Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Congrats and a Call to Action on My First Line

Congrats to Holly and Sarah, my first and second place winners in the Romance is in the Air blog hop! I'll be sending their gifts soon.

Here's what's happening in my writing world. I'm currently working on a teenage witch series. I'm still super excited about it, which is good because I plan on writing about five of them. But I'm not super excited about my first line. And first lines are important. So, here's the first bit. If you can think of a better first line, I'd love to hear it. The first three chapters in all their unedited glory can be found here.work-in-progress-share


Rage is like that. It builds up inside of you, like pressure in a teapot, until finally when the steam is so hot, so big, you let go—because really, there isn’t another choice. And everyone lets go differently. Some use body language—tight lips, a simple eye-roll. Some make noise and throw things against the wall. Others swear and name call. A few actually become violent, and throw punches or people.
Some of us burn stuff.
Although, not always intentionally.
It happened in Biology when Troy, the kid that liked to chew paper, blinked at me through his Stephen Hawking glasses and told me that he would be honored to go the dance with me. If it had just been Troy, I wouldn’t have been so mad, but Troy was the final paper-chewer that blew my cool—literally. Earlier that day, I’d learned that I had supposedly also asked Harrison, the kid that wore a Justin Bieber button on the lapel of school blazer, and Frankel, the lead singer of the Wanna-be Lounge Lizards, a band that serenaded the Hartly cafeteria every Friday. Three dates to Homecoming. I didn’t even want one.
And so when I found out Melissa Blankley was to blame, I blew it. Literally. And everything caught fire.
Don’t ask me how. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before.
And because it was so frightening, I hope that nothing ever happens like that again.


Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Romance is in the Air Blog Hop

Welcome to my Romance is in the Air Blog Hop. I'm offering three prizes.

First prize:
E-copies of all the books in my Beyond trilogy.

Beyond the Fortuneteller’s Tent, a 2014 I Heart Indie's finalist: When Petra Baron goes into the fortuneteller’s tent at a Renaissance fair, she expects to leave with a date to prom. Instead, she walks out into Elizabethan England, where she meets gypsies, a demon dog and a kindred spirit in Emory Ravenswood. Can Petra and Emory have a future while trapped in the past? Or is anything possible Beyond the Fortuneteller’s Tent? 
 Beyond the Sleepy Hollow: With a collection of the writings of Washington Irving in her hand and a prayer that the nine-pin playing ghosts that gave carried away Rip Van Winkle will give her drink of their ale, Petra Baron heads into another time defying adventure Beyond the Hollow.
Beyond the Pale: After their encounter with the Headless Horseman in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, Petra Baron and her immortal boyfriend, Emory Ravenswood, find themselves thrust into the bustle of modern-day New York City, where the dangers are both living and dead.

Second Prize:
An e-copy of my clean romance, Love at the Apple Blossom Inn
A small town girl.

A rock star living a lie.
Their paths cross and lead them down a road neither of them expected to find: love at the Apple Blossom Inn.
Janey knows that life doesn’t come with a happy-ending guarantee. She needs to keep her feet securely on the ground working two jobs, going to school, and caring for her little brother. She has no time or room for romance.
After an accident leaves his charmed life in ruins, Derrick abandons his Hollywood lifestyle and checks into rehab. The world believes that Derrick Cordell the rock star is dead. And despite his beating heart and breathing lungs, that’s exactly how he feels until, disguised and living incognito in the tiny town of Rose Arbor, Washington, he meets Janey, who loves him as plain old Eric Roudell, the wanna-be music teacher.
But secrets have a way of unraveling. When Janey discovers the truth about Eric/Derrick, how can she love someone she doesn’t even know? Especially since love is not on her to-do list?

Third prize: 
Everyone wins! You can get this collection of 13 paranormal stories for free! (It includes Beyond the Fortuneteller's Tent.) To claim this prize click here: 13 Paranormal Stories
How do you win?
Follow my blog. Be sure to leave your email addie in comments so I'll know where to send your prize. Thanks for stopping by! 

P.S. I'm starting something new. It's a live chapter share. Every week I'm going to post the first chapter of my current work in progress. Right now, I'm writing a teen witch book, the first in a series. You can read that here:


Sunday, February 1, 2015

Anyone Else Read The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells?

I both loved and hated this book. I think I loved it until the last ten or so pages--which makes my hate more bitter than if I'd been meh until then. I loved the prose. I loved the tension. I loved all the pretty sentences that made me stop and think about the people we love and lose.
But I really hated the ending. I think Greer took an easy out. Greta didn't arc--she just sort of flattened and picked an easy road. By so doing, she made all the other Greta's subject to her choice, and that made her seem weak, selfish, and cruel.
I think it would have been much more satisfying if she had realized that life is simply what we make of it. We don't get to choose who lives, dies or stays. We have to go forward, making the best of things.

But Greer did write pages and pages of lovely prose. Here's some of my favorite lines.

You can't marry such hopes--they won't be faithful.

What is the perfect world--except the one that needs you?

I understand that it wasn't that you didn't want to be with me anymore, but you didn't want to be yourself--the one you were with me.

It was wearying, getting everything wrong.

A shift in the weather, and we are a different person.

The darkness had drained all color, so we were in silent-movie tones.

They aren't fixed, they're just back.

There is the thing you hope for, and then beyond it, there is the thing you dare not hope for.

Everybody knows the thing that would change your life, and yet no one is friend enough to tell you.

They think I should be someone else.