Cover Reveal - We Met In A Dream by Joy Kamen

Cover & Excerpt Reveal & Tribute Trailer

We Met In A Dream by Joy Kamen
At desperate times in their lives, Grace and Delta Force sergeant Tyler meet in a dream. Will they be able to find each other again when they awaken? They vow in their dream to spend Christmas together, but will they be in time? A bittersweet love story similar to Somewhere In Time.

The proceeds from all downloads for the entire month of December 2013 will go to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Includes excerpt for Joy Kamen's upcoming release Love Treasure, an erotic romantic adventure.

Genre: Erotic Fantasy Romance
Content/Theme(s): Military, Dreams
Release Date: December 7, 2013
Publisher: Joy Kamen

Trailer, Excerpt & More

Purchase links:   Amazon     Smashwords

I'll Be Home For Christmas tribute to the troops trailer

Excerpt:
I had reached my breaking point and didn’t think I could go on another day. I tried to relax, meditate, but this particular panic attack consumed me. My chest hurt, my head hurt, I could hardly breathe. I’d been having panic attacks for a while now, but this one Was. A. Doozy.

How did I get to this point in my life? I was one year over thirty but I looked and felt like I was fifty. If I had been lovely at one point, stress had killed it. I’d given up all hope of ever having a dream come true.

Of ever having a boyfriend.

Or even an orgasm.

Cinderella was a cruel, taunting lie.

I have to shoulder the blame. I didn’t set boundaries when I should have and now I was being strangled to death by the umbilical cord. My mom has always been a sickly, helpless woman. Sickly mostly in her mind, always telling people she’s dying of something. The truth of it is, she’s pretty hale and hearty and no doubt will outlive me.

My dad cared for her, catered to her really, and when he died I gained sole custody. I can empathize with why he catered; it’s much easier to appease her than suffer through severe mood swings and emotional manipulations. Dad long ago resigned himself to putting Bandaids on a cut that didn’t want to heal.

I remember when I was little pleading with her begging her not to take her own life, an act she seemed perfectly willing to do simply because dad was trying to set his own boundaries and not cave in to whatever she wanted. It took me until high school to realize it was all a manipulating act and she never ever had any intention of ending her own life.

I could have bolted after dad died. Got in my car and hightailed it cross-country to start a new life, leaving mom to find her own way. But I grew up having to deal with her weaknesses and I didn’t think she would have survived. Dad didn’t cut and run, he stayed and endured. I needed to honor that.

After he died of a heart attack, ten years ago, I picked up his burden and continued to carry it. Ever since his death I have been my mother’s keeper. She has lived off of dad’s money and my efforts, never having had to work a day in her life.

When I actually had the guts to move out of the family house and into my own apartment three miles away she called me a slut for wanting my own place. If anything, I’m way closer to reclusive nun on the sex spectrum. The most action I get is from my Cosmopolitan subscription.

The very few times in the last decade I attempted to date and explore the possibility of having a boyfriend or take a short breather from mom duty she landed in the hospital for no other reason than to re-secure the leash and to guilt me into never leaving her side. Purposely dehydrating herself is her golden ticket to getting herself hospitalized, and it’s worked on numerous occasions. I can’t possibly be with her twenty four seven to make sure she’s drinking properly; there comes a limit to the time I can - and should - give to babysitting my own mother.

I’m sorry if I’m sounding harsh. I do love her. She’s my mom. That’s why I’ve devoted my life to her. She can be very sweet and loving; people think she is the kindest most generous person - and that can be true. Her struggles and the qualities that have defined her are the result of emotional abuse she suffered as a child. I get that, but it hasn’t made my life any easier.

I took a deep breath trying to release some stress. I desperately needed to contain the whale of a panic attack, to relax and get some sleep. Tomorrow, Monday, was going to be a tough day. A suck out loud day.

Tomorrow I had to be at work a half hour early for an employee meeting, answer a busy phone system for four hours, run mom’s errands on my lunch time, answer the phones again for another four hours and then get take-out for mom for dinner. Since it was November, there’d be no light for me to get the raking done after dinner and the maple tree leaves were piling up. I could hear mom already, “Grace, we need to get the raking done.” (We meaning me.)

For the entire day, and every day to come, I needed to force a smile on my face and keep it there. To mask my hopelessness. I needed to be kind, even when people weren’t kind, when they were pissed off at me because I had to put them on hold to answer five other incoming calls. I tried to honor kindness no matter how much I ached inside. It wasn’t anybody else’s fault but mine that I ended up with a life of my making but not of my choosing.

Peace, love, freedom, I repeated. Those were my yoga meditation mantra words. Peace, love, freedom. My go-to words whenever stressful thoughts consumed me. Tonight, they so weren’t working. I ditched the mantra, and as tears streamed down my cheeks I begged and pleaded with whatever higher power was out there in the universe to please, please, please let me fall asleep and wake up in another life. I prayed and wished and hoped and begged, with every cell of my soul, that I could forget who I was and wake up in the life I wanted to believe that I was meant to have.

And then I drifted into something, somewhere - a dream maybe?
As I drifted deeper into the darkness and farther away from the panic attack that ripped through my being I could feel the chains of my life, along with the memories of who I was, vanishing from my existence. Then everything went black.

∞∞∞∞∞
Before she opened her eyes she could smell jasmine. And hear waves crashing on the surf. A balmy sea breeze caressed her cheek and carried the smell of the jasmine into the room. She snuggled under a soft cotton blanket, her head resting on down pillows. Thanks to the comfortable bed and the soothing sounds and smells she felt at peace. Peace, a novel feeling she sensed.

When she opened her eyes, she caught the image of the ocean through opened wrought-iron balcony doors. The warm orange of the sky complimented the azure blue of the water. Whether it was sunrise or sunset, she had no idea.

“How are you feeling?” a deep voice, soothing with a bit of country drawl, asked. She turned her head and locked into a gaze with Guinness brown eyes.
~~~~~~
Purchase links:   Amazon     Smashwords

Other titles by Joy Kamen:

Stories For Halloween	The Beast Curse

Find Joy Kamen at:
www.joykamen.com
Twitter: @JoyKamen
www.facebook.com/pages/Joy-Kamen/163754067158158
Joy Kamen Goodreads author page
Joy Kamen Amazon author page

Be on the lookout for Joy Kamen's upcoming release Love Treasure coming January 2014

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