Katie Hamstead's Blog, page 100

Cover Reveal: Fast Forward by Marion Croslydon

A New Adult Contemporary NovelBy Amazon Bestselling Author Marion Croslydon
Second Chances, #2Expected release is December 19, 2013Cover designed by Claudia at PhatPuppyArt
    
From the Amazon bestselling author of No Reverse comes a moving story about love, redemption and what happens when life switches to fast forward.   Cassie learned the hard way: Love forgives… in the end. In No Reverse, Josh and Cassie’s epic love story went from the brink of destruction to a fragile new beginning. Now they must mend their broken family and win back the son they gave up five years ago. But second chances need to be earned and the road ahead is rocky. With Cassie on tour and Josh trying his hand at a political career, the struggle becomes clear. When the adoption takes a bad turn, Cassie and Josh are prepared to give up everything for the fight of their lives. Will this young family finally heal the years of heartache, or will they be torn apart for good? There is no cliffhanger.    
Can’t wait to begin reading? The author has made available the first chapters for download here!
    About the Author Marion loves to share happy vibes, talk book crush, fictional boyfriends and sexual chemistry with like-minded people. And because she spends most of her days on her own deep inside her writing cave, you are welcome to come and say “hello” from time to time. Just to make sure she doesn’t sink into insanity. Her friends, family and arch-enemies (there are quite a few) will be forever grateful for your help. Website | Facebook |Twitter

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Kiya: Mother of a King Release Day! Q&A and Giveaway

Today is the big day! The second book in my Kiya Trilogy releases. I'm really excited, and will announce the winners of the pre-release review tour here soon to celebrate!
For now, I'd like to open up the comments for you to ask me what you want about the series, but don't expect me to give out spoilers ha ha! And yes, book 3 is written and contracted so you will be seeing the final installment before you know it.
For information on all my books click the "My Books" tab above.
So, here is the details for Kiya book 2:

Amazon Kobo B&N Goodreads
Nefertiti has forced Naomi to flee Amarna with Malachi and the three children. But even under the protection of Naomi’s family in Thebes, Nefertiti still hunts her and Tut. Nefertiti sends assassins to kill them, and while Naomi fights to protect the children, Malachi fights to keep her safe.

With three children in tow, one of which isn’t her own, she is labeled the harlot outcast wife of the pharaoh and is shunned. She isn’t safe among her own people, and flees from being stoned to death. Although her family protects her, she must find a way to survive.

While Naomi struggles to keep herself and Tut alive, old adversaries return as Smenkhkare takes advantage of Akhenaten’s ailing health. Naomi must rely on Horemheb’s promise to protect Tut’s birthright, but her feelings for Malachi could cause more problems with Horemheb than she expects.



CQ is also hosting a giveaway for Kiya: Mother of a King on Goodreads! So jump in!
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Goodreads Book Giveaway KIYA by Katie Hamstead Giveaway ends November 20, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win

Announcement! Meet Cadence Anderson

Cadence awakes in a hospital to find her husband and daughter dead, killed in an earthquake. So when her guardian angel appears and offers her a chance to go back in time with all the knowledge she has, she accepts, desperate to prevent their deaths.She shoots back eleven years to her fourteen-year-old self, and faces high school all over again. She is determined to do everything better, including preventing the loss of her best friend and not dating any of her original, drama-inducing boyfriends. Her main focus is on her future husband, who she won’t meet for several years.But James Gordon crosses her path. While she wishes to remain single, the bad boy pursues her. He threatens to disrupt everything that is to come as she begins to develop unwanted feelings for him, and distract her from her original goal: to save her future family.


I am so excited to announce this! Deceptive Cadence is now signed with Curiosity Quills! Deceptive Cadence is a manuscript I loved every second writing and the characters just burst to life in my mind. With elements from my own life entwined in the pages, Cadence is very much like me. So, to give you a taste, here's an excerpt:

I scowled, knowing I wasn’t going to get an answer. I stormed out and into my room. I paced back and forth. The second chance suddenly didn’t seem so appealing. Having to relive being under the rules of my parents, having to face injustices I’d managed to let go of, and the hormones, oh the hormones! Even with my rational, more mature twenty-five-year-old reasoning, the hormones seemed to thrust me into an emotional haze. It was ridiculous. How did I live with it the first time?

photo credit: ~FreeBirD®~ via photopin ccand Ricard Aparicio - Bellas Ads via photopin cc

Cover Reveal: Grounded by You by Ivy Sinclair

We join Grapevine Book Tours in presenting the new cover for:

Cover designed by CCR Book Cover Design Grounded by You
by Ivy Sinclair
Publication: November 2013
Genre: NA Contemporary Romance


Lights, camera, and passions flare as a small town boy gets the break of his career. As the lines of life and art blur together, can he also find a way to win the love of the girl who got away?

Carter Samuel Groveson.

His name is on the lips of every woman in the country who has a pulse. An actor pulled from obscurity to star in the most anticipated movie of the century, he’s an enigma to all. Everyone wants a piece of him.

Except her.

Amelia St. John isn’t about to follow the life plan that her father set out for her. She refuses to be tied down or commit to anyone. A year ago, she ran as far and as fast from Sam Groveson as she could. But when he reappears in her life and asks her to be the friend he needs to keep him tethered to reality in the midst of the chaos, she can’t say no.

Unfortunately for Sam, his big break comes with expectations that threaten his career if he doesn’t toe the line. In this high stakes game of love, everyone is watching.


Ivy Sinclair

Her Website | Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | GoodreadsIvy Sinclair cut her romance teeth on classics like Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, An Affair to Remember, and Sabrina. She is a firm believer in true love, a happily ever after ending, and the medicinal use of chocolate to cure any ailment of the heart. Ivy's guilty pleasures include sushi, endless Starbucks lattes, and wine. Readers of Ivy's stories can expect smoldering sweet stories of romance that tug at the heartstrings.

• One (1) $10 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card {INT}
• One (1) signed paperback copy of Where My Heart Breaks by Ivy Sinclair {US only}
• Two (2) eBook copies of Where My Heart Breaks by Ivy Sinclair {INT}a Rafflecopter giveawayCover reveal organized by

This week's Humorous Video

So lately, Jimmy Fallon and sexy Justin Timberlake have been rocking it with the hysterical skits and videos. Here is on of their most recent ones and it had me rolling laughing!Thanks for all the fish!

Inspirational Music

The weekend is inspirational music time! Here's a great one that came out when I was twelve and has shaped my love for music and movies ever since. The words are inspirational.

Blog Tour: Finding Home by Lauren McKellar

Today I have Lauren McKellar, one of my Aussie Owned and Read sisters visiting on her blog tour for her new release Finding Home

Character Creation
Which came first: the chicken or the egg?I find that, when it comes to writing a novel, a lot of people seem to want to know which came first, the chicken or the egg; or, in a writer’s case, which came first, the plot or the characters?For me, in Finding Home, it was the plot; and that made building characters around the major story and themes quite challenging. How do you fit these fictional entities into a world you’ve already so thoroughly fleshed out? And how do you then make them all different, and yet “real”?Fitting the characters into the world was surprisingly easy once I started building the plot a little more, but I was still really worried about the idea of having characters that felt too cardboard, too much like you’d seen them before in a bad audition tape for Home & Away. [Not that I’m saying Home & Away has terrible actors; more that an audition reel for that show would be horrid because it’s an audition, not the show, and… *takes shovel, keeps digging*]ANYWAY! The way I worked out a method around this madness was, for me, including a small element of myself in each and every character. The heroine was, of course, easy. It wasn’t hard for me to remember moments of my teenage life, or to evoke certain emotions my lead character, Amy, would feel. That’s not saying that Amy is me (I never really binge drank, nor did I have sexual relations as she does). However, whenever Amy would have this plot I’d created just fall on her head and happen to her, I would use a reaction I could see myself using. And my reactions to dramatic situations sure aren’t always perfect. In doing this I gave Amy flaws, which I think help her feel more real as a character.   I then applied this technique throughout the rest of my novel, interjecting tiny slices of my personality here and there. *BAM* take a hint of my sensible side. *WHAM* have a splash of my childlike elements. *KAPOW* here’s some awkwardness that you can share.Soon, all my characters had a little bit of flaw, or a little bit of “Lauren” to them. And I think it made them better.Having finished the book, I don’t think this is how I’ll write again. I don’t think I need to sprinkle my essence all over everything in order to create realistic and slightly broken characters. However, it did teach me one very important thing: characters need flaws, or they become unlikeable. And for my next release, The Problem With Crazy, I have built them in, so they’re complete little chickens. And this time, they’re coming first.




Lauren McKellar is a writer and reader of Young and New Adult books. Her debut novel Finding Home is out now, and can be bought from all your usual eBook sites (extensive links available here; Amazon listed below). She also works as a freelance editor for novels for all age groups and you can chat to her on twitter or facebook any time you’d like. 
WebsiteAmazonGoodreads

About Finding HomeMoody, atmospheric, and just a little bit punk, Finding Home takes contemporary YA to a new level of grit...
When Amy’s mum dies, the last thing she expects is to be kicked off her dad’s music tour all the way to her Aunt Lou in a depressing hole of a seaside town. But it’s okay — Amy learned how to cope with the best, and soon finds a hard-drinking, party-loving crowd to help ease the pain.
The only solace is her music class, but even there she can’t seem to keep it together, sabotaging her grade and her one chance at a meaningful relationship. It takes a hard truth from her only friend before Amy realises that she has to come to terms with her past, before she destroys her future.


PLUS:Win one of two $5 Amazon cards, one $10 Amazon card or a copy of Finding Home.


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Blog Tour: Supernova by Elizabeth Sharp

[image error] On Cleo’s first day at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Academy, things get pretty weird pretty fast. After being confronted by a strangely hostile boy, she meets two girls and instantly bonds with them. Before long danger threatens the entire student body, in the form of a soul eating possessor fae. When her brother is savagely beaten and left in a coma, the girls decide to use their fae powers to become superheroes and stop the possessions.They quickly learn things are a lot more complicated than they had ever imagined. A government plot that had begun when they were infants endangers them all, and a demented former soldier bent on revenge is after them. The line between friend and foe has become so blurry, Cleo has no idea who she can trust. Will their superhero plot help them save the day, or just get them killed?

Excerpt:
Someone slammed into my shoulder, making me stumble into my brother. I whipped around, my hair flying around my head as I lost control of my power. Logan stood there, a wicked grin tilting up one corner of his mouth. I considered letting a little of my explosive power loose, but I’d be on a slippery slope if I did. I knew from past experience that I must be starting to glow by now, but the other students seemed to be filing past without noticing. With more willpower than I thought I possessed, I reined myself in. Once the fires were quenched, I realized what a bad idea it would have been to let them out. I glanced around, but the only people who seemed to have noticed were Violet and Antonio.

“What exactly is going on?” Violet asked. She narrowed her eyes as she studied me. “I…felt something. And I think you glowed.”

I wanted to tell her nothing had happened aside from a confrontation with a jerk, but Logan wasn’t done being a grade-A bully.

Logan got really close, almost in my face. “Fae.” He spat the word like it was distasteful. “And a good girl I’d bet.” He packed so much malice into the words, I felt offended, despite the fact that I really was a good girl.

My brother’s strong fingers wrapped around my upper arm, pulling me back. As I took one reluctant step away from the boy who’d been trying so desperately to rile me up, my hand raised, my fingers clenched tightly in a fist I was moments from throwing. And if I lost control of myself, even for a moment, I could turn the school into a fiery inferno. I took a deep breath to calm myself as I glanced around at the students who had no idea how close they had been to disaster.

Something odd was going on here. Why weren’t the humans noticing us using magic in the middle of the hall? They should be freaking out, stampeding out the doors and reporting the freaks to the government by now. Instead they just hurried about their lives, chattering about inconsequential things as if they were life and death. I suppose to them, it was. But it was hard to imagine a formal dance as the most important event of the year when you’re standing toe to toe with a boy who wanted to hurt you simply because you were there.

“You reek of good.” Logan was cloaked in darkness as he spoke, shadows rolling around him like smoke. Horns curved forward out of the dark hair on top of his head, the tips curving up to his hairline. I glanced around again but the students continued to flow around us as if they didn’t see anything. Maybe they couldn’t.

My brother coughed and I could feel a surge of energy in him, a strange sixth sense we shared. I grabbed his wrist before he did something as stupid, as I tried not to do the same. I glanced around again, still expecting everyone to be standing and staring at us. Aside from a few scattered stragglers, we were alone in the hall. A boy with dark curls rounded the corner, rushing to Logan’s side. He grabbed his arm and gave him a shake.

“Dude, back off.”

Logan snarled at him, and the shorter boy’s eyes glowed red, moving as if the irises were made of liquid. With his jaw set, Logan stepped backwards away from me.

“Is this entire school made up of fae?” I asked, spinning to face forward with my hands thrown up in the air. Too late I remembered Violet walking along beside us, oblivious to the fae world.

She took the weirdness in stride. “Not entirely, but we seem to have more than our fair share. I think all the teachers are, and a good chunk of the staff too.”

Or maybe not so oblivious. I didn’t realize I had stopped until she turned to face me. Buy LinksPaperback Amazon B&N Smashwords

Tour ScheduleAbout the Author: Elizabeth has a near crippling Facebook addiction, dwarfed only by her need for Dr. Pepper. A self-proclaimed techno geek, she loves cell phones, computers, tablets and all things technological. The internet has to be the greatest invention since the wheel, in her opinion. She lives in a quiet subdivision with her husband, one-year-old son, three cats, and far too many electronics. It’s quite possible she has some raccoon in her DNA, because she loves glitter and anything that sparkles. She enjoys making jewelry and costumes. Halloween is her favorite holiday since it’s the one day of the year that you can be whatever you want. But her first love will always be writing. Otherwise, hearing voices in her head would make her feel schizophrenic.Website Facebook Twitter Goodreads Email


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Fun Video

So I've decided to do this new thing. My husband is a huge youtube addict and is forever showing my hilarious videos. So now, during the week (Wed unless tours, reveals etc get in the way) I'll post a funny video. So, here is today's. This particular video is going viral right now, so I hope you enjoy!

Cover Reveal - Entwine by Rebecca Berto

Cover by: Berto Designs Releasing in late November 2013 Sarah Langham’s life was the epitome of normal until her dad slept with another woman when she was sixteen. It ripped her family apart. Twenty-two-year-old Sarah has it together, though. Waiting at the train station to go home from her first day of her first proper job out of university, she spots a man. He is an enigma to her. She’s drawn to him, with his square jaw; buzz of hair; and his tall, solid frame, seen under the contours of his business suit. And he’s been looking at her, too. Fate pulls them together that night on a whirlwind date, exceeding anything Sarah’s experienced before. He’s even more into her than she’s into him. Finally, she wants to trust a guy for the first time since she was sixteen. But then they discover something. Something that meant they were never two strangers at a train station. And it threatens to tear their future apart before it, really, ever begins.

     
  About the Author Rebecca Berto writes stories about love and relationships. She gets a thrill when her readers are emotional reading her books, and gets even more of a kick when they tell her so. She's strangely imaginative, spends too much time on her computer, and is certifiably crazy when she works on her fiction. Rebecca Berto lives in Melbourne, Australia with her boyfriend and their doggy.   
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