Friday, January 9, 2015

M9B Friday Reveal: Featuring Month9Books Spring 2015 Debuts Blitz and Giveaway #M9BFridayReveals


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Hello everyone! Welcome to the Month9Books Spring 2015 Debuts Blitz!
These upcoming M9B books will be ones that you'll definitely want to add to your TBR list!
You can enter for a chance to win 1 of 4 prize packs of eBooks open Internationally.

Horror Business by Ryan Bradford
Coming February 2015

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Armed with a passion for classic B-grade horror movies, a script co-written by his twin brother, and a wicked crush on his death-obsessed neighbor; hardcore horror fan Jason Nightshade must finish his student film.
But his plans are derailed when the children of suburban Silver Creek start disappearing – his twin brother among them. Battling a possessed video camera, a crazy zombie dog, a monstrous bully, and a frighteningly broken down family life, Jason embarks on a mission to find his lost brother so the two can write an ending for his story.
As an any horror fan knows, saving the day won't be easy, as Jason finds himself forced to face the real world where death isn't just a splash of fake blood on a camera lens.

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Ryan grew up in Park City, Utah. His fiction has appeared in Quarterly West, Paper Darts, Vice, Monkeybicycle and [PANK]. He currently lives in San Diego where he acts as Creative Director for the nonprofit literary arts organization So Say We All. He’s the co-editor of the anthology Last Night on Earth and founder of the literary horror journal, Black Candies. Find him at ryancbradford.com

Fingers in the Mist by O'Dell Hutchison
Coming February 2015
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Sixteen-year-old Caitlyn Foster never believed in the legend of the Redeemers. That was before the trees started to whisper her name. Before a murder of crows attacked the town. Before she and her family came home to find a bloody handprint on their front door, marking one of them as a sacrifice. As Caitlyn’s friends are ripped from their homes, she knows it’s only a matter of time before the Redeemers come for her. Caitlyn has the power to stop the terror, but she’ll have to decide if she’s willing to sacrifice herself to save those she loves.

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O’Dell was born in a small rural town in Idaho. There were no Redeemers living there (that he knows of). After attending college in the Pacific Northwest, he found his way to the Houston area. By day, he is a Business Systems Analyst and at night you can either find him sitting at home, dreaming of random super powers he wishes he had, or directing plays and musicals at various theaters around Houston.

Lucas Mackenzie and the London Midnight Ghost Show by Steve Bryant
Coming February 24, 2015

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Lucas Mackenzie has got the best job of any 10 year old boy. He travels from city-to-city as part of the London Midnight Ghost Show, scaring unsuspecting show-goers year round. Performing comes naturally to Lucas and the rest of the troupe, who’ve been doing it for as long as Lucas can remember.
But there’s something Lucas doesn’t know.
Like the rest of Luca’s friends, he’s dead. And for some reason, Lucas can’t remember his former life, his parents or friends. Did he go to school? Have a dog? Brothers and sisters?
If only he could recall his former life, maybe even reach out to his parents, haunt them.
When a ghost hunter determines to shut the show down, Lucas realizes the life he has might soon be over. And without a connection to his family, he will have nothing. There’s little time and Lucas has much to do. Can he win the love of Columbine, the show's enchanting fifteen-year-old mystic? Can he outwit the forces of life and death that thwart his efforts to find his family?
Keep the lights on! Lucas Mackenzie’s coming to town.

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Purchase HERE!
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Steve Bryant is a new novelist, but a veteran author of books of card tricks. He founded a 40+ page monthly internet magazine for magicians containing news, reviews, magic tricks, humor, and fiction; and he frequently contributes biographical cover articles to the country’s two leading magic journals (his most recent article was about the séance at Hollywood’s Magic Castle).


The Perilous Journey of the not so Innocuous Girl by Leigh Statham
Coming March 17, 2015
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Lady Marguerite lives a life most 17th century French girls can only dream of: money, designer dresses, suitors and a secure future. Except she suspects she may be falling for her best friend Claude, a common smithie in the family's steam forge. When Claude leaves for New France in search of a better life, Marguerite decides to follow him and test her suspicions of love. But the trip proves more harrowing than she had anticipated, revealing secrets and testing her strength as well as her heart. Love, adventure and restitution await her in Canada, but only if she can survive the voyage.

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Leigh Statham was raised in the wilds of rural Idaho, but found her heart in New York City. She worked as a waitress, maid, artist, math teacher, nurse, web designer, art director, thirty-foot inflatable pig and mule wrangler before she settled down in the semi-quiet role of wife, mother and writer. She resides in North Carolina with her husband, four children, five chickens and two suspected serial killer cats. If the air is cool and the sun is just coming up over the horizon, you can find her running the streets of her small town, plotting her next novel with the sort of intensity that will one day get her hit by a car.


I Heart Robot by Suzanne Van Rooyen
Coming March 31, 2015
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Sixteen-year-old Tyri wants to be a musician and wants to be with someone who won't belittle her musical aspirations.
Q-I-99 aka 'Quinn' lives in a scrap metal sanctuary with other rogue droids. While some use violence to make their voices heard, demanding equal rights for AI enhanced robots, Quinn just wants a moment on stage with his violin to show the humans that androids like him have more to offer than their processing power.
Tyri and Quinn's worlds collide when they're accepted by the Baldur Junior Philharmonic Orchestra. As the rift between robots and humans deepens, Tyri and Quinn's love of music brings them closer together, making Tyri question where her loyalties lie and Quinn question his place in the world. With the city on the brink of civil war, Tyri and Quinn make a shocking discovery that turns their world inside out. Will their passion for music be enough to hold them together while everything else crumbles down around them, or will the truth of who they are tear them apart?

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Suzanne is a tattooed storyteller from South Africa. She currently lives in Finland and finds the cold, dark forests nothing if not inspiring. Although she has a Master’s degree in music, Suzanne prefers conjuring strange worlds and creating quirky characters. When not writing, she teaches dance and music to middle schoolers and entertains her shiba inu, Lego. Suzanne is represented by Jordy Albert of the Booker Albert Agency.


Where the Staircase Ends by Stacy Stokes
Coming April 2015
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After her best friend orchestrates the lie that destroys her reputation, Taylor wants more than anything to disappear from her life. But when an accident turns this unspoken wish into reality, instead of an angel-filled afterlife, Taylor must climb a seemingly endless staircase into the sky.
Instead of going up, the journey plunges her into the past. As she unravels the mystery behind her friend’s betrayal, she must face the truth about life and find the strength to forgive the unforgivable -- unless the staircase breaks her first.

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Stacy grew up in Dallas, TX, but has lived all over. After spending time in Austin, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, she is happy to call San Francisco her home, where she lives with her husband. When she’s not bringing the voices in her head to life, she’s working as a brand and marketing professional in the consumer products industry. She has a slight obsession with puns (they are, in her opinion, the highest form of humor), which might be linked to the three years she spent studying improv comedy at Chicago’s Second City and IO theaters. She holds a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business. WHERE THE STAIRCASE ENDS is her debut novel.

Nobody's Goddess by Amy McNulty
Coming April 21, 2015
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In a village of masked men, each loves only one woman and must follow the commands of his “goddess” without question. A woman may reject the only man who will love her if she pleases, but she will be alone forever. And a man must stay masked until his goddess returns his love—and if she can’t or won’t, he remains masked forever.
Where the rest of her village celebrates this mystery that binds men and women together, seventeen year old Noll is just done with it. She’s lost all her childhood friends as they’ve paired off, but the worst blow was when her closest companion, Jurij, finds his goddess in Noll’s own sister. Desperate to find a way to break this ancient spell, Noll instead discovers why no man has ever loved her: she is in fact the goddess of the mysterious lord of the village, a Byronic man who refuses to let Noll have her right as a woman to spurn him and who has the power to fight the curse. Thus begins a dangerous game between the two: the choice of woman versus the magic of man. And the stakes are no less than freedom and happiness, life and death—and neither Noll nor the veiled man is willing to lose.

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Amy McNulty is a freelance writer and editor from Wisconsin with an honors degree in English. She was first published in a national scholarly journal (The Concord Review) while in high school and currently spends her days alternatively writing on business and marketing topics and primarily crafting stories with dastardly villains and antiheroes set in fantastical medieval settings.


The Artisans by Julie Reece
Coming May 19, 2015
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They say death can be beautiful. But after the death of her mother, seventeen-year-old Raven Weathersby gives up her dream of becoming a fashion designer, barely surviving life in the South Carolina lowlands.
To make ends meet, Raven works after school as a seamstress creating stunning works of fashion that often rival the great names of the day.
Instead of making things easier on the high school senior, her stepdad's drinking leads to a run in with the highly reclusive heir to the Maddox family fortune, Gideon Maddox.
But Raven's stepdad's drying out and in no condition to attend the meeting with Maddox. So Raven volunteers to take his place and offers to repay the debt in order to keep the only father she's ever known out of jail, or worse.
Gideon Maddox agrees, outlining an outrageous demand: Raven must live in his home for a year while she designs for Maddox Industries' clothing line, signing over her creative rights.
Her handsome young captor is arrogant and infuriating to the nth degree, and Raven can't imagine working for him, let alone sharing the same space for more than five minutes.
But nothing is ever as it seems. Is Gideon Maddox the monster the world believes him to be? And can he stand to let the young seamstress see him as he really is?

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Born in Ohio, I lived next to my grandfather’s horse farm until the fourth grade. Summers were about riding, fishing and make-believe, while winter brought sledding and ice-skating on frozen ponds. Most of life was magical, but not all.
I struggled with multiple learning disabilities, did not excel in school. I spent much of my time looking out windows and daydreaming. In the fourth grade (with the help of one very nice teacher) I fought dyslexia for my right to read, like a prince fights a dragon in order to free the princess locked in a tower, and I won.
Afterwards, I read like a fiend. I invented stories where I could be the princess… or a gifted heroine from another world who kicked bad guy butt to win the heart of a charismatic hero. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? Later, I moved to Florida where I continued to fantasize about superpowers and monsters, fabricating stories (my mother called it lying) and sharing them with my friends.
Then I thought I’d write one down…
Hooked, I’ve been writing ever since. I write historical, contemporary, urban fantasy, adventure, and young adult romances. I love strong heroines, sweeping tales of mystery and epic adventure… which must include a really hot guy. My writing is proof you can work hard to overcome any obstacle. Don’t give up. I say, if you write, write on!


Summer Of The Oak Moon by Laura Templeton
Coming May 5, 2015
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Rejected by the exclusive women’s college she has her heart set on, Tess Seibert dreads the hot, aimless summer ahead. But when a chance encounter with a snake introduces her to Jacob Lane, a black college student home on his summer break, a relationship blooms that challenges the prejudices of her small, north Florida town.
When Jacob confesses that Tess’s uncle is trying to steal his family’s land, Tess comes face to face with the hatred that simmers just below the surface of the bay and marshes she’s loved since birth. With the help of her mentor Lulu, an herbal healer, Tess pieces together clues to the mysterious disappearance of Jacob’s father twenty-two years earlier and uncovers family secrets that shatter her connection to the land she loves.
Tess and Jacob’s bond puts them both in peril, and discontent eventually erupts into violence. Tess is forced to make a decision. Can she right old wrongs and salvage their love? Or will prejudice and hatred kill any chance she and Jacob might have had?

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Laura Templeton lives near Athens, Georgia, with her husband, son, and a menagerie of animals. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, gardening, ice skating with her family, and taking long walks on the quiet country roads near her home. Her previous novel, Something Yellow, was released in 2013 and is set in one her favorite places – the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.


Vessel by Lisa Cresswell
Coming May 26, 2015
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The sun exploded on April 18, 2112. It exploded in a Class X solar storm the likes of which humankind had never seen.
They had nineteen minutes.
Nineteen minutes until the geomagnetic wave washed over the Earth, frying every electrical device created by humans, blacking out entire continents, every satellite in their sky.
Nineteen minutes to say goodbye to the world they knew, forever, and to prepare for a new Earth, a new Sun.
Generations after solar storms have destroyed nearly all human technology on Earth and humans have reverted to a middle ages like existence, all knowledge of the remaining technology is kept hidden by a privileged few called the Reticents and books are burned as heresy.
Alana, a disfigured slave girl, and Recks, a traveling minstrel and sometimes-thief, join forces to bring knowledge and books back to the human race. But when Alana is chosen against her will to be the Vessel, the living repository for all human knowledge, she must find the strength to be what the world needs.

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Lisa, like most writers, began scribbling silly notes, stories, and poems at a very young age. Born in North Carolina, the South proved fertile ground to her imagination with its beautiful white sand beaches and red earth. In fifth grade, she wrote, directed and starred in a play “The Queen of the Nile” at school, despite the fact that she is decidedly un-Egyptian looking. Perhaps that’s why she went on to become a real life archaeologist? Unexpectedly transplanted to Idaho as a teenager, Lisa learned to love the desert and the wide open skies out West. This is where her interest in cultures, both ancient and living, really took root, and she became a Great Basin archaeologist. However, the itch to write never did leave for long. Her first books became the middle grade fantasy trilogy, The Storyteller Series. Her first traditionally published work, Hush Puppy, is coming soon from Featherweight Press. Lisa currently lives and writes in Idaho with her family and a menagerie of furry critters that includes way too many llamas! You can visit her website at www.lisatcresswell.com

Chapter-by-Chapter-header---Giveaway
  • Three (3) winners will receive eBook prize packs of 5 Month9Books of your choice, upon their release (INT)
  • One (1) winner will receive all these titles, upon their release (INT)


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Monday, January 5, 2015

Book Covers, Reviews, and other Nonsense



I admit it. I read book reviews. Not the professional review so much as the average reader reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I read book blogger reviews too. Occasionally, I may even pick up the books that are recommended in the reviews as I did recently with A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray. It was highly recommended by a blogger I know as one of the best she'd read in 2014. It was supposed to be scifi and since I was looking for scifi, I gave it a chance.

Now, being the review reader that I am, I added the book to my Goodreads list and looked at the reviews. Just a warning here, the book is also a romancy YA novel, so the readers might be a bit different from adult novel readers. So what do you think I saw?


I saw pages and pages of readers gushing over the cover before they'd ever read it. Yes, the cover is nice. It has some pretty colors, but who would have thought a picture of two cities would set the YA readers' hearts on fire? I don't get it. I love watercolors as much as the next gal, but I also know that the inside of a book often has nothing to do with the outside. As it so happened, the inside of this book was actually disappointing to many of those Goodreads readers, who annihilated the book in various scathing reviews.



I've written enough of my own books to know just how hard it is and I've read enough to know just how subjective that is. I would no sooner walk up to an author and claw their heart out with my fingernails than post a mean spirited review, because that's what mean reviews do. By "mean" I'm talking about reviews that go on for pages belittling and denigrating  every nit picky little thing the author did or didn't do. Believe it or not, dear reader, there's a human being behind every book you read, doing their very best to entertain you. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's nothing personal, I promise you.


I have a new book coming out in 2015. Sometimes I shake in my shoes at the thought of the reviews that are sure to come, but I have to remind myself that its all subjective. Not every book is for every reader. There are certainly books I don't enjoy, but I don't take pleasure in shredding those books and their authors publically. I prefer to do something more useful with my time, like read the next book on my list.

I guess, as they say, haters gonna hate. I wish instead they would write a book of their own and just see if they could do any better before they start slinging the mud at others. What are the chances of that?


Peace~

Friday, January 2, 2015

M9B Friday Reveal Blitz: 2014 M9B Books you may have Missed with Giveaway


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Hello everyone! Welcome to Month9Books 2014 Books you may have Missed Blitz!

Check out all M9B 2014 titles below and enter for a chance to win 1 of 3 prize packs of eBooks! International

Click on the cover for book information.



Tantrum Titles


Chapter-by-Chapter-header---Giveaway
(3) winners will receive eBook prize packs of 5 Month9Books of your choice! International

Thursday, January 1, 2015

The Resolution Time of Year~

Here I am again, thinking about resolutions. I've accomplished much and would like to do even more. These are just a few of my wishes for 2015~


1. Find the writing/exercise/work balance

I've found over the last couple years it's very hard to all three things equally. If I work hard at the day job, the writing and/or the exercise tends to slip. Being a mother, I'm a natural multi-tasker, but I often feel I'm tasked out some days! When do I fit it all in?? I have to get back on my exercising track. After spending much of 2014 writing, I fear that's the piece that's slipped the most. I have a FitDesk that my son spends more time on than I do. That's going to have to change.


2. Promote my new book

Vessel is coming out from Month9Books in May 2015!  It's been a long wait and I'm excited to have a new book out! I've been plotting a sequel in my mind for this one, reading some scifi to get my head around it. I hope to actually write a draft in 2015, just in case the publisher decides its sequel-worthy. :)


3. Finish what I've started

I wrote two new drafts in 2014 that are both far from finished! 2015 is the year they get done and sent out for query. I would like to resolve to have an new agent in 2015 too. I've had a few nibbles, but it's a lot of waiting to see, which I'm not very good at.  I guess I'll just have to resolve to be more patient, but if I have anything to do with it, 2015 will be the year The Color of Water finds a publishing home.



4. Do something I've never done before

Not sure what this will be, but I'll let you know when I figure it out. It won't be anything crazy like bungee jumping or climbing Mt. Everest, but it will be good. I'm sure an opportunity will present itself.


5. Read more widely

I read a lot of young adult, which I enjoy, but I want to read outside my usual stuff, just to have a better idea of what's out there. The YA I write is not like a lot of other YA out there. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but I like to think it's the result of reading outside my niche and pulling in some unique elements. (all right, cue eye roll.)

 
 
6. Write more stories
 
There are a lot more stories out there I want to write: more steampunk, more gothic, more scifi. Last June I was able to write a complete first draft in a month. It might be a complete wreck, but it can be fixed. A first draft is half the battle and having an outline helps so much. I resolve to have a new outline ready to go for JuNoWriMo again this year and to continue with the monthly writing challenges I've been participating in. It's so nice to know you have buddies out there in cyber-land chasing the same dreams you are and sharing the struggle with a sympathetic ear.
 
How about you? What are your plans for 2015?