Welcome Leona!
Hi! I’m Leona Bushman. I’ve been working on my branding, forgetting I’d found what the common thread is in all my books.
It’s JUSTICE. Yes. Whether it’s legal justice or karma given, my books almost all share that theme. I write in the romance genre as a whole, but I also write non-romance. Within the romance genre, I write all sorts. I started writing for specific calls for small publisher I started with, then moved on to what is selling, what calls my fancy, so needed to find my branding.
There it is. Justice. From family, from society, from whomever the bad guy is. I seek to find a justice for my character’s in whatever they went through.
In Darkest Valentine, it is justice for and from family for our hero and heroine. In book 2, Darkest Death, we will see justice again in a bit of different form. In book 3, Darkest Summer, we will see justice again, but all from different angles and ways. Justice is a many-colored thing. Something that sometimes, is a gray area. And sometimes, justice doesn’t mean the bad guys go to jail.
What kind of justices do you think about that aren’t simply someone going to jail? For instance, that kid stole your candy bar as a kid, but then tripped and fell, and the candy bar landed in the mud. That is a form of Karma justice. 🙂
Anyway, justice is something I think about a lot in this world. I hope to make people think and feel good when reading my books. So enjoy this excerpt for Darkest Valentine! Darkest Death is out on preorder.
Here is an exclusive excerpt for Darkest Valentine:
She held her reticule close and felt along the wall for the latch to open the door. Quietly as she could manage, she opened it, wincing at the squeak. The drop to the ground would prove daunting in her soft slippers made for dancing, but it was better than whatever the driver had in store for her.
Holding onto the side, she managed to catch her footing down one step, but the rocking of the carriage kept her from the others. Heart racing, she held her breath and jumped. A ripping sound reached her, no doubt her dress being torn. She landed with a breathy oomph. Her ankles complained, and she fell forward to her hands and knees, biting her lip to keep from crying out when the stones bit into her palms through her thin gloves. Her reticule skittered across the stones. She held her breath to see if the driver noticed. When the carriage kept moving, she released a short burst of air and stood.
Furtively, she snagged her reticule and clasped it close to her, hiding it beneath her midnight blue wrap as she ran. The dark warehouses cast long fingers of inky blackness in the low light of the waning moon, and the lamplight only accentuated the shadows. Fear threatened to abscond with her courage, but she tamped it down.
She’d been in tight situations before.
She noticed an alley not far and moved in that direction. Once there, she took careful breaths, hiding like she had as a child from her ruthless uncle. Debris littered the area, and the smell of feces and rotten fish saturated her nose with the God-awful stink, but she remained concealed there. When the carriage came to a stop, she held her breath, listening.
“You have her?” an unknown male asked the driver.
“You have the coin,” the driver countered. A pause, and then a gleeful, “She’s in the carriage. Stupid girl doesn’t know her own brother set her up.”
“If it wasn’t for the greed of the ton, we’d all be out of business,” the other man said, then cackled.
The sound of the laugh sent shivers of fear up her spine, and the cold somehow took on a sharper tang, going bone deep. Her brother? The betrayal hit her hard, mixing with the cold and apprehension. However, she couldn’t claim to be surprised. He’d always been jealous of her for as long as she could remember. Still, the tears silently fell while she waited for them to discover her missing. Would they search for her? She was afraid to go any deeper into the alley lest she get lost, but didn’t fancy staying put, either.
A loud cry rent the air. “She’s gone. You trying to cheat me?” The strange male’s voice tripled her terror and brought forth visions of evil.
She desperately wanted to peek around the corner but dared not in case they saw her. She heard a thud, as if the driver had descended his perch.
“She can’t ha’ done a bunk. I haven’t stopped since I picked her up per her brother’s instructions when he left.”
She held her wrap closer to ward off the chill, but it wouldn’t leave her. No wonder she’d been lucky to find a hackney so quickly.
“She has to be here somewhere, then,” the stranger said. “Spread out and search for her.”
She hunched back deeper into the shadows, trying to get her cloak to cover every scrap of skin and fabric. A hand touched her shoulder, and she took in a deep breath to scream, but another one clamped over her mouth.
“Shhh. I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice could barely be considered a whisper as he spoke directly into her ear.
She nodded her head to show she understood. Besides, he’d given her a moment to think. The scream had been instinctive, but if she had, she would have been found out by the two she ran from. She tried not to panic. Had she jumped from her carriage and escaped a kidnapping, only to trade it for something worse?
I have a deal for you! Darkest Valentine is FREE February 15 and 16 only so grab it while you can! And it is Free on KU as well.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Darkest-Valentine-Leona-Bushman-ebook/dp/B0788LD9Y1/
Darkest Death is available on Preorder for only 99cents Until release day March 31 so grab your now!
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Darkest-Death-Leona-Bushman-ebook/dp/B07MDV3T6J/
USA Today bestselling author Leona Bushman is a crazy writer taught by dragons and known as Dragon Queen of the North. She loves to write and paint, even when her muse tries to muck things up. She chases after the three out of the five children still at home, and sometimes after the other two and the grandbaby around her freelance editing jobs. She has many hobbies like SCA, painting, quilting, sewing, and gardening. Or, as one blogger succinctly put it, Leona Bushman is a whirlwind made of sheer will with a dash of clumsy to keep her grounded.
She can be found solving mysteries, exploring space, making art, and loving dragons and other creatures of the supernatural at these places:
Twitter: @L_Bushman
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLeonaBushman
Facebook artist page: https://www.facebook.com/LeonaBushmanArtisteExtraordinaire/
Website: www.leonajbushman.com
Blog: www.lbushman.blogspot.com and www.lbushman.wordpress.com
Newsletter: http://madmimi.com/signups/374285/join
I frequently post under the hashtags #thenextleonardodavinci and #thenextleonardodavinciandson
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