Fabulous and Brunette: Hostile Takeover by Cristelle Comby - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway

Hello lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Cristelle Comby and her new book, “Hostile Takeover”! For other stops on her Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.

Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $20 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with Cristelle and to increase your chances of winning!

Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!

Hostile Takeover

by Cristelle Comby

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GENRE: Urban Fantasy

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BLURB:

P.I. Bellamy Vale isn’t your everyday investigator. Moonlighting as Death’s earth-bound envoy, he specializes in the weird, wacky, and slightly unhinged.

When a mysterious beast savagely mauls random residents of Cold City, the police assume that these are the killings of a rogue wolf. But experienced private investigator, Bellamy Vale, is unconvinced.

Ordered by Death herself to investigate, Vale has no choice but to obey, for his boss is not someone to disappoint—if he wants to keep breathing, that is.

With friend and computer hacker Zian, nosy journalist Candice Kennedy, and homicide sergeant Melanie Ramirez by his side, Vale has no choice but to end the killings or face the wrath of the demon who holds his life in her hands.

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EXCERPT ONE:

I was having a bad day.

The ugly thug facing me readied himself for the next swing. “What did you say, bastard?” His red-splattered knuckles were ready for the next round; my body wasn’t.

“I’m haffin a fah fay,” I managed to repeat through a mouthful of saliva and blood.

That made Julian Ragazzo, former welterweight boxing champ and top bodyguard to the city’s prime Italian Mafia family, smile. His wet beard glistened with sweat beads around stained teeth. Glad one of us was happy.

I took stock of the damage Ragazzo had already done. Broken nose, check. Split lip, check. Swollen eye, check. Broken rib, double check, and the list went on and on. It could have been worse. The injuries, though painful, weren’t enough to put me in the hospital. Sure, I’d hurt for a week or four, but I’d live to tell the tale outside of a body cast. I knew that, and Ragazzo did, too. This was a game we’d both played before … not that I’d gotten any better at it.

I caught a reflection of myself in the glossy surface of a cabinet door. My messy mop of brown locks was matted with blood on one side and the five o’clock shadow had a hard time concealing a fast-bruising chin. One eye was swollen shut and the other had a pale blue, haunted orb dancing amidst a sea of red veins. I was a mess, and not a hot one.

I closed my good eye and waited for the next blow. The bodyguard didn’t disappoint. A second later, he delivered a power punch and I saw stars. It didn’t help that I was tied to a chair and my already sore shoulders screamed in protest at the added strain. In a noise that only I could hear, my body cried out, ‘How in all the hells was this part of the plan?’ Fair question—it wasn’t.

In truth, there may have been a few glitches here and there. Like those two extra guards at the office building’s back entrance, plus that wrong turn I took on the fourteenth floor. Yeah, okay … the plan was just as screwed as I was.

Ragazzo followed up his haymaker with another kick in the guts. It would have ripped a scream out of me if I’d had any breath left for it. Instead, my lungs just took in short, choppy gasps I couldn’t control.

“Well, well, well … look what the cat dragged in,” taunted an Italian-lilted voice.

I recognized the lazy drawl and opened my good eye to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough, Alonzo Vitorini, Cold City’s resident wannabe kingpin, stood near the entrance in a dark-green pinstriped suit. Shit, looking at his ugly get-up hurt worse than any of Ragazzo’s blows.

Vitorini sauntered into the room, smiling as he noticed my stare. “Like the suit?” he asked, doing a little pirouette to show off this walking insult to fashion.

I wasn’t going to reply, but the second my eye caught sight of the finishing touch, a pair of black-and-white spectator shoes, my mouth kicked into gear on its own.

“Al Capone called,” I wheezed out. “He wants his brogues back.”

Vitorini laughed, the corners of his muddy-green eyes wrinkling. Not sure if he was laughing at the crack or the fact that he was going to kill me for it in another minute or two.

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GUEST POST:

My Biggest Writing Mistake and the Most Valuable Lesson It Taught Me

As far back as I can think of, I’ve always loved writing. While I was in school, I was pretty good at it; always got nice grades for essays, poems and stuff. Fast forward to my teenage years… that’s when I discovered fanfictions. Yes, I’m not ashamed to say I wrote my fair share of ‘em. I’m proud of those years; they were very formative.

My earliest pieces weren’t that good (I was fourteen) and they’ve long since been scrubbed off the internet. But my latest work are still available on Fanfiction.net and they have some great reviews. Actually, that’s what got me to thinking: “Heh, I should write a real book sometime”. So, I went about to do just that.

My only experience in the field was my on-and-off ten-years-long relationship with fanfictions. But I thought I would be fine. So fine actually, that instead of writing one book and I decided to write an epic fantasy trilogy—what can I say, I love a challenge.

So, I wrote one book and edited it. Then I wrote volume two and edited it. And I started on the third and ran out of ideas somewhere along chapter four. Not a word has been added to that manuscript since 2011! All in all the only thing epic about that trilogy, was the amount of time I wasted on it.

But silver linings and all that… that wasted year-and-a-half taught me a most valuable lesson: “Always outline you must, young padawan”.

Outlining, to writers, is the process of setting out the main events of your book and working out the plot from beginning to end. The outline is like the skeleton of your manuscript, because:

You know what to write next. There is no starring at a blank screen wondering what to write. You won’t get so lost and end up down a blind alley with your plot.

Change plot or incorporate new ideas. If you plan it out, you can see ways to enhance the plot and add in new ideas. As you research, you will know where to put them in or what to change.

Find out the problems and holes in the plot or characters. Work out how things are meant to happen before time instead of as you write. This may enable you to see gaping holes in the plot or some problem with a character.

And lasts, and more importantly, if you’ve carefully outlined your story, it means that you know how the story ends.

In the past five years, I’ve published five novels. Every time I carefully outlined everything, and I never once hit a brick wall. I know some people can’t stand the idea of outlining, but it is paramount to me. Without structure, my writing is all over the place.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Cristelle Comby was born and raised in the French-speaking area of Switzerland, in Greater Geneva, where she still resides.

She attributes to her origins her ever-peaceful nature and her undying love for chocolate. She has a passion for art, which also includes an interest in drawing and acting.

She is the author of the Neve & Egan Cases series, which features an unlikely duo of private detectives in London: Ashford Egan, a blind History professor, and Alexandra Neve, one of his students.

Currently, she is hard at work on her Urban Fantasy series Vale Investigation which chronicles the exploits of Death’s only envoy on Earth, PI Bellamy Vale, in the fictitious town of Cold City, USA.

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CONNECT WITH CRISTELLE:

Website:

www.cristelle-comby.com

Blog:

http://cristelle-comby.com/blog

Email:

http://cristelle-comby.com/contact-2

Twitter:

https://www.twitter.com/Cristelle

Goodreads Author Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6988416.Cristelle_Comby

Goodreads Book Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40181700-hostile-takeover

Amazon Author Page:

https://amzn.to/2vd79U6

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AMAZON BOOK BUY LINKS:

Amazon Kindle:

https://amzn.to/2AHTtFE

Amazon Paperback:

https://amzn.to/2AJb4NQ

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

Cristelle will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions. Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.