Welcome author Katey Hawthorne & the Superpowered Love: Reloaded blog tour to Boy Meets Boy Reviews! Learn more about the super powered series and the latest release and enter in the giveaway to win a $10 Amazon gift card (TWO WINNERS)
Take it away, Katey!
Superpowered Mishaps
Thanks for having me during my Superpowered Love: Reloaded tour! The third book in my Superpowered Love series, Nobody’s Hero, just dropped the other day at Less Than Three Press. Yay! All the books can be read in any order, but technically speaking the fun with wild powers begins in book one, Equilibrium, which is full of friends-to-lovers feels and electrical mishaps. Because what’s worse than not knowing why you’re suddenly throwing lightning from your fingers? The lightning being out of control, that’s what.
So here’s an excerpt to give you a taste of the situation. Also some very weird flirting from Hansen’s best friend and fellow superpowered dude, Sam. On whom he’s totally not crushing hard. Nope. Not even a little…
[Sam said,] "Sorry about this morning."
I stood hunched under his arm awkwardly for a second before I finally put mine around him in return, behind his back and bent at the elbow, so my hand was on his near shoulder. He loved soft T-shirts, which didn't do much to save me from feeling the smooth, tight motion of his delt when he adjusted his stance. "My fault," I said. "Game theory paper's making me into an even bigger prick than usual."
"Pfft. I'm just a little stressed."
"I called Mom. She says she'll come down Monday night."
He squeezed me and turned his eyes on the flashing jukebox, but he wasn't looking at it so much as through it. "Shit, if it weren't for you guys—"
"Forget it. You okay?" I asked.
"Yeah. Just—Like, you ever date someone for a while, and then realize you don't like them the way you thought you did?"
Whoa. Missed a left turn at Albuquerque there, buddy. "Uh…"
"Like, Nessa's great. But I don't know. Not much there now that the hormones have burned out on it." He let go of me and started pushing buttons on the box, flipping the pages of CDs on the inside one after the other.
"Who are you, and what have you done with Sam?"
He snorted. "She's hot, but whatever. And she's definitely not interested anymore, but girls never care about that shit. She thinks she knows me"—he rolled his eyes—"so we have some connection."
"So, connection, but no sex. You're in the friend zone…with your girlfriend?" Not that the friend zone was a real thing. Still, served the bastard right. I bit my lip before I could say anything else. Took a step away while I was at it.
He sighed. "But what I'm saying is that I don't even care. This morning, she—"
A bright blue flash cut him off. His fingers were lit up, clothed in tiny leaping strings of white-hot lightning. It raced to his fingertips all at once and arced to the jukebox, like he was shooting it on purpose, like he'd practiced and refined it to an art form.
Electricity popped, audible even over the buzz and music, and the thing burst into flames. I didn't even think; my body just reacted—I shoved my hand into the fire, sensing the vibrations and focusing hard. It was hot, yeah, but I could do hot so long as I was ready for it. It's hard to burn a thermal manipulator alive without a chemical additive. Lucky for me I hadn't had enough beer to dull my abilities.
A lifetime of training rushed at me, the old tactic Mom had drilled into me back in my Little League days. I visualized the vibrating atoms in the air and plastic like tiny baseballs, but instead of trying to knock them out of the park—adding more energy, as was my natural instinct, no metaphor required—it was like bunting, removing the energy, slowing them down. I can't get things actually cool to the touch, but I can work within a certain heat range, enough to stifle some of it before the flame got too far.
My head swam with the exertion. Reversal is hard as hell unless you're a real badass, but I stayed on my feet. I looked to Sam finally. He was frozen, dark eyes wide and horrified, mouth open.
"Sam." Unthinking, I put a hand—the one that had just been in the fire—on his arm. It was still hot enough that he jumped and looked down in surprise, but not enough that he pulled away.
It woke him out of his stupor, though. He gave a little yelp. "Shit. What the shit was that?"
"It's okay." I hoped it sounded more confident than it felt. I'd had no idea he could arc like that. Uncle Kristoff could do it, but that was what his looked like after forty years of practice. Uncle Neil—well, Mom said he used to do it naturally.
It wasn't a powers fuck-up like this that had gotten Neil killed, not directly. But close enough that it made my skin crawl when the comparison came to mind. I hoped to Christ no one had seen, but first things first. "Don't worry about it. Just an accident."
Sam shook his head so his hair flopped into his eyes. His arm tensed, his entire body pulling in on itself.
I moved closer, both hands on his shoulders and using my best serene voice. "Sammy, calm down, okay? Just relax. They'll just think it was an electrical fire."
"It was a fucking—"
Movement caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. I looked to our right, away from the box.
Vanessa and Trent were there, watching. Nessa's eyes were wide, her face pale. Trent looked like he'd seen a ghost, pale and gray-lipped.
Sam had seen them too. Must've been why he cut himself off.
Nessa kind of shook herself and came to us. "You okay, Sam?"
He shook his head but said, "Yeah. Yeah, fine."
I let him go and tried to step back, but he grabbed my arm and held me there.
"That looked…kind of scary," Nessa said.
Trent ambled up behind her, eyeing the jukebox with extreme suspicion. When he turned his gaze on me, a tingle ran up my spine. He'd seen it all. Had he somehow known what it meant? Unlikely, but not impossible. Shit, there had to be a way to ask without outing us completely, right?
But Sam was looking at me too, and the panic in his eyes took precedence. If he was flipping arcs when he was calm, what the hell would happen when he panicked?
"Yeah, crazy fucking jukebox exploded. Almost killed him," I said. "Dude, you wanna get out of this death trap? Go home, relax?"
"Yeah. Good idea. Look, Ness, I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"
She nodded dumbly, and I felt her eyes on us the whole time we were making our way out.
Please, please don't let her have seen too. Please, please don't let Trent know.
Superpowered Love: Re-loaded! Blog Tour
The Superpowered Love series (http://www.kateyhawthorne.com/p/superpowered-love.html) explores the mixed-up love lives of the “awakened”, humans with awakened thermal or electrical superpowers.
December 26 – Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words
December 27 – Love Bytes
December 28 – My Fiction Nook
December 29 – Boy Meets Boy
January 1 – Joyfully Jay
January 4 – MM Midnight Café
January 7 – Bayou Book Junkie
January 9 – Diverse Reader
January 11 – Eroticaforall.co.uk
Superpowered Love 3: Nobody's Hero
Jamie Monday lives in two different worlds. With his family, he's the golden child of awakened superpowered society. He's meant to do great things and pass on his powers—with the appropriate girl, hand-picked by his mother. He's already failed at the first, so he can't bring himself to tell her the wife and children aren't happening either.
With his friends, he's the social director and life of the party. He's also an out gay man with an appetite for quick and easy lays. It's tough to have a relationship when you're hiding off-the-charts electrical powers, but Jamie doesn't mind.
Not until the prickly, paddy rocking, geeky-hot new guy at work shows him what he's been missing. Kellan's singular combination of dirty mouth and pure soul makes Jamie spark right from the beginning. But if he's going to overcome Kelly's defensive front and reach the gentle heart inside, Jamie will first have to come to terms with his own divided lives.
http://www.kateyhawthorne.com/p/nobodys-hero.html
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About the Author: Katey Hawthorne is an avid reader and writer of superpowered and paranormal romance, even though the only degree she holds is in the history of art. (Or, possibly, because the only degree she holds is in the history of art.) Originally from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, she currently lives in Ohio with her family, two cats, and one very large puppy. She lives at http://www.kateyhawthorne.com.
Sounds good
ReplyDeletesounds interesting.
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