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15 Minutes by Jill Cooper

The future can be a dangerous place when you changed the past….

15 minutes is all the Rewind Agency gives a person when they travel to the past, but for Lara Crane it’s enough for her to race through the city, find her mother, and stop her from being killed in a mugging that happened over ten years ago.

But the story she’s been told all her life is a lie. When Lara takes a bullet meant for her mother, her future changes forever. A new house, new friends and a new boyfriend turns Lara’s life upside down. She thinks if she can save her father from prison, reunite him with her mother, everything will be fine.

15 Minutes is an edgy high octane YA thriller where the people Lara trusts change in an instant. She is in a timeline she doesn’t understand, and is about to make one fatal mistake as she faces an enemy so familiar, he’s family.

Book Trailer: Gamer’s Quest by George Ivanoff

George Ivanoff talks about how he made this fantastic trailer over on Writing for Children.

Only $0.99! The Complete Souls of the Stones Trilogy by Kelly Walker

A convenient omnibus edition of the three main works of the Souls of the Stones series.

Souls of the Stones follows Emariya Warren as she navigates the three divided lands of her world, as well as the three families striving for control. The series incorporates traditional fantasy elements such as prophecy and magic with a love story that transcends genre and time. Books 1-3 are included.

Cornerstone – When Emariya Warren learns enemy forces have captured her father, she’ll do anything to save him. Anything. Even marry a mysterious prince she knows nothing about in order to rally the strength to arrange a rescue. During her journey to Torian’s foreign castle, Emariya comes face to face with her mother’s killers–and a deadly secret.

Not only does Emariya possess a powerful but unexpected magical gift. So does the prince she’s promised to marry, and an ominous prophecy has warned their gifts must never be combined.

If she breaks her promise to marry Torian, she won’t be able to save her father and if she keeps it, she may bring a curse upon everything she holds dear. Determining which choice is best won’t be easy, but when she meets the gorgeous prince who may desire more than just her heart, she realizes she will have to fight just to have a choice at all.

Her heart wants him desperately. Her head begs her to run. If she doesn’t want to share her mother’s fate, she’ll have to find a way to untangle the truth from the lies in time to save herself.

Second Stone – In the second installment in Souls of the Stones, the stakes are higher, the romance is hotter, and Emariya’s power as a Cornerstone is growing.

Determined to make sense of the betrayals, lies, and her undeniable attraction to Torian, Emariya and her prince begin the journey to Sheas to confront her uncle and bring her father home.

Broken Stone – Unable to avoid her destiny any longer, Emariya has become the leader her mother always envisioned. Before she can focus on embracing her gifts to unify her three lands, she must first stop her own land from dissolving into civil war.

The Defiance by A.G. Henley

It hasn’t been long since Fennel, a Sightless Groundling, and Peree, her Lofty Keeper, fell in love and learned the truth: the Scourge, and their world, are not what they seem.

Fenn and Peree are determined to guide their people to the protected village of Koolkuna, but first they must convince them that everything they believe is a lie. An impossible task, especially when someone seems hell-bent on trying anything–even animal sacrifice and arson–to destroy the couple’s new bond and crush the frail truce between the Groundlings and the Lofties. Not everyone wants to uproot their lives in the forest, and those who stay behind will be left terribly vulnerable.

Fenn and Peree’s resolve to be together, and the constant threat of the Scourge’s return, push both groups to the breaking point. Unable to tell friend from foe, Fenn must again decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice to ensure the future of the people of the forest.

Only this time, the price of peace may be too high to bear.

The Defiance (Brilliant Darkness, #2), the highly anticipated sequel to The Scourge (Brilliant Darkness, #1), a 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist!

Download The Defiance on Amazon.

For more from A.G. Henley, visit her website, Facebook and Twitter.

Hilda the Wicked Witch by Paul Kater

Hilda and William leave for another vacation, some time away. Knowing the witch and her wizardly partner, this will end up in work of course. Tremors, flower witches, dwarves and trolls are only some of the elements that will turn this trip into yet an unforgettable one for the magical couple who will also have a few fun surprises along the way!

“Readers are not simply page turners, they are thought turners…”

“Readers are not simply page turners; they are thought turners, as well—true imaginative partners, not passive audience members.”

I love that.

This is from a thoughtful essay about the mid-list by the author of the traditionally published Red Sonja series, and also the now indie-published Fall of the First World series:

Midlist authors reaching their readers in this age of instant gratification brings me to another observation, this one regarding my former agent, Don Maass, who has been spectacularly successful in developing precisely these sorts of instant-gratification, industrial-quantity products that regularly appear on the bestseller lists, where sales “consistently override all product development decisions.”

Maass and I once talked about the possibility of my writing my breakthrough novel. When I knew him, early in his career and, as it turned out, near the end of mine, he championed my fantasy trilogy The Fall of the First World, then recently out of print, and tried to get it picked up for republication. No one wanted it, but I credit him for his hard work and his appreciation for a book series that had nothing in common with the Tolkienesque clones that were as popular then as they are now. On the other hand, Maass failed me in a number of ways. He refused to show Magicians(later retitled The Fair Rules of Evil) to Doubleday, even after an editor there asked to see it; he preferred to pitch it to paperback houses. It was published under its new title by Avon, who dropped the ball miserably on distributing it. I also recall Don’s dismissing one my pitches (for a manuscript titled Sinister) because it mixed genres. “Is it a horror novel?” he asked me in 1987. “Or is it a police procedural? It has to be one or the other.” Perhaps I was ahead of my time, given the enormous success we’ve seen over the past fifteen or so years with precisely those kind of cross-genre novels.

Don would have no interest in representing me now because I myself am no longer interested in trying to develop the kind of book-as-product that he has so successfully managed to promote in this modern era of readers-as-consumers. (I know this because I recently pitched him with a new idea and never received a response.) But I think it’s important to keep in mind what Don has helped to accomplish for his brand of writer. His methodology has been undeniably profitable and has helped shape the current system of fiction publishing in New York. However, we are moving at the speed of light into fascinating new regions of author-reader exchange as a benefit of digital publishing, web publishing, independent publishing. In a year-end blog dated this past December, Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, reports an encounter he had with Maass in which they came down on two different sides of writers publishing independently. Mark Coker thinks that the future for many writers is in self-publishing; Maass, contrarily, says, “If you don’t care to reach readers, then by all means self-publish.” ( http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/12/mark-cokers-2013-book-publishing.html) As a woman who responded in the Comment sections of Coker’s blog says, Maass turned her down when she pitched him, and if she’d listened to him, she’d still have no readers. Instead, she now has thousands as a result of self-publishing her novels. It’s simply the difference between writing to reach readers, even if the cost-benefit ratio does not look good in a purely business sense, and writing to produce a product that will appeal to customers and succeed in a purely business sense. (Again, there used to be room for both types of story, back when we still had the midlist.)

Much of the discussion in the Comments section of Coker’s blog has to do with the concept of black swans—the outliers in any field that seem to come out of nowhere, exactly in the way that the latest writers or hit novels used to appear from the midlist. Where are these black swans now? They’re coming from the self-published authors and independent publishers.

 

Read his whole essay.

Movie Trailer: Kill Your Darlings

Lichgates by S.M. Boyce

Kara Magari is about to discover a beautiful world full of terrifying things: Ourea.

Kara, a college student still reeling from her mother’s recent death, has no idea the hidden world of Ourea even exists until a freak storm traps her in a sunken library. With nothing to do, she opens an ancient book of magic called the Grimoire and unwittingly becomes its master, which means Kara now wields the cursed book’s untamed power. Discovered by Ourea’s royalty, she becomes an unwilling pawn in a generations-old conflict – a war intensified by her arrival. In this world of chilling creatures and betrayal, Kara shouldn’t trust anyone… but she’s being hunted and can’t survive on her own. She drops her guard when Braeden, a native soldier with a dark secret, vows to keep her safe. And though she doesn’t know it, her growing attraction to him may just be her undoing.

For twelve years, Braeden Drakonin has lived a lie. The Grimoire is his one chance at redemption, and it lands in his lap when Kara Magari comes into his life. Though he begins to care for this human girl, there is something he wants more. He wants the Grimoire.

Get your FREE copy of Lichgates, the first novel in the Grimoire Saga, at any of the following retailers:
Amazon
Amazon UK
Kobo
iTunes
Smashwords

Find out more about S.M. Boyce on her blog and Twitter. You can also follow The Grimoire Saga on Facebook.

What did Charlotte Bronte think of Jane Austen?

A Bronte Rogue or  an Austenian Gentleman?

“I had not seen Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth as Darcy till I had read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped [photographed] portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck [stream]. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”

And you thought only contemporary authors could be snarky!  (More here.)

Considering Bronte had been told to write like Austen, she might have been justified for being a bit miffed. She decided to go a step further and slam her rival in classic nineteenth century style.

Was this more than writerly rivalry, though? Does it represent a real difference in what kind of writing —  and what kind of hero — or indeed, what kind of society, is preferable? Bronte was a Romantic, who idealized the violent passions, whereas Austen captured the aspirations of the nascent middle class. Both were rebels, I think, against the existing order, but Austen’s heroines were determined to conquer the class divisions of the old system through sense and sensibility, whereas Bronte heros were more likely to burn it to the ground.

Moonlit by Jadie Jones

Eighteen-year-old Tanzy Hightower knows horses, has grown up with them on Wildwood Farm. She also knows not to venture beyond the trees that line the pasture. Things happen out there that can’t be explained. Or undone. Worse, no one but she and the horses can see what lurks in the shadows of the woods.

When a moonlit ride turns into a terrifying chase, Tanzy is left to question everything, from the freak accident that killed her father to the very blood in her veins. Broken and confused, she turns to Lucas, a scarred, beautiful stranger, and to Vanessa, a charming new friend who has everything Tanzy doesn’t.

But why do they seem to know more about her than she knows herself?

Moonlit is the first in a trilogy and is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Excerpt

The glow from the barn quickly dissolves into the inky night. Not a shred of it accompanies us past the mangled gate. But the dark offers little relief from the shadows that plague me in the light of day.

The full moon casts a blue glow over the rolling field, making the dark places that sway in the steady breeze look alive. I release the breath I’d been holding as we near the riding ring. Hopewell stands still as I lean from the saddle to let us through the gate.

Once we’re closed inside the safety of the lit arena, I take a quick scan of the tree line. The woods and their shadows are still.

“Paranoid,” I say, unwilling to admit to myself that it sounds too much like a dare as it drifts across the empty pasture.

I cluck to Hopewell and he strikes off in a floating trot. He stretches his neck and lets out a snort. We track a figure-eight pattern across the broad arena and then I move him up into a canter. His three-beat gait feels like flying. My eyes close in bliss as we sail down the long side of the ring. And then, a break in rhythm. The next two beats come too fast and his typically light step pounds at the ground. My muscles clench, locking my seat into the tack, and my eyes fly open.

“Easy, Hope. Easy.”

His pulse skyrockets, thumping through the saddle. I search the dark in a long sweep, anxious to catch sight of something I can define scurrying in the brush. But the field is empty.

“I don’t see anything.” Panic raises my voice to an unfamiliar octave and every muscle tenses with adrenaline.

Suddenly, he charges for the railing, twisting his head so far to the inside of the ring that I can see the rolling whites of his eyes.

Whatever is scaring him is in here with us.

I brace myself in the tack and chance a look behind us. Horror charges through my body as I lock eyes with a dark, ghastly creature slinking along behind us. It lowers its saber head and opens a pair of wide, capable jaws. My breath stills in my throat as it lunges from its crouch. Hopewell spins and bucks, kicking the beast square in the chest and throwing me onto his neck.

Don’t fall! I cling to his mane as I try to right myself, but I can’t get my feet back in the stirrups.

Hopewell leaps into a gallop and races toward the end of the ring. The distance between us and the fence evaporates in seconds. I push him forward, silently begging him to ignore the routine barrier. He powers off the ground and sails over the rail. I sit up as he lands, and steer him towards the barn.

Without warning, he leaps sideways tossing me airborne. I cry out as I land hard back in the saddle.

Another animal races toward us from the side. The first creature is closing in from behind.

Find more from Jadie Jones on her website, blog, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.