After some deep deliberation, I've decided to move Across the Bookiverse to Wordpress.
All future posts will go up on there. I will continue to leave up this content up here for now while I'm making the move over.
Thank you for joining me on Blogger and hope you join me on Wordpress now.
Caroline
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Blog Tour - Cursing Excerpt + Giveaway
Title: Cursing
Author: Lynne Murray
Series: Cursing #1
The day she killed her boss...
Everything changed.
She never laid a hand on him to take his life. She didn’t have to.
As her boss lies on the floor with a dozen witnesses staring and paramedics working in a futile effort to save him, a mysterious stranger approaches Angie with a bizarre offer.
It’s a job with the ExtraTerrestrial Protection Agency, a secret organization. Can Angie trust a group whose very existence is ultra classified?
She has to decide in a hurry because her newly released power starts drawing attention from life-draining, telepathic, Mindworms and alien scientists obsessed with abducting humans. Most terrifying of all, she’s stalked by one of the most fearsome predators in the galaxy.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Things changed the day I killed my boss. I was trying so hard not to.
He died quickly from cardiac arrest in front of a dozen witnesses in the glassed-in fishbowl of a conference room at Wolfe, Savage and Steele, the law firm where we worked. I never touched him physically. I didn’t have to. His name was Carroll Caine.
The Office Manager’s death interrupted an extended yelling session aimed at me. Caine was a short, square-built man with small bulging, blue eyes, a permanently red face and silver hair, cut brush short. For some reason, he had singled me out for verbal abuse almost from his first day on the job. He retired from the Navy as a Warrant Officer. Law firms like to hire former non-coms on the theory that they work well with a formal chain of command. But for Caine, taking orders from civilian lawyers he didn’t respect chafed him like a sandpaper jockstrap.
He took it out on his subordinates. I was a favorite target.
Understanding why Caine attacked me so often didn’t protect me when he did.
My other co-workers looked away in embarrassment or relief that, at least for the moment, Caine wasn’t singling them out. Not Francine, the woman sitting next to me in the conference room. She was petite, blonde and eager to score points with Caine by digging up the slightest hint of an error on my part.
Caine picked a bad day to stand over me and settle in for an extended rant. My Aunt Bess had simply disappeared six months earlier and without her, I had no one. The pain of her loss had retreated to a dull ache most days, but sometimes it flared up into a sharp pain of grief and confusion.
I focused all my attention on breathing slowly and letting his word roll over me.
I huddled in my chair, trying to make myself invisible, staring down at the pad of paper in front of me, a pencil gripped in my hand.
Caine paused for breath as if savoring looking down at me. He leaned in close. “You’d already be out of here if I didn’t suspect you might have a hidden disability and you’d sue all our asses. Is that it, Angie?”
“Look at me!”
I slowly looked up and met his eyes. Bad idea. The urge to let loose the anger that built in every cell of my body. I blinked when a cloud of black dots like a swarm of tiny insects filled my vision, swirling between Caine and Francine. I glanced around. Most people stared at the table or Caine. No one else gave any sign of seeing the whirling dots.
Great Angie, you’re hallucinating, just what I need.
“Keeping something up your sleeve, Angie? Maybe you lied on your employment application?” His spit landed on my face. Droplets hit my glasses. I wanted to wipe them off, but I didn’t move a muscle.
I could smell Caine’s rage under the Bay Rum aftershave and lingering cigar smoke on his breath.
Something inside me settled. Everything seemed sharper, clearer and despite the black cloud of dots passing between Francine and Caine. It couldn’t be real. A voice somewhere in the mists of early life echoed in my head.
Stop the heart.
Deadly calm washed over me. I felt myself starting to shake as if there was an earthquake. There was not. Yet an inner vibration shook me physically like the roars I heard when my aunt took me to the Lion House at the San Francisco Zoo at feeding time.
I focused on Caine. Not on his face, on his chest. Every sound in the room fell away. I found his heart. I raised my hand to point at him, still holding the pencil.
He straightened up. A slow smile on his face told me he was hoping he had made me mad enough to do something stupid. He had.
“Ya gonna hit me, Angie?” he asked.
“No.” I couldn’t remember ever feeling so calm.
Now.
I snapped my arm a few inches back as if I meant to throw the pencil at him. Caine instinctively rocked back on his heels, but there was no escape for him. Energy tore through me. My fingers tingled as I completed the short gesture toward his chest. I sensed the familiar but unknown force piercing him like a tool. It reached for his heart and grabbed it. And squeezed.
The pencil broke in half. The eraser end bounced off the table and fell on the rug. I lowered my arm, feeling his heart, frozen in a spasm as if my hand really was squeezing it. The inner shaking stopped and I took a deep breath, suddenly, oddly at peace.
Caine’s knees gave way and he crumpled to the floor. He twitched a few times. I don’t know how, but I could feel his life leave his body. He wasn’t coming back.
I stood up and backed away as two co-workers rushed past me to attempt CPR. They knelt beside him, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to revive him. I jammed my hands into my pockets and finally let go of the top half of the pencil. I kept my head down because I couldn’t help myself from smiling. The roaring inside me was gone. The swarm of black particles was gone too.
I took my hands out of my pockets and saw a couple of wood slivers had pierced my skin. I was bleeding. It didn’t even hurt. I didn’t feel anything but relief at the sudden quiet when Caine shut up.
Then the fear hit.
Everything I learned growing up told me I should go home, grab my getaway pack and leave town. It would be hard to run without my aunt organizing our escape.
I didn’t want to move again. I loved San Francisco. The rent-controlled apartment was my true refuge with my grandfather’s books lining almost every wall.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to run. Maybe no one noticed how Caine had died. People drew back to the edges of the room while efforts to revive him got more frantic. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to me. It wasn’t as if I’d physically touched the old man. Maybe no one would blame me.
Scratch that.
As I surreptitiously dabbed Caine’s saliva off my face and glasses with the cuff of my long-sleeved blouse, I raised my head and looked straight into the eyes of the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. He twirled a pair of sunglasses in his hand and continued to stare right at me.
He had a tousled mop of sun-streaked light brown hair. He wore a tan suit about the same shade as his hair and a light blue shirt and gold and darker blue striped tie. His angelic face, even features and sensual lips seemed familiar. Maybe I’d seen him in one of those semi-porn underwear ads—the kind where you don’t look closely at the model’s face because you’re too busy checking out that impossibly lithe and muscular body. He leaned against the receptionist’s desk as if he owned it, as if he owned any place he stood simply by standing there.
He stowed his glasses in his jacket pocket and raised a blond eyebrow at me as if asking a question with luminous blue eyes.
The receptionist, a sixty-something retired airline stewardess with a British accent, had already called 911. Now she leaned over her counter at the perfect angle to check out Underwear Model Man’s ass at the same time that she watched the drama around our co-workers struggling to revive Caine.
Underwear Model Man held my gaze and nodded at me. I flinched in surprise. He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes crinkled as if we had a secret understanding. A deep feeling of dread settled like lead in my gut. This couldn’t be good.
I made it past the reception desk and nearly to the elevator when Underwear Model Man fell into step beside me. He was taller than me. I’m five ten, he must have been around six feet.
“Meet me for coffee after work,” he whispered, leaning close. He smelled of Irish Spring soap. “There’s someone you need to talk to. Someone you have a lot in common with. You won’t regret it.”
I kept moving without answering. Every woman in the place stared at this guy. He was that magnetic. The last thing I wanted at this particular moment was anyone paying attention to me.
But the stranger followed me and held the elevator door while I got in. “Seriously, you owe it to yourself to listen to an offer that would get you out of this...place.” He didn’t have to say “This hellhole,” it was implicit in his tone. I couldn’t disagree with him. The only thing I liked about Wolfe, Savage and Steele was the paycheck.
“An offer I can’t refuse, huh?” I snapped at him. “That turned out so well for the guy who found the horse’s head in his bed.”
The man chuckled. “No dead horses, I promise. But your skills deserve better.”
“You know nothing about my skills,” I kept my voice low.
“Don’t I?”
Francine and three other women slipped past Underwear Model Man into the elevator with me. They all stared at and me, then back at him again.
He let go of the door and it closed before I could say another word.
An older woman whose name I didn’t know commented on how fine that young man was. Then the elevator bell dinged for our floor and we all filed out in silence. No one mentioned Caine.
Underwear Model Man was leaning against the building waiting for me when I went out the front door. He’d taken off his tie and it was hard not to look at the tanned skin and a curl of golden chest hair showing where the top button of his shirt was open.
“Hi, I’m Chad Falconer.”
At least I didn’t have to keep calling him Underwear Model Man. Automatically, I responded, “Angie Faust.” I instantly regretted that. Now he knew my name.
I needed to get away fast. Men like him don’t follow women like me home from work without some agenda. Whatever his reason it didn’t involve flowers, dinner dates and happy endings. Maybe he sensed how desperately I missed my aunt. Predators can read body language and track wounded animals.
“Whatever it is you’re selling, I can’t afford it.”
He grinned as if I’d said something terribly witty. “Fair enough,” he said, falling into an easy pace beside me. Chad persisted, walking closer and tilting his head down to get my attention.
“Whoever you are and whatever you want, I don’t trust you,” I said.
“The only reason you should listen to me at all is that you and I seem to be the only two people who understood what was going on this morning.”
I stopped so fast he almost ran into me.
“My boss had a stroke or heart attack while he was yelling at me. He was an old man. He had a strenuous day of verbally abusing people. His heart just gave out.”
“It doesn’t usually happen that way though, does it?” Chad said. “I don’t know about you, but the people I want to see die usually go on to live a disgustingly healthy life of making everyone miserable and die peacefully in bed at 95.”
“You can’t blame me for what happened,” I concluded, my voice wavering a little.
He seemed to understand because he stepped away a foot or so. “Believe me, Angie, blame is the last word I would use to describe you or anything you do.” He stepped in front of me to stop for a moment but he held out his hands out with palms up. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Maybe. Will you let me alone if I do?”
“Absolutely. The only thing I ask is that you come with me to a coffee shop and meet someone who understands your great gift.”
“Gift?” I snorted a small burst of laughter at that thought.
“Seriously, it’s a public place, a café not far from here. No pressure.”
I stared at him. I never admitted that I was responsible for the violent things that happened around me. My aunt and I rarely spoke about it. “Where is this place?”
“It’s an easy walk. Come on, it will only take half an hour of your time.”
I admit I was curious and absurdly relieved that he didn’t seem to be selling anything or whipping out a chloroformed rag and forcing me into a car. But mainly I agreed because of a vain hope that there might actually be a way to cope with whatever the hell it was that I had been fighting my whole life.
Giveaway
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Blog Tour - The Rule of Many Excerpt + Giveaway
Title: The Rule of ManyAuthors: Ashley Saunders and Leslie Saunders
Series: The Rule of One #2
Born to a death sentence in a near-future America, rebellious sisters herald a revolution—if they can survive.
Twins Ava and Mira Goodwin defy the Rule of One simply by existing. The single-child law, ruthlessly enforced by Texas’s Governor Roth, has made the sisters famous fugitives and inspirations for the resurgent rebellion known as the Common.
But the relentless governor and his implacable Texas State Guard threaten that fragile hope, as Roth consolidates his power in a bid for ultimate authority.
As Ava and Mira relinquish the relative safety of their Canadian haven to stand against Roth, new allies arise: Owen, a gifted young programmer, impulsively abandons his comfortable life in a moment of compassion, while Zee, an abused labor camp escapee, finds new purpose in resistance.
The four will converge on Dallas for a reckoning with Roth, with nothing less than their destinies—and the promise of a future free from oppression—on the line.
Disobedience means death. But a life worth living demands rebellion.
Excerpt
AVA
“You’re back,” I say, rising from my bed. Everyone in the room stands, acknowledging Emery as leader of the Common.
She wears her signature look: an unstructured, slightly oversized yellow coat that ends at her knees. Her rich nut-brown hair is short and wild like Einstein’s, and she’s taller than everyone in her small entourage. The more I’ve studied Emery—my mother’s childhood best friend—during my stay here at the Paramount, the more I’ve discovered she’s not the perfectly straitlaced leader I’d expected her to be. Looking closely, I can see the rough edges that hint at the woman she was before having to bear the weight of being the rebellion’s leader. The leftover holes from a double eyebrow piercing above her left eye, the way she bites the inside of her cheeks when she’s angry, as if withholding a fiery reaction. A poorly healed scar just below her collarbone. It all makes me like her even more.
Emery studies the room, her intent gaze passing over all the young faces eager and willing to carry out her orders, however small. We’re all unified in the reason we’re here with the Common, so far from our homes, and I find an unhappy comfort in the shared white-hot pain of loss. And the anger that comes with it.
“It’s good to see you all again,” Emery says. She nods to each of us in greeting. “May I have the room? I need to speak with Ava and Mira.”
The Games Club immediately disassembles, Barend directing everyone out into the hall. He shuts the door and turns on his heel, returning to his post inside our room.
Three members of Emery’s inner circle remain at her side. They’re all Elders, members who’ve been a part of the Common the longest. Their faces are hardened with world-weariness, and although I’ve never spoken to any of them personally, Pawel tells me they’ve each seen the inside of a prison cell more than once.
The door opens, and a young woman who looks a few years over twenty strides with pure confidence into the room. She stands a short distance from the group, unchallenged by Barend. She must be a new recruit, and an important one if she’s included in Emery’s close circle. The young woman’s jet-black hair is pulled back tightly into two French braids, highlighting her dark eyes with their long, intense lashes. If the eyes truly are a window to the soul, hers has taken more than a few beatings.
Mira clasps Emery’s shoulder in welcome before asking, “Did you find him this time? You’re back early—did something go wrong?”
Countless missions to rescue my father have led to nothing but disappointment. Wherever Roth is hiding his former Family Planning Director, he’s making damn sure he’ll never be found.
All four Common Elders lower their heads. Something did go wrong. Horribly wrong.
My stomach drops like a heavy anchor cut loose into the sea.
“What happened?” I demand, stepping forward. His execution date has been moved up. The Guard caught wind of our extraction plans and changed his location . . .
Emery raises her head, biting the inside of her cheeks, hard. “It’s with great sorrow that I have to inform you of your father’s murder,” she tells us straight. “I am sorry that we could not get to Darren in time.”
He’s dead. My father’s dead. I’ve learned to always prepare for bad news, but I wasn’t prepared for this.
Through a haze of salted tears, I lurch backward. Mira catches me, and I hold on to my sister tight—our combined strength the only thing that keeps me from shattering against the floor.
“No, no, no . . . you said Roth wouldn’t kill him!” I cry. “You said he wouldn’t risk turning the people to our side!”
“What about the stay of execution!” Mira says in disbelief.
“The official statement from the Governor’s Mansion is that it was a suicide,” Emery says. “Roth made a speech, weaving a story that Darren hanged himself with his bedsheets during the night, leaving behind a note detailing his great regret for his traitorous crimes against his country and its people.”
A cold panic rushes through my body, and I feel faint. Mira shakes uncontrollably beside me. I turn to my sister, and both our green eyes scream, Lies!
Father would never, never take his own life. He would fight until the bitter end to get back to us.
“The note said his greatest shame of all was raising illegal twin daughters who turned into dangerous traitors themselves.”
Roth is using our own father against us. Bile rises to my throat, and my knees falter.
Emery seizes both our shoulders, pulling us close, making sure we listen.
“We know both the suicide and the note are bullshit. We know just before sunrise, Roth entered Darren’s cell and shot your father in cold blood.”
I try to break free of Emery and my sister. I can’t breathe. I need space for my heartache, but Emery grips my shoulder harder.
“Listen to me. We have the surveillance video. Your father’s killing will not be buried. Roth’s corruption will be exposed—another link in his chain of lies. Your father will continue to help the cause even in death, as your mother did.”
“The video could be fake, too, just like the suicide note. He could still be alive!” I find myself pleading.
The new recruit with the French braids steps forward, shaking her head. Her eyes soften with sympathy. “I wish that were true.”
She pulls something from her jacket’s inner pocket and carefully opens her palm: a metal capsule the size of my fingernail.
Father’s microchip.
“I was held in the same prison as your father,” the young woman explains, her steady voice struggling to break through the fog of despair that separates me from everything else in the room. “While the Common arrived too late to rescue your father, they were able to rescue me.”
Who is this person? Why was she imprisoned, and how did she gain access to my father’s chip? It’s always a never-ending maze of questions.
“Scan the chip,” Mira says, her voice hollow.
Barend produces a microchip scanner from his duty belt—he always seems to have the necessary tool or weapon—and hands the device to Emery to scan.
Ping.
A death record pops up on the chip scanner’s screen:
Name: DR. DARREN JAMES GOODWIN
Status: DECEASED
Cause of death: SUICIDE
Burial location: UNKNOWN
The only thing I have left of my father is this tiny scrap of metal with his blood still on it. Where is his body?
I want to scream.
“It’s Darren’s chip. It has been authenticated,” Emery declares with full conviction. “Skye Lin has been fighting for the Common’s cause for half her life. She turned a Guard at the prison, who gave her the chip and surveillance video in the midst of our rescue mission.”
Skye Lin. The assassin who poisoned two states’ Family Planning Directors and made an unsuccessful attempt on my own father’s life. I’ve never seen her face; after she was arrested in Dallas five years ago, Roth banned images of the teenage murderer across all media outlets. Before Mira and me, criminals were not lionized in Texas; they did not become famous. They were thrown in dark cells and never heard from again.
“I didn’t know your dad was a member of the Common,” Skye insists. “I wasn’t trying to kill him. I was trying to kill his office.” The Family Planning Division.
With that, she turns and walks out, leaving Mira and me drowning in confusion.
“I want to see the surveillance video,” Mira says from beside me.
Taken aback, I turn to face my sister. “You want to watch our father’s murder?”
“I have to see it for myself.” She looks up at me, her eyes red and glassy with anguish. “We were raised on so many secrets, Ava. I just have to see.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
As I move to leave the room—I need the open air; the hurt inside me suddenly seems too large for this crowded space—Emery holds up her hand to stop me.
“We leave for the Common’s headquarters in the morning—Paramount Point Lodge. You both are needed there. I can explain more tomorrow, but for now take the time to grieve.” She lowers her head in a respectful bow. “Your father was a brave man.”
Chills run through my body. Rayla had said those same words.
He wants a better future for you both.
I close my eyes and remember Father’s greatest lesson: it takes iron to sharpen iron. Metal bullets forged my father’s death into a cast-iron weight that sits at the bottom of my heart. To be brave like my father, I must endure the painful process of honing. I must become so sharp that no one can touch me or mine again.
“Show me the surveillance video,” Mira demands once more.
“It will not be easy to watch, but the choice is yours to make,” Emery says.
Visions of my father tied helplessly to a chair, Roth standing over him with a gun, a smug smile on his lips . . .
No! I rip open my eyes and push past Emery, away from my sister. Barend gets out of my path, allowing me to throw open the door, and I stumble into the hall alone. Without any clear direction in mind, I head toward the stairwell. Anger clouds my vision; my knees are shaky, and I lean on the wall to stay standing. My entire world feels upside down, spinning out of control.
Bam. My shoulder slams into someone, jolting my body back upright.
“I’m sorry,” I say automatically.
But sharp-edged things don’t apologize. They just cut right through. I steel myself and keep going, not looking back, continuing to drag my wobbly legs down the hallway to the exit.
“No, I’m sorry,” a tentative voice says behind me. Pawel. “I’m sorry about your dad. I just heard the news.” Intensity seeps into his words. “At least he died for a reason. You can be proud.”
His words shoot at me like bullets, a gut shot with no exit wound, and I stop short. I wrap my arms around my waist—like that could stop the bleeding—and peer inside the room Pawel just exited.
A group of kids, no older than eleven or twelve, huddle on the floor around a tablet screen. Barend would be livid if he caught them with this smuggled technology. As I wonder fleetingly what their punishment would be for risking the Common’s safety, one of the kids’ heads tilts to the side, giving me a full view of the screen.
My father’s face is splashed across an underground virtual newscast. The kids watch, enraptured as a computer-generated anchor with blue hair and violet eyes gives a breathless account of how the disgraced Family Planning Director shockingly took his own life out of shame.
“My brother says it’s all a conspiracy,” a girl with a high ponytail says. It’s Ellie, Pawel’s adopted sister. “A Goodwin would never give up.”
Another girl spies me standing in the doorway, her breath catching in her throat. She nudges the boy sitting beside her, and the entire group turns to stare at me, their mouths slightly open in reverence.
“Our parents sacrificed themselves for Ellie and me too,” Pawel says quietly. A crushing sadness marks his face at the memory. Pawel’s four-person family was illegal, even if Ellie wasn’t related by blood. Whatever hardships he experienced that led him to the Common will haunt him the rest of his life.
All at once my sharp edges soften with empathy.
I flick my gaze back to my own father on the newscast. They chose a photograph of him in his stately dress uniform. He looks strong and proud and so violently alive it hurts.
I scan the youthful faces of my unexpected audience. Ellie rises and holds out her forearm, fist curled into a tight ball, like Mira and I did at the end of our hijacked newscast. She’s petite but fierce, her oval-shaped hazel eyes reflecting her tremendous appetite for defiance at such a young age.
Everyone around her stands and does the same.
Tattoos, drawn with identical dark ink, cover their right wrists, each one a unique emblem of their own resistance: a charging bull, two thick parallel lines, a scorpion ready to strike, a beautifully patterned sun with a face inside.
Next to me Pawel lifts his shirtsleeve, revealing his own tattoo of a tree with thick roots sheltering the letter E.
Our spark worked. The flame of revolution spread like wildfire just as Rayla said it would, and now even the next generation can feel its burn.
My heart races wild inside my chest. I hold down my wrist, fist clenched.
“Resist much,” I say.
“Obey little,” their voices answer in unison.
Hailing from the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, Ashley Saunders and Leslie Saunders are award-winning filmmakers and twin sisters who honed their love of storytelling at The University of Texas at Austin. While researching The Rule of One, they fell in love with America’s national parks, traveling the path of Ava and Mira. The sisters can currently be found with their Boston terriers in sunny Los Angeles, exploring hiking trails and drinking entirely too much yerba mate.
Giveaway
Monday, May 6, 2019
Book Blitz - The Temple Twins by Emily Shore
THE TEMPLE TWINS by Emily Shore
Our team at CTP is excited to share the official release of THE TEMPLE TWINS by Emily Shore, which released in all online retailers today, May 6, 2019. THE TEMPLE TWINS is the fourth novel in Emily Shore's UNCAGED SERIES. Readers can dive further into this captivating and dynamic Young Adult fiction series today! If you haven't had a chance to start this series, today's the day since the first book—THE AVIARY—is FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME. Also, as a reminder, a portion of the sales from the first 30-days of each of the UNCAGED SERIES releases will be donated to an organization that helps survivors of human trafficking.
START READING BOOK 4 TODAY!
The Temple twins must unite as sisters or risk losing everything—including their own hearts.
PLUS...
THE FIRST BOOK IS FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME!
THE AVIARY by Emily Shore
“Gentlemen, we have a special treat for you today. Feast your eyes on this pure-blooded beauty!”
Serenity wakes to find she's been sold into The Aviary—an elite museum where girls are displayed as living art by day and cater to the lascivious whims of the highest bidder by night. In this elaborate and competitive world, girls go by names like Raven and Nightingale, and will stop at nothing to become top Bird. To escape would mean losing her parents, but to stay means losing herself.
ALSO...
BUY A BOOK AND HELP US DONATE TO A WORTHY CAUSE.
A percentage of the first 30-days worth of sales for each novel in THE UNCAGED SERIES will be donated to Women At Risk, International—a nonprofit organization, established to create circles of protection around those at risk. Through culturally sensitive, value-added intervention projects and partnerships, they provide safe places to heal from abuse, trafficking, exploitation, and more. Their passion is to empower survivors to live and work with dignity and hope.
Emily Shore is a MN author with a B.A. in Creative Writing from Metro State University and was a grand prize winner of #PitchtoPublication, which led her to working with professionals in the publishing industry. She is signed with Clean Teen Publishing for her anti-trafficking dystopian The Aviary, first in the Uncaged Series. For every sale, proceeds return to trafficking rescue and to Emily and her husband's international adoption fund.
Throughout the years, Emily has connected with rescue organizations and survivors of sex-trafficking and injects the truths she's learned into her books for youth. She loves motivational speaking on the issue of sex-trafficking and always hopes for more speaking events in schools, churches, and libraries. Please contact her on her website if you are interested in hearing her speak.
Emily lives in Saint Paul with her husband and two daughters. They are currently in the process of adopting a little girl from India.
MORE ABOUT EMILY SHORE: Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter
Please consider sharing this announcement. A simple forward, Facebook share, Tweet, etc. can help us bring awareness to both this series and the important cause that a portion of the series sales will be donated to.
~Thank you from Emily Shore and the CTP
Friday, May 3, 2019
Author Interview - L.E. DeLano
Jessa has spent her life dreaming of other worlds and writing down stories more interesting than her own, until the day her favorite character, Finn, suddenly shows up and invites her out for coffee. After the requisite nervous breakdown, Jessa learns that she and Finn are Travelers, born with the ability to slide through reflections and dreams into alternate realities. But it’s not all steampunk pirates and fantasy lifestyles—Jessa is dying over and over again, in every reality, and Finn is determined that this time, he’s going to stop it…This Jessa is going to live.
Check out my review for TRAVELER here!
Interview
What authors and/or books inspired your writing?
I love love love Cassandra Clare and the way she weaves her storylines (and her amazing, richly detailed characters). So often in her stories, she makes you revisit scenes and look at them from another perspective. I can't get enough of her, J.K. Rowling, or Sarah J. Maas.
What is your ideal writing setting (outside, at a desk, etc.)?
I always kind of laugh at this question. I have no “writer’s nook”, no “writing rituals”- none of that sacred writing space sort of stuff. I’m a single mom with a full time day job and two kids - one of whom is special-needs. I write whenever and wherever I get a chance, with a laptop on my lap, my kitchen table, or a café table, if I’m lucky enough to get away. I can write with the TV and dishwasher on, while one kid is singing and the other is yelling at him to shut up. I think it’s made me a better writer.
How do you deal with writer's block?
The trick with writer's block is to just write. Badly, if you have to, but keep writing. One thing that's been a tremendous help to me is using Google Voice Typing ( In the Tools menu on Google Docs - you need a headset with a microphone). I write a scene by talking it through, and the great thing here is all voice typing programs suck in various ways. They don't put in quotation marks, they randomly capitalize words, they sometimes mis-hear you. So you know that whatever you get down will be flawed. You accept that. And it frees you up so much to just keep going no matter what--no second guessing, no going back and fixing it once each line is down (thereby stopping your train of thought). You plan to go back and fix it all once the scene is finished, and it works. For me it really works.
In TRAVELER, do you have a special connection to any of your characters?
That would be Danny, and to a lesser degree, Jessa. I am an autism parent – my son is on the spectrum – and his relationship with his sister features heavily in some of Danny and Jessa’s scenes. Danny is every inch my son on paper. I wanted very much to show not just a person with autism in a positive way, but also to shine a light on what it’s like to be a sibling of a special needs person. Jessa has had to grow up very differently than some people because of that – and not in a bad way.
What are some of your favorite writing tropes that most people usually hate (I.e. love triangles, etc.)?
I absolutely LOVE a good love triangle! So much great tension and heartache, when it's done right (but soooo annoying when it's not).
TRAVELER is about taking portals into other universes. Are there any ideas for universes that didn't make it into the books? Will we ever get to see them?
I had a whole list of alternate realities--and a few historical realities (in the original draft of the story, Jessa also time traveled). I had a reality where everything was bubbles! People living in bubbles, driving floating bubble cars, dancing on bubble clouds. I had a great reality that Jessa and Finn traveled to, only to discover that he had a boyfriend in that reality. And Jessa was going to visit the Aztecs and nearly get her heart ripped out. I'd love to write ten more books in the series, but I guess we just have to hope it gets picked up by Netflix Originals.
What can we hope to see from you in the future?
I have a few different irons in the fire right now. One is a YA fantasy based on Irish mythology, another is a YA Sci-fi thriller, and the third is a contemporary YA. We'll have to see which one gets to the bookshelf first!
Any advice for aspiring authors?
First, finish your book. You will never be a published author without a finished book. Second, as you're shopping for agents and publishers, remember how subjective the process is. You can have a great book that still gets rejected (See: Harry Potter). Perseverance is a grueling waiting game, so keep writing while you wait for your book to find its home. Most of all, believe that it will.
L.E. DeLano is a novelist rep’d by Barry Goldblatt Literary agency, author of the YA fantasy novel “Traveler” (Swoon Reads/MacMillan) and lifelong writer. Her work has been featured on various online outlets and she lives in Pennsylvania with two very adventurous kids and two very ridiculous cats. In her spare time, she writes (of course) and binge-watches way too much Netflix.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Mini Reviews - April 2019
Title: Defy MeAuthor: Tahereh Mafi
Series: Shatter Me #5
Rating: 4/5
I actually did a full review for this one, right here.
Title: One?Author: Jennifer L. Cahill
Rating: 4/5
**I received an e-copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review**
This took me a while to get through, but I thoroughly enjoyed every word. It's the perfect book to just take time to relax and read, which is exactly what I needed. The main characters all had different things to deal with and I found myself genuinely interested to see where each character ends up. I especially liked Penelope's storyline, because she keeps getting guys thrown at her and she doesn't want to end up with someone completely plain and boring. Which makes sense! The ending was a plot twist that I didn't see coming and ended in a way that was basically a cliff hanger, so I can't wait to read the next one. I'm team Alyx.
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Top 10 - Sci-fi Books
Sci-fi is one of my favorite genres, so while I was busy studying for finals, I threw together this list of 10 Sci-fi books that I absolutely adore in no particular order!
2. These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
3. Alienated by Melissa Landers
4. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
5. Cinder by Marissa Meyer
6. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
7. The Body Electric by Beth Revis
8. 1984 by George Orwell
9. Divergent by Veronica Roth
10. The Host by Stephanie Meyer
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