KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!

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POSSESSED BY PASSION
A Dark Romance & Paranormal Collection
BY ERIN LEE ETAL

Crazy Ink Publishing, LLC is pleased to present a USA Today bestseller list-aiming dark romance and paranormal romance collection boxset for release on March 16, 2021. Featuring stories from USA Today and International Bestselling authors, this set includes more than twenty romantic novels and novellas aimed to ignite your passions and make you fall in love with the characters. Pre order your copy today!

Collection Blurb

Passions pulsate.
Destinies collide.
Humans, angels, and demons alike are possessed with a common bind—desire.

Experience exquisite and sultry seraphs, demonic witches, a hellfire phoenix, a vengeful gargoyle, ordinary humans with dark sides, vampires, werewolves, ghostly spirits, and other creatures of the night, who will whet your desire for romance and seduction. Travel with them into their worlds as they lust for love, romance, and pleasure.

Will they find what they are searching for? Will you?
Find out in this twenty-plus, limited time paranormal and dark romance collection by USA Today, international bestselling, and award-winning authors.

Experience the passion.

Readers of Anne Rice, Debbie Paterson, Linda Howard, Dean Koontz, Kristen Ashley, and Paul Tremblay will love this dark collection! One click now to become POSSESSED…

Featuring the works of USA Today and International Bestselling Authors:

Bella Emy – USA Today Bestseller – For Better or For Cursed

Alyssa Drake – USA Today Bestseller – For Better or For Cursed

Cora Kenborn – USA Today Bestseller – Cast Stones

Catherine Wiltcher – Amazon All Star – Cast Stones

Erin Lee – USA Today Bestseller – Blank Slate

Olivia Marie –USA Today Bestseller– Blood Bound

Lorah Jaiyn – USA Today Bestseller – The Immortal Stone

Murphy Wallace – International Bestseller – Death in the Flames

N Isabelle Blanco – International Bestseller – Malice

Rena Marin – International Bestseller – The Arisen

Rita Delude – International Bestseller – Driven by Desire

M W Brown – International Bestseller – Under the Moonlight

Diana Register – International Bestseller – Electric Man

Stephanie Ayers – International Bestseller – Blood White

Yolanda Allard – International Bestseller – Gargoyles: Stone Curse

Sian B. Claven – International Bestseller – Neutral Ground

LJC Fynn – International Bestseller – Blank Slate

John Watson – International Bestseller – The Hollow-Eyed Girl

Tiffany Carby – International Bestseller – Meet Cut(e)

Michelle Edwards – International Bestseller – Demonic Destiny

Tracy A. Ball – International Bestseller – Blood Like Rain

Eve Corso – International Bestseller – Spellbound

Marie Ahls – International Bestseller – Villainous

Rheanon Nicole – International Bestseller – His Soul to Keep

Cloud S Riser – International Bestseller – Queen of Stone

Editor’s Note: Look for **Spring Madness** spotlights through March and April for authors included in this collection, a deeper look at the individual authors and their books, including Excerpts, Author Interviews, and Character Interviews!

 BLANK SLATE
A Twisted Urban Fantasy
BY ERIN LEE AND LJC FYNN

Included in Possessed by Passion Collection

Blurb

The day eight-year-old James heard his Granddad’s death rattle in a tiny canoe was the day changed everything. Since then, with the ability to foretell, smell and even witness death in the eyes of both strangers and close associates, he’s tried to outrun the curse.

But death chases him. It surrounds his every interaction and makes it nearly impossible to get close to anyone. It’s taken him to the shadiest of places – including a prison cell and the darkest of living arrangements.

He no longer hopes to escape it. In fact, he welcomes death’s reaper.

Until her. She is the first whose final demise is a blank slate. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t see it. She is the one.

But will death finally catch up to her too?

BLANK SLATE
A Twisted Urban Fantasy
BY ERIN LEE AND LJC FYNN

Excerpt

Editorial Note: Edited for language

Chapter One 

James

Death surrounded me. I tried to look her in the eyes, but it was hard to hold eye contact when all I could see was the knife to her throat and the bulbous, greasy hands of her reaper. I could smell it too – the familiar coppery mix of blood and sweat. She rambled away like it would never happen to her; too concerned that I knew to check in with my parole officer twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays by noon. I wondered if it’d be an inmate who killed her. I wondered more why I cared. She was just another bitch in the system making a living off of tracking guys like me. Frankly, she was a pain in the ass and if I told the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if I recognized those hands as my own.

Squinting, I tried to get a better view of them. There were no tattoos. It wasn’t me. I exhaled, nodding like I gave two f**ks about checking in with another nark. His nails—they had to be the hands of a man—were cut too short. He wore a thick black ring on his right hand. The cuticle on his left thumb was bleeding. It didn’t stop him. Instead, he squeezed harder.

“You need to sign here,” she said, shoving the forms at me.

Grabbing a pen from her dingy metal desk, I quickly scrawled J.T. Maynard next to her babysitter-style ‘X.’ Pushing the paper back at her, I leaned back in my chair waiting for a lecture about not hanging with other cons, not going to bars, and signing up for the job program. It wasn’t like I didn’t know the drill. I’d been here before and I’d be here again. That bitch didn’t have my abilities, but she knew it too. All of it was quite monotonous.

While I couldn’t see my own fate, I was pretty clear on how getting out of this last stint in the joint would go for me. I’d give it three or four days before I was on the run again. Rules and check-ins had never suited me. It wasn’t that I minded authority. What I resented was people making assumptions about me.

It was a curse, this thing that I lived with. No matter how many shrinks, doctors, and specialists they sent me to see, they’d never really get it. Instead, they sent me off with one diagnosis or another. It was easier for them to write me off as a quack than to listen to my warnings and motivations for doing the things I did. It was funny how they never took note of the provocations but only the reactions. It didn’t matter. None of it did. It wasn’t like I could change things. If there was one thing I had learned about fate and death, it was that it comes for you no matter how you or a guy like me tries to change it. Still, it was impossible to avoid.

“Initials here,” she said, moving her eyes to her watch.

Back at it, I went through each ‘X’ and threw down the mandatory ‘JTM.’

On cue, she launched into the rules. I felt my eyes glaze over and managed to straighten my back to make myself appear interested. The hands came back and this time I was able to keep eye contact. Something about the way her own looked as she faded out of this world was too darn cold. I hadn’t seen it before. She didn’t just fade. She lingered. I hoped to never see it again. Sadly, I knew I would.

Like I said, death chased me. It had been that way since I was a kid. First time it happened, my parents ditched me with Granddad. Said I should be excited to go fishin’. I might not have minded the lake and the shot at a record-winning perch if the trip hadn’t been stained by watching Granddad death rattle through to his final breath. But that’s how it was. It would stick with me from the age of eight until my own last days. I just didn’t know it then.