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In my upcoming contemporary romance series, Once and Forever, the stories are rooted in fairytales but, of course, they don't take the pretty route. Their moral is twisted and turned into a gritty, modern story about real people who go through as much cruelty as I can throw at them, but who come out stronger. Ready to be the person they should be and have the love they deserve.

Each novel in the series will begin and end with their own fairytale, as I see it.
This is the fairy tale of DARKER WATER:

Prologue:

Once upon a time there was a young woman who lived in a tall glass tower in the middle of a city. She wasn’t incredibly beautiful but she was attractive, probably somewhere around the eighty-fifth percentile. She was smart, kind, honest, and good with animals.

But the most beautiful thing about her was her heart, for it was made of the purest of golds. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very good at taking care of it, and over the years, it lost its shine. Because every time she met a prince, she believed him to be perfect—strong but gentle, brave, and caring. So, she would show him her heart and give it to him to hold, thinking he would take care of it.

What she hadn’t yet realized was that there was a curse put on her…at some time…by someone. And the curse was this: The moment the woman gave her heart away and kissed the prince—believing it to be true love—the prince would begin to change. Sometimes slowly, other times quickly. But he always turned into a frog. And although the frog would give her heart back to her, each time it was a little more worn, a little less brilliant.

But the woman didn’t give up trying to find a prince who would remain a prince, knowing that somewhere out there was someone who could heal her heart and break the curse by remaining a prince after she kissed him.
Then one day, she finally understood the curse’s power. No one could heal her, she would never find a prince, and the curse would never be broken.

And so, clutching what was left of her heart, she gave up her search.

Epilogue:

Once upon a time there was a woman who though not stunningly beautiful, thought herself to be. Because she was in love with a man who made her feel that way. And despite himself, he was in love with her.

After all of the princes who’d turned into frogs and had damaged the woman’s heart, it took a man who was not a prince to mend it. And in return she mended his. For even though he’d long believed himself the lowest of creatures, he wasn’t. His heart was locked away, deep inside of him, and he had never allowed anyone in for fear they would discover how truly ugly it was.

But what he didn’t know was that his heart was pure and beautiful and strong. And all he needed was the right woman to unlock it and set him free…with a kiss.

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DARKER WATER is available for pre-order now. Sign up for my newsletter to hear the moments it's released. Or, you know, click one of the links below to buy it now. Then it'll show up on your eReader magically on October 3rd.

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Amazon             iBooks             B&N             Smashwords

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Want to win the paperback of DARKER WATER?
Enter the giveaway from now until release day, Oct. 3rd

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Darker Water

by Lauren Stewart

Giveaway ends October 03, 2014.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

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DARKER WATER  will be released on Friday, October 3rd!

You can even preorder it on Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes, and B&N, so it'll show up on your eReader automatically.

I'll share the links to other retailers as soon as I have them.

Until then, enjoy this gorgeous cover by Amanda at www.PixelMischief.com. In case you haven't heard, DARKER WATER is a contemporary romance, the first in a series of seven-plus books, all stand-alone novels. Yeah, that's right! Who says I can't write happy endings?! Okay, fine, I may have said that at one point. But people can change.

Drum roll please…

DARKER WATER
ONCE AND FOREVER #1

 How beautiful is that? I could look at it forever.
Thanks, Amanda!

DARKER WATER is a twisted take on the Frog Prince story and is about Laney, a woman who's given up on relationships, love, and men, and Carson, a man who's never even tried relationships and love. He hasn't tried men either. Haha. Here's the book description:

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Laney Temple believes in love about as much as she believes in princes, happy endings, and honest relationships. After kissing way too many frogs, all she has to show for it is sore lips and a bruised heart.

 Luckily, Carson Bennett isn’t interested in her for her heart. Her lips? Hell yes. Other parts of her anatomy? You better believe it. But her heart? Nope, not even a little bit. So it just makes sense for him to selflessly volunteer himself to show her that great sex can just be great sex. Except, for them, it isn’t that simple.

 If Laney can’t keep sex and love separate, she’ll lose everything she’s gained. And if Carson starts to feel more than he should, Laney may be the one to pay the price.

 What neither of them want to admit is that their choices—not to love or be loved—have never been theirs to control.

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Sometimes an author comes across a quote that sums everything up–their writing, their experience, the message they're trying to communicate to readers.

C. Joybell C. is a poet. An incredibly talented one who just happens to be kind and incredibly generous. Something she wrote is the perfect way to communicate the overall theme of my work. Here it is:

“Some people live in cages with bars built from their own fears and doubts. Some people live in cages with bars built from other people's fears and doubts…Some people live in cages with bars built from the choices others made for them, the circumstances other people imposed upon them. And some people break free.” — C. JoyBell C.

If you told me you've heard something as beautiful, tragic, meaningful, and just plain awesome than that lately, I wouldn't believe you.

In the Hyde series and The Heights, I've used epitaphs: those short quotes you find in the beginning of books that convey a little of what you're about to jump into. It takes a really long time for me to find the perfect one for each book. Here are the ones I chose:

Hyde:
“…I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but two.
There was something strange in my sensations…an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil…”
– Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886

Jekyll:
“When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,
There arises the recognition of ugliness.
When they all know the good as good,
There arises the recognition of evil.”
– Lao-tzu

Strange Case:
“…everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
– Marilyn Monroe

Unseen:
“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

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I still haven't found exactly the right one for UNEARTHED. If you ever happen upon a great quote, feel free to post it on my Facebook page. You may just see it in my next book. :)

Want to win free books and other prizes today?

THEN GO HERE!

At 2:15 today and join me for a great time with fun, amazing authors and free stuff. My highly amusing author friend, Renee Bernard, is throwing a takeover party on Facebook today beginning at 2pm PST (which is 5pm EST which is who-knows-what anywhere else time).

And I'm giving something away! If you have a suggestion for what I should give away, please feel free to tell me. It could be an Ebook, print book, audiobook, swag, or… Hey! Here's an idea!

Who wants to read an ARC of my upcoming novel?

DARKER WATER is hot and sweet and funny and tear-jerking and DEFINITELY worth a bit of your time to try and snag an early copy of! So stop by, make me smile, have a few laughs, and hopefully get yourself something nice from me or one of the other authors you'll be there.

SERIOUSLY, GO HERE TO JOIN AND THEN REMEMBER TO COME BACK AROUND 2PM TODAY!!!