The Coven's Curse
Dark Magic #3
by Jamie Lee Fry
Published: April 30, 2024
Publisher: Big Mountain Publishing
Genre: Teen, Young Adult, Fantasy, Supernatural, Mystery, Magical Realism, Thriller
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Monday, April 29, 2024
Review: Blood of the Dead (Dark Ink Tattoo #6) by Cassie Alexander @cassie_author
Blood of the Dead
Dark Ink Tattoo #6
Cassie Alexander
Published: February 1, 2023
Publisher: Caskara Press
Genre: Paranormal, Vampires, Romance, Bisexual Romance, Paranormal Romance, Shifters, Erotica
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Review: Blood at Dawn (Dark Ink Tattoo #5) by Cassie Alexander @cassie_author
Blood at Dawn
Dark Ink Tattoo #5
Cassie Alexander
Published: August 9, 2022
Publisher: Caskara Press
Genre: Paranormal, Vampires, Romance, Bisexual Romance, Paranormal Romance, Shifters, Erotica
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Review: Blood by Moonlight (Dark Ink Tattoo #4) by Cassie Alexander @cassie_author
Blood by Moonlight
Dark Ink Tattoo #4
Cassie Alexander
Published: May 8, 2022
Publisher: Caskara Press
Genre: Paranormal, Vampires, Romance, Bisexual Romance, Paranormal Romance, Shifters, Erotica
Friday, April 26, 2024
Review: Blood by Midnight (Dark Ink Tattoo #3) by Cassie Alexander @cassie_author
Blood by Midnight
Dark Ink Tattoo #3
Cassie Alexander
Published: March 8, 2022
Publisher: Caskara Press
Genre: Paranormal, Vampires, Romance, Bisexual Romance, Paranormal Romance, Shifters, Erotica
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Book Tour: Mastering Your Scenes by J.A. Cox @pumpupyourbook
All the tools that you need to create engaging scenes and permanently remove the bane of writer’s block.
Title: Mastering Your Scenes: Your Blueprint for Success
Author: J.A. Cox
Publication Date: August 27,b 2020
Pages: 78
Genre: Nonfiction/Writing
Mastering Your Scenes was written with one main purpose, to help give authors and writers a creative boost in their scene writing and toss writers block into the oblivion of the abyss. In order to accomplish this each chapter is written in a workbook like format so that the steps provided can easily be implemented after they are explained. For each element of scene writing that is presented J.A. Cox explains the How, Why and When of its use along with his own description so that the information is easy to assimilate. He provides copious examples from his own writing of these elements in action as well as from shows and movies.
You will be given an anatomical look of what composes a scene and understand what goes into creating scenes that are engaging, seamless, and bristling with activity without any fluff. Mastering Your Scenes gives you the practical advice you need to keep your readers turning pages and falling in love with your characters. With the steps you will learn there will be no more question of if that scene fits or seems out of place.
“A slim, concise and well focused treatise on how to write and master scenes and how writers can become authors by mastering scene writing. The various elements of a scene are discussed with well known examples and the key facts of each element are presented in depth, with a well laid out structure. The focus on the when, why, how, and the practical application tie up the various aspects of an element neatly and are very well explained. The author’s observations based on experience in each area further adds to the utility of the treatise.”
– The International Review of Books
Buy Links:
Book Excerpt:
Let’s look at a scene in this manner:
As an episode.
As a segment of an episode.
Some episodes are short, and some are long, it really all depends on how they are made. Also, an episode is the medium in which a portion of a series plays out. A scene can also be viewed in the same manner, as a medium in which a portion of your story plays out. On that notion, some may be short, and some may be long, but they still fulfill the same purpose. They provide the boundaries to contain all of the myriad of things that will take place at a certain point in the story.
Consider that within an episode that there are segments in which very particular things happen, such as a robbery at a bank, a high-speed chase along the highway or even a ship being boarded by pirates on the high seas. All of these segments placed into a written format would actually be the scene itself. I hope I am not confusing you but am just trying to convey the fact that a scene in a story fulfills the purpose of both episode and segment combined.
The purpose of this book is to look at the pieces that go into creating the segment so that you can create the most dynamic episode possible. Another very important factor about a scene, is its continuity. Whether one scene directly spills into the next or it is briefly interrupted as you transition to something else for a few scenes and pick back up where you left off, you still want things to be seamless. One of my goals is through the use of these elements to empower you with the ability to do so with ease. You can think of each element as a layer on which to build each scene in your story and as your story evolves your use of each will shift as some may not be needed and others will be essential. I will help you to realize how they all tie together to bring out the best in your scene creation.
– Excerpted from Mastering Your Scenes by J.A. Cox, J.A. Cox, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author
J.A. Cox is a husband, father and disabled veteran. He is passionate about Jesus Christ and has a desire to allow God to use his writing to bring glory to his name and reach others for him. His other passions lie in: 1) Empowering people by teaching about things that he is knowledgeable in in a simple and fun as well as interesting manner. 2)Inspiring others that they may realize how the true potential to overcome their perceived dilemma lies right between their ears and how they allow it to manipulate what their eyes behold. 3) Helping people to realize that being healthy truly begins with realizing how important it is for them to be intimately acquainted with their own body in order for others to help them resolve its maladies that beset it. Along with those, he enjoys entertaining with fiction based on the concept that fact is stranger than fiction and then stretching it just a tad to create some memorable page turning moments that you will likely recall for some time to come.
Author Links
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Review: Blood at Dusk (Dark Ink Tattoo #2) by Cassie Alexander @cassie_author
Blood at Dusk
Dark Ink Tattoo #2
Cassie Alexander
Published: February 8, 2022
Publisher: Caskara Press
Genre: Paranormal, Vampires, Romance, Bisexual Romance, Paranormal Romance, Shifters, Erotica
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Review: Blood of the Pack (Dark Ink Tattoo #1) by Cassie Alexander @cassie_author
Blood of the Pack
Dark Ink Tattoo #1
Cassie Alexander
Published: January 5, 2022
Publisher: Caskara Press
Genre: Paranormal, Vampires, Romance, Bisexual Romance, Paranormal Romance, Shifters, Erotica
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Book Tour: The Best Life Book Club by Sheila Roberts @pumpupyourbook
It started as a book club. It became a way to build a better life together.
Title: The Best Life Book Club
Author: Sheila Roberts
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Pages: 368
Genre: Women's Fiction/Romantic Comedy/ContemporaryRomance
Karissa Newcomb is ready for a new start in a new neighborhood, as far away as she can get from Seattle, where her husband cheated on her with the neighbor who was supposed to be her best friend. She and her nine-year-old daughter are moving on to the city of Gig Harbor on the bay in Puget Sound. She even has a new job as an assistant at a small publishing company right in Gig Harbor. Her new boss seems like a bit of a curmudgeon, but a job is a job, she loves to read, and the idea of possibly meeting writers sounds fabulous.
Soon she finds she’s not the only one in need of a refresh. Her new neighbors, Alice and Margot, are dealing with their own crises. Alice is still grieving her late husband and hasn’t been able to get behind the wheel of a car since a close call after his death. Margot is floundering after getting divorced and laid off in quick succession. They could all use a distraction, and a book club seems like just the ticket. Together, the three women, along with Alice’s grumpy older sister, Josie, embark on a literary journey that just might be the kick-start they need to begin building their best lives yet.
Buy Links:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | HarperCollins
Book Excerpt:
Landing butt first in mud. How symbolic of Karissa Newcomb’s life. The old life. Not the new one, please, God.
She shouldn’t have crossed that corner of the lawn where the grass was sparse and slick in the pouring Northwest rain. Now here she was, wet and caked in mud. Like the cardboard box she’d dropped. At least the towels were still safely inside it. Something to be thankful for.
“See? There’s always a bright side somewhere,” her mother would say.
What was the bright side to Karissa’s marriage ending? There had to be one. It would be nice if she could find it before she turned thirty-five. It felt like a landmark birthday of sorts, but that was only a few months away though, so she wasn’t holding her breath.
Gig Harbor, Washington, a small maritime city, was a good place to start—close enough to Seattle for the obligatory bi-weekly child hand-off with the ex-husband, but far enough away that she wasn’t constantly having to look at the scene of the crime. Out of sight, out of mind. Someday, hopefully. Meanwhile, she needed to get up and get focused.
Brush the mud off your rear and get it in gear. That should be a bumper sticker.
She picked up her soggy box of towels and followed her brother Ethan and his friend Ike, who were making their way up her driveway, carrying her couch. Her eight-year-old daughter Macy was sitting on it, giggling.
The excitement of the new house had temporarily distracted Macy from the fact that she’d left behind her best friend. Who happened to be the daughter of Karissa’s former best friend. Like Karissa, Macy was going to have to find a new bestie.
Moving in the middle of February, in the middle of the school year, swimming through a deluge of icy rain wasn’t ideal, but that was how events had played out. The house in Seattle on which Karissa had lavished so much care had finally sold and now she had this house—a blue, two-story, Victorian-inspired one with three small bedrooms and a front porch. And a need for paint. The price had been right. Motivated sellers, the real estate agent had said. Karissa knew what that meant. She’d been a motivated seller, herself. Divorce had a way of motivating you. The house didn’t come with a water view like she’d originally dreamed of—water views were far outside her price point—but the neighborhood was pretty, and the street seemed quiet. She could hole up in her almost Victorian home and rebuild her life, the new start people expected you to make after your world collapsed.
“This is adorable,” her mother had gushed when she and Dad had made the trip to check out the house with Karissa and her Realtor.
Her parents were as enamored of Gig Harbor and its waterfront downtown as Karissa was. “I think Gig Harbor will be a perfect place to write the next chapter of your life,” Mom had told her.
“I hope I do a better job of writing this time around,” Karissa had muttered.
“It wasn’t you who messed up,” her dad had growled.
But maybe it was.
She jerked her mind away from that thought. She had a new house and a new job waiting for her. Between that and the spousal and child support her ex was paying she’d be okay financially. Certainly not rich, but okay. And she had free moving help. Look at all the good things she could focus on.
Inside the house, she followed one of the butcher-paper paths she’d made and set the box on the guest bathroom counter. Then she went back for the one with her clothes, brought that into the primary bedroom, which would be hers, and dug out a fresh pair of pants and panties. Think of this as peeling off all the bad parts from your past, she told herself as she ducked into the bathroom and stepped out of her pants.
It was hard peeling off the bad though. It stuck to you like dog poop on a shoe. There was always some little stinky bit that hung on. Like the memory of Mark walking out the door for the last time.
Dog poop, mud. She needed a new image to focus on. Rain. Rain washing away past sadness, bringing a rainbow and a promise of something better. Yes, that was a good image.
Her butt hurt.
Her cell phone rang, and she fished it out of her jacket pocket. “Hi, Mom,” she said, trying to sound the way a hopeful woman making a new start should sound.
“How’s it going?” Mom wanted to know.
“The guys are moving the furniture in now.”
“What’s the weather like there? It’s partly sunny up here.”
“It’s raining like crazy. I should have rented an ark instead of a moving van. I spent a fortune on plastic covering.”
“At least it’s not snow,” Mom said. “And the rain is what keeps everything so green.”
The Pacific Northwest was famous for its perpetual state of green and Seattle had been dubbed the Emerald City. Like Dorothy, Karissa had loved living in the Emerald City.
Until the witch showed up.
About the Author
USA Today and Publishers Weekly best-selling author Sheila Roberts has written over fifty books under various names, ranging from romance and relationship fiction to self-improvement. Over three million of her novels have been sold and that number continues to climb. Her humor and heart have won her a legion of fans and her novels have been turned into movies for the Lifetime, Hallmark, and Great American Family channels. Sheila is also a popular speaker, and has been featured at women’s retreats, writers’ conferences, and banquets. When she’s not out dancing with her husband or hanging out with friends, she can be found writing about those things near and dear to women’s hearts: family, friends and chocolate.
Author Links
Website | Facebook | Goodreads | Instagram
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Monday, April 22, 2024
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