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Release Day! And a Sale!

January 22, 2020 by Elizabeth Drake

Knights’s Redemption Releases Today!

I am so excited to share Tessa and Sir York’s journey. I hope you will love these two as much as I do!

Available Here

3d-3

 

What secrets are okay to bury to save the life of a child? A town? A province? And who will pay the price when those secrets are unearthed?

Sir York buried his noble title and his past to join the Knights of Valor. He then accepted the most difficult of assignments to prove his dedication: rebuild the war-torn province of Marren. But the annual harvest is the least of his worries as a powerful and ancient evil threatens to consume all in it’s path, including every soul in Marren. When a beautiful but reclusive mage saves his life, Sir York will do anything to win her help to save Marren. Anything but fall in love with her.

Tessa couldn’t care less about Marren. Or so she tells herself. But they need her magic to survive, and so does Sir York, a man far too handsome, too charismatic, and too blessed by the gods. After all she’s endured, the last thing she needs is to fall in love with someone that will break her heart as surely as he will. Especially if he ever learns the truth about who she really is.

Just when it seems the people of Marren may actually stand a chance, unearthed secrets lead to a dead woman and a holy inquisition. Now, neither Sir York’s blade nor Tessa’s magic is enough to save them all. As darkness descends, Sir York and Tessa must face their pasts and risk everything, including their hearts, before the ancient evil devours them all.

 

In honor of releasing the latest in the Knights of Valor series, the first two books in the series are on sale.

To Love a Prince is currently $0.99 – Available Here

Seducing the Ice Queen is currently $2.99 – Available Here

 

 

ToLoveAPrinceSmall

What you don’t trust can’t betray you, but it can still break your heart.

Haunted by a tragedy he couldn’t prevent and hounded by a duty he never wanted, Crown Prince Eli of Tamryn is a cold, calculating, and manipulative man. But, whether his subjects like it or not, he will soon be their king. All he needs is to ascend the throne is the Dragon God’s blessing and the approval of the Dragon Church.

There’s only one small problem: the god is silent, and the church wants him dead. Well, there is one other problem—the slightly confusing matter of how he somehow acquired a slave girl who wheels and deals with everything and everyone, no matter what the cost, to win her freedom.

When Eli uncovers a plot to seize the throne, driven by a forbidden cult of dark worship, he must protect a church that hates him and a god he thinks has forsaken him. Duty runs headlong into the newly awakened needs of his heart, and with treachery before him and enslavement behind, no choice is good.

Old secrets reveal new lies, and betrayal will bring a man, a crown, and a kingdom to the very brink of war.

Available Here

 

 

IceQueen_3d

 

Ice queens can’t be hurt because they have no feelings. They also can’t fall in love…or so they tell themselves.

Having to pretend everything is fine after being jilted by the crown prince was bad enough, but now, Lady Daniella is being exiled to a distant castle ‘to recover.’ Except, her exile happens to include an order from the king to investigate the murder of the castle’s former owner, the old Duke of Westlake.

At least she’d never been in love with the old Duke of Westlake. Too bad she can’t say the same thing about his brother, the dashing heir apparent just returned from battle. But facing down an awkward childhood crush who is just as determined as she is to unravel the mystery is the least of Daniella’s worries.

Someone in the shadows is watching her. Someone who doesn’t want to her to solve this murder. Someone that’s already killed once to buy silence. Someone who will force Daniella to choose whether love will be what defeats her or the only thing that could save her…if only she will let it.

Available Here

Filed Under: Books, Knights, News Tagged With: A Knight's Redemption, Knight, Knight in shining armor, Knight of Valor, love, mage, new release, pre-order, Romance, romance author, Romance Novel, Romance Novels, Romance Writer

Available for Pre-Order: A Knight’s Redemption

December 16, 2019 by Elizabeth Drake

3d-3

 

What secrets are okay to bury to save the life of a child? A town? A province? And who will pay the price when those secrets are unearthed?

Sir York buried his noble title and his past to join the Knights of Valor. He then accepted the most difficult of assignments to prove his dedication: rebuild the war-torn province of Marren. But the annual harvest is the least of his worries as a powerful and ancient evil threatens to consume all in it’s path, including every soul in Marren. When a beautiful but reclusive mage saves his life, Sir York will do anything to win her help to save Marren. Anything but fall in love with her.

Tessa couldn’t care less about Marren. Or so she tells herself. But they need her magic to survive, and so does Sir York, a man far too handsome, too charismatic, and too blessed by the gods. After all she’s endured, the last thing she needs is to fall in love with someone that will break her heart as surely as he will. Especially if he ever learns the truth about who she really is.

Just when it seems the people of Marren may actually stand a chance, unearthed secrets lead to a dead woman and a holy inquisition. Now, neither Sir York’s blade nor Tessa’s magic is enough to save them all. As darkness descends, Sir York and Tessa must face their pasts and risk everything, including their hearts, before the ancient evil devours them all.

Available for pre-order now!

Filed Under: Books, Knights, News Tagged With: A Knight's Redemption, Knight, Knight in shining armor, Knight of Valor, love, mage, new release, pre-order, Romance, romance author, Romance Novel, Romance Novels, Romance Writer

Available for Pre-Order: A Knight’s Redemption

November 11, 2019 by Elizabeth Drake

3d-3

 

What secrets are okay to bury to save the life of a child? A town? A province? And who will pay the price when those secrets are unearthed?

Sir York buried his noble title and his past to join the Knights of Valor. He then accepted the most difficult of assignments to prove his dedication: rebuild the war-torn province of Marren. But the annual harvest is the least of his worries as a powerful and ancient evil threatens to consume all in it’s path, including every soul in Marren. When a beautiful but reclusive mage saves his life, Sir York will do anything to win her help to save Marren. Anything but fall in love with her.

Tessa couldn’t care less about Marren. Or so she tells herself. But they need her magic to survive, and so does Sir York, a man far too handsome, too charismatic, and too blessed by the gods. After all she’s endured, the last thing she needs is to fall in love with someone that will break her heart as surely as he will. Especially if he ever learns the truth about who she really is.

Just when it seems the people of Marren may actually stand a chance, unearthed secrets lead to a dead woman and a holy inquisition. Now, neither Sir York’s blade nor Tessa’s magic is enough to save them all. As darkness descends, Sir York and Tessa must face their pasts and risk everything, including their hearts, before the ancient evil devours them all.

Available for pre-order now!

Filed Under: Books, Knights, News Tagged With: A Knight's Redemption, Knight, Knight in shining armor, Knight of Valor, love, mage, new release, pre-order, Romance, romance author, Romance Novel, Romance Novels, Romance Writer

5 Reasons Science Says We Should Consume Less News

April 19, 2018 by Elizabeth Drake

What Common Household Item is Killing Your Children? We’ll tell you, tonight at eight.

Except, if it really is killing my children, shouldn’t I get a news flash across my phone telling me what it is and how to get rid of it, much like an Amber Alert?

localnewsmeme
If they were honest, this would be the news in my area.

 

 

 

Here are six reasons why research says you should consider changing your news consumption habits.

 

1. News Outlets are Here to Make Money, Not Inform

With the wave of “fake” news lately, this hardly needs explanation. But we need to remember that news doesn’t usually cover what’s important anyway. They’re looking for the “human” element, the element that sucks you in and gets you to keep watching or clicking.

If it bleeds it leads.

fear
Fiction shines light on reality.

If a building burns to the ground, what do you think the media is going to focus on? The building. The people in the building. Injuries. Fatalities. All of which is relatively inexpensive to produce. They don’t actually have to dig to get to the guts of the story. Do they ever tell you why the building burned? Changes to the fire code that should be enacted to save those lives?

No, because that doesn’t get clicks.

With this emphasis on the dramatic, we focus on the wrong things, and those things are then overblown in our minds. We all fear terrorism, but no one thinks too much about chronic stress. Total US deaths, worldwide, due to terrorism from 2004-2014 was 112.  Think about that for a moment. 112 people in the Unites States died from terrorism over ten years. That’s 11.2 people, on average, per year.

How much news did it get?

But how many people die each year of heart attack? Stroke? Cancer? Yet, how much emphasis has any of this gotten?

Stress affects 143M Americans, and 81M are under extreme stress.    The causal connection between chronic disease and stress is growing .

So why don’t we hear more about this? Reducing stress is something we might actually have control over, and it can have a direct impact on our lives. Imagine if reducing stress could reduce the number of people with heart disease or cancer by 10% or even 1%.

The news doesn’t cover this because it doesn’t get clicks.

News is a for-profit organization. They are not here to inform. They are here to make money.

 

2. Doesn’t Really Matter to You

How many news stories have you watched or read in the last year? The last month?  What did you do because you read or watched it? What decision did it help you to make, particularly about anything of consequence? Did you become a better parent? A better spouse? Did you make a serious financial decision? Do something to improve your career?

I ask this is all seriousness. If it is meant to inform you, it should be doing so in a meaningful way. We’ve already established that it’s not really informing you. Rather, it’s telling you things to get you to tune in, and we should be challenging the value of tuning in.

I can honestly say consuming news did little to engender action from me. News stories didn’t even help me make a decision on the candidates I voted for. I got that from their stated positions on their websites.

fear2

 

3. Teaches You Not to Think Too Hard

This article really says it all. News programming is designed to make you think you’re seeing both sides of a story and getting the low-down, but you’re not. Most of what we get are news bites, little pieces of information meant to fit into an allotted amount of time. Deep, complex subjects require time to digest. Truly difficult concepts can’t be understood in the five minutes they get.

We’ve all heard “climate change”, but how many of us have actually taken the time to understand what it is and why it’s happening? What are the macro effects? What does it truly mean to the planet and to us? (Give you a hint, the planet doesn’t care. It’s already survived numerous mass extinctions.) What are we really sacrificing by not dealing with it, and what would it really take to reverse it?

You see this superficiality with a lot of “news” reports.  They are interested in giving you bite-sized pieces, but nothing too meaty. They don’t make money informing, remember? They make money on you tuning in or clicking.

Yet, without this deeper level of understanding, you lose sight of the bigger picture. Events become singular and contained instead of part of the broader view. Hard to make truly informed decisions when you see a very small piece of the whole issue.

 

4. Seek Conforming Opinions

With the sheer volume of news out there, we no longer have to expose ourselves to ideas that don’t conform to ours. If we don’t want to believe in climate change, we can find plenty of articles denying it to fill our screen.

As Warren Buffet said, “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

If this is true, then we’re really not seeking information or enlightenment. We simply want to be told that everyone already agrees with us. That we’re right.  That’s called confirmation bias, and it’s very detrimental.

It means you never hear the other side, you never have the chance to understand their way of thinking. You can’t find a compromise because why would you compromise when “everyone agrees with you?”

But what if we’re wrong? Even Albert Einstein was wrong on occasion.

 

5. Induces Stress 

News, particularly what’s splashed across our networks, triggers our  fight or flight response. The same stories that get clicks activate this center.

When you hear about a family dying in a fire, you have a very different reaction than if you’re hearing about alternate routes to avoid a fire. That’s why so many of us felt panicked and twitchy after all of the 9/11 stories, particularly as we watched people, human beings, plummet from those upper stories.

That’s one image I will never, ever forget.

The “human” side of these stories releases glucocorticoid  which has a whole slew of effects on your body. It’s the fight or flight response. And what does this constant fight or flight response bring? Remember that stress we were talking about and how we know it contributes to heart disease, stroke and cancer? Yeah, that. 

It’s like being constantly told there’s a monster under your bed, and knowing there is nothing you can do about it.

fear3

 

6. Crushes Creativity

I’m not sure if news in general does this, or just bad news.  I won’t say this is an unbiased or researched article, because I couldn’t find any with hard facts, but it states what I’ve seen myself.

The more news I consume, the less creative I am. Or, perhaps, the less time I have for creativity.

Not sure, but I do know that switching off the news, even for a week, made it much easier to focus on my novel. I felt more relaxed and able to bring more of myself to my writing.

Why?

Not sure, but I figure the reduced fight-or-flight response is part of it. As is not allowing the news to snatch at my already divided attention. Kids, spouse and day job already get most of it, I’m not letting things I can’t impact take more.

Of course, tuning out the world burning may not be ideal, but there is very little I, personally, can do for the issues of the day.

 

Yet, despite the science that says to ignore it, we keep coming back to the news. Makes me think they’re in the same camp as social media. They’ve figured out how our brains work and how to keep us coming back for more. How to suck our precious time from us for profit.

I am done.

I will continue to read the Economist, and I will never know what household item is slowly killing my children until they send me an Amber Alert to my phone.

 

How about you? Do you watch the news? Do you get anything out of it? Does it inform your decisions? Has it ever affected your sleep or given you nightmares?

Filed Under: News, Uncategorized Tagged With: confirmation bias, fear, Fears, local news, News, Stress, Stress kills creativity, Think, Turned off the News

What Common Household Item is Killing Your Children?

March 6, 2017 by Elizabeth Drake

We’ll tell you, tonight at eight.

Except, if it really is killing my children, shouldn’t I get a news flash across my phone telling me what it is and how to get rid of it, much like an Amber Alert?

I have ignored traditional news media for years, getting most of my news from the Economist.   Yes, it’s a paid subscription and an expensive one. I’m fortunate that my company is willing to reimburse me for it. Still, it’s some of the best and most in-depth analysis I’ve seen. Positions are well thought out, and their research is impeccable.

For those of you shaking your heads thinking it’s an ultra-conservative news outlet, you may be surprised at how liberal many of their social views are. Why? Because allowing things like gay marriage, religious tolerance, and immigration are actually good for the economy.

Remember who is writing it.

They care about making economies prosper and the generation of wealth. In a recent piece, they actually call for allowing people age 16 and older to vote rather than 18.    Why? Because we need to teach this habit like any other. And people must vote or you undermine the very concept of democracy. It’s an interesting article. I recommend it.

As I’ve been entering the social media sphere because authors “must”, I started getting caught in the news cycle. The drama. The “end-of-the-world” mongering.

The fear.

fear

I decided to stop following people on Twitter or Facebook that post a lot of “news”. I stopped clicking on any and all links to news articles. I stopped looking at anything that remotely resembled click-bait.

Yes, I know a lot of things are going on right now, bad things, but the constant stress was making me crabby and interfering with my sleep.

If you’re rolling your eyes and thinking I’m a snowflake, here are six reasons why research says you should consider changing your news consumption habits.

 

1. It’s Here to Make Money, Not Inform

With the wave of “fake” news lately, this hardly needs explanation. But we need to remember that news doesn’t usually cover what’s important anyway. They’re looking for the “human” element, the element that sucks you in and gets you to keep watching or clicking.

If it bleeds it leads.

If a building burns to the ground, what do you think the media is going to focus on? The building. The people in the building. Injuries. Fatalities. All of which is relatively inexpensive to produce. They don’t actually have to dig to get to the guts of the story. Do they ever tell you why the building burned? Changes to the fire code that should be enacted to save those lives?

No, because those don’t get clicks.

Because of this emphasis on the dramatic, we focus on the wrong things, and those things are then overblown in our minds. We all fear terrorism, but no one thinks too much about chronic stress. Total US deaths, worldwide, due to terrorism from 2004-2014 was 112.  Think about that for a moment. 112 people in ten years. That’s 11.2 people, on average, per year.

How much news did it get?

But how many people die each year of heart attack? Stroke? Cancer? Yet, how much emphasis has any of this gotten?

Stress, on the other hand, affects 143M Americans and 81M are under extreme stress.    The causal connection between chronic disease and stress is growing .

So why don’t we hear more about this? Reducing stress is something we might actually have control over, and it can have a direct impact on our lives. Imagine if reducing stress could reduce the number of people with heart disease or cancer by 10% or even 1%.

The news doesn’t cover this because it doesn’t get clicks.

News is a for-profit organization. They are not here to inform. They are here to make money.

 

2. Doesn’t Really Matter to You

How many news stories have you watched or read in the last year? The last month?  What did you do because you read or watched it? What decision did it help you to make, particularly about anything of consequence? Did you become a better parent? A better spouse? Did you make a serious financial decision? Do something to improve your career?

I ask this is all seriousness. If it is meant to inform you, it should be doing so in a meaningful way. We’ve already established that it’s not really informing you. Rather, it’s telling you things to get you to tune in, and we should be challenging the value of tuning in.

I can honestly say consuming news did little to engender action from me. News stories didn’t even help me make a decision on the candidates I voted for. I got that from their stated positions on their websites.

fear2

 

3. Teaches You Not to Think Too Hard

This article really says it all. News programming is designed to make you think you’re seeing both sides of a story and getting the low-down, but you’re not. Most of what we get are news bites, little pieces of information meant to fit into an allotted amount of time. Deep, complex subjects require time to digest. Truly difficult concepts can’t be understood in the five minutes of time they get.

We’ve all heard “climate change”, but how many of us have actually taken the time to understand what it is and why it’s happening? What are the macro effects? What does it truly mean to the planet and to us? (Give you a hint, the planet doesn’t care. It’s already survived numerous mass extinctions.) What are we really sacrificing by not dealing with it, and what would it really take to reverse it?

You see this superficiality with a lot of “news” reports.  They are interested in giving you bite-sized pieces, but nothing too meaty. They don’t make money informing, remember? They make money on you tuning in or clicking.

Yet, without this deeper level of understanding, you lose sight of the bigger picture. Events become singular and contained instead of part of the broader view. Hard to make truly informed decisions when you see a very small piece of the whole issue.

 

4. Seek Conforming Opinions

With the sheer volume of news out there, we no longer have to expose ourselves to ideas that don’t conform to ours. If we don’t want to believe in climate change, we can find plenty of articles denying it to fill our screen.

As Warren Buffet said, “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

If this is true, then we’re really not seeking information or enlightenment. We simply want to be told that everyone already agrees with us. That we’re right.  That’s called confirmation bias, and it’s very detrimental.

It means you never hear the other side, you never have the chance to understand their way of thinking. You can’t find a compromise because why would you compromise when “everyone agrees with you?”

But what if you’re wrong? Even Albert Einstein was wrong on occasion.

 

5. Induces Stress 

News, particularly what’s splashed across our networks, triggers our  fight or flight response. The same stories that tend to get clicks, tend to activate this center.

When you hear about a family dying in a fire, you have a very different reaction than if you’re hearing about alternate routes to avoid a fire. That’s why so many of us felt panicked and twitchy after all of the 9/11 stories, particularly as we watched people, human beings, plummet from those upper stories.

That’s one image I will never, ever forget.

The “human” side of these stories release glucocorticoid  which has a whole slew of effects on your body. It’s the fight or flight response. And what does this constant fight or flight response bring? Remember that stress we were talking about and how we know it contributes to heart disease, stroke and cancer? Yeah, that. 

It’s like being constantly told there’s a monster under your bed, and knowing there is nothing you can do about it.

fear3

 

6. Crushes Creativity

I’m not sure if news in general does this, or just bad news.  I won’t say this is an unbiased or researched article, because I couldn’t find any with hard facts, but it states what I’ve seen myself.

The more news I consume, the less creative I am. Or, perhaps, the less time I have for creativity.

Not sure, but I do know that switching off the news, even for a week, made it much easier to work on my novel. I completed as much in a week with it off as I had in three with it on. I felt more relaxed, more able to focus, and able to bring more of myself to my writing.

Why?

Not sure, but I figure the reduced fight-or-flight response is part of it. As is not allowing the news to snatch at my already divided attention. Of course, tuning out the world burning may not be ideal, but there is very little I, personally, can do for the suffering people in Syria other than donate to the White Hats.

 

Yet, despite the stress, lost creativity, and lack of information, we keep coming back to the news. Makes me think they’re in the same camp as social media. They’ve figured out how our brains work and how to keep us coming back for more. How to suck our precious time from us for profit.

I, for one, am done.

I will continue to read the Economist, and I will never know what household item is slowly killing my children until they send me an Amber Alert to my phone.

 

How about you? Do you watch the news? Do you get anything out of it? Does it inform your decisions? Has it ever affected your sleep or given you nightmares?

 

Filed Under: News, Uncategorized Tagged With: Anger, Conforming Opinions, fear, Make Money, Stress, Stress kills creativity, Think

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