Friday, November 28, 2014

~Blog Tour & Giveaway~ Burnt Edges by Dana Leipold

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Title: Burnt Edges  

Author:  Dana Leipold

Published:  October 21st, 2014

Word Count:  56,000

Genre:  Women’s Fiction

Content Warning:  contains sexual abuse and domestic violence

Recommended Age:  18+

Synopsis:

Abuse or an uncertain future. This is Laurel Lee Page’s choice when she is faced with an unplanned pregnancy at 18. Born into a broken family, all she has ever known is guilt and shame. No matter what she does or who she meets, Laurel appears to be living a condemned life but she is determined to find independence and freedom in spite of her family’s legacy of hatred and self-contempt. Can Laurel see that she is in a powerful position, poised to break the cycle of abuse? Set in Southern California during the tumultuous 1960s era, Burnt Edges is based on true events and proves that strength can be found even in the most horrific situations.


Excerpt:


Laurel decided that Rusty was Mother’s favorite child. The afternoon in the garage had been proof. But because he often took the brunt of Father’s anger, she felt a bizarre kinship with him. She also loved the stories he would tell when they had nothing to do. He would make up tall tales like the one about spacemen who came to Earth to taste hamburgers because they had none on Mars. He described them as little green men with antennae.
“Whenever they come to visit, people find their hats missing, because the Martians steal them to conceal their antennae,” Rusty said.
“That’s just silly,” Laurel said.
Gerry sat in the dirt, playing with rocks and half-listening. Laurel thought he’d rather be playing football or punching some kid, so he sometimes got bored of the stories.
“No, it’s true, really.”
“What did they do to hide their green skin?” Laurel asked.
“They also steal women’s pancake makeup and put it all over their faces. Helps them blend in.”
“Ew, they wear girl’s makeup?” Gerry said, sticking out his tongue.
Laurel giggled, imagining Martians wearing makeup and hats just to get a taste of a hamburger.
“Why don’t they just steal the recipe and learn how to make hamburgers on Mars?” Laurel thought she’d caught Rusty off guard with this question.
“They tried that once, and it was a disaster,” he said, picking up rocks and throwing them against the fence in their backyard. “Yeah, it almost wiped out the whole Martian race.”
“What’d they do, get all sick and throw up?” Gerry laughed at his answer.
Rusty threw a rock at Gerry but missed him. “No, moron.”
He kept throwing rocks without saying anything. Laurel thought he was trying to come up with a good story. She waited another moment.
“Well, what happened?” she asked.
“I’ll tell ya! Don’t rush me!”
He stopped throwing rocks and sat Indian style, his elbows resting on his legs, hands clasped together so he was leaning forward a bit.
“The explorer Martians who had just come back from Earth brought the hamburger recipe to the King of Mars. They told him about the most delicious food they’d ever tasted and that they had brought the secret to it. The king was excited and told his royal cook to make up a batch, but they don’t have meat on Mars.”
Rusty paused, and Gerry rolled his eyes, waved his hand, and climbed the rope up to the tree house. Rusty watched him, but Laurel was listening, waiting for Rusty to tell the rest of the story.
“Go on,” she said.
“Nah, no one cares about the dumb old story,” he said.
“I do! Tell me!”
“All right, but it’s horrible!”
“I don’t care. Tell me!”
“Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Rusty paused and then he began again. “So the cooks tried to figure out what to do. They didn’t want to tell the king that there was no meat. Once a cook had told the king he was all out of Martian mush-rooms and the king executed him. They thought and thought about what to do, and then they called in the royal jester.”
“The jester? What does he know about cooking?” Laurel asked.
“Exactly.”
Laurel looked confused.
“So the jester came in, and the cooks smashed him on the head and put him in a boiling pot. Once the Jester was done cooking, they ground him up into bits and fed him to the king.”
“Yuck!”
Gerry must have heard about the cannibalism. He peeked his head through the hole in the tree house. “That’s disgusting,” he said, loud enough for Rusty and Laurel to hear.
“The king loved it and ordered the cooks to make more. So they did. This time they called in the royal guard, bopped him on the head, boiled him up, and fed him to the king. The king couldn’t get enough of those hamburgers, so he made a royal decree stating that the official food of Mars was hamburgers.”
Gerry had the tree house door open and was sitting on the floor with his legs hanging out. Laurel shook her head.
“The cooks went through the whole Martian Royal Army, the royal court, and most of the Martian population before the king caught on. He ended up executing the cooks, but now the King of Mars comes to visit Earth himself, because he loves hamburgers.”
“That’s the dumbest story I ever heard,” Gerry said.
“If it’s so dumb why did you listen to it?” Rusty answered back.
“Hamburgers aren’t that good,” Laurel said. “Not as good as pizza.”




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About the Author:

Dana Leipold is a freelance writer, author, and member of the Association of Independent Authors and Creativity Coaching Association. She has self-published two books: a collection of limericks in Dr. Seuss-style for adults entitled, Stupid Poetry: The Ultimate Collection of Sublime and Ridiculous Poems, and a non-fiction book entitled, The Power of Writing Well: Write Well. Change the World, to help writers get their message heard, create stories that connect, and leverage the power of writing well. In addition, she coaches other writers on story structure, messaging, and writing skills so they can achieve their dreams to become published authors. Leipold lives with her husband and two children in the San Francisco Bay Area.



Giveaway Details:

There is a tour wide giveaway. Prizes include the following:

  • 5 Lucky Winners will each receive a $10 Amazon gift card.

Giveaway is International.

a Rafflecopter giveaway




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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

~Cover Reveal~ Torn by A.M. Wallace


Title: Torn
Author: A.M. Wallace
Genre: New Adult
Release Date: Feb. 18, 2015
Hosted by: Lady Amber’s Tours


Blurb:

Marcus has his life pretty much figured out at twenty five years old. He’s got his career on track, a nice house just outside of the city, and his lifelong best friend, Hannah, by his side at every turn. The only problem is that he has been fighting with himself to tell Hannah how he really feels. How she’s all he’s been able to think about since he was old enough to have those feelings. What he doesn’t know is that Hannah is facing the same inner battle with herself about him. She fantasizes about a life with Marcus.

Will Marcus or Hannah be able to tell each other how they feel about one another? Will they be able to make a life together or does fate have other plans?






A.M. Wallace was born and raised in southern Ohio. She is currently a stay at home mom to her wonderful son. She and her husband still reside in southern Ohio after a few years of living in east Tennessee (Go Vols!) While her husband is a die-hard Volunteer, A.M will always be a Buckeye. (O-H-I-O!) Thankfully the two teams almost never play one another.

Her love for reading started at a very young age. The Boxcar Children was where it all started, and she never quit. AR Reading in school only pushed her that much harder to read faster and more advanced books. Her competitiveness came out when there were prizes and “winning” involved. Now, she reads anything and everything in her free time. (When she has free time.)

After being a stay at home mom for seven months, needing a change that would allow her to continue staying home with her son, she finally decided to pursue her dreams and write her first novel. While watching reruns of The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Handy Manny, and Doc McStuffins in her living room with her seven month old rolling around, the idea behind The Divided Series was born.

Author Links:
Author Links – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authoramwallace


Thursday, November 20, 2014

~Release Day Blitz~ Enlightening Bloom by Michelle Turner


Title: Enlightening Bloom
Author: Michelle Turner
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Hosted by: Lady Amber's Tours

Synopsis:

Who knew finding out shifters are real would be the easy part?

Trying to finalize the bond with her mate, Pike, Bloom is struck with a mysterious illness that puts a strain on the newly mated pair. They’re forced to take off on their mating night to track down a long lost relative in hope’s she’ll have the cure and answers they desperately need.

Bonnie Harris took it in stride when her best friend hooked up with a wolf shifter. But can she do the same thing? Her mind is telling her no, but her heart is telling her yes. Which will she listen to?

The Masterson pack is thrown for a loop when a pack member’s past is revealed. Will they all be able to stand together and survive when one of their own brings an old enemy to their door?

Michelle is a native Ohioan who now finds herself in the mountain state of West Virginia. She lives with her husband, son, and three spoiled rotten dogs. When she isn't spending time with her family you can find her with her nose stuck in a book or her head in the clouds as she dreams up new adventures for her characters.

Author Links:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/MichelleTurnerAuthor 



~Pike~
Bloom pulls back, and with passion burning in her hazel eyes whispers. “Mark me, Tennessee.”
I move us further into the room, press my lips to my favorite freckle right in the crook of her neck, and whisper against her skin. “As you wish, Darlin’.” I let my teeth sharpen into that of my wolf. I place one hand at the small of her back, holding her closer to me. The other is sifted into her hair at the other side of her neck. Her breathing is heavy against my own skin, from both fear and want. Or maybe more from need. A need so thick it’s pulsating around the room. We need each other. We’ve always needed each other, even when we didn’t know who the other was. And we always will need each other. It’s how we’re made. I give into that need I feel to the very core of me, and through the bond I feel to the core of my mate, and I sink my teeth into her soft flesh.
I close my eyes, letting the pure pleasure of the moment wash over me. She’s now unmistakably mine. I don’t want the moment to end but I know there are still good moments ahead of us, so I retract my teeth and lick the spot to clean it. She’s still in my arms, but now that my mind is clearing I feel how tense she is. I pull back, still holding onto her, and take in her face. It’s scrunched in to one of pain.
“Bloom?” I ask, confused as to what’s happening. She pulls out of my arms and crumples to the floor, letting out a blood curdling scream. 




Sunday, November 2, 2014

~Book Blitz & Giveaway~ Warrior's Watchtower by Aedan Byrnes


Title: Warrior’s Watchtower
Author: Aedan Byrnes       
Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal RomanceHosted by: Lady Amber's Tours

Blurb:“I am yours, and you are mine...Whatever comes now, we are one.”
Her heroes are gone, taken together in a flash by a vengeful God leaving Jondre to find her way alone. Befriended by a woman who knows more than she’s telling, she makes a choice to try to help what’s left of her family and finds herself at the seat of power but also the center of the expanding abyss. Her world is nothing that it seemed.
A Eupion raid near the boundary delivers a surprise to High House, a new tragedy to deal with and the catalyst for an even more difficult future to come. Just when she thinks there cannot be more, she sees the most fearsome immortal she’s ever encountered, and as match-mates are revealed, this one is hers. Nothing is simple anymore.



There is no simple description for Aedan Byrnes. Obsessive, dreamer, reclusive, compulsive, outdoorsman and wordsmith would be among the list if one were started. The displaced Gael lives in the upper Midwest with family between jaunts wherever the road goes. A frequent traveler, Aedan is as likely to be found rock climbing, spelunking, sitting fireside dreaming or aimlessly floating away as hiding with pen and paper working on the next tale.
A lifelong lover of words and writing, Aedan claims a diverse reading appetite and the writing reflects the myriad influences. A self-proclaimed ‘reader’s writer’, the emotional and sensory results of word combinations outweigh the visceral comprehension of phrases for the stories and drives the prose. The original 'Eclectic Bard' enjoys the special magick of storytelling, those who embrace the challenge of writing, and the dreamers who get whisked away by the words making the journey worth taking.

Author Links:Website: www.aedanbyrnes.com
Facebook - Personal Page: https://www.facebook.com/aedan.byrnes.7



●●Foreword●●
They jumped.

If I would have blinked I would have missed it. It was that fast. For every breath of every moment of my life one or more of them were there and yet in the span of time between breaths every one of them had disappeared.

Playing it back in my head, it was just too fast. I didn’t see it coming until the moment it happened, and then I couldn’t believe it happened.

“What have you learned Vengelys?”

“We have learned we are at war.”

“What else have you learned? You should have known we were at war.”

“We have learned that our adversary is wily and cunning and we have been, but should not underappreciate his tenacity in the war he is waging.”

“Do you infer that the strength of the enemy has been misrepresented to you Vengelys?”

“No.”

“Do you believe then that the complexities of the war we wage are beyond our abilities?”

“No.”

Tynan reached up to tap him out and take over. Rigor would never allow that I’m sure, but Tynan had tried anyway. I’m not the only one who noticed. Amaranos seemed to launch at the action as Rigor refocused fully on the God.

“Do you act in union or from a divided front? Perhaps it is not the war that was the problem with your ability to deal with the situation you discovered.”

“We stand as one, Amaranos.”

“Do you? It would seem that your kin believes they have the ability to stand before me with a calmer presence. Perhaps you should let them try.”

“We stand as one, and I speak for us all. My brother was reminding me to remember my place. It is his job to protect me as it would be mine to protect any of the others of us here before you.”

“Do you need reminding of where you stand? Is my presence before you not reminder enough?”

“No, I do not need reminding, though I appreciate his reminder just the same.”

I had never seen my father sit so still. His eyes were the only things that changed. They grew larger and larger as the comments flew between Rigor and Amaranos. My mother’s hands were red from ringing them and shaking in her lap. As I watched, Asmodai started to twitch and shake in the line behind Rigor. Tynan and Mastema traded worried eye glances. They were all showing the nervousness and fear I was feeling and I wasn’t standing there so I imagine it was multiplied for them. Kyrna’s forehead wept a large shiny sweat tear. I watched it splat on the stone floor before I looked back to Rigor again as Amaranos continued his verbal siege of my brothers.

“Do you supposition then that the task you were charged with was beyond you and your brother’s abilities? Is that why you flinch and fidget before me?”

“No my liege. I believe, as we all do, that we will become better with more training and that we completed the charge given to the best of our abilities.”

“So you instead infer that you were sent out ill equipped for the battle you were asked to take on. To read between the lines of your answer, you are yet unskilled and need training to become that which Amarine believed you had already evolved to. Perhaps my other face had seen something that I myself cannot, as I see a group of brothers with far to go.”

Rigor shook. He looked like he was going to explode apart he was shaking so hard.

“Stand. Down. Vengelys. I will not say it again.”

Rigor stood, but barely. My father grabbed the arms of the chair, but his whitened knuckles betrayed the energy he was fighting to stay put. My mother dropped her head to look down and I could hear her muttering something to herself. All I caught of it was ‘Please...’ I could only look on in disbelief.

These were my brothers. These were the heroes of my waking and dreaming times. The sight of them fidgeting and failing in front of the God and the people was breaking my heart. Rigor turned to the line behind him and turned back on a rough growl at Dom who had lifted a foot toward him. What that was about I had no idea, but Rigor was having none of it. When he turned back to face us, he was different. His face was a mask of rage and his eyes had a fire in them I had never seen before. I loved every one of my brothers, but the idea of facing any of them as Rigor appeared right then had me torn between tears and screams.

“No Amaranos I would not stand down, and I am evolved. We took on a charge from Amarine and completed it. We have brought forward four Eupion, three males and a female found on this side of the portals and demonstrated by the items they had with them that they were here establishing an operation on our lands. We did this because we believed Amarine wished us to do so. It was not simple. It was not without confusion, and it was not without knowledge that we could have been better prepared, but in an effort to honor the charge, we did as we were told. Could we have done better? Perhaps. Could other warriors of longer tenure done better? Perhaps. Will we know one way or another for certain? No, because we did as we were tasked without stopping to question if we should or should not. We sealed into purpose for the throne and the throne bid us proceed.”

The collective gasp was so loud it hurt my ears, or maybe that was just me. Amaranos was visibly angry…red. faced. angry. The air in the room changed and any in the gallery who had been whispering, went silent.

“What did you say to me?”

“With respect, I said...”

With a gesture of his hand Amaranos silenced Rigor, freezing him in place.

“No Vengelys, as you have not respected, you will not proceed. Let all who are herein know that this impudence and blatant disrespect is not tolerated in the high house of Amaranth.”

A flash of light sparked between Rigor and my brothers in line behind him. As we watched it grew fatter and deeper between them. Rigor had no idea. I wanted to shout, knowing that would lump me in with them, but I could not find my voice. The six of them in line behind Rigor looked at each other, but that was the only movement before I watched them slide together. As the gaping hole got closer to Rigor, though he couldn’t see it, he must have known. His frozen form did not change, but his eyes grew larger and the fire in them blazed. He seemed to get bigger before my eyes too, but I think it was me feeling smaller and smaller as I knew I couldn’t help him.

It was all over but the jump and I nearly missed that. As Rigor began to tip over backwards, the rest of them grabbed on and they were gone. Replaying it in my mind changes nothing. I still cannot believe it.

I cannot breathe. I cannot cry. I cannot fathom the implications of this. I want to rub my eyes and see them there, that their disappearance through the now perfect floor was just an illusion. It isn’t.

I’ve never seen my father weep until this moment. My mother is caught in a vortex of rage, grief and denial that mimics the emotions I cannot summon to the surface.

They’re gone.

Before I know or notice, everyone else is gone too. The gallery, full to bursting earlier, is now empty. The court high seat, where Amaranos waved them off to no one knows where, is also void. All that remain are my parents and I; all numb, all shocked, all stilled in our disbelief.

Amaranos had raged all through the high light rise to peak and pitch before my brother’s arrival. For the neutral between the faces of the God, he was ruthless in his rule of the people. News of raids, open portals, and reports of missing emgur, durab and mataur from near the boundary had soured the day before the seven men I loved best after my father had walked in to stand at court center.

I imagine they were blind-sided. Given the notoriety they had gained in the war, I think everyone in the room was. I had expected their strides against the Eupion advancements to have been met with praise, not disdain. How wrong we had all been.

“They’re gone.”

Saying it out loud, even as a whisper does nothing to make the obvious more real. The echo of those two little words around the now empty court chamber only serves to lance the wound in my chest to a deeper cavern of empty. It can’t be, but I know it is.

They’re gone.

~Jondre







Saturday, November 1, 2014

~Book Blitz & Trailer Reveal~ Contact by Laurisa White Reyes



Title: Contact
Author: Laurisa White Reyes       
Genre: Young Adult Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Hallowed Ink Press



Blurb:
It takes only half a second…

 …Like those commercials where a crash test dummy rockets forward at high speed and slams into a wall.
…In that instant, every thought in Emma Lynn Walsh’s head collides with mine—every thought, memory, hope, disappointment and dream.
…I open my eyes to see Dr. Walsh peering at me, a puzzled expression on her face.

“Let—go—of—me,” I order though clenched teeth.

Mira wants to die. She’s attempted suicide twice already, and failed. Every time she comes in contact with another person, skin to skin, that person’s psyche uploads into hers. While her psychologist considers this a gift, for Mira, it’s a curse from which she cannot escape.

To make matters worse, Mira’s father is being investigated in the deaths of several volunteer test subjects of a miracle drug. Shortly after Mira’s mother starts asking questions, she ends up in a coma. Although her father claims it was an accident, thanks to her “condition” Mira knows the truth…but proving it just might get her killed!





After earning her B.A. in English in 1995, Laurisa White Reyes spent many years writing for newspapers and magazines before gathering enough courage to live her dream of writing novels. Contact is her third published book. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in creative writing, is a book editor for Hamilton Springs/Xchyler Press, and is the Editor-in-chief of Middle Shelf Magazine. She lives in Southern California with her husband and five children.