Kellyann Zuzulo's Blog, page 13

Genies on the Horizon

There are genies on the horizon.

I’ve been working with an amazing marketing consultant, Lisa Pietsch, to create a new look for my website/blog. Summoning Magic on the Page is the tagline for this oasis of genie lore, fiction, history, and photos related to all of these things. Please click the follow button on the right side of this page and join me on this magic carpet ride of discovery and exploration into the world of the jinn.

Over the coming weeks and months, you’ll read some shocking facts and fascinating tidbits about a realm that is mostly misunderstood. I’ll share the stories that I uncover in my research (some of them will be actual news accounts of genie encounters, some will be archaeological finds, historical facts, or ancient superstitions) and I’ll keep you posted about the new stories I’m creating based on the jinn.

Currently, The Genie Ignites is available from Boroughs Publishing Group for ereaders, phones, laptops, and most other digital divination. Pick it up today if you haven’t already. Meanwhile, I’m currently onto the edits for book two of the Zubis Chronicles series, which is titled The Genie Smolders. The editor on this book is the sharp and insightful Editor-in-Chief Christopher Keeslar, formerly of Dorchester. That fact alone is a guarantee of a hot, happenin’ and very well written romance.

Take a look around the site and let me know what you would like to see or feel free to share your own fascinating facts about genies.

Sincere thanks to Lisa Pietsch for unleashing this vibrant genie world with her extraordinary marketing savvy. I highly recommend her marketing services. If you’re an author like I am who mostly wants to write but also recognizes the need to get my books into people’s hands, you’re going to need some help. Lisa Pietsch is that person. She built a new website, linked all my social networking, and quadrupled my Facebook reach to readership in less than a week.

Let’s get started.  Go click “follow” and fasten your silky sashes.

Best Wishes,

Kellyann Zuzulo

My Facebook Friends

[image error]It seems ironic and maybe a little dishonest to say I have 1,400 friends.  But on Facebook, I do.  However, I selected each and every little avatar as people who may have similar interests to myself.  (Not counting the dozens of family members and friends I know in real life.  That’s genuine friendship!)  Let’s be honest, though.  I don’t need that many friends.  I started my Facebook page initially with the sole purpose of social marketing.  I’m an author.  I write books.  I would love people to know about them.  This is one way to do it.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum.  I’m making what can be considered real friends among the thousand or so.  People I’ve never met who regularly stop by my page and say hello, make kind comments, or just share their experience about a certain topic.  And isn’t that what a friend is.

This week, I had a lovely phone call with a woman I know only from Facebook.  We had a great chat about writing and publishing, and even family (i.e. making time to work with little ones scampering about).  And another woman I know only from Facebook generously read and then reviewed my book The Third Wish on her blog.  I say generous, because it was a good review — but you can read it for yourself.

I’ve never met most of the people who I share comments and laughs with on Facebook.  But I consider them friends.  Lots of people knock the Facebook community (I myself have done so in the past).  But it is a community.  And that’s a friendly thing.

Come on, be honest.  Haven’t you made some real friends through social marketing?

And if you want to be my friend onFacebook, come on over.  You can never have too many friends.

BEA and Book Celebrities

Because I’m a book geek (okay, so I’m also active in the publishing industry), I attended Book Expo America this week. The biggest draw for me was an author breakfast on Tuesday morning. While I may make fun of our society’s penchant for celebrity worship, when it comes to certain authors, I can be just as effusive as any talking head on Access Hollywood. If there weren’t so many librarians at my table, I might have squealed with delight when Jo Nesbo came to the microphone. However, I also pick up writing tips. Read about my literary geekness at The Pop Culture Divas.

~Kellyann

Download THE GENIE IGNITES today!

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Zubis on Location in Saudi Arabia

 

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Laurie’s Thoughts Paranormal Blog Interview

Laurie’s Thoughts Paranormal Blog secured an interview with Zubis where he’s on location on the northeast coast of Saudi Arabia. He seems distracted and typically intense. Read why today and then enter to win a free copy of THE GENIE IGNITES.

Here’s some of what he says:

Reporter: What is something people would be surprised to know about you?

Zubis: That when I love, I love completely. There is no expanse of burning desert or raging sea that will keep me from the one I love. Though years pass like grains of sand in an hourglass, my love will never fade. That I would kill for love. That I would die for love.
Read the rest of the interview now…
Best Wishes,
Kellyann
www.kfzuzulo.com
What Would You Wish For?

The Art of “Cobbling”

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Kurt loves to cobble

I’m over at The Pop Culture Divas blogging about Kurt and his love of cobbling. This is him here (he photographs very well). So head over now to read some wisdom about Kurt the Cobbler. I first posted a helpful tale of hard work and tenacity, originally subtitled How to Succeed in Publishing. Then I revised Kurt’s story to a more erotic telling, subtitled How Romance Writers Can Find their Voice and Their Tongue.  The hits for the erotic version are, not surprisingly, more robust.

See you soon,
Kellyann
 
Don’t forget to download THE GENIE IGNITES today!
Some bonds last forever.
It’s $3.99 from Boroughs Publishing Group

News Like Dark Chocolate…Bittersweet

 

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Seven Souls A Leaping selected.

Joyfully Reviewed, a rockin’ romance review site, selected SEVEN SOULS A LEAPING–an anthology I wrote with Heather Long and Lisa Pietsch–as a BEST OF 2011. Woo-hoo! Yowza! and Hip-Hip-Hooray! ….followed by a heavy sigh and a lowering of the raised fist. Seven Souls A Leaping is no longer available to readers because the publisher has since gone out of business. The anthology has three really good stories. Really. My contribution was a novella entitled Star Light, Blood Bright.

My story nestled between the other two stories, all of which were connected by the theme of a serial killer, Jeffrey Wiles. In the first story by Lisa Pietsch, entitled Frozen Hell, Wiles is a living killer on the loose.  Pietsch’s main character, Duncan MacDougall, is the brother to my main character Samantha MacDougall. Together with their cousin, Tara Conroy (who is the star of Heather Long’s 13th Night), they run the New England New Age Investigations company. By the time I catch up with Wiles, he’s been killed by Lisa’s character, Detective Danyelle Roy. But my character can see auras and soon realizes that wicked Wiles is hopping bodies to continue killing. In 13th Night, Tara uses her connection to the ghostworld to battle Wiles to obliteration.

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Star Light, Blood Bright is the 2nd tale.

So, the book is gone. But the story lives on. I’m rewriting Star Light, Blood Bright as a standalone. The best news is that I can change the title. What do you think of Starry Nights? Here’s a blurb and an excerpt. Hopefully, the story will live on. Stay tuned…

Samantha MacDougal can see auras. Her gift usually helps her pursue rascals and wraiths for her family’s business, New England New Age Investigations. But when she begins to  track Satanic serial murderer Jeffrey Wiles along icy Boston streets, her own life’s light is in danger of being extinguished. She is alone in her struggle until handsome Boston detective Ike Marshall mysteriously provides a supernatural shield of light that warms her as never before.

EXCERPT:

Ike and Sam stood face-to-face in front of the fireplace, her elbow still gripped in his fingers.  A log hissed in the flames.  He released her arm.  Sam gazed back at him, searching his head for the spikes of tall light she had seen before.  He was invisible, not as in the auras that were lost because of encroaching death but because she knew Ike’s aura was somehow inaccessible to her.

Isn’t this what she had wished for?  A relief from the constant burden of auras.  Yet, she still pulled back from him.  She had to get away from him and from everyone.  She would find Wiles on her own, because she was the only person who saw him as he truly was.  Raw, splintering hatred that was visible only in that ceaseless guttering of charcoal sparks.

Sam smiled and absently massaged her elbow where the feel of Ike’s fingers was still warm.  “I don’t think so, Ike.  Stow the pity for me.  I don’t need you.  I’m better by myself.”

“You’re coming with me, Sam, even if I have to carry you out of here.”  He gestured with a sweep of his long arm toward the kitchen, now cluttered with both uniformed and plainclothes law enforcement.  “And not one of these guys will do anything to stop me.”

Sam half-smiled in spite of herself.  She cocked her head and the look of earnest intensity on Ike’s stern face, like a warrior who moves forward to the front lines of a battle and will not surrender, sent a lariat of energy through the air that linked them one to the other.

“Give me one good reason why I should.”

Ike stared at her and the thin skin beneath his eyes tensed as though he felt the same energy and didn’t quite understand it.  Sam was entrenched in her decision to go it alone, determined to send well-meaning Ike on his way, until he spoke the only words that made sense.

“I think we’re stronger together.”

Love is in the Air at Boroughs Publishing Group

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Love is in the air at Boroughs Publishing Group

The romance fiction industry has a rival for its affections.

Boroughs Publishing Group offers some heart-captivating romances that throb with the best of them. In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that Boroughs is my publisher. But that is advocacy as much as admission. I like what they do.  I think you will, too. Spring is here and love is in the air.  See what’s happening at Boroughs and meet a surprise guest at their very romantic blog….

Best Wishes,
Kellyann

Part of the Big Thrill

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The Big Thrill over a genie

As a member of International Thrillers Writers, I’m in some storied company…most of whom I’ve read and many of whom I’ve met: Lee Child, Joseph Finder, Gayle Lynds, James Rollins, Sandra Brown, Rebecca Cantrell, Sophie Littlefield, Allison Brennan, JT Ellison, Harlan Coben, Vince Flynn, Doug Preston…the list goes on and on. So it was a “thrill” to get a brief but magical write-up in The Big Thrill webzine recently to announce the release of The Genie Ignites.  And it goes like this:

When your past reaches for you across 3,000 years, there’s only one thing you can do…remember. Bethany O’Brien is a D.C editor suddenly embroiled in a Middle Eastern mystery that she can solve if only she can recall why she once betrayed Zubis, the nearly 4,000-year-old genie who loves her still. Job in jeopardy and citizenship in shambles, she plunges through London, Italy, and Egypt into Saudi Arabia, with no hope of overtime.

THE GENIE IGNITES is available from Amazon and Smashwords, and will be released soon from Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

*****

Get Online for Off Limits by Rue Allyn

Welcome to author Rue Allyn! Her new novel OFF LIMITS was released this month by Red Sage Publishing. If you’re fond of love and a good story, you might want to check it out.

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A story about the force of love

Thank you, Kellyann, for having me as a guest at Cultural Arcana & Mystical Tidbits.  I love reading paranormal romance…the more mystical the better.  However, paranormal romance is not yet in my writing repertoire.  My newest erotic romance, Off Limits, contains nothing mystical except love.

Love is the most powerful mystical force known to man.  In fiction or true life, nothing can surpass love.  This is true for all humans as well as for my characters, Senior Chief Hank O’Mara and Lieutenant Bethany Morton.

My publisher describes the story this way:  For Senior Chief Hank O’Mara, no woman compares with the sea until he meets Lieutenant Bethany Morton. Only the sea can draw two such opposite and passionate people together. Only US Navy regulations keep them apart. Fraternization between Officer and enlisted is forbidden. Beth and Hank do their utmost to resist their mutual attraction. Can love prove stronger than either the sea or the USN? To find out, Hank will sacrifice his career, and Beth will risk her professional dreams.

For those of us who believe in the power of love, the question posed above has only one answer.  For non-believers, or if you simply want to know how Hank and Beth overcome the considerable obstacles in their path, you can get a copy of Off Limits from Red Sage Publishing.  Want to read an excerpt?  Follow this link to the Rue Allyn website. Please leave a comment and share your own story about the mystical power of love.  Happy reading!

Blog Tour Whirlwind…Join me!

Today the magic carpet ride of blog and interviews begins for THE GENIE IGNITES! To kick off three weeks of virtual travel in the book world, I’m celebrating all day at the 5th anniversary bash for Beyond Her Book, Barbara Vey’s wildly popular blog for Publisher’s Weekly. Then zip over to Literal Exposure where we can discuss What Would You Wish For? So many things…

Here’s the rest of my schedule. Every day is a different blog or interview. No two the same. I hope you’ll meet me somewhere along the road.

[image error]Tuesday, March 6th: The Examiner
Wednesday, March 7th: Motherhoot
Thursday, March 8th: The Plot Thickens
Friday, March 9th: Paranormal Haven
Sunday, March 11th: Barry Eva’s A Book and A Chat Radio Show (airs 6:30 pm Eastern Time)
Monday, March 12th: Five Alarm Book Reviews
Tuesday, March 13th: Literarily Speaking
Wednesday, March 14th: The Hot Author Report
Thursday, March 15th: Blog Critics
Friday, March 16th: Always A Book Lover (book review)
Monday, March 19th: Love Romance Passion
Tuesday, March 20th: Hott Books
Wednesday, March 21st: Book Marketing Buzz
Thursday, March 22nd: Darlene’s Book Nook
Thursday, March 22nd: Review From Here
Friday, March 23rd: The Dark Phantom

And let me know what you think of the book!
Best Wishes,
Kellyann