{Blog Tour: Guest Post, Excerpt, & U.S. Giveaway} Sonia Poynter, Author of THE LAST STORED

What inspired me to write my book?

Inspiration can be found in the littlest of ideas, the smell of nutmeg and clove coming from the oven, a song you danced to when you were in high school, or a memory of leaves crunching under your feet as you walked home after school.  Each idea is carefully cut and then pieced into place until a work of art is formed.

I think inspiration is a lot like quilting. Often I sat and watched my great grandma Whitis. Her home was deep in the hills of Kentucky. She was a small woman with just a few teeth left in her mouth. I remember she covered her mouth when she laughed, and she laughed often. The quilting loom took up her whole living room, a patchwork of colors, and thread. I was eight years old. Her hands were worn as she brought the needle up and then back down, pulling the thread taunt with each stitch. My nose rested just above the fabric and I gazed in awe. Each remnant of fabric no matter how meager became a thing of beauty in her hands.  I still have one of her quilts. Now, it is thread-bear from love, but I cherish it greatly.

Inspiration for me is a bit of a memory, of laying on my back as a child imagining the clouds into the strangest of creatures, or hearing my mother pray for me and my brother when she washed the dishes every night, of seeing shadows under my bedroom door at midnight when I know everyone is fast asleep. It is both heartache, laughter, and knowing that imagination can grow into something to grab hold of.

THE LAST STORED story came to me after the loss of my own father. I wanted to explore a daughter’s love for her parents, and the pain of losing a loved one. How do you get through the day when you are stuck in routine and grief? Then, like many writers I asked myself a bunch of what ifs. What if another world apart from our own existed? What if we forgot of this world? What if that world stored something here, a girl? The story came together much like my grandma’s quilt. But something funny happened as I finished the novel, my own writing inspired me to see that through death, the Light remains and life goes on. Good always overcomes.

Blurb for THE LAST STORED:

After the sudden death of her parents, making it through the day is a struggle for Amber Megan Peel. In the midst of her grief, an exquisite bird perches on her garden fence and shows her visions of a vivid landscape and a dark lord slouching upon a throne.  She thinks the visions are tied to her sorrow. But when a boy flies through her kitchen window to tell her she’s the Last Stored, she wonders if she’s just lost her mind.

Cree of Din is tasked with one job: Bring Amber home. For seven years, Cree has trained as her protector and it is the ultimate responsibility. Failure means Amber’s certain death, and that’s not an option for Cree – especially since he’s falling in love with her.

The Returning has begun. Now all Amber and Cree have to do is enter Tali, a world of unimaginable splendor and equally unimaginable horror, and defeat Lorthis. If they can’t, not only will Tali plunge into darkness, but so will Earth.

Released: January 6th 2015

You can find The Last Stored here:

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Last-Stored-Sonia-Poynter-ebook/dp/B00QUD6CGC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418932052&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Last+Stored

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22606747-the-last-stored?ac=1

Anaiah Press: www.anaiahpress.com

Excerpt:

Cree climbs onto the railing and extends his hand to me. “Your choice, Amber, you can come or you can stay!” he yells over the roar of the water.

“This is nuts. You expect me to jump?”

“Nuts? No, merely the door.” He beams with anticipation. He seems fine. In fact, his eyes sparkle with the moon’s glow.

My heart skips. My choice. I had another choice. I grasp his hand and crawl onto the railing. My feet slip, and I waver. Cree steadies me with his hand. The water falls in torrents in front of me. Am I really about to do this?

“You can’t go back once you enter. Are you ready? You can do this.”

He looks into the raging waters, then back at me. His cloak swirls around him like Superman’s cape.

“Yes, I can do this!”

My heartbeat bangs in my throat. I’m about to jump off of Lovers Leap with a boy I don’t know, along with two little old men who have vanished below my feet. This is crazy, but I’m supposed to do it. Part of me knew it every time my mother and father looked over this very railing. I’m at the door.

Cree squeezes my hand, nods, and we jump. He howls. The feeling of dropping over a roller coaster comes on fast. The water rushes by, cold and wet. I fall.

My chest tightens like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. I choke and cough, spitting out water. I see darkness, and I feel Cree’s hand holding mine.

Then, a bright light shimmers and glows at my feet, reflecting upward. The sound of the water fades. My lungs fill with sweet air. The light expands, covering me. Wind swirls and holds me up. I no longer fall, but glide upward. A light from above warms my face, and the aroma of fragrant honey hangs on the air. We twist and turn, Cree’s cloak coils around him, my own clothing flapping in the wind.

I giggle loudly and squeal like a child.

Cree crinkles his face and laughs along. The wind continues pushing us through a tunnel. I lift my free hand and try to feel the mist forming around us; it scatters with my touch, only to form again when I retreat. We have increased our speed. Far above me, Dartlin and Fink’s feet come into focus, and they’re whooping with joy.

Then we stop.

We stand in a brick wading pool a few inches deep. Stone replaces the air, which moments before surrounded me. I take in a deep, fragrant breath.

Cree continues to hold my hand. He looks at our fingers still entwined and laughs. “You can let go.”

Book Trailer:

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About Sonia Poynter:

Sonia Poynter is a homeschooling teacher, an active youth volunteer, and a writer. She grew up traipsing through the thick woods of Kentucky often getting lost in the magic of the forest. The woods inspired her heart and her father and mother, a Kentucky Colonel, cultivated her love for storytelling. For Sonia every day is an adventure, providing her with an endless parade of eccentric characters and vivid worlds. Currently, she lives in the sleepy community of Pittsboro, Indiana, with the love of her life and God has blessed them both with three amazing kids.

You can connect with Sonia here:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoniaPoy
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/SoniaPoynterAuthor

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8343589.Sonia_Poynter
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/bigmug/

Blog:  http://twowillowswriter.blogspot.com/

{Animal Welfare Week: Wrap Up} A Gin & Tonic Mystery Series by L.A. Kornetsky

Thank you for joining us this week as we celebrated Animal Welfare Week in conjunction with Gallery Books. Below is our wrap up post where you can access all six posts from this past week.

Book Spotlight of COLLARED, posted on 10/5:

They rely on animal instincts…

Meet “Gin” and “Tonic.” She’s a dog person. He’s a cat person. But when these two friendly rivals team up to solve a mystery, you can bet their pets aren’t the only ones getting collared… Read more here.

Book Spotlight of FIXED, posted on 10/6:

A professional problem solver, Ginny Mallard can’t resist a call for help. And try as he may, Seattle bartender Teddy Tonica is powerless to resist a challenge. They may not agree on much—Teddy prefers bar cat Mistress Penny, while Gin’s shar-pei, Georgie, is her constant companion—but these friendly rivals make perfect sleuthing partners ... Read more here.

Book Spotlight of DOGHOUSE, posted on 10/7:

Amateur sleuths Ginny Mallard and Teddy Tonica and their furry partners prove in L.A. Kornetsky’s DOGHOUSE that twelve legs are better than four when it comes to solving a risky new case in the third novel from the “entertaining” (Library Journal) Gin & Tonic mystery series ... Read more here.

Book Excerpt from DOGHOUSE, posted on 10/8:

Chapter 1

Theodore—Teddy to nearly everyone not related by blood—Tonica was king of his domain. Or maybe ringleader was a better description, he thought with a grin, snapping the bar towel in his hand at a patron who tried to reach over the bar and change the music. “Hands off the dial, Joel.” The radio was set to a local jazz station, and it didn’t get turned up any higher than could be heard at the bar itself. Those were the rules, and everyone knew it ... Read more here.

Guest Post by L.A. Kornetsky, posted on 10/9:

I’m getting ready for a move, and part of that is decluttering.  Getting rid of things – objects, old paperwork – that I don’t need to haul with me any more.

But in a folder of otherwise no-longer-needed papers, there’s a sheet I’m keeping.  It’s from the ASPCA, and it documents my adoption of the kitten once known as Minna, who became my beloved Pandora, gone now a little over a year ... Read more here.

Review & Giveaway of DOGHOUSE, posted on 10/10:

Not having read the first two novels in the A Gin & Tonic Mystery series, I wondered if I'd be able to follow the characters and their quirks. Never fear, dear followers, DOGHOUSE can be read on its own and be understood just fine. There were several references to things that happened in the past that I wish I would've had knowledge of, but that's just my OCD kicking in ... Read more here.

{Animal Welfare Week: Guest Post} L.A. Kornetsky, author of A Gin & Tonic Mystery Series

L. A. Kornetsky is the author of two previous Gin & Tonic mysteries.  She lives in New York City with two cats and a time-share dog, and also writes fantasy under the name Laura Anne Gilman.

She welcomes visitors to www.lauraannegilman.net, @LAGilman and Facebook L-A-Kornetsky.

Guest Post:

I’m getting ready for a move, and part of that is decluttering.  Getting rid of things – objects, old paperwork – that I don’t need to haul with me any more.

But in a folder of otherwise no-longer-needed papers, there’s a sheet I’m keeping.  It’s from the ASPCA, and it documents my adoption of the kitten once known as Minna, who became my beloved Pandora, gone now a little over a year.

There’s no point to keeping the sheet of paper.  All it does is say that I paid x amount for a 4 month old female tiger kitten, spayed.  But throwing it out isn’t an option, either.  Because this was the first connection I had to Pandora, the first contract we made with each other: I would give her food, shelter, care, and a lap when she wanted it.  I would give her a home.  And in return, she gave me such love and companionship, letting her go at the end was no less a pain than losing a human friend.

I don’t have documentation from Indy-J, who was found on the street as a weeks-old kitten, and lived a long and adventurous life before cancer took her in 2000.  But Pandora’s adoption paper will go in the current file, along with the papers for  our current residents, Boomerang (aka Boomer you idiot), and Castiel the Kitten of Thursday (aka DamnitCas).

Because you keep the important moments, the documents that say “this is how you changed my life.”

(and some of you may note that I invite disaster in the renaming of my cats.  You would not be wrong.  But where’s the fun of living with Sir Napsalot?)

Previous Animal Welfare Week Posts:

Book Spotlight of COLLARED by L.A. Kornetsky

Book Spotlight of FIXED by L.A. Kornetsky

Book Spotlight of DOGHOUSE by L.A. Kornetsky

Book Excerpt of DOGHOUSE by L.A. Kornetsky

{Guest Post} How I Wrote NOT WITHOUT YOU (Clue: With A Computer) by Harriet Evans

Writing books is a weird job to have. Explaining how your mind works and how you write books is also weird. I suppose the strangest bit is the beginning. I don’t force myself to think about what book I’m going to write next. I wait till an idea pops into my head and sometimes I don’t even realise it’s there till it sort of springs out, more fully formed, and I find I keep thinking about it. Not Without You began as an idea for writing a glossy tale about a British film star and her bonkbuster-y Hollywood world, but I don’t have it in me to write a Judith Krantz, Valley of the Dolls-style airport novel, much as I’d like to! And I kept hearing this other voice of another character, one from the past, in the back of my head, and eventually I had to listen to that voice too.

I knew this other character should be called Eve, and that she’d be a huge film star at the end of the Golden Age of movies in Hollywood. I was a massively geeky teenager and that has many advantages, not least that you learn lots of weird things.  I knew Eve so well, even now I can picture her perfectly clearly. I knew that something tragic would happen to her, she’d go missing and be almost forgotten about for years and years, until the modern-day actress who lives in her house in 2012 starts to track her down.  What I loved was as I wrote more of the novel the two characters of Eve Noel and Sophie Leigh (the modern-day star) became more and more real to me.

My favourite actress growing up was Vivien Leigh, born 100 years ago on 5th November 1913 and it’s strange to be writing this in the week of the centenary of her birth, because she was also my inspiration for the character of Eve. I love old films, especially Hollywood in the 30s to the 50s. My obsession started (as things so often do) between the pages of a book. When I was fourteen I devoured Gone With the Wind and I thought it was literally the best book ever. I’d never really read a big juicy blockbuster in that style before that has a world so utterly different from everything you know and I became obsessed with the film, too. But we didn’t have a video player *gets out small violin* and so I didn’t see it for ages. In the meantime I read all about the film, its tortuous production history at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and stared obsessively at what small pictures there were in books my parents owned about cinema instead. I read biographies of Vivien Leigh, Margaret Mitchell, George Cukor (first director, sacked for being too empathetic to the actresses and not being manly enough for Clark Gable) and Victor Fleming (second director, bit of a chauvinist pig but got it made, having just finished working on Wizard of Oz, so you have to give him some respect for that, even if he sounds pretty awful).

GWTW started for me a love of old films that endures to this day. I used to watch random Myrna Loy comedies on TV during half-term, or stay up scaring myself witless if there was a late-night Hitchcock movie on. This was when there were only four channels, and when it wasn’t unusual to show, say, Notorious at 11.20 on a Saturday night. My parents loved films, my dad especially and it’s through him I got most of my information about it, too. Plus the one connection to a proper old movie star that I actually have.

In the 70s, my dad was a paperback editor at Coronet. He was lucky enough (and clever enough!) to publish David Niven’s autobiography, The Moon’s A Balloon, which sold over a million copies, as did the follow-up, the more Hollywood-orientated Bring on the Empty Horses. I loved those books. I absolutely gobbled them up. I couldn’t believe that my dad had a) met David Niven b) David Niven actually knew his name. I’d sat on his lap when I was two or three and didn’t even know it! He’d been to our house! (Along with Delia Smith, but that’s another story). When I was nine months old, Dad had had a terrible car accident that left him in a coma and later, using a wheelchair (which he still does). David Niven recorded tapes of himself in Geneva that he posted to my dad to cheer him up. ‘Hello old boy… Hope you’re doing a little better. Well, I’m sitting here overlooking the mountains, and I must say…’

He was a lovely man, someone who wrote thank-you notes, had friends he’d known all his life, a sense of right and wrong, someone with an interior life that wasn’t all about him. A proper old movie star, not someone who has an aftershave range and a DUI conviction. What I loved best about Bring on the Empty Horses in particular is this sense in Hollywood in the Thirties to the Fifties that the stars of that era were very much just making it up as they went along. It was a slick, hugely successful business that had exploded out of nowhere but the movie stars seem much nicer, more realistic, more intelligent, less self-obsessed, somehow. Their private lives were more private. They went to each other’s houses for dinner, they went fishing together, they volunteered for World War 2. They looked out for each other as they were being manipulated by the studio system into having their teeth ripped out or their hair electrolysised or being forced to give up love-children. And when they came out on display they were goddesses and gods, idols whom mere mortals couldn’t believe they were lucky enough to witness.

I wanted to write a book about the end of that age, and contrast it with fame today, from the point of view of two different women. I did some ghostwriting a couple of years ago for someone famous and the (very brief) brush with an A-list world was mesmerising. How the system now is in a way, I think, even more perverted and sexist than it was then, even in the age of rags like Confidential which weekly published the most salacious and vicious stories about closeted men, battered wives, cheats – all big stars where there were big bucks to be made from tearing away the veil and revealing the truth. These days reality is so distorted and public and private are so mixed up it’s impossible to understand what’s real and what’s not in a star’s life.

That really fascinated me. It must be incredibly difficult for women at the top to even stay sane. How fame is something totally different now, so that talented TV and film actresses like, say, Claire Danes, aren’t newsworthy compared to Kim Kardashian or Miley Cyrus, and whether they want to be, and how they are made to use their femaleness to publicize their work. And everything is a bizarre mixture of hyper-real (you have your own Twitter account, you Instagram photos of yourself naked in the mirror) and totally fake (your agent stages ‘paparazzi’ shots of you in Whole Foods, you give interviews saying you love burgers and chips all the while making yourself sick or taking appetite suppressants to stay so thin it’s unhealthy) against this background of really nasty, naked aggression (when you get out of a car you have photographers squatting on the ground trying to take photos of your vagina. I mean – WTF?)

And the other thing I wanted to write about was the question of ‘being a good girl’, both then and now. Women who don’t play by the rules are slapped down in Hollywood like no-where else these days. Newspapers, magazines (mostly consumed by women but owned by men) constantly take women down for getting uppity. The more you look the more you remember actresses who were big stars and then just… disappeared. Take any actress who starred in a massive film and compare their career to the career of their male co-star today. Debra Winger’s the classic example: she starred in Terms of Endearment and An Officer and A Gentleman. Jack Nicholson (20 years older than her) and Richard Gere are both still headline stars in films today. Where are the interesting, fleshed-out parts for her? Where’s Debra? Where’s Andie MacDowell? Penelope Ann Miller? Molly Ringwald? Karen Black? Debra Winger, Meg Ryan, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Rebecca DeMornay, Elisabeth Shue, Linda Hamilton… it goes on and on.

The other thing that interested me is how many of the actresses listed above are referred to as mad or crazy. The shrug that says… so that’s why she doesn’t work any more. Whereas someone like Christian Bale whom everyone acknowledges is… tricky at best, mental at worst is hailed as a total genius. For what? playing a psycho and putting on a rubberised batman costume, when it comes down to it. It really started to bother me, and I wanted my heroine to become increasingly aware of this and to start to rail against it and take control of her own life, which is so much harder than it’d appear to be in that world.

I adored writing Not Without You. My boyfriend and I went to California for research. I was pregnant, and it was the best holiday ever. We did a roadtrip and went to Big Sur and Vegas and cycled along the beach at Santa Monica and that’s where I felt Cora my daughter kick for the first time. I loved the idea of California and how the freedom of spirit that infected those early Hollywood stars is still so present there too. Ultimately the book can be summed up for me in an Eve Arnold photo of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton that I had by my desk while I was writing. They’re in a pub and he’s ranting on about something with a fag in his hand. She’s really emoting to someone (it’s during the filming of Becket and she did love a literary chat) and by her side is… a packet of Walls sausages, just on the table there, they’re taking them back to their hotel to be cooked for supper. It’s so real and alive and natural. Just the idea now that you’d get Jessica Biel or Reese Witherspoon in a crappy old man’s pub with an overflowing ashtray chatting about Becket with a packet of Wall’s sausages next to her is just… never going to happen.

Now I’m editing my next book, and I love thinking back to doing Not Without You. Despite all the research I did was amazing how much of the information actually ended up coming from my own memories of the films I loved as a young girl and the books I read about them. Just one of the many ways in which being a geeky teenager was helpful for the job I have now. Geeky girls out there – it’s OK. Carry on being weird. It’ll stand you in better stead than flicky blonde hair when you’re older. In the meantime, if you get the chance to read the book, I really hope you enjoy it. Please please let me know what you think!

Harrie xxxx

{Guest Post} Against Reading by Emily Croy Barker, Author of THE THINKING WOMAN'S GUIDE TO REAL MAGIC

Beginning writers are usually advised to read, read, read as much as you can. Literary classics, usually: Tolstoy, Melville, Bellow, Cheever, Bronte, Faulkner - just to pick some heavyweights at random. I think that's excellent advice. Right now, though, I want to make the case for not reading.

Normally, I have a novel going at all times - and when I'm getting to the end of one, I usually make sure that there's another novel tucked into my bag, ready for me. Call it an addiction if you will. I have long ago accepted that I am powerless over this particular compulsion.

But when I was writing the first draft of The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic - which took more than three years - I drastically changed my reading habits. I gave up novels almost completely. There were some exceptions: I couldn't resist The Historian or Perdido Street Station or the last couple of Harry Potter novels, and I remember rereading Special Topics in Calamity Physics during a long train ride. Overall, though, my normal novel consumption rate, which probably hovers around a book a week, dropped to maybe ten per year.

It was painful, frankly. Why did I do this? A couple of reasons. First, I frankly didn't want to be intimidated by how much better other, published writers were. Also, I wanted to avoid imitating another writer's voice or fantasy world. I know very well that there's nothing truly original under the sun. Every book ever written - except for the very first one, I suppose - is in dialogue with its predecessors, and it wasn't as though I could forget the novels I'd already read. But I could at least give my creativity a little more room to wander.

Most importantly, however, I wanted to goad myself to write. If I could happily lose myself in someone else's novel - even during my subway ride or some other time when I couldn't write - I'd have less incentive to lose myself in writing my novel. Reading and writing are not so far apart when it comes to the role of the imagination.

And yet I still needed something to read on the subway. So I turned to reading novels in French. I don't speak French that well, and I read at a glacial pace - it took me six months to get through The Count of Monte Cristo (totally worth it, by the way!). But my ineptitude turned out to be a good thing. Reading in French was a great exercise for me as a writer, because I had to go slow and pay very close attention to language, and I was also essentially writing the novel, line by line, as I translated it mentally into English.

I finished the first draft of my novel in May 2009 - and the next time I went into a bookstore, it was like going into a bakery after being on a diet for years. Am I advocating that writers give up reading novels for the rest of their lives and learn a foreign language to boot? Not at all. But sometimes, when you really need to concentrate on doing your own work, it's a good think to turn down the volume on all the distractions, even the best ones.


*A copy of the guest post was provided through the publisher.

{Guest Post} A Criminal Defense by Steven Gore

ISBN #: 978-0062025074
Page Count: 352
Copyright: July 30, 2013
Publisher: HarperCollins

Counterintuitive.

If there is a single word that characterizes my encounter with writing crime fiction after decades as a criminal investigator, it's counterintuitive.

And it's part of the explanation why true crime makes for lousy crime fiction, why so few career-long law enforcement officers and private investigators succeed in crime writing and why most of those who do have only worked in the field briefly. In truth, much of what readers want from investigator protagonists are characteristics and habits that experienced investigators have to train out of themselves and train out of young investigators in order for them to succeed.

Readers want different things from investigators than do law enforcement agencies and private investigator clients. Readers want to feel increasing tension, while, with the rarest of exceptions, experienced investigators aim to lower it; readers want to watch investigators overcome obstacles, while experienced investigators aim to avoid them; readers want to read about characters who are uniquely qualified, while in the real world there are only investigators who are especially qualified; readers want to watch investigators run up against walls and then force their way through them, while experienced investigators aim how to slip around them; readers want spontaneity and surprise, while experienced investigators plan and plan in order to limit surprises; readers want to investigators try and try again, while clients want real investigators to get it right the first time; readers are not troubled by brash, aggressive protagonists injecting conflict into a scene, while real investigators don't inject it, they anticipate potential conflict inherent in a situation and work to mute it.

In the end, in the real world, doing all these things in these ways is both the criteria of competence and the conditions for successful investigations.

There is one kind of law enforcement that matches readers' expectations: narcotics. But it isn't at heart a crime solving assignment. Narcotics cases are generally built from leaning on people who've already been caught dirty - by patrol officers and street drug task forces and through search warrants and wiretaps - to give up those above them. It's less about solving crimes and more about discovering crimes already in progress or creating crimes by means of informants or undercover agents. The problem is that since the skills and attitudes that succeed in narcotics enforcement fail in investigations, few narcotics officers become first rate homicide detectives. Observe the contrast between the drug enforcement reality shows and A&E's The First 48. In The First 48, at least during the first few years of the show and before detectives began to play to the camera, nearly all of the excitement came from the music and the jump cuts. The detectives themselves were generally low key and methodical.

The problem for me was to translate the reality of investigation into fiction. That is to say, there could be no "When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand" of Raymond Chandler or "My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery" of Dashiell Hammett. Rather, plots had to be driven internally and conflict had to be exploited from within, rather than imposed from without and the methods used had to be those that succeeded in real life.

On the domestic front, I'm making this effort in the Harlan Donnally novels of which A Criminal Defense is the latest, and on the international front, in the Graham Gage thrillers of which Power Blind is the latest. In each series, the central problem I faced was investigative competence: the protagonists had to apply real world methods and approaches in a realistic way. That meant applying the techniques of genre fiction to stories whose aim is realism. And the challenge was to make the stories not only informative about the real world of crime and investigation, but exciting for readers. In the end, it's the readers who will judge whether I have truly bridged the gap between the real and the fictional.


*A copy of the guest post was provided by the publisher.

{Cover Reveal/Guest Post/Giveaways} The Dragon Carnivale by Heidi Garrett

Why Do I Write Fantasy? or You Never Know Who Might Show Up at Your Front Door

by Heidi Garrett

As long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with the truths that my physical senses cannot explain: the mystical things occurring on this planet. Writing fantastical stories is my testament to these other layers of reality.

There are many ways of looking at our world. Imagine sitting at home, perhaps in your living room. There's a knock on the door. When you open it, a funny little woman is standing there. She is about half your height, and a plaid crimson kerchief - knotted under her hooked chin - covers her head. Her dress is sack-like over her square body. She's wearing an apron that could use a good ironing and she's carrying a battered brown suitcase that's almost as big as she is.

"As long as you're staring, a glass of water would be nice," she says.

Despite her gruff manner, you sense something mysterious about this stranger, and to be honest, you're dying to know more about her. When she crosses the threshold of your home, a strong wind slams the door behind her. You both jump. There hasn't been a breeze all day. In fact, it's sweltering and heat waves have been rising from the melting pavement for weeks.

When you offer it, she almost grabs the glass from your hand, and you can't stop your staring - even though you know it's rude - as she drinks in noisy gulps.

"What? You've never seen a spring faerie before?" she asks.

Before you can answer, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Guess not, there aren't many of us left. And I haven't been to the Mortal World, since ..." She stops. Her deeply etched face softens. Something like sorrow pools in her dark brown eyes. She waves her hand. "That's not what I'm here to talk about."

Your heart tugs. You want to pull her from that sad place. "What's in your suitcase?"

She points to the table. "I'll show you."

The suitcase is filled with eyeglasses. There are so many. Some have square black frames, others have round wire frames; there are a few speckled frames with octagonal lenses. You spy a pair of purple ones.

She shoves a pair of thick black glasses into your hand. "Put these on. Tell me what you see."

With the eyeglasses settled on the bridge of your nose, you can't see anything but yourself. You blink. You can see your hands and feet, your legs and toes. But the spring faerie - if that's really what she is - is just a blur. You pull them off. She trades them for a pair of wire rims. With these glasses you can see her and your home.

"What's your name?" you ask.

"Flora."

"Like flowers blooming."

She nods and looks away with that whiff of sadness.

Again, there is something about her that pulls at your heart. You think of the miracle of spring after a long hard winter, and that she shouldn't be sad - if she really is a spring faerie.

"But ... you don't have any wings," you say.

She smooths the wrinkles in her apron. "Not all faeries do."

"But -"

She almost jerks the wire-rim spectacles from your nose. You reach for that purple pair. She doesn't stop you. Now, you can see down the street; your eyes travel the highway. Your view elevates, as if you are a bird. Soon you see the entire city you live in. With each pair of glasses, you see the bigger world.

When Flora tucks the temple arms of a pair of red frames behind your ears, perspective zooms around you. It's like the lens pulls you into outer space, and you can see the entire world and all the billions of people who live on Earth.

Your heart flutters in your chest; it's a lot to take in.

"Now-" Flora hands you a pair of fuchsia glasses with tiny rhinestones embedded in the frames. "Try on these."

When you put them on, you're able to see beyond the physical entirety of the world into the things that you've always known exist, but since you can't see, touch, smell, or hear them, sometimes you've doubted. But you'll never doubt again, because now - with these special glasses - you can actually see the bonds of love that death can never sever, the strings of fate that wrap the brown paper package of all our lives with twine, the tide of time that alters us, even as we never change ...

But most importantly, you've seen that you belong here, on this planet. And you know - without a shadow of a doubt - that everything fits. Including you.

"I don't ever want to take these glasses off," you say.

Flora is already cramming the rest of them back into her bag. "Then don't."

The Queen of the Realm of Faerie is a fairy tale fantasy series that bridges the Mortal and Enchanted worlds. The main character, Melia, is an eighteen-year-old half-faerie, half-mortal. She lives in Illialei, a country in the Enchanted World, with her two sisters and their mother. Melia's father has been exiled to the Mortal World, and her best friend is a pixie.

When the story opens in the first book, Melia is troubled by her dark moon visions, gossip she overhears about her parents at the local market, and the trauma of living among full-blooded faeries with wings - she doesn't have any.

As the series unfolds, the historic and mystical forces that shape Melia's life are revealed. Each step of her journey - to find the place where she belongs - alters her perceptions about herself, deepens her relationships with others, and enlarges her world view.

In The Dragon Carnivale, book 3 of The Queen of the Realm of Faerie, energies in the Enchanted World are shifting and new alliances are forming; the Battle of Dark and Light has begun. Melia is desperate to make things right with Ryder, the young priest from Idonne, but first she must warn the half-bloods in the Mortal World that Umbra is coming for them, and face the powerful Dragonwitch and her spectacular Dragon Carnivale.

The first two books in the series: Nandana's Mark and The Flower of Isbelline are currently available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. Nandana's Mark is free.

The Dragon Carnivale is scheduled for a June 18, 2013 release.

Sign up for Heidi Garrett's new release email list and receive a lavender and gold Half-Faerie bracelet while supplies last ... because you're a half-faerie, too, right?

Book Summaries:

Nandana's Mark (The Queen of the Realm of Faerie Book 1)

Dark visions haunt the half-faerie Melia, but try as she might, she cannot chase away the images of destruction that are linked to her father's ambitions. Looking for a way to stop him and the visions, she visits the Illustrator and is given a strange mark meant to bring her help. Before it arrives, a tragic accident occurs and a family's dark legacy is revealed.

              

The Flower of Isbelline (The Queen of the Realm of Faerie Book 2)

The half-faerie Melia wants to save her sister from a false marriage, and their world from a dark power. But her sister is determined to pursue their father's damning legacy, and the cost of denying true love will be apocalyptic.

Author Bio & Book Links:

Heidi Garrett is the author of The Queen of the Realm of Faerie series. Her personal message to all her readers is:

Once upon a time, you lived in an enchanted world, too ...

There is magic in all our lives; sometimes we need to look through different eyes to see it.

The Queen of the Realm of Faerie includes many strong female characters within an intricate fantasy land. It is also a fairy tale fantasy.

The first book, Nandana's Mark, is one of those free ebooks; the second book, The Flower of Isbelline, is now available; and the third book, The Dragon Carnivale, will be released in June 2013.

The series was inspired by the 15th century French fairy tale, Melusine.

Heidi's hope is that when you read her books, you will rediscover the enchantment in your own life.

She currently resides in eastern Washington with her husband and their two cats. So far, she loves the snow. Being from the South, she finds it magical.

Learn more about Heidi and enjoy her stream-of-consciousness reading journal, Eating Magic, at www.heidigwrites.blogspot.com.

If you want to say hello, give her a shout out on Twitter at @heidigwrites or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/heidigwrites.

Book Links

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Kobo

Smashwords

Giveaways:

The first giveaway is being hosted by the author and is for a $25 American Express Gift Card. Enter below for your chance to win.

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The second giveaway is being hosted by us. This giveaway begins now and will end on March 31, 2013. Enter for your chance to win an e-copy of both Nandana's Mark and The Flower of Isbelline along with a lavender and gold Half-Faerie silicone bracelet (see picture above).

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{Blog Tour:Excerpt, Guest Post & Giveaway} Gilded Wings by Amy Lignor

We are very excited to be kicking off this wonderful tour!!!! Each day a blog will have an excerpt from the new novel. If you start with us and read them each day, in order, the story will begin to be revealed. How cool is that?!! Everything you need is below - Enjoy!

Book Info:

Ebook ISBN #: 978-0985792220

Ebook ISBN #: 978-1301335541

Page Count: 275

Copyright: November 1, 2012

Summary:

The Beloved Angel-Warrior Team from Until Next Time Returns!

When Matt and Emily are sent on their second mission they have no idea how truly dark human nature can become ...

Emily never wanted to face humans again. With the heartache that went on down below, she's still trying to figure out how to save souls that don't deserve saving. The only one she wants to see again is Jason - the young man she fell in love with who became the soulmate she simply can't forget ...

Matt was trained to protect and defend the souls down below. Longing to feel the heartfelt emotions that come from being human, Matt wants nothing more than to have just one life - one chance - to live and love the girl of his dreams ...

The powerful team find themselves in a brand new century, living in the Gilded Age of New York City. Emily takes over the body of Anya, a young Russian girl who arrives on Ellis Island after a hideous tragedy. There she meets up with a strangely familiar young man by the name of Drew Parrish, who helps Anya survive in an unknown world of luxury, snobbery and ... obsession.

What Anya's inner angel doesn't know is that the soul she loves is also back. This time around Jason goes by the name of Max Carrow. Once a quiet and kind boy, he's now part of the 'Four Hundred Club,' and wants nothing more than to be among the most admired as he climbs the shaky ladder of society's elite.

As two worlds merge, Emily and Matt struggle under the weight of their Gilded Wings. Not only will they have to figure out who they should fight to save, but they must also face a romantic choice that could destroy them both.

Until Next Time: The Angel Chronicles, Book 1 Buy Links:

Kindle      Nook      iBookstore      Smashwords      PDF

Gilded Wings: The Angel Chronicles, Book 2 Buy Links:

Kindle      Nook      iBookstore      Smashwords      PDF

Excerpt:

The first time down there, my partner and I lived, loved, fought and retired gracefully - the four ingredients that make up a life well-lived. But the second time ... well ... the second time was when we grew up and split up, stuck in a frightening world that was growing larger and angrier by the minute. We were sent to a country that was in the clutches of a population explosion - the first of many - where millions of new souls, who had their own views on the way life should be lived, came across the ocean on leaky deathtraps to get a taste of freedom. That's all Matthew and I ever wanted, but we found out the second time around that freedom isn't all it's cracked up to be.

This second trip included so many excuses. There were so many obvious factors working against us before we even arrived. The pressures of a growing world being transformed by the miracle of technology; the harsh bigotry of the 'fancy few' who were the only ones allowed to walk on the streets paved with gold; and, most importantly, the social classes that divided the country, relegating strangers to the lowest rung on the ladder.

I've watched people overcome shoddy beginnings. I've also seen people left behind in the shadows of the crumbling tenements; people who'd given up the fight and succumbed to the weight of poverty and oppression. And it's gotten worse.

List of all the Tour Stops:

Guest Post: The Allure of Romance

Ever since 'Romeo and Juliet' had their tragedy, the romance novel has been the lure - the draw - for many readers. So it came as no surprise that when old Edward & Bella came along, love grew even more exciting for readers because one character was already dead, so they actually HAD the ability to live in each other's arms for all eternity.

Romance is one of those rare things that make people forget. In other words: Heart comes to life and brain can take a day off. No, I'm not saying that when you're in love you're no longer intelligent. What I'm saying is that when you feel protected, excited and when you're falling in love with that soul mate you've waited for such a long time, your brain knows that 'all is right with the world.' When that occurs a great deal of pressure is taken off your shoulders, because you now have that ultimate partner who will help, protect and offer that look in his/her eyes that you believed only came when 'Once Upon a Time' was spoken.

As a person who came from a family that had those huge romances - the two sets of grandparents who were always loving and kind to one another, and the mother and father who quite literally would check on each other while they were in the same room by looking over and giving a smile when needed - I was blessed to see the fact that real romance was certainly available and was a gift that you could find if you tried.

When I think of Matthew and Emily, I think of that partnership. Yes, there is the lure, the drama, excitement, hardship - everything that life offers when it comes to the two of them trying so hard to figure out how to be soul mates while doing a job that must be done correctly. But watching them be everything from friends to partners to enemies, makes my heart grow. As the writer, even as the words come out and are placed on paper, I am rooting for them. Emily has a tough time, seeing as that she's been in love with Jason 'down below' and has had that feeling of perfection. She is loyal, which means she can't just wave off that lifetime and forget that he was her first, magical love. And I feel for Matthew a great deal. He's had lives, he's had romance, but when it comes to the ultimate partnership, Emily is the only one he wishes to stand behind to support, in front of to protect, and, finally, by her side so that they can face things together.

I don't know what will happen to these two. Yes, I am the creator, but their hearts can walk down a different path in what seems like seconds sometimes as the story offers a twist or turn that I didn't even know was coming. But, in the end, Matthew and Emily have joined the category of star-crossed lovers. They are knee-deep in a romance we all long to have, because their souls ARE one! Perhaps, for them, the third time will be the charm.

Until Next Time, Everybody,
Amy
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{Guest Post} The Blessing of a Bad Review by Tracey Sinclair

Tracey Sinclair works as a freelance copywriter, editor and legal directories consultant. A diverse and slightly wandering career has included writing fact sheets for small businesses, creating web content for law firms, subtitling film and TV and editing one of the UK's largest legal directories.

A keen blogger, she regularly writes for online theatre site Exeunt and science fiction site Unleash the Fanboy and her blog Body of a Geek Goddess was shortlisted in the Cosmopolitan Blogger Awards 2011. Her work has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies and her short play Bystanders was premiered in 2011 as part of the CP Players New Writing Season at Baron's Court Theatre, London.

She has published two small press books (Doll and No Love is This, both Kennedy & Boyd) and is now dipping a toe in the digital self-publishing world with her new urban fantasy novel, Dark Dates.

Guest Post: The Blessing of a Bad Review

It seems like at the minute, every time you go online there is another scandal in the book world. Either it's bloggers and authors at war over bad reviews, it's fans attacking reviewers who don't like their favourite books, or, the latest scandal, it's services offering paid-for reviews (and, in some cases, to vote as 'unhelpful' bad reviews on Amazon). But as someone who's been in the writing industry for over 20 years - as small press and then indie author, a playwright, blogger, and, yes, as a reviewer - I have to ask: why are people getting so bothered? What's all the fuss of a bad review?

I know, as an author, what it feels like to read a bad review, and I won't lie to you, it's never fun. You spend ages and ages - months, sometimes years - slaving away over something, you put your heart and soul into it, and then someone who probably skim read it on the tube or with one eye on whatever TV show they were watching dismisses it out of hand! How very dare they! Clearly they are idiots who wouldn't know a good book if you hit them over the head with it ... etc, etc, etc. And that's fine: you can throw a tantrum, rant at your partner or your friends or even your cat about all these idiots who shouldn't be let near a computer ... but that's where you need to stop. In public, you never, ever react.

Go back to the review, when you're calm: maybe there are some valid points in there? Is there something you could have fixed, or points you could take on board? Some things may be easily mended; for instance, if you're an indie author and a reviewer says that the book was poorly edited or proofed or the cover looked cheap, maybe next time you just need to spend some money getting your next manuscript professionally worked on before you put it out there. If they say the story is confusing, or the writing sometimes not that clear - do they have a point? Think about what your beta readers said (and you should always, always have a team of beta readers to give you feedback before you publish - nobody in the world can properly edit or objectively judge their own stuff). Did you ignore any feedback from them that is being repeated by the reviewers? If so, you might have to accept they have a point. Look at the good reviews you are getting - are they saying similar things, even though they liked it? It's rare you'll get a review from someone who thinks your book is flawless.

Of course, you may also just think that the reviewer is stupid (who knows, they may be, there's plenty of dumb people in the world) or that they didn't 'get' your book. That can happen and, I'm afraid, you just have to live with: don't try and argue your case, don't get your friends or family to vote their reviews as unhelpful, and certainly don't badmouth them in any forum outside your own house. Every single writer in the world who puts their stuff out there will get bad reviews. Every book you loved, every writer you adore - someone, somewhere, will hate. Why should you be any different? And think of it this way - nothing looks more suspicious on Amazon or Goodreads than pages of perfect reviews: it looks like, at best, the only people who've read the book are your friends, at worst, you're paying people to say nice things. Throw in some one and two star reviews, and at least it looks like actual people in the world have read your book. Sometimes getting a bad review can prompt discussion, too - and people talking about your work is exactly what you want.

And do I need to even spell out why buying reviews is a terrible, terrible idea? It undermines the whole system, it tars all indie authors with the same brush, and you know what, it's bad for your writing. I know plenty of people in professional publishing, and it's not a kind industry. Buffeting yourself against genuine, helpful feedback means you won't ever get better, and sooner or later, your bluff will get called. Putting yourself out there inevitably means that some people won't like you: but that's part of what being a writer is. Authors who can't accept that are in the wrong job.

Author & Book Info/Links:

ASIN #: B007RH5PF4

File Size: 335 KB

Page Count: 246

Format: Kindle

Blurb:

All Cassandra Bick wants is to be left to get on with doing her job. But when you're a Sensitive whose business is running a dating agency for vampires, life is never going to be straightforward - especially when there's a supernatural war brewing in London, a sexy new bloodsucker in town and your mysterious, homicidal and vampire hating ex-lover chooses this moment to reappear in your life ...

Witty, sharp and entertaining, Dark Dates is a heady mix of vampires, witches and werewolves - with the occasional angel thrown in - and introduces Cassandra Bick, a likable heroine destined to join the ranks of fantasy's feistiest females.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Goodreads

Book Trailer

{Guest Post/Giveaway} Perfection Unleashed by Jade Kerrion

 Jade Kerrion unites cutting-edge science and bioethics with fast-paced action in her novel, Perfection Unleashed. Drawing rave reviews for its originality and vision, and lauded as "a breakout piece of science fiction," Perfection Unleashed is a Royal Palm Literary Award 2011 winner, a Next Generation Indie Book Award 2012 finalist, and a Hollywood Book Festival Award finalist. Get your copy at Amazon.com.

Social Media Links:

 

Website: http://www.jadekerrion.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JadeKerrion

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JadeKerrion

Google+: gplus.to/JadeKerrion

 

  

Book Synopsis:

 

What would you do if you came face-to-face with perfection, and it looked just like you? Two men, one face. One man seeks to embrace destiny, the other to escape it.

 

Danyael Sabre spent sixteen years clawing out of the ruins of his childhood and finally has everything he wanted - a career, a home, and a trusted friend. To hold on to them, he keeps his head down and plays by the rules. An alpha empath, he is powerful in a world transformed by the Genetic Revolution,  yet his experience has taught him to avoid attention.

 

When the perfect human being, Galahad, escapes from Pioneer Laboratories, the illusory peace between humans and their derivatives - the in vitros, clones, and mutants - collapses into social upheaval. The abominations, deformed and distorted mirrors of humanity, created unintentionally in Pioneer Lab's search for perfection, descend upon Washington D.C. The first era of the Genetic Revolution was peaceful. The second is headed for open war.

 

Although the genetic future of the human race pivots on Galahad, Danyael does not feel compelled to get involved and risk his cover of anonymity, until he finds out that the perfect human being looks just like him.

  

Giveaway:

 

Every person who enters in this giveaway will have an opportunity to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate. The drawing will be held on September 21st. Please click here to enter through the author's Facebook page and good luck!

 

   

Guest Post:

 

Whenever people ask how the idea of PERFECTION UNLEASHED came about, I frequently attribute it to my undergraduate degree in Biology and Philosophy. After all, PERFECTION UNLEASHED explores the idea of perfection in a genetically altered world.

 

There are, however, lots of other inspirations that go into PERFECTION UNLEASHED. Facets of its many characters existed in an earlier incarnation in my Guild Wars fan fiction. Guild Wars is an MMORPG, one I devoted hundreds, possibly thousands of hours to several years ago. It was a fantastic game. You could play one of ten different professions across four different continents in the game world. Naturally, I had to have at least one of each profession, and then I usually had one of either gender in each profession. Yes, I was addicted, perhaps just a wee bit. My marriage survived Guild Wars, that's all that mattered.

 

The beauty of Guild Wars was that it was beautiful. The art was enchanting, the characters flawlessly lovely, which appealed immensely to my huge streak of online vanity. After all, if you're going to spend hours staring at a screen, you might as well enjoy what you're looking at.

 

I had always been a storyteller at heart, and naturally, I began to tell stories about the characters within the game that consumed most of my waking moments. I started writing fan fiction and eventually incorporated my friends' characters into my story. A gamer paid me the highest compliment when he said that he stopped seeing his characters as pixels on a screen and started seeing them as people, with a story to tell. Eventually, that fan fiction became a 300,000-word novel that for copyright reasons (since the story was created within the world owned by Guild Wars) could never be published.

 

So, I decided to find another home for my imaginary friends, and that home became the world of the Double Helix. Danyael Sabre and Lucien Winter's life-transforming friendship in PERFECTION UNLEASHED began in Guild Wars. Facets of my Guild Wars elementalist, Dalliance Jade, were reborn in the flashy and stunning Zara Itani, the Lebanese-Venezuelan assassin from PERFECTION UNLEASHED.

 

I invite you to meet my friends, Danyael, Lucien, Zara, and of course Galahad - the perfect human being - in PERFECTION UNLEASHED, "a highly-enjoyable, brainy guilty pleasure of a novel: a perfect mixture of non-stop action, gripping plot, thought-provoking philosophy, and beautiful visuals ... a feast for the eyes."

 

Welcome to PERFECTION UNLEASHED and the world of the Double Helix.

{Blog Tour/Guest Post & Excerpt} Can Books Teach Kids to Overcome Peer Pressure?

Welcome to our stop on Steve Theunissen's Through Angel's Eyes blog tour, hosted by ABG Reads Book Tours!

Below you will find book info, book summary and Steve's post with a small excerpt. Enjoy!

ISBN #: 978-1618973740
Page Count: 208
Copyright: May 1, 2012
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing

Book Summary:

(Taken from Amazon)

Alabama, 1963 - A world is about to explode ... Angel Dunbar's life is about to be engulfed by the flames. She'll be humiliated, spat upon, beaten and left for dead. And she'll fall in love - with a dangerous twist. Want to know what really happened when Birmingham exploded? Then you've just got to live it ... Through Angel's Eyes.

Guest Post: Can Books Teach Kids to Overcome Peer Pressure?

As a middle school teacher I see children with sharp minds and oodles of potential daily being sidetracked by that great evil of society, peer pressure - and it breaks my heart. The urge to conform among kids is so strong that they seem all too willing to betray their true selves in order to gain, if not popularity, then at least acceptance by their peers. Yet, isn't it individuality rather than conformity that is the mark of a productive member of society?

That is why I believe that resistance to peer pressure is one of the greatest lessons that we can teach our children. But how? It has been my experience that good books with strong role models can have a powerful influence on children. It was that realization that spurred me on to write my first novel 'Through Angel's Eyes.' I wanted to put in front of my students a hero drawn from real life who faced up to and overcame seemingly unendurable pressure from all sides, without denying the beauty of her inner self. At the same time I wanted to share with them the timeless wisdom of a man who had so much to teach us all about overcoming peer pressure - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By walking in the shoes of Angel Dunbar, I figured, students would be able to make the hard choices in their own lives, especially with Dr. King's words ringing in their ears.

Here's one example of Angel overcoming peer pressure in Through Angel's Eyes ...

There, comin' up the street was that old black beast of a car that I'd come to hate. The car that I'd heard at Fred's meetin' that time. The car that I'd sat in on the way to that dreadful other meetin'. The car that stood for everythin' I was trying to get Ronny away from. "Damn!" I whispered. Ronny squeezed my hand. It was those same two guys as last time sittin' in front. As they got closer, the guy in the passenger seat leaned out an' yelled, "We caught the love birds!"

The other guy let out a loud "Hurrah!" an' then they both repeated it together, "We've caught the lovebirds!"

"Ronny, they've been drinkin'!" I whispered.

"It's alright, Angel," he tried to comfort me. The car pulled up alongside us, an' they both spilled out, stumblin' onto the pavement.

"Hoping we'd come across you, Ronny boy," the one who'd been drivin' mumbled. His breath was all over us, that sick smell o' hard liquor.

"Ain't got time for no mushy stuff, now boy," he babbled. "We got biznes to do."

"What's up?" Ronny asked.

"Serious, Ronny," the other one spoke now. "Klan's been doin' some serious crap, man. Bombed King's house, bombed the Gaston. We gotta do somethin' 'bout those fascist pigs, boy!"

I looked at Ronny.

Now's the time Ronny, I thought. Now's the time to prove this to me. All the talk in the world don't mean nothin' if you don't stand up now.

"What ya gonna do?" Ronny asked.

No, Ronny, I thought. Don't even go there.

"Jus' gonna go cruising, Ronny," the driver slurred. "But, boy, who knows what we gonna find?"

He winked at me then, an' I gave him a look that made it clear I wasn't gonna play along.

"Now, you gonna drop off your woman first or she comin' too?" He smirked back at me.

"Ronny!" I whispered, grabbin' his arm.

"You guys are drunk," Ronny said, pulling away from me. "You'll drive us to our death 'fore we even see the Klan."

"Drunk!" the driver roared. "Boy, I ain't never been more sober. Now if you's too chicken to mix it with the big boys, don't come up with no wimpy excuses 'bout us bein' drunk!"

"I ain't chicken," Ronny shot back.

Oh, Ronny, I thought, you've played right into this fool's hand. I had to jump in.

"But he ain't stupid, either," I said.

The driver turned to me, an amazed look on his face.

"What the hell is this, Ronny?" he yelled. "Your tart standing up for ya. Where's your pride, boy?"

I waited for Ronny to let him have it then - to put that drunk fool in his place for callin' me a tart.

But he never did. Instead he shot an annoyed look at me.

"Shut up, Angel!" he said.

I felt foolish then. Ronny'd let me down - left me stranded. All the nice words - the dreamin' while we were alone, the promises - all that'd jus' disappeared. But it was worse than that. They were gonna do somethin' crazy tonight an' I knew now that Ronny was goin' with them. Without me, he'd be led into whatever stupid thing they did. I knew I had to save him.

The three of 'em were piling into the car.

"You can walk home from here," Ronny nodded at me. His words were harsh soundin', nothin' like the sweet, comfortin' way he'd been speakin' jus' a few minutes ago, before these two'd turned up.

"No," I glared at him. "I'm comin' with you."

The driver let out a hoot an' cried out, "Got you a feisty one there, boy!"

As I climbed into the back o' that horrible black car I jus' knew that somethin' terrible was gonna happen.

{Blog Tour/Guest Post} Satan's Chamber by Molly Best Tinsley & Karetta Hubbard

Welcome to our stop on Molly Best Tinsley's and Karetta Hubbard's Satan's Chamber mini blog tour, hosted by Tribute Books. We hope you enjoy their bios and guest post below.

Book Info:

ISBN #: 978-0984141203

Page Count: 294

Copyright: August 2009

Publisher: Fuze Publishing

Summary:

Junior CIA operative Victoria Pierce is posted to Khartoum, Sudan, where her father vanished five years before. Obsessed with solving the mystery of his disappearance, she uncovers a horrific plot that threatens to ignite World War III. A fast-paced spy thriller, Satan's Chamber shuttles between Washington, DC, and war-torn Sudan, geo-political intrigue and ancient mysticism. It introduces a rich array of memorable characters, from Bart Wilkins, the bumbling but buff young supply officer at the Embassy, to Kendacke, one-eyed descendant of the female pharaohs, to Adam Marshall, one of the richest and most ruthless men in the world.

Authors' Bios:

Air Force brat Molly Best Tinsley taught on the civilian faculty at the United States Naval Academy for twenty years and is the institution's first professor emerita. Author of My Life with Darwin (Houghton Mifflin) and Throwing Knives (Ohio State University Press), she also co-authored Satan's Chamber (Fuze Publishing) and the textbook, The Creative Process (St. Martin's). Her fiction has earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sandstone Prize, and the Oregon Book Award. Her plays have been read and produced nationwide. She lives in Oregon, where she divides her time between Ashland and Portland.

As a businesswoman and entrepreneur, Karetta Hubbard has more than twenty-five years of experience in consulting, strategic management, and organizational change for companies throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan. Having recently turned to literary endeavors, Ms. Hubbard credits her five grandchildren as her inspiration and encouragement to put pen to paper.

As an active member of the Washington, DC community, Ms. Hubbard has held appointments at the Small Business Advisory Council (SBA), the Tyson Business and Professional Women Foundation (BPW), and the Fairfax County Democratic Committee. Ms. Hubbard attended the University of Virginia and received her B.A. degree from George Mason University. She also attended Catholic University's Graduate School in Social Work.

Guest Post:

Pharaoh is just another word for King or Ruler, and in ancient times, the land of Nubia that lay south of Egypt (in what is now northern Sudan) was ruled by a series of queens, or female pharaohs. These were also called kendackes, and the English name Candace derives from that word. Relations between Nubia and Egypt were tense: the Egyptians believed that a particular mountain on Nubian land, Jebel Barkal, was sacred and the birthplace of key Egyptian gods. Thus they often invaded and occupied the region. One female pharaoh, or Kendacke, earned fame for leading her army to drive the Egyptians out of Nubia. She lost an eye during the battle.

Now here's the interesting part - and this sort of synchronicity happens all the time when you imagine stories. Molly was drafting a chapter early in the novel when the image of a regally tall woman, draped in blue, stepped onto the page. She had only one eye. That particular scene didn't survive in a rewrite - Kendacke's entrance was postponed until later - but as our research began to uncover more details for Kendacke's character - that of a selfless, mystical leader committed to unifying and redeeming her people - we were astonished to read that one of the famous Nubian queens had lost an eye!

Kendacke is absolutely critical to the story of Satan's Chamber as a counterbalance to the horrific evil at loose in Sudan - both in real life and in our novel - forces of greed, corruption, brutality, and betrayal. She represents for our protagonist, the young American CIA operative Tory Pierce, a powerful female model and strong reasons not to succumb to cynicism or despair but to continue to fight for one's ideals. Tory is also a fierce loner, convinced that by applying her reason, she can act unilaterally with success. Kendacke's modus operandi is collective and cooperative, and her appeal is to the intuition and spirit, but she's a tireless, effective warrior nevertheless.