Christine Rains's Blog, page 111

Teaser Tuesday with Kiss the Dead

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
Grab your current read Open to a random page Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that pageBE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!This is the newest novel in L.K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. I love the beginning of the series, but after a while, it became hit or miss with me. I like the darker and grittier books where Anita is on Marshal duty rather than the ones she's dealing with her harem. Oh, I particularly like some of the men in her harem, but too much of a good thing is a little too much.
Here's your teaser:
Sometimes when I had nightmares, they got glimpses of it if we were sleeping next to each other. When I was working on a really violent case, some of my lovers started sleeping elsewhere. (page 64)

Genre Favorites Blogfest

This is another fantastic blogfest from our dear Ninja Captain, Alex J. Cavanaugh. I love the simplicity of his blogfests. It makes it fun and easy to visit the other participants to see what their favorites are.

Here are mine!
Movies - Adventure. With close seconds of science-fiction, horror, and black comedies.
Music - Rock alternative.
Books - Paranormal romance. (I bet you didn't see that coming! Ha!)
Guilty pleasure - Cheesy sci-fi and horror movies like you see on Syfy Channel. I can't get enough of them! Did you see Pegasus vs. Chimera on Saturday? Hehehe! So horrible!
In other news, I received a fabulous review for FEARLESS at BigAl's Books and Pals. Please go check it out. A great place to get your books reviewed. They accept indie books where many other big review sites don't.

Daisy Award

Thank you very much to the wonderful Elizabeth Arroyofor this cute award.
I must now tell you seven unusual things about myself.
1) My wedding ring is black with a white gold band. I don't like diamonds or yellow gold. I don't like to wear rings either. Plus, I'm quite accident prone. The ring is made from black titanium. Near indestructible!
2) I have a lot of paperclips and I'm not sure why.
3) I'm thinking of chocolate cheesecake when I should be thinking of unusual things about myself. The What's Your Chocolate? blogfest from earlier this week has stayed with me all week long.
4) I have a firm handshake. It weirds me out a bit when I shake someone's hand and theirs is limp.
5) I don't know what I'm going to be for Halloween. It might be too early to be thinking about it, but I'd like to have some time to prepare. Any suggestions?
6) I say "cool" a lot. Now my son is saying it. Will it still be a cool word to use for his generation?
7) Top items on my Christmas list for this year: a composter and a kitchen floor. Yes, I'm that exciting.
I nominate these worthy bloggers that I haven't heard from in a long time:PK HrezoLaura JosephsenAmy LundermanKathleen DoyleSarah Ahiers

Gravity: The Complete Trilogy now available

A Space Fantasy Collection including DEFYING GRAVITY, FIGHTING GRAVITY, and PULL OF GRAVITY Three alien couples in three space fantasy novelettes fall in love in this complete trilogy. A Persean and a Medusan crash land on a post-apocalyptic Earth and must escape their prison cells in DEFYING GRAVITY. An Earthling and an Aresian flee their vicious peoples and fight for the right to live and love in FIGHTING GRAVITY. A Cupidian and an Earthling can't ignore the pull of love while they battle to save their home in PULL OF GRAVITY. Each print version includes information on how to get a free ebook of GRAVITY: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY by Cherie Reich. 
To Purchase the ebook version: Amazon US / UK / DE / FR / IT  / ES  Smashwords  Nook  Kobo 
Add on Goodreads, click here. (Links for the print version forthcoming.)

Friday Five for September 14th

1. Good week for writing again. I finished the first draft of my newest novella on Sunday night. It's sitting to the side and cooling off as I start the second novella in the series. I'm pleased with the way the ending went. I was afraid I'd get stuck, because I couldn't see the ending. Yet my muse did not fail me. The new novella is starting off well too.
2. FEARLESS has still been doing well. Over 2000 copies sold/downloaded. Huzzah! It's weird to think that many people are reading something I wrote. Just because I'm curious about how sales go for other writers, I'm posting my stats for you.Amazon Kindle (free): 1339Smashwords (free): 666CreateSpace: 11B&N: 0Kobo (free): 0
3. Yesterday evening, a lady with a clipboard actually heeded our "no solicitors" sign on the front door!
4. Preschool is still going well. The boy will protest when going there and cry a bit after I leave, but then he's good for the rest of the morning. Everyone comments on his good manners and intelligence. I'm a proud mama. Today is the school's fall picnic. Socializing isn't my strong point. My husband is going to come during his lunch hour so I won't have to go it alone.
5. Yesterday while my son was in school, I decided to go some random place without a child in tow. Where did I end up going? To the library, of course! It's blissful to browse the shelves without having to chase a toddler around.
Have a wonderful weekend, folks!

My experience with Twitter so far

I still consider myself new to Twitter. Sometimes I still feel overwhelmed by the amount of information that goes through. I haven't become addicted. Thankfully! Though I can see how someone can spend hours upon hours on there.

I tweet a couple of times a day. I pass on links to my blog posts and RT other links that I find interesting. Sometimes I post something about my home life, but I mostly use it to tweet about writing.

It's good for promoting books. A great blurb with a link can attract a lot of attention. It's easy for others to RT (re-tweet) your blurbs too and for you to do the same for them.

I have nearly 1000 followers. I'm amazed at how fast I've gained them. I almost always follow back. I check out the person before I follow. Sometimes they're scammers or spammers. Or they could be something I have zero interest in. I get a lot of women's health people wanting me to follow them, and entertainment people I don't like. The strangest one I had was a coffin company. It was legitimate. Did they target me because I write about the paranormal, or because they're saying I'm getting old and better plan ahead?

I don't read many tweets. I just don't have the time. There's too much going on on there. I might read the top twenty on the list when I tweet. I more often read tweets by people I know if they have the little widgets on their sidebars on their blogs. I'd rather read blog posts than tweets.

Was it worth it joining Twitter? Yes. It's effective for what it does and easy to use. A better social media tool than Facebook.

If you have a Twitter account, what has your experience been like? What's the strangest individual to ever follow you?

Wicked Wednesday - why paranormal?

I'm over at Spacedock 19 today with the wonderfully talented Mary Pax. We'll be talking about the paranormal and I'll be doing my best to resist touching the chocolate. Please pop on over and have a drink with us!
We read stories to provide an escape from every day life. There's nothing more exciting than adding something in that might seem impossible and making it real in the book. Wouldn't it be wonderful to find a family of friendly fairies in your garden or a playful ghost in the abandoned house down the street? Of course, not all the supernatural elements are so nice. They can terrify us, and we end up sleeping with the light on that night.
A paranormal book must have a supernatural element that is integral to the plot. Don't confuse imagination and magical realism with the supernatural. Readers will feel cheated if it doesn't turn out to be paranormal. They're expecting to be lifted out of their reality and into world where vampires are real or what goes bump in the night just might plop on you next.
Paranormal characters give you a broader range of conflicts to play around with in your story. They can have the every day problems of a boring job or smothering mother, but they also have to hide their nature, or if it's known, deal with the consequences of it. It stretches the writer's imagination to realistically deal with these situations, but if done well, the readers love the paranormal conflict.
Writing paranormal stories gives you the freedom to play around with extraordinary ideas. You don't have to explain where monsters come from or how magic works. You can stretch the every day boundaries and surprise your readers with something that will leave them in awe.
I like the escape. I like the infinite possibilities. The supernatural has always fascinated me, and I have no doubt that it will continue to do so.
Why do you like to read and/or write about the paranormal?

Teaser Tuesday with Flora Segunda

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
Grab your current read Open to a random page Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that pageBE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!I'm in love with this book already. Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce is a middle grade fantasy. It's quirkier than Harry Potter. I know lots of Harry Potter fans out there. You'll love this book too.
Here's your teaser:
I was about to give up and go to the Tuckshop for a mocha, and then let Udo arrive and wait for me, when at last there was a hollering yahoo, and here he came, resplendent in a black-and-white-striped frock coat over an emerald green kilt. Perched on his head was an emerald green hat the size of a wheel of cheese, well festooned, with black and white ribbons and cruelly surmounted by an iridescent green-and-gold bird wing. (page 87)

What's Your Chocolate? Blogfest

Who doesn't love chocolate? It's one of my favorite things to indulge in. Thank you so much to M. Pax, Laura Eno, Brinda Berry, and Ciara Knight for this awesome blogfest.
The rules are simple: Post about your favorite chocolate – what it means to you, where and when you indulge, a favorite memory – anything chocolate-related.
It's so hard to pick just one thing. I love chocolate. Chocolate has been a part of my life since I can remember. It's a part of all my family holidays and sinful private moments. If we are what we eat, I'm made out of chocolate.
I'm going to go with my favorite treat: chocolate chip cookies. They've always been my favorite cookie. I love fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven. The melty chips nearly too hot to stand. The smell. Oooh, it's the perfume of the gods!
One of my favorite things to do with my Nana as a girl was to make chocolate chip cookies. We made them so often, I knew the recipe by heart by the time I was seven. Those were special times with my Nana in her little kitchen. I'm smiling just thinking about them.
(There's my Nana! And yeah, me too.)

Friday Five for September 7th

1. It's been a productive writing week. I finished a sci-fi short story for this month. I had another short story rejected and submitted it to another press. I'm over halfway done with my new novella. If I can keep up the pace, I might be able to finish the first draft on Sunday.
2. My productivity has been largely related to the fact I haven't been writing blog posts and making my rounds. I miss you guys, but I know you all understand we need breaks now and then. I'm going to continue to be around only for a little this month. If I can keep up my great writing pace, I'll be able to start putting out my new series by November or December.
3. I'll be visiting M. Pax on Spacedock 19 next Wednesday. We'll be talking about the paranormal. Make sure to stop by and have a drink with us.
4. My son is loving preschool. Yet he still has some problems being separated from me. And yeah, maybe I have a little anxiety about letting him go on his own too. Tuesday was a rough day. He refused to let go of me for over an hour. I stayed the whole morning with him. Yesterday was much better. I researched techniques to deal with separation anxiety and put them to good use. He made it through the whole morning without me. I'm so proud of him. (That's my boy having thoroughly enjoyed a chocolate turn-over!)
5. I'm researching mini laptops. I want to get something small and light to carry around for writing. I don't need anything fancy, but I want something durable and with great battery life. Any advice and recommendations are welcome.