Guest Post: COUNTERMEASURE byChris Almeida and Cecilia Aubrey+Giveaway

**Update: Correction on Grand Prize

Today
Simply Ali
welcomes
Authors
Chris Almeida and Cecilia Aubrey!!

---

Countermeasure
by
Chris Almeida and Cecilia Aubrey



Blurb

In the first novel of the COUNTERMEASURE SERIES, Trevor Bauer is haunted by the mystery surrounding his parents' disappearance. His dreams for his own life have been put on hold. While searching for clues about them, he crosses paths with Cassandra James, a tough ex-CIA agent who derails every one of his best laid plans to avoid a relationship until he can find the closure he desperately seeks.

Suspicious and determined never to fall into the love trap, security specialist Cassandra James takes on a chase to recover files stolen right out from under her nose. In an effort to prove to her father--also her boss--that she is a capable woman, she follows the digital trail--a trail that leads her directly into the arms of Trevor Bauer, an NSA analyst who appears to have more secrets than she has scars...

When he accepts her request for help in recovering the files she's hunting, they embark on an adventure that takes them across the ocean and into a world of intrigue and violence. As things between them begin to heat up, Trevor realizes that, if he is ever to win Cassandra's heart and the future he craves, he has no choice but to reveal all his secrets.

---

Excerpt 1

CASSANDRA KEPT HER EYES LOCKED with his wide ones when his curse burst loose with a delicious lilt she hadn’t noticed before. His eyes had darkened from indigo to the dark blue of a raging sea in a matter of seconds.

“What were you doing on the server Mr. Bauer?” she calmly asked him. When he simply stared at her, she added, “It’s a simple question, Mr. Bauer. It shouldn’t be that hard for you to answer.”

Her sarcastic tone rubbed him the wrong way again. Who was she to talk down to him like that? He refused to follow her lead. “What gives you clearance to ask such ‘simple’ questions regarding NSA operations, Ms. James?”

Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to imply your prowling around the server was official NSA business, Mr. Bauer?”

His eyes were drawn to her lips. “What I am saying, Ms. James, is that I am not answering any questions until we establish why you are here and what you want from me.” He smirked when her eye twitched slightly under the heat of his gaze.

“The only thing I want from you is the truth regarding why you were worming your way around the server.”

Trevor’s anger swelled and his eyes narrowed. “I was…”

Before he could finish, she spoke over him, “I know that you were careful enough to leave almost no trace behind. You deleted most of your presence on the server, so technically I can’t press any charges against you, since I have no actual proof of what you did. But…we both know that you wouldn’t have been there if you hadn’t thought there might be something of value to retrieve from it.”

Trevor chuckled at her condescending tone and her eyes widened in surprise.

“You laugh. Why?”

“You just confirmed what I was thinking, Ms. James.”

“And that would be…?”

“You have no fucking idea what, if anything, I was….” he flashed a smile, lifting his hands and using his fingers to gesture quotation marks in the air, “‘…doing in your servers.’”

His laughter, while totally unexpected, ground on her nerves but was simultaneously surprisingly appealing to her ears. She schooled her features and held her emotions in check, but she couldn’t hold back the anger from sparkling in her eyes.

She wanted to throttle the son of a bitch for destroying her carefully planned interview. Cassandra had expected to come in and pound him with her questions. Instead, he was messing with her. Trying to trip her up each chance he got. The tension in her neck grew as she stood and placed her hands on the table, leaning over him in an attempt to intimidate him, but even that didn’t seem to faze him.

“You can wipe that smirk off your face, Mr. Bauer. I’m not through with you just yet.” Trevor stood and faced her with a thoughtful expression that in a matter of a few seconds transformed into a big, knowing smile. “Nah. That’s where you’re wrong, Ms. James. We’re through,” he said, and walked toward the door.

Cassandra, realizing he was serious about leaving, intercepted him and firmly grabbed his arm.



Follow the Blog Tour to the next Hop for the next part of the excerpt. HERE is the schedule.

---

---

Grab your copy of COUNTERMEASURE here...
Amazon / Amazon Digital

---

Team Work by Chris Almeida

When Cecilia and I mention our writing partnership the comment is usually received with awe and curiosity. Family, friends and/or readers’ first question is usually “How do you do that? How do you write together so seamlessly?” To some, the idea that two people collaborate in writing such intense and fairly erotic scenes is somewhat strange. To us, it’s a natural thing.

Now, in order to understand how this works you need to understand how Cecilia and I began our collaboration. We met in September of 2010 when we both joined a role playing group. We were a mated couple then and the chemistry was immediate. Our writing style and ideas matched. We played the POV in a way that didn’t amount to head hopping and one post just flowed into the other like paragraphs in a novel would.

A few months later, we left the group and, with just a splice of an idea born out of a dream, we began to plot role play stories with our own characters, Trevor and Cassandra, and in a genre we had not played before but which I was drawn to: Contemporary Suspense.

It didn’t take long for us to get the hang of the interactions between our characters. Our writing flowed from where the other left off without a hitch. But role play is not novel writing and we had to adapt, change to how we collaborate in order to make it work.

We divide our work by POV. It’s the simplest way for us. If a chapter starts with Cassandra’s POV, Cecilia starts it and if it’s Trevor’s POV, I start it. Whoever starts writes it until we hit a wall. We pass the chapter to the other for additions. We continue to pass it back and forth, line editing with each pass, until we feel we can go into deep editing. At that point, we turn to our developed method where Cecilia reads the manuscript and I listen for flow, grammar, repetition, and read for typos, punctuation. During that phase of the editing we spend fourteen to sixteen hours on the phone.

Depending on the length of the chapter, the whole process can take from a day to a week. Each chapter is then passed along to our group of beta readers who read it and give us feedback. We only move forward once each chapter has been given a thumbs up. The whole thing has become so fluid that even if we start chapters out of order, when it gets to deep editing, it has been shaped to fit the mold. We are so in tune with the others thoughts and ideas that there is not a big divergence of opinion regarding the direction of the story and as far as the character’s POV, we respect the other’s depth of understanding of the character we play. So if I write something in Cassandra’s POV, Cecilia always goes through it to “Cassiefy” it and if she writes a Trevor piece, I “Trevorfy” (or geekify) it.

Our team work is surprisingly easy and, most of all, a lot of fun. We laugh together daily and that’s what makes our partnership work. We do a lot of things together. We go through tense moments waiting for reviews to come in, we hold our breaths in expectation for reader feedback, and, most of all, we laugh at ourselves and have tons of fun while doing what we love doing: entertaining readers and sharing our world with them all.

We hope you join us in this amazing journey and become a part of our Countermeasure family. With the first day of Countermeasure’s Blog Tour we will begin a series of 5 sequential excerpts from COUNTERMEASURE. Follow the tour for each of the pieces and make sure to comment and fill the form for the daily and grand prizes.

A daily winner will be selected from the comments and a grand prize winner will be selected from the entries on the form.

You can find a list of the winners on our sites and on our Facebook pages.

Sláinte!

Chris

---

About the Authors

CHRIS ALMEIDA and CECILIA AUBREY

Chris Almeida began writing children’s stories at a very young age. While Cecilia Aubrey has dabbled in writing on and off over the years. It was in 2010, when Chris and Cecilia met and began role-playing online as a hobby, that writing placed itself front and center—this time, writing storylines for the role-playing group.

The ideas and plots created for the game awoke their inner writers, and, a few months later, together they began writing romantic erotica. Together, they write suspense-driven erotic romance with sexy, technologically inclined men and woman, filled with intrigue and enough twists and turns to make a rollercoaster seem tame.

Chris and Cecilia have several published short stories to their credit and their first novel, COUNTERMEASURE, was published in January 2012. They are currently working on the second and third books in the COUNTERMEASURE series. Through all the chaos and laughter, they still hold true to their roots, bringing their favorite role-play characters and stories to life.

---

Want to learn more about Chris and Cecilia? Here are some links...
Website / COUNTERMEASURE Website / COUNTERMEASURE Facebook / Authors Facebook

---

Giveaway

Comment below and you are entered to win the $10 daily prize!! Yay!!

Fill out the Google Doc below and you are entered for the grand prize of a Signed copy of Countermeasure and To Russia With Love!!! 

Contest Info:

 

---

To increase your chances of winning the Grand Prize follow the tour HERE! You are allowed one Grand Prize entry daily!