Red August Series Re-Boot

Red August – Book One
Shifters of Mahigan Falls

It’s been edited, trigger warnings and author notes have been added, and an all-new cover! When? HALLOWEEN! What goes better together than shifters and Halloween?

Pre-orders will be up soon!

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What if you found out that you’re descended from a long line of clandestine fighters, and that your family is still at war? Or that the love of your life is something other than he appears to be?

August Archer thinks she’s an average hormonal teenage girl—who also happens to have disturbing and sexy dreams about werewolves, all while trying to uncover the mysteries of her ancestry.

Still grieving over the loss of her father, and confused about his final gift of a red hooded cloak, August is uprooted from her New York City apartment to the tiny town of Mahigan Falls, Maryland.

There she meets a cast of characters that hold clues to her past—especially her new neighbor, an enigmatic, fascinating man who refuses to talk to her, yet who seems to know things about her nobody else does.

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 Red Riding Hood story.

The cover of a book with H.L. Brooks in bright pink at the top. A dark background with a full moon and swirls. A girl with long dark hair and green eyes is in a red velvet cloak. The title of the book Red August is in white with shiny spots. The series title is in white lettering over dark blue background stating Shifters of Mahigan Falls.

Red August Quote – Heart Holes

RedAugustfillingherheart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find out where to order Red August HERE

Sensual Sunday – Sunshine

We lie in a puddle of light.  The earth on my back.  Dirt, grass, dandelions, crushed under my weight.   And your weight pressing down, again and again.  I look up, your hair like a halo of sunshine.  Your chin is high, too far from my mouth to kiss.  So, I follow, with my eyes, the contour from your chin, along your jawline, to earlobe, to collarbone.  Pale, almost as the bone beneath the flesh.  I lift my head to fasten my lips over the protrusion on your landscape.  I then press my tongue into the hollow near your throat and you moan.  I close my eyes and lay back.  Rays warm my face and nothing else exists but you and me and this union in the sun.

Sensual Sunday – Bodice Ripper Train Ride

Sensual Sunday is a weekly sensual micro-story, poem or word association. It’s mostly sexy writing practice. I encourage others to do Sensual Sunday – share your links with me!

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This is a bit longer than a micro-story so we’ll just call it a short story. This is in the erotica category, so it’s NSFW. It is a rough draft. I have not gone through to do edits. I am still working on tense shifting, so I try hard these days not to shift tense in the first draft, but I have yet to manage that feat. I am sure somewhere in this story there are improper tense shifts. I can’t promise that I won’t go through and edit something if I see it later and it bothers the hell out of me. But part of these Sensual Sunday writing exercises is to push outside of my comfort zone. And leaving barely edited work hanging out there is definitely outside of my comfort zone.

Do you have any special writing exercises?  Do you have a blog where you practice?  I’d love to hear from you!

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SStrain

Lindy straightened her hat and stepped onto the train, a dainty gloved hand extended to the conductor. She placed one perfectly heeled white pump onto the first large step and felt her dress catch a draft and fly out behind her. She let out a little yelp and the conductor quickly saved her reputation by swatting the hem back towards her calves.

“Thank you,” she said, demurely. He simply nodded and touched the brim of his hat.

The train was mostly empty and it would be a long ride to Memphis from Sacramento, so once in the back she opened her small suitcase and fished for the bodice ripper her older sister had insisted she take along. She looked around, saw only a couple of passengers at least six rows up, grasped the book like a child thieving from the cookie jar and tucked it behind her back. She snapped the metal clasps closed with two satisfying pops and slunk down into her seat.

Proper young unmarried ladies just didn’t read this sort of thing. But she would be married in a few days’ time and she wanted to be prepared for the wedding night. Her mother never prepared her for the “big night” and her sister did her best to explain things. But Cora said the book would give her more detailed descriptions of what to expect. She crossed her legs, cheated her body towards the window and hunkered over the pulp as she began to read the first pages. It was long before the pirate in the story was popping a maiden’s bodice with his cutlass.

These scenes were full of words that Lindy had never seen before, but she somehow knew exactly what they meant. She devoured each page like a rich, sinful bon-bon. After a solid hour of reading, Lindy began to grow restless. She felt herself swell a number of times throughout the pages. At one point she gasped out loud. She kept shifting in her seat, trying to simultaneously ignore and relieve the ache.

After several hours of reading and the light failing, she left her car to use the lady’s room. She tidied up her dampness, feeling somewhat silly and sexy somehow. She splashed some cold water on the back of her neck and took a few deep breaths. She chided herself for allowing her hormones to get carried away, but she also couldn’t wait to get back to her seat to finish the book. She even took it to the lady’s room, only – of course – because she didn’t want anybody to find it. In all honesty, she couldn’t bear to put it down.

On her return one of the doors popped open and a man, tall and handsome and probably ten years older than she was, emerged. He was wearing a white dress shirt, rolled up at the sleeves. A royal blue tie with green diamonds, loosened and his top button was undone. They almost collided.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said. His voice as rich as molasses. Eyes as green as emeralds. She looked down at his left hand. No ring.

Lindy felt herself start to perspire, even though the car was pleasantly cool for June. She smiled at him and pressed herself against a bit of wall as he started to squeeze by. As he did she put her hand on his torso and said, “It’s a long trip to Memphis.”

His forehead creased and he tilted his head to the side, as if trying to figure her out. He looked down at her and smiled a crooked grin and nodded, “Yes, it is.”

She held up the novel she’d been reading, a pirate on the front with a woman in a chemise draped artistically over his arm, both of them with windswept hair, the title in a lusty shade of red shouted out from the cover, Pirate Plunders Pink Pearls.

“I…I brought this book to read.” She took a deep breath and held is gaze. Her chest rising and falling and the sound of the train beginning to sound muffled the world became a single focal point – his mouth.

His face flushed. His breathing stopped for a moment. She saw his body give an almost imperceptible shiver. He let out a long breath. “Is there something I can help you with?”

She opened his compartment door, which was strewn with books and papers, turned to him and backed into it. “I can’t…you know…I can’t do everything. But I’m…well, you know. I’m getting married in a few days and I just…I want to, well…have, well, I’m kind of restless, on account of reading this book. Do you think you can help me?”

He stepped into the compartment and shut the door behind him. For a moment Lindy felt a trapped, and like she could be murdered and it would serve her right for doing something so sinful. But she was drunk with hormones and want and in a few short days she could never have sex with anybody else again. It was making all her proper pearly buttons pop.

It wasn’t long, though, before her mouth was on his and her hands were inside of his shirt, feeling all of his firm, smooth flesh. They kept their mouths pressed together as he pulled off his shirt. She pulled away to watch him remove his pants and as he took down his shorts his cock sprung forward. She gasped out loud a felt a little faint. It was longer than she thought it would be and bouncing and swaying as it stuck straight out from his body.

“Sit down,” she said. He swiped away papers and books and did as she commanded. He settled onto the cushioned portion of the first class seat.

As he watched, Lindy kicked off her shoes. She put a leg up next to him and unhooked her garter, then the other side. She pulled off the stockings and tossed them behind her, floating down like feathers, resting onto the bench seat behind her. She grinned and locked eyes with him as she reached under her dress and pulled down her panties and stepped out of them. She stepped towards him, pushing him to lean back a little and she straddled him, resting her slit along his erect cock, sandwiching it between them. The length of him was nestled in her cleft. She unbuttoned the top portion of her dress as he pushed it down around her shoulders. He nestled his face into her ample cleavage as he reached around back to remove the significant undergarment. The elastic relaxed after the popping of the fasteners and she tossed the brazier aside, holding her arms up, she let them swing free.

He looked at her, as if in awe at her rosy nipples and the beautiful milky orbs that they decorated. He hefted the glorious weight of them in his hands, cupping and lifting and repeating, as if he could never do it enough times. This made her swell so greatly between her legs she thought she might burst like an overripe berry. Skin splitting. Juices running all over. She was slick with want and began to rub back and forth against the length of his hardness. He cupped and suckled and rubbed and moaned as she pressed her hands hard against the wall behind him. The motion of the train added to the rocking motion of their rhythm.

She could feel the lust rise in her like never before and couldn’t have stopped rubbing if the train derailed. She felt as if a force of nature, as if an animal acting on instinct, her hips compelled to slide her wetness, her soft downy cleft along him. She was attached to him. Tingles ran up her spine, to her nipples, to her mound, train sounds, his hands, his mouth, all a jumble, dizzying as she rocked and rocked until she heard herself yelling and felt her thighs clasp and her spine make an arch over him as she spasmed and she felt silent, even though her mouth was wide to continue her cries.

At this moment she felt his legs tense and his body lean into hers as he thrust his hips upwards. He pushed up her skirt again, and they both watched as his seed erupted over his belly, some making it almost as far as his neck.

They were both panting as she dismounted and sat next to him. He wiped away his semen with a handkerchief and put his arm around her as she nestled into his chest where she fell asleep. He soon was sleeping, too.

Song List for Writing Werewolves

writerscouple

Today I am writing on the second book of the Red August series and behind me, my lover is editing the first book. It’s nice when he’s here I can work at my desk writing, and he can sit behind me at the table, writing.

We have officially reached workaholic status, though.  All day yesterday I was making artwork for my store website (which is set to launch May1).  Last week I split my time between writing, making items for my online store and making a Cafepress shop.  Which is still very much NOT DONE.  But off to a good little start.

Anyway, at first I was playing a music list with no lyrics.  Then I ended up putting on my Fairytale Writing Mix – Red August which is on Spotify.  You can follow it, if you like and you use Spotify – I am under “Heather Brooks.”

I take several approaches to listening to music while writing.  If I’m in an easily distracted mood I will put on instrumentals.  I have a list that is almost all instrumental called Myth, Magic, Faeries & Mermaids.  I may even just listen to coffee shop sounds on Coffitivity.  Other times I like having some music with lyrics happening – and usually it’s because I want something that gives me the atmosphere of what I’m writing.  In the case of Red August I made a list that has a lot of sexy, ethereal stuff on it.  Also, since the book is set in the early 1980s, I listened to some of the stuff around then.  Retrojam is good for that.

So, here are probably my top five favorites (in no particular order) from my Fairytale Writing Mix – Red August:

HowlFlorence + The Machine
Exiles (The Wolves of Midwinter) – Mary FahlBorn to DieLana Del Rey
Ride – Lana Del Rey
My ImmortalEvanescence

If you have suggestions for good songs that fit the haunted, werewolf, wolf, hunter, huntress, archery theme, please leave me a comment!

 

 

 

 

Red August

Coming this Summer

HLBrooks_RedAugust_blurb

 

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.

Mood Music

I enjoy background noise when I’m writing.  Sometimes I play a show series like Psych or Once in the background.  I’ve used Coffitivity as well.  If I’m working on a fantasy story I have been known to put on movies like Labyrinth or Star Wars.  It’s a lonely gig sometimes.  Especially for somebody like me who fluctuates between introvert and extrovert. Having some background noise makes it feel like there is somebody else here.  Especially if it’s characters like Monk or Gus that I know so well.  It’s like having somebody here chatting, solving a murder or having a fantasy adventure without me having to tidy up the place or stop working to entertain them.  They can go about their business and I can go about mine.

Sometimes though, I want a little mood music.  I might be needing to really immerse myself in a place or time.  I have several playlists on Spotify that include music with little or no lyrics, for those days I’m too easily derailed.

For the Red August series I have a list that includes Celtic music as well as fantasy movie soundtracks.   Then a few days ago I discovered Retrojam which is a cool little website that suggests playlists to you based on your birthday.  You plug in the numbers and it spits out some lists from what you would have been hearing on the radio in sixth grade or high school, depending on which list you select.  It was pretty effective.

The main character in Red August is August Archer who is coming of age in the early 1980s.  Having lists of songs that set me in that space helped me sink into her much easier and recall some old feelings and memories from my formative years during that era.

Some of the songs had me chuckling because they were so sappy or not at all what I would listen to.  I was a total, Police, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd girl back in the early 80s.  But unless you avoided the radio, you couldn’t help but hear a lot of other stuff floating around in the top forty, much of which will bring nostalgic feelings screaming forward.

Enjoy the trip!

retrojam

 

55,714

55,714 and my first draft of Red August is done.

I finished it on Monday and it is going through the editing process.

I’m very excited to not only be done with the first draft of the first book in this series, but I am also excited to be working on the second book in the series.

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