THREE MORE WEEKS TO PRE-ORDER!!

This boxed set is one I've been working on since February. My novella, "The Poisoined Cup" is part of the collection.  Right now it's only 99 cents to pre-order. So ACT NOW as they say.
Here's the universal link.

Review of Pretty Little Gun by R.C. Barnes

Every tattoo tells a story and sixteen-year-old Bess Wynters can read those stories—the ones on the surface and the ones that are below the skin—just by touching them. It’s a talent that would get her labeled a freak if people knew what she could do, so even her mother, legendary tattoo designer Terry Wynters, doesn’t know the whole story.
This short read is an introduction to the world of Barnes’ upcoming novel, Ink for the Beloved, and it will pique the interest of anyone who has despaired at the mountains of same/old same/old YA books and their supernatural heroines. Brown-skinned Bess is refreshingly original and wise beyond her years. She sees it all, but she doesn’t share all that she sees and that’s a burden she carries alone. Her world is something different too. For one thing, there’s only one male character in this story and he’s not a love interest. Barnes teases us with a mention of a “Ink for the Beloved” ritual Terry Wynters has invented and we want to know what that is all about. In fact, we want to know more about everyone and everything we’ve encountered in this story. Barnes’ “The Tattoo Teller” series debuts later this month with Ink for the Beloved. Put it on your TBR list.

Find Pretty Little Gun here

Playing with Fire!

Love is patient, love is kind, even those doomed by what is forbidden let love be their salvation in the Playing with Fire Boxset -

On pre-order for 99c + 14 free reads for you today!

https://www.subscribepage.com/playingwithfireboxsedpromotion

#99c #romance #mustread #pnr #UF #darkfantasy

Excerpt from The Poisoned Cup

We're just weeks from the release of the Playing With Fire boxed set (so excited). To get you in the mood (you HAVE pre-ordered it, haven't you?), here's the prologue to "the Poisoned Cup," my modern-day retelling of the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot:

In the end, people blamed me for the fall of Camelot and the end of the British monarchy. As if one woman could do in a thousand days what a thousand years of war, murder. Family feuds, and anti-royalist sentiment could not. Those who blamed me conveniently forgot that when Arthur took the throne, he inherited a kingdom already in disarray. The Brexit mess had weakened the economy, fractured the United Kingdom, and left his subjects demoralized and unhappy. They needed a scapegoat, and they chose me for the role.

It wasn’t even personal.

Royals have traditionally been a focus for “civilian” discontent, and in many cases, understandably so. Royals were rich, after all, and therefore had no idea what it was like to live paycheck to paycheck or work more than one job just to be able to afford the basic necessities.

It grated on the public when a royal—usually some dotty dowager duchess—was praised for being “hard-working” when the work involved was mostly smiling pleasantly while listening to a boring speech about some issue of little practical concern to anyone outside the room. After all, no one wants to hear the extinction of the skylark when their own jobs are in danger of disappearing even sooner.

And it didn’t help that the royals were always so ubiquitously on display, with the press and the bloggers feverishly covering their every move, recording their every utterance, and memorializing their every fashion faux pas. And even then, in the face of nearly universal mockery, it took forever for the “fascinator” fad to die. I never could understand how a grown woman could wear something that looked like a toddler had made it out of pipe cleaners and keep a straight face. Or those silly flat hats that are tilted at such an acute angle that they looked like tiny alien spaceships had just landed on the royal coif.