Title: Convicted
Series: The Bureau #5 (but can be read as a standalone)
Author: Kim Fielding
Genre: paranormal romance, m/m romance
Release Date: October 29, 2019

New Release Giveaway!

Convicted by Kim Fielding

Winner #1 to receive: Ebook version of The Bureau: Vol 1,
plus Ebook version of Chained, plus $10 Amazon gift cert

Winner #2 to receive: Ebook version of The Bureau: Vol 1,
plus Ebook version of Chained

Winner #3 to receive: Ebook version of Chained

**Giveaway Eligible in US Only**

October 27 thru Nov 2, 2019

Book blurb:

Vietnam veteran Kurt Powell’s addiction almost cost him everything, but a job as federal agent with the Bureau of Trans-Species Affairs helped him find sobriety and purpose. Now he tracks down dangerous paranormal creatures as well as humans who abuse their magical powers in illegal ways.

Sent from Belfast to the United States as a boy, Desmond Hughes later fell into a disastrous relationship that led to horrific murders. He’s spent seventeen years in a bleak prison with few comforts and no hope of release.

A new mission throws Kurt and Des together in a desperate attempt to prevent disaster. Sometimes what’s long been lost can still be found, but the road to redemption is never easy—and a mutual attraction may not ease the way.

Excerpt:

1993

It was fucking cold outside.

When Desmond Hughes had been a young boy in Belfast, he used to go to the Royal Cinema to see American Westerns. John Wayne, Glenn Ford, Randolph Scott, Alan Ladd, Audie Murphy. Des had felt as if he knew those men as well as he knew his neighbors. He’d practiced their accents and spent hours running around the neighborhood with friends and siblings, pretending to be cowboys, Indians, and bandits. He’d insisted to everyone that when he grew up, he was going to move to America and buy a horse. He clearly pictured himself riding through those rugged, remote landscapes with a white Stetson on his head and a six-shooter hanging from his hips. He’d capture all the bad guys.

What he’d never once imagined—what he wouldn’t have believed if anyone had told him—was how cold the desert gets on a clear night. The air in his lungs feeling too thin to sustain him. Endless stars blinking overhead like snowflakes that never fell. And the scent of sage as brittle in his nose as thin shards of glass.

The only warmth in addition to his government-issued orange cotton jumpsuit was a thin blanket wrapped around his shoulders. The chill of the concrete seeped right through his cheap socks. Yet despite the cold, Des remained outside, pacing within the confines of his tiny exercise yard. Six strides away, four over, six back, four over. He looked up at the sky rather than at the high concrete walls or the electrified wire that topped them. He inhaled deeply, bringing in odors of the outdoors. When he was lucky, he’d catch an owl’s call or a coyote’s howl. The faint sounds always seemed as far away as the stars.

“And here you are in the American West, just as you promised.” He had frequent conversations with himself, and he hoped they staved off insanity rather than being a symptom of it. Or maybe insanity wouldn’t be so bad, especially if it were a comfortable kind. His grand-aunt Molly from Donegal, for instance, had believed herself to be a maighdean mhara—a mermaid—and had insisted on taking long baths daily so she wouldn’t dry out. Once in a while she grew upset because she couldn’t find the magic cap that would allow her to grow a tail and breathe beneath the water again, but mostly she was content. She used to sit at her open window and sing, in hopes of luring handsome men.

Des wouldn’t mind that sort of insanity if it helped him tolerate incarceration. Of course it would be difficult to be a merman here in Nevada, with the ocean so very far away. He’d have to become something else instead.

“Ah, but you’d still be a prisoner, Des. This place is full of creatures, and none of them any freer than you.”

He never saw or heard any of his fellow inmates, but he knew they were there: Monsters too dangerous to allow in public but not so threatening that the Bureau of Trans-Species Affairs needed to destroy them. And humans who, like Des, had become involved in things they shouldn’t have. Larry had told him about this prison, probably to frighten Des and keep him close. Nobody who’s locked up there ever gets out.

Now Des shivered hard and tried to turn his thoughts to slightly better things.

“Remember your first Fourth of July, Des?” He’d been only ten years old when his mother sent him away to live with distant relatives in America, virtual strangers living in a small house in suburban Chicago. Although they were strict about many things, including early bedtimes, that night they’d barbecued hamburgers and let all the kids sit on the front lawn, ready to watch the nearby fireworks. Des had been delighted to get his first look at fireflies. “And you ate so many Popsicles that you were nearly ill.” He traced fingers over his bristly cheeks and chin in recollection of the sweet stickiness that had once been there.

“I wonder what the date is now. Doesn’t matter, I suppose. I’ve even lost track of the year, and that particular Fourth was a long time ago.” He was seeing more threads of gray in his long dark-blond hair, and he supposed there were lines on his face as well.

Still circling the inside of the exercise yard, he was in the midst of recalling his first American Halloween when the light outside the doorway blinked twice. When he’d first been imprisoned, he ignored the signal and remained outside—a small attempt at independence. But a hidden guard had shot him with a tranquilizer, and hours later Des had awakened in his cell with a pounding headache. And naked, because they’d removed his clothes and blanket—as well as his mattress and books—as punishment. Many days passed before those comforts were returned, and he hadn’t been permitted outside again for… weeks? Months? He hadn’t been sure.

Abandoning his memories of the past, Des hurried through the doorway and the metal door slid closed. The lock engaged with a decisive thunk.

 

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About the Author:

Kim Fielding lives in California and travels as often as she can manage. A professor by day, at night she rushes into a phone booth to change into her author costume (which involves comfy clothes instead of Spandex and is, sadly, lacking a cape). Her superpowers include the ability to write nearly anywhere, often while simultaneously doling out homework assistance to her children. Her favorite word to describe herself is “eclectic” and she finally got that fourth tattoo.

Kim donates all royalties from her self-published works to Doctors Without Borders.

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