A
Time Apart
Macauley
Series, Book
One
by Rebecca
N. Caudill
Genre: Paranormal Romance , Vampire
Date of Publication: February 8,
2015
ISBN: 978-1508482666 * ASIN: B00TDR1O6U
Number of pages: 211 (estimated)
Word Count: 71,020
Cover Artist: Rebecca N. Caudill
Book Description:
A love story that traverses the
confines of time, life, and death, uniting two passionate souls from different
worlds and ages …
Olivia Donnelly has spent her whole
life obsessing about how she will die. When tragedy strikes, reality comes
crashing down and she’s forced to confront her fears head on. Hoping that a
move across the globe will help her to cope with a devastating loss, she
arrives in Ireland a broken down shell of a woman looking for a second chance
at life.
Almost immediately Olivia is drawn
to places she’s never been, and to a man that she’s never met. When she crosses
paths with the mysterious and frustratingly private William Macauley, her life
is thrown into turmoil unlike any she has ever known. The two couldn’t be more
different – she’s human, he’s a vampire – but Olivia can’t get him out of her
mind. Having acknowledged her overwhelming desire for William, now she must
come to terms with how her feelings for him will greatly alter her future.
Olivia’s understanding of life –
and death – take on new meaning as she examines the truth of the person she
once was, the woman she was born to be, and how William is the key to her
everlasting happiness.
Excerpt:
Sample from Chapter 1
“Ladies and
gentlemen, welcome aboard Flight 716 with service from San Francisco to Dublin.
We ask that you please fasten your seat belts and secure all baggage beneath
the seat in front of you or in the overhead compartments. At this time, please
turn all personal electronic devices to airplane mode so that they cannot
transmit a signal. As you know, smoking is prohibited for the duration of our
journey to Dublin, and that includes in the lavatories. Thank you for choosing Aer
Lingus. Enjoy your flight.”
It was usually at
this point in any flight where Olivia’s real panic kicked in. Shortly –
terrifyingly – the plane would be airborne with nothing but land and sea below.
While she knew statistically that airplanes were safer than cars, she’d never
known anyone – let alone two anyones – who had been killed, their bodies never
recovered, from a freak accident on the freeway. Not to say that it didn’t
happen everyday; she just didn’t know anyone that it had happened to.
To distract her
mind, she listened to the crew outline the plane’s safety procedures and then
the Captain’s welcome, including the weather forecast for Dublin – rainy and
brisk, how shocking. Sipping the champagne the flight attendant had offered her
when she boarded, Olivia felt the combination of the Valium and the alcohol
take over her body, but not quite enough that she gave up the death grip she
had on the arm rests. As she felt the tell tale tingle of the Valium working
its magic, she thought – not for the first time – that maybe someday a plane
crash wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to her. Maybe someday she’d just
never wake up from the self-induced drug and alcohol fueled nothingness she
needed just to fly.
Who am I kidding?
Sadly, more and
more frequently it wasn’t just plane rides that had her mixing booze and pills.
Most days she wrapped herself in a hazy blur of alcohol like a security
blanket, protecting her in a cocoon of mental fuzziness.
Olivia felt her
pulse beginning to race and her breathing accelerate, and she made a conscious
effort not to panic, not to look over at Judgy lest the woman start advocating
for professional psychiatric help. It wouldn’t have been the first time some
well-meaning motherly type had tried to get Olivia into therapy. She stole a
quick glance in Judgy’s direction only to find that she was already engrossed
in her novel, Olivia’s neurosis and emotional paralysis the least of her
concerns.
Not too long after
she had fought back the near panic attack, the whirring of the engines lulled
Olivia into a stupor that soon resulted in a fitful sleep. For the next ten
hours she didn’t exactly fall into a deep slumber, but she wasn’t fully awake
either. Her mind seemed to float between a dreaming and wakeful state, and she felt
strangely separated from her body. She’d see snippets of things in her head but
wasn’t sure if the images were of events or instances that she was remembering,
things she was imagining, or scenarios she was concocting to be used in her
novel.
And then Olivia
saw, quite clearly, the face of a man she had never met and yet she felt like
she had known him all of her life – blue eyes, sharp and unnaturally piercing
as if he could see deep into her soul. She saw a field of green that stretched
far and wide, rolling hills dotted with sheep and lined with stacked stone
walls. She saw herself as a child chasing a puppy larger than she was down by a
river while laughing that high-pitched squeal that only a child can make as the
dog raced back toward her covered in mud and dripping with water. And then that
image changed as quickly as it came and she saw her mother as a young woman,
happy and carefree, in love with a man who was not Gerald Donnelly.
And as she always
did when in one of her fitful states of sleep, Olivia saw all the ways she
could die – car accident; mugging gone horribly wrong after having put up a
brave fight; her house on fire, the flames licking at her feet as she tried to
run; her body weak and broken as it was ravished by cancer; or her heart slowly
stopping as she lay in her bed, blind from old age and hunched with the rigors
of time.
And in these
dreams she was ready for it – any of it – almost welcoming the vast blackness
that would follow whatever her death would be.
And then she saw
that face again – the man she didn’t know but felt so deeply that she should.
He whispered her name, longingly, “Olivia.”
About
the Author:
Rebecca Caudill read her first
novel when she was just four years old and has been hooked on books ever since.
When she wasn't writing her own stories, she was sneaking copies of her mom's
paperbacks to read late into the night.
Fast forward several years later
and Rebecca graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in
Journalism and a minor in English Lit, which gave her new insight into the
written word. Following college, Rebecca embarked on a career in tech PR in the
famed Silicon Valley, which eventually led to her leading Global R&D
communications for a Fortune 500 company that everyone knows by name. Finally,
after more than a decade of writing words ascribed to other people, in December
2014 she quit her job to pursue writing full time.
Today Rebecca lives with her
husband and beautiful-but-neurotic cat in Oakland, California. When not
creating fictional worlds inhabited by strong women, rakes, rogues, and dashing
heroes, she is planning her next vacation, trying out new recipes, or drinking
Islay scotch.
Blog – http://www.rebeccancaudill.com
Tour Giveaway:
$25 Amazon gift card
$10 Starbucks card
1 autographed paperback
