Sarah Ballance's Blog, page 36

Heather Allen is “Barely Breathing”

Please welcome author Heather Allen with a look at BARELY BREATHING, an exciting new book which follows her previous release JUST BREATHE.

Barely Breathing

Ever Harding used to believe in love. That is until she was left heartbroken by the only person she ever really loved, Jack, the mysterious boy from her history class. Little did she know he was born of the sea, on land to watch over her. But was he really? She made the ultimate sacrifice, to live in the sea as a mermaid, for Jack and for love. But she found that in the end, that love wasn’t enough.

Now she finds herself alone, having to make a huge choice. She must decide whether to defend others against the choices she has made or fight for the freedoms of a population, she has just become a part of.

Ever’s brother James, became a part of the sea not by any choice of his own, but he is willing to embrace it as long as a certain long legged, beauty is by his side. But as his sister found, things are not always as they seem.

In the end what they feared the most comes to reality, the battle, waged between staying true to life in the sea or changing a race of people to become more powerful and diverse. Will Ever and James survive the lines drawn in the sand or will they have to battle each other for what they believe?

Little do they know the battle in the end, will be something entirely different than what they were ready for.

Find it @ Amazon

Barely Breathing | Excerpt – James’s POV

As I climb the steps I notice the bench swing moving. I glance over and see Sara with one leg dangling over the edge and the other pulled under her. She’s reading again. She must not have heard us pull up because she hasn’t looked up yet. I stand there and take in the sight. Her wavy, golden hair is hanging across her face. One hand is touching her pink lips as if she’s deep in thought. And that leg, just peeking out of her dress, it goes on forever. It’s moving the swing just slightly.

She must feel my eyes on her. She glances up and notices me. She jumps as if I startled her. My eyes meet hers. I could get lost in them, like they’re a mirror of the ocean. She pushes her hair behind her ear and closes her book looking down over the edge of the swing to find her shoes and slips into them as she climbs off the bench.

As she walks slowly toward me I glance away and fumble with my keys, trying to unlock the door. She reaches out her hand to stop me. I glance back down at her.

“How long were you standing there?”

I shrug my shoulders, caught, “Not long.”

She licks her bottom lip, I can’t help but notice. Something in me does a tumble and I suddenly can’t breathe. She takes her hand away from my keys so I look down trying to find the right one. Ugh, how long does it take to open a door? Finally, I find the key and open the door letting her go first. I stand there for a few seconds longer trying to catch my breath.

Damn James, get it together.

Find it @ Amazon

Heather Allen

Heather Allen lives in Melbourne, Florida with her husband and three kids. She has been a teacher for fifteen years now. Most recently, teaching reading, exclusively. Her dream has always been to write a book. She is an avid reader of just about any genre. When she’s not reading, she is usually at the beach or out on the water with her family.

You can also find her @ blog | twitter | facebook | goodreads

Spring Fling #Giveaway Hop May 1 – 7 (INT)

Welcome to the Spring Fling Giveaway Hop, hosted by I Am A Reader Not A Writer and co-hosted by Eve’s Fan Garden.

To enter, the only thing you need to do is leave a comment with your email address. (If you put your email address in the comment form, I will see it. You do NOT need to post it publicly). However, I would greatly appreciate if you’d consider liking me on Facebook (there’s a box in the sidebar for your convenience, or you can click here).

The Prize

The winner (who will be chosen by random.org at the close of the giveaway) may select the ebook of his or her choice from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. The book may be of any genre, but it must be priced at $10.00 or less and must be delivered electronically.

For dozens of additional giveaways, click the image above or head to the linky list by clicking here to see all participating blogs.

VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. For full giveaway rules, please click here.

CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE BLOG HOP!

$50 Book Blast: Alexander Drake by Elizabeth Parkinson-Bellows ($50 #Giveaway)

Alexander Drake’s Extraordinary Pursuit

Meet Alexander Drake, a curious young man living in a drab, oversized mansion with his secretive father. He spent his days playing alone. In the back of his mind he wondered what happened to his mother, and why his father was tight-lipped about the past; but secrets have a way of getting out.

It all started with a stay at his grandmother’s cottage. Alexander found strange clues tucked away in his father’s old bedroom. With a mysterious key and several maps in his pack he set off on an innocent search for answers about his family.

When he discovered a secret passageway the search took a dramatic turn. He suddenly worried about what was searching for him. Alexander was being hunted by a sorcerer from his father’s past. Answers lead to more questions and the journey of his life.

Join Alexander for a thrilling adventure in Azra’s Pith, a place of beauty and magic… but beware—something evil lurks in the shadows.

Amazon
The Return of General Drake

When Alexander arrived in Verhonia, something went terribly wrong. A dark spell delivered from the mountains of Acadia sent him on a dangerous journey in the middle of the night. As he marched into the mountains, the great city of Verhonia was ambushed and burned to the ground by Roman’s army of vicious giant murks.

With the safety of the realm in jeopardy, General John William Drake was asked to come back to Azra’s Pith. He swore he would never return. But after discovering his son was under a spell and in the grips of a dark sorcerer, he had no choice.

Things take a wild turn in the mountains, with runaways, a hungry wolf and a mysterious, young empyrean wizard thrown into the adventure. A tight race against time and evil is in full swing. With faith and a little magic, they just might come out on top.

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Author Elizabeth Parkinson-Bellows

Being the frizzy-haired tomboy with buck teeth gave me a slight case of shyness as a kid. A colorful imagination meant escape and adventure at the drop of a hat.

Over the years I learned that the insecurities I carried around were a waste of time. I still prefer a football game to a manicure any day of the week. That indispensable imagination has found its way into my writing providing a sense of joy and a true purpose.

Website * Twitter * Facebook

Book Blast Giveaway

$50 Amazon Gift Card or Paypal Cash

Ends 5/15/13 CLICK HERE TO ENTER a Rafflecopter giveaway

#WeWriWa #8Sunday #SnipSun Returns Next Week!

I’ve been on hiatus from my Sunday Snippets this month while I’ve worked on a deadline … and the deadline has been met! I’m finishing up my edits this weekend and will turn in the story in the next day or two. Which means … I’ll be back next week! I’m looking forward to making the rounds again. I’ve missed you guys!

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Education and Freedom: A Guest Blog by Wendy S. Russo, Author of January Black ($50 #Giveaway)

This guest blog is nothing short of fascinating. I’m delighted you’ve joined me and hope you’ll say hello and share your thoughts with Wendy before you go!

Education and Freedom (Or Salvaged Bits from my Personal Junkyard)

A guest blog from Wendy S. Russo, author of JANUARY BLACK

I have a shelved novel, a book that I worked on for ten years and grew out of my control. It was called “The Lords of Papiyon,” and I now use it as a sort of personal junkyard. January Black grew out of one of that book’s scenes. It was a still-frame, really. A twelve-year-old boy stood in an overgrown garden, looking at the stars. That boy became Matty, and the overgrown state of the garden was explained by a law that forbade anyone to enter it, a law that was obeyed for more than 200 years until Matty broke it.

Sarah asked if I could talk about the themes of education and freedom in January Black. They, too, were salvaged from The Lords of Papiyon, as was the Regent government that rules Matty’s kingdom, and the King’s Class, from which he’s expelled in the beginning of the book. So, to explain the deeply rooted traditions that shape Columbia, I’m going to explain the relationship between the Regency and the King’s Class in The Lords Papiyon.

In Papiyon, Kelmarin’s throne was passed from father to son. However, government of the kingdom was split between the king’s advisers, called Regent Masters, and the lords of Papiyon, whose power extended through the capital city’s alleyways. They were waste managers, controlled import/export from the city, and kept the city “clean” by any means necessary. The Regent Masters scoffed at the idea that they shared power with the “crime lords,” but at the same time, as long as the smell of garbage and sewage was kept away from the wealthier sections of the city, they stayed out of Papiyon’s affairs.

All that is neither here nor there, but it sets the stage for a conversation about education…specifically, the king’s education.

The Regent government maintained their control over the kingdom in three ways.

One, they chose the best and brightest of the kingdom’s children, brought them into the capital city, and developed their gifts into expertise. These children, “the King’s Class,” were raised as peers to the throne’s heir. The future king would consider them friends, trust them implicitly, and he would someday choose his advisers from among them. Each of those children was instilled with a fierce loyalty to the Regency abovethe kingdom itself, because whomever the king chose to advise him would be the next generation of Regent Masters.

Two, there were at least a dozen girls in this class that were about the king’s age. Each was brilliant, beautiful, ambitious, and they were trained specifically to influence the king on the Regents’ behalf.

Both choices for the king—advisers and bride—were illusions. No matter who he chose, they were all first chosen by the Regency.

Three, the king was cleverly denied the same education by instilling a sense of entitlement. He was actually encouraged to pull his “I’m the prince; I can do what I want!” card.

This is the underlying system. I then upended it by giving Prince Erik a subversive streak. With the help of a few classmates, he acquired a lot of knowledge that he was never meant to have. At sixteen, he made a deal with Papiyon’s rightful heir. Erik offered his first choice for queen straight across for delivery of the lord, and his four bosses, in chains. (Erik’s was encouraged to do this by the girl, who was in love with Shane, the lord’s son. It was a win/win/win situation.) Then, Erik released the rest of the queen-elects from their obligations to the throne and proposed marriage to the daughter of an ally who lived a 1000 miles away, (thus had no Regent training.) Chaos ensues, at least as far as the Regents were concerned.

The idea behind all of this was to explore how knowledge, and education, could be used as an instrument of control. One character calls the Regents “the gears behind the clock face.” They ruled the city in the king’s name, gave the king ideas while leading him to believe they were his own, giving him the illusion of control and freedom. And the people of Kelmarin looked to the king, accepted that it was his rule and never questioned it. The Regents were a devious body, but they were not an inherently evil one. Under their rule, there were no dark eras, no tyrant kings, and no uncertainty that caused by the deposing of leaders. At least, not in Kelmarin proper. These things happened in Papiyon with some frequency, justifying among the Regents that their system was just and right.

But, was it, really? I don’t have an answer. That is something that we all really decide for ourselves about the things our government does for our benefit.

I shelved The Lords of Papiyon because, as interesting as this premise may be, the story wasn’t really about Erik. He was one character providing a set of world-building circumstances. What I have on the shelf, that I’m scavenging through, was the beginning of something massive. Like “Song of Ice and Fire” massive, and I wasn’t committed to researching politics, Roman era waste management, disease control, battle strategies, horse training, farming, fishing, theater, law, or any of the thousand things I’d need to know to do this story justice. At the moment that I realized how much work was ahead of me, my interests were leaning in a different direction. So, I scrapped it, and now I pick things out, like the themes of education and freedom to stitch into other stories.

The Regency of Columbia is much like Kelmarin’s. They accept gifted students into their private school and train them for positions of power. But they withhold information, mostly about their own history, fromeveryone, and give the impression, through copious records of every event and redundant data systems, that there are no holes. In January Black, Hadrian asks Matty a question, but the quest is more important than the answer. It was intended to open the young man’s eyes to a problem in their society. Things were missing from their history. Those things were deleted on purpose. And once that veil in the mind is breached, by Matty in his world, or any of us in ours, one question naturally follows: “What else is being kept from me?”

Knowledge is power, for those who have it over those who don’t. For that reason, education and freedom will always be inseparable. The one thing I hope readers will take from January Black is to not take the world at face value. For everything that we encounter, there is always something that lies beneath, and there’s usually someone benefiting from keeping it buried.

January Black

Sixteen-year-old genius Matty Ducayn has never fit in on The Hill, an ordered place seriously lacking a sense of humor. After his school’s headmaster expels him for a small act of mischief, Matty’s future looks grim until King Hadrian comes to his rescue with a challenge: answer a question for a master’s diploma.

More than a second chance, this means freedom. Masters can choose where they work, a rarity among Regents, and the question is simple.

What was January Black?

It’s a ship. Everyone knows that. Hadrian rejects that answer, though, and Matty becomes compelled by curiosity and pride to solve the puzzle. When his search for an answer turns up long-buried state secrets, Matty’s journey becomes a collision course with a deadly royal decree. He’s been set up to fail, which forces him to choose. Run for his life with the challenge lost…or call the king’s bluff.

Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Amazon Kindle

Praise

Refreshingly intelligent and loads of fun!

I lost a few hours as I read this book. It’s a Young Adult novel that is refreshingly and astonishingly intelligent, and the love story is perfectly played out.

~Christine Ashworth, Amazon Review

The mystery was intriguing – I loved how Wendy Russo weaved in all her secrets throughout the book, how she incorporated just enough to keep you reading, while never actually divulging much of anything. I was guessing for most of it and that’s pretty hard to make me do.

~Julie, Clean Teen Reads

Wendy Russo has created a masterpiece.

~Ivan Amberlake, Author

Book Trailer

Author Wendy S. Russo

Wendy S. Russo got her start writing in the sixth grade. That story involved a talisman with crystals that had to be found and assembled before bad things happened, and dialog that read like classroom roll call. Since then, she’s majored in journalism (for one semester), published poetry, taken a course on short novels, and watched most everything ever filmed by Quentin Tarantino. A Wyoming native transplanted in Baton Rouge, Wendy works for Louisiana State University as an IT analyst. She’s a wife, a mom, a Tiger, a Who Dat, and she falls asleep on her couch at 8:30 on weeknights.

FACEBOOK * WEBSITE * TWITTER
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Book Blast Giveaway

$50 Amazon Gift Card or Paypal Cash

Ends 5/5/13 – CLICK HERE TO ENTER

Open only to those who can legally enter, receive and use an Amazon.com Gift Code or Paypal Cash. Winning Entry will be verified prior to prize being awarded. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter and announced here as well as emailed and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Rafflecopter or any other entity unless otherwise specified. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Giveaway was organized by Kathy from I Am A Reader, Not A Writer http://iamareader.com and sponsored by the author. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

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Unconventional Love Story: A Guest Blog from Michelle Muckley, Author of “Escaping Life” (#Giveaway)

Please welcome Michelle Muckley as she talks about unconventional love as part of her ESCAPING LIFE blog tour, then stick around to learn how you can enter to win some goodies. You won’t want to miss any of this!

Unconventional Love Story

A guest blog from author Michelle Muckley

When you ask somebody to describe a love story, most people will revert to a similar sort of notion.  Boy meets girl, boy loves girl, girl falls in love with boy.  They’ll throw in a small dose of tragedy (just in the interest of testing the depth and extent of the love), and boy will be forced to leave girl, or vice-versa.  But yet by the end of the 92 minutes running time they will have undoubtedly fallen back into each other’s arms amid promises of an eternity of unconditional love as they grow old together.  Til death do them part.

It seems that the world is completely in love with falling in love, and most of us have probably been there.  We have cherished it when we felt the good, and recoiled as we felt the bad.  We have promised ourselves it would never end when high on an endorphin fuelled rush, and then cried helplessly into the soggy shoulder of our best friend as we crashed back down to an ultimately more stable hormonal plateau.  A rare few can say that they haven’t felt the rough side of love, and yet even those that have seek it out after recovering from heartbreak, setting off in search of the next soul mate with which we just know it’ll work this time.

Yet, in literature and film love is often portrayed quite differently to this.  Love, it seems, is not quite so conventional after all.  I was only ten years old when Walt Disney convinced me that it was possible to fall in love with an oversized hairy creature in Beauty and the Beast.  But it was over a century before that when Victor Hugo was telling the tale of Quasimodo, the terribly disfigured and horribly ridiculed hunchback of Notre Dame, and how love not only afflicts the beautiful and young, but transcends sense, remains painfully unrequited, and can ultimately be the source of your own sorry demise.

Love remains for many, one of the most craved and necessary elements of life.  It provides us with somebody to listen to us.  It offers company in place of loneliness.  It makes us feel valuable to be cared for by another, and helps validate us as people to overcome the fear which accompanies our inherent flaws.  At times it is so powerful that it surpasses all logic.  People fight, lie, cry, and die for love, as if they would inevitably wither away into nothingness without it.  It becomes more important than food or water, no more cheerlessly demonstrated than by Quasimodo’s unfortunate death as his dusty remains were pulled from Esmeralda’s body.   But it is not just this crazy obsessive love that we crave.  We search for love throughout our whole life.  We find it with our parents, and experience the safety and comfort that it offers.  We find it with friends, and begin to understand the sense of loss that is sometimes coupled with it when they are absent and we learn that feelings of love can teeter precariously close to pain and sadness.  We find it too, if we are lucky with our siblings.

I grew up with four brothers as the youngest girl.  I was mercilessly picked on, left out from fun, and trapped behind bedroom doors whilst Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ played on repeat as I cried to be set free from such a horrible torture.  I promised them all at different times that I would never speak to any of them again.  But it was never true, because when all of the childhood craziness was laid to rest in the passage of time, I came to realise that without them life simply wouldn’t be the same.

In Escaping Life, Elizabeth Green loses her sister.  She mourns her loss and tries to move on and yet without her can never quite find the life that she had enjoyed before.  This platonic love could never be replaced, and the void of the loss could never be filled.  Love comes in all shapes and sizes, and conventional or not, we need it at times more than we need life itself.

Escaping Life by Michelle Muckley

It’s beautiful here. It’s a beautiful place to die. Since the accident claimed her sister’s life, Haven has been a sanctuary for Elizabeth Green.She has finally found some of the tranquility that she thought had been lost long ago to the past.Homicide cop Jack Fraser is running away from his miserable life too.But when the discovery of a body on a local beach leads him directly to Elizabeth’s front door, it seems her past might not have been left behind her after all. Together they must face their demons, and in the process expose the dangerous secrets that cloud their lives before it’s too late. Running from reality is sometimes more painful than discovering the truth.

Learn more @ Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Giveaway

There are lots of ways to enter to win!

 - Stop by Facebook and leave either a like, a comment, or a share Michelle’s blog tour related posts (www.facebook.com/michellemuckleyauthor)

- Visit Michelle’s website (www.michellemuckley.com) and leave either a facebook like or sign up to the newsletter.

All who leave comments/likes/shares/signup to the newsletter will receive a free eBook.  There will then be two further prizes.

- First prize: Signed paperback, including a surprise goody bag

- Second prize: Signed paperback

And don’t forget to follow the tour for more glimpses into ESCAPING LIFE!

A Fantasy Come True! Guest Blog from Lindy S. Hudis, Author of “Weekends”

Lindy S. Hudis is back, and this time she’s offering a glimpse of her romantic side. Get to know this author and her book WEEKENDS.

Lindy S. Hudis: A Fantasy Come True!

Ahhh…..romance. I must confess, I am hopelessly addicted to it. There is no feeling as exciting, no rush more exhilarating, and nothing I can name that gives an energy boost like that of a romantic and hot encounter. I seem to get quite a bit of inspiration from that, the real and the imaginary.

Want to know about one of my romantic fantasies? I am sitting on a beach at an exclusive California beach resort, listening to the sound of the waves and sea gulls, all while sipping a Pina Colada. I am sitting in the warm sand, covered with coconut scented lotion, watching the palm trees sway in the cool ocean breeze, and lusting as the smoking hot, scantily clad men walk by. Living in California, I have participated in similar activities, but more along the lines of the Santa Monica Pier than at the Bel-Air Bay Club.  However, we all have fantasies, I know I do….and mine get pretty vivid and sensual. Being a fiction author I find that the more fantasies I have, the more material I have to share with you! So, here is the deal – “Weekends” was inspired by a sexual fantasy that caught on fire. One day, many years ago, I met this gorgeous, hot, sexy, blonde dude named Joe. He was a struggling actor living in Los Angeles (like I myself was at the time) so we met up and had a brief fling. He turned out to be nuttier than a can of Planters, but that is beside the point. (A nutty person in LA???? What????)

So, Joe and I didn’t fall in love and run away together. He was just a “man from my past” who I still think about on occasion. However, his looks were the inspiration for the character “Joe” in “Weekends”. Joe is a fantasy, as is most of the romantic and sexy fiction that I write.  I took the crazy, hot man and, instead of being in a relationship with him in real life, and the fruitless task of trying to change him, I just made who I wanted him to be a character in my romance-suspense novel.  I fell madly in love with Joe, the one I created, not the real one.

So, what was the real inspiration behind “Weekends”? I must confess, I live in a fantasy world, however, I take a very spiritual approach to my daydreams and fantasies.  On some level, I believe that a person’s idle thoughts and daydreams are actual realities in another dimension.  Vivid imagination have I? You bet!

As a fiction author, I tend to live in my imagination. I become very emotionally close with my characters (I cried one time writing a scene where one of my characters gets fired), I live vicariously through all of their circumstances, and I tend to see parts of myself in every one of their situations. No, I’m not a nutcase- just a fiction author. Because of this, I create little worlds in my imagination. That is what I do, I create, and sometimes live in, these little worlds. Sometimes these little worlds become published works of fiction for different readers to enjoy, sometimes they just live in my crazy noodle. However, what if there is some truth to this theory? What if, as Mark Twain once said, truth is stranger than fiction?

What does this have to do with writing? Plenty! Fiction is my forte, my strong point. I was not destined to write anything else. ( I don’t have the knowledge or experience to write non-fiction. I can’t compete with all the doctors out there.) My stories come from the little people who live in my head. They come from my imagination. That is what fiction is, plain and simple. To invite a reader into my story, and to keep them there, I have to create another world for them to enter into. As the risk of repeating myself, I create worlds – and perhaps those worlds exist somewhere else? Somewhere far, far away?  As a creative person, (that is the kind of mind I was blessed with. Anything technical would confuse the hell out of me…) I feel at my best and most fulfilled when I am doing just that – creating. What am I creating exactly? Only my higher power seems to know for sure, but I have a hunch!

Perhaps I am writing my next life as I am thinking this? Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic? Both? I just happen to love what I do, and I hope that many readers feel the same.

Weekends by Lindy S. Hudis

An innocent-sounding family reunion at an exclusive California beach resort turns into a weekend of murder, deceit, exposed secrets and unexpected intimate encounters.

John Peterson has it all: He’s a respected, successful Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer with a loving wife and grown son, the strikingly handsome young film director Joe Peterson. John also has a secret and he decides to gather his disparate family members at the elegant Hotel Del Moor in picturesque Linda Bella, California for some luxurious fun, togetherness and re-connecting before revealing his secret. Unbeknownst to the family, a brutal serial killer is lurking in the midst of all the wondrous festivities.

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Lindy S. Hudis

Lindy S.Hudis is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied drama. She is a former actress, having appeared on such television shows as “Sunset Beach” and “Married with Children”. Her romantic murder mystery, Weekends, is currently available from Lachesis Publishing. She is also a filmmaker, her independent short film “The Lesson”, which she wrote, produced and directed, screened at the Seattle Underground Film Festival. She is co-owner of an independent production company called Impact Motion Pictures. She and her husband Steve, a Hollywood stuntman, have just completed the screenplay adaptation of Charmaine Hammond’s best selling book, “On Toby’s Terms.”  She lives in California with her family.

Sarah here: Okay, readers. Time to spill. What are your biggest/greatest/favorite romantic fantasies? (You saw that one coming, didn’t you? LOL!) Let us know, and be sure to say hello to Lindy. Lindy, you rock. Thanks for being here today!

Showers of Books #Giveaway Hop April 24th – 30th (INT)

Welcome to the Showers of Books Giveaway Hop, hosted by I Am A Reader Not A Writer and co-hosted by Books à la Mode.

To enter, the only thing you need to do is leave a comment with your email address. (If you put your email address in the comment form, I will see it. You do NOT need to post it publicly). However, I would greatly appreciate if you’d consider liking me on Facebook (there’s a box in the sidebar for your convenience, or you can click here).

The Prize

The winner (who will be chosen by random.org at the close of the giveaway) may select the ebook of his or her choice from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. The book may be of any genre, but it must be priced at $10.00 or less and must be delivered electronically.

For dozens of additional giveaways, click the image above or head to the linky list by clicking here to see all participating blogs.

VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. For full giveaway rules, please click here.

CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE BLOG HOP!

$50 Book Blast: David’s Song ($50 #Giveaway)

Tour Schedule

David’s Song

Taken from the book cover: Annie only ever really loved two men in her life. One broke her heart, the other married her. Four children and fifteen years later, Annie’s marriage is in jeopardy. Money is tight and her husband questions the very foundation of their relationship. When Annie is unexpectedly given the opportunity to see the young man who broke her heart — a man who is now a megastar in the music industry — Annie is faced with choices. Choices that will determine what is of more value — a second chance at lost love and unfulfilled dreams or commitment, trust, and love built on years of experience.

A psychologically subtle, yet compelling tale about how the instinct and need for love overcomes self-doubt and personal inadequacy.

Amazon * Barnes & Noble

Author A.R. Talley

April R Talley was born and raised in the Rubber City, Akron, Ohio in 1959. She is the youngest of six children. She attended Brigham Young University for a time, but withdrew to work fulltime for Osmond Productions in Orem, Utah as a member of The Osmond production staff. After a brief stint working in television, she returned to Akron to finish her education. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Mass Media Communications in 1981. April later worked as vice president and part owner of a dance and sportswear boutique. Married in 1982, she is the proud mother of seven children and is deeply involved in volunteer work for her church. April spends her time working on future projects, caring for home and family, and traveling. David’s Song is her debut novel and the first of a trilogy.

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Praise from reviews on Goodreads.com

“Not just your typical romance novel” – Tracy Williams

“David’s Song is great read that leaves you thinking about the story and pondering your own relationships”. – Anna Pavkov

“Sucked me in from the 1st page” – Jill Walker

“Loved this book . . . could not put it down!” – Dana Vieira

Book Blast Giveaway

$50 Amazon Gift Card or Paypal Cash

Ends 5/12/13 Click to enter: a Rafflecopter giveaway

Exciting Contract News (#WeWriWa #8Sunday #SnipSun Will Return)

Thank you for visiting!

It’s official: I’ve signed a contract with ENTANGLED PUBLISHING for a historical romance to release this fall from their SCANDALOUS line! The story behind this story is all kinds of crazy, but I can sum it up nicely: it was a whim. Yep, a whim. Know why it was a whim? Because I’ve never written a historical in my life. I’m still blinking my way through the shock of this one, LOL, but I’m writing in between blinks and that’s a good thing because I have about ten days left to finish.

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Now, onto the snippet … or lack thereof.

In light of my May 1 deadline, I’m putting my Sunday Snippets on hold. And I know I still have a few blogs from March to visit. EEEP! (Forgive me, guys … I’m going to each and every one!) Anyway, until I catch up and get through my deadlines I’m going to take a break from my Sunday rounds. I hope to be back soon with a couple of new releases in the works and lots of time to read all of your fabulous snippets!

I’ll see you then!