Laura Tolomei's Tiki Hut Winner

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to talk with Laura about her books and the subject of soul mates.

Congrats to Lainey!!! You win a free download of your choice of Laura's TO SEDUCE A SOULMATE or DIVINITAS. Please contact AuthorIsland at yahoo.com with your email address and which ebook you'd like to have so Laura can get you out your prize!

This Week At The Tiki Hut - Laura Tolomei

This week's special guest is eXtasy Books author, Laura Tolomei who stops by to talk about the journey through space and time of souls and soulmates.

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Souls and soul mates: analysis of a journey through lives, times and space

by Laura Tolomei

My latest release is titled To Seduce A Soulmate, but it’s not the first time I wrote about soul’s journeys or soul mates for that matter. True, the subject fascinates me. Must be those travels in India or my personal beliefs life isn’t a one shot deal. Repetition makes perfect, that’s why souls need more than one journey to get it right…so to speak. The fact is we have so many lessons to learn on our way to true knowledge and awareness, it seems impossible to do it all at once.

These personal beliefs have the bad habit of slipping inside my books and leaving a common thread particularly in my dialogue. But let me start at the beginning.

The first published novel that talks about such issues is Divinitas, released about a year ago, Jan. 1st to be precise. Just to refresh your memory, Divinitas is about two souls chasing one other through several lifetimes in search of a balance. Predictably, the journeys are neither smooth nor easy, at least the ones presented in three stories that make up the novel, one set in Ancient Egypt, the other during the Persian Empire and the third in Celtic Britain.

Divinitas – PG excerpt

“How did you find your way?” Us-Yri asked at last.

“I will tell you my own personal point of view, but don't take any of this as Truth. Unfortunately, in this world we can never understand completely because a veil covers our eyes.” He paused briefly before continuing. “I believe the gods give us three tools to travel the path of Life—Body, Mind and Soul. Only the Soul will live on forever, but like a bird we desperately want to keep with us, the Body locks it in a cage. These limitations are more than enough to make us lose the right way. The Soul holds the key to our life, the past, the present and all the future lives as well—“

“You really believe we have more than one life?”

“Of course, Us-Yri. There are just too many things to learn in one single lifetime alone. We need time to grow, develop, learn about the world and mostly ourselves. Piecing together this information will set our Soul free. But Body and Mind work against it, so we can seldom collect all the right pieces and connect them in just one lifetime.”

“But how many do we need to reach—“

“Awareness?” Heru-Ur shrugged. “Each Soul will take its own time, Us-Yri. There are no fixed rules. Of course, if the Body and Mind’s limitations are strong, a Soul could take forever before it grasps the Truth.”

Now supposing the above to be true, would you want to go through several journeys alone? Or wouldn’t you rather have someone who understands you because you share a bond older than life itself?

Divinitas – PG excerpt

Shaun grinned. It had taken a long training to remind Halifax who he was and now that it was finally time to explain, it felt odd, maybe because their positions seemed reversed if compared to previous lives. Shifting through past scenarios, Shaun briefly analyzed their timeless relationship, searching for answers. Somehow, Halifax had always been the seducer rather than the seduced. Reversing their roles was a necessary shift, the Druid knew it far too well, but he still had to get used to it.

“Please,” the blond missionary begged, “tell me about it.”

Where to begin? From the ancient walls of Egypt or the Persian prince’s golden bed? From our love…or the betrayal that followed? Shaun wondered as images kept playing in the fire.

Us-Yri and Set, Mitra and Varuna, Shaun and Halifax…that in Divinitas the characters change names and shapes makes little difference. They remain essentially the same souls that grow in awareness also thanks to their special relationship…if and when they have one. The problem of recognition is no small one, considering a soul has no face, no tangible trace to jog one’s memory. And in modern times, Martin has none of the Druid’s or Ancient Egyptian’s mystical knowledge to convince Pirate Drake he’s his soul mate. Martin’s only resource is in the words, which must be very powerful if he wants To Seduce A Soulmate.

To Seduce A Soulmate – PG excerpt

Martin was about to reply when the waitress brought their platters. He pulled back to give her room, then leaned forward again. “Listen, I’m not asking you to believe in it, but don’t tell me you didn’t feel it because I read it in your eyes, too.”

“Read what?” Drake asked, suddenly feeling very cold.

“The flicker of recognition. When our eyes met, you knew who I was just as surely as I knew who you were.”

“That’s impossible, Devil,” he argued, biting his cheeseburger. “We’ve never met before in our lives.”

“You wouldn’t believe how many unexplainable things defy rationality, Pirate. When I lived in India, I saw more than my share of them.”

“They’re all visionaries over there.”

“I beg to differ, Pirate. They have an age-old tradition, a mix between magic, religion, logic and belief in the unknown. To them, the soul is something alive even when the body dies, with a million journeys behind it and a thousand more ahead, which shape it and mark its path in each successive passage.” He paused to eat a french fry. “And it’s not just an individual affair. I believe there are souls that start out together, soul mates some call them, which inevitably call for each other because alone they’re incomplete. So they go through life seeking their missing half, the essential piece that will restore them to the unity they had started out with.”

“And you think I am—“

“I don’t think, Pirate, I know.” Spoken without any emphasis, the words rang even more forceful despite Drake’s thundering heartbeat clogging his ears. “I’ve been waiting a lifetime to read what I did in your eyes and your reaction was exactly as I’d imagined it a million times in my head. That’s why I behaved like I did that first night.”

“I don’t believe this, Devil.”

“That’s your choice, Pirate. I can’t and certainly won’t force you to believe in this. When you ran away that night at your parent’s house, it became quite obvious that you weren’t ready to accept the truth anyway.”

“What truth?”

The Irish devil stretched across the table. “Just answer me honestly, Pirate. Before you met me, have you ever felt you recognized a complete stranger before in your life? Or felt an electrical current run through your body merely by standing next to someone? Or felt your heart beat so fast you feared it might fall out of your chest?”

With a heavy heart, the pirate realized there was no point in lying so he had to shake his head in denial, long hair flying around.

“But you did the moment you saw me, right?”

Divinitas
AUTHOR: Laura Tolomei
GENRE: Gay, M/M, Lesbian, Menage, Paranormal, Deities, Historical, Dark Fantasy god, gods
ISBN: 978-1-55487-215-2
RELEASEE DATE*: January 1st, 2009
FLAME RATING: 5
PUBLISHER: eXtasy Books
BUY LINK

To Seduce A Soulmate
AUTHOR Laura Tolomei
GENRE: Gay, Holiday, Contemporary, m/f, m/m, m/m/f
ISBN 978-1-55487-440-8
RELEASE DATE: December 1st, 2009
PUBLISHER: eXtasy Books
BUY LINK

WIN - Leave a message or comment for Laura this week at the Tiki Hut and your name goes in the hat for a free download of your choice of TO SEDUCE A SOULMATE or DIVINITAS. Good Luck!

This Week At The Tiki Hut - An X Rated Halloween

Thanks for such a fun post and thanks for sharing you Halloween interview with us!

We had five winners this week - each will receive a free ebook from one this week's talented authors!!!

Andrea - Judy - Joey - Estella - Booklover0226 - if we drew you name, email me at AuthorIsland.com with your info so we can get you out your free ebooks!!




Extasy Book at Halloween - Vampires, Shifters and Sex - A Match Made in Hell itself!

Halloween’s right around the corner and I’ve a great book coming out by eXtasy Books, Bloody Passion, genre M/M, ménage, horror, dark fantasy—The Druid, the hunter, the apprentice: sex, power and transformation…what else?

But this is not the news I wanted to give you. No, the real excitement is I’ve joined forces with 4 other wonderful writers, Courtney Breazile; Angela Caperton, Jamboree Jones and C.R. Moss to promote our upcoming releases. Until Angela launched the idea, few had tried a group promo adventure which is not the cost sharing of an ad, but a collective brainstorming to plan and plot new strategies on a group level, rather the usual individual one. And I must admit what we came up so far is incredible, to say the least. But first a word about our 5 books, which are:

Reincarnated Death Wish by Courtney Breazile – Release date Oct. 15th
Green Flash by Angela Caperton – Release date Oct. 31st
Unseen Path by Jambrea Jones – Release date Oct. 31st
In the Spirit by C.R. Moss – Release date Oct. 15th
Bloody Passion by Laura Tolomei – Release date Oct. 31st

One of our best achievements is a great trailer, available on YouTube:


Another promo idea was to devise a mini-interview where each of us asked and answered 3 questions, concerning Halloween. Here are my questions and the answers I received.

1. What Halloween creature would you bring on a deserted island?

Angela: I think a black cat familiar. A magical one, of course, that can change into a rakish lover.

Courtney: Werewolf, one of my favorite beasts.

CR: A witch so we could manifest things

Jambrea: A werewolf...hoping he would change into a hunky man. heehee

Laura: Frankenstein with John Holmes’s equipment.

2. What Halloween creature would you choose to become?

Angela: An owl! I live in the woods and I see them and hear them this time of year. We have a mating pair of Barred Owls that live on our property and every fall I love listening to them call to each other. I think it would be wonderful to fly and hunt by moonlight.

Courtney: I would be a sexy witch, no green skin and warts.

CR: A witch ;)

Jambrea: I think I'll go with the same answer...werewolf. :)

Laura: Vampire’s wife.

3. What would be the perfect Halloween soundtrack?

Angela: I’m a Loreena McKennitt fan, and her albums are some of the most beautiful and haunting songs and music I have heard. Mysterious, atmospheric, light and dark, she is the slice of frozen time that is Samhain – that is Halloween.

Courtney: Deep breathing.

CR: IMHO the perfect soundtrack for Halloween is the soundtrack from the movie Halloween. The first one, not the remake... Though I do like Rob Zombie's music and his ideas for the remakes...

Jambrea: Wow...this hard. Little Red Ridding Hood. There is a song out by Sam the Sham and the Pharaoh's that would be a great theme. Here is the song... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J1XqEX3VBc

Laura: Howling wolves.

Read the more Q&A on the other author’s blogs:
Angela http://blog.angelacaperton.com/
Courney http://themanyshades.blogspot.com/
CR http://www.brigitsworld.blogspot.com/
Jambrea http://internationalheat.wordpress.com/


Well, what do you know…it’s been great fun and for the future, we’re scheduling chats all across the web. And however things turn out, it has been a great experience, very instructive in learning to cooperate with fellow authors and great ladies like my co-partners have proved to be. So thank you and look for us on the Internet. Ciao from Rome,

Laura Tolomei
Website http://www.lallagatta.com/

WIN - This week, you have FIVE chances to win!!! To get your name in the hat for one of the five free downloads by this week's guests, simply leave a comment or a question here at the Tiki Hut Blog this week, our FIVE winners will be chosen next Monday, so stop by next week to see who our five lucky readers are - you just may be one!

This Week At The Tiki Hut - Laura Tolomei

If you really want to know, I was born in 1965 in Rome, Italy, but soon started my travelling career. At the age of five, my parents took me to Lagos, Nigeria, where I grew up free and hot like I've never been since. I loved it there and still think of it with nostalgia. Anyway, it was also where I learned English.

After my African experience, I was ready to tackle the US. I lived in Atlanta, GA, five teen-age years, attending the Crestwood High School, where I started my writing career by publishing a short story Nostalgia on the Crestwood Journal. Very thrilled about discovering my new talent, I went ahead during college, writing for the Emory University journal The Phoenix. Three articles mark my first-and last-steps in journalism, "The peace Corps", "WAMM, Women Against Military Madness," and "Lesbism".

After my American experience, I moved back to Rome, but still kept living from time to time abroad, spending several months in Mumbay India, a country I always felt very close to me in more ways than one.

Today, I write both in Italian and English, mostly fiction of various genres, from fantasy erotica, to mysteries up to plain ordinary life stories.

For those of you who read Italian, you can simply visit the Italian sections of my website, but if you feel particularly lazy, here's a short summary:

I have a short story on line Incontro Metropolitano (Meeting at the Subway) and two books: PICCOLO CROCEVIA A CINQUE (Little Five Points, for those who know Atlanta it's a spot near Emory University), printed by Editing Edizioni and released in December 2008, and L'INVESTIGATTO (loosely translated The Cat Detective), publisher Ennepil Libri to release in 2009.

In English, I write erotica in various genres, mostly fantasy, sci-fi and paranormal, sometimes trespassing into contemporary. Feel free to look over my current and future projects by clicking here.

Visit her Facebook page *** Visit her Website *** Visit her Myspace Page

Laura talks about her new release SPYING THE ALCOVE

When my editor wrote me she’d gone through edits on only some of Spying the Alcove chapters, but I needed to change POV on chapters 3, 5, 7 and 9 from first to third person because she’d never seen something like that before, my stomach caved in just like Valerio’s when he saw Andrea’s glistening naked torso under the sun. True, Spying the Alcove has the unusual trait of combining two different narrative styles, one in third and the other in first person, but the mere thought I should rewrite one part to fit the other seemed wrong.

Pardon me, I don’t mean to sound snobbish nor did I plan to write something so unique. Apparently, the e-world does not have many examples of multiple POVs within the same book, but if Spying the Alcove does, it’s because it fits the storyline to a Tee, proving once again the characters make the story, never the author.

But let’s start at the beginning. The story centers around two Italian University teachers, the Professor and his assistant, digging for buried memories on the ancient city of Selimos, an archeological site located in southwestern Sicily. Long-time friends, the two men work amiably together until Andrea, the assistant, finds a Roman medallion, intact despite the centuries or the crumbling ruins littering the place. Intrigued, Valerio pockets it and that same night the medallion will begin to narrate a Roman matron’s erotic adventures in the privacy of her alcove, talking to the Professor as if it were the woman herself telling of her exciting adventures. Of course, it never entered my mind that this narration was anything but personal, which necessarily implied the use of first person, even if the story so far had been told in third person.

To a closer analysis, the novel’s own structure justifies the use of two different POVs. The medallion is in fact someone talking from a distant past, a time our protagonists know only from stuffy old books and boring researches. To bring such past truly alive, the narration needed to be as personal as possible, thus preserving the full enchantment that the printed words of sterile history books have trouble recreating.

If we also consider the book’s internal logic, it makes even more sense to have two different narrating styles because centuries of history separate the stories themselves, which never actually touch in either time or space if not in Valerio’s imagination.

Well, I guess I did a good job at arguing my point so in the end, both my editor and publisher decided to go ahead with it—more as a gamble, than because they were completely convinced—and for that, I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I know it’s not easy to take chances when you’re running a business, however creative it might turn out to be, and to try new paths is always risky. But I personally have a lot of faith in our readers.

Setting aside all logical arguments, I think readers need new inputs to keep their minds alert. I know it’s a trait of mine to challenge them, have done it before with Divinitas, a novel that mixes sex and religion in its own unique way—I like to think of it as a Laura Tolomei style—but Spying the Alcove didn’t seem to be very original at first. I mean, if you boil the Alcove’s contents down to their basic ingredients, they’re nothing different from the usual erotic book with a whole lot of sex and not much of a storyline. Allowing the two narrative POVs, however, gives the readers something more, a new way to enjoy a story and understand its characters, perhaps even with a greater emotional power than I’ve managed so far. And emotions are what my books are all about, whether written in first or third person.

Read an excerpt for Laura's new release SPYING THE ALCOVE

WIN- To get your name in the hat for a free download of Laura's latest release, SPYING THE ALCOVE, leave Laura a question or a comment this week here on the AuthorIsland Tiki Hut Blog. A winner will be drawn Monday, August 24th - Good luck!