UpSpark by Nicole Wells Book Blitz! @MagicPenTours #nicolewells #magicpenbooktours #fiveelementsseries #upspark

Welcome to Magic Pen Book Tours' organized book blitz for for UpSpark by Nicole Wells taking place November 23-27, 2020!

Book Details

Title: UpSpark Series: Five Elements #1 

Author: Nicole Wells 

Genre: Upper Young Adult (15+), Inspirational Romance, Speculative Fiction, Magical Realism / Friends-to-Lovers Romance 

Published: July 25, 2020 

Publisher: Indie published 

Trigger Warning: Suicide

Blurb

Get ready for an award winning story that reached Amazon's top 500 for all e-books (over 2 million), now fully revised! Can they find themselves and each other before time runs out? Enya's dreams of making a difference in the world are devastated the summer after high school when she finds out she has a fatal disease. A cross country road trip to Native American reservations helps her find meaning. But Jacob, her best friend and traveling companion, has longed for them to become something more. Their expedition is just the start of an amazing love and spiritual journey, but a one-in-a-million phenomenon changes everything.

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What Readers are saying:

"I get the feeling like I'm reading Fault in Our Stars Part 2." Winner of the Readers' Favorite 5 Star Award “Everyone who reads this gem of a book will certainly anticipate the second one!” - Deborah Lloyd for Readers' Favorite “It is a love story of the dreams and stars.” - Oviya Nila Muralidharan, Book Blogger "Romantic, magical and inspiring." – Bookstagram review “Compelling!” – Bookstagram review “UpSpark is an elegant character-driven drama that will make you sob and smile, but mostly it will instill a sense of gratitude for whatever time we have.” - Amanda Murello for Indies Today “This is one of the most spellbinding stories that I have read.” – Jean R., UK Amazon customer “The sweetest friends to lovers I’ve ever read.” Zoe E., ARC reader

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Excerpt

I'M WAITING IN THE EXAMINATION ROOM. I've moved from the exam table to the plastic chair at its side. I feel like I have more fortitude here; it's more familiar and less lonely than being elevated and exposed on the exam table. My mom is still in the waiting room. I didn’t push for her to be here. I mean, Jesus, dad only died a year and a half ago. But I’m grateful. What if it's positive? I wouldn't be able to drive myself home after that, and I couldn't ask a friend. It's just...too much. Too personal. I also moved to the chair because every move on the table — every fidget, every deep breath — caused that damn paper to crinkle, like a mocking echo of my nervousness or a refrain to my thoughts. Those thoughts circle around and around, only pausing when I wonder how much time has passed. I refuse the temptation to check my phone, but lose the fight to keep my eyes off the clock on the wall. It's been three minutes. Goddamn, but the brain can think a helluva lot in three minutes. Happy birthday to me. My name is Enya. I'm 18. Newly minted. Just a couple weeks ago, actually. To most kids, that means another degree of freedom — moving out of the house, entering official adulthood, starting the rest of their lives, maybe beginning college. To me, it means I get to take a genetic test. I've been waiting my entire life for this test. No, I've been waiting my entire life for the results of this test. I can wait a little longer. Another minute passes. Are these my last minutes of freedom or the beginning of freedom? The shadow of a death sentence will either become real or dissipate. My eyes drift to the clock again. Thirty-two seconds have ticked by. I focus on benign facts. Did you know that about 300 million cells die every minute in our bodies? And that we replace about 48 million cells a minute? Or that every few years most of our body has recreated itself? Or that most of our body is made up of stardust? Everything in our bodies originates from stardust, which is still falling and still recreating us. There’s something beautiful in the impermanence of us from the eternity of stars. I wish that thought could bring me the reassurance it usually does. Did you know that I want to be a doctor? I know exactly the kind, too. I want to do Integrative Medicine. Yeah, all that kooky stuff. I love it. I really believe I've got my head screwed on a little tighter than my mom does since my dad died last year. I credit my getting acupuncture and homeopathy. People know it works, too. That's why it's so popular. I'm gonna be part of the movement that brings it to the forefront. Despite waiting for it, the double rap on the door startles me, and Dr. Yee strides in. I could have chosen a different doctor to tell me my fate, perhaps a genetic expert in a comfy conference room, but Dr. Yee is my family doctor. She’s a special combination of straightforward and kind, and I trust her. She grabs the black, wheeled stool and sits facing me, leaning onto the examination table. There is a computer screen hiding my medical records beside us, but she doesn't log in. I want her to. I've prepared for this appointment by imagining how it would play out, and I used our prior visits as fodder for my fantasy. In my mind, she logs in and shows me what my record says. Sometimes it's printed out, which usually doesn't bode well. She stares at me now, and I desperately, unreasonably, want her to show me the computer screen. I don't want her to tell me directly. Give me a buffer, let the windows to my soul have some privacy. But the only shutters to my eyes are my eyelids, and my face feels frozen, eyes wide. She leans closer and paper crinkles. "Enya, I know you are prepared for any answer. You've had extensive counseling." I have, but I'm not. My dad had Huntington’s disease. It’s a fatal, inheritable disease. His mother had it and he had a fifty percent chance of having it, just like I have a fifty percent chance. My dad decided not to get tested, but I want to know. I had to go through a lot of counseling to get the test since there’s no cure. Huntington’s is not a pretty way to go, but I’d like to fortify myself if I have to. I’m not braced for this like I thought I would be. It's like when my mom gets her mammogram and freaks out until the test results come back. If there's cancer, it's been there. It wouldn't magically appear on the day of the mammogram. The test just brought the possibility front and center and she's out of her mind with worry until she gets the results. There's something in the knowing that makes fear manifest. Ignorance is bliss. So I’m here, willingly giving up my bliss, and freaking out... Because my dad started having symptoms on top of a midlife crisis and ended up killing himself. Knowledge catches up to you; it’s better to be ready. "You are prepared for this," Dr. Yee repeats. The exam table paper crinkles sound their exclamation point, now like a cheer-leading section, but I don't need an audience. She's staring, and I think she expects me to nod. I'm still frozen. "Enya, it's positive." 

  

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Author Bio

Nicole Wells. In the ethos where herds of story ideas run wild and free, I am known as the Devourer of Books. A voracious predator, I — Okay. I’m a mom of three young children. And I spend way too much time in the fantasy world in my head. But, hey, in this world I’m still supernatural. I channel the powers of my insomnia for good. I’m impervious to kid whining and insults (well, mostly). I have a second sense for cereal disasters and broken toy catastrophes. They call me Mom, which is code for You’re-Awesome-We-Love-You or Stop-Writing-On-Your-Computer-and-Play-With-Me. I’m not sure which. My kryptonite is my pet peeves: water running down my elbows, food stains on papers, and losing the little plastic tethers when you remove the tags off new clothes. So, yeah, that’s me. Your average superhero mom. Oh, and I’ve got three eyes (one in the back of my head). UpSpark is my debut novel, Book One of the Five Elements Series

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | AMAZON

Inside Passage Book 1 of the Corey Logan Trilogy by Burt Weissbourd Book Tour and Giveaway!

Inside Passage

Book 1 of the Corey Logan Trilogy

by Burt Weissbourd

November 1-30, 2020 Tour

Synopsis:

Corey Logan was set up. She knows Nick Season’s terrible secret. Coming home from prison, all Corey wants is to be with her son. To get him back, she needs to make a good impression on the psychiatrist evaluating her. Dr. Abe Stein doesn’t believe she was framed — until his well-heeled mother falls for the charming state attorney general candidate, Nick Season. As the dogs of war are unleashed, Corey and her son run for their lives — taking her boat up the Pacific Northwest’s remote Inside Passage.

“A stunning, fast paced thriller that took me on an intense ride and kept me on the edge of myseat the entire way through … If you love beautifully executed thrillers that will play with your mind as well as your heart, this is the book for you.” ~ Midwest Book Review

Inside Passage is the first in Weissbourd’s haunting, heart-stirring Corey Logan Trilogy.

Inside Passage

Teaser

Minos

Click here to find out more about the Corey Logan Trilogy.

Book Details:

Genre: Crime Thriller
Published by: Blue City Press
Publication Date: October 20th 2020
Number of Pages: 290
ISBN: 1733438246 (ISBN13: 9781733438247)
Series:A Corey Logan Thriller, #1 || STAND ALONE MYSTERY
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

“Wouldn’t you like to get married in your own backyard?”

“Of course I would. You know that,” she snapped. “But I can’t.”

“Why not? Because Nick Season says you can’t. You have the right to live the life you want to live. Don’t give it up for that son of a bitch. Hell no. You don’t have to do that.” Abe leaned closer. There it was, those laser-like light blue eyes. “It won’t be easy, but together, we can figure out what to do. You and I can do this. We have to.”

“My God, what are you thinking? This isn’t like psycho-therapy.” She held his eyes. “We can’t ‘figure it out’ or ‘work on it.’ It’s not a head game. We have no evidence. Nothing. Nick’s a foolproof liar and a stone-cold killer. And he’s going to be Washington’s state attorney general.”

“And he has to be stopped.” Abe looked into their fire. “It’s not just about what you’d have to give up … think about what he’ll do if he ever finds out that you and Billy are alive. And though you might be okay for a year, or even two, eventually, he’ll start to wonder. And then to worry. It’s who he is. You’ve told me that. And then he’ll never stop checking. He’ll have me followed. Every year, he’ll run your prints, and Billy’s, through some Canadian database. And that’s just the beginning … unless we stop him.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

Abe’s bushy brows furrowed in a “V” until they almost touched. “I understand the problem now.” They touched. Corey had never seen that. Very cool. He meant business. He turned to her, full face. “To begin, I’ll comb my hair and look this devil in his shiny black eyes.”

What? What was that? Corey was dumbstruck. Eventually, she softly mouthed, “What?” And louder, before he could answer, “Aren’t you afraid of him?”

“He’s very frightening, and I’m painfully aware of what’s at stake. And of course I see how very dangerous he is and yes, that scares me.” He scowled. “But I have other feelings that are even stronger than my fear.”

“What does that mean?”

“What I’m afraid of, what keeps me up at night, is losing you. Nick wants to kill the person I love most in the world. That makes him my archenemy, my nemesis. What I feel for Nick is inexhaustible rage.” He tapped his pipe against the log, emptying it into the sand, then he carefully set it down. When he looked up, his expression had turned fierce. Abe took both of her hands. “Nick Season be damned!”

“You’re being crazy.” She had never seen Abe like this.

“No, I’m telling you how I feel. I want to marry you Corey. I want to live with you and Billy in Seattle. I want to go to parent night at Billy’s school. I want to take you guys to dinner at Tulio and for pizza at Via Tribunali. I want to fish at your favorite spots near Bainbridge —”

“He’ll kill us all.” And Abe was really scaring her.

“I have to keep that from happening.”

“This isn’t a storybook. Nick isn’t like anyone you know. And this isn’t an insight kind of deal. Look what happened the last time you tried to help. They almost got Billy, and I had to kill someone. Look what almost happened last night. This time you and Billy and I, we could all die. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I do. But I won’t let that happen.”

“Won’t let that happen?”

“No, I won’t.”

“How?”

“I’m working on that. “

“Working on it? How? You’re going to comb your hair? Look this devil in his shiny black eyes? What is that about?”

Abe considered her question. “It’s a way of starting.”

Corey put her head in her hands. She didn’t know what to say.

***

Excerpt from Inside Passage by Burt Weissbourd. Copyright 2020 by Burt Weissbourd. Reproduced with permission from Burt Weissbourd. All rights reserved.

Author Bio:

Burt Weissbourd is a novelist, screenwriter and producer of feature films. He was born in 1949 and graduated cum laude from Yale University, with honors in psychology. During his student years, he volunteered at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and taught English to college students in Thailand. After he graduated, he wrote, directed, and produced educational films for Gilbert Altschul Productions. He began a finance program at the Northwestern University Graduate School of Business, but left to start his own film production company in Los Angeles. He managed that company from 1977 until 1986, producing films including Ghost Story starring Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, John Houseman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Patricia Neal, and Raggedy Man starring Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard, which The New York Times called "a movie of sweet, low-keyed charm." In 1987, he founded an investment business, which he still runs. Burt's novels include the thrillers Danger in Plain Sight, The Corey Logan Trilogy (Inside Passage, Teaser and Minos), and In Velvet, a thriller set in Yellowstone National Park.

Catch Up With Burt Weissbourd:
BurtWeissbourd.com, Goodreads, BookBub, Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook!

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

Enter To Win!:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Burt Weissbourd. There will be 5 winners of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card each. The giveaway begins on November 1, 2020 and runs through December 2, 2020. Void where prohibited.

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Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours

 

Heart Locket Giveaway! Ends 12/26

 

Sponsored By: PicturesOnGold.com

Hosted By: Love, Mrs. Mommy

Winner Will Receive: 

A Beautiful Sterling Silver 2 Photo Heart Locket w/ 18" Box Chain 

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Can't wait to see if you won? I have a coupon code for 10% OFF your order! 

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Love, Mrs. Mommy's PicturesOnGold.com Review: 

Pictures On Gold has a large collection of customizable jewelry. They carry everything from heart lockets to medical ID bracelets. You name it, they have it, and you’re going to love the beautiful, customized necklace I made… (now don’t judge me)… for myself, haha!

I’ve been making beautiful necklaces for my family, but had been neglecting myself. After all, sometimes we Moms need a special treat once in a while. So go ahead… nudge, nudge, buy yourself something, too!

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This would make the perfect Holiday Gift!


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Open To US and must be 18+ to enter
Giveaway Dates ~ 11/26 9:00 AM EST through 12/26 11:59PM EST
Good Luck!!

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Disclosure: Love, Mrs. Mommy and all participating bloggers are not held responsible for sponsors who do not fulfill their prize obligations. This giveaway is in no way endorsed or sponsored by Facebook or any other social media site. The winner will be randomly drawn by Giveaway Tools and will be notified by email. Winner has 48 hours to reply before a replacement winner will be drawn. If you would like to participate in an event like this please contact LoveMrsMommy (at) gmail (dot) com.

Second Start by S.E.Rose Book Tour!

 

  Career failures bring both Brittany and Tyson back to Holiday Springs but second starts aren’t easy and broken dreams threaten futures. Will a former Olympic athlete and budding musician get a second chance at their happily ever after? Readers will fall in love with this second chance romance from S.E. Rose. The Holiday Springs Resort series is here and SECOND START is now live!

Only on Amazon + Read for FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Goodreads

Will a former Olympic athlete and budding musician get a second chance at their happily ever after? Brittany Evans and Tyson Mitchell were the “it” couple in the Poconos. Until their own dreams and goals got in the way. With broken hearts, they both left their town while doing their best to never look back. But, when a skiing injury and a failed singing career bring them both back home, they find that their feelings may not have iced over after all. Fate has brought them together again, but if Tyson wants to win back Brittany’s heart, he’ll have to prove that she’s the only dream that matters. Escape to the romantic paradise of Holiday Springs and warm-up with your next happily ever after.

Excerpt

Copyright S.E. Rose 2020

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and her eyes meet mine. “W-What? Why?” Her eyes flash with more confusion. I reach out and caress her face with my gloved hand, wishing I could feel her skin beneath mine. “I’m sorry for hurting you, Superstar.” Her eyes glance back down at her lap. “It was a long time ago, Ty.” I push under her chin, and she gazes at me again. “I’m sorry. I was young and stupid. I thought I was protecting you.” She pulls back. “Protecting me from what?” I sigh. “From me, from having to have a boyfriend that was never here, that was always busy.” “But all I wanted was you,” she states bitterly. “And I wasn’t here for you. No one could’ve had me. I was too... too busy and wrapped up in my Olympic dreams.” She turns and zips up her bag. “I would have waited,” she murmurs as she stands up to leave. I jump up and block her path. “I know you would have. But I couldn’t ask you to do that. You have dreams, too.” “But you never gave me the choice to decide for myself,” she says and jams a finger at my chest. “You decided for both of us.” “I did. And I can’t take it back, but if I could, I would,” I reply as I grab her head in my hands and kiss her. She doesn’t move as I press my lips to hers. They warm under mine, and after a second she sighs, allowing my tongue free reign of her mouth. I taste her for the first time in way too long. And she tastes just as sweet as I remembered. She drops her guitar case in the snow, letting her arms wrap around my middle as my hands hold her face. I don’t feel anything except her, not the snow, the cold, the wind, nothing but Brittany. Our warm breaths mingle in the cool air, surrounding us in our own personal cloud. I groan as I deepen our kiss. She pulls back suddenly. Her hand flying to her lips. “I’m sorry. I... shit, I’m sorry.” She has a look of anguish on her face. “Brit, I kissed you. There’s nothing to be sorry about. When are we going to stop dancing around this thing,” I motion between us, “that’s clearly still between us?” She shakes her head. “No. There’s nothing between us. That’s over. It ended when you walked out of my life.” I watch as a single tear falls on her cheek, and it might as well be a knife plunging into my heart. I reach out to pull her back to me, but she jumps away. “No. We can’t do this. I can’t do this. Not again.” And it hits me. She’s protecting herself. I hurt her so badly that she reacts to me like a hand touching a hot pan. I can’t blame her. “Brit, I won’t hurt you. I never met to hurt you.” “I know,” she answers as another tear falls on her cheek. “But you did.”

Only on Amazon + Read for FREE on Kindle Unlimited

About S.E. Rose USA Today & International Bestselling romance author, S.E. Rose lives near Washington D.C. with her family. When she's not wrangling her cats or keeping up with her kids, she's plotting her next story. She loves all things wine, coffee, and cats. In her non-existent free time, she enjoys traveling, going to concerts, binging on her favorite shows, and reading, especially if it's a good mystery or comedy.

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About the Holiday Springs Resort Series

 

  Nestled deep in the mountains of Pennsylvania, Holiday Springs Resort promises to bring the heat this winter! Join Forever Write PR and seven amazing authors as they take to the slopes on the adventure of a lifetime and find their happily ever afters. From hot bartenders to brooding exes, Holiday Springs Resort is the place to be. Each story features a brand new couple and a fun trope to love from our amazing line up of authors including: second chance romance and best friend's sibling to jilted brides and friends to lovers. Your holiday wonderland won’t be complete without a widower, office, and enemies to lovers romance. We’ve got a remarkable line of up must-read romance authors including, A.M. Williams, Julie Archer, Kim Bailey, Moni Boyce, S.E. Rose, Stacey Lewis, and B. Ivy Woods. Follow the Holiday Spring Resort series on Facebook for more on release dates, cover reveals, and exclusive book news ➝ https://www.facebook.com/HolidaySpringsSeries/ 

  This series and all promotional events are brought to you by Forever Write PR - Forever your source for all your writing needs. https://www.facebook.com/ForeverWritePR/

Second Survivor by Leah Moyes Book Tour and Giveaway!

Leah Moyes is from Arizona but experienced many parts of the world in thanks to a career in the airlines. Now most of her time, aside from writing, is spent with her family, reading Historical Fiction novels or studying ancient cultures as a student of Archaeology.

She always believed she was born in the wrong time period, but since she doesn’t have access to a time machine she must write and read intriguing stories of the past. 

~ Twitter ~ Goodreads ~

~ Amazon ~  

Her secret sank with the ship.

Isabel Fontaine’s lavish lifestyle came to a crashing halt the night the General Chanzy sank. At 18, she had everything—fine luxuries, a prominent family, and an extravagant estate in Marseille. The one thing she didn’t have was her freedom. As the sole heir to the Fontaine fortune, her future was forged with a betrothal to a stranger from a foreign country, but when her family perishes at sea, Isabel sees this as a chance to hide her identity and change her fate.

Taken in by poor, elderly farmers on the Spanish island of Menorca, Isabel is torn between the growing affection for a neighbor and the guilt of living a lie. The simplicity and genuine goodness of this life takes her on a journey she never believed was possible, yet, as time passes and the threat of her untruths face exposure, Isabel must make an agonizing choice.

When that choice is taken from her prematurely and danger cultivates from an implausible guise, will Isabel accept the outcome, or fight to save those she loves?

Second Survivor is a heart-wrenching historical fiction novel set in both Algiers, Algeria during French occupation and Menorca, Spain. Told in the perspective of four characters, Second Survivor is a twist on the tragic shipwreck . . . the General Chanzy in the Mediterranean Sea. 156 people aboard the barge lost their lives on the morning of 10 February 1910. There was only one survivor. This story shares the fate of a Second Survivor.

  

~ Amazon ~  

  

Snippet:

Second Survivor is told in the perspective of 4 different people- Isabel, Miguel, Thomas, and Francisco.

(Thomas)

He sat down and waved one hand my direction. “Please, be seated.” He retrieved a cigar from an ornately crafted humidor on the table nearby. After clipping the tip, he handed it to me. “Elaborate, Monsieur.”

I accepted his gift and waited for him to ignite the smoke with a silver lighter fashioned after a dragon. I admired his taste. Sitting back, I drew a decent inhale before I spoke. “I have a rather delicate conundrum involving a woman.”

His head rolled back, and a loud laugh erupted. “Don’t we all.”

I eased at his humor and set the cigar on a cast iron tray before I retrieved the two ripped pieces of Isabel’s photograph from my pocket. Placing them on table next to his chair, I pointed. “This woman.”

He pushed them together to make a complete image. “She’s beautiful.”

“She perished in the Chanzy shipwreck.”

He tilted his head. “and you want me to bring her back?” His chuckle began in his stomach but by the time it reached his throat it was noisy and grating. “I am very good at what I do, but I cannot raise the dead.”

 

  

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Last Chance Witch by Alex Lidell Book Blitz!

Welcome to Magic Pen Book Tours' organized book blitz for for Last Chance Witch by Alex Lidell taking place November 23-27, 2020!

Book Details

Title: Last Chance Witch Series: Immortals of Talonswood #3 Author: Alex Lidell Genre: New Adult/Adult, Paranormal Romance / Dark Reverse Harem Romance, Bully Romance, Hate-to-Love Romance Release Date: November 6, 2020 Publisher: Danger Bearing Press

Blurb

It’s a new regime at Talonswood Reform. It’s cold and it’s cruel. And it’s Asher’s. After a violent attack leaves the academy in tatters, Asher is in charge of shaping up the place for inspection. And according to the stick-up-his-ass commander, everything that’s gone wrong here comes down to me. My power. My addictive connections with Ellis and Reese. And the tiny, fire-breathing dragon who won’t leave my side. Asher is determined to make me an enemy, but he won’t make me a subordinate. I’ve never bowed down to power-drunk males before, and I refuse to now—no matter the punishment. But even Asher himself can’t control what’s coming. A secret that could undo him. A brewing divide between fae and vampires. A centuries-old magic that ignites the air between us, no matter how much we hate each other. And if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that the magic always wins… LAST CHANCE WITCH is a full-length dark reverse-harem paranormal romance. This is the third of four books in IMMORTALS OF TALONSWOOD, a new series from Amazon’s top-100 author Alex Lidell. With hot shifter-fae, delicious vampires, and one lone witch, Talonswood isn’t your normal reform school.

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PURCHASE NOW!

Book one in Immortals of Talonswood – LAST CHANCE ACADEMY: AMAZON Book two in Immortals of Talonswood – LAST CHANCE REFORM: AMAZON Book three in Immortals of Talonswood – LAST CHANCE WITCH: AMAZON

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Excerpt

Still dressed in nothing but Reese’s oversized shirt—my old clothes having been soaked in the bleach by Wayne and his gang several disasters ago—I rub one bare foot against my shin. Though the attack on Talonswood Reform ended a few hours ago, the scent of battle still clings to my skin. Standing beside me, Ellis and Reese—half of the once close-knit group of immortal friends who nicknamed themselves horsemen—smell of blood and sweat. Beyond the window, night settles gently over the wounded Academy, the green bathed in pale moon hues. And here, inside my room…is a fire-breathing dragon. When my attention catches on him, the little creature coos and, opening a short green snout of tiny sharp teeth, melts my best pair of shoes into a bubbling leather goo. He burps a tiny puff of white smoke and turns to look at me, as if to make sure I saw it. His yellow eyes gleam with pride, the two stubby horns on his head shifting as his face splits in what can only be called a shit-eating grin. The spiky, spade-shaped tip of his tail swishes over the ground, casually toppling Mika’s desk chair. “Fuck,” I mutter, the implications of what this might mean swiping at my thoughts. A dragon. I’ve never even had a dog, and now I’m somehow bonded to an overgrown lizard that flies and destroys furniture. In my side vision, I see the down feathers from my pillows now floating in the air, my wooden dresser shredded and smoldering at the edges.

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About Author

Alex Lidell is the Amazon Breakout Novel Awards finalist author of THE CADET OF TILDOR (Penguin, 2013) and Amazon Top 100 Kindle Bestsellers POWER OF FIVE and MISTAKE OF MAGIC (Danger Bearing Press, 2018).

She is an avid horseback rider, a (bad) hockey player, and an ice-cream addict. Born in Russia, Alex learned English in elementary school, where a thoughtful librarian placed a copy of Tamora Pierce's ALANNA in Alex's hands. In addition to becoming the first English book Alex read for fun, ALANNA started Alex's life long love for fantasy books. Alex lives in Washington, DC.

WEBSITE | NEWSLETTER | GOODREADS | FACEBOOK | READER GROUP ON FB| AMAZON | BOOKBUB

The Waltz of Devil’s Creek by Justine Carver Book tour and Giveaway!

The Waltz of Devil’s Creek
Justine Carver
Publication date: October 20th 2020
Genres: Adult, Historical

Judith Campbell is dying, and she cannot take the painful truth about where her son came from to the grave with her. While on her deathbed in Atlanta, Georgia in 1994, Judith tells him the tragic story of his conception, and which of two men his birth father could be: the young man who professed his love to her, or the pastor who assaulted her.

Set in the Deep South in 1947, The Waltz of Devil’s Creek digs into the dark crevices of racism and women’s rights during a heated political climate in an era of segregation. Combined with Judith’s lack of social stature, and at a time when reporting sexual assault was unheard of, every injustice is stacked against her from the very beginning.

But there is a light in Judith’s young life: her best friend, Joseph Bird, who has loved her since childhood. Joseph stands up for Judith when no one else will and proves that even in the darkest of times, a light is always burning.

Goodreads / Amazon

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EXCERPT:

The sound of trickling water hit the floorboards beneath me; I sucked in a sharp breath and froze.

Joseph’s eyes strayed downward; his brows crumpled in his forehead, and he gawked at me like I’d grown a third eyeball. “Are you…peein’?” he asked as if he couldn’t believe such a thing.

“No…I uh…” I couldn’t get the words out, but I sure knew what was going on. I gripped my belly with both hands and sat down on the edge of the bed, fluid dripping down my legs—I’d swore I’d never wear a dress again, but I couldn’t fit into pants anymore. “I think I’m gonna have a baby now, Joseph.”

His eyes darted back and forth from my face to the puddle on the floor; he looked as white as the sheet I’d just dressed the bed with.

“Oh, umm…what do you…oh shit, Judy, I don’t know what to do. I’ll go get—.” He started for the door to fetch my pa.

“Joseph, remember what we talked about,” I said, stopping him in his tracks. “You can do this.”

“I remember a brief conversation about who’s gonna deliver this baby,” he said with sarcasm. “But I also remember tellin’ you ain’t no way in hell I can do it. You gotta go to the hospital.”

The first wave of pain struck me like somebody done hit me across the lower back with a two-by-four. “Ahh! Oh no, Joseph, this…ahhh!” I gritted my teeth so hard that pain shot through my jaw and into the top of my head. “I can’t go to the hospital…please, you promised.”

“What?! I did no such thing!”

“Yes, you did! You said: ‘I swear on my life I’ll deliver the baby if nobody else is around to do it’—can’t go back on it now.”

He threw his hands up in the air. “Well yeah, I may’ve said that, but it was only to get you off my back about it—I can’t deliver a baby!”

“You’re gonna have to!” I cried out in pain again and fell back against the bed; I didn’t know why, but for a moment, I thought about how I’d just made the bed and was annoyed by the awful timing.

I heard my pa’s voice from the doorway—he was like the dead arisen, as I hadn’t heard him say much in so long. I clamped my jaw down again, eyes closed so tightly I saw spots dancing on the inside of my eyelids.

Author Bio:

Justine Carver was born and raised in the Southern United States on a heavy dose of creek-wading, lightning-bug-catching, and Saturday morning cartoons. She is a full-time writer, all-the-time reader, and every now and then, she pulls her head out of the clouds long enough to remember how much better it is up there.

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Who's Your Daddy by Arisa White Book Tour and Interview! @PoeticBookTours

 

About the Book:

Who’s Your Daddy is a lyrical genre-bending coming-of-age tale featuring a young, queer, black Guyanese American woman who, while seeking to define her own place in the world, negotiates an estranged relationship with her father. (Check out that cover!)

Advance Praise:

"...absence breeds madness, an irreconcilable relationship you know is there but can’t call it by its name..." In these crisply narrative poems, which unreel like heart-wrenching fragments of film, Arisa White not only names that gaping chasm between father and daughter, but graces it with its true and terrible face. Every little colored girl who has craved the constant of her father’s gaze will recognize this quest, which the poet undertakes with lyric that is tender and unerring.
-Patricia Smith, Incendiary Art

Arisa White channels the ear of Zora NealE Hurston, the tongue of Toni Cade Bambara, and the eye of Alice Walker in the wondrous Who’s Your Daddy. She channels Guyanese proverbs, Shango dreams, games of hide and seek, and memories of an absentee father to shape the spiritual condition. What she makes is “a maze that bobs and weaves a new style whenever there’s a demand to love.” What she gives us are archives, allegories, and wholly new songs.
-Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins

Somewhere nearing its end, Arisa White says of Who’s Your Daddy, it’s “a portrait of absence and presence, a story, a tale, told in patchwork fashion...” This exactly says what Who’s Your Daddy is, though it doesn’t say all it takes to do justice to the mythic paradox an
absent parent guarantees a child, young or grown, or what it takes to live with and undergo such birthright. There’s not only a father’s absence and presence, there’s a mother who says you raise your daughters, and love your sons, there are stepfathers, uncles, aunts,
cousins, a grandmother, brothers, lovers, all of whom leave their marks and give and take love. Surrounding the whole book hovers the questions do I forgive him, and is forgiveness possible? This beautifully, honestly conceived genius of a book shook me to the core.
-Dara Wier, You Good Thing

How does a lyric memoir—a queered-up autobiographical hybrid of prose and poetry—become a real page-turner? Well, for one thing, its speaker uses her authenticity and open-heartedness to generate a rib-cracking amount of courage to look for, find, and emotionally confront a missing Guyanese father who ends up being the “unhello” of a “nevermind.” What’s so moving about this discovery is the speaker’s lyric response. It’s a shrug that’s a song that’s the speaker telling it experimentally-straight about how it feels to have “arms free of fathers.” It’s a story that’s a song that’s the speaker’s “gangster swagger” that beautifully tells of how to confront one’s relation to “a culture of deadbeats, wannabes, has-beens, what-ifs, [and] can’t-shows” without succumbing to despair. One really wants to quote Plath’s line here about “eat[ing] men like air.” Oh, I love the courage of this book. The whole “black heart” and love-strength of it. And you will too!
-Adrian Blevins, Appalachians Run Amok

A lyric anthem for the fatherless, for seekers of the places and people that made us, for the artists ready to unearth and reshape their own stories. I gulped this exquisite manual like precious medicine, a spell that made me more myself.
-Melissa Febos, Abandon Me

Collaborative, interactive, this work of poetry and memoir offers life as a recurring question. Who’s Your Daddy is a study of how power and loss work on the intimate scales of daily living and queer loving. Read this with compassion for your own defining questions
and the raw texture they have left upon your heart.
-Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Dub: Finding Ceremony

Who’s Your Daddy is striking and gorgeous. “I’m born into a bracket of boys,” White writes, framing a portrait of fatherhood that shutters and aches; it enthralls. I wanted to lap it up. A reflection on family that permeates via knitted prose with deep verse—my favorite kind.
White’s work is sonic, lyric, and important. I can’t wait for y’all to read this book.
-Emerson Whitney, Heaven

About the Poet:

ARISA WHITE is a Cave Canem fellow, Sarah Lawrence College alumna, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess, Post Pardon, Black Pearl, Perfect on Accident, and “Fish Walking” & Other Bedtime Stories for My Wife won the inaugural Per Diem Poetry Prize. Published by Virtual Artists Collective, her debut full-length collection, Hurrah’s Nest, was a finalist for the 2013 Wheatley Book Awards, 82nd California Book Awards, and nominated for a 44th NAACP Image Awards. Her second collection, A Penny Saved, inspired by the true-life story of Polly Mitchell, was published by Willow Books, an imprint of Aquarius Press in 2012. Her latest full-length collection, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, was published by Augury Books and nominated for the 29th Lambda Literary Awards. Most recently, Arisa co-authored, with Laura Atkins, Biddy Mason Speaks Up, a middle-grade biography in verse on the midwife and philanthropist Bridget “Biddy” Mason, which is the second book in the Fighting for Justice series. She is currently co-editing, with Miah Jeffra and Monique Mero, the anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, which will be published by Foglifter Press in 2021. And forthcoming in February 2021, from Augury Books, her poetic memoir Who’s Your Daddy.

Interview with Author

1. What's your favorite memory from your childhood?

I was in kindergarten. I decided to not go to class because I wanted to play in the snow. It was falling, it was powdery accumulation on the ground. While everyone was going off into the school building, I went off into the off-limits courtyard, making fresh tracks, populating the snow with angels. At one point, I went into the playground that faced the window of my kindergarten classroom. Waved to my classmates from the jungle gym and of course my fun soon ended once my teacher spotted me. The principal came outside and yelled, Young lady, you’re supposed to be in school!

2. Is there one moment from your childhood that you can recall that spurred you to become a writer?

In eighth grade, I wrote an essay for my younger brother—he was a fifth-grader at the time. The essay won first place for his grade. (I entered the same contest for my grade, but it didn’t place.) I can’t remember what the theme was about, but the moment taught me something about the passage of time and subjectivity: I could embody a deeper sense of truth when I spoke about what I’ve done and where I’ve been. And by inhabiting a persona, a fifth-grade boy’s voice—a vehicle by which to shift perspective—offered sharper clarity and insight into my own experiences.

3. In the memoir Who's Your Daddy, the images in your poems are vivid and realistic. Did you look through old photographs, rely on your memory or relatives' memories, or something else? What other sources did you rely on?

A lot is from memory and imagination. What was told to me, what I remembered and recorded in journals. There were books and articles that helped frame my feelings, help me to see a father’s absence as a presence in my life. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe was one such book. Hybrid, genre-bending memoir collections like Ladies Lazarus by Piper Daniels, Emerson Whitney’s Heaven, and You Da One by Jennifer Tamayo gave me ways of looking that were generative and offered creative responses to my own questions about how to write this book, how to write about an absence in my life.

 

In graduate school, for a literature course on the trope of descent in modern poetry, I wrote a paper on water bodies being conjunctions, specifically “and.” My father was deported back to his country, “Guyana,” which means “land of many waters” in Arawak. Water became a motif in the book. Astrologically, I am a water sign. The element’s fluidity and defiance would disobey borders and bridge distance—water, I imagine in Who’s Your Daddy, would be the conjunctive experience between me and my father.

4. There are some early signs of trauma in the poems from a police raid to a last visit from your dad. How did the crafting of this memoir and its poems help you heal and do you have any words of wisdom for others dealing with similar situations?

In order to get to the point where you make from your life something creative, especially when working with traumatizing experiences, the healing has to happen in multiple ways. I like to think that you are writing from your scars, and not your wounds. You are writing from the time and perspective it takes to be well, so that you can offer others your journey and not your trip. There are the friends, therapists, cognitive behavioral group therapy, Science of Mind classes, yoga on Mondays, massage, acupuncture, podcasts from self-help gurus, self-help books, meditations and mantras, community and love and family willing to make amends and remind you they are here.

One of the ways Who’s Your Daddy came to be was from a series of community writing workshops I facilitated in the San Francisco Bay Area. I held space for people to write letters to their estranged, absent, and dead fathers and patriarchal figures. Through a call for submissions, and by way of these workshops, folks could exchange their letter with me for a chapbook of epistolary poems that I addressed to my father. Reading their letters were humbling—we all shared similar stories, we all seem to have the same father. We were all working through similar personal problems and doubts. Recognizing that I’m not alone decentralizes the I, makes it less self-centered, which can be the downfall to any memoir, and more intersectional. When writing from a place of connectivity, interconnectedness, from a healed wound, the writing itself will be an extension of the ways that you are whole.

5. Other writers who write memoirs will change the names in their work to protect family members. Was this a concern for you? Did you show it to your family for their approval/blessing before you decided to publish Who's Your Daddy?

Most of the names have been changed in the book, for the exception of my mother and father’s first names. My mother set me on this journey, asking me on my 33^rd birthday, if I wanted to write my father in Guyana. Then a few years later, with assistance from a Center for Cultural Innovation grant, I was able to plan a trip to South America. While there, my father gave me permission to write his stories. My immediate family received advanced review copies of the book, and my mother and grandmother enjoyed it.

 

At some point, along the way, I gave myself the permission to write this book and to trust in the process that was forming. And that was my most-needed permission because I took creative risks that grew me as a writer. Having to creatively labor in absence, in the nothingness, you begin to truly renovate your world.

6. When taking it to publication, given its genre bending nature, did you find that the road was harder than with previous books? Explain a little bit about the book's publishing journey.

The publication journey was an easy one. Augury Books is the same press who published my previous collection of poetry You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened. My editor, Kate Angus, gave it a first-read in spring 2018, just before I moved across the country to Maine. She loved it. With Kate’s edits, Who’s Your Daddy began to take its genre-bending shape. The first draft was far more prose, and she suggested opening up the narrative to include childhood moments and to bring more poetry into the work.

7. What's next for you? Will you be writing another poetry collection? Something else?

I’m working on a poetic narrative, set in place like Oakland, California. The main character is completing a nine-stage heroine’s journey. I’m hoping to use my sabbatical in spring 2022 to complete a first draft. Right now, there are pieces here and there, and I think I may have figured out the opening.

Thank you ARISA WHITE for answering these questions!!

She's the One Who Thinks Too Much by S. R. Cronin Book Blast and Giveaway! @hfvbt @cinnabar01 @46Ascending #ShestheOneWhoThinksTooMuch #SRCronin

She's the One Who Thinks Too Much by S. R. Cronin

Publication Date: November 13, 2020

Cinnabar Press

Series: The War Stories of the Seven Troublesome Sisters, Book One

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Do you know what your problem is?

Ryalgar knows hers. People have been telling this over-educated 13th-century woman for years. So when an equally intellectual prince decides he loves her, it looks like everyone was wrong and her dreams have come true.

Except, this prince is already betrothed to another. He’s leading the army training to defend their tiny realm against an expected Mongol invasion and he is considering sacrificing Ryalgar’s home nichna of Vinx by abandoning it’s rich farmlands to their foes.

Another woman would flee to safety. Maybe she would seek another lover. But not Ryalgar. Living in a world where witchcraft has been allowed to flourish and problematic powers remain, she devises her own strategy to keep the invaders from destroying her home.

This is just the sort of thing that happens when a woman thinks too much.

Available on Amazon

About the Author

Sherrie Cronin is the author of a collection of six speculative fiction novels known as 46. Ascending and is now in the process of publishing a historical fantasy series called The War Stories of the Seven Troublesome Sisters. A quick look at the synopses of her books makes it obvious she is fascinated by people achieving the astonishing by developing abilities they barely knew they had.

She’s made a lot of stops along the way to writing these novels. She’s lived in seven cities, visited forty-six countries, and worked as a waitress, technical writer, and geophysicist. Now she answers a hot-line. Along the way, she’s lost several cats but acquired a husband who still loves her and three kids who’ve grown up just fine, both despite how odd she is.

All her life she has wanted to either tell these kinds of stories or be Chief Science Officer on the Starship Enterprise. She now lives and writes in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she admits to occasionally checking her phone for a message from Captain Picard, just in case.

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She Who Thinks Too Much

To Fetch a Villain - Four Fun "Tails" of Scandal and Murder A Mutt Mystery by Jayne Ormerod, Maria Hudgins, Teresa Inge, & Heather Weidner Book Tour!

To Fetch a Villain - Four Fun "Tails" of Scandal and Murder A Mutt Mystery by Jayne Ormerod, Maria Hudgins, Teresa Inge, & Heather Weidner

About To Fetch A Villain

 

To Fetch a Villain - Four Fun "Tails" of Scandal and Murder A Mutt Mystery 

Cozy Mysteries 3rd in Series 

Publisher: Bay Breeze Books 

Paperback: 244 pages 

ISBN-13: 979-8681709619

ASIN: B08LSQ7VVX

Old dogs and new tricks abound in TO FETCH A VILLAIN, the third installment in the Mutt Mysteries series. This collection of four novellas illustrates why dogs are our best friends and the perfect companions for digging up clues, solving crimes, and bringing villains to justice. Let sleeping dogs lie? Not when the MUTTS are on the case.

About the Authors

Heather Weidner Heather Weidner writes the Delanie Fitzgerald mystery series (Secret Lives and Private Eyes, The Tulip Shirt Murders, and Glitter, Glam, and Contraband). Her short stories appear in the Virginia is for Mysteries series, 50 Shades of Cabernet, and Deadly Southern Charm. Her novellas appear in The Mutt Mysteries series (To Fetch a Thief, To Fetch a Scoundrel, and To Fetch a Villain). Her new cozy series, the Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries, launches October 2021. She is a member of Sisters in Crime – Central Virginia, Sisters in Crime – Chessie, Guppies, International Thriller Writers, and James River Writers. Originally from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a pair of Jack Russell terriers. Through the years, she has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager.

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Maria Hudgins Maria Hudgins is a mystery writer and a former high school science teacher. She is the author of the Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries, the Lacy Glass Archaeology Mysteries and several published short stories. Her favorite things are traveling, reading, dogs, and cats. She lives in Hampton, Virginia with her cat, Lulu.

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Jayne Ormerod Jayne Ormerod grew up in a small Ohio town and attended a small-town Ohio college. Upon earning her accountancy degree, she became a CIA (that’s not a sexy spy thing, but a Certified Internal Auditor). She married a naval officer, and off they sailed to see the world. After nineteen moves, they, along with their two rescue dogs Tiller and Scout, settled in a cottage by the Chesapeake Bay. Jayne writes cozy mysteries about small towns with beach settings. You can read more about Jayne and her many publications at www.JayneOrmerod.com.

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Teresa Inge Teresa Inge grew up reading Nancy Drew mysteries. Today, she doesn’t carry a rod like her idol, but she hotrods. She is president of Sisters in Crime Mystery by the Sea Chapter and author of short mysteries in Virginia is for Mysteries, 50 Shades of Cabernet, Coastal Crimes: Mysteries by the Sea, and Murder by the Glass. She resides in Southeastern Virginia with her husband and two dogs, Luke and Lena.

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