28 Aug 2013

Waiting on Wednesday: Premeditated by Josin McQuein


Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly memo that is hosted by Breaking the Spine Blog.



Expected Release Date: 8th October 2013
(Release date obtained from Goodreads)

Goodreads link is here.




A week ago, Dinah’s cousin Claire cut her wrists.

Five days ago, Dinah found Claire’s diary and discovered why.

Three days ago, Dinah stopped crying and came up with a plan.

Two days ago, she ditched her piercings and bleached the black dye from her hair.

Yesterday, knee socks and uniform plaid became a predator’s camouflage.

Today, she’ll find the boy who broke Claire.

By tomorrow, he’ll wish he were dead.
Continue reading Waiting on Wednesday: Premeditated by Josin McQuein

27 Aug 2013

Dusty Reads: The Secret Year by Jennifer R Hubbard




Dusty Reads is a Tuesday meme that I found at Ya-aholic.com and was originally started at Xpressoreads.com. 

This is a meme where I intend to showcase a book that has been on my shelf for a while and haven’t got to yet.  If you have read this or have heard of this book, I would love to hear your comments on whether you  like it or not, or have heard great things about it.



This week, my  Dusty Read is:


 Colt and Julia were secretly together for a year, and no one ever knew, not even Julia's boyfriend. Why would they-they were from two different crowds. Julia lived in her country club world and Colt . . . didn't. Then Julia dies in a car accident. Colt is devastated but can't mourn openly, and he's tormented that he may have played a part in her death. And when Julia's journal ends up in his hands, he is forced to relive their year together-just when he is trying to forget. The problem is, how do you get over someone who was never really yours to begin with?


     

   

      The Secret Year
   

 

 
 
    

Continue reading Dusty Reads: The Secret Year by Jennifer R Hubbard

26 Aug 2013

Author Interview - Peter Meredith




Twelve-year-old Audrey Wyatt bears the unfortunate nickname "Odd." A name, even her bar hopping, alcoholic mother uses—when she's sober enough even to recognize the girl. Odd
doesn't protest. This is her life and it can be no other way, not when she's deformed as she is.
Born with a combination of rare birth defects, Odd's eyes are a startling and dreadful red. Demon eyes is the first thought that springs to mind and the little girl takes
care to hide them behind dark sunglasses. This is something her mother insists on, except when she's trading freak show peeks for dollars or drinks, a practice
that is a nightly torture for the girl.  Yet when her mom abandons her, Odd discovers that loneliness and fear of the unknown are
far worse than being a freak. Desperate for the least love, the girl with red eyes begins a quest through the American underclass
that takes her halfway across the country. She thinks her adventure is a search for her mother, but in truth she's after so much more.




If you could work with any other author, who would it be and why? If the option included deceased authors as well I'd choose I'd Harper Lee who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. Not only was that masterpiece her debut novel, it was her only novel. She was clearly gifted with genius level raw talent, while I am gifted with the ability to shamelessly attach my name to hers! It would be a perfect pairing.

When and where do you write? I write first thing in the morning. I get up early while my wife sleeps in. Later I head off to a favorite Italian restaurant here in Denver and write through two whiskey sours and a plate of carbonara

What is the hardest part of the writing for you? Promotional work. I'm not one of those who claim to write for the sake of writing, but book signings, readings, and schlepping your work all over the place gets old very quickly.

When and why did you first start writing? Unlike almost every other author I've run across, I wasn't reading at the age of two and writing my first poem by my third birthday. Quite the opposite, I hated to write. I never learned to type and my penmanship hasn't progressed beyond a second grade level. Since I would fret over every little error, an e-mail used to take me close on an hour to write, if the client was important enough.

But that all changed in 2010. With the economy in the dumps, my company decided to rework our website and in order to attract attention to it, I was told I should write articles and submit them online. So I painstakingly wrote five articles. They were terrible.

Not terribly written, just dull. Writing about the technical aspects of LED lights is super boring and not just to me but for everyone. So with Halloween coming up, I decided to write about the two super-natural occurrences that I had been involved with instead. The boss wasn't exactly happy, but seeing as she's my wife, what could she do?

So I wrote two little short stories. Just like that, something kicked in. Suddenly I became a writer. It was altogether inexplicable to go from writing as little as possible to writing all the time. Without any classes or real training, I wrote a book, and then a trilogy, and in October I will begin work on my twelfth novel. Life is strange, but great.

How did you come up with the idea for the book? The original idea for Sprite came about because I wanted to add to my collection of horror short stories. The only problems was that main character, Audrey(Odd) wouldn't contain herself. She grew so out of control that the short story stretched to a novella and then to a novel. As well she completely jettisoned the idea of horror. Her story is that of a girl in search of the least love and at times it felt as if I wasn't the one writing, Odd was.

Are you a big reader? If so, what are you reading now? Gerald's Game by Stephen King. So far, I wouldn't recommend it. The main character's voice is jarringly unfeminine. It's not that she's butch or a tom-boy, it's just that if a few words were substituted, the reader would easily believe the character is a man. Also it's over-written. As an example, the main character is chained to a bed and she spends 11 pages trying to get a glass of water from a shelf. After awhile I didn't really care if she got the water or not. (note: I'm only 92 pages in and it might get better. Fingers crossed.)

Do you have any advice for other aspiring writers? Stay in school. Don't give up on your dreams. Reach for the stars. And definitely memorize as many platitudes as you can before giving interviews. Truthfully, I'm full of advice specific to indie publishing or writing and don't mind answering questions. I can be messaged at Goodreads or will reply to blog comments.



Continue reading Author Interview - Peter Meredith

☼☼ Book Review / The Oathbreaker's Shadow by Amy McCulloch ☼☼



Fifteen-year-old Raim lives in a world where you tie a knot for every promise that you make. Break that promise and you are scarred for life, and cast out into the desert.

Raim has worn a simple knot around his wrist for as long as he can remember. No one knows where it came from, and which promise of his it symbolises, but he barely thinks about it at all—not since becoming the most promising young fighter ever to train for the elite Yun guard. But on the most important day of his life, when he binds his life to his best friend (and future king) Khareh, the string bursts into flames and sears a dark mark into his skin.

Scarred now as an oath-breaker, Raim has two options: run, or be killed.




Published:    6th June 2013
Publisher:  Random House
Goodreads :  Click here
Series:  Book 1, The Knots Sequence 

Source:  Review Copy from Publisher
Review:   9 out of 10

My Review

What I loved about this book...

I absolutey loved the world building in this first book in a series.  It is a world where before you 'come of age' if you make a promise, you get punished but after you have 'come of age' when you make a promise, you are bound to it (having to wear a thread bracelet to seal the deal).  If you break this promise, you are banned from society and are forever followed by a shadow, which is a ghost of the person they made the promise to.  I really enjoyed getting into this world and learning all the different rules and regulations of the society. 

What I was not fond of with this book...

Apart from one particular plot twist near the end of the story that I had hoped happened another way, honestly, there really wasn't anything I didn't like about this book


In summary...

This is a really great start to a series.  When picking up this book, I was completely out of my comfort zone having not read this style of story before but I have to say I really enjoyed this story and will definately be picking up the next in the series....

Video Review...



Best wishes

Debs :-)


Continue reading ☼☼ Book Review / The Oathbreaker's Shadow by Amy McCulloch ☼☼

22 Aug 2013

Author Feature - Sara V Zook





Book #1

Genre: Fantasy

Synopsis:

From the moment Anna James meets the strange prisoner Emry Logan, she becomes instantly obsessed and will stop at nothing to try to get another interaction with him. But going against her family and church aren't without consequence. She is deemed a traitor as she quickly realizes that there’s more to Emry’s past than just murder. He has a special ability that is far from human that he only shares with her. Feeling this magical connection, Anna has to free her beautiful inmate so that they can be together finally, but someone else knows about Emry’s secret and wants Anna to stop digging for answers as she finds herself in the midst of a modern day witch hunt. The life of an innocent pastor’s kid suddenly is turned upside down in a war between good and evil as Anna begins to wonder which people in her life are on the side of good, and is she one of them.










About the Author 

Sara wrote her first book at age six.  Of course, it was only a few pages, handwritten by a 6-year-old and was about kitty cats.  As a child, some days she would be out venturing in the woods with her older brother and cousins, but sometimes would stay inside and create stories, write them down in a notebook and then pretend to publish them by typing them up on her mother's old typewriter.  "I know, what a weird child I was."  From then on out, Sara didn't want to be anything but a writer.  When others would ask her classmates what they wanted to be when they grew up, some would say the usual things, singers, veterinarians, astronauts, but not Sara.  Sara would say writer, and then she'd get a strange stare.  Writer?  What child says they want to be a writer?

Sara graduated from United High School in 2000, a small school out in the country where everyone knew each other from kindergarten up and could tell you every little detail about each other and still can.  "It was a nice area to grow up, and I love going back."

In 2004, Sara graduated from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown with a bachelor's in, you guessed it, creative writing.  She had such a blast in college, met some of the greatest people that Sara still remains in close contact with along with her husband, Brad.  They were married and had two children back to back, so while Sara was in "mommy land," her writing was put on the back-burner.

 
Sara started writing again in the summer of 2010, and after three months, 'Strange in Skin' became the product of her imagination.  Sara had so much fun writing it, she couldn't stop.  She would work all day and then stay up late at night typing up a few more chapters.  She didn't want it to end, so Sara decided she would have to write more books to follow it.  The main characters, Anna James and Emry Logan, were people Sara could relate to, that she loved to relate to.  There's nothing quite like a sappy love story that's so good it sucks you in.  You want them to be together.  They have to be together and you can't stop reading until they are together.  That with a little paranormal twist, and voila, a book is born. 

Then Sara and Brad became proud parents once again. Sara is still in "mommy land" but also Strange in Skin fantasy land.  The mix of both raising children and writing makes for some pretty entertaining days.  Sara could write a million stories on her kids alone, especially the things that come out of their mouths that you're either so shocked they said or are so funny that you can't stop laughing. 

Sara really hopes everyone enjoys her first novel, Strange in Skin.  Evadere (Book 2 of Strange in Skin) is also available along with a stand alone, Clipped.  She hopes everyone enjoys reading her books and will talk to everyone soon! 







Continue reading Author Feature - Sara V Zook