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Monthly Archives: August 2013

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.

Excerpt:
A photo falls from my papers and lands face up.
Her face. Her eyes. It’s like looking in the mirror.
I scoop the picture up and head down the hall. A piano chord strikes. The soft tone echoes toward me, and the digital watch on my wrist beeps. A rush of memories slam into my mind, knocking me off balance. I wobble on my feet as if the collision were physical. I retch, the vomit threatening to spill. Swallowing, it burns like racing lava. I check my watch.
I only have thirteen minutes left.
I don’t bother to look through the doors to find five-year-old me. Instead, I race down the hall, feet gliding across the linoleum. My hood flaps behind me as my body crashes into the elementary school front doors. Blinding sunlight greets me, and I am flying down the hill. My arms pump, and I suck in deep breaths of air, like I learned in my time as a sprinter at Cambridge High.
Rounding the corner into Mass Avenue, I see Tower Records off in the distance.
Beep.
I now have ten minutes to run eight blocks in time to save Mom. If I don’t make it, if I fail, I won’t get another shot.
15 Minutes is available on Amazon.
Find more from Jill Cooper on her website, Facebook and Twitter.

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 whole series is available for $0.99 today on Amazon!
For more from Kelly Walker, visit her website, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.

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!

Available to download on:
Amazon
Smashwords
Barnes and Noble
KoboRock ‘n’ Troll is the 11th book in the Hilda the Wicked Witch series. The first 7 books in the series are free in most places.

Excerpt

Slipton was one of those quaint little villages that had a typical charm to it. Slipton’s charm was in its smell, because many a famous baker came from there, and new bakers were constantly being trained so the scent of freshly baked bread was always around.

“Bakers?” William wondered. “That’s special.”

“The baker in our village is from here also,” Hilda lectured. “He was the best of the baker’s dozen of his year. They only deliver thirteen bakers each year, you should know.”

“Oh?” William was not prepared for that revelation.

“One a month, and a spare just in case,” Hilda clarified as she saw the wizard’s surprise. “And I think I see where we’re wanted.” She pointed down at a huge area of land, half of which was carefully coloured with budding flowers that attempted to withstand the cold wind, and the other half looked like a battlefield. As the two brooms flew lower, the magicals saw six people standing at the edge of the field of flowers. They all stared at the part of the field that looked freshly destroyed. Once Hilda and William touched down, they saw a massive amount of garden gnomes in the deflowered field. The six people stood and stared at the small army of grey stone men with their shovels and wheel barrows.

“I wonder what they’re doing,” William wondered as they walked to the human and hopefully talkative contingent of the staring contest. The gnomes looked like a boringly silent lot.

Hilda announced their arrival. A woman asked the others ‘if they had them’, without taking her eyes off the gnomes. Only after at least three confirmations were voiced did the woman blink and look at the magicals. “I am so glad you are here,” she said as she rubbed her eyes. “They’re really becoming a problem.”

Hilda looked at the garden gnomes. “Not the regular kind I guess?” The little creatures did not strike her as odd, except that they stood still.

“No. As long as we look at them they stand there. If we don’t look, or when we blink at the same time, they approach and start damaging the flowers. In the daytime it’s not too difficult to keep them under control this way, but when it’s dark it becomes hard. We lack proper light, and it’s still very cold at night.”

“How long has this been going on already?” Hilda asked, as William and Obsi walked over to the grey statues.

“A few days. At first we thought they were here to help so we did not pay attention to them. But then they did this, in half a day,” the woman said as she pointed at the dishevelled area. “After ruining one of our larger flower fields further to the south.”

“Damn, these things are heavy.”

Hilda looked up and saw William come back. He carried one of the gnomes in his arms, the thing wrapped in a piece of rough cloth. “Are you crazy, wizard? You don’t carry garden gnomes around like they’re… statues!”

William laughed. “That’s how this one feels though. And if looking at them is the problem, then blindfolding them is the solution I think. This one is quite harmless at the moment.” He laid the wrapped up gnome on the ground. It didn’t move.

“Is that really all we have to do?” the woman asked as she prodded the rigid shape with her foot.”Hermina, can you take over from Joe for a while?” someone of the staring group called out. “He got some sand in his eyes.”

Find more from Paul Kater on his website, Twitter and Smashwords.

“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.

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