I’m thrilled to be a part of so many cover reveals over the last couple of weeks! Today is another one of those, and I have to say that I think this book cover looks terrific.

Splinters is a YA horror, Sci-Fi that was co-written by married couple, F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter.

Giveaway:

Everyone who adds Splinters to their Goodreads to-read list on or before March 7th will be entered to win a $25 Amazon giftcard! A winner will be selected at random and contacted by Goodreads direct message. Just go to: www.goodreads.com/book/show/20860637-splinters

Details to note:

Splinters is the first book of the series The Prospero Chronicles and will be launched in the fall of 2014.

F.J.R. Titchenell is also the author of Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of), to be released May 6th, 2014. To find out more about that book, click here.

Back cover blurb:

Under ordinary circumstances, Ben and Mina would never have had reason to speak to each other; he’s an easy-going people person with a healthy skepticism about the paranormal, and she’s a dangerously obsessive monster-hunter with a crippling fear of betrayal. But the small town of Prospero, California, has no ordinary circumstances to offer. In order to uncover a plot set by the seemingly innocent but definitely shapeshifting monsters-that-look-like-friends-family-and-neighbors, the two stark opposites must both find ways to put aside their differences and learn to trust each other.

Author bio:

F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter met and fell in love in a musical theatre class at Pasadena City College and have been inseparable ever since. Though they have both dreamed of being writers since a very young age, they both truly hit their stride after they met, bouncing ideas off of one another, forcing each other to strive to be better writers, and mingling Matt’s lifelong love of monsters with Fiona’s equally disturbing inability to forget the tumult of high school. They were married in 2011 in a ceremony that involved kilts, Star Wars music, and a cake topped by figurines of them fighting a zombified wedding party.

Author links:

F.J.R. Titchenell’s blog

Matt Carter’s blog

F.J.R. Titchenell’s Facebook

Matt Carter’s Facebook

F.J.R. Titchenell’s Twitter

Matt Carter’s Twitter

I’m so happy to be a part of the cover reveal for Teri Harman, author of Blood Moon. Her second book, Black Moon, will be coming out this fall! In order to celebrate the big cover reveal, Teri is having a giveaway for a signed hardback copy of Blood Moon! If you like witches or the paranormal in general, you definitely want to get your hands on that book. The link to the giveaway is below.

So, without further adieu, I give you the book cover:

BOOK SUMMARY

Simon Howard accidentally killed three people. Four months later, the nightmares won’t stop. Willa Fairfield, his girlfriend, his soul mate, wants nothing more than to help him move on. But guilt isn’t the only thing getting in Simon’s way.

When unexplained earthquakes hit the small town of Twelve Acres, and dozens of people go missing, the Light witches discover their most feared enemy, Archard, is still alive. Employing the twisted, dynamic magic of a legendary witch known as Bartholomew the Dark, Archard plans to exact his revenge and take control of the Powers of the Earth on the night of the black moon, a rare lunar event infamous for Dark magic.

As the Light Covenant fumbles to defend against Archard’s sadistic intentions, Simon’s magic grows inexplicably more powerful, even dangerous. Willa throws all her efforts into solving the mystery of Simon’s transformation, but when the events of the past storm into the present, the couple’s future changes forever.

 

Don’t forget to checkout a Rafflecopter giveaway!

 

Mojave Green is the sequel to Pitch Green, a YA horror. I haven’t had the privilege of reading Mojave Green yet, but I’m so excited to see the cover! This book is highly anticipated and will, no doubt, be even better than Pitch Green.

 

MOJAVE GREEN

 

Camm and Cal thought they had killed the unearthly creature that preyed upon the people in their isolated mining town deep in the Mojave Desert. Off at college, they feel safe, until they hear news that Trona’s children are still disappearing. Caught in that nightmare since childhood, Camm feels responsible for the town’s children. As her life-long best friend, Cal feels responsible for Camm. With unsuspecting friends in tow, they return to warn the town’s innocent people, but things have changed.

 

Death comes in a new form. The dimensional balance is altered. Crossovers multiply. The situation spirals out of control, and Cal is pulled into another world where his chances of survival are slim. Without Cal, Camm seeks help where she can, even from the dead. Soon, she is on the run from relentless federal agents, who are hiding secrets and pursuing their own agenda. The mysterious depths of the Searles Mansion may yet contain a key to stopping alien predators, if it is not already too late.

THE BROTHERS WASHBURN

AUTHORS’ COLLECTIVE BIOGRAPHY

 

A. L. Washburn and B. W. Washburn are licensed lawyers and full time writers, residing in Colorado and southern Utah. They grew up in a large family in Trona, California, a small mining community not far from Death Valley, and spent many happy days in their youth roaming the wastelands of the Mojave Desert. After living in Argentina at different times, each came back to finish school and start separate careers. Living thousands of miles apart, they worked in different areas of the law, while raising their own large families.

Each has authored legal materials and professional articles, but after years of wandering in the wastelands of the law, their lifelong love of fiction, especially fantasy, science fiction and horror, brought them back together to write a new young adult horror series, beginning with Pitch Green and Mojave Green. They have found there yet remain many untold wonders to be discovered in the unbounded realms of the imagination, especially as those realms unfold in the perilous wastelands of the Dimensions in Death.

 

 

 

Author links:

 

Twitter 

Facebook

Blog

In anticipation of fellow author, Jo Ann Schneider’s debut release, today’s blog is dedicated to the upcoming launch of Babes in Spyland.

I haven’t had the privilege of reading the book yet, but am dying to get a copy of my own. So just wait – I’ll be posting a review after I finish reading it. Until then, enjoy this excerpt!

(Links to Jo Ann’s blog and other details are below.)

Agent Milkshakes:

 

Height: 5’-5”

Years with The Super Secret Agency: 3

Preferred Gun: Unknown

Strength: Cool, calm and collective. Plus she makes the best chocolate milkshakes anyone has ever tasted.

Weakness: Good food and all things geeky

Name origin: She foolishly made milkshakes for everyone during an all-nighter case. It stuck.

 

The sound of a phone being picked up came through the wall. The click click of buttons came just before Milkshakes’ phone started to vibrate in her pocket.

 

It took almost everything she had not to let out a cry of dismay, and the rest went toward not falling off her perch and breaking her neck. She pulled her phone out as Amphibian Queen opened the door. Milkshakes tumbled off of her pile and squeezed through the gap. With the phone still vibrating in her hand, she looked at the caller ID. Sure enough, Mud.

 

“Milkshakes here,” she said in greeting.

 

“I need you to pull the security cameras from all of the locations and times that I am about to send you. Coordinate with Intel and make sure you have this entire route mapped out in less than an hour.”

 

“Uh…” Milkshakes said.

 

“Considering the four of you are piled into the supply closet adjoining my office, I don’t think that you need any further explanation.” Mud hung up.

 

Milkshakes stared at her phone for a second before shaking her head and grinning. How did the supervisor do that? It’s like the woman had eyes in every crack, corner, ceiling tile, and fiber of carpet in the building.

Babes in Spyland on Amazon

Jo Ann Schneider Blog

Jo Ann Schneider on Facebook

Jo on Twitter

 

I just finished reading a book on my Kindle. It was only $.99 and the plot and characters were interesting. Sure, I thought the author used way too many exclamation marks and had a few too many “telling” moments, but I wanted to find out what would happen with this story.

You know how it ended? Neither do I. Because it DIDN’T end. The last sentence of the book was something to the effect of: “She glanced between him and the door in indecision. Then, taking a deep breath, she walked over to…” And that was it. The next page advertised the next installment in the series that would continue the story.

This author used a cliffhanger. And yes, it’s a cheap trick! Because I had to tolerate some factors of that book that I already didn’t like, and then the author used such a cheap trick to try and keep me reeled in to buy more books from them, I was mad.

I’m a busy person. My reading time is so very precious. It’s rare that I have a lot of time to sit and relax while I read a book. And most times that I have a chance to read, it’s only a few hours out of the entire week. So if I’m taking the time to read a book at all, I don’t want my time wasted with a cliffhanger that used to be practiced in periodicals in Victorian times. So that author just lost a reader by using that cheap trick.

Don’t get me wrong; I wrote a trilogy. So the first two books of the Blood Inheritance Trilogy are open-ended. But the difference is that the books still followed a decent story arc. There was a beginning, a middle, and mostly an ending. However, some larger issues weren’t resolved until the final installment. That is an example of a series that has open ends that can keep readers wanting to buy more without tricking them into it.

A cliffhanger, on the other hand, usually ends in the middle of a plot climax. Then, when you get around to reading the next installment, you find out what happens with that particular climax, but the overall story still gets dragged out. Since these stories with cliffhangers are written in such a way, you never know when the final installment will ever come out. The author could drag it on for years before finally putting the wretched characters to peace.

There have been a few exceptions of authors using cliffhangers and making it work. If you’ve ever read the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning, you know that her first two books followed the natural story arc while the end of the books were open-ended. The rest of the books (5 total) were cliffhangers at the end. Though, in Moning’s defense, her overall story was so big, that I doubt she had room to end the books anywhere else except at the cliffhangers they were at. So I’m sure that as you read this, you can think of examples where you were alright with cliffhangers. (Feel free to list them in the comments!)

However, if an author can avoid using them, it’s probably for the better – especially if they’re not a fully established author yet.