’s a big book, and I’m excited and terrified and in love with it (all normal emotions for this stage of the game–I’m having a lot of end-of-book feels!) but mostly I’m excited that we’re getting close to having it ready to share.

Once we finish it and get it into our editor’s hands, we’ll be setting the production wheels in motion. Once we know how much revision we’re looking at, we’ll set a release date and let everyone know. As we told people on Facebook, we’re counting weeks now, not months.

If you’re not signed up to our announcement newsletter, now is a good time to fix that!

And strap yourselves in, VIPs. This book is going to change everything for the O’Kanes.

And now for something completely different…

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Aug 19

So, a lot of you have probably heard about this already, but this is just making it official and what-not.

As mentioned previously, we have to take a break in between Beyond books to refresh our brains and keep the stories and the world fresh and exciting for us to write.  In 2014 we tried to write novellas in between the books, but that didn’t go so well…by the end of the year, we were tired.

So this year, as soon as Beyond Innocence was done, we picked up a project we’d started last summer but had put aside because we just didn’t have time to finish it. This project was exciting to us. It was different from anything we’d ever written. It wasn’t about saving the world or killing bad guys before they kill you. It was about the quieter ways we break and the struggle to feel normal.

When the time came to publish, we considered releasing this book as Kit Rocha. But it is different. You won’t find dystopian hijinks or grown-ups fighting wars or having crazy hot sex parties within these pages. So we decided on a new name–a name we’ll share, hoping you might want to read something a little different–but a name that makes it clear that this is something different.

So meet Joelle Knox.

Anything but Broken

Anything but BrokenAfter five years, tragedy brings Hannah Casey back to Hurricane Creek to bury what’s left of her family. She’s flunking out of college, haunted by scandal, and the only person who cares is Sean Whitlow, an irresistible bad boy with a soft spot for her. The problem? He’s her dead sister’s ex.

Sean doesn’t bleed red, he bleeds motor oil. During the week, he struggles to turn his auto repair shop into a profitable business. But when Saturday night rolls around, he’s the reigning stock-car king of the local race track. He doesn’t know how to lose–or how to walk away and leave Hannah alone with her grief.

Between her grades and her wealthy family’s dark secrets, Hannah’s barely holding her life together. And the last thing Sean needs is to get tangled up with another Casey girl. As the attraction between them spins out of control, they’ll either find a love with no limits–or go up in flames.

Available August 25th (Preorder Now)
Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, iBookstore, Kobo, ARe, Google

We’ll be back in our writer cave after this, working on the next in the Beyond series with fresh hearts and great excitement. Also we’re going to do terrible things to the sectors, so you have that to look forward to.  😉

Win a Kit Rocha audiobook!

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Aug 12

Audiobook Contest

As we work on getting Beyond Innocence into production in audio, we wanted to go back and give some of you a chance to try the series in audio. We’ll be picking one winner a week on Facebook and five winners a month here on the blog. (You can enter both. And hey, if luck is with you, maybe you’ll win both!)

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment and tell us which book you’d like to win. Winners will be given a code to redeem that works on Audible.

Novels available in audio: Beyond Shame, Beyond Control, Beyond Pain, Beyond Jealousy & Beyond Addiction.

Novellas available in audio: Beyond Temptation, Beyond Solitude, Beyond Possession.

What’s next for the Beyond series?

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Jul 31

As we settle in to writing Beyond Ruin, we finally have a solid enough view of the Beyond series to answer a few questions about where it’s headed, when it’s ending, and what comes next.

What?! The series is ending?!

Yes, all good things must come to a graceful end. Though I will say that ending the novel series doesn’t mean you won’t see more stories or novellas from familiar, beloved characters. Just that the big action arc we set in motion for Dallas & Lex and their people will be coming to a conclusion soon.

When?!

Don’t worry! You have some time to brace yourselves. In fact, we have enough action-packed O’Kane hijinks to carry us through the end of 2016 with the final three books:

Beyond Ruin Beyond Book #8 Beyond Book Nine

If you’re leaving Sector Four, where are you going next?!

Not very far!  Just around the corner to Sector One. Mad and his cousin Gideon have long been fan favorites, and preparation for Mad’s book got us excited to explore another Sector with some fascinating possibilities.  If you’re interested, we have a few hints about the scope of the series and the first hero here.

We hope you’re as excited as we are. 😀

Virtual Signing Update

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Jul 15

Virtual Signing

Whew, y’all.

160+ orders and 697 books later, we are closing in on the end of this round of the Virtual Signing. I’m going to keep it open for a couple more weeks and do a second mail out in August to catch those of you waiting for paychecks, but the BIG BIG one for everyone who has ordered books thus far is happening on Sunday.  (Books ordered from here on out will be shipped on August 15th at the latest.)

I am blown away, honestly. A little nervous about signing close to 700 books, but way more excited. The first year we had 96. Last year we had close to 250. Jumping to 700 this year has been a bit of a logistical adventure (plus the UPS guy really, really hates me…do you know how heavy 700 trade paperback books are?!) but I am just… there are no words, y’all. Thank you for reading, for buying, and for being O’Kanes.  #okane4life

Here’s a taste of what my office looks like this morning:

2015-07-15 08.35.03

A few frequently asked questions…and their answers! Kinda.

By Kit Rocha Leave a Comment Jun 23

Since a few of you have asked recently, I’m answering a few questions I’ve seen floating around. (If you have another question, leave it in the comments. :D)

Does the Beyond series end with book #7?

No! Right now, it’s the only upcoming book on our coming soon page because we need to get into writing it before we’ll be sure how a few important plot points are going to shake out. Those will decide which order the next few stories come in.

But I thought Book #8 was Nessa’s book!

Yes, there used to be a spoiler page up saying that book #8 is Nessa’s book. And I guess it’s not a spoiler anymore because while we definitely have a story to tell for Nessa, it proooobably won’t be book #8. Sometimes the plot changes direction on us and we follow!

What happened to Beyond Ecstasy? I thought that was #6.5

The novellas were very fun, but it turns out that we couldn’t sustain that pace. We need a couple months in between Beyond books to write something different. That gives our mind some time to recharge. Writing a novella in between each release last year is why we hit November so burned out we needed to take 6 weeks off before we could start the next book. (And why Beyond Innocence ended up later than we wanted it to be.)

So for now…even though we have a lot of characters with smaller stories that might be fun to tell, we’re going to have to wait and tell them later, after the main novel series is complete.

What about the couple who were going to be in #6.5?

Their story, it turned out, was NOT small. They are probably one of the upcoming books we’re thinking about right now.

So if you need a break in between books, what are you writing now?

You may find out some day soon. wink emoticon But we’ll be back to work on Beyond Ruin by the end of the summer, and whoo boy. That’s gonna be a long, dirty book.

What about Ashwin? Is he going to get a book?

*twirls mustache*

Okay, what about Ryder?

Mwahahahahaha.

Will you tell me ANYTHING?

We’re thinking seriously about the plots of books 8, 9 & 10 right now. Nothing is set in stone…but you don’t have to worry about the series going away this year.

So take a deep breath, O’Kane VIPs, and have a shot on us!

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