One of my good friends, Lex Chase has a new book release coming up in a few days. How many days? THREE. In three days, you can read the second installment of Pawn Takes Rook, and believe me, you'll want to.
Lex is here today to talk about her book and the music she feels goes best with her new story.
Spinning on its Axis: The Sounds of Axis City
I’m sharing something very special with you guys today, a
score to the Checkmate series to maximize your reading pleasure! Spinning on
its Axis: The Sounds of Axis City is a completely instrumental mix that
reflects the overall feel of the wondrous megacity that Rook and Garth call
home. I chose sounds that will make you stomp your feet and make you want to
take on the world! As a suggestion, you should listen with earbuds and FEEL DAT
BASS!
Track Listing:
1)
Pacific Rim – Ramin Djawadi – The Beating Heart of Axis
City
2)
Pro Victoria – VnV Nation – The Power Alliance Tower
3)
Suffer – VnV Nation – The Fallen (Rook’s Theme)
4)
Fly Up In The Air – Yoko Kanno – Chivalry Soars
5)
Red Carpet Extend-o-Matic – Kyle Gabler – It’s Dirty
but Beautiful
6)
Ball – Craig Armstrong – Taking Care of Business
7)
Synchrotone – Hans Zimmer – Rook’s Relentless
8)
Nara – ES Postumus – Fretful Dreams, Perpetual Stasis,
Unforgiving Regeneration
9)
Introduce A Little Anarchy – Hans Zimmer – Damage,
Damage, Damage!
10) Hall of Mirrors – Klaus Badelt – Being A
Technopath Has It’s Perks (Hogarth’s Theme)
11) And
Then I Kissed Him – Hans Zimmer – A Love That Shouldn’t Be (Rook and Hogarth’s
Theme)
12) The
Shatterdome – Ramin Djawadi – Checkmate Rises
13) Smoke
N’ Oakum – Christopher Gordon – Gloriously Deadly
14) What
Shall We Die For – Hans Zimmer – Die On Your Feet, Or On Your Knees?
15) Together
We Will Live Forever – Clint Mansell – Rook Can’t Let Go
16) Like
A Dog Chasing Cars – Hans Zimmer – The Axis City Howls
17) Myung Theme (Cello Version) – They’re Up
There, We’re Down Here
18) Are
You Coming Home, Love MOM – Kyle Gabler – Conrad Dawson’s Legacy
19) A
Watchful Guardian – Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard – A Red Rook and a
Black Pawn
20) BONUS
TRACK - Bullets – Archive – Axis City Devours Its Children
Did you give a listen and enjoy? Let me know in the
comments below! I’m also having a giveaway
of some awesome swag on every stop! One lucky winner will receive a set of
Series 1 and Series 2 Checkmate buttons, a Lex Chase.com pen, and both
Checkmate covers! August winners to be announced August 31st!
*** *** ***
Pawn Takes Rook: Cashing the Reality Check Blurb
Even after eleven months of keeping the mean streets of
Axis City safe, superduo Checkmate—Hogarth Dawson—and his boyfriend, Memphis
Rook, still receive the cold shoulder from the Power Alliance. Undeterred,
Hogarth brings his intense focus to bear on Rook, and after Hogarth makes an
accidental marriage proposal, it becomes all too clear Rook isn’t quite at the
same place. But before life gets awkward, duty calls.
Booted-off female contestants of the romantic reality show Single and Super are being found in
comas, and Checkmate needs to get to the bottom of it. As part of Rook’s plan,
he cleans up his bad boy image and goes undercover as a bachelor looking for
love among twenty-five frenzied women. Against Rook’s wishes, Hogarth sneaks
onto the set as a cameraman to investigate the case on his own. With questions
unanswered between them, emotions run high, distracting them and feeding a trap
of their own making.
Where To Buy:
Goodreads:
Catch up on
Checkmate #1, Pawn Takes Rook:
*** *** ***
Pawn Takes Rook: Cashing the Reality Check Excerpt
Rook’s lips
parted to speak, then shut, then parted again, then finally shut. He rumbled a
thunderous laugh. “You dirty minx.” He closed the distance between us in less
time it took to blink. The padded palms of his fingerless gloves cupped my
rear, and he scooped me up before dropping me hastily on the desktop.
The loud
thump of the desk smacking the wall made me curl my fingers into his coat
lapels. “Shhh!” I warned him. “Do you wanna get caught?”
He leaned in
and nipped my ear, his tongue exploring my lobe. I might have squealed very
inappropriately. Might have.
“Don’t you
wanna get caught?” he growled, planting searing kisses on my neck. His hands
roved my cold body and the soft pads of his gloves coupled with his hot fingers
sent sparks up my spine. I parted my legs wider, ready to accommodate whatever
he was going to throw my way. He pulled his teeth away from my neck in a long
scrape, and he slanted his mouth over mine. I gasped into him, and our tongues
met in a starved need to taste one another. With a deft flick of the wrist,
Rook stroked me easily between two broad fingers. My stomach tightened with the
intimate contact, and I buried my fingers in his hair. He chuckled against my
mouth and captured my bottom lip with one of his pronounced canines. Rook
pulled away for the slightest of seconds to watch my reaction as he teased at
my entrance with his fingers, trying to relax me enough into relenting for him.
“Do it,” I
said, and it came out like a begging whimper. “It’ll only hurt for a second,” I
lied out my—wait. This metaphor is really inappropriate for this moment. I just
lied, okay. The laws of physics when it comes to me and Rook getting busy
boggle the mind. I always get the feeling somewhere he’s concerned about
hurting me, but I can’t seem to make him understand it’s that pain of him just
being him that sets me off into the
stratosphere. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s—” I started to say but broke into
a high pitched crack when he entered me with two fingers.
I turned up
my chin to kiss him again as he tenderly worked me over. All the troubles of
the world seemed to melt away when we were like this. No ruined apartments to
worry about how to fix. No case to fret over. Nothing. We were just two guys,
stupidly crazy about each other, and on a mission to get each other naked as
often as possible.
Here’s the
kicker though—you might want to sit down for this part.
Ever get that
moment where everything is just so incredibly perfect that out of your mouth
comes the stupidest thing ever? Well, yeah. Stupid comment in three… two… one….
“Marry me…,”
I groaned. I needed him and needed him now in every possible way. My body ached
for him.
Rook, on the
other hand, froze faster than Han Solo taking a dip in carbonite. “Hogarth,” he
said flatly. His hands rested on the desk next to my thighs.
I searched
his face, hunting for what I could have possibly said and turned the mood to a
steaming pile of shit. “Why not?” I asked. “I love you, you love me, Axis City
legislation made it legal, we want to be together forever, and—”
“Hogarth,” he spat, then turned away. He
ran a hand through his long blond hair and tugged at his roots.
I knew that
completely at-a-loss gesture all too well. And I became far too aware that I
was naked. Like way naked. Like that dream of being in high school in your
underwear. My lip quivered. It could only mean one thing, one horrible thing,
and I was going to be the overdramatic boyfriend.
“You don’t…
love me?” I said, and my voice cracked as all my insecurities flopped out like
a beached beluga. And there I earned my dubious place in Encyclopedia
Dramatica.
Rook spun to
face me, waving his hands quickly in a halting gesture, “Jesus, no! It’s not
like that, okay?”
Somehow this
didn’t exactly inspire confidence; shocking, am I right?
He brushed a
long streamer of blond from his eyes and palmed his face. “Do you even have any
idea how intense you are?”
You know… if
the world could suddenly open up and swallow me whole, that would be just
ducky. I wanted to tell him: “Here, Rook,
here’s my heart. Just for you. Shattered like glass into a million tiny shards.
I hope you fucking choke to death when you eat it.”
*** *** ***
Bio:
Lex Chase is a journalist by day and a writer by
night. Either way you slice it, she makes things up for a living. Her style of
storytelling is action, adventure, and a dollop of steamy romance. She loves
tales of men who kiss as much as they kick ass. She believes it’s never a party
until something explodes in a magnificent fashion, be it a rolling fireball of
a car or two guys screaming out their love for one another in the freezing
rain.
Lex is a pop culture diva, an urbanite trapped in a country bumpkin’s body, and wouldn’t last five minutes without technology in the event of the apocalypse. She has learned that when all else fails, hug the cat.
She is a Damned Yankee hailing from the frozen backwoods of Maine residing in the ‘burbs of Northwest Florida where it could be 80F and she’d have a sweatshirt on because she’s freezing.
You can find her on those Facebook and Twitter things at:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LXChase
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Lex_Chase
And her blog at http://lexchase.com.
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