11 October 2013

The Road To You Book Blitz


The Road To You by Marylin Bryant
Release Date: October 3, 2013
Genres: Mystery, New Adult, Romance
Synopsis: The Road to Discovery...
Two years ago, Aurora Gray’s world turned upside down when her big brother Gideon and his best friend Jeremy disappeared. Now, during the summer of her 18th birthday, she unexpectedly finds her brother’s journal and sees that it’s been written in again. Recently. By him.

The Road to Danger...
There are secret messages coded within the journal’s pages. Aurora, who’s unusually perceptive and a natural puzzle solver, is hell bent on following where they lead, no matter what the cost. She confides in the only person she feels can help her interpret the clues: Donovan McCafferty, Jeremy’s older brother and a guy she’s always been drawn to — even against her better judgment.

The Road to You...
Reluctantly, Donovan agrees to go with her and, together, they set out on a road trip of discovery and danger, hoping to find their lost brothers and the answers to questions they’ve never dared to ask aloud.

In that expectant space between silence and melody, our trip began...

Book Links:

Meet The Author:
Marilyn Brant is a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary fiction. She wrote the new adult/humorous paranormal novel ACCORDING TO JANE (2009), the women’s fiction relationship drama FRIDAY MORNINGS AT NINE (2010), and the romantic travel adventure A SUMMER IN EUROPE (2011), all published by Kensington Books. She's also a #1 Kindle and #1 Nook bestseller and has written a series of fun and flirty romantic comedies, including ON ANY GIVEN SUNDAE (2011) and PRIDE, PREJUDICE AND THE PERFECT MATCH (2013). Her coming-of-age romantic mystery, THE ROAD TO YOU, will be available in October 2013.

Marilyn is a lifelong music lover and a travel junkie. She’s visited 46 states and over 30 countries (so far—she's not done yet!), but she now lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family. When she isn't rereading Jane Austen's books or enjoying the latest releases by her writer friends, she's working on her next novel, eating chocolate indiscriminately and hiding from the laundry.
Author Links:

Excerpt:

Option #2: (537 words)
I could count on one hand the things I knew were true about Donovan McCafferty:
He was twenty-three—just over five years older than I was.
He’d escaped into the Army at age eighteen and, except for a few quick but memorable visits, hadn’t returned to Minnesota until this past winter.
He had an excellent mechanical mind.
And he made me very nervous.
Underneath my skin, every nerve fiber was fast twitching. Just thinking about Donovan always did that to me...
It was 7:05 p.m. by the time I got to the auto-body shop where he worked. They closed at seven, but the light in the back was on and I knew he was in there. Not because I’d caught even one glimpse of Mr. Tall, Dark and Intense yet, but because the only other car in the lot was a crimson Trans Am with the giant Firebird decal in black and gold across the hood. His, of course.
I pushed open my car door, grabbed my tote bag with Gideon’s journal tucked safely inside and inhaled several lungfuls of the cloying summer air.
I didn’t make it more than five steps before Donovan came out. A solid, broad-shouldered, six-foot-two mass of frequently impenetrable emotions. Not impenetrable enough this time, though.
Even at a distance of half a parking lot, I detected two powerful sensations that crashed, one after the other, into my awareness:
One, he was hugely curious about why I was here.
And, two, he very much wished I hadn’t been.
He walked up to me and cleared his throat. “Car trouble, Aurora?” He glanced at myhand-me-down Buick, which had done nothing but purr contentedly during my drives around town. Donovan was the type to have noticed this, so I could tell he knew it wasn’t the car.
I shook my head. “I need to show you something,” I told him. “Privately.”
A small flash of amusement quirked one corner of his mouth upward. I was surprised he allowed me to read this, especially since he knew I could. Surprised he was letting me see that one of his possible explanations for my presence was flirtatious in origin—even as he immediately dismissed the idea.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like that.”
He pressed his lips together, but the amusement still simmered just beneath the surface.“Too bad. ‘We’re both young and inconspicuous,’” he said, parroting the hideously embarrassing words I’d said to him two years ago at our brothers’ secret high-school graduation party..
I fought a blush. “We’re not that young,” I told him, trying to stand straighter and look older. “And we’re not inconspicuous here.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” He turned and motioned for me to follow him inside. Led me into the back office and ushered me in. “You want me to close this door, too? Snap the blinds shut?”
He was mocking me, but there was a layer of concern beneath it. He knew something serious was up. In a town of 2,485 people, where you’d run into the majority of the residents a handful of times each week, I’d spoken with Donovan McCafferty in private exactly six times in the past five years.
Here’s to lucky number seven.

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Everything You Know Book Blitz


Everything You Know
by Mary Beth Bass
Release Date: 09/27/13

Summary from Goodreads:
A dark forest, a screaming woman and blood. These are the images that haunt seventeen year old Emma from the moment she meets Joe Castlellaw. And so much more awaits.

Emma Mathews never believed she was like everyone else, but neither did she think herself crazy. Meeting Joe Castlellaw, Henry Dearborn High’s newest student, was like waking on a cold rock in a strange place, the world bathed in liquid moonlight. Everything is different now…and fraught. Visions of a dark forest, a screaming woman and blood have begun to haunt Emma’s dreams, and not only at night. But Joe’s lonely beauty makes her float on air, and she would follow him anywhere—out of high school and through the great tree, to a world of poetry and political savagery, of magic and murder, to a life that is entirely theirs and yet unlike anything they have ever known.

About the Author
More than a little obsessed with Keats and MOBY DICK and fueled by loud music and cold grey days, Mary Beth Bass is the author of young adult fantasy and romantic women’s fiction. Her debut paranormal-women’s fiction hybrid, FOLLOW ME received the Book Buyers Best Award for Time Travel, Fantasy, and Paranormal Romance. 

An occasional travel writer, Mary Beth has written about Paris, Bordeaux, and Yorkshire, where she hiked the moors to the legendary setting for WUTHERING HEIGHTS and stood breathless in the parsonage room where Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte talked out their stories with each other.

And if I seem a little strange, well that’s because I am.
Also loves octopuses. 

***Author Links***
photo iconwebsite-32x32_zps1f477f69.png  photo icongoodreads32_zps60f83491.png  photo icontwitter-32x32_zpsae13e2b2.png


GIVEAWAY
1-prize pack of C. C. Hunter Shadow Falls series: Born at Midnight, Awake at Dawn, Taken at Dusk, Whispers at Moonrise, and Chosen at Nightfall (US)
3 ebook copies of Everything You Know (INT)
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09 October 2013

Wish I May by Lexi Ryan Tour: Excerpt + Giveaway


Wish I May by Lexi Ryan
Synopsis: I grew up wishing on stars.

My father taught me to believe…in destiny, in magic, in happily ever after. Dreams were my scripture and the starry night sky was my temple. Then Mom stopped believing, left him, and took us with her. At the age of sixteen, I cashed in my dreams to pay the rent, pawned my destiny to keep my sisters together.

Now, seven years later, I’m returning home, grieving the death of my mother, and settling my sisters back into the life Mom threw away. I never intended to stay. I don’t want to deal with my father, who is so invested in the spiritual world he forgets the physical. I don’t want to face William Bailey, whose eyes remind me of the girl I was, the things I’ve done, and the future I lost.
This would all be easier if Will hated me. As it is, I have to hold my secrets close so they won’t hurt him more than they’ve already hurt me. But he wants to be in my life. He wants what I can’t bring myself to confess I sold. He wants me.

I find myself looking to my stars again...wondering if I dare one more wish.

Book Links:

Meet The Author:
Lexi Ryan, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, writes romances with humor, heat, and heart. A former college English professor, Lexi now writes full time from her home in Indiana, where she lives with her husband and two children. Please visit www.lexiryan.com 

Author Links: 
Site

Excerpt:
Cally.
I can hardly breathe. My brain doesn’t have time for something as trivial as oxygen when it’s so busy cataloging her features, memorizing the exact shade of her mocha eyes, warring with the anger and regret that have sprung to life as if they never left me to begin with.
I never thought I’d see her again. I didn’t think I wanted to.
The moment I step closer, I realize my mistake. Being near her is like a sip of water to desert-parched lips. It whips something through me—memories, lust, first love. Heartbreak.She tilts her lips up to mine, and I actually think for one goddamned ridiculous minute that I might kiss her, that I want to. That I would swallow all my pride and forgive her for just one taste.
I step back before I can give in to the impulse, and her cheeks blaze to life, her blush as cute as the rest of her. That’s the word for her: cute. Sweet smile and peppy ponytail, she exudes cuteness.
Except her ass. Her ass doesn’t even land in the same stratosphere as cute, and those tight little pants do nothing to hide its soft, round curves. And her breasts. There’s definitely nothing cute about the way her T-shirt stretches across their fullness. Or her go-for-miles legs. Not to mention the narrow strip of skin exposed between the hem of her shirt and waistband of her pants. Just looking at the single inch of flesh below her navel, and I practically taste strawberry wine.
Moonlight. Her warm skin under my tongue. The sound of her moan as my mouth dips lower.
The memory grabs hold of my senses and won’t let go.
Fuck. I can’t even lie to myself. Nothing about her says cute. Everything about her says sex. And mine.
“Directions?” she asks. “To my father’s house?”
“Do you want me to walk you there? It’s close.”
I immediately regret the impulsive suggestion. I should be giving her directions, putting her in the car, and sending her back out of my life. But I want to be close to her for a minute, to prove to myself that I’m bigger than a seven-year-old shit breakup.
Or I want to prove to myself she’s more than just a dream.
She worries that plump bottom lip between her teeth because, obviously, she’s trying to torture me. How can I want her so much when I thought I hated her?

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The Ever Tour + Giveaway


Ever Near by Melissa MacVicar
Release Date: 2013
Synopsis: Love is ever near. But trouble is never far.


Nantucket Island is haunted, but only sixteen-year-old Jade Irving knows it. Ignoring the disturbing spirits isn’t an option, because one dwells in the enormous historic home she shares with her newly blended family. Jade is finding it more and more difficult to explain away Lacey’s ghostly, anguished tantrums, especially with Charlie, her gorgeous, almost step-brother, living right across the hall.


When a power-hungry ghost hunter tracks down Jade and blackmails her, Jade’s secret teeters on the edge of exposure, and her entire future hangs in the balance. If anyone finds out Jade can talk to ghosts, her life will be forever changed.


Can she save herself, free Lacey, and hang on to her tenuous connection with Charlie? Or will everything she ever wanted slip through her fingers?
Book Links:

Meet The Author:
Author Links:













Guest Post:
Real Boys By: Melissa MacVicar
Augustus Waters was a real boy. Actually, he was a fictitious boy who behaved very much like a real boy. In case you didn’t read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Augustus Waters is one of the main character.  He’s a boy who lost his leg to cancer. He’s also a boy who plays violent video games, and a boy who used to play basketball well, and a boy who drives a car very poorly. Augustus Waters is a true to life boy. A reader could imagine that he might in fact be real.
Writing teenage male characters that are both realistic and likable was what I set out to do in my debut novel EVER NEAR. Charlie Dowler is Jade’s soon to be step brother and her love interest. I gave Charlie many wonderful traits and a few not so desirable ones because I didn’t want him to be an idealized version of a boy. Iwanted Charlie, like Augustus, to be a real boy. Real boys are so much more interesting, don’t you think?
As a novelist, I am also a sociologist. I have to study the behavior of people and ponder the reasoning behind the choices they make. Do they adhere to norms and rules or do they break out of them? My study is not limited to the young variety of the species either but the more mature members as well. I will often ask my husband questions about what I call The Unspoken Rules of Being a Guy. We females have our own set of these rules which is long and complicated. These rulesare constantly changing and morphing so it’s important to keep up on trends. I want to be sure the characters in my books don’t inadvertently violate the rulesunless I want them too. Of course, breaking the rules makes for great conflicts and plot lines.
Here’s a few interesting rules of men/boys that I have discovered while conducting my continuous, informal study of humans beings on planet earth.
1. Adult males don’t generally send each other emoticons when texting. They do however use them with females. This rule varies with younger males depending on the closeness of the friendship.
2. It’s only okay for boys to cry if they break a bone and the bone is actually showing. Preferably, this injury should be sustained while doing a sport or usingpower tools.
3. When congregating at a social event, teen boys stand with their fellow boys andtalk. They only sit if:
a.) girls are included
b.) they are playing a game like poker
c.) they are watching sports.

4. Boys can never admit to liking a Taylor Swift song. Even if they secretly like one, they must make fun of it and her whenever one is played.

Now, please don’t misunderstand my research. I am not saying that I agree with allThe Unspoken Rules of Being a Guy. In fact, some of them are silly to me and I wish they weren’t rules at all. Knowing the rules helps with my writing though. This knowledge enables me to make up true to life characters and it gives mematerial when I’m creating metaphors, story twists, and funny dialogue.
So when you read EVER NEAR, please let me know what you think about the portrayal of the boys. Could they be real boys? Do you love them or hate them or both at the same time? I’d love to hear about this topic from readers.

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08 October 2013

Book Blitz: No Angel by Helen Keeble







No Angel by Helen Keeble
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: October 8, 2013
Genres: Paranormal, Young Adult
Synopsis:
Rafael Angelos just got handed the greatest gift any teenage boy could ever dream of. Upon arriving at his new boarding school for senior year, he discovered that he is the ONLY male student. But what should have been a godsend isn’t exactly heaven on Earth.

Raffi’s about to learn that St. Mary’s is actually a hub for demons-and that he was summoned to the school by someone expecting him to save the day. Raffi knows he’s no angel-but it’s pretty hard to deny that there’s some higher plan at work when he wakes up one morning to discover a glowing circle around his head.

Helen Keeble’s debut novel, Fang Girl, has been praised for its pitch-perfect teen voice, and VOYA called it “refreshing and reminiscent of Louise Rennison’s Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series.” No Angel brings you angels and demons like you’ve never seen them-complete with the wry humor of Vladimir Tod, sinfully irreverent romance, and some hilariously demonic teenage dilemmas.


Purchase:



Meet The Author:

Helen Keeble is not, and never has been, a vampire. She has however been a teenager. She grew up partly in America and partly in England, which has left her with an unidentifiable accent and a fondness for peanut butter crackers washed down with a nice cup of tea. She now lives in West Sussex, England, with her husband, daughter, two cats, and a variable number of fish. To the best of her knowledge, none of the fish are undead.

Her first novel, a YA vampire comedy called FANG GIRL, is out 11th Sept 2012, from HarperTeen. She also has another YA paranormal comedy novel (provisionally titled NO ANGEL) scheduled for Sept 2013.

Author Links:


Interview With Helen Keeble on Writing:
1. Your first book, Fang Girl, was a paranormal comedy about a vampire fan girl who becomes a real vampire. Is No Angel a sequel?

No, they’re completely unrelated – no characters from Fang Girl show up in No Angel. There isn’t any mention of vampires in No Angel, and Fang Girl didn’t have any angels or demons in it, so the jury is out as to whether they’re even set in the same world. (Even I haven’t quite made up my mind on that one)

However, for those who enjoyed Fang Girl, I can promise that No Angel has the same sense of humor, including affectionate mockery of ridiculous paranormal romance tropes! Basically, what I do to vampires in Fang Girl, I do to angels in No Angel.


2. What was the hardest part of writing No Angel?

Working to a deadline! Because I had a two-book contract with HarperTeen (the first being Fang Girl), I actually had a deadline for No Angel before I’d written a single word, or even worked out what the story was going to be about! A very different experience from slowly writing Fang Girl in spare hours over the course of several years, with no-one but myself caring whether or not it was ever finished…

3. How did you become a writer?

The short answer is that I wrote a lot of stuff, and eventually got good enough (and lucky enough) to find someone that would pay me for it.

The longer answer is that I’ve always written for my own amusement, but never let anyone read it until I went to university and started writing fanfic based on a role-playing game called Legend of the Five Rings. It was a rather unusual fanfic community, because people generally used the game’s setting but invented their own original characters rather than writing stories about pre-existing characters (like Harry Potter or Twilight fanfic tends to do). It gave me a lot of practice in inventing imaginary people! I then slowly drifted into writing completely original stories, and was eventually lucky enough to be able to sell some to magazines. After a few successes with short stories, and in a fit of pique at the prevalence of both Twighlight-inspired novels in bookstores and Twilight-bashing articles in newspapers, I decided to try writing a novel… and that was Fang Girl!

So now, somewhat to my bemusement, I seem to have become a YA comedy author. I still blink at my own books sitting on my bookcase, amazed that they are really real.

4. Are you a full-time writer?

I wish! No, like most writers I have a day job – I’m an industrial software engineer. It is a very awesome career (where else do you get to play with oil rigs and nuclear power plants) but does mean I have to squeeze my writings into the evenings. I have a bad habit of forgetting to go to bed, so I’ll often be typing away at my laptop well into the small hours of the morning.

5. Fun fact about writing No Angel?

In order to keep track of where all my characters were at different times in the school day, I made timetables for them in Google Calendar… and then forgot to delete the calendars after I'd finished the book. I was greatly puzzled when Google started bombarding me with reminders to get to my history class.

6. Are you a pantser (just sit down and write) or a plotter (outline everything first)?

I used to be a total pantser (the first draft of Fang Girl was written in a month, for NaNoWriMo), but these days I’m more of a plotter. It’s something of a necessity when working to a deadline, with an editor who wants to make sure you’ve actually got a plan, and are not just going to kill all the characters in the last chapter out of despair.

7. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Apart from the day job, sleeping, and taking care of my family? I read everything I can get my hands on, especially fantasy and science fiction books. I’m also very into board games of all descriptions, from light family fun like Survive! and Kingdon Builder through to heavy strategic games like Tzol’kin or Puerto Rico. In any spare moments, I like to dabble in crafts – I recently learned to knit dolls and dolls’ clothes, and am now experimenting with making jewelry out of resin and plastic. If only there were more hours in the day!

8. What books make you laugh out loud?

I love Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. They’re an amazing blend of so many different types of comedy: parody, political satire, character-driven, situational, wordplay, puns… even slapstick! He’s a master of messing with reader expectation to comic effect. I think my very favorite example of this in the entire series is the character in Thief of Time who’s dialogue is all “----ing” this and “----ing” that… but late in the book we find out (spoiler alert, look away now!) that all he’s doing is pausing and saying “ing”. Genius!

Other writers I can consistently rely on to make me giggle are Sarah Rees Brennan (though she’ll make you laugh in one paragraph and stomp on your heart in the next) and Louis McMaster Bujold (who also manages to mix high emotional stakes with very witty characters). I’m also very fond of the classic P. G. Wodehouse stories, although some of them have, erm, really not aged very well (why hello there, casual racism).


9. Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on now?

I'm currently writing a YA dystopian comedy. No, really. If anything is ripe for a parody, it’s the whole “THE GOVERNMENT CONTROLS X AND Y IS BANNED!!” genre! The working title is Escaping Utopia, and it's set in an idyllic far-future society where there is no war or crime as everyone’s needs are perfectly fulfilled by government-issued androids called Soulmates. Unfortunately for one 16 year old boy, his brand-new Soulmate tries to kill him on sight. Hijinks ensue!

The story also features a grumpy girl revolutionary hacker, a ridiculous number of huge planet-shaking conspiracies, and a bubblegum-pink battle robot named Candi who just wants to be loved. Let’s just say I’m having a lot of fun with this one!



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