Amanda Young's Blog, page 14
November 3, 2014
November 2, 2014
Mackenzie Twins series gets a new look and buy link!
Hi all! My Mackenzie Twins stories have been updated with brand new covers and are finally available for purchase at a new retailer – Payhip. I’m also in the process of lowering the prices to $2.50 and updating these stories at Smashwords and Barnes and Noble, which are the only two retailers who’ve been willing to list my kinky little twin stories until now.
Here are the new covers:
And here are the new buy links:
Tempestuous Relations
https://payhip.com/b/ZI0w
Tempestuous Revelation
https://payhip.com/b/WE5o
November 1, 2014
Snarkology Halloween Hop Winners!
Hi Guys! I can’t believe Halloween is over and it’s November 1st, but the calendar doesn’t lie. Thanks so much to everyone who participated in the blog hop, authors and readers alike. We all had a lot of fun with it.
The grand prize winners have been chosen and announced. You can find their names on the rafflecopter, if you’re curious.
The winner for my drawing for a $5 gift card is Anne, who I’ll be emailing as soon as I finish this blog.
Thanks again guys! I hope you all had a safe and fun Halloween!
October 31, 2014
Friday Five: Leela Lou Dahlin
This week’s guest for Friday Five is Leela Lou Dahlin. Thanks for visiting the blog, Leela!
What kind of books do you read for fun?
I’m an all romance kind of woman but I like all kinds. Every once in a while I’ll add a little Sci-fi in there just for kicks.
What’s the one thing you can’t live without?
My family but if you’re talking about an electronic device I’d say my iPhone
If a genie granted you three wishes, what would they be?
A genie, huh? My next story involves a genie…well…sort of. Wishes if I could have three they would be.
1. A beach house in North Carolina all furnished and paid for of course.
2. I’d wish everyone really did treat people like they wanted to be treated
3. An abundance of health, wealth and happiness
I guess I could have used the abundance of wealth to get the beach house but hindsight is 20/20. LOL
What is best writing advice you can give?
The best advice I can give is in two parts-
1. Write. I know it’s been said a million times before but if you don’t do that one part all the other parts don’t matter. Make it a priority.
2. Get into a group of other writers in real life or the internet variety—it doesn’t matter it’s just nice to have like minded people to bounce things off of. You’ll quickly figure out that authors are in a league of their own and I’ve never met such helpful people.
Can you share a little about your current release with us?
My current release is called Rumor Has It and was my NaNoWriMo 2012 so I was really happy that it was coming out at this time of year. Here’s the blurb
Raina Gibson is an event organizer who’s planned a family of her own ever since her mother passed away. The idea was to be married by age twenty-six, and have two children by thirty. She’d had everything in place, but one thing kept getting in her way: her best friend Liam Prescott. She’s attracted to his sexy confidence and intrigued by his daring spontaneity. Rumor has it this committed bachelor is phenomenal between the sheets, and since she’s never known anything but ordinary she figures that has to be the draw. So she decides there’s only one thing to do: get him into her bed and out of her system then get herself back on track.
Liam’s a Lieutenant Fire Chief who’s never forgotten what it feels like to have the most important woman in his life walk away without looking back. But there’s still something about Raina that makes him want to keep her close and protect her. So when Raina propositions him he’s torn. They’re thrown together for the Annual Fire Ball and the more he has her the more he wants.
“Out of their systems” isn’t working out as planned. So they’ll have to decide whether to keep the fire between them burning or hose down these new behaviors and go back to what’s always worked for them.
ARe- https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-rumorhasit-1658066-149.html
Loose Id – http://www.loose-id.com/rumor-has-it.html
Facebook – Leela Lou Dahlin
Twitter – LeelaLou_2
Email – LeelaLouDahlin@gmail.com
Blog – LeelaLou.wordpress.com
October 27, 2014
Snarkology Halloween Hop
Hi all! For the next few days I’m participating in the Snarkology Halloween Hop. There are a ton of authors involved (there’s a complete list below) and prizes galore for everyone to win. The grand prize is a $100 gift card to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can enter to win that by using the Rafflecopter below. In addition to the grand prize, each author is also giving away something on their own site. More on my giveaway in a second.
First I wanted to talk a little bit about Halloween. Without a doubt, this is my favorite holiday and has been for as long as I can remember. I love fall, the leaves changing, and the cooler temperatures. More than the season, I love adore the history, the creepy atmosphere, and (of course) the horror connection. I glut myself on horror novels and scary movies during October. This year I’ve been binging on erotic horror and re-reading my favorite zombie romance novels.
Some of my favorite movies include George Romero’s Dead series, Night of the Demons(original), Fright Night(original), Night of the Creeps, and The Descent.
The list of books I love is much, much longer. However, some of the books I re-read year after year include Haunted by Tamara Thorne, Phantoms and Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz, Mort by Joseph Duncan, and Dead Tropics by Sue Edge.
So with that thought in mind, I’d like give away a $5 gift certificate for Amazon so whoever the lucky winner is can buy a book or rent a movie of their choice. To enter, just leave a comment sharing your favorite creepy book or movie. I’ll choose a winner at random on November 1st and announce it here on the blog. Please leave your email address or check back here on that date to see if you’ve won.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Don’t forget to check out all the other participants in the hop!
Music I Love: Thriller by Michael Jackson
In honor of Halloween:
October 23, 2014
Friday Five: Lynley Wayne
This week’s guest for Friday Five is Lynley Wayne. Thanks for visiting the blog, Lynley!
So, Lynley, what kind of books do you read for fun?
These days I don’t have a lot of time to read. When I do find the time, I read whatever catches my interest. Mystery. Romance. Fantasy. Science Fiction. Suspense.
What’s the one thing you can’t live without?
Books, obviously! Outside of books though, I’d have to say my chai tea. Without it I wouldn’t be able to function.
If a genie granted you three wishes, what would they be?
1. To be able to download my thoughts directly to a computer. (would make writing so much easier)
2. To be able to travel anywhere with a thought.
3. To be healthy and in shape.
What is best writing advice you can give?
Be true to yourself. This is assuming you’ve already taken the most common advice writers give, and that is to write. You have to write the story you want to write and not the story you think you should write. If you don’t care about your story or your characters, it will show in your writing.
Can you share a little about your current release with us?
Facing Demons, book three in the Scars series, just came out on Oct. 3rd. This story is about Seth and Cam. They’ve known one another since they were kids. Cam’s life isn’t ideal by any means. His father is abusive and drags him into a life of motorcycle gangs, drugs, and guns. While Seth knows about some of what Cam has to deal with, he doesn’t know it all. Seth begins to have feeling for Cam, but Cam is determined to stay just friends. It takes awhile but Seth eventually convinces him to give them a chance. However, circumstances out of their control cause them to go their separate ways. Fast-forward eleven years. Cam’s in trouble so he turns to the one person he knows he can trust…Seth. It’s a story of drug cartels, dirty law enforcement officers, love, and facing the demons of the past.
Blurb:
At the age of fifteen, Seth Dempsey gave his heart to Cameron Reyes. Three years later, Cam shattered it when he walked away. When Cam blows back into Seth’s life years later, Seth knows he will do whatever it takes to ensure Cam doesn’t slip away again. Even if it means going up against a corrupt DEA agent and a drug cartel.
Cameron Reyes was born on the wrong side of the tracks. He fell in love with Seth, but knew the only way to keep him safe was to leave, no matter how much it hurt. Eleven years later, when his life implodes, he knows the only person he can trust is the boy whose heart he broke all those years ago.
While they fight to stay one step ahead of everyone and clear Cam’s name, can they learn to work together in order to face down the demons of the past and find the happily ever after they have dreamed of?
Author Bio:
Lynley Wayne is the pen name of a thirty-something female living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. When not writing, she can usually be found reading and thinking up creative ways to avoid housework. She is married to a very understanding man who doesn’t complain when she spends hours in front of the computer, or talks for hours about whatever story she’s working on, or asks random off the wall questions. He also keeps her fed on those occasions when her muse has taken over and she loses days at a time. Yeah, basically he’s vying for sainthood.
Lynley strongly believes everyone is entitled to their own version of happiness, no matter how it may differ from the norm. She writes characters she wants to read and hopes others like reading about them as much as she enjoyed writing them.
It is her hope that one day society will be able to look past the labels and see the person behind them. That they will realize we are all the same. Until that time comes, she will continue telling stories of a love others may believe is wrong, but she thinks is nothing short of beautiful.
You can find Lynley online at:
Website: http://www.lynleywayne.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/@LynleyWayne
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lynley.wayne.1
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/LynleyWayne
October 20, 2014
October 17, 2014
Friday Five: Thom Lane
This week’s guest for Friday Five is Thom Lane. Thanks for visiting the blog, Thom!
So, what kind of books do you read for fun?
…Wait, what? There are kinds of books? There are categories, and people think some are more fun than others…?
No, sorry, I will be serious: but I read all kinds of books, me. Anything in English. History – for research, yes, but who says research can’t be fun? – and biography, science for simpletons, all the varieties of fiction that there are, from kids’ books to serious literature. What I love best is genre: science fiction and fantasy and historical fiction and mystery and and and. I’ve written all of those, in various combinations, but I read them before ever I was a writer.
What’s the one thing you can’t live without?
Ask me first thing in the morning, it’ll be coffee: brewed hot and black and very strong. Ask me five o’clock in the evening, it’s alcohol: beer or wine or a cocktail, depending. Ask me at six o’clock in the evening, it’s my favourite kitchen knife. But ask me once for all time, and it’s books, reading, the ability to read. If I couldn’t read – well, I dunno, but I’d probably just cease to exist. In some absolutely concrete way, I think I probably am text rendered flesh.
If a genie granted you three wishes, what would they be?
Heh. I’d find it hard not to wish for eternal youth, because I’m insatiably curious and I really, really want to know what happens to humankind in the far far future; and I might well wish that I’d been into bitcoins in the very early days, because an awful lot of money would make things so much easier, for myself and all my friends; and then of course I’d wish for three more wishes, because I’m not a fool, y’know.
What is the best writing advice you can give?
Probably my favourite single line is “Don’t get it right, get it written.” Bad drafts can be made better, but nothing can help a story that’s not actually made it onto paper. But that’s a quotation; my own personal best advice is not to get hung up on anyone’s advice, let alone a mantra like “less is more”. Sometimes that’s true, but sometimes less is just less. Every story has its own voice, and some of them need to be tight, and some of them need to be extravagant. Write everything you can: every genre, every style. If you don’t tell your stories, nobody else is going to tell them for you.
Can you share a little about your current release with us?
I can! For some years now I’ve been writing the “Tales of Amaranth” series for Loose Id, set in a fantasy empire where slavery is an accepted part of life. These are m/m stories, some told from a slave’s point of view, some from a master’s. People who are strict about such things say they’re not properly BDSM, and they’re not romances either. Me, I just shrug: I’m not good at definitions and they are what they are, which is stories about young men learning how to live and be happy in a fairly ruthless environment. Some of the stories feature magic (there’s a recurrent couple of characters, a master mage and his body-slave), some don’t.
(cover art by Anne Cain)
The new one, Heart’s Hunt, is a long short story, a good entry-point for anyone who hasn’t met the series before. It’s set in a neighbouring kingdom, where revolution has overturned the social order. A bounty hunter is chasing down a runaway prince, but his big score doesn’t turn out the way that he was hoping. According to the publisher’s blurb (actually, I think I might have written this): “When he rides into the charcoal-burner’s clearing, he doesn’t find a depraved young aristocrat hiding out with his loyal servant. Rather, he finds a displaced old man doing the best he can with only a slave to help. A willing, beautiful, poorly trained slave. From their first encounter, Martel can’t keep his hands off the boy – and sees no reason to, when the master doesn’t care and the inexperienced boy is sullen and frightened and eager all at once. This is the last thing he was looking for – but can one hot night change the course of a life, of two lives…?”
You can read more (and buy the book!) here: http://www.loose-id.com/tales-of-amaranth-heart-s-hunt.html
October 14, 2014
Tuesday 10: Ten Great Horror Novels
Hi everyone. This week I have a list of ten creepy horror novels for you. As always feel free to share your favorites in the comments section.
Phantoms by Dean Koontz
CLOSER…
They found the town silent, apparently abandoned. Then they found the first body strangely swollen and still warm. One hundred fifty were dead, 350 missing. But the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California. AND CLOSER…
At first they thought it was the work of a maniac. Or terrorists. Or toxic contamination. Or a bizarre new disease.
AND CLOSER…
But then they found the truth. And they saw it in the flesh. And it was worse than anything any of them had ever imagined…
Meg by Steve Alten
On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean’s deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he’s sure he saw but still can’t prove exists – Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds. Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub. Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he’s never imagined. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one is going to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Aging, self-absorbed rock star Judas Coyne has a thing for the macabre — his collection includes sketches from infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a trepanned skull from the 16th century, a used hangman’s noose, Aleister Crowley’s childhood chessboard, etc. — so when his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale on an online auction site, he immediately puts in a bid and purchases it.
The black, heart-shaped box that Coyne receives in the mail not only contains the suit of a dead man but also his vengeance-obsessed spirit. The ghost, it turns out, is the stepfather of a young groupie who committed suicide after the 54-year-old Coyne callously used her up and threw her away. Now, determined to kill Coyne and anyone who aids him, the merciless ghost of Craddock McDermott begins his assault on the rocker’s sanity.
The Store by Bentley Little
In a small Arizona town, a man counts his blessings: a loving wife, two teenage daughters, and a job that allows him to work at home. Then “The Store” announces plans to open a local outlet, which will surely finish off the small downtown shops. His concerns grow when “The Store’s” builders ignore all the town’s zoning laws during its construction. Then dead animals are found on “The Store’s” grounds. Inside, customers are hounded by obnoxious sales people, and strange products appear on the shelves. Before long the town’s remaining small shop owners disappear, and “The Store” spreads its influence to the city council and the police force, taking over the town! It’s up to one man to confront “The Store’s” mysterious owner and to save his community, his family, and his life!
Waiting by Frank M. Robinson
There are people living among us, who look just like normal human beings. They’ve been here for a long time–waiting. But they aren’t exactly like us at all. Some of them can read minds, and in subtle ways take over what your are thinking, control you for a while.
They can make you love.
They can make you die.
One ordinary man in San Francisco, Arthur Banks, begins to find them out, and immediately his life and his family are in danger. It’s a paranoid’s worst nightmare. But that’s just where it starts. He may well be fighting for the survival of the entire human race.
White Shark by Peter Benchley
At a small marine institute off the coast of Connecticut, only marine biologist Simon Chase realizes that a sixteen-foot pregnant Great White is feeding in the area. But even Simon doesn’t know that a far deadlier creature is about to come out of the deep and threaten everything he cares for. A creature whose malevolence is unthinkable. Whose need to feed is insatiable. And whose relentless hunt for prey is unstoppable.
Twenty years after his huge bestseller Jaws, the master of the deep has done it again, letting loose a chilling new predator that only he could create. Drawing on his singular knowledge of the sea, science, and history, Peter Benchley masterfully spins a suspense-filled novel that hits you on a primal level, makes your heart pound, and leaves your blood running cold.
White Shark is Peter Benchley at his best. Read it at your own risk.
Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz
They’re out there, lurking in the dark shadows of an eerie carnival, feeding on human suffering, plotting the downfall of the human race, and invisible to the eyes of all, but one man…
Bad Things by Tamara Thorne
The house has been in his family for generations. But it really belongs to them…
The Piper clan emigrated from Scotland and founded the town of Santo Verde, California. The Gothic Victorian estate built there has housed the family for generations, and has also become home to an ancient evil forever linked to the Piper name…
As a boy, Rick Piper discovered he had “the sight.” It was supposed to be a family myth, but Rick could see the greenjacks—the tiny mischievous demons who taunted him throughout his childhood—and who stole the soul of his twin brother Robin one Halloween night.
Now a widower with two children of his own, Rick has returned home to build a new life. He wants to believe the greenjacks don’t exist, that they were a figment of his own childish fears and the vicious torment he suffered at the hands of his brother. But he can still see and hear them, and they haven’t forgotten that Rick escaped them so long ago. And this time, they don’t just want Rick. This time they want his children…
IM by Rick R. Reed
The Internet Is the New Meat Market for Gay Men Now a Killer Is Turning the Meat Market into a Meat Wagon.
One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. He’s just another guy.
They invite him over. He’s just another trick. Harmless. They’re dead wrong.
When the first bloody body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. Sickened by the butchered mess of one of his brothers left on display in a bathtub, he seeks relief outside where the young man who discovered the body waits to tell him the story of how he found his friend. But who is this witness… and did he play a bigger part in the murder than he’s letting on?
For Comparetto, this encounter with a witness is the beginning of a nightmare. Because this witness did more than just show up at the scene of the crime; he set the scene. And maybe, he’s more than just a killer… maybe he’s dead himself.
Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth, a truth that he needs to discover before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity…his life. Because in this killer’s world, IM doesn’t stand for instant message… it stands for instant murder.
Moonfall by Tamara Thorne
Moonfall, the picturesque community nestled in the mountains of Southern California, is a quaint hamlet of antique stores and craft shops run by the dedicated nuns of St. Gertrude’s Home for girls. As autumn fills the air, the townspeople prepare for the festive Halloween Haunt, Moonfall’s most popular tourist attraction. Even a series of unsolved deaths over the years hasn’t dimmed Moonfall’s renown. Maybe because anyone who knew anything about them has disappeared.
Now, Sara Hawthorne returns to her hometown…and enters the hallowed halls of St. Gertrude’s where, twelve years before, another woman died a horrible death. In Sara’s old room, distant voices echo in the dark and the tormented cries of children shatter the moon—kissed night.
But that’s just the beginning. For Sara Hawthorne is about to uncover St. Gertrude’s hellish secret…a secret she’ll carry with her to the grave…
