Sunday, 6 April 2014

Last AOTW!


Welcome to Author of the Week! Every week on my book group, an author member is chosen to be Author of the Week and will be featured here, tweeted on Twitter, shared on Google Plus and Pinterest and generally treated like royalty! Group members are asked to do features and talk about our AOTW to help each one to promote his/her work to the book community. 
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/114319-my-big-fat-indie-book-gang

This week: Roz Carter!

Roz Carter was born in Philadelphia, back in the days when televisions had knobs, to two crazy people. The youngest child of too many children, Roz spent her childhood with her nose stuck in a book, preferring their company to that of her siblings or classmates. By the time she was eight years old she had declared herself finished with the children's section in the library and demanded an adult library card. Clutching that adult library card in her hot little hand was the happiest day of her young life.

The Covington Witches is her first novel. She is currently at work on the second novel in the series.



Where can I find Roz?
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7692262.Roz_Carter 
http://www.covingtonwitches.com/
https://twitter.com/rozcar

Imara Covington has always known that she comes from a family of strong women. Only after an unexpected journey to the quaint town of Edenton, North Carolina, do the family secrets begin to unravel. Once she thought of her family as her safety net and her home as a haven, but now Imara is forced to confront the long buried secrets that are at the center of her family's strength.

Imara Covington has always known that she comes from a family of strong women. Only after an unexpected journey to the quaint town of Edenton, North Carolina, do the family secrets begin to unravel. Once she thought of her family as her safety net and her home as a haven, but now Imara is forced to confront the long buried secrets that are at the center of her family's strength. Spells, Shocks and Family Ties In Part two of THE COVINGTON WITCHES, we start to learn more about the Covington family. More secrets are revealed about just what some family members are up to in Edenton and Philadelphia. Imara sustains some shocks to the system. The cast of characters is expanding, but who is trustworthy and who has their own agenda is something Imara has to figure out. Blending Gothic horror, with contemporary suspense, THE COVINGTON WITCHES, Part 2 will keep you turning the pages!

Imara Covington has always known that she comes from a family of strong women. Only after an unexpected journey to the quaint town of Edenton, North Carolina, do the family secrets begin to unravel. Once she thought of her family as her safety net and her home as a haven, but now Imara is forced to confront the long buried secrets that are at the center of her family's strength. Part Three of THE COVINGTON WITCHES introduces us to family members who have dirty little secrets they need to keep hidden. But like all secrets, they have a way of worming their way into the light. Find out what Imara Covington has to face in this installment of the horror saga, THE COVINGTON WITCHES, and why family secrets are the most deeply buried secrets of all. There are forces that are willing to sacrifice family member's sanity to keep the truth hidden. Who will suffer and who will succeed?

Where can I buy this series?
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/rozcar 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Roz+Carter 

http://www.amazon.com/Roz-Carter/e/B00I7GEG18/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1396773549&sr=1-2-ent 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Roz-Carter?store=allproducts&keyword=Roz+Carter 

 
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, 5 April 2014

Stacking the Shelves #30


Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews
Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks!
    
This week I decided to reduce my shelves of more of those freebies that you pick up as you browse the websites. When I got my Kobo I was on a freebie hunt for anything that might interest me even a tiny bit but it means I'm overloaded with a lot of books which I wouldn't normally have picked up and will probably not rate very highly. So to help me clear the tbr and to be reviewing only stuff I really want to read(which is fairer to authors!) I decided to look at the Goodreads blurb of each one and a few reviews that gave info about how slow the book was, which had whining characters, which had YA love triangles and insta-love, ones with erotic pnr etc. I deleted those that I thought would bug me and the genres I'm not fully into like fantasy and sci-fi. It took my tbr from 968 to 900 which is better! Still got lots to read but I'm more confident that most of them sound more like my kind of thing!
 
I did go on a bit of a splurge to congratulate myself on getting rid of those Kobo books! Well you need to have a treat sometimes...

FREE DOWNLOADS:


BOOK TRADE:

BOUGHT:



 
Posted by at 12 comments:

Friday, 4 April 2014

Book Blitz: The Only Boy by Jordan Locke


The Only Boy by Jordan Locke
Publication date: December 17th 2013
Genres: Dystopia, Young Adult

Synopsis:
Mary is stuck in Section One, living with three hundred women in a crumbling hospital. She wonders what life was like two centuries ago, before the Cleansing wiped out all the men. But the rules—the Matriarch's senseless rules—prevent her from exploring the vacant city to find out.

Taylor's got a dangerous secret: he's a boy. His compound's been destroyed, and he's been relocated to Section One. Living under the Matriarch means giving up possessions, eating canned food and avoiding all physical contact. Baggy clothes hide his flat chest and skinny legs, but if anyone discovers what lies beneath, he'll be exiled. Maybe even executed.

Mary's never seen a boy—the Matriarch cut the pictures of men from the textbooks—and she doesn't suspect Taylor's secret. If she knew, she might understand the need to stop the girls from teasing him. If she knew, she might realize why she breaks the rules, just to be near him. Then again, she might be frightened to death of him.

Taylor should go. The Matriarch is watching his every move. But running means leaving Mary—and braving the land beyond the compound's boundaries.

AUTHOR BIO
Jordan Locke lives in Connecticut with his wife, two lively daughters and a well-behaved whippet. A graphic designer by trade, his creativity spilled over into the literary world. After years of writing, reading and learning the craft, his fifth novel, The Only Boy, brought him offers of representation from two well-known agents. Now, after the dog is fed and the kids are in bed, you will find him tapping away at the keyboard.

Author links: 
 
Interview:

Were you always good at English?
Honestly, English was not my best subject in school. When I was younger, I never, ever thought I would someday be writing novels.

When did you decide to become a writer?
I had an idea for a scene for a book or movie, wrote a few pages and stuck it in a drawer. Four years later, while listening to a radio show about books, the ideas started coming, and I HAD to write them down. In a couple of weeks, I wrote the entire plot.

Do you write full-time or part-time?
I write at night and on the weekends. Most of us writers have day jobs.

Do you work to an outline or plot, or do you prefer to just see where an idea takes you?
I have a very rough idea of a plot and characters and just start writing.

How long on average does it take you to write a book?
About a year—a few months for a first draft, and then six to nine months of editing.

Tell us about the cover and how it came about.
I’m a graphic designer in my day job, so I designed the cover myself. The idea, a graphic depiction of rows of females and only one male, came to me while I was writing the book. When I designed the cover, I added the teenage boy holding the page to give it a human touch.

Do you think that the cover plays an important part in the buying process?
Definitely. It’s a potential reader’s first impression. Of course, it’s the writing that’s going to convince them whether or not to buy the book.

How are you publishing this book and why?
My agent was unable to sell The Only Boy to major publishers (many of them had overfilled their quotas for dystopian novels), so I decided to publish it myself.

What would you say are the main advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing versus being traditionally published?
Advantages: You have more control when you self-publish, and you can get your book out really quickly. Disadvantages: You have to do everything yourself (design, edit, market, etc.), and your chance of success is much, much lower.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Persistence is key. Keep reading, keep writing and keep learning the craft.

 

Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, 3 April 2014

Book Review: Valhalla Unleashed by Garry Charles

What happens when a Viking long boat is discovered down a UK coal mine? What happen's when the passengers are undead and hungry for flesh? This is that story... This special edition has extra features in the form of three journal entries found after the zombie outbreak.

When a Viking Longboat and its corpse crew are found buried deep inside a coal mine countless miles from the sea, it is an incredible historical find. Miners and experts are anxious to get underground, the miners to get back to digging and the experts to see the boat...but in the dark the corpses are not dead.

My Review:
This was a fun gory horror short story with Viking zombies and death in the dark. There were the usual obnoxious cast of miners and supervisors who were rude, sexist and annoying but who cares when most are going to be chomped! I'm never bothered much about character development in something short and this was an enjoyable story. Now as a woman I have seen my share of sexist gits and this book has them in abundance but I have to admit that I was laughing at the sole woman's furious outbursts at their comments and I was still laughing when the zombies started coming towards her while she was taking a toilet break. I mean, it would have to happen like that wouldn't it! There you are stuck underground with your bladder on critical and you find a dark corner to go to and the zombies are coming to eat you! It follows the usual plot of people wandering around in the dark and getting eaten but what do you expect in a zombie short story?

My confusion about this is the content of the ebook. On p16 the press are waiting to hear about what has been found, on p17 we are reading extracts from someone's diaries about zombies. Now is this the same book or a totally different short story? That is never explained which was a bit annoying. I'm assuming that it is a different story or at least a different story relating to the same outbreak but I'd like to know for sure.

Not the greatest horror story ever told but it was a nice short zombie filled read.
star rating photo: Three Star Rating 3stars.png
Posted by at No comments:

Throwback Thursday #15

This Meme is hosted by Melissa at My World in Words and Pages. Go to her blog and join us!

I blog about great looking new releases, new books sent to me for read and review, book reviews of what I've read and features about exciting new authors to try.

 But what about all the books that are already on my TBR, waiting for me to read them? Don't they deserve a mention and a chance to be highlighted? Yes they do!

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, where I will take the time to tell you about some of the books that have been on my shelves for a while and maybe a few of you will add them to your wishlists/tbrs. If you have read them, why not leave a comment to tell me what you thought of it-but no spoilers please! 

This week I'm featuring a series that I want to catch up on-actually I haven't started it yet but I really want to, based on everything I've seen about it!

Deacon Chalk prequel #0.5
Shredding monsters is his stock and trade. He sniffs them out, tracks them down, and corners them. End of story. But when the tables are turned, expect the unexpected.

Knowing his enemy is a rule Deacon Chalk swears by. But he's never seen anything like whatever is leaving the Atlanta Zoo's most dangerous predators bloodless, skinned, and hanging high in the treetops. And he's only got until sunrise to keep it from turning the entire city into a slaughterhouse.

Now Deacon is in zoo lockdown with a handful of staffers to save. His zookeeper backup has more guts than monster-hunting experience. And the only chance Deacon has to run this thing to holy ground is to unleash his darkest, most uncontrollable instincts...

Deacon Chalk #1
He lives to kill monsters. He keeps his city safe. And his silver hollow-points and back-from-the-dead abilities help him take out any kind of supernatural threat. But now an immortal evil has this bad-ass bounty hunter dead in its sights. . .

Ever since a monster murdered his family, Deacon Chalk hunts any creature that preys on the innocent. So when a pretty vampire girl "hires" him to eliminate a fellow slayer, Deacon goes to warn him--and barely escapes a vampire ambush. Now he's got a way-inexperienced newbie hunter to protect and everything from bloodsuckers to cursed immortals on his trail. There's also a malevolent force controlling the living and the undead, hellbent on turning Deacon's greatest loss into the one weapon that could destroy him. . .


 Deacon Chalk #1.5
He lives to kill monsters. He keeps his city safe. And his silver hollow-points and back-from-the-dead abilities take out any kind of unnatural threat. But between this bad-ass bounty hunter and rescuing the most helpless of victims stands the one evil he can't defeat...

For Deacon Chalk, loyalty is worth dying for. And now that something has taken were-spider Charlotte's un-hatched children and one of his closest friends, he'll tear up the human and supernatural underworlds to find them. But with his allies stripped away by an invincible Yakuza hit man and time running out, Deacon must face down the most ancient of demonic entities. And his last hope means surrendering to the inner darkness waiting hungrily to consume him ...

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)