Author: writer35_bg

Hearts in Hazard: Which Book Should I Read?

Posted on by writer35_bg

The Hearts in Hazard series
12 books set in the English Regency Era
Mystery & Suspense with a Dash of Romance

October 2015

That’s the Release Date for the first three books in the Hearts in Hazard series.

The Game of Secrets

The Game of Spies

The Game of Hearts

August 2020

the final Hearts in Hazard book released: The Hazard with Hearts.

Now ~

Time for the annual Celebration of Hearts in Hazard.

Which book is right for you?

I’ve never actually written down all this information. I’ve written snippets, but never the whole thing. So here it is ~
  • how the books are interconnected without being sequels.
  • which books have common characters.
  • which books follow a similar plot or a similar trope.

With Hearts in Hazard~

Each novel is complete and stands alone, but the series has interconnected characters among the books. Not ALL the books and not ALL the characters.

New couples confront the primary conflict for each book.

What are the 12 books in the Hearts in Hazard series?

Visit M.A. Lee’s page on this website for links for more information, to view a trailer, and to buy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

1. A Game of Secrets 

2. A Game of Spies

3. A Game of Hearts

~ bundled as A Trio of Games.

 

 

 

4. The Danger of Secrets

5. The Danger for Spies

6. The Danger to Hearts

~ bundled as A Trio of Dangers.

 

 

 

7. The Key to Secrets

8. The Key for Spies

9. The Key with Hearts

~ bundled as A Trio of Keys.

 

 

 

10. The Hazard of Secrets

11. The Hazard for Spies

12. The Hazard with Hearts

~ bundled as A Trio of Hazards.

How are the Novels Interlinked?

1/2 ~ A Game of Secrets 1 leads to A Game of Spies 2. These two are the most like sequels: Kate & Tony and Josette & Giles will become good friends. The friendship of Tony and Giles started when they served in the military together and were both wounded.

2/3/11 ~ A Game of Hearts 3, featuring Rafe & Maggie and Connie & Roger, mentions one of the treacherous English traitors from A Game of Spies 2. That treacherous traitor will recur in The Hazard for Spies 11.

  • Also, the time frame for A Game of Hearts covers a month before A Game of Secrets to after A Game of Spies, and GSpies’ characters are mentioned in GHearts.

2/4/5 ~ Building on the characters in A Game of Spies 2 are The Danger of Secrets 4 (Gordon & Maddy) and The Danger for Spies 5 (Tony & Melanie).

  • The Danger of Secrets 4 was a joy to write. I laughed often at the repartee between Gordon & Maddy.
  • The Danger for Spies 5 has as its primary couple Eugenie & Charles.

1/6 ~ The Danger to Hearts 6 brings back Jess Carter from A Game of Secrets 1. Jess becomes protector of Agatha.

6/7/10/11  ~ The Key to Secrets 7 features Constable Hector Evans (in love with Bee). Hector first appeared as a secondary in The Danger to Hearts 6.

  • Hector re-appears as a side character (chief constable!) in The Hazard of Secrets 10 and The Hazard for Spies 11.

1/2/3/5/10/11 ~ The Hazard for Spies 11 concludes the “Capture French Spies” conflict of Game/Secrets 1, Game/Spies 2, Game/Hearts 3, and Danger/Spies 5.

  • The Hazard for Spies 11 features Conrad and Phinney. She was barely mentioned in The Hazard of Secrets 10.

10/11 ~ The Hazard of Secrets 10 and The Hazard for Spies 11 have a secondary plot with the children Vic, Elise, and Hank. The three are not the main focus.

  • Corrie & Jem carry the main plot in The Hazard of Secrets.

6/9 ~ A character mentioned in The Danger with Hearts 6 becomes one of the primary leads in Key with Hearts 9. Greville Myers has married Liza Corbett to access her wealth. This convenient marriage inconveniently causes murder.

8 ~ The Key for Spies 8, one of the least-connected of the 12, is a stand-alone novel set in Spain. No interconnected characters. We do have spies, but I wished to break the constant focus on England. I justified my wish by saying, “Well, it has spies.” Let’s pretend our Simon Pargeter is friends with Hector Evans.

  • Simon & Miriella carry the plot, but Jesus & Elixane are strong secondaries.

9 / 12 ~ The Hazard with Hearts 12 is another stand-alone, with no interconnected characters. With The Key with Hearts 9, The Hazard with Hearts 12  is most like the vintage gothics of Victoria Holt and Dorothy Eden, from the 1960s.

  • It’s another marriage of convenience, this time with Vivienne & Max.

What Else will Help me Pick a Great Read?

 

Do You Like Couples falling in Love? (Not Lust.)

All the books are for you.

Want a Strong Heroine? Or a Strong Hero who is not an Alpha Dog?

All the books are for you.

Do you like Murder Mysteries? A Puzzle to Solve?

A Game of Hearts

The Danger of Secrets

The Danger to Hearts

The Key to Secrets

The Key with Hearts

The Hazard of Secrets (begins as suspense then morphs into a murder mystery)

 The Hazard with Hearts (both murder and suspense)

Do you like Suspense more than Murder?

A Game of Secrets

A Game of Spies

The Danger for Spies

The Key for Spies

The Hazard of Secrets (which morphs into a murder mystery)

The Hazard for Spies

The Hazard with Hearts (because murders happen long before the novel begins)

Like Former or Current Soldiers? Or a Story in Wartime, on the battlefront?

A Game of Secrets

The Danger for Spies

The Key for Spies

Like Early Law Enforcement?

A Game of Secrets

A Game with Hearts

The Danger to Hearts

The Key to Secrets

The Hazard for Spies

Want a Story with Spies?

A Game of Secrets

A Game of Spies

The Danger for Spies

The Key for Spies

The Hazard for Spies

 Want a Smuggler Story?

A Game of Secrets

The Danger to Hearts

Want a Story with Nobles? (Earls and Marquesses and Barons are one of the primary characters: hero or heroine)

A Game of Spies

A Game with Hearts

The Danger of Secrets

The Key for Spies

The Key with Hearts

The Hazard with Hearts

Want a Story without Nobles? (Not the hero or the heroine)

A Game of Secrets

The Danger for Spies

The Danger to Hearts

The Key to Secrets

The Hazard of Secrets

The Hazard for Spies

Want a Marriage of Convenience Story?

A Game of Hearts

The Key with Hearts

The Hazard with Hearts

Want a High-Low Story? Someone of High Social Standing marries Someone Lower in Rank than them.

A Game for Spies

A Game of Hearts

The Danger of Secrets

The Danger to Hearts

The Key to Secrets

The Key with Hearts

The Hazard with Hearts

Want a Story with a Runaway ?

A Game of Secrets

Want a Story with Children?

The Hazard of Secrets begins the story with Vic, Elise, and Hank, and it concludes in The Hazard for Spies.

Want a Story with a Young Couple?

A Game of Hearts

The Hazard for Spies

Want a Story with a Couple Approaching Middle-age?

A Game of Hearts

The Danger of Secrets

The Danger for Spies

The Danger to Hearts

The Key to Secrets 

The Key for Spies

The Key with Hearts

The Hazard of Secrets

Want a Story set in a Foreign Land?

The Key for Spies

Want something like a Vintage Gothic?

The Key with Hearts

The Hazard with Hearts

. ~ . ~ . ~ .

This is all of the ways

to classify the 12 books in the Hearts in Hazard series.

If you can think of another, do write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

Read them all, a book a month. (Wasn’t that a book club?)

 

 

Free Glimpse: Summer Sieges

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Free Fiction

Take a W.Ink with a First Chapter Glimpse.

Edie Roones’ fantasy Summer Sieges :: ordinary people battling extraordinary odds and foul sorcery.   

Chapter 1

Her body jerked.

Beren muddled her way up.  Slowly.  Into the pain.

Another jerk.

Return was . . . sluggish.  A great darkness.  A lesser one.  She wanted to retreat from waking, crawl back into the deep blackness, but pain pulsed in her head and throbbed along her arm, denying any escape.

Her body jerked again.

Hands were on her.  At her hips.  Metal clinking.  A lift.  She groaned.

The hands stilled then gave another jerk that peeled something from beneath her.

And then a growl, deep, predatory.  As black as the darkness.  Danger as old as time.

Whoever had pulled at her scrambled away.  She tried to open her eyes then realized they were open, to night-black.  The dancing lights weren’t in her throbbing head.  They were torches bobbing, some bigger and brighter, others distant, like the will o’wisps that hovered over deepest springs and in magickal glades.

Continue reading “Free Glimpse: Summer Sieges” →

Who is the Fae Mark’d Wizard in *Weave a Wizardry Web*?

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Fantasy Set In A Renaissance World

Weave A Wizardry Web by Remi Black

Least becomes great.  Greatest becomes least.

Two wizards travel sharp-bladed roads in Weave a Wizardry Web.

  • Wizard against sorcerer. 
  • Fae against dragon. 
  • Wyre against Rhoghieri.  

As children in the Wizard Enclave, Camisse and her niece Alstera recited that catechism daily.  Yet the war against sorcery seems far from the Enclave, and the current leaders have forgotten that childhood chant.

What happens when forbidden magic lures wizards?

How many die when shape-shifting wyres invade the Wizard Enclave?

Can Alstera escape the spidery lure of corrupted magic? Or will she become the shifters’ next target?

Meet Alstera at this link. 

Meet Camisse in this excerpt.

Click here for information about Web and the Enclave: 

https://remiblack.blogspot.com/2021/05/weave-wizardry-web.html

To view on Amazon, click here.

click click click click!

Twisted Magic in *Weave a Wizardry Web*

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Twisted magic. Foul sorcery. Dark corruption.

Weave a Wizardry Web

Frost Clime threatens the Wizard Enclave. Sorcerers and their servants, shape-shifting wyre, have stolen into the city of Tres Lucerna, home to the Enclave.

Alstera is the greatest of the young wizards in the Enclave.

She’s treated like the least.

Alstera is desperate to join the war against Frost Clime, but the chief wizards refuse. Denied her wish, Alstera explores other ways to increase power.

A Fae disguised in glamour courts her aunt Camisse … but for what purpose? Does Camisse have latent power that the Fae will control? Will a forbidden linkage unlock her magic?

And what of Alstera’s cousins, who have joined an outland wizard’s circle? They dabble in twisted magic.

Danger walks the streets of Tres Lucerna, yet the chief wizards refuse to acknowledge it. Rumors fly … of a taboo nexus of power, of vile blood spells, and of enemy shape-shifters in the heart of the Wizard Enclave.

Then wizards are murdered.

A grim future awaits any wizard lured into forbidden Twisted magic,

And a grimmer death awaits wizards caught by the shifters.

Can Alstera escape the spidery lure of corrupted magic? Or will she become the shifters’ next target?

A dark fantasy of twisted magic, Weave a Wizardry Web by Remi Black is first in the Fae Mark’d Wizard series. Dream a Deadly Dream and Sing a Graveyard Song continue the series.

Visit remiblack.blogspot.com to connect with Remi Black.

Fetch it here.

View the Trailer

https://youtu.be/jePz27U2Y6U

 

 

Weave a Wizardry Web :: free glimpse of the Fae Pearroc Seale

Posted on by writer35_bg

Here’s a free glimpse at an opening chapter of Weave a Wizardry Web, by Remi Black, available exclusively from Amazon

Weave a Wizardry Web ~ book 1 in the series Fae Mark’d Wizard

Why has the Fae Pearroc Seale assumed the glamour of a Wizard?

What’s his goal?

Chapter 1

Pearroc Ciele poured Fae power into the newly learned wizard spell.  Even as it flashed lightning bright, he recognized the weakness that shattered through the spell.

“If you are to pass yourself off as a wizard during the Trials, you must defend as a wizard would, not as a Fae would.”

He twisted his shoulders.  The aged man never missed a point when teaching

wizardry.  He might be too weary to rise from the chair provided by the arena master, but his black eyes snapped onto a flaw and his quick mind decoded the reason for that flaw.  Fae spell contorted to look like wizardry:  most wizards would miss the foundation hidden by the swirling energies.  Pater Drakon never missed it.

Sine Pearroc’s springtime arrival, Drakon had trained him.  Pearroc had selected the aged man, one of the few clan leaders who supported Faeron.  A Blade sent in secret to the wizards by his queen the Maorketh Alaisa, he fumbled like a child at some lessons.  He didn’t regret his apprenticeship to the master wizard, but it was High Summer, and still he trained.

The old wizard had a point.  The Fae sparked power from the tangible element:  a flame for Fire, soil for Earth, and on to Air and Water.  Then they built the spell based on the power borrowed from the element.s  Wizards needed nothing to spark power;  it came from their essence.  Though Pearroc wielded wizard-shaped power, he still needed a tangible element to initiate his spells.  And as he fought to twist his spells to match to wizardry, he often dropped back to the easy Fae wielding.

The sudden clash of steel against steel jerked his head around.  Power sparked at his fingertips.

“Stand down,” the Drakon clan leader said.  “It’s a practice arena.  Are you expecting someone to assassinate me?”

Continue reading “Weave a Wizardry Web :: free glimpse of the Fae Pearroc Seale” →