Good day, everyone! Hope the week has been good to you. I work for an inbound customer service call center for a cell phone company so I've been swamped with the iPhone 6 orders. But in the midst of all the overtime I've been getting, I have good news to report!
The third book in the Mirror series has been completed and sent to my editor! So shortly I'll have cover art and a release date to announce. I can't wait. This series has been very dear to my heart. Even though the main story of the trilogy is ending with Mirrors 3, look for short stories on the origins of the characters, starting with John.
John's story should be coming out around November. We're currently targeting the first week of December for the release of Mirrors 3 and the first book in my new series, the Amethyst Chronicles, will kick off the new year in January. Are you ready for the epic which is the final book?
Which leads to my dilemma. I have so many concept ideas for books which I need to figure out what to write next! The order of the origin stories is John, Seth and Logan, Jackson, and Mack. So I could begin the short for the twins.
I also have plans for a sequel to the romance I had come out in August, The Color of Dreams.
I had begun writing a historical pirate romance which was titled Belle of the Brawl, but I've had an idea for a wrestling story which that name would suit better for. So I need to come up with a new name for my Spanish queen and pirate captain. I am tentatively calling it the Howling Damned as a placeholder (which is the ship name).
Or I could begin the second book in the Amethyst Chronicles.
Anyone want to help me out? What would you like to see after my current line-up is released?
1. A Mirrors Beginning: Seth and Logan Brooks
2. Belle of the Brawl
3. Howling Damned
4. Amethyst Chronicles: Croceus Poison
5. The Color of Dreams 2
Also I'm still taking ideas for the final Mirrors title. Leave me a comment here or hit me up on Facebook with a vote!
Facebook.com/KGStutts Let your voice be heard!
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Five things with Rachel Leigh Smith
I’m back! KG had such fun hosting me last week I came back.
She may get more than she bargained for...
Bio:
Rachel Leigh Smith writes romance for the hero
lover. She lives in central Louisiana with her family and a half-crazed calico.
When not writing, which isn’t often, she’s hanging with her family, doing
counted cross-stitch, or yakking about life, the universe, and everything with
her besties. There may also be Netflix binging . . .
Question for readers: Who is your
favorite romance hero?
This time I’m sharing five things about My Name Is A’yen.
1: I wrote the first draft in 86 days, all 97,000 words of
it. If you’re thinking I put my “real life” on hold while I did it, you’d be
correct. I came out of my writing cave to help paint the swimming pool, deal
with a flock of dying chickens, to see a movie, when we had guests over for
dinner, and when my crit partner came down for a research trip to New Orleans.
(I live in Louisiana) That’s it. The rest of the time I was pounding away on my
keyboard as this story poured out of me.
2: A’yen is a humanoid alien similar in looks to The Face of
Boe from Doctor Who. Minus the tentacle thingies and wrinkles. If he was
totally human he’d be the yummy Tom Weston-Jones, who I met in the show Copper
on BBC America, while I was writing the book. The first time he opened his
mouth and spoke it was like A’yen had come to life just to talk to me.
3: This was the first time I’d written a book while
listening to music. Specifically my Nickelback station on Pandora, full of hard
and post-grunge rock bands. Each character ended up with a theme song. A’yen’s
is “When I’m Gone” by 3 Doors Down. Fae’s is “Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence.
Another character, Na’var Manchac, has “Lost In Paradise” by Evanescence.
4: I had no intention to ever publish this book. Then a
friend told me Harper Voyager was doing an open submission call for manuscripts
in preparation for a new digital first line. So I submitted in October, 2012.
In January, 2013, I found out I’d made it through the first round and my ENTIRE
manuscript would be read. I was over the moon! Somebody loved it as much as me.
Alas, I wasn’t picked. But the experience was exactly what I needed at exactly
the right time.
5: This book is A’yen’s story. It’s mostly in his point of
view. It’s what I always wanted to write, but never let myself do because the
market I’d been writing for had no idea what to do with it. They believed
nobody would buy it. So I left the Christian market for the general market. And
kept this story exactly the way it needs to be told.
She blogs sporadically at www.rachelleighsmith.com, can be
found on Twitter @rachelleighgeek, and hangs out on Facebook, www.facebook.com/rachelleighsmithauthor.
You can sign up for her newsletter here.
Buy Links:
Blurb:
They've taken everything from him. Except his name.
The Loks Mé have been slaves for so long,
freedom is a distant myth A'yen Mesu no longer believes. A year in holding,
because of his master's murder, has sucked the life from him. Archaeologist
Farran Hart buys him to protect her on an expedition to the Rim, the last
unexplored quadrant.
Farran believes the Loks Mé once lived on the
Rim and is determined to prove it. And win A'yen's trust. But she's a breeder's
daughter and can't be trusted.
Hidden rooms, information caches and messages
from a long-dead king change A'yen's mind about her importance. When she's
threatened he offers himself in exchange, and lands on the Breeder's
Association's radar. The truth must be told. Even if it costs him his heart.
Rafflecopter code:
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Thursday, September 18, 2014
Blog tour: Rachel Leigh Smith
When KG asked me to write about my favorite women in science
fiction my first reaction was total panic. You see, I’m all about the hero and
I don’t connect with most female characters. I guess because I’m not the
stereotypical woman in any way and never dealt with common issues most women
deal with. It’s almost easier to write about the women SF characters I don’t
like, because the list is long.
So I started thinking, told my sister about my panic, and
finally figured something out enough to write about.
My first favorite woman in SF is Aeryn Sun from Farscape,
played by the awesome Claudia Black. There’s been a ton of stuff written about
the gender reversal in this show, about all the themes, about how Aeryn has to
learn to process her emotions and stop being a super-soldier all the time.
That’s not what makes her awesome to me. What makes her
awesome is the development of the romance between her and John Crichton, the
main character. It’s slow, beautifully done, and SO believable. Her growth as a
character is incredible to watch.
My family watches quite a bit of BBC America, being Whovians
and all, and enjoying a lot of British dramas. When they started promoing their
original series Orphan Black we decided to check it out. Wow! We all love it.
There’s nothing all that original about it from a plot
standpoint. Cloning experiment to measure nature versus nurture outcomes. It’s
the characters and the acting that make it a standout. The main character is
Sarah Manning. She’s also a clone. She plays ALL the clones. Each one is
different and unique, with a completely different life.
Sarah’s been in a lot of trouble and made a lot of bad
choices in her life. Another clone, Allison, is a soccer mom with an attitude
and wound up so tight you could bounce a quarter on her. Cosima is the science
geek and loves Jamaican music. Helena is the crazy one, raised by a group of
religious extremists and she’s very attached to Sarah. And when I say Helena is
crazy, I mean she’s CRAZY. She has her own little twisted theme song that
relays how messed up she is. These four make the core group of clones and
they’re trying to figure out what’s going on and why they were created.
Watching their relationships unfold is the biggest part of
the show’s appeal. Sarah starts out impersonating another one of the clones who
was a cop and committed suicide right in front of Sarah. That’s not giving
anything away, either, because it’s the opening scene of the first episode.
I also enjoy watching Kira Nerys develop on Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine. She has a lot of depth as a character, and has a lot of issues to
work out.
You’re probably
noticing a theme by now. I’m all about the characters, both as a viewer
and a writer. My characters come first, usually the hero, and I have to create
the perfect heroine for him. Which is always a challenge for me. I’m most
comfortable in the hero’s POV, and that’s what you’ll find in A’yen’s Legacy.
Each book belongs to the hero, and it’s his story I’m telling.
Thanks so much for having me, KG! Keep reading, folks,
there’s a question for you at the bottom, along with all the buy links for the
book. It’s on Goodreads too, so you can add it to your TBR shelf.
Bio: Rachel Leigh Smith writes romance for the hero
lover. She lives in central Louisiana with her family and a half-crazed calico.
When not writing, which isn’t often, she’s hanging with her family, doing
counted cross-stitch, or yakking about life, the universe, and everything with
her besties. There may also be Netflix binging . . .
She blogs sporadically at www.rachelleighsmith.com, can be
found on Twitter @rachelleighgeek, and hangs out on Facebook, www.facebook.com/rachelleighsmithauthor.
You can sign up for her newsletter here.
Buy Links:
Blurb:
They've taken everything from him. Except his name.
The Loks Mé have been slaves for so long,
freedom is a distant myth A'yen Mesu no longer believes. A year in holding,
because of his master's murder, has sucked the life from him. Archaeologist
Farran Hart buys him to protect her on an expedition to the Rim, the last
unexplored quadrant.
Farran believes the Loks Mé once lived on the
Rim and is determined to prove it. And win A'yen's trust. But she's a breeder's
daughter and can't be trusted.
Hidden rooms, information caches and messages
from a long-dead king change A'yen's mind about her importance. When she's
threatened he offers himself in exchange, and lands on the Breeder's
Association's radar. The truth must be told. Even if it costs him his heart.
Question for readers: Who is your
favorite romance hero?
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Book tour: Pippa Jay
I always love when someone can step outside of their comfort stone. This is the situation when it came to sci-fi author Pippa Jay when she set out to write her paranormal zombie story, Restless in Peaceville. I turn my blog over to her as she goes in depth on the research it took to bring this story to life.
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2. Youtube. I used youtube a heck of a lot. Initially to pick up the Cajun accent and typical vocabulary for Louisiana teens. The more I listened, the more I fell in love with it! (my original experience with the accent was Gambit from the X-Men cartoons. Probably not the best example, but I just loved how he said 'cher' to Rogue). Then a friend directed me to several videos of wildlife tours in Louisiana after I asked about animal noises you might hear. Sounds, sights and smells, however background, are so important to setting the scene and giving it realistic depth. Again, no replacement for actually going there, but it helps.
3. Cajun language website. http://www.louisianacajunslang.com/language.html
I found this by a simple Google search, but later had it recommended to me by someone I'd been put in contact with about the language. I used this A LOT!
4. Wikipedia. Well of course. Who doesn't use it? Although I never take it as the be all and end all of knowledge, it's usually the first place I start. However, thanks to a discussion on Facebook on why zombies eat brains and the mention of Louisiana voodoo, it was Wikipedia that sparked off the idea of RIP. Most of the elements in RIP were originally researched from there, then backed up or changed after further research elsewhere.
5. Brains! Yeah, what else would I use for a zombie story?! Lol. But not how you might think. In this case it was picking of people's brains. One of the great things about the internet, especially platforms like Facebook and Twitter, is you can connect with people all over the world. I'm fortunate to have friends on both who are Louisiana born and/or raised, or knew people or resources that could help me. And the Twitter hive mind is awesome! Put a question out on Twitter and someone, somewhere, will be able to answer it or direct you to a resource that can help. (and Twitter is the best place to find me if you want to chat).
Blurb:
Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems... But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one of the undead? And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunter who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P. Buy links:.jpg)
Bio:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
For free Wordpress sites, link to rafflecopter page –
http://www.rafflecopter.com/
Trailer URL -https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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1. Google Maps. This was the first time I'd ever really used
Google maps since its inception (c'mon, who didn't
try looking up their house on there when it came out?), and the most
intensively. Having chosen the real life Louisiana town of Arnaudville as a
basis for my mythical Peaceville, I spent some time virtually wandering the
streets to check out the location, the condition and direction of the roads,
businesses, the rivers, cars, houses, facilities etc. Of course, it doesn't
totally replace the actual experience of going there, but it's better than just
looking at a standard road map.
2. Youtube. I used youtube a heck of a lot. Initially to pick up the Cajun accent and typical vocabulary for Louisiana teens. The more I listened, the more I fell in love with it! (my original experience with the accent was Gambit from the X-Men cartoons. Probably not the best example, but I just loved how he said 'cher' to Rogue). Then a friend directed me to several videos of wildlife tours in Louisiana after I asked about animal noises you might hear. Sounds, sights and smells, however background, are so important to setting the scene and giving it realistic depth. Again, no replacement for actually going there, but it helps.
3. Cajun language website. http://www.louisianacajunslang.com/language.html
I found this by a simple Google search, but later had it recommended to me by someone I'd been put in contact with about the language. I used this A LOT!
4. Wikipedia. Well of course. Who doesn't use it? Although I never take it as the be all and end all of knowledge, it's usually the first place I start. However, thanks to a discussion on Facebook on why zombies eat brains and the mention of Louisiana voodoo, it was Wikipedia that sparked off the idea of RIP. Most of the elements in RIP were originally researched from there, then backed up or changed after further research elsewhere.
5. Brains! Yeah, what else would I use for a zombie story?! Lol. But not how you might think. In this case it was picking of people's brains. One of the great things about the internet, especially platforms like Facebook and Twitter, is you can connect with people all over the world. I'm fortunate to have friends on both who are Louisiana born and/or raised, or knew people or resources that could help me. And the Twitter hive mind is awesome! Put a question out on Twitter and someone, somewhere, will be able to answer it or direct you to a resource that can help. (and Twitter is the best place to find me if you want to chat).
What's your number one place to
find information?
Welcome to Peaceville, population 2067
and rising...from the grave...
Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems... But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one of the undead? And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunter who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P.
Lycaon Press – http://www.lycaonpress.com/index.php?main_page=product_free_shipping_info&cPath=1&products_id=41
Bookstrand – http://www.bookstrand.com/restless-in-peaceville
Add it to your Goodreads TBR here – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22062985-restless-in-peaceville
Sign up to my no-spam newsletter to get
updated on the latest releases, giveaways and special offers. Exclusive
snippets and stories coming soon! http://pippajay.blogspot.co.uk/p/newsletter-signup.html
After spending
twelve years working as an Analytical Chemist in a Metals and Minerals
laboratory, Pippa Jay is now a stay-at-home mum who writes scifi and the
supernatural. Somewhere along the way a touch of romance crept into her work
and refused to leave. In between torturing her plethora of characters, she
spends the odd free moment playing guitar very badly, punishing herself with
freestyle street dance, and studying the Dark Side of the Force. Although
happily settled in the historical town of Colchester in the UK with her husband
of 21 years and three little monsters, she continues to roam the rest of the
Universe in her head.
Pippa Jay is a
dedicated member of the Science Fiction Romance Brigade, blogging at Spacefreighters Lounge, Adventures in Scifi, and Romancing the Genres. Her works
include a YA science fiction novel—Gethyon—published
through BURST (Champagne Books), a scifi romance novella—Tethered—published by Breathless Press, three
self-published short stories (Terms & Conditions Apply, The Bones of the Sea, and Reboot), and she’s one of eight authors included in a
science fiction romance anthology—Tales from the SFR Brigade. She’s also a double SFR Galaxy
Award winner, been a finalist in the Heart of Denver RWA Aspen Gold Contest (3rd place), and the GCC RWA Silken Sands
Star Awards (2nd place).
You can stalk
her at her website http://pippajay.co.uk, or at her
blog http://pippajay.blogspot.co.uk, but without
doubt her favorite place to hang around and chat is on Twitter as @pippajaygreen.
Website
– http://www.pippajay.co.uk
Blogs
–
Adventures
in Scifi - http://www.pippajay.blogspot.co.uk
Spacefreighters
Lounge - http://www.spacefreighters.blogspot.com
Romancing
the Genres - http://www.romancingthegenres.blogspot.co.uk/
SFR
Brigade - http://www.sfrcontests.blogspot.co.uk/
Twitter
- https://twitter.com/pippajaygreen
Pinterest
- http://www.pinterest.com/pippajaygreen/
Wattpad - http://www.wattpad.com/user/PippaJay
Amazon page - http://www.amazon.com/Pippa-Jay/e/B0080QVWEE/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1406376408&sr=8-1
Code for the
rafflecopter giveaway (open 1st September to the 1st
October, international) –
For free Wordpress sites, link to rafflecopter page –
http://www.rafflecopter.com/
Trailer URL -https://www.youtube.com/watch?