Author: Katie L. Carroll (Page 77 of 142)

Cover Reveal YA Romance UNSPEAKABLE by Michelle K. Pickett

August 8, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

I’m excited to bring you this amazing cover for Michelle K. Pickett’s upcoming YA romance UNSPEAKABLE. I’m a big fan of Michelle’s (check out my 5-star review of her YA paranormal PODs). Everyone give her a big welcome and don’t forget to enter the Goodreads giveaway!

COVER REVEAL:
UNSPEAKABLE by Michelle K. Pickett

Genre: Mature Young Adult Contemporary Romance (Realistic Fiction)

Publisher: Clean Teen Publishing

Release Date: February 10, 2015

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Unspeakable

by Michelle K. Pickett

Giveaway ends September 30, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

We are excited to share with you the official cover reveal of UNSPEAKABLE by Michelle K. Pickett. UNSPEAKABLE is a young adult contemporary romance that is scheduled to release in February of 2015. Check out more information below and make sure to add it to your TBR List!

Summary from Good Reads:

“Breathe. No one will break me. I’m strong. Breathe. Just breathe.”

On the outside, Willow appears to have it all. She’s beautiful, smart, from an influential family, and she dates the most popular guy in school—Jaden. But she would walk away from it all in a second. Willow is tormented by lies and suffocating guilt, not the hearts and flowers people believe her life is full of.

She carries a dark secret. Plagued by nightmares and pain, the secret dominates her life. If she hadn’t walked away. If she had just… but she didn’t. And now she has to live with her choices. But when someone uncovers her family’s past, they use it against her, crushing her spirit little by little. She tells herself she just has to make it to graduation. Then she can leave Middleton, and her secret, far behind.

When Brody transfers to Cassidy High, he turns Willow’s life upside down. He shows her what it feels like to live again, really live. And suddenly, she isn’t satisfied with just surviving until graduation. She wants a normal life—with Brody—and he wants her. But the closer they become, the more it threatens to unravel the secret she’s worked so hard to hide.

Willow finds true love with Brody. Will she let his love save her, or walk away from him to keep her secret safe?

ABOUT MICHELLE K. PICKETT:

Michelle is the bestselling author of the young adult novel “PODs.” She was born and raised in Flint, Michigan, but now lives in a sleepy suburb outside Houston with her extremely supportive husband, three school-aged children, a 125 pound “lap dog,” and a very snooty cat.

Red Bull or Monster Khaos are her coffee of choice, and she can’t write without peanut butter M&Ms and a hoodie. A hopeful romantic; she loves a swoon-worthy ending that will give her butterflies for days. She writes across genres in the young adult and new adult age groups. She loves to hear from her readers.

Michelle signed her new young adult contemporary novel— Unspeakable, with Clean Teen Publishing in 2014.

Keep up-to-date on her current and future projects at www.michelle-pickett.com.

More from Clean Teen Publishing:

Be the first to know about our giveaways, new releases, cover reveals and more! Join our VIP Mailing List!

WWW.CLEANTEENPUBLISHING.COM

The Sassy Summer Book Party

August 4, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

You’re invited to the Sassy Summer Book Party and it starts now! Join 61 authors (including yours truly) and enter for a chance to win one of ten awesome prize packs. You can win an ecopy of my book ELIXIR BOUND in Prize Pack #2 Young Adult. Each prize pack includes a $10 Amazon gift card, books, and swag! Enter them all on Melissa A. Petreshock’s Dragon Blog.

Watch the Dragon Blog over the next two weeks as we highlight the participating authors.

Check out each prize pack to see which authors are included.

The Sassy Summer Book Party (#SSBP) is brought to you by the Sassy Sisters.
Follow us on Twitter for for all the latest fun!
(@macpetreshock & @jlstreck)

Join the fun by using #SSBP

I’ll be featured on the Dragon Blog on Friday with the 14 other YA authors. So grab a drink and some partay snacks and enjoy!

Remembering When I Used to Attend Conferences

August 1, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

The kidlit writing world is abuzz with the goings on at the annual SCBWI conference in L.A. this weekend, and alas I’m once again not there. Instead of having sour grapes about it, I’m remembering the last time I went to the L.A. conference and all the great wisdom I gained while there. So I went into my archives and found a post from way back in 2010, which I’m reposting now.

Enjoy these great nuggets from some great writers!

M.T. Anderson:

Books take us away from home, so we can actually see our home.

Literature restores a sense of unknown to what we already know.

Understanding the past is just as much about forging ahead to the future.

Gordon Korman:

What do you use more as an adult? Your sense of humor or your ability to recognize foreshadowing.

Kids are more subtle than you think they are. It’s not that stuff is going over their heads; it’s just the stuff we think is important, they don’t care about.

Kids are not an exotic subspecies. When we are writing for kids, we are writing for ourselves.

E.B. Lewis:

We spend so much time scratching to get some wealth that we miss out true wealth: our children.

Sometimes we don’t scratch deep enough to find the true value of our kids. It’s more valuable than gold. We scratch them too deep sometimes and destroy our children.

As artists, we need to fill ourselves up to flowing and give it all back.

Rachel Vail:

Trick to being a good listener is to actually listen.

Spying is key to being a writer. Put on your headphones in a public place, but don’t really listen to music.

How can two people in same conversation have such different experiences of what happens?

When I get stuck, I make some tea and force myself to remember.

Gail Carson Levine:

When you make a list, no idea is stupid.

The magic and joy of being a writer is learning about yourself in your writing.

Carolyn Mackler:

By standing out, you put yourself out there for a fall.

Be proud of what you wish for and stand by it, even if it’s harder than you expected.

Gennifer Choldenko:

Human beings need stories; we always have and we always will.

Harness the energy of your dreams.

Give yourself the right to take risks; you’re not making real risks if you haven’t risked and failed.

Paul Fleischman:

Research should be like slip; it should be there but never show.

Laughter gives you a sense of control.

There’s now way around but through–that’s the writing life.

Adventures and Writing Prompts in the Backyard

July 29, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

When people ask where my ideas come from, I always tell them from any and everywhere. As I’ve mentioned in my Confessions of an Author series, coming up with ideas is not a problem; it’s whittling down those ideas to find the gems and then following through on them that’s the hard part.

Out in the backyard the other day, just playing with the boys, there was no shortage of visual prompts that could easily turn into book ideas (and it was a different black butterfly on the butterfly bush that inspired my current WIP–see first pic!). So I thought I’d go ahead and share those visuals with all of you (and of course some cuteness with pics of said boys).

Whenever I find mushrooms in the yard, I wonder what kind of magical creatures might live there. Though I knew The Boy had created the little rock formation, I thought about someone who didn’t know its origin coming across it and wondering how it came to be. And bubbles are always magical and fun!

Where do your ideas come from? What gets your creative juices going?

Firebolt by Adrienne Woods Book Blitz

July 25, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

I love the cover of today’s featured book Firebolt by Adrienne Woods. Don’t forget to enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy!

About the Book:

Firebolt by Adrienne Woods

Genre: YA/Paranormal/Fantasy

Published by GMTA, November 17th, 2013

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Firebolt-The-Dragonian-Series-Book-ebook/dp/B00GS5SUM6

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/firebolt-adrienne-woods/1117456833?ean=2940149030019

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20517266-firebolt

Dragons. Right. Teenage girls don’t believe in fairy tales, and sixteen-year old Elena Watkins was no different.
Until the night a fairy tale killed her father.
Now Elena’s in a new world, and a new school. The cutest guy around may be an evil dragon, a Prince wants Elena’s heart, and a long dead sorcerer may be waking up to kill her. Oh. And the only way Elena’s going to graduate is on the back of a dragon of her own.
Teenage girls don’t believe in fairy tales. Now it’s time for Elena to believe – in herself.

About the Author:

Adrienne Woods resides in South Africa with her husband and two beautiful little girls, where she work as a full time writer and lives her dream. Thunderlight is the second part of The Dragonian Series which will be available in November 2014. Firebolt, book 1, of The Dragonian Series is available for purchase at all the big online stores.

Twitter: @erichb3
Blog: Adrienne Woods Books and Reviews woodsadrienne.wordpress.com
The Dragonian Series blog: http://thedragonianseries.blogspot.com
Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/pages/The-Dragonian-Series/301375039891281?_rdr

An excerpt from Thunderlight, BOOK TWO in the series

The girl had made it.

The Rubicon saved her life, so a part of him was still fighting me. I could still see her eyes searching mine. They bore into my soul, seeking answers. How was this possible! The wall wouldn’t allow any human to go to the other side.

Albert’s laughter echoed inside the castle; s startling reminder that good would always win. He would pay dearly for this. I would find a way, but I promised she wouldn’t live much longer.

I got up, rubbed my face hard and let the emotion of my anger escaped my lips. The rage that emanated from deep within me overpowered the haunting laughter and echoed throughout the entire castle.

“Master,” Cain’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Speak my loyal servant,” I said out loud. “What is the news?”

“Everything is in place. We won’t fail you,” his voice said in my head.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and let it out hard. “We’ll see.”

Chapter One

Castle of Etan

Anger, betrayal, and hate turned my stomach acid, it consumed my mind and I watched as bottles, papers and books on the desk, flew off and crushed to the floor.

A maid rushed to my side. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes reflected fear. The dustpan in her hand trembled as she started to sweep up the jagged shards of glass. Rising from the floor she began to straighten the books that had fallen to the floor in a heap. Every few seconds I would notice her eyes dart nervously in my direction as if a mere breath would make me lash out as her with my outstretched hand.

I touched her face gently until my hand reached her neck, tightening slowly as my anger began to rise once again. My grip tightened around her soft, shapely neck as I lifted her up from her position on the floor at my feet. Listening carefully I could hear her heart fluttering like a bird trapped inside a cage.

“How did I become this way?” I thought, giving voice to my reality softly.

She just stared at me with round, brown unblinking eyes. Her eyes were sunken deep into the surface of her face and her cheek bones were sharply defined.

Looking at her sullen face made me feel worse. I lifted up my other hand and struck the woman hard across her cheek.

A cry left her mouth and I threw her from me as if she weighed nothing. She skidded across the floor landing in a heap against a wall of cold, unforgiving stone. If I was a dragon I would blast fire, redeem this wretched place to a pile of insignificant ashes.

Two other maids, hearing the startled cry, rushed into the room. Their eyes were wide as they took in the room and the immobile heap near the far wall. “Sorry, me lord,” the older one said. “She’s new, we will train her better.”

They picked up the maid who had come too and begun sobbing. She clutched the side of her face, cover the huge red hand print where I struck her.

I nodded. The old maid knew her place well, although I still didn’t care for her name, she knew where she stood.

I plunged myself down onto the chair and closed my eyes. A silent roar growled inside of me lighting a fire of rage deep in my core.

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