Silver Dagger Book Tours
  • Welcome!
  • Current Tours
    • Book Tours
  • Book a Tour
  • Open Sign Ups
  • Contact
  • About
  • Welcome!
  • Current Tours
    • Book Tours
  • Book a Tour
  • Open Sign Ups
  • Contact
  • About
Silver Dagger Book Tours

 

Liberty - Book Tour and Giveaway

8/19/2019

37 Comments

 
Picture
Picture

Liberty
by Kim Iverson Headlee
Genre: Historical Romance

Picture
How hard would you fight for a chance at love across a vast social divide?

“Epic.” ~ Drue’s Random Chatter Reviews.

Betrayed by her father and sold as payment of a Roman tax debt to fight in Londinium's arena, gladiatrix-slave Rhyddes feels like a wild beast in a gilded cage. Celtic warrior blood flows in her veins, but Roman masters own her body. She clings to her vow that no man shall claim her soul, though Marcus Calpurnius Aquila, son of the Roman governor, makes her yearn for a love she believes impossible.

Groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps and trapped in a politically advantageous betrothal, Aquila prefers the purity of combat on the amphitheater sands to the sinister intrigues of imperial politics, and the raw power and athletic grace of the flame-haired Libertas to the adoring deference of Rome's noblewomen.

When a plot to overthrow Caesar ensnares them as pawns in the dark design, Aquila must choose between the Celtic slave who has won his heart and the empire to which they both owe allegiance. Trusting no man and knowing the opposite of obedience is death, the only liberty offered to any slave, Rhyddes must embrace her arena name, Libertas—and the love of a man willing to sacrifice everything to forge a future with her.

WINNER, 2015 BooksGoSocial Best Book.




**Only .99 cents until Aug 26th!!**
Add to Goodreads
Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Kobo


​

Picture
​The door shut with a terrifying clang.
“Sir!” She clutched the cold bars, failing to bleed the raw panic from her tone.
The guard paused with the key in the lock.
A hundred questions clamored for release. Every one started with, “Why?”
He frowned as if trying to discern what she’d asked. She wasn’t sure herself. “Why the lock?”
’Twould do, for a start. She nodded.
He scrunched one shoulder. “Lanista Jamil’s orders.” He twisted the key. The lock engaged with a loud click. “For all warriors—gladiators. And you, Gladiatrix.” He withdrew the key, hooked the ring on his belt, and stepped away.
“May I know your name, sir?” It felt ungodly strange asking that of a captor, but she hoped to reclaim a hint of humanity in this inhumane place into which the gods had thrust her.
“Vederi,” he said without breaking stride.
He had disappeared from sight before she realized he hadn’t bothered to ask her name.
So much for humanity.
She sank onto the cot, head in hands and heedless of the straw poking her thighs through the mattress’s canvas cover, and sobbed out all the rage, fear, despair, and grief that had harried her for the past fortnight, feelings pride had forbidden her to show the soldiers or the slaver or her new owner or his servants or even that pampered Roman—especially him—denying them all the chance to wield those emotions against her. Pain as visceral as a blade’s thrust sliced into her gut. She dropped to her knees and pressed her cheek to the wall, painting it with her tears and pounding the cool slate with the heel of her hand.
“Da, how could you!”
Each futile thump knelled like another nail driven into the coffin housing the remains of her freedom.
“Da!”


​

Picture
Picture
Kim Headlee lives on a farm in southwestern Virginia with her family, cats, goats, Great Pyrenees goat guards, and assorted wildlife. People and creatures come and go, but the cave and the 250-year-old house ruins--the latter having been occupied as recently as the mid-twentieth century--seem to be sticking around for a while yet.

Kim has been a published novelist since 1999 with the first edition of Dawnflight (Sonnet Books, Simon & Schuster) and has been studying the Arthurian legends for nigh on half a century.



Website * Newsletter * Facebook * Twitter * Bookbub * Amazon * Goodreads


​

Picture
Historical research connected to Liberty


Thank you for hosting Liberty on your blog today!

In September 2000, British archaeologists announced an extraordinary find: the cremated remains of a wealthy young woman buried in a Roman-era paupers’ cemetery on the south bank of the Thames, outside the perimeter of AD second-century London. The ossuary was remarkable for its eight oil lamps, bearing gladiator and Egyptian motifs; evidence of an exotic feast that included almonds, dates, and figs; and traces of stone pine incense from the cones of trees that grew nowhere in Britain save for the grounds encircling London’s amphitheater. The “Great Dover Street Woman,” as the London Museum archaeologists prosaically named her, was either a gladiator’s aristocratic consort or else a superstar gladiatrix in her own right.

I chose the latter interpretation and gave her a story.

Carbon dating placed Great Dover Street Woman’s remains at about a hundred years earlier than I depicted, coinciding with the rebuilding of London’s amphitheater following a cataclysmic fire, and at about the same time as the opening of Rome’s Flavian Amphitheater, or Colosseum, as it quickly came to be known. Since I wanted to show an emperor who wasn’t a raving megalomaniac, I employed literary license to set Rhyddes’s story during the early reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the governorship of Sextus Calpurnius Agricola.

Contemporary inscriptions show that Agricola was responsible for refurbishing an eastern section of Hadrian’s Wall, and Roman lighthouses were built along Britain’s northeastern coastline at approximately the same time. If those lighthouses weren’t Agricola’s idea, they should have been.

Other historic personages in Liberty include the emperor’s wife, Empress Faustina, and their son, Prince Commodus—who did not grow up to murder his father, as shown in Russell Crowe’s movie Gladiator, although Commodus did enjoy fighting as a gladiator in later years and became arguably the worst of Rome’s megalomaniac emperors.

The Greek physician Galen of Pergamum received his professional start treating gladiators and cured Commodus of some unspecified childhood disease; I selected chicken pox, with complications. As a result, Galen became Emperor Marcus Aurelius’s physician in Rome during the precise period depicted in Liberty. Galen’s prolific medical treatises, which have proven to be about 80 percent accurate by present-day standards, including essays about the dangers and avoidance of infection, formed the vast bulk of the Roman world’s medical knowledge. Healers continued to consult them well into the medieval era.

My major written source for gladiatorial research was Gladiators and Caesars, edited by Eckart Köhne and Cornelia Ewigleben, University of California Press, 2000, and my research was supplemented by various television documentaries, produced by the Discovery Channel and History Channel, and aired between 2000 and 2004. For everyday details I found the Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome by Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins, Oxford University Press, 1994, to be indispensable. My research into the history and cultures of British Celts and Picts spans more than twenty-five years, and those sources are far too numerous to mention.

But, educational nuggets aside, my primary goal with Liberty was to create a story that inspires as well as entertains. Observed the newspaper reporter who interviewed James Stewart’s character, Ransom Stoddard, at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:

“When the legend becomes fact… print the legend.”

​

Picture
Follow the tour HERE for exclusive content and a giveaway!

Aug 19
kickoff at Silver Dagger Book Tours
All the Ups and Downs – GUEST POST
A Wonderful World of Words
The Sexy Nerd 'Revue'
Reign of Fantasy
Midnight Book Reader
Scrupulous Dreams
The Book Dragon

Aug 20
b for bookreview – GUEST POST
Viviana MacKade – GUEST POST
Jazzy Book Reviews
Romance Novel Giveaways
Always Love Me Some Books Blog – GUEST POST
Reviews and Promos by Nyx– GUEST POST
A Pinch of Bookdust
eBook Addicts
The Bookshelf Fairy

Aug 21
Readeropolis – GUEST POST
Literary Gold
TNT Book Promotions
A Blend of Sass and Class Blog
T.L. Gray Blog
Books a Plenty Book Reviews
Stormy Nights Reviewing & Bloggin'
The Scratching Post

Aug 22
I'm Into Books – GUEST POST
Bedazzled By Books
Book Corner News and Reviews
Girl with Pen
Keep on Booking
Luv Saving Money
T's Stuff
Word Processor, Romance, Cats, Kids and Creed

Aug 23
nanasbookreviews
Better Read Than Undead
books are love
Dragon's Den
Inside the Insanity – GUEST POST
Maiden of the Pages– GUEST POST
Sapphyria's Book Reviews
Sylv.net
Taryn Jameson

Aug 24
Reading On The Edge
Romance - Sweet to Heat
Anna del C. Dye official page
3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, &, Sissy, Too!
Books, Authors, Blogs
Craving Lovely Books
Paranormal Palace of Pleasures
Teatime and Books
Yearwood La Novela

Aug 25
Rita's reading room – GUEST POST
Valerie Ullmer | Romance Author
Book-Lover
2 chicks and a book
Books all things paranormal and romance
Breanna Hayse Romance
Drako's Den
Momma Says: To Read or Not to Read
Paranormal Romance Trance
Twisted Book Ramblings

​

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Picture
37 Comments
Janet W.
8/19/2019 07:12:14 am

I love the cover! Sounds like an excellent read!

Reply
Bea LaRocca
8/19/2019 07:17:36 am

Love the cover and the excerpt is intriguing. This sounds like a good read. Thank you for sharing your book info and guest post.

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/19/2019 09:45:30 am

Thank you for setting up the Liberty tour! :)

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/19/2019 09:46:29 am

Thank you for setting up the Liberty tour for me this week! :)

Reply
Kelly Nicholson
8/19/2019 09:52:48 am

What do you think of the book or the cover?

looks like a very old sports arena ythanks

Reply
Rita Wray
8/19/2019 12:52:16 pm

Sounds like a book I will enjoy reading.

Reply
Calvin Fung
8/19/2019 01:45:44 pm

Nice feel for Rome with this, sounds like a classic.

Reply
wendy hutton
8/19/2019 03:45:11 pm

sounds like a great book, very nice cover

Reply
Debbie P
8/19/2019 04:46:35 pm

This book sounds like a very interesting read. Cool cover.

Reply
Victoria
8/19/2019 09:05:59 pm

Sounds like a really good book :)

Reply
Debra Walker
8/19/2019 10:12:56 pm

The Cover Looks Great

Reply
Emmaline
8/19/2019 10:37:09 pm

Yes!!!! I love this time period. How did this story come to you?

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/20/2019 08:33:34 am

A dear writer-friend sent me a newspaper clipping -- literally; this was well before the Internet had gotten very far off the ground :D -- announcing an archaeological find. The remains were female, and the grave goods buried with her suggested that she was either the wealthy consort of a gladiator (forced to be buried in the paupers' cemetery because she was a social outcast), or else she was a superstar gladiatrix. I chose the latter interpretation and gave her a story. :)

Reply
Mood Reader
8/20/2019 12:35:59 am

Looks great! :)

Reply
Amy F
8/20/2019 12:21:27 pm

Gorgeous cover design!

Reply
Paula
8/20/2019 02:06:52 pm

The cover art seems appropriate for the book. Good job.

Reply
Bridgett Wilbur
8/20/2019 03:58:57 pm

I would love to read your book.

Reply
Kelly D
8/20/2019 07:08:28 pm

I like the cover. It makes me interested to read the book.

Reply
Terri Quick
8/20/2019 08:25:14 pm

Thanks for this giveaway

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/21/2019 09:18:21 am

You're welcome. :)

Reply
aaron e reck
8/21/2019 01:47:00 pm

Makes me think of the Romans and I love that period how beautiful with all that granite. So pretty. Love it.

Reply
linda gawthrop
8/22/2019 03:40:11 pm

Striking and clever cover.

Reply
Daniel M
8/22/2019 07:30:42 pm

like the cover

Reply
Marcy Meyer
8/23/2019 06:41:52 pm

The cover is pretty. I love a good historical romance.

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/23/2019 08:38:55 pm

Thanks; LIBERTY is a great one... and don't just take my word for it. :D

Reply
Corey Hutton
8/24/2019 02:31:50 am

Good luck with the book and Thanks for the giveaway.

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/24/2019 05:18:25 pm

You are very welcome, and good luck to you too. :)

Reply
Susan Smith
8/24/2019 06:38:10 pm

I like the cover, sounds like an interesting book.

Reply
lynn clayton
8/24/2019 10:16:57 pm

Love the cover looks like a interesting read

Reply
Sarah L
8/24/2019 10:30:45 pm

Looks like an interesting book.
Thanks for the contest. 

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/25/2019 05:13:49 pm

You're welcome and good luck!

Reply
Barbara Montag
8/25/2019 01:59:15 pm

I enjoy a book with a fight for a good purpose & the cover is fantastic!

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/25/2019 05:13:15 pm

LOL; I tell people this book has a save-the-emperor plot... but that I had to work hard to find a Roman emperor who was =worthy= to be saved. (There were five. The rest were raving megalomaniacs. Kind of like, well, never mind. :D)

Reply
Ellie Wright
8/25/2019 09:58:16 pm

Great cover! I'm looking forward to reading it.

Reply
Sabrina Zehner
8/25/2019 09:59:30 pm

I love history and the roman's were very interesting.

Reply
Jerry Marquardt
8/25/2019 11:03:09 pm

I would like to give thanks for all your really great writings, including Liberty, and wishing the best in keeping up the good work in the future.

Reply
Kim Headlee link
8/26/2019 07:34:51 am

Many thanks and blessings to you all. :)

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    **NEW** Subscribe to the Silver Dagger Reader Newsletter to stay up to date on new tours!

    * indicates required

    Categories

    All
    Action
    Activity Book
    Adventure
    African American
    Alt History
    Anthology
    Apocalyptic
    Audiobook
    Australian
    Bdsm
    Billionaire Romance
    Biography
    Chick Lit
    Childrens
    Christian
    Coloring Book
    Comedy
    Coming Of Age
    Contemporary Fiction
    Contemporaryromance
    Contemporary Romance
    Cookbook
    Cozymystery
    Cozy Mystery
    Crime
    Cyberpunk
    Dark
    Dark Romance
    Drama
    Dystopian
    Educational
    Eroticromance
    Erotic Romance
    Fairytale
    Fantasy
    Financial
    Giveaway-hop
    Gothic
    Health And Wellness
    Historical
    Historicalromance
    Historical Romance
    Holiday
    Horror
    Humorous
    Inspirational
    Legal Thriller
    Lgbtq
    Literaryfiction
    Mafiaromance
    Mafia Romance
    Magicrealism
    Magic Realism
    Mcromance
    Mc Romance
    Memoir
    Menage
    Middlegrade
    Middle Grade
    Military
    Mystery
    Newadult
    New Adult
    Nonfiction
    Paranormal
    Paranormalromance
    Paranormal Romance
    Parenting
    Pets
    Poetry
    Postapocalyptic
    Pulp-fiction
    Reverseharemromance
    Reverse Harem Romance
    Rockstarromance
    Rockstar Romance
    Romance
    Romanticcomedy
    Romantic Comedy
    Romanticsuspense
    Romantic Suspense
    Satirical
    Sciencefiction
    Science Fiction
    Scifi
    Scifiromance
    Scifi Romance
    Selfhelp
    Shortstories
    Short Stories
    Speculativefiction
    Speculative Fiction
    Sportsromance
    Steampunk
    Supernatural
    Suspense
    Sweetromance
    Thriller
    Timetravel
    Time-travel
    Urban
    Urbanfantasy
    Urban Fantasy
    Western
    Womensfiction
    Womens Fiction
    Ya
    Youngadult
    Young-adult
    Youngadultya
    Young Adult Ya

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016

© 2021 Silver Dagger Book Tours