L.R. Braden's Blog, page 15

Vote for Cover of the Month!

AllAuthor /* CLIENT-SPECIFIC STYLES */ body, table, td, a{-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; -ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;} table, td{mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt;} /* RESET STYLES */ img{border: 0; height: auto; line-height: 100%; outline: none; display:block; max-width:100%;} .img-circle{border-radius:50% !important;} table{border-collapse: collapse !important;} .logo img{ margin:inherit;} body{height: 100% !important; margin: 0 !important; padding: 0 !important; width: 100% !important;} /* MOBILE STYLES */ @media screen and (max-width: 575px) { h2{font-size:24px !important;} /* ALLOWS FOR FLUID TABLES */ .wrapper {width: 100% !important; max-width: 100% !important;} /* ADJUSTS LAYOUT OF LOGO IMAGE */ .mob-book img{margin:0px auto 20px auto !important;} /* FULL-WIDTH TABLES */ .responsive-table {width: 100% !important;} .mob-responsive{width:96% !important; float:left !important; padding:0px 10px !important;} /* UTILITY CLASSES FOR ADJUSTING PADDING ON MOBILE */ .padding {padding: 10px 5% 15px 5% !important;} .padding-meta {padding: 30px 5% 0px 5% !important; text-align: center;} .no-padding { padding: 0 !important;} .section-padding {padding: 30px 15px 50px 15px !important;} /* ADJUST BUTTONS ON MOBILE */ .mobile-button-container {margin: 0 auto; width: 100% !important;} .mobile-button {padding:12px 15px !important; border: 0 !important; font-size: 16px !important; display: block !important;} } Cover of the Month A Drop of Magic (The Magicsmith Book 1)Hey Everyone,
I’m excited to say that my book has been nominated for the "Cover of the Month" contest on AllAuthor.com. Every vote I get brings me closer to the next round, so please help me out by voting for my book.
Vote Now » Thanks,
L.R. Braden

Faerie Forged on Audio

Faerie Forged, book three in my Magicsmith urban fantasy series, is now available from Audiobooks.com and Audible as an audiobook produced by Tantor Media and read by Heather Costa. That means you can now listen to the first three books in the series without having to wait for the next installment!

Author Spotlight Double Feature

Today I'm joined by the amazingly talented Carol Berg *AND* Cate Glass, who just happen to be the same person. ;) I've been fortunate enough to attend a few of Carol's writing workshops, so I can say with certainty that she knows her stuff. But if my word isn't enough for you, she's also received the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, been honored as the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' "Writer of the Year" twice, and earned the Colorado Book Award FOUR TIMES, including the most recent one on May 2020 for An Illusion of Theives. Thanks Carol, for taking the time to share some background on yourself and your books! How much must one pay for an hour of youthful folly? The Pureblood Registry accused Lucian de Remeni-Masson of “unseemly involvement with ordinaries,” which meant only that he spoke with a young woman not of his own kind, allowed her to see his face unmasked, worked a bit of magic for her....After that one mistake, Lucian’s grandsire excised half his magic and savage Harrowers massacred his family. Now the Registry has contracted his art to a common coroner. His extraordinary gift for portraiture is restricted to dead ordinaries—beggars or starvelings hauled from the streets. But sketching the truth of dead men’s souls brings unforeseen consequences. Sensations not his own. Truths he cannot possibly know and dares not believe. The coroner calls him a cheat and says he is trying to weasel out of a humiliating contract. The Registry will call him mad—and mad sorcerers are very dangerous.... Find in on Amazon or Indie Bound A Conjuring of Assassins is Cate Glass's second adventure with the Chimera team, a ragtag crew who use their forbidden magic for the good of the kingdom.
Romy and her three partners in crime—a sword master, a silversmith, and her thieving brother—have embraced their roles as the Shadow Lord's agents, using their forbidden magic to accomplish tasks his other spies cannot. Now, the Shadow Lord needs them to infiltrate the home of the Mercediaran Ambassador and prevent him from obtaining information that would lead to all-out war with Cantagna's most dangerous enemy. To succeed, they will have to resurrect long-buried secrets, partner with old enemies, and once again rely on the very magics that could get them sentenced to death. Find in on Amazon or Indie Bound About Carol Carol Berg’s eighteen fantasy novels have won four Colorado Book Awards and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, both under her own name and her pseudonym Cate Glass. Carol is a regular presenter/panelist at writers conferences and fantasy/sf conventions and is a two-time Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Writer of the Year. All of this is amazing to a former software engineer who majored in math at Rice University and computer science at the University of Colorado in part to avoid writing papers. Carol’s newest work is A Conjuring of Assassins by Cate Glass, from Tor Books. A Summoning of Demons arrives in February 2021. Want to know more? Visit http://www.carolberg.com or http://www.categlass.com

New Release: Casting Shadows

The newsest addition to The Magicsmith urban fantasy series is now available! CASTING SHADOWS Children are disappearing.
With Purity growing in political power and bigotry on the rise across the Realms, Alex’s short-term goals are to stay under the PTF's radar and as far from the fae Courts as she can. But her plans go up in smoke when May, the younger sister of her good friend Emma, goes missing.

The fae are involved.
Alex will do everything she can to find May, but to mount a rescue she'll have to avoid PTF raids, conquer old ghosts, and risk coming face to face with her fae grandfather again.

War is coming.
Lines are being drawn. No one is safe. To survive, Alex will have to choose a side.
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Google | Kobo | iBooks First off, a big thanks to everyone who pre-ordered the book!
As part of the launch, Casting Shadows is going on tour with Silver Dagger Book Tours. You can follow the tour and enter for a chance to win a $20 Amazon giftcard HERE Here's what people are saying so far about Casting Shadows: "I love this series! Alex is full of surprises and never fails to keep my attention. Such a unique world to fall in to." ~Karen F. "This is an excellent series that gets better and more complex with each addition. I highly recommend this book, especially to lovers of the urban paranormal fantasy genre." ~Evan G. "This is the fourth book in this series, and I love that it just keeps getting better and better. I love the excellent writing, complex characters, interesting plot, and the great action, and I think those who love urban fantasy will, too. Highly recommend!" ~Penny N "An excellent addition to a great series that I love. Great characters, world building and plot. Can't wait to read the next installment. Highly recommended." ~Anna Maria G. "This may be my favorite of the series so far! There has definitely been a lot of character growth for Alex throughout the series and she is finally becoming the hero/person I hoped to see. The storyline of this book was great. Can’t wait for the next one!" ~Alison K.

Happy Book Birthday to A Drop of Magic!

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of my very first book: A Drop of Magic. One year ago I published my first book and kicked off my writing career. Since then, that book has become an Amazon bestseller, won multiple awards, and I've been contacted by numerous readers wanting to tell me how much they've enjoyed my stories. In the year since that first book came out I've published three others. That's four books in one year, and I'm still going strong!
I couldn't have imagined a year ago where I would be today, and I couldn't be more happy or more proud. Thank you all for taking this wonderful journey with me and making my dream of becoming an author a reality. To celebrate this momentus event and spread the joy, I'm giving away three copies of A Drop of Magic. Simply fill out the entry form below or go to https://forms.gle/S994WMhfH8edHRnY9. I'll select three winners on Monday, Aug.3rd. Winners will be able to choose between eBook or audiobook format for their prize, which will be given out as a redemption code from either audiobooks.com or Amazon kindle. Loading…

Review: The Brightest Fell

The Brightest Fell by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Seanan McGuire continues to be one of my favorite urban fantasy authors.
In this latest addition to the October Daye series, Toby faces the threat of losing the family she's created for herself if she can't bring the family she was born into (but wants no part of) back together.
Toby is a snarky, practical woman who is easy to empathize with in most situations. She is joined on this adventure by her squire, who readers of the series will already know well, and Simon --- Toby's ex-nemesis turned savior and sort of father figure. Most of the internal arc of this adventure is about Toby getting to know Simon better, and realizing that even good people can make terrible decisions. She herself questions how far she'd go, what travesties she'd commit, to save someone she loves.

Toby's world is a mix of modern day San Francisco and the magical realms of faerie hidden just beyond mortal perception. McGuire blends those two realities seamlessly, creating a rich and truly unique setting.

The writing is smooth, fast-paced, and engaging, creating a compelling story that's hard to put down.

View all my reviews

Time Travel & Nikola Tesla!

Today I'm joined by author Diane Byington, celebrating her newest book: If She Had Stayed. A blend of women’s fiction, thriller, and time travel that features Nikola Tesla in a cameo role. Kaley Kline is thrilled to have landed a job as director of the new Tesla Museum in Colorado Springs. To make the museum successful, she searches for undiscovered works to display. When she finds an old safe that might have been Tesla’s, she’s shocked to find some diary pages supposedly written by the inventor himself. Kaley initially thinks either that the journal is a fraud or Tesla was experiencing a nervous breakdown when he wrote it. However, if his experiments were real, the world will never be the same. She decides to secretly build Tesla’s time machine and attempt to go back into her own life to change a decision she has always regretted. She prepares for a trip to the past, not knowing whether she will electrocute herself or travel back to the Boulder of her sophomore year in college. But an old boyfriend might have hidden some secrets from her—secrets that could have her fighting for her life.
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iBooks What did you enjoy most about writing this book? I wrote the first draft during NaNoWriMo one year, and I finished it in six weeks. I had a general plan for the book, but I discovered the specifics during the writing. It was fun to write my 5,000 words during one day, never caring whether I was making a mistake or not, then think about what should come next in the book, and write that the next day. It was a freeing experience to write that first draft. Of course, writing the next dozen or so drafts wasn’t as much fun, but they were definitely necessary. What did you edit out of this book? I loved writing in Tesla’s voice. I read everything about the man and by him and did my best to channel his voice in his journal entries. I had to edit out one journal entry that I really loved, in which Tesla talks about achieving world peace. That was always his goal, but, of course, he fell woefully short. What was your hardest scene to write? That would be the beginning. Where and how to start a story is always the hardest thing for me. I must have rewritten this one a hundred times, and forced my critique group to read most of them, which they did with kind hearts and red pens. The first scene must pull the reader into the story and let them know what to expect. Eventually, I ended up with the first scene being Kaley trying to break into Tesla’s old house in Colorado Springs so she can search for Tesla artifacts that others might have missed. How important is research to you when writing a book? I spent years as a college professor, which required doing research as part of the job. I don’t teach anymore, but I still love doing research for novels. In this case, I spent most of a year studying about Nikola Tesla and reading what other authors had written about time travel. It’s such an interesting topic that I could read, research, and write about time travel for years without repeating myself (hopefully). I loved the process of trying to make my time travel be as close to what Tesla might have done as possible. He invented lots of gadgets, from engines that ran AC electricity to x-rays to remote controlled boats. Why wouldn’t he invent a machine to facilitate time travel? Excerpt from If She Had Stayed:“Time of the Season”
Struggling to keep her teeth from chattering, Kaley pushed on one of the back windows of the dilapidated Victorian home where Nikola Tesla had once lived. The hinge let out a loud squeak, and she froze. The houses were close together in that part of Colorado Springs, and a neighbor might call the police.

As the seconds ticked by, she considered what she should do if a police officer appeared around the corner of the old house. She was a fast runner, but no one could outrun a bullet. Fear flooded her chest, and her heart hammered, but uppermost in her mind was how embarrassed she would be if she had to call one of her friends to post bail for her.

After another long moment with no sign that she’d been caught, Kaley’s heartbeat returned to normal. She’d come too far to stop. She placed a concrete block beneath the window, grabbed her flashlight and other tools, and hoisted herself over the sill.

A thrill ran up her spine. She’d never done anything illegal before, but she couldn’t miss the opportunity to possibly discover something of Tesla’s that no one else had found. She’d waited months for the previous tenant to move out, and the landlord had shown her the house that morning.

After looking around for a bit, she’d said, “Three thousand seems a little steep for this old neighborhood. Would you consider twenty-three hundred?” Even at that rate, she’d have to get roommates, which she was reluctant to do. She liked her privacy. Still, she would do it if she had to.

He laughed. “I just put up the sign yesterday, and five other people have already called to see it. I’m showing it to someone else in an hour if you don’t want it.”

She took a breath. “Has anybody found any Tesla artifacts here?”

“Not in the ten years that I’ve owned the house. If he’d left anything, it would have been snatched up years ago. Every single tenant asks about it, and I tell them all the same thing, but they think they’ll discover something no one else has found.” He shrugged. “Everybody’s got a fantasy, you know?”

Continue reading... About Diane Diane Byington has been a tenured college professor, yoga teacher, psychotherapist, and executive coach. Also, she raised goats for fiber and once took a job cooking hot dogs for a NASCAR event. She still enjoys spinning and weaving, but she hasn’t eaten a hot dog or watched a car race since. Besides reading and writing, Diane loves to hike, kayak, and photograph sunsets. She and her husband divide their time between Boulder, Colorado, and Dunedin, Florida. To learn more about her or join her mailing list, visit her author website at https://dianebyington.com/

Review: Fire Touched

Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another fantastic installment in Briggs' Mercy Thompson series.

Fire Touched focuses on a boy who escaped from Underhill after centuries of wandering the dangerous magical realm alone, but he didn't come out entirely human. Now Underhill wants him back, and the fae want him as a bargaining chip to reclaim their old homeland. Mercy and Adam, lovable bleeding hearts that they are, decide to protect the human-looking boy from all the big bads out to get him, and in doing so, claim the entire Tri-cities as their territory to defend against all comers.
I found the beginning of this book a little slow, starting off with a seemingly random scene of Mercy buying products from (basically) an Avon lady. But then a rampaging troll was set loose on the cable bridge and the story took on a more usual pace.

I really liked the character of Aiden, the young-looking boy who isn't young at all. As always, Briggs' writing really shines through in her characters. Aiden is powerful, self-assured, and rude while at the same time being just a scared little boy. He lashes out and pushes people away, but really just needs a good solid hug and someone to tell him he's safe.

The climax and wrap-up felt a little rushed to me, but were still satisfying. Mercy and her pack of do-gooder werewolves will live to fight another day . . and I can't wait to read about it.

View all my reviews

A Drop of Magic is now an audiobook!

Available from:
A Drop of Magic The bestselling, award-winning, first book in The Magicsmith urban fantasy series is now an audiobook! Enter a world of magic and mystery as narrated by Heather Costa.

With the world clinging to a fragile peace forced on the Fae by humanity after the Faerie Wars, metalsmith Alex Blackwood is plunged into the world of the half-fae who traffick in illegal magical artifacts. Her best friend’s murder and his cryptic last message place her in the crosshairs of a scheme to reignite the decade-old war between humans and fae.

Worse, violent attacks against her and the arrival of a fae knight on a mission force Alex to face a devastating revelation of who and what she is. To catch a killer, retrieve a dangerous artifact, and stop a war, Alex will have to accept that she’s an unregistered fae “halfer” with a unique magical talent—a talent that would change everything she believes about her past, her art, and her future.

Her world is crumbling around her, and Alex will have to decide who to trust if she and the world are going to survive.

The Eric Hoffer Book Awards

I can now introduce myself as an award winning author! This morning, the results were published for the 2020 Eric Hoffer Book Awards for which my book, A Drop of Magic, was shortlisted. While I wasn't able to bring home the grand prize, I was honored to receive not one, but two distinctions! You can find a list of the twelve books given this honor both on the First Horizon Award page and on the US Review of Books website. The second award I won was the Category Prize for Sci-Fi / Fantasy. The Eric Hoffer Award includes eighteen category distinctions, and awards a winner, runner up, and honorable mentions in each.
To see all the categories and their respective winners, visit the Eric Hoffer Award page or the complete posting by The US Review of Books.