Ragnarok by Michael Smorenburg 💕 Book Tour & Gift Card Giveaway 💕 (Romantic Suspense)

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A secret NASA experiment gone wrong, the chaos that erupts, and one reporter seeking the truth who chases leads where she shouldn't.

On a flight from Paris to Los Angeles Tegan Mulholland is intrigued & charmed by Pete, the mysterious stranger sitting beside her. But when their plane almost falls from the sky and other jets in her vicinity wink from the radar, the official explanations that follow reek to Tegan's retired investigative journalist mind of cover up.

What is not declared:
A secret NASA experiment has warped a column of time instead of space, plucking with it the planes out of our era, and a band of Norse warriors from the Vinland colony millennia ago into our epoch.
Rowing eastward and back to Iceland, the contrail of Tegan's plane appearing after the strange aurora and moving westward high above, the Norsemen conclude are Odin's order to return to Vinland and unknowingly toward the modern day Canadian coast, where, just days--yet a thousand years before--the skraeling Indians had driven them out.

As news reports flood Tegan's living room of bloodshed and massacre, speculating about which gang of roughly dressed bearded marauders are responsible for mass-murder around the quiet Canadian coast, Tegan develops a hunch that there is more to the story than it seems. She quits her Hollywood Exec job and embarks on an odyssey that leads inexorably ever closer toward the Norsemen's hidden lair.

Only Pete, the Lockheed consultant she had steadily fallen in love with during the harrowing flight and since, has any hope of saving her.

If you enjoy intrigue, conspiracy and romantic suspense, Ragnarok will grip your imagination and not let go.

Viking LongShip, 35 Nautical Miles East of Newfoundland
Latitude: 47°37'14"N
Longitude: 51°45'52"W
Throughout the night, under the rash of stars, Raol conned his vessel ahead of the howling wind, preferring the tiller in his own experienced hand with the fast conditions.
The men tried to sleep as best they could to prepare for the coming confrontation with the skræling, but sleep eluded most.
It was not yet ten days ago that they had been routed and lost half their small civilization to the marauders.
And now Odin’s emphatic decree that they must return to do his will weighed heavily on each man.
The boat skipped ahead of the wind through the dead of night, and sheets of thrown water flew over them, icy and miserable with the chill factor of speed as they raced down the fronts of ocean swells.
And then a sight that set their nerves to jangle befell them.
Out of the far horizon, came a vast city of lights, row stacked upon row, level over level battering fast in their direction, nearly headlong into the wind. It was a mountain of lights that crossed their bows faster into the wind than they ran with it.
The heart of a monstrous beast throbbed within this vessel, the sound of its grumbling came to them through the soles of their feet. At the stern of the titan, boiled a violent turbulence.
As it went by, the monster blasted an angry horn of warning, “Baaaaaaaawwwwp…. Baaawwwp, Bawwwwwp…”, and then it was gone, stroking into the night.
When the ship was already nearly five leagues past, from its surging prow came a bow wave half as tall as their own mast.
Their dwarfed little vessel skipped gamely over the crosswise run of that wave.
The men knew it was some devious magic that the gods of the skræling had sent to head them off. But no threat would make them turn away from their oath now, and on they pressed, sleep impossible, the wind still at their backs.

Before dawn, the wind abated and land could be seen on the far horizon. They were heading for a large encampment, a watch fire at every tent. The terror of what they suddenly faced gripped Raol, making his mind explode with questions.
Could the savages have somehow multiplied in their short absence to have such an encampment in place? Why would they keep their fires burning all night?
They must be forewarned that we return, he thought with a terrible foreboding.
He pulled the steering oar towards himself, turning their boat north to run along the coast, avoiding the waiting skræling.
Finally, there was only the unlit blackness of the coast left, and then the first glow of dawn began to warm the sky.
There, low and squat was Vinland once more—a fine peninsula of land jutting out into the sea, a peninsula with a profile that Raol recognized when they’d first explored this coast.
With war now declared between their gods, each Norse warrior aboard was in silent contemplation and high alert as he pulled with all he had for a sanctuary around that headland.

Michael Smorenburg (b. 1964) grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. An entrepreneur with a passion for marketing, in 1995 Michael moved to California where he founded a business consultancy and online media and marketing engine in the burgeoning internet. In 2003 he returned to South Africa where he launched a security company. In 2015 he divested of the business to write full time. Michael's greatest love is the ocean, keeping up with the latest breakthroughs in science, understanding the cosmos and sharing all he learns.