Dark Dawn Blog Tour - Day 2

Yeah, I like Melissa Brodsky so much I signed up for three days touring with Dark Dawn.  Get over it.  How can you not love her with a cover like this?

AND it's about angels.  I love angels.  Especially falling angels.

In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth, and everything in between. The In-between was unplanned, unexpected, and unwelcome. Every action causes a reaction and when mankind was born, so were the Fae. Suddenly it was up to Heaven to save Earth. God created Angels to right his wrong, to save human kind. A deal was made, an agreement of sorts. The Angels would protect humanity from Fae domination and destruction, and in return they would have inhuman strength and immortality. Thus a time of angels swooping in to save humans from free will, bad decisions, and big mistakes began. They protected humans from the Fae who intentionally enslaved them, leaving shells of humans, or worse, leaving nothing at all. 

Even God doesn’t always learn from mistakes. Angels were given freedom of choice. Some Angels chose wrong. When some of them spread their wings, they went too far, and just as Icharus was punished for getting too close to the sun, they were punished for getting too close to mankind. 

So they fell. Falling was the easy part.


The really cool thing about this book is that the authors wrote two versions, an adult and a YA version.  That's something that Indie Authors are breaking the mold on.  Since we market and promote our own stuff, we don't have to pigeon-hole anything into a cute little cubby where someone tells us it will sell.  We can do whatever the heck we want to to sell books.  And some of us are just desperate enough to try whatever it takes.  I'm going to publish two versions of my Christmas novella: a naughty and a nice(r) version

To purchase Dark Dawn, you can get the adult version HERE and the YA version HERE

Watch Book Trailer HERE

Nicole Andrews Moore:

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Melissa Brodsky:

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This is my happy video

I am just enough of a control freak to not seriously pursue traditional publishing markets.  I know I bitch and moan about the graphic design, and the marketing bs, and all that, but what I do I DO.  It's all mine.  Me.  Anne's.  Nobody else's.

And I'm proud of it.

I am truly saddened when something happens like the blatant plagiarism of Jordin Williams in her novel, Amazingly Broken.  You can read a few articles about it, on Dear Author and mediabistro.  Not only do I work my ass off for what I do, but hundreds of other authors do as well.  Personally, I have several friends who go about the Indie Author thing full time, as well as taking care of families.  We do it the right way:  OURSELVES.  Sure, our families and friends support us, but our words are ours.

I'm sure that Ms. Williams just thought that this would be a "victimless crime."  Nobody gets hurt, right?  "I'll just "borrow" page after page of other peoples' work and nobody will get hurt.  Heck, I might even make some money!"

Well, it hurts me.  It hurts other Indie Authors who have been working so hard to earn credibility the hard way, from people who aren't really willing to give it to us.  My Mother-in-law still keeps asking me if I've gotten my big movie deal yet.  Responding to that is hard enough, Ms. Williams, without people like you mucking up the freaking market!  If my MIL ever heard about this, she will undoubtedly suggest I just copy EL James and make a million, so I can start spending more time cleaning my house.  Now, instead of just deprecating pats on the head from my family, you've given the general public more ammo against the "Indie Hacks."

You've also hurt me and others by making us that much more paranoid.  We're already paranoid about the normal paranoia stuff:  Will anybody like our books?  What do we do about bad reviews?  No mom, I didn't use the F-bomb in this one...And then there's the, I've given out a bunch of ARCs, now we have to make sure they're not being sold online somewhere.  Well, now in addition to that, we've got to scour other works for plagiarism?  Thanks!  Appreciate it, Babe!

I am proud to be an Indie Author.  Up until now, I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with the people that I've met and the things I've accomplished.  While Ms. Williams didn't plagiarize from me, she attacked my livelihood.  She's stained what I love with her thoughtless greed.

And I'm pissed about it.

My review of Returning Pride by Jill Sanders

Aside from the fact that this is one of the most beautiful book covers I've seen in a long time, this is also one of the best romances I've read in a while.  I'll admit it, I may be jaded, but I really, really, really like this one. I really like Jill's writing style. I got a chance to beta read this book, and I gotta say, when the final is completed, it will be a stellar contemporary romance. Ms. Sanders has a clean writing style, with vivid imagery that isn't too wordy (no paragraph after paragraph of descriptions). Great secondary characters that we know from her other books, even though each book is a stand-alone. 

The series of books flow together well, each character in each book is beautifully depicted with individual, dynamic personalities.  The setting is amazing, and the actions are believable.  I cannot say enough good things about these books, you'll just have to read them yourself.

Yesterday, I put out the links to her stuff, but I will repeat them here, because everybody needs to be exposed to it.  Period.  There's really no excuses here, because the first book in the series, Finding Pride is free HERE

Friend/Fan her on GOODREADS

Follow her on FACEBOOK

Visit her WEBSITE  and be sure to check out her Heroes page.

F

Jill Sanders Blog Tour - Returning Pride 6/24

Jill Sanders has become a dear friend of mine, but that's not why I love this series.  I actually fell in love with Discovering Pride, and hunted her down.  Because that's just how I roll.  When we found out we sort of live close to each other, we met for lunch and really hit it off.  Now, not a day goes by that I don't get my Jill Fix, usually in an email.  She's really a great person, and she has created a wonderful place to visit - Pride, Oregon.

Now the third book in the series is up, Returning Pride, and I have to say, it's my favorite.  The series follows a family in Pride, and this is Iian's story.  Iian is a deaf man who's been in love with Allison forever.  When she returns to Pride, he makes a go at her, finally.

I'm fixing to beta read Lasting Pride, and I've got to say, I wish my kids were gone for awhile, because I just want to read and enjoy it...But alas, that's not likely to happen.  So, I'll just do what I normally do.  Stay up into the wee hours of the morning and read.

Everything seems to be going Iian’s way, he has a successful restaurant, a beautiful home, family, and friends. He’s even overcome the loss of his hearing, but why does he still feels like something is missing.

Allison has worked hard to make a name for herself in the art world, now all she wants is peace and quiet to work on her passion. But, with her mother overtaken by illness, she has less time than ever. When everything is stripped away in one tragic blow, and she’s being stalked by a mad-man, she’ll need the help of her hometown and an old flame, to turn everything around and find what she’s been looking for.

Jill's books can be purchased from AMAZON, KOBO, B&N, AND SMASHWORDS  or you can buy the paperback HERE

Jill Sanders survived 80's pop music, and life as an identical twin in a chaotic family of nine.  A feat by any standard!  She was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, relocating to Colorado for college and a successful IT career at IBM in Boulder.

Narrowly escaping before all creativity was squashed, she jumped at the chance to trade the mundane world of computers for the sexy, exciting world of her own imagination.  She now lives in charming rural Texas writing wonderful novels such as the Pride series.

Her debut novel, Finding Pride, was shortlisted in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards 2013, and has received glowing industry and reader reviews from around the world.  Her latest release is Discovering Pride. Yet another novel, Returning Pride, is slated for July 2013.

To learn more about Jill, visit her website www.jillmsanders.com, where she blogs daily, or follow her on Twitter: @jillmsanders.

And if you guys get a chance to check this out, go to Goodreads and add Tempest Torn to your TBR shelf.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18053715-tempest-torn

Today's the cover reveal, and I promised to stick it up on my blog.  So, here it is...

Hot Mess Promotional goodies

I've done all of this promotional stuff for Hot Mess, and I don't think I'm a part of my own blog tour.  So I thought I'd go ahead and put it up.  I may come and put it up again during the actual tour time, but because.  I did some cool stuff for this.  I recorded excerpts of me reading stuff from the book.  I made a play list.  I have created a cool graphic (That took half a day.  I really need a graphic designer on retainer).

I like it. It's got a sort of film noire look to it (completely unintentional, I assure you).

The audio excerpts are on sound cloud, and as hard as I tried to find a quiet place to record them (no a.c. units or fans blaring in the background) I still managed to have birds chirping in the background, since I made the recordings in front of an open window.  Apparently, that lends a charm to the recording.  I'll take it.

AUDIO EXCERPTS, COMPLETE WITH BIRDS CHIRPING

And then there's the trailer...Holy Cow...This took me weeks.  I painstakingly went around town and shot footage, used my kids when inspiration struck.  I had some really pretty images, but my camera-man skills are definitely shoddy at best.  I'm not going into the whole, "my friend was going to do it, but I thought he didn't really want to, so I took the job back, and hurt his feelings because he DID really want to" business.  In the end, I had to use all stock footage I found on the internet, and I think I forgot to credit the website I got it from.  Oops.

I did decide to do a trailer for the whole series, instead of just Hot Mess, so hopefully it will generate sales in other areas, too...

STORIES OF SERENDIPITY TRAILER

I also made a playlist of songs that go along with the book.  They're sort of songs to listen to while you're reading, although I'm not sure how that would work.  It's roughly a song for every two chapters...  I didn't really know what people did with playlists.  Some authors seem to do playlists of songs that inspire their story.  Others seem to do songs that are mentioned in the story.  Still others write a playlist of songs they themselves listened to while writing the story.  Since I don't listen to much music while I write, I made the list of songs that reminded me of different aspects.

PLAYLIST IN SPOTIFY

So that's some of the promotional goodies that I'm sending out to my blog tour hosts when it starts on the 17th. In case you need a visual reminder...

If you are a blogger, and want to participate in the tour, email Danielle at pimpyourbook@gmail.com, and tell her you want in on the action.  I have way more promotional goodies, I was just sharing a tidbit here...