Christina Bauer's Blog, page 54
June 28, 2018
The THRAX Audiobook Launch Tour is Here!
ANGELBOUND THRAX AUDIOBOOK LAUNCH SUMMARY
TITLE: Angelbound THRAX, Book 4 in the Angelbound Origins Series
GENRE: Young Adult Paranormal Romance
AVAILABILITY: On iTunes and Audible
FORMATS: audiobook, ebook, print
LIST PRICE: $14.95
GIVEAWAYS and GOODIES!
Rafflecopter: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/f7ec85e719/
Discounts – ANGELBOUND FREE on Amazon Prime: https://tinyurl.com/ydafxj7j
Book trailer: https://youtu.be/roznLuuUY1c
About Angelbound THRAX
Myla Lewis has married Prince Lincoln, and now they’re expecting! All the after-realms rejoice. Myla should be happy too, but she has a serious problem. The day after their honeymoon ended, Myla’s real husband disappeared.
The man who’s sharing her bed is an imposter.
Myla tries explaining about “Evil Lincoln,” but no one will listen. The reason? People think that Myla’s supernatural pregnancy is making her cray cray. Mostly because that’s what Evil Lincoln is telling everyone, and that man’s a great liar. What a creep.
There’s no way Myla will take this lying down, though. She’s going to rescue her man, and she has a pretty good idea where he’s being held. With her best friend, Cissy, along to help, Myla sneaks off to Earth. All she has to do is blend in with the humans, avoid Evil Lincoln, and find her real man before the baby arrives. How hard can it be?
The post The THRAX Audiobook Launch Tour is Here! appeared first on Monster House Books.
June 27, 2018
THRAX Audiobook Tour – Meet The Bloggers
The blog tour starts tomorrow for the audiobook version of Angelbound THRAX! I’m both the author and and voiceover talent on this one, and I can’t wait to share this version of the work with the world 
June 21, 2018
ANGELBOUND FREE for Amazon Prime Members
You can read my best seller ANGELBOUND for free in June. This is my first time being on the Prime list—and I don’t know when/if I’ll ever get selected again—so be sure to get your free copy ASAP!
To get your prime copy of ANGELBOUND, please click here or cut and paste the following URL into your browser: https://tinyurl.com/ydafxj7j
BONUS: There is also an audiobook version of ANGELBOUND, so you can enjoy that as well
June 16, 2018
If I’d written the TV Show BEWITCHED
If I’d been head writer on the TV Show BEWITCHED…
Season 1
Darrin Stephens, a mortal dude who spells his first name with an i for some reason, meets Samantha, who’s a witch. She’s also trying to pretend to be a regular suburban chick with no powers for some reason. Darrin is like, no way, babe! You shouldn’t hide out in nowheresville when you have the ability to change the world! Samantha agrees and they plan to change stuff together. Did I mention there’s an evil league of mages who are trying to destroy the universe in my version? There are.
Season 2
Darrin quits his soul-sucking job at an ad agency and jets around the world with Samantha, fighting the evil mages together. They decide to hang out more with Samantha’s mother because, damn, that lady is cool.
Season 3
Darrin and Samantha have a kid, which makes it harder to fight crime, but they still do it. They build an in-law unit onto their ‘false identity’ house in suburbia so Samantha’s mom can watch the daughter while they’re off battling evil mages.
Season 4+
Darrin and Samantha come up with a super-cool way to turn all the evil mages to good and change the world. Huzzah!
The End.
The post If I’d written the TV Show BEWITCHED appeared first on Monster House Books.
June 6, 2018
Fairies and Frosting Cover Revealed
Take a look at the cover below and scroll even further for the giveaway!!!
About FAIRIES AND FROSTING:
Elle (never call her Cinderella) is trying to throw a surprise birthday party for her bestie, Bryar Rose. Trouble is, some unfriendly fae are working hard to ruin everything. Good thing she has a certain handsome Le Charme wizard on speed dial…
The post Fairies and Frosting Cover Revealed appeared first on Monster House Books.
May 30, 2018
Signing at BookExpo and BookCon!
Hello! I will be at BookExpo and BookCon this weekend signing! Make sure to catch me at the IPG Booth on Thursday at 11 AM and Sunday at 2 PM!
The post Signing at BookExpo and BookCon! appeared first on Monster House Books.
MOONLIGHT AND MIDTOWN is now live!
TITLE: MOONLIGHT AND MIDTOWN, Book 1.5 in the Fairy Tales of the Magicorum
GENRE: Young Adult Paranormal Romance
AVAILABILITY: On iBooks, GooglePlay, B&N, Kobo, and Amazon
FORMAT: eBook
LIST PRICE: $3.99
GIVEAWAYS and GOODIES!
Rafflecopter: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/f7ec85e716/
Audiobook trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riET86Oj3_0
Book tour trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oatx6VIP5c4&t=6s
About MOONLIGHT AND MIDTOWN
After battling werewolves and evil aunties, Bryar Rose is ready to enjoy her new life. No more crazy aunties. Her curse is toast. And Bry’s new man, Knox, is literally a dream come true. Best of all, Bry will soon attend a regular high school. Forget those sketchy tutors! To get ready, Bry is dedicating the rest of her summer to some serious back-to-school shopping with her best friend, Elle. It’s a blast, except for one thing:
Mysterious strangers are following Bry across Manhattan.
All these stalkers have oddly familiar scents and an uncanny ability to slip into the shadows whenever Bry tries to confront them. Even worse, their presence is making Knox act crazy with a capital C.
But Bry’s having none of it. Enough of her life has already been ruined by secrets. With Elle’s help, Bry plans to confront these strangers, find out what they want, and send them packing. Trouble is, the truth about their identity won’t be so easy to manage, especially when Bry finds out how these stalkers could change her future with Knox…and not for the better.
***An interim novella between WOLVES AND ROSES and SHIFTERS AND GLYPHS***
About The Series
The Fairy Tales of the Magicorum series includes WOLVES AND ROSES (Book 1), MOONLIGHT AND MIDTOWN (Novella 1.5) and SHIFTERS AND GLYPHS (Book 2, Fall 2018). Eight full novels are planned in total.
The post MOONLIGHT AND MIDTOWN is now live! appeared first on Monster House Books.
May 12, 2018
FREE Novella From Yours Truly
Dear Readers,
I’ve decided to start a monthly personal newsletter thingy. It’ll be random (hopefully fun) stuff like: what does my nanny say when she ‘Southern swears’ at me? (BTW, our Nana Sharyn is the voice basis for Colonel Mallory the Magnificent, for those of you who follow the Magicorum series). And I might write about more serious stuff too, because that’s just me. I’ve led a pretty serious life, which means that I can’t really write about my food all the time and feel like I’m being real with my readers. As the saying goes… it is what it is!
Anyway, I decided to start this newsletter and as an incentive to sign up, I’m giving away free copy of an early novella I wrote called BEVERLY HILLS VAMPIRE. In all honesty, it needs a few more rounds of edits and about 40,000 more words to be release-able, but meh. I haven’t been in the zone for six years (I wrote this puppy in 2012) so why the fuck am I pretending that the zone is coming on now? Better to put it out there as is, and if you like it, YAY! If you don’t like it, what do you want for nothing?
So that’s it. Sign up for my newsletter here. If that link doesn’t work for you for some reason, type in: https://tinyurl.com/bauersbooks. I’ll launch my first newsletter by the end of May.
Oh, if you want to see what I’m up to in the meantime, be sure to check out my new author web site at www.bauersbooks.com. BTW, Bauer Books (the singular Bauer) is some kind of religious thing, so don’t get shocked if you get to the wrong page. I am Bauers books. With an ‘S’. And it’s all the snarky kick-ass fun you can handle.
Thanks for reading and talk to you soon,
Christina
The post FREE Novella From Yours Truly appeared first on Monster House Books.
May 8, 2018
Cover Reveal: ZINNIA
Take a look at the cover below and check out Zinnia’s wings! And scroll even further for the giveaway!!!
About ZINNIA
As the last dragon shifter, I live alone, hiding in one of Earth’s sacred deserts. My human handlers tell me that I have no parents, no name, and no purpose other than to train for battle and one day become a vessel for the reincarnation of Chimera, the greatest dragon shifter of all. Sadly, Chimera’s rebirth will mean my own death. But my handlers say this sacrifice is a noble fate that will rebuild the dragon shifter world.
I shall die on my seventeenth birthday. That’s five days from now.
Then I hear music thumping across the desert. I take my mortal form, follow the sound, and find humans dancing in what they call a rave. There is a stage and a rock band. One thing quickly becomes clear: Unlike the audience, the musicians are dragon shifters, just like me. And one of them, the guitar player Rhodes, makes my knees turn watery. The lead singer, Kaps, has something strangely familiar about her.
It all adds up to one conclusion: My handlers lied to me. I’m not the last of my kind. Memories reappear. I had parents once. Portia and Tempest. I even had a name. Zinnia. Perhaps I have a reason to live as well. I step past the dancing humans to confront the players.
I will find out the full truth, no matter what.
The post Cover Reveal: ZINNIA appeared first on Monster House Books.
May 6, 2018
On Ash Maiden (aka the Original Cinderella)
Here’s my #writingtip: don’t be afraid to look for inspiration in odd places. In the case of Angelbound, I eventually found it in the original version of Cinderella, what the Brothers Grimm called Ash Maiden.
How did this happen? Time to hit the way-back machine.
When I was nine years old, I got my hands on a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales from the 1890’s. It had a pretty red embossed cover; it had lovely woodcut illustrations; it had gruesome stories that were freaking terrifying. I loved it instantly.
Thanks to this wonderfully nasty book, I got to know the original fairy tales in all their pre-Disney horror. Few of the stories had happy endings. Snow White, for example, was a dumbass who kept taking obviously-dangerous gifts from her stepmother until a pair of shoes danced her to death. The moral? Use your brain, twirp. There won’t always be a huntsman around to save your pretty face.
Ash Maiden was one of the few tales that ended well, but for one simple reason: Ash Maiden (what was later Disney-fied into Cinderella) worked her tuchus off…And not in the ‘sweeping the floors with happy rodents’ way that we think about today. Yeah, you read that right. Ash Maiden’s main challenge in life was NOT boring chores, her mean step-mother, or ugly step-sisters. Bizarre, huh?
Here’s the shocker (to me anyway): in the original story, Ash Maiden’s big problem was that she lost her mother and had grief work to do. And no, I am not kidding.
Don’t get me wrong; our lovely lady worked hard. She was forced to sleep in the ashes and given a not-so-clever nickname. But Ash Maiden didn’t weep every day because she had chores to finish or teasing to endure. She cried because she missed her Mom. It was mourning that drove Ash Maiden to plant a seed in her mother’s memory. Every day, she’d find time to be alone and cry, her teardrops falling on the tiny seed until, bit by bit, it grew into a massive tree.
SIDE NOTE: This is something I love about the original Grimm’s fairy tales. No easy answers. People had to empty lakes with thimbles, stay trapped in animal-form for centuries, or cry on a seed until it grew into a huge goddamn tree. Got problems? Shut up and grab a thimble, bitch.
Back to the story. For those of you who’ve lost a loved one, you know what Ash Maiden was going through at this point: the valley of the shadow of death, one tear at a time. And Ash Maiden’s ball gown? Fell out of that freaking tree, along with her famous shoes. In that tree perched a bird that led her to her Prince. There was no fairy godmother, no quick fix. It was this young girl’s unflinching bravery in facing her sorrow that brought about positive change in her life…and that thought inspired me.
In the end, I decided that Angelbound would include action, adventure, and romance. However, I wanted all of that to be secondary to the central story of someone coming to terms with their relationship with their mother. In this case, a mother who was in some ways ‘dead’ (I can’t say more without spoilers).
From a storytelling standpoint, this was a huge shift for me as a writer. Many YA stories are about the heroine realizing they have some kind of power they never expected or earned, like the immunity to paranormal mind-reading, magical abilities and so on. To me, that’s symbolic of one kind core YA experience: that of changing from a child into a woman. The idea is that suddenly (and without any effort on your part) you have sexual power. This is something you may never have seen coming, and it can be a trial to deal with it. That is very different from heading out on a quest to come to terms with something, like what Ash Maiden did. The latter kind of story captured my imagination, and I was off and running on Angelbound.
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