Archive for August 8, 2014

 

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Virtual Book Tour Dates: 7/16/14 – 8/13/14

I have a fun post to share with you today. The author has written an interesting guest post about her characters, I have a fun excerpt for you, and there’s a great giveaway, so don’t forget to enter!

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 Rayne Rachels shares with us about writing her characters

Sometimes the characters I create are difficult to write. They refuse to work with the plot I have created, or for some reason, I can’t stand them and want to kill them off so I don’t have to deal with them anymore. But then, there are a lot of characters I have created that I really like and enjoy writing about them and their adventures.

Ember Winterstone in Reluctantly Undead was one of those characters who was really fun to write. This was the first time I have written a story in first person, but it gave me the opportunity to explore Ember and her world through her eyes, which I didn’t have with Queen Zophia, the psycho vampire. I only saw Zophia through Ember’s eyes.

Ember has a lot of issues. She deals with her weight. Being a size 16 is not easy. When she gets stressed, Ember eats chocolate which, of course, is not a good thing for the weight issue. How many of us deal with this same issue? My hand is up.

Ember also has a crazy stepdad and an even weirder stepbrother. She tends to be stubborn and sometimes mouthy, but that is part of her charm.

And then she is bitten by a vampire and left for dead.

According to Ember, being a vampire sucks because somehow she managed to totally screw up the whole transformation process. She has the fangs and the desire for blood, but she can walk around in the sunlight as long as she has her trusty sunglasses on, and she still eats food, especially chocolate. How cool to be a vampire, but not have to give up chili-cheese fries or chocolate milkshakes!

It was fun following Ember as she discovered what being a vampire really was, her strange heritage her mom kept hidden from her, and figuring out what really mattered.

Honestly, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for Ember.

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Genre: Paranormal Romance

 

Blurb:

Ember Winterstone is not having a good night. She wakes up in a dumpster. Her neck hurts where her date used her as a meal. Vampire hunters chase her, and the other vampires think she is the real queen, especially since she is a day walker, eats food, drinks almost no blood, and stands up to Zophia, the psycho vampire queen.

Ember’s problems have just begun.

Her mother has kept a couple of major secrets from her, the two men who make Ember drool refuse to claim her, and the psycho vampire queen decides Ember must die.

 

Excerpt:

I looked around.

My brain started functioning, and it dawned on me.

I was in a dumpster—a stinking, nasty, filthy, rotting trash-filled dumpster!

I couldn’t believe it. I mean, how did I get in here? I didn’t exactly climb in willingly. I can’t even stand opening the large green trash can when I take out the trash at home. The smell—especially in summer—is enough to gag a maggot! My climbing into the dumpster on my own was off the list of possibilities.

I sniffed and looked down.

My jeans!

There was no way I was going to get the ode de trashcan funk out of my jeans.

I groaned.

I just bought them, and they fit good…really good! It’s not easy finding jeans to fit a size 16 frame, especially with a butt like mine.

I was pissed.

Someone was going to pay for them, just as soon as I figured a way out of the gross, over-sized tin can in which I was buried.

Glancing around, I sighed. The dumpster was only half-full, so getting out probably wasn’t going to be easy.

Pulling myself into a sitting position was an act of Congress, but standing? That had me clueless.

I pushed and shoved stuff out of my way. I started to groan when I heard a sound. At least, I thought I heard something. I got really still and waited.

Nothing.

I started to take to move again.

“Are you sure she’s dead?”

I froze.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” replied a second male voice.

What the hell, my eyes widened and my heart pounded against my rib cage.

“It just sounds strange that she died like that. Maybe she just fainted,” suggested the first voice.

“She was dead. I waited an hour. No pulse. No heartbeat. She was dead. I tossed her into the dumpster.”

 

Buy Links:

Amazon  ~ Barnes and Noble ~  KOBO

 

About the Author:

Rayne Rachels lives in Texas with her husband and two very demanding cats. When she isn’t creating stories, she can be found reading and honing her photography skills. Rayne enjoys taking road trips, especially to the coast where she fishes every chance she gets. She also enjoys visiting flea markets and playing poker.

 

Author Links:

Blog ~ Twitter ~ Pinterest ~ Goodreads

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Giveaway:

Enter to win one of two $10 Amazon gift cards! Open internationally. The giveaway will run the length of the tour.

Click on the rafflecopter below to enter.

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew and Good Luck!

To see all of my giveaways click on the lucky horseshoe below!

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The Friday 56 hosted by Freda’s Voice.

The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader and find any sentence or a

few (no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.

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Both the rats and the birds have proved willing to sacrifice large numbers when they attack. They can move quickly, making them a foe you cannot fight, only elude. Whether we leave during the day or during the night, our scents will travel the second we leave here. Whichever predator is near will move on us and might spring unexpected. The one thing we have going for us is this dog, Bones. He’s an enforcement animal and could buy us a few minutes to get to cover.

Potential savior? Not really.

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Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga

by  Mark Wheaton

 

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Synopsis

When mankind is visited by Three Great Apocalypses, the only thing standing in their way is a feckless but loyal, easily distracted yet occasionally ferocious German shepherd named Bones, a one-time cadaver dog with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. This is his amazing story.

In Bones, our hero must battle a plague of dangerous parasites that brings the dead back to life with the goal of destroying the planet. Shepherd finds Bones delivered to earthquake-devastated Los Angeles to hunt for survivors only to run afoul of armies of rage-driven rats and birds emerging from the rubble. And when mankind reaches its final hour and a pocket of surviving Indians are all that’s left of humanity, it falls on Bones to save the species before civilization is wiped out forever in Alpha.

Three Apocalyptic novellas of nature run amok, three interwoven stories that feature a German shepherd at the center of the things, three stories with so much action you might just explode reading them.

Includes prequel short story, Mongrel.

 

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew!

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Welcome to the Cover Reveal for

Dead Jed 2: Dawn of the Jed by Scott Craven

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presented by Month9Books!

Be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!

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Synopsis

After a tumultuous first semester in seventh grade, Jed Rivers returns triumphant or so he thinks. After embracing his undeadness to put his archenemy Robbie in his place, the thirteen-year-old zombie thought he’d have a much easier time surviving the second semester relatively intact. That was before he came across the antizombie propaganda published by the mysterious NZN Network, a group trying to push Hollywood stereotypes as the truth. Through fear-mongering and outright lies, the NZN Network will stop at nothing to get Jed expelled.

Jed s attempts to blend in get even more difficult when news spreads that he’s created a zombie dog. And it’s no rumor. Jed shocks even himself when, after seeing a dog get hit by a car, he brings the dog back to life or at least to undeadness when some of his ooze slips into the dog s wounds. The good news is that Jed always wanted a faithful canine companion. The bad news is that the creation of Tread (so called for the mark on his ribcage) unnerves Jed s best friend Luke. Luke abandons Jed, who then learns Luke has been feeding the NZN Network inside information.

Determined to unmask those behind NZN, Jed gets his opportunity at the end of the school year during Pine Hollow s annual Science Fair. When the NZN s experiment goes horribly awry, Jed has a chance to show people that being undead isn’t always a bad thing.

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Title: DEAD JED 2
Publication date: December 2, 2014
Publisher: Month9Books, LLC.
Author: Scott Craven

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Scott Craven

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Proud graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, have one son who will turn 18 in March 2013, now a features writer for The Arizona Republic.

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Connect with the Author: Website | Twitter

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Chapter-by-Chapter-header---Giveaway

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An eBook copy of Dead Jed 2 and a $10 Amazon Gift Card

Click on the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win!

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(Winners will receive their book on release day)

 

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew and Good Luck!

To see all of my giveaways click on the lucky horseshoe below!

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