HOT SUMMER READS from Zoe Winters & Kimberly Kinrade

Summer is heating up, and we're making it even hotter with a sizzling summer promotion you won't want to miss.

Win a Kindle Fire and six signed paperback books from authors Zoe Winters and Kimberly Kinrade, and get ready to enjoy some sexy hot reads while having fun in the sun.

From August 5-18^th, Winters and Kinrade are giving away two sets of each of their paranormal romance series (all signed) to two lucky winners. The Grand Prize winner will also receive a Gift Certificate for Amazon.com to cover the cost of a Kindle Fire (but we won't tell if you just want to buy $200 worth of books instead!)

Join us in celebrating the launch of the newest in Zoe Winters's Preternatural Series, Life Cycle (how much do we love love love Tamara and Cain? So freaking much!) which now includes one novella compilation and three novels. If hot & steamy paranormal romance is your thing, then you'll fall in love with all the hunks in this series, whether they be demons, vampires, werewolves or mages… they're all so deliciously bad they're good!

Life Cycle is book 4 in the Preternaturals series. However, new readers can read this installment first with no problems. Most of the books work as stand alones, and each book focuses on a different couple. The main theme of the Preternaturals is: “Everybody is the hero of their own story.” Some characters start out villains and become heroes. Some are heroes and turn into villains. Some are heroes to some characters and villains to others.

The series world has multiple dimensions, heaven, hell (which is earth), demon dimensions, and others. Magic, reincarnation, witches, vampires, demons, werecreatures of all sorts (called therians), gods, and angels all play an important role in the Pretverse.

It’s a world where blood is magic, authority is questioned, and soul mates always find each other, no matter how many incarnations it takes.

The Preternaturals contains a blend of snarky humor and angst that fans of the series have come to expect and enjoy.

As an extra bonus for this exciting launch, get signed copies of Kimberly Kinrade's award winning Forbidden Series—a YA paranormal romance/thriller.

"...a thrilling, dark and deeply romantic read that had me sitting on the edge of my seat and eagerly awaiting the next installment." - Refracted Light Young Adult Book Reviews

While light on sex (it is Young Adult after all) it's packed full of romance and a fast-paced thrilling adventure. Think X-Men meets Dollhouse if Professor X has been an evil human trafficking geneticist.

Paranormal teens with unimaginable powers. An evil organization with deep secrets. When Sam, a girl who reads minds, meets a boy who controls minds, she discovers her future isn’t what she thought.

Together they must escape and free the others… or risk losing everything–and everyone–they love.

Learn more about Zoe Winters's Preternatural Series here:

http://zoewintersbooks.com/books/

Book 1: Blood Lust


Book 2: Save My Soul


Book 3: The Catalyst


Book 4: Life Cycle

And more about Kimberly Kinrade's Forbidden Series here:

http://kimberlykinrade.com/books/forbidden-series/

Book 1: Forbidden Mind

Book 2: Forbidden Fire

Book 3: Forbidden Life (coming Oct. 2, 2012)

About Zoe Winters

Zoe Winters writes quirky and sometimes dark paranormal romance. Her favorite colors are rainbow and clear.

To receive updates on new releases from the author, send an email to: zoewintersbooks AT gmail DOT com with "Subscribe" in the subject line. Newsletters go out only when there is an actual new release or a big contest. Your inbox will not be cluttered, newsletters won't go out more frequently than once a month, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

You can visit the author at: http://www.zoewintersbooks.com

Be sure also to visit http://www.theriantype.com for some fun supplemental material.

Twitter Page

Like her on Facebook

Amazon Author Page

Goodreads Author Profile

About Kimberly Kinrade

Kimberly Kinrade was born with ink in her veins and magic in her heart. She writes all things paranormal and fantasy, including award-winning young adult and children's books.

Visit her at http://KimberlyKInrade.com

Also visit http://IPIAcademy.com to participate in a fun fan-based site with swag and info on all things paranormal. You even get to be a secret agent!

Twitter Page

Like her on Facebook

Amazon Author Page

Goodreads Author Page

About the GIVEAWAY

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Blog Streaking with Thea and Friends

For the month of April, fellow author, Thea Atkinson is streaking through 30 blogs and flashing us a piece of fiction. I generously offered her a space today so she could expose a piece. My blog will be back to normal tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy and follow the links at the end to see who she flashed yesterday and who she will flash tomorrow. Feel free to leave a comment to let me know if you enjoyed the streak, and you are welcome to tweet it or share it on Facebook. You can also follow the chain through twitter with the hashtag #blogstreak

I am Anna

By Thea Atkinson

http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com

I am Anna, and the sounds of this house whisper to me as I lie on my narrow bed in darkness. There’s no window in my bedroom to relieve my eye of wall; no moonlight streams in through clouded panes. This room is wholly blanketed in a perfume that dissipates by day but that leaks from the walls at night and rises to my nose with the stealth of a snake. It brings with it a spectral whispering that brushes over my body and makes each hair rise to its touch. From toe... to shin... to thigh... to stomach… the moaning washes over me, as if it were a blanket being pulled to my chin.

When it reaches my ears it swells to a whisper and circles my head with a ghostly life of its own, with essence, and movement, and body.

I repeat the same sentence to remind myself I am of this world and no other, that I am a solid body with a right to be here. I repeat it to block out the sounds of night in this room, to disguise the whispers, to fill in the brief silences between the guttural cries--to drive away the spirits.

I am Anna.

I scrub his floors and scour his fancy, indoor commode in return for billet, spare and cheap as it is. My employer just grunts at my efforts and scurries back into the mortuary, closing the door behind him with a deathly click. I gape and try not to look shocked at the naked bodies within.

The Music of My Muse

The Music of the Muse

Sorry I haven’t been around lately but I’ve been a bit under the weather.  Trying to stay awake and get some writing done, despite cold meds.  To get in the mood, I have my personal writing station on Jango running in the background.  It plays a mix of songs from bands I’ve designated and those thrown in by Jango.  I knew that music had the power to change my mood, so it followed that my characters would have music that represented them, both in general and in certain scenes. Right now, I’m listening to Bruno Mars “Grenade”.  It somewhat reminds me of Ekaterina Vilkas, the shapeshifting assistant to my Russian vampire, Baron Ivan Vasilievich.  She is hopelessly and obsessively in love with him.  She will do anything for him and in a dangerous extension of this, she will do anything to make him hers.  So I might add it to Kat’s song list.  Songs are not a perfect reminder fit my characters but they help me focus on them or the emotion of a scene. 

“Werewolves of London” belongs to Liam when he’s in one of his playful moods.  As his mood darkens and the moon grows full, he might switch to U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name”. When out driving, he listens to Bad Haggis. In his gloomier moments, The Doors and darker from there.

Micaela is a funny girl. She likes music but since there are so many things she doesn’t want to deal with she avoids associating things and herself with music.  As usual she’s holding out. As if on cue, Styx’s Crystal Ball started.  It now belongs to my MC Micaela.

Now I’m from New Jersey and here we have our own version of Coke vs. Pepsi and it’s Springsteen vs. Bon Jovi.  I like early Bruce, but I am a Bon Jovi girl.  Looking great from the front and rear doesn’t hurt, either.  So I find a lot of inspiration in his songs.  Welcome to Wherever You Are is a group song for my main characters who all seem to be on a journey to getting comfortable in their own skin (or skins, in some cases).

During fight scenes, it’s not about the lyrics; it’s the bass and the drum.

What do you listen to while you right? Is it about the character, the emotion, the location or the action?

Monday Musings: Shadows, E-books and Entrepeneurs

I have always been a bibliophile.  I love the smell of a book, the feel of the page between my fingers.  Waking up on the couch with a novel splayed across my chest (dare I say bosom—how Jane Austen).  But I have recently discovered, along with throngs of others, the benefits of portable reads.  I dipped my toe in with the Kindle for PC.  It’s on my Android but my over-40 eyes, rebel against the screen.  I mean, how will I read the Large Print Version on a screen that will hold four words at a time.  I haven’t made the plunge into actually buying a Kindle, but my birthday is coming up….

Then there is the issue of book signings.  That’s for another time.  I have an idea.

I previously talked about a paper book I read that I liked called “Paul is Undead”.  For those who have read it, it shed a whole new perspective on Mick Jagger’s Grammy performance.  This time I want to share my thoughts on “Into the Shadows” by Karly Kirkpatrick.  I purchased the e-book from Amazon.  Karly and Darkside Publishing represent an interesting aspect on the changing landscape of book publishing and selling.

Her story is a well conceived YA story of difference and persecution and the paranormal.  As a former teacher, I think it could have an appeal to the reluctant reader.  It is the story of high school students and their families some of whom possess unique abilities and the government that would declare them Enemies of the State.  For struggling readers who need high interest text,  that could segway them to such required novels as The Crucible or history topics like McCarthyism, Nazism, Japanese American after Pearl Harbor, this might be a way in.

In “Into the Shadows’ we meet, for the first time, Paivi Anderson who is not like other teenagers.  Since she was a child she has seen things that will happen, a good grade, a fall in the playground and things more horrible than she can tell.  One day Paivi, her family and others are rounded up and told that they must wear special badges and that their movement is restricted.  They are now Enemies of the State.  It is modern and paranormal, a genre very popular with the YA reader.  Lots of potential here.

What is also interesting is Darkside Publishing, a consortium of writers who are trying you combine their markets and through mutual promotion and support create a combined momentum for their work.  It is this kind of entrepreneurship that we can expect to see in a fluid industry.  It is part of a trend worth watching. Follow them on Facebook and Blogspot.

What good e-books have you read lately?  Are you an e-book author?  Why did you choose that route?

Decisions, Decisions

One year ago, I wrote an article for More magazine’s online edition about reinventing yourself.  You can read it here:

http://www.more.com/2009/11597-reinventing-one-small-step-at-a-time

It may not go down as the best example of my writing, but it talks about a theme I keep revisiting and observing in my life and in others.  Deciding.

As writers, we are watchers.  We observer people and events and maybe, just maybe, they become the seed of our next story or character.  I am a character-focused author or maybe plot-focused.  It’s so hard to tell.  My writing mentor, Barbara Rogan, explained in one of her online classes, and I paraphrase, (any errors are my misinterpretations), that each scene puts characters in a position to make a decision, big or small, and that each decision changes the character and direction of the plot.

I watch people every day.  I see their actions and decisions, sometimes better than they do because I’m looking for them.  I wonder what they are thinking and why they are doing what they are doing.  Do they appreciate that even a seemingly small decision, picking up the dry cleaning now instead of later, has a ripple effect?  Have you ever made a last minute decision to stop for a coffee for the road, then after crawling along in traffic you pass a messy accident and wonder what-if? 

In the opening scenes of my paranormal manuscript, my main character, Micaela decides to use metaphysical gifts she has suppressed to help find a missing friend.  She really has no choice, since she already blames herself for the death of her parents because of what she did not do or say.  But this new decision opens a door she cannot easily close and draws the attention of ‘others’.  Events continue to require decisions that she must make, even if the decision is to run, and each is a step along a path.

What decisions do your characters make and how does it drive the story? 

As for me, I must decide everyday to keep focused on my goals.  Like our plots it is often easy to go off on tangents, to try to hijack our stories.  It may be the job or it may be the latest rejection letter from an agent or editor, the dreaded writer’s block.  How I react to feedback (this includes rejection) is a decision.  I can dismiss it, rail against it, or look for the learning.  I choose to look.  This is no easy feat, especially if I’ve also had the day from hell at work, but I give it it’s moment, take a deep breath and work to move forward.

New Year’s Resolutions are just decision.  This blog was a New Year’s Resolution.  The question is: how committed are we to those decisions?  What decisions have you made and how do you stick to them?  How do you know if you have REALLY made the decision?   

Kill your PITAs

So I sit here contemplating the murder mystery series I want to write someday.  Why you ask.  So I can murder my PITA’s.  In my family that’s not just a flatbread great with hummus, it’s short for Pain in the Ass.  I have spent years working in the corporate world and watched Performance Coaches make millions speaking and writing about leadership.  But, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is listening… I think you know where I am going with this.

Why is it that “leadership” still thinks that it is effective and appropriate to use negativity and threat to produce results?  There is some amazing literature out there on how to motivate for peak performance, to develop people by coaching and mentoring.  What leadership manual are they working from?

So I try to decide, who’s next?  How?  Maybe I could work it into my paranormal.  Weres and vamps are so handy that way. Have you ever been tempted to murder a PITA?  What about an ex?  In my current manuscript, one of the vamps killed his fiancée while a new vamp and out of control.  I gave her the last name of an ex.  Don’t get mad…

After all, they say you should write what you know? How about you?  No names needed, unless you want to share.

A Jump on a New Year's Resolution

2 hours later

People say I have a lot to say…

Usually I say a lot when I’m trying to avoid doing.  In this case, I am procrastinating on my current manuscript, that always needs editing, and the next manuscript, which is just a gleam in my mind’s eye.  Oh, and those query letters for a manuscript in search of an agent.

So…it was time to start blogging.  After all, it’s still writing.  Right?

Besides, I was going to make this one of my resolutions for 2011.  We are snowed in today by a raging blizzard—see photos.  No time like the present.

Like most writers, I have a J-O-B.  Writing is a passion, an addiction; I don’t know how to stop.  It doesn’t pay the bills, yet.  In fact, it doesn’t pay at all.   I know there are a lot of us out there pouring our words out on paper or screen.  I wanted to create a place to ramble about the writing process, ideas, books, movies and all those things that writers wonder about including real life.

Christmas Day, my daughter flipped through the guide on our TV and noted that there was nothing to watch except multiple versions of The Christmas Carol.  At the same time my son was excited about the premiere of the Dr. Who version of The Christmas Carol.  Christmas is about hope and redemption.   But do we have the tendency to take a good thing (a story, a theme a trend) and beat it to death.   I hope not.   Paranormals are my passion, ever since I was in grammar school and raced home everyday to watch Dark Shadows or curled up under a hand crocheted throw in a dark room with my grandmother as images of Bela Lugosi, John Carradine and Lon Chaney (Sr. and Jr.) flickered across the television screen.

So for 2011, I will continue to pursue my passion, hopefully publish and get this blog thing figured out.  Did I mention the twenty pounds I must lose by mid-March?