GIveaway--Loving the Book Launch blitz

• 

  ~ HUGE $2000 Giveaway! ~

  Welcome, fans of the Paranormal Romance and Urban

  Fantasy genres! This one is just for you!

  And really, it is! 21 best selling authors have come together to

  provide this EPIC giveaway, and they have devised the perfect

  plan for vetting winners and making sure these awesome

  prizes go to true fans of the genre–so if that’s you, don’t

  worry, we won’t let giveaway bots or cheaters steal your

  prize!

  Our only rules for winning: 1 Entry Per Person (plus the additional entries

  you get for referring friends) and You Must LOVE Paranormal Romance and

  Urban Fantasy!

  By entering this giveaway, you will be subscribed to the newsletters of sponsoring

  authors for opportunities to snag more great deals, giveaways, and freebies, though

  you can unsubscribe at any time. Find the link to the giveaway at the bottom of the

  page.

  Join the facebook event here:
• 

  Not only will one grand prize winner snag a $2000 Gift Card, there are also a

  TON of fabulous runner up prizes (6 print books and 9 ebooks)!!

   The Beast by J.R. Ward (any format)

   Feverborn by Karen Marie Moning (any format)

   Moon Called by Patricia Briggs (ebook or paperback)

   Charlaine Harris, Dead until Dark (ebook or paperback)

   Angels’ Blood by Nalini Singh (ebook)

   Cold Burn of Magic by Jennifer Estep (ebook or paperback)

   Signed Copy of The Blackburne Legacy by Apryl Baker

   Magick After Midnight Boxed Set (ebook)

   Wolf Rampant Boxed Set (ebook)

   Mythean Arcana Boxed Set (ebook)

   Cursed by Lucy Leroux (ebook)

   Flower of Hell by Noree Cosper (ebook)

   Darkness Rising by Lisa Carlisle (ebook)

   Blood Warrior by H.D. Gordon (ebook)
• 

   Winner’s Choice on any top 10 PR/UF book on Amazon at the time of the

  drawing

  Good luck, and don’t forget to share this giveaway with your Paranormal Romance

  and Urban Fantasy loving friends for extra entries to win!

$2000 Giveaway Blitz URL Links

Official Facebook Event page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/542397559272143/

Rafflecopter Giveaway:

http://www.beccahamiltonbooks.com/giveaways/paranormal-romance-pnr-and-urbanfantasy-uf-2000-giftcard-giveaway-amreading/?lucky=39369

Blog Tour: Review of "The Making of A Man"

I love historical fiction and love good characters.  This is why I was eager to read Rachel Rossano's "The Making of a Man" and that is our review for today.

The stories in this anthology run from adolescence to adulthood and cover some crucial moments in any person's life:  the loss of a parent, the culmination of love, the development of leadership skills, etc.  I do like that its set against the backdrop of the 15th Earl of Dentin.  I admittedly have little experience with this overarcing storyline or time period.  As with most historical fictions, I found myself fact-checking and Googling to hmmm at things that I either didn't know or found to be anachronistic.  (No one should take this a bad sign.  I do the same thing with World-War-II sotrylines equally.)

The characters were definitely engaging in this, with some humorous but believable figures worked in.  I felt that she wrote younger characters best and my favorites were children who begged to go on a boar hunt and taunted the imaginary pig that they would have caught.  This example is given to show that while the anthology is about a specific character, the minor characters enrich the stories the most.

My only issue with it was that the editing was inconsistent.  It frustrates me when I am drawn into a story that then tends to have random misspellings or incomprehensible narrative sentences.  I always advise people to do what I do and read sentences aloud before committing them to the final draft and while they grew fewer as the anthology went on, I wished that the fine-tooth comb of proofreading had overruled the need to get the stories out there.

Thanks to Rachel for letting me read and review!  I'll be looking into other titles by her.

Blog Tour: "The Fairest Poison" Review

A few weeks ago, Lauren sent me an e-mail saying, essentially, "Hey, friend.  Here's a copy of my new book.  Would you like to do the blog tour again?"  Since I had jumped at the chance to review anything and everything she wrote before, I squealed "IGOTLAUREN'SBOOOOOOOOOOK" like a fourth-grader to my roommate and she appropriately gasped in envy.  Of course I said yes to the chance to do her blog tour.  I also got to have the signing spot next to her at LDStorymakers Conference on Saturday (and heard a lot of "Oh, so you're NOT the same person?").  What is Hidden was the first book I ever blog-toured for and Lauren now stands with authors like Brandon Sanderson and Elizabeth Kostova, where I became a fan when they first started publishing and have followed their careers obsessively.

So, here we come to the third book in her series about The Chameleon.  After leaving Venesia with the villain of the first book, Lauren brings us back to the palace for a Snow White-based fairy tale adaptation.  Princess Bianca and Prince Aiden have discovered that the court is being poisoned.  The most obvious evidence of this is in the form of their ailing parents, but also several attempts to bump the princess off.  She turns to an old assassin to find the culprit and, as you might guess either from the opening sentence of this paragraph or my earlier interview, that is The Chameleon.

My friends laugh at me for my villain obsession.  I'm fascinated by redemption arcs as much as the irredeemable characters.  I absolutely get a thrill out of the fact that neither Palpatine nor Voldemort can "be a man and try for remorse."  Lauren pointed out that one of her influences was Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender and I smacked myself for not having recognized it before.  I read The Chameleon as a bit of a Vader, who (to quote myself) "had been a fool who did right in the end." That suggested that he had a moment of redemption that fixed the ending.  But no, now that I know she drew the inspiration from the heir to the Fire Nation who went from being a bloodthirsty vigilante to a justice-seeker, I recognized that she had been setting up this characterization for a very long time.  I mentioned in a previous review of her books that I love a mystery where I can tell the ending, but am satisfied with the road that leads there.  This is absolutely true of The Fairest Poison. 

Briefly leaving behind my villain-obsession, I loved changing perspectives from seeing the court through the eyes of a commoner/servant to seeing it from the position of power.  There was a very effective character-building for Evie, the first book's narrator who has to face the transition from one perspective to the other.  Using that character tied the reader into the world a lot more effectively than I would have originally guessed.  This is only the second series ever where I've been an unabashed fan of changing the narrator from one book to the next.

So there you have it.  If I haven't talked you into reading this series in its entirety, come talk to me.  We'll have WORDS.

Or you could buy it here and make life easy on the both of us.

Blog tour: The Fairest Poison, Pt. 1

I got very lucky that when Lauren Skidmore went looking for bloggers to read her third book, she emailed me.  I broke with tradition and did an interview this time, but will post my review later.  

1.  The series has focused on a new character in each book, but always in the context of The Chameleon.  This is something that reminds me both of Lord Voldemort and Darth Vader.  Was it always your intention to make the person we originally saw as the villain the focus of the entire story arc?

Yes and no. When it comes to villains, one of my favorite characters of all time is Prince Zuko from The Last Airbender series. I thought it would be fun to write a redemption arc like that, and the Chameleon ended up being a good outlet. My primary focus for each book though was the narrator’s own character development, since I still wanted each book to be able to be read on its own. It just sort of worked out by the end that the Chameleon was a tidy link between stories.

2.  As a follow-up to that, this is the third book and there is a natural conclusion to the trilogy.  On the other hand, the ending leaves a whole different set of adventures as a possibility.  Will there be a fourth book?  

I don’t have a fourth book planned right now. I just like endings that hint at what’s to come after that book’s story is complete. Plus I have commitment issues, so it’s nice to have the possibility to go back and write more in this world again.

3.  "The Fairest Poison" is a departure from your previous title trend.  I think you told me about having a different title in mind.  What was it and where did you find the eventual title?

Yes, originally the title was going to be What Is Found, but my publisher wanted a title that hinted more at the fairy tale I was playing with, as well as make it more accessible as a stand-alone read.

I settled on The Fairest Poison basically by googling various Snow White references and seeing what words were associated with the fairy tale. “Fairest” and “poison” were naturally popular, though I didn’t really see them together, so I tried it out and liked it. I think it has a sort of lyrical sound, and it ended up tying in nicely with certain parts of the novel.

4.  I remember enjoying the Japanese influences in your last book, but enjoyed returning to Venesia as well.  What was your favorite thing about making us more familiar with the first book's city?

I really liked being able to explore palace life from the side of the royal family, as opposed to the servants’ view from What Is Hidden.

5.  I always say to world-build about three pages for every one page of what makes it into the book.  Are there things about the court or Venesia in general that you'd like to share as an interesting tidbit?

Previously, the royal family did not speak at all, except to the Speaker, who would then relay everything to those not of royal blood, which is how things worked in What Is Hidden. After the events of that book, and as the prince took more control, that tradition was basically abandoned for purposes of practicality. I wish I could have included more about that shift in particular as it happened, but it just didn’t work out with the timeline. It really made the royal family appear more human to outsiders, and not these untouchable beings dressed all in white. Which, in turn, made them more vulnerable.  

Also, a tour of the Venesian palace in general would have been fun for me, but probably not so much for a reader.

6.  As the title and cover art both indicate, there's a bit of murder afoot.  What did you research to create your various assassination attempts?  (My favorite was the razor-sharp combs, personally.)

So many poisons! I used mostly made up names for the poisons I used, for safety reasons, but I researched lots of different types of poisonous types of plants and venoms and basically anything that could kill you from the inside out. The most difficult Snow White murder attempt to work in was that bodice, since the original was magically cursed to tighten, and there’s no magic system at work here. Also a few other things that I can’t really talk about without giving stuff away to those who haven’t read it yet, but royal assassination attempts in general were super interesting to read up on.

7.  Were there any plot changes that you had to make based on editor feedback?  From start to finish, did you make any major plot changes on your own?

The culprit actually changed a couple times. As I fine-tuned the motivation for the attacks and the characters, it made more sense to change the original to what ended up in the final copy.

8.  What's next for you?

I’m taking a little writing break right now to recharge, but I’ve got a few ideas in mind for future books. Right now I’m leaning towards a high fantasy with dragons, but we'll see.

Blog tour: Georgia Jones comes to talk books

I hope you're enjoying all this activity and I even have a blog tour on May 11 that includes an interview as well!

For now, an exciting author with great taste is contributing some thoughts. Please welcome Georgia Jones and her favorite books, some of which I share!

Wordsmith G. L. Jones

TOP 10 LIST OF ALL

TIME FAVORITE BOOKS

1.  

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. (Theodor) Seuss.

No matter what mood one is in…The Cat in the Hat always makes me smile. This quote is from I Can Read With My Eyes Wide Shut. It’s my favorite quote from all of the Dr. Seuss books.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

2. Odyssey written by Homer

Original fantasy work at its best. Anyone who loves dark fantasy reading would love a story like this. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when they are binding the Cyclops… We handled our pole with its red-hot point and twisted it in his eye till the blood boiled up round the burning wood. 

3. Dracula by Bram Stoker

How clever it was of Bram Stoker to make the vampire hunter such a smart man. He wasn’t your average brute force but was a professor with a list of credits following his name. I have always been intrigued that he chose the route of brains over brawn in his approach to slaying the monster. It is my favorite vampire genre novel.

4. The Discourse on Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by Rene Descartes

I love the way this particular book made me think about everything with reason and rational. The first precept that he based this method on was to never accept anything as truth that you could not undeniably see as such. Basically…throw out everything you think you know and look at the facts, then move forward with founded truths. 

5. The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

This book has a tendency to come back to me. I have given away every copy that I’ve ever stumbled across, but not until I read it again. 

6. The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King

Stephen King has always been one of my favorite authors, even before I realized that we had the same birthday.  I didn’t read this series until later because of my preconceived idea that it was a western and that is a genre of books that I don’t typically pick. I was, of course, astonished as I began the series and very quickly realized what I had been missing. I fell in love with Roland and was quite intrigued to find so many of his other books fall into the worlds that he built for this series.

7. The Gnostic Bible by Marvin Meyers

This book includes the most comprehensive list of Gnostic texts that I’ve ever found. I’ve read many of the stories several times and consider it a veryvaluable piece in my collection of books.

8. The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pen name of Lewis Carroll

An absolutely phenomenal fantasy book for any era. 

9. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

This series of books include a vacation anyone should be glad to journey on. It’s fantastical and magical.  I enjoy the style in which it’s written as well as the adventures that are conjured up while reading. 

10. The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

I find the dark and dreary sentiment of his works to be completely compelling and very complex. Any time I see or hear the words, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary”, I take notice. He sparked something in gothic literature that seemed to change the landscape of it in a way. 

Thank you for allowing me to share my top 10 books list with you. I would like to add that this is just a short list of the many, many books that I’ve read. I find nearly all the books I read, bring something to me. I love the vacation of any fiction book because I believe that all fiction is fantasy in its own right. I personally have a distinct love of ancient literature of any kind. I enjoy the glimpse into ancient cultures…it gives me idea of how we became who we are today because every writer puts a piece of themselves into their work. The cryptic code lies in the words which are often times undecipherable, but none the less there.

Blog tour: Now and forever

Happy Thursday!   Today, I'm featuring a collection of witty and warm-hearted stories that have caught my attention.  Here are a couple of examples to spark your interest.  My internet at home is being wonky, so I am posting from work without the gorgeous cover art, but you can check it out at the buying link at the bottom. 

tBook blitz

Snippet from Perfect Pitch by Debbie White

“She’ll be obsessed with baseball, and not have much of a life beyond it until she meets the man of her dreams that is,” she said.

Zach brushed his hand across his face. He’d pausedbefore he spoke. “When you say it like that, makes it sound like baseball isn’t worth living for. It pays my bills, and not to mention the activity side of the sport. It keeps me in shape.”

He got that right. On and off the diamond, Colton was ripped. He had what many would describe as a solid frame. It was beautiful and she admired his strength. It was most difficult to conduct the interview with well-defined pecs and a six-pack visible under his tight tee-shir . Someone had to do it, she giggled to herself.

Snippet for: Bound by Marriage: Looking Through Your Eyes by Brandi Gillilan

Light colored eyes were all but shooting fire at the older woman. “Let me get this straight.” Annabelle started listing the events with her fingers, “You tricked us into filling out questionnaires. Turned them into a matchmaking company.  And contractually obligated the three of us in arranged marriages if we want to keep Taking the Plunge as our business.”

The older lady smiled at her granddaughter, “You’ve always been a quick study Annabelle.

Buy here

Crying From the Dust: Joann Arnold's "The Buckskin Trail" blog tour

I was lucky enough to nab a spot on this tour and you should be happy to hear that I have a couple more in the works.  (Lauren Skidmore sent me a copy of her new book and a request for a review, for example.)  Today, we'll be looking at something that reminded me both of Jodi Picoult's family dramas and Dan Brown's pseudo-archaeological thrillers.

I love authors who delve into different cultures and as someone who has enough Native American ancestors that I'm still registered as a member of a tribe, I looked forward to reading what I described as "DaVinci Code with Cherokees and Mormon references instead of symbologists and Catholic apocrypha."

The book had a fascinating premise--Kelzi Tsali, who begins the book as a terrified child and ends the book as a fearless lawyer, is entrusted with a centuries-old deed to land that proves her tribe's claim to land.  Naturally there are secret combinations out there (told you there were Mormon references) trying to keep the document from coming to light so the greedy men can essentially build strip malls and housing developments.

Here are the only things I had problems with:  I found myself uncertain at the end of the book what I really felt about it.  The main reason for this is that it switches genres on you.  It's like reading a book where John Grisham got co-authors who loved the plot, but didn't agree on which section of the bookstore it should be sold in.  I found a lot of intrigue and suspense for the first half of the book, but then two love stories became the focus of the book instead.  Yes, she came back to the suspenseful plot, but it had to be wedged into the last few chapters instead of building up naturally.  I knowwell as a disability case manager and as much as anyone who has had to witness court proceedings that certain phases of a suit have to proceed quickly while others are pain-staking.  I've sat in on court sessions ranging from preliminary hearings to sentencings for the interpreter program and I would have liked to see this be threaded more naturally throughout the book.

Leaving behind this genre ambiguity and pacing issue, I didn't find a single character I disliked.  The family dynamics for Kelzi led to an emotional and effective ending.  There is a Scottish character whose role I will not give away here, but he was absolutely hilarious.  When scare tactics lead to one character building an insanity plea for crimes committed, it's a natural by-product of what they've put the poor idiot through.

Whenever I read The DaVinci Code or watch an Indiana Jones movie, I have to turn off the part of my brain that disbelieves that symbologists stop terrorists attack or that archaeology professors can always foil Hitler's relic-happy goons because I enjoy the journey through the plot.  I made the mistake of reading The Last Tsar just before I saw Anastasia and spent the entire movie analyzing the historical flaws, but eventually learned to take it as nice fiction with a good soundtrack.

In this same way, this is a book best read if you leave all of the analysis and mystery-solving to the characters.  It's a hard thing to do for me, since I analyze every mystery so I won't be surprised by the ending.  But if you trust the author to give you the answers you need in the ending, you'll get through this just fine.