October Weeks's Blog, page 31

Monday Madness ~ Special Treat!

For today’s Monday Madness, I give you the blurb and cover for A Taste So Bittersweet!

 

Blurb:

Eight years ago, twenty-nine year old slayer Fiona Wesley was turned into a vampire. She survived her transformation but carries the nightmares and scars from the attack. Continuing to hunt the worst of her kind keeps her grounded, as does her new family. She does her best to stay away from slayers, but the past has a way of sucker-punching a person.

Now, not only is she facing the beasts that turned her, but also the one slayer that’s given her nightmares. A slayer that was once her best friend. All of that just as she’s taking her first steps into the arms of the man she loves.

 

 

Series Saturday

Welcome to another installment of Series Saturdays! Today I’ll be talking about the Ghost Hunter Mysteries by Victoria Laurie, which stars M.J. Holliday[image error]

SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!! WARNING! WARNING!

 

M.J. is a medium. Along with her partner, the ever over-the-top but lovable Gilley, they help the dead move on and help their clients deal with their hauntings. The first book, What’s A Ghoul To Do?, is a nice introduction to the characters and their world without bogging the story down with too much descriptions and info-dumps. I immediately fell in love with M.J., which helps when the story is told from her point of view[image error] We’re introduced to Steven Sable in this book, as both a client and a love interest for M.J..

click on the book covers to go to their Amazon pages

The next book, Demons Are A Ghoul’s Best Friend, introduces us to the spirit of Hatchett Jack ~ a dark spirit loose on the grounds of a boarding school. The third book, Ghouls Just Haunt To Have Fun, has M.J. appearing on a television show, where she encounters an evil knife (which plays into the last book of the series) that unleashes a demon. We are also introduced to Heath, another medium.

The fourth book, Ghouls Gone Wild, finds M.J., Gilley, Heath, and the crew of their new television show, Ghoul Getters, in Scotland battling a witch wrath. This is also the book where M.J. and Steven’s relationship ends and Heath’s and M.J.’s begins. This transition felt very natural and I quickly fell in love with the pairing. Also in this book, we see just how much Gilley fears the dead. The fifth book, Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls, finds our crew of ghost hunters in Ireland, where they encounter a resident phantom that tests their abilities. Gilley meets the soon-to-be love of his life, Michael, in this book. The pairing is wonderful[image error]

The sixth book, Ghoul Interrupted, finds M.J. and crew rushing to New Mexico, where there’s a demon waging tribal warfare and trying to wipe out Sam Whitefeather’s (Heath’s grandfather and M.J.’s spirit guide) bloodline. This was a great book ~ I loved seeing Heath’s family, as well as seeing how Laurie incorporated his Native American heritage. The seventh book, What A Ghoul Wants, sends our crew to northern Wales and on the hunt to find the a nasty spirit called the Grim Widow, who drowns her victims in the castle’s moat.

The eighth book, The Ghoul Next Door,  has our team on a well deserved hiatus back home in Boston. But that break doesn’t last long: M.J.’s ex, Steven, comes to her for help. His fiancée’s brother is being haunted by a sinister ghost. This story is one of the darkest of the series, and really tests the characters and their abilities. The ninth book, No Ghoul’s Allowed, takes M.J., Heath, and Gilley to M.J’s and Gilley’s hometown in Georgia to see her father and his fiancée, Christine. They end up investigating a home that Christine bought and is having renovated. This book…was hard to read. It not only deals with a very chilling spirit, but also with M.J.’s deceased mother and the ties she had to the haunted plantation. I cried reading parts of this book. I mean, I truly cried. My heart just broke for our heroine. Laurie certainly brought her A-game to this installment.

 

The tenth and final book, A Ghoul’s Guide to Love and Murder, has M.J., Heath (who were on vacation…where they got married!), and Gilley (who is planning his wedding to Michael) back in Boston for the premiere of the Ghoul Getters movie. The studio is sponsoring a museum exhibit of some artifacts from their hunts. One of those artifacts is the evil knife, that contains the demon Oruc (from book three), which is loaned to the museum by Gilley, who thought he’d put up every guard for protection he could around the knife. But the knife is stolen, and all hell break’s loose because of it. Now, the three must battle unleashed ghosts and demons of the past (literally, we see haunts for previous books) and find the knife before it’s too late.

What I loved most about this series is the character growth and that each book became darker than the one before it. The tension was perfect, the light, loving moments were wonderful, and the humor was well placed and well timed. There were times when I actually feared for the crew, their mental and physical well being. I cried, laughed, felt their emotions…all of it. Victoria Laurie is a great storyteller. One who knows how to pull her audience in and keep them their until the last word of the book.

I’m sad that this series had ended, but I plan on many rereads[image error] I highly recommend giving this series a shot if you like cozy mysteries, dark mysteries (for later in the series) with vibrant characters and a dash of romance.

Fantasy Friday

I am a big fantasy fan- both books and movies (as those who’ve followed me for awhile know[image error] ). Today is a release day for an awesome author and great lady, Skye Knizley, so I’m going to pimp her Urban Fantasy book for today’s Fantasy Friday.

I came across the first book in her Storm Chronicles series- Stormrise– in early 2014. I enjoyed reading about Raven and her friends enough to pick up the second book in the series, Stormrage. There are currently six books published with a seventh on the way later this year.

STORM CHRONICLES

Stormrise

Stormrise Special Edition

Stormrage

Stormwind

Shadowstorm

Raven

AND RELEASING TODAY

click on cover to go to Amazon page

 

Thursday Thoughts

I missed a couple of days! As I expected I would, but the weather has been beautiful here so I’ve been out and about for the most part, which is why I missed blogging Tuesday and yesterday.

Anyhoo[image error] I’ve decided that there will be days not marked for anything in particular (like Series Saturday and Monday Madness). These unnamed days will be for whatever I feel like posting about. And today is to make that announcement, to let you know that I’m not completely off my intent to blog more

Monday Madness~ Writing Update

Monday Madness will be the day I talk about what’s going on in the writing for the week[image error]

Isles and West:

I’m working my way through book three, Aequitas (due out December 16th), checking over everything after edits. I’m very happy with how this trilogy will end…though, my characters probably aren’t very happy with me LOL

I got a peek at the cover for Over the River (May 20th) ~ cannot wait to share it with you all! It’s amazing, and absolutely perfect.

Tuck Houston:

Because of other book commitments, I’ve put book three on hold until July. But I’m still hoping to have it done by the end of the year.

A Taste So Bittersweet, The Damned from Fiona’s POV ~ I am waiting on edits. Hopefully I will have a release date and cover to share soon[image error]

New WIPs:

I am working on a couple of new series LOL I don’t want to say too much right now, but one of them is revising an old ms featuring zombies, and the other is a new paranormal mystery series. I’ve also dabbled in the slayer world with a whole new set of characters, which I’ve fallen in love with and I hope you do as well!

_____

I took a roughly two months break from writing at the beginning of the year because I had so many releases in January and February that I needed to concentrate on promoting them. I also had written so many books last year, to release this year, that I was a little burned out. Now, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t writing on things here and there, because I was[image error] But I just let the words flow naturally when they wanted to instead of sitting down for a set period of time and getting my words in. It was a refreshing break, and in the end it allowed me to choose what stories were ready to be told and which ones needed to be placed on the back burner for now.

And that is your writing madness update for this this week[image error]

Series Saturdays: Books

Hi All. As promised, the first day of the new blogging idea. I’ve decided to designate Saturday as the day to talk about book series that I love, and hopefully you all love to. Or, if you’ve never read the books, it’ll give you something new to check out! I know I love finding new reads[image error] This Saturday I’m going to start with the Kitty Norville series by Carrie Vaughn.

I adored Kitty and the Midnight Hour when I first read it. It was a breath of fresh air when Urban Fantasy started to become stale for me. I loved that Kitty was a DJ, a werewolf, and wasn’t the strongest of the pack. I loved that she was normal but different. Then, when the second book- Kitty Goes to Washington –came along, I fell even more in love the series. This was a new take on supernaturals coming out to the public and how the public handles it. The books that followed played with that theme and it was a nice change of pace that not all humans reacted the same way, and not all of the supernaturals reacted the same way to suddenly being known to the world as opposed to hiding or moving in the shadows.

The one thing that always drew me to the books, and the thing I loved the most about them, was that Kitty grew as a character with each book. She never stalled, she was always learning, she became stronger but never so strong that she was a one woman army that never needed anyone. The secondary characters in these books were as alive as Kitty, and they were extremely important to who she was and who she became. They were never shoved to the back burner and she never became a Mary Sue (as which I was grateful).

When the end of the series came with Kitty Saves the World, I was both excited and sad. I was also happy that it was ending before it could become stale or start to drag on and on with no end. This series, for me, ended on a high note. Plot threads were wrapped up well and past characters came into play to help Kitty in her fight against Roman. Carrie did a great job giving the series the ending it deserved.

This is not to say that there weren’t bumps in the road. There were two or three books that felt slow to me, that I feared the series was losing direction or it was venturing away from what had been building for several books. And I won’t deny that a part of the very end of the last book irked me to no end, but out of fourteen books and a short story collection, that’s pretty damn good.

My favorite book in the series? Kitty and the Silver Bullet. The book hit on themes that touched close to home, and that was the book (in my opinion) that Kitty really shined and the journey to who she ended up as began. That copy has a little extra wear than the others because I’ve reread it so many times[image error]

 

Have you read the Kitty Norville series? What did you think of the ending?

A Blogging Idea

So, I used to post pretty frequently the first two years of this blog. Not just about my books but about tv shows, movies, book recommendations…etc. I’ve decided that I’m going to try and do that again[image error]

Starting this weekend, I’m going to choose a subject for each day of the week and write a blog around it. One day may be book suggestions, one day may be movies, another could be fashion. I haven’t completely ironed out the what subject will be on what day, but that’s an idea of what’s coming.

I may miss a few days here and there until I get into the groove again, but this blog will definitely be busier really soon :D And of course I will keep you all updated on my books and events as they come in.

 

❤

Path to Damnation on Sale!

Hi All[image error] I have another sale for you!

For the next two weeks,  Path to Damnation will be on sale for $0.99!!!

EVERNIGHT

AMAZON

ARe

Over the River Release Party

Hello all[image error]

Here is the link for the release party to celebrate the re-release of Over the River (with an added 14k words!). Join the fun ~ games, prizes, exclusive excerpts and more!!!

click promo picture to go to the FB event page[image error]

The Damned on SALE!

Hey All :)

To celebrate the one year anniversary of The Damned, it is on sale for the next TWO WEEKS! Grab a copy for $0.99!

EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING

AMAZON