Tuesday 5 April 2016

Release Day & Review: Distant Thunder by Larissa Ione

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Welcome to Storm, Texas, where passion runs hot, desire runs deep, and secrets have the power to destroy…

Nestled among rolling hills and painted with vibrant wildflowers, the bucolic town of Storm, Texas, seems like nothing short of perfection.
But there are secrets beneath the facade. Dark secrets.  Powerful secrets. The kind that can destroy lives and tear families apart.  The kind that can cut through a town like a tempest, leaving jealousy and destruction in its wake, along with shattered hopes and broken dreams. All it takes is one little thing to shatter that polish.

Reading like an on-going drama in the tradition of classic day and night-time soap operas like Dallas, Dynasty, and All My Children, Rising Storm is full of scandal, deceit, romance, passion, and secrets.
With 1001 Dark Nights as the “producer,” Julie Kenner and Dee Davis use a television model with each week building on the last to create a storyline that fulfills the promise of a drama-filled soap opera. Joining Kenner and Davis in the “writer’s room” for the Midseason Episodes of this serial opera are bestselling authors Lexi Blake and Larissa Ione who have brought their vision of Storm to life.

So get ready.  The storm is coming.

 Rising Storm - Midseason 2 Distant Storm


 Secrets, Sex and Scandals …

 Welcome to Storm, Texas, where passion runs hot, desire runs deep, and secrets have the power to destroy…  Get ready.  The storm is coming.

As Sebastian and Marylee plot to cover up Sebastian’s sexual escapade, Ginny and Dakota continue to reel from the fallout of Dakota’s announcement. But it is the Rush family that’s left to pick up the pieces as Payton, Brittany and Jeffry each cope with Sebastian’s betrayal in their own way…


Distant Thunder - Teaser 1

Experience Rising Storm Here…

Rising Storm Midseason Episode 1 (March 29): Lexi Blake’s After the Storm



Rising Storm Midseason Episode 2 (April 5): Larissa Ione’s Distant Thunder



Highly charged and as dramatic as a soap opera can be, this second mid-season episode sees Sebastian Rush's family picking up the pieces after Dakota's revelations.

Unsurprisingly, another storm is brewing in Texas and Marylee Rush is the epicentre. Whilst she's always been a formidable woman, we haven't seen anything yet as she plots and schemes. After consulting her contact list for unscrupulous people, she enlists the expertise of Oliver Stayton, a crisis manager to assist clearing Sebastian's name. With an impressive record for cleaning up the reputations of other politicians, he's ruthless as he sets out a plan to win the election.

Logan Murphy who's still coming to terms with Ginny Moreno's deception becomes an unwilling pawn at a Senator Rush PR event. 

Ginny Moreno shows she's not a pushover whilst Dakota Alvarez caves into Marylee's demands in the hope she'll get back who she misses in return!

Payton Rush remains the stoic wife whilst seeking out words of support and comfort from her friend Francine.

Sebastian Rush's insincere tactics make Tate Johnson question his allegiance to the gubernatorial candidate or is he eyeing up ways to exploit the unprincipled senator for his own gain?

To sum up, Larissa Ione has done a fabulous job completing the scene setting for Rising Storm Season Two in the Autumn. I'm left craving more of this captivating and highly addictive series. One thing that's impressed me about the writing is that all the authors have brought their own style to each Rising Storm episode whilst managing to keep the flow consistent and seamless. If you've not discovered this series, there's time to catch-up before the new one kicks off later in the year...can't wait!

4 stars

***arc received courtesy of Evil Eye Concepts via Ink Slingers PR***


Check out this fantastic excerpt from DISTANT THUNDER!

It had only been three days since the Great Founders’ Day Disaster, but it felt like a month. For the first twenty-four hours after Dakota’s revelation, the town had been mostly shell-shocked. Then the story started spreading through social media, and last night after Marcus dropped Brittany off after dinner at Murphy’s, she discovered that someone posted the Founders’ Day Disaster on YouTube. The media had descended on Storm like locusts this morning, and her father, whom she’d only seen in passing since Founders’ Day, had adopted a shelter-in-place stance.

Brittany had given him suggestions on where he could shelter in places that were much, much hotter than Texas, and then she’d run out the front door toward her car, only to be swarmed by reporters.

“Ms. Rush, is it true that your best friend is pregnant with your father’s baby?”

“Ms. Rush, how do you think this scandal will affect your father’s reelection campaign?”

“Ms. Rush, did you know about the affairs your father was having with your friends?”

Ugh. She and her mother shouldn’t have left Francine’s cabin so soon, and Jeffry certainly should have remained with one of his buddies. But when Marylee snapped her fingers and went into crisis mode, everyone came running and fell in line like good little minions.

“This blows,” Jeffry said, looking up from where he was lounging on the couch with his iPad.

“What blows?” She sank onto the love seat across from her brother. “The game you’re playing? Or the fact that we’re trapped like animals? Or maybe the fact that our father is a lying, cheating bastard who slept with our friends? Or the fact that my best friend is going to give birth to our little brother or sister?”

Yep, she might be a little bitter. And it was ex-best friend.

He tucked his feet under him on the couch and sighed. “Yeah.”

“I can’t believe Mom thinks we need to be here for him—”

She broke off as their mother, Payton, came around the corner with a tray of finger sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade. They hadn’t spoken much about any of this, and Brittany wasn’t sure how to go about it. As far as she could tell, her mother hadn’t so much as shed a tear over the fact that her husband had knocked up a girl young enough to be his daughter and had probably slept with a dozen more.

“I brought you something to eat,” Payton said, and if she’d heard Brittany talking, she was choosing to ignore it. “Your father and grandmother are finished with their meeting with Mr. Stayton, and they’re on their way up to talk to you.”

“This should be good.” Jeffry reached for a sandwich as their mother put them on the coffee table. “I was wondering how long it would be before we got the circle-the-wagons lecture. Five bucks says he tries to convince us that everything Dakota said was a lie.”

“I know you two are angry and confused and you have a lot of questions,” Payton said as she took a seat next to Brittany, looking all prim and proper in a subdued green dress and gray scarf. “But we’ll get through this. I promise.”

stunning sensual young couple in love posing in summer field, happy lifestyle concept


Author pic - Larissa Ione
Larissa Ione is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. An Air Force veteran, she traded in a career as a meteorologist to pursue her passion of writing. She now spends her days in pajamas with her computer, strong coffee, and supernatural worlds. She believes in celebrating everything, and would never be caught without a bottle of Champagne chilling in the fridge…just in case. She currently lives in Wisconsin with her U.S. Coast Guard husband, her teenage son, a rescue cat named Vegas, and her very own hellhound, a King Shepherd named Hexe.




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