Category: Books (Page 48 of 82)

Cover Reveal for ALLIANCES by S. Usher Evans

December 18, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

In this last guest post of the year, I’m pleased to host author S. Usher Evans revealing the cover for the second book of the Razia series, ALLIANCES. Make sure to check out the teaser chapter and enter the giveaway!

Alliances_CoverOnly ALLIANCES by S. Usher Evans

Piracy is a Game. Whom do you trust?

Lyssa Peate has found a tenuous balance between her double lives – the planet-discovering scientist and space pirate bounty hunter named Razia. No longer on probation, Razia still struggles to be thought of as more than a chocolate-fetching joke, and Lyssa can’t be truthful to those closest to her. But both lives are turned upside-down when feisty government investigator Lizbeth Carter shows up to capture the same pirate Razia is after.

Lizbeth’s not interested in taking Razia’s thunder; rather, she convinces the caustic bounty hunter to help solve a mystery. Somebody’s hiring pirates to target government ships, and there’s a money trail that doesn’t make any sense. From the desert planet of D-882 to the capital city on S-864, the investigation leads them deeper and deeper into a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of the Universal Government – and to one of the most painful chapters in Lyssa’s past.

Pre-orders for Alliances will be available on Amazon Kindle begin January 1, 2015.

Double Life, Book 1 in the Razia Series, is available now on the following stores:

http://www.amazon.com/Double-Life-Razia-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00KXCR422/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/double-life-s-usher-evans/1119269005?ean=2940045836302

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/double-life/id864156016?mt=11

Chapter One Teaser:

The room was dark, with a single, dingy lamp hanging over a table where three men sat, each holding a hand of cards. They said little, except for the occasional grunt or movement to tap their grungy mini-computers to up their ante. The first sighed and rubbed the scruff around his chin. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter.

“You hear that Llendo is running for re-election?” he said, cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“What else is new?” The short, squatty man and whose toes barely brushed the floor, threw a few chips into the virtual pile using his mini-computer. “The guy’s a puppet. There ain’t nothin’ that comes out of his mouth that ain’t been sent through the ringer about a million times.”

The other two men chuckled and shuffled around their cards. The third man, with a long face and sallow complexion, pulled two more cards for his own hand and shuffled them together and apart again.

“But who else is there to vote for?” he asked, counting his cards and stacking them together again.

“That general? You know that buffoon Peate works for him. He ain’t getting my vote until I know he’s gonna play along.”

The second shrugged and said, “Nobody’d vote for him in a million years.”

“You and your millions.” The third rolled his eyes. “Everything you say has been done a million times.”

“Bah, can it,” the first barked. “And hurry up and make your move.”

“I’m taking my time. Don’t want to get fleeced again,” the third said. “You’re all a bunch of crooks.”

“Takes one to know one.” The second man peered at his cards through a pair of thick glasses, hunched over.

“I am retired,” the first man said, sitting back and taking a long drag of his cigarette. “None of that piracy crap for me anymore. Getting too dangerous for me.”

“Gonna break a nail?” the second snorted. “Bad enough you got that girl. Whatsherface.”

“I hear she’s doing all right,” the third said. “Kidnapped Jukin Peate’s brother and held him for ransom last year.”

“And what’s she done since then?” the second said.

“More than you’ve done.”

“I’m just saying, it’s unnatural to have a woman out with the men,” the first said. He paused for a moment and began to smile. “Although I can’t say I hate seeing her scamper around ‘882.”

“Shame she doesn’t wear tighter pants,” the second said. “I seen pictures. She wears these baggy things. I bet if she wore something that made her look like a girl, she wouldn’t even have to fight nobody.”

“She could come capture me any day of the week. I don’t care what she looks like,” the third said. “I’d lay down and let her do whatever she wanted to me.”

“Care to test that theory?”

The three looked up sharply at the sound of a distinctly female voice in the doorway.

“Hey, hey,” the first man said, standing up. “We don’t want no trouble. We’re retired here, lady.”

“You are,” Razia said, stepping into the light with a smirk on her face. She turned her eyes on the third man in the room. “He isn’t.”

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New Release CLAUDIA MUST DIE by T.B. Markinson

December 11, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

I’m happy to welcome T.B. Markinson today as she offers an excerpt of her latest release the thriller CLAUDIA MUST DIE.

Claudia doesn’t feel like herself anymore—she feels like prey. Her husband’s hired goons have stalked her all the way to Boston and will only stop their pursuit once she is dead.

Divorce is not an option. Instead, she has stolen a bunch of her man’s money to disappear into another life.

In order for Claudia to live, someone else must die. A lookalike college student becomes the target capable of freeing her from an awful marriage.

The plan goes horribly awry. Instead of murdering Claudia’s double, the assassins shoot the woman’s lover who is the cousin of a powerful Irish mobster. Claudia becomes hunted by all involved. Can she survive? Should she?

Purchase Links

Amazon (US) / Amazon (UK)

Excerpt:

At first, everything had been roses and wine. When others warned her about Dennis, Claudia laughed it off.

“Use your head,” Claudia’s mother had said. “How could a man in his early thirties make so much money owning a handful of run-down bars in two small towns in the West?”

“What, you think he’s a drug dealer or something?” Claudia had broken into hysterics. “He hardly looks like a gangster, Mother. Dennis doesn’t wear any jewelry. Not even a wedding ring.”

In Claudia’s mind, a gangster would at least wear a gold necklace. And, he had excellent table manners. There was no way Dennis could be a thug. How many scrawny five-foot-six guys were?

They had married after seven months. Neither had intended to marry so quickly, but they had visited Vegas for a long weekend, got drunk, and got hitched. It wasn’t until Claudia moved into Dennis’s house that she started to notice things. He wouldn’t come home for days, and when he did, he refused to tell her where he had been. He racked up a lot of mileage on her car, not his. When Claudia asked about it, his reply was a cold stare that made her legs feel like jelly. Granted, one of his bars was in Greeley, but that was only a twenty-minute drive from their home in Loveland. How did the miles add up so quickly?

After a year, they started to fight constantly. Verbal arguments. After another year, the fights turned violent. Claudia ended up in the hospital—still nothing serious enough for her to walk out. Not yet. Instead, she started hoarding cash. In the beginning, it was a little bit here and there. It was simple. Claudia would request cash back when she used her debit card at the grocery store. Dennis liked her cooking; he never questioned how much his wife spent on food. When she realized her embezzlement plan would take years, not months, The Hunted chose a more drastic solution. The next time her husband crossed the line …

About the Author:

T.B. Markinson is an American writer, living in England. When she isn’t writing, she’s traveling around the world, watching sports on the telly, visiting pubs in England, or taking the dog for a walk. Not necessarily in that order. T. B. has published A Woman Lost, Marionette, and Confessions From A Coffee Shop.

Mailing List:

Sign up to TB’s New Release Mailing List here. Your email will never be shared and you will only be contacted when a new book is out.

Find her on:

Twitter Facebook Blog Goodreads

Amazon Author Page

Guide to Self-Publishing with Ellen Allen Author of THE SHAM

November 20, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Today Ellen Allen, author of the YA thriller THE SHAM, is sharing some insights on the self-publishing process, which is something I think all of us authors, if we’re not doing it already, have at least thought about doing. Welcome, Ellen!

A writers guide to self-publishing

by Ellen Allen

Having recently self-published my first book and because more and more people are choosing to do so instead of following “traditional” routes to publishing (and asking me how I did it), here’s a handy cut out and keep guide – basically everything I would have liked to have known beforehand!

1. Get a critique of your final draft. If you’re going to spend any money, it should probably be in the editing process (as well as in preparing the cover). Otherwise you run the risk of publishing what agent Mary Kole calls, “just a printout of (your) manuscript bound between two thicker pieces of cardboard, and about as fulfilling as a pile of scratch paper”. Sites such as youwriteon allow other writers to critique portions of your book and sites such as wattpad and widbook will help you connect to readers to see if they like it.

2. Get your “platform” ready.If you’re starting at zero you’ll need time to find twitter followers and facebook friends. It also takes more time, and organisation to link all your different mediums together so that people can find you more easily.

3. Get some beta readers to review your book. Once you’ve got yourreal final draft (after editing and critiques) put it in the hands of actual readers. Goodreads has lots of groups of people who are willing to beta read and will offer really constructive feedback on your story.

4. Decide how to publish your book. For example, are you going to use a professional service, like BookBaby or do it yourself, through Amazon’s CreateSpace? Your decision will depend on money, confidence and your strategy. You may want more hand-holding than other people and want professionals to be available to answer questions about Digital Rights Management – DRM – for your book, etc. The answer also depends on distribution. Do you want your book available everywhere or just Amazon?

5. Create your cover. It probably pays to use a professional but regardless, make sure the name of your book is clear in the thumbnail. Spend time investigating the look and feel of other book covers; readers will use your cover to decide whether or not they’ll read your book!

6. Preparing your final document will take much longer than expected, as you’ll need to proofread and check the formatting. You’ll have greater distribution possibilities if your book is available in all three main formats (mobi for the kindle, epub for nook and iBooks and of course, pdf) but they’ll all need to be proofed separately.

7. Get your marketing blurbs ready. You need to distil your book into one or two sentences for taglines and you’ll also need long blurbs, short blurbs, A4 summaries (with plot spoilers and without) and a variety of teaser paragraphs. Make sure you also have your cover photo stored somewhere online in a really high resolution that you can link to different sites (Photobucket will let you do this). Keep all these marketing documents in a word document on your desktop so it’s easily accessible to cut and paste from at a moment’s notice.

8. Sort out your advertising. Are you going to run giveaways, youtube book trailers or pay for ads on sites like goodreads? Are you going to try to get some author interviews fixed up? You need to think about this before your book is out.

9. Line up reviewers before the book is launched. If you don’t have reviewers lined up for your book, then no one will read it! There are lots of places to ask for reviews but goodreads is a good start.

10. Finally, remember to celebrate the small victories. You are your very own, editing, marketing, advertising and production department and you have a very long road ahead of you. It won’t happen overnight, if at all (you only need to trawl through the millions of goodreads authors to understand how few people actually manage to become successful self-publishers) so remember to enjoy the small things: the jump from ten to fifty twitterfollowers; reaching 100 likes on your book’s facebook page; gaining a real footing on goodreads, where you have met some great friends, supporters and fans. Don’t spam your followers with “all about me” posts but do publicise your good reviews!

THE SHAM blurb:

When love leads to death, be careful who you trust…

Eighteen-year-old Emily Heath would love to leave her dead-end town, known locally as “The Sham”, with her boyfriend, Jack, but he’s very, very sick; his body is failing and his brain is shutting down. He’s also in hiding, under suspicion of murder. Six months’ ago, strange signs were painted across town in a dialect no one has spoken for decades and one of Emily’s classmates washed up in the local floods.

Emily has never trusted her instincts and now they’re pulling her towards Jack, who the police think is a sham himself, someone else entirely. As the town wakes to discover new signs plastered across its walls, Emily must decide who and what she trusts, and fast: local vigilantes are hunting Jack; the floods, the police, and her parents are blocking her path; and the town doesn’t need another dead body.

WARNING: this book is unsuitable for younger teenage readers. It depicts adult situations, murder scenes, conversations about sex and profanity.

Giveaway

The Sham is a YA contemporary thriller with scenes that are unsuitable for younger readers. If you want to read what other people think of The Sham, check out the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. If you want to win a copy of The Sham, enter the facebook giveaway here.

About the Author:

On her inspiration for The Sham

The idea for this book came to me in a nightmare. It was so vivid that I imagined I was 17 again, at school, in the same group of 4 friends that I used to hang around with. We were involved in a murder and cover-up. I started writing partly as a way to get it out of my head and then the characters turned into real people… and Emily and Jack were born.

More about Ellen

In a previous life, Ellen Allen was an Associate Director in a small consultancy firm (focusing on Sustainable Development and Climate Change) running research projects and writing client reports. She doesn’t find fiction writing too dissimilar in process but she gets to use her imagination considerably more! She now lives in the south of France with her small daughter.

If you want to contact Ellen Allen you can find her on twitter @EllenWritesAll or facebook www.facebook.com/EllenWritesAll or on her writing blog: www.writingright.net. If you want to buy her books, find her on Amazon.

Reading with Beverly Stowe McClure Author of STAR OF THE TEAM

November 14, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Beverly Stowe McClure is an author, a former teacher, and a wonderful, supportive member of the kidlit writing community. Today she is sharing her MG contemporary STAR OF THE TEAM with a post about how she wasn’t always a reader. Welcome, Beverly!

JOHN NEWBERY AND A CLASSROOM OF FIFTH GRADERS

by Beverly Stowe McClure

When I was very young, I was not a reader. I listened to the radio instead. A program called “Let’s Pretend” came on every Saturday morning. This was BTV (Before TV). I loved Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White and the Severn Dwarfs and all the others. Even though I never read the books, perhaps I absorbed the stories that years later I would remember how much I enjoyed them.

I squeaked through high school, reading only what I had to. After graduation I worked at various jobs, none of them exciting. When my sons started school, I decided to attend the local university so I could find a job with a future. This meant reading, lots of it. Four years later, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education degree. And, now get this, I became a teacher. What was I thinking? Teaching meant more reading. I also made an amazing discovery. Not only did I love teaching, I loved reading children’s books.

One of the requirements we had for our fifth-graders was a book report every six weeks. This was before the AR program many schools have today. Our students had to read Newbery winner or honor books. Memories surfaced of how much I hated book reports in my school days, so I hoped to make them more pleasant for my boys and girls. I also had to read the books so I could tell they’d read them. Sigh. I wish someone had introduced me to these stories when I was in school. Maybe they did and I wasn’t listening. For whatever reasons, I was hooked. My students’ reports were amazing. Sometimes, they dressed like the characters and acted out the stories. Other times they wrote reports with illustrations or in story form. Most of them had fun. The teacher had fun. Reading was fun. Remember the saying: “You’re never too old to learn.” It’s true.

So today, I thank John Newbery, the wonderful books that have won his award, and my classroom of fifth-graders for showing their teacher the beauty of a good book.

STAR OF THE TEAM blurb:

A girl.

A dream.

An accident.

A dream shattered.

Eleven-year-old Kate Taylor dreams of being the star of her basketball team, Angels. When Kate’s tooth is knocked out at one of the games and her mother, who is also her coach, says she can’t play until the tooth the dentist replants heals, Kate’s dreams are in jeopardy. Add Emily, the new girl at school who claims she’s the best, and Kate faces a challenge to prove that she is the star.

Will Kate succeed? Or will Emily ruin Kate’s plans?

Find it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

About the Author:

Most of the time, you’ll find Beverly in front of her computer, writing the stories little voices whisper in her ear. When she’s not writing, she takes long walks and snaps pictures of clouds, wild flowers, birds and deer. To some of her friends, she is affectionately known as the “Bug Lady” because she rescues butterflies, moths, walking sticks, and praying mantis from her cats.

For twenty-two years Beverly taught children in grades two through five how to read and write. They taught her patience. Now, she teaches a women’s Sunday school class at her church. To relax she plays the piano. Her cats don’t appreciate good music and run and hide when she tickles the ivories.

For more about Beverly visit her blog or website.

The Women in THE UNHEWN STONE by Wendy Laharnar

November 7, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Wendy Laharnar was gracious enough to stop by the blog today to give us some insight into the women in her YA historical fiction THE UNHEWN STONE. Thanks for sharing today, Wendy!

The Unhewn Stone is 18 yr old Stefan’s search for identity as he tries to restore honour to his family name which has long been tarnished by the Wilhelm Tell legend. From modern day Switzerland, Stefan is transported back to his ancestors, in the Wilhelm Tell era of 1307AD, on a mission to prevent the legend from happening.

While searching for the hero he hopes to find within himself, Stefan finds the heroism he seeks in the women in The Unhewn Stone.

21^st century:

Heidi – sister of Stefan’s best friend Uri.

Ursula – Stefan’s unrequited love.

Marta – Stefan’s sister

Stefan’s mother

14^th century:

Frau Gessler – the tyrant governor’s mother, a healer.

Cassandra – – a prophetess

Yelka – a wanton strumpet

Eva Tell – Wilhelm Tell’s daughter

Hedwig Tell – Wilhelm Tell’s wife

The sibyl – a shapeshifting prophetess.

Ingrid –the innkeeper’s daughter.

I’ll concentrate on four of these women who represent the differing cultures in medieval life and reflect different aspects of Stefan’s changing character.

The sibyl (means ‘prophetess’; ‘oracle’):

Because many peasants, in the Middle Ages still believed in Greek and Roman mythology, I modified this mythical figure based on the Roman ‘Cumaen Sibyl’ to represent the superstitions still lingering in the Middle Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire. She is the bane of Stefan’s life.

Stefan is drawn to this shape-shifter because she bears a strong resemblance to Ursula, the beautiful 21^st century woman Stefan loves. The sibyl appears as a lovely courtesan, a withering crone, a Snow White lookalike and a large black bat. She mistakes Stefan for his ancestor, the alchemist, who, with her help, invented the magic orb. This orb opens the wormhole between 14^th and 21^st century Bürglen in central Switzerland. The sibyl needs the orb to serve her own evil purpose and pursues Stefan relentlessly to get it back. She is ruthless and dangerous, the antithesis of Stefan, the pacifist, who is forced to pit his wits against hers. He finds her both appealing and repulsive. I believe he equates her ugly side to his own ugly complex.

Eva Tell (Eva means ‘life’; ‘living one’; ‘the first woman’):

Eva is a zealot, dominated by her religion, her father and the vision of a united and liberated Switzerland. Tell’s wild daughter fights by his side and yet she is drawn to Rolf, son of the enemy, the tyrant governor Gessler. Their love is stymied by the feuding families, and family is all-important to Eva. Her courage and stubbornness fascinate and confuse Stefan. He sees her as a threat as well as a saviour. When she swaps her clean grey cloak with his filthy blue one, in order to camouflage him, she receives his reluctant admiration. In effect she cloaks Stefan with her identity. This is a significant turning point for Stefan.

Ingrid Gasparin (Ingrid means ‘fair’; ‘beautiful’; more recent meaning ‘a hero’s daughter’):

The innkeeper’s cheeky daughter also has eyes for the nobleman, Rolf, who encourages her advances. To Stefan, Ingrid is simply a peasant, a flirtatious, buxom wench in need of her father’s discipline and a long, hot bath. But the reader knows Ingrid is an innocent; intuitive and just. When Stefan learns that behind the façade she is pious and brave beyond measure, Ingrid becomes his inspiration.

Frau Gessler (unnamed in the book, but clearly she must be a Sophia because this name means ‘wisdom’):

A noble woman, Frau Gessler is the mother of Hermann Gessler, grandmother of Rolf, and great grandmother 7 times removed, or more, to Stefan. She is a pagan, a healer, merciful and kind even to her enemy, but she is quite prepared to physically defend her family when attacked. To Stefan, who is searching for acceptance, Frau Gessler, the matriarch, represents family. He needs to hear her acknowledge him as her grandchild (Grosschind) just once while he is trapped in the 14^th century.

In this era where myth, magic, religion, and science collide, these women embody the conflicting attitudes of the medieval world within themselves and in their society. Their influence on Stefan is profound.

THE UNHEWN STONE blurb:

The Wilhelm Tell legend has a new hero but he belongs to the wrong side . . . on the wrong side of time.

When Swiss teen, Stefan Gessler, answers the call to restore his family’s honour, he discovers it might be easier to change base metal into gold than overcome evil in the Middle Ages with modern day ‘magic’.

With his medieval cousin, Rolf, Stefan is trapped inside the legend, caught in the turbulent events of 1307AD. Pursued by an avaricious shape-shifting sibyl and an evil knight who want him dead, he is hindered in his mission and unlikely to escape the 14thC alive.

Life in the Middle Ages is a dangerous game even for Üserwäälti, the Chosen One.

THE UNHEWN STONE is available at the MuseItUp bookstore, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and Amazon.

About the Author:

Wendy Laharnar lives on the south coast of NSW, Australia, with her husband and mini Schnauzer, Spitzli. She writes historical fiction, science fiction and children’s stories.

Several overseas trips took her to Europe where she collected ideas and information for her stories. In Switzerland, she researched her medieval novel, The Unhewn Stone, and made lasting friendship with two Swiss women who helped her with their language. Her Arts degree in English Literature and History opened up new worlds to feed her imagination and love for research.

When she isn’t writing, Wendy enjoys spending time with her husband, their son and daughter and their families. She likes to sew and knit and take Spitzli for long walks by the sea.

Contact Wendy via her website, Facebook page, or Twitter account.