*Anna is hosting a Tour Wide Giveaway for $10.00 Starbucks eGift Card.
Title: First to Burn (The Immortal Vikings #1)
Author: Anna Richland
Publishing Date: January 27, 2014 (from Carina Press)
Buy Links: Amazon | B & N | Kobo | Carina Press | Are | iTunes
A Soldier with Secrets.
Immortal Viking Wulf Wardsen once battled alongside Beowulf, and now serves in Afghanistan. He’s trusted the mortal men on his elite special operations team to protect his secret, until an explosion lands Wulf in a place more dangerous to him than a battlefield: a medevac helicopter.
A Doctor with Questions.
Army captain Theresa Chiesa follows the rules and expects the same from others, even special forces hotshots like Sergeant Wardsen. She’s determined to discover the secret behind his supernaturally fast healing, and she won’t allow his sexy smile to distract her.
An Enemy with Nothing to Lose.
Even as Theresa’s investigation threatens to expose him, Wulf dreams of love and a normal life with her. But the lost Viking relic needed to reverse his immortality is being hunted by another—an ancient enemy who won’t hesitate to hurt Theresa to strike back at Wulf.
Excerpt:
Theresa perched on the edge of the blue-velvet fainting couch and leafed through her guidebook for the third time. Two glasses of water and twenty push-ups had tied off the slight hangover threading through her head, so she could decline any aspirin Wulf might bring.
If he showed up.
Her book extolled restaurants, nighttime strolls and ideas for la dolce vita, as if every tourist had a partner. So what if these photos of the Roman Forum at night made it harder to turn Wulf away and go forth unaccompanied? To follow the rules, she had to. She’d thank him for last night’s dinner and then politely refuse today’s invitation. No waffling, no sinking in his eyes.
The knock jolted her to her feet. She settled the wide belt of her safari dress, then crossed to the door.
“Good morning.” The standard greeting covered her awkwardness as she drank in the contrast of his square shoulders against the hallway’s cream-patterned wallpaper.
“Good morning to you too.” His deep voice, not the simple words, sent tingles racing from her chest to her fingertips.
She retreated, but he mistook it as an invitation and followed. Knowing he’d pass too close, she abandoned the dim entry for safety in the middle of the well-lit room.
“You picked a good hotel.” His gaze traveled her curves.
“How can you tell?” Until he’d invaded, her room had felt spacious. Now it felt as tight as the littlest two-seat cars that roamed the city. “You haven’t looked at the room.”
He glanced past her to the bed. She’d smoothed the duvet and fluffed all six pillows, but his eyelids lowered as if he could see through her effort to the sheets where she slept.
“It has everything that matters.” His nostrils flared and he closed his eyes. When he opened them, it was as if he’d forced himself away from a ledge. “Ready?”
“Um, no.” Somehow she had to ask him to leave. At the bureau, she fiddled with a lip gloss tube and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror. You need color, her mother would chide. “You don’t really want to sightsee.”
“No.” He stalked closer as she unscrewed the plastic cap. “But I’ll sacrifice for you.”
About the Author:
Anna Richland lives with her quietly funny Canadian husband and two less quiet children in a century-old house in Seattle. Like the heroine of FIRST TO BURN, she joined the army to pay tuition, a decision that led to an adventurous career on four continents (if standing on the bridge in Panama that divides North and South America counts as two).
She donates a portion of her book proceeds to the Fisher House Foundation, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers in the US and Great Britain, and Doctors Without Borders, which delivers emergency medical care in more than sixty crisis zones world-wide.
To find out about her October novella, HIS ROAD HOME, and the next Immortal Vikings romance, THE SECOND LIE, visit her website at annarichland.com and sign up for her newsletter.
Connect with Anna Richland:
Website | Facebook | Goodreads
Giveaway!!!
Anna is hosting a Tour Wide Giveaway for $10.00 Starbucks eGift Card.
Girl meets Books 
Thanks so much for hosting First to Burn! That hotel room scene takes place while my army officer heroine is on leave in Rome – she thought she’d left the sexy sergeant she knows she can’t fraternize with behind in Afghanistan. But he showed up the day before, right at the foot of the Spanish Steps, and found her. Now she’s battling herself … she knows she shouldn’t spend time with him, but it’s Rome, very far from Afghanistan and the rules in force there. She’s alone, he’s awfully attractive, and of course there is the thing she’s very, very curious about … how did he heal in minutes from a near-fatal gunshot wound on their last mission together? It’s harder and harder for Theresa to send Wulf away like she should.
I loved writing the scenes set in Rome because I was lucky enough to go there six years ago. Real locations inspired all the scenes set in Italy (although thankfully Mr. Richland and I did not have to escape any bad guys through the sewers). I have a photo album over at my facebook page that shows some of the locations.
Because I love to travel – that’s part of what sent me to the Army! – I’m curious — what’s the favorite place everyone’s travelled, either in a real life or in the pages of a book?
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I also love traveling. I haven’t been to many places yet, only in Asia. But I would love to tour Europe some day. Paris sounds amazing from Laura Florand’s books.
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I love Laura Florand’s Paris too! I just know the macaroons and chocolates in her books are better than anything I can find in a store here, I just know it. And I want them all. I was super lucky and had a friend from college who had a garret apartment (really! an attic with slope ceilings – it was beautiful) in Paris, and she let me stay there for a week – it was amazing.
I just finished “A Discovery of Witches” by Deborah Harkness, and a lot of that book is set in Oxford, England, and a castle in France. It’s sort of hybrid (and really interesting) because it has lots of romance elements like vampires, etc., but done in a very lyrical, lush literary fiction way. Definite arm-chair travel, paced differently from my romantic suspense (of course!), but I recommend it too.
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Wow, your stay in Paris sounds really amazing. It’s also a dream of mine to travel by myself, for the experience. My next target is Japan sometime next year I hope.
A Discovery of Witches is long.. hahaha 🙂 but I’m enjoying it now so doesn’t matter I guess. 🙂
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Where in Asia, by the way? (The Army sent me there too…)
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I live in the Philippines and I’ve traveled to vietnam, macau, hong kong, malaysia, and south korea. 🙂
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So you’re actually reading Discovery of Witches and I just recommended it? That’s crazy! I really want to go to South Korea (for the Winter Olympics in 2018! It’s a dream, I know, but it’s a long time so maybe my family can make it happen).
Which did you like more, Macau or Hong Kong? Are they pretty similar? I don’t know anything about Macau, so I have no idea.
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I am reading it now! Happy coincidence! 🙂 South Korea is really nice although we didn’t get to travel outside of Seoul. I like Macau better because of the people but I guess you can do much more in Hong Kong. 🙂
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