Katie Hamstead's Blog, page 107

Best Book Ever Giveaway Hop

I am joining in the Best Book Ever Blog hope giveaway! Check out the linky at the bottom to see all the prizes up for grabs, and enter my rafflecopter. I will be doing US only mailing addresses. See here for the categories involved in this hop:  The Best Book Ever Categories

And here's my package on the rafflecopter! Good luck!
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Pitcharama! Hosted by Aussie Owned and Read

Looking for a pitching opportunity? Head over to Aussie Owned and Read and follow the blog and twitter account for more details and updates! We'd love to have you join in! Join the Aussie Owned Team for Pitcharama—a pitch contest with eight publishers. Eight! The good news, you’ll have not one but two chances to make it into the editor round. Either by the more traditional pitch or by the special Pitch Your Mate round.The details;June 14: Pitcharama first round opensJune 20: Pitch Your Mate roundJune 25: Announcement of 30 through to the editor roundJune 28: Editor Round!Until then catch us on  the #pitcharama twitter hash tag.

Review - A Texas Hero

As I've said before, I've signed up for NetGalley. I've got a few pending now which I'm slowly and surely getting to now things with Kiya have quietened down.
So, today, I'm going to give you my review!
To start with, this did not begin how I expected, it was better! I picked this one because I'm a sap and love romances, (Thus my stalking of the Harlequin archives) but it's more than that. It opens with a big BANG and plenty of action.
The story follows Ethan and Abby, both single parents scared by the other parent of their child. Neither are looking for anything, so the tension fizzles between them from the very beginning, but not in a good way! I loved watching them tear the walls down from each other as they struggle to survive and get themselves out of the sticky situation they found themselves in.
But the sticky situation turns out to be a big scheme... I won't say more because I don't want to give out any spoilers. But I loved Ethan's fight. He's one determined guy! And Abby is so real. I think in her shoes I'd do the same thing. I even stopped to hug my own toddler several times while reading.
I enjoyed this very much and am looking forward to the next installment.

5/5 stars

Lover of Mythology Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Lover of Mythology Giveaway Hop, hosted by Buffy's Ramblings, Close Encounters with The Night Kind, and Book Lover's Hideaway
This hop is centered around all types of Mythology(Greek, Roman, Egyptian and so on), YA, Fiction, Nonfiction, Adult, Romance and Erotic is welcome as well. 
This giveaway hop is running from June 1st to 8th, so jump in and take a look around to go in the running to win some great prizes!
The Grand Prize Consists of the following: $45 Amazon GC or $45 worth of books at ....ebooks from Patricia Batesa prize from Lisa Beth Darling an ecopy of Sunburn by Rosanna Leoan ecopy of Ain't No Bull by Danica Avetan ecopy of Remedy Maker by Sheri FredricksAs for me, I will be talking briefly about Egyptian Mythology as my recently released novel is about Egypt! Most of my study for the book was on the religion of Aten, the sun disc god which Akhenaten raised from a god who was just a very minor god to the supreme and only god during his reign as Pharaoh. He abandoned the old religion and city, and built his own city, Akhetaten, dedicated solely to his new religion.
There is evidence that the people did still worship their on gods in secret though, as small idols were found hidden in the ruins of the rural areas.
Up until then, and then again after he passed, the supreme gods consisted of Amun-Ra, Ptah and Horus. Depending on which region you came from, ie. Upper or Lower Egypt, you believed one to be more superior than the other. But, Amun-Ra or Ptah were generally believed to be the creator gods, Osiris the king and master of the afterlife, and Horus was the god of the Pharaohs.
There are so many gods, and so many depended on regional preference it's hard to say how many gods there were. Egypt was formed for many tribes after many wars over the years so their gods and customs kind of merged all together.

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Progress Report

So, tomorrow marks the last day of the Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh blog tour. I must say this month has been absolutely nuts. It's been a giant juggling act, and on top of everything my husband and I have been taking turns getting sick. Thankfully, our two year old hasn't picked anything up (touch wood!)
But now, Kiya has been out a month. I feel like things will settle into a groove for it, and I've done all I can to get the ball rolling. I guess I'll just have to sit back and wait.
I just finished proofing book 2 and sent it in to be placed in my editor's queue. I've also sent the final book in to my Acquisitions Editor for reviewing. Book 2 will be coming out Oct 25th if you missed that little detail :-)
Branded is all submitted now too and is lined up for a November release. No specific date yet, but it's on its way. November is a crazy month for me on a normal year with my birthday the day after Halloween, then my Dad's a few days later, then my father-in-law's, then my daughter's, then thanksgiving. Phew! I better be super organized this year!
Also, after some great advice from an editor, I am planning on self-publishing the Cadence books. These won't come out until after the Kiya trilogy is complete, but I've decided to self pub because I've realized why they keep getting rejected. This editor pointed out to me that with my MC going from 25 to 14 and slowly aging up, it's almost impossible to market as it's not YA or NA. So there you have it. I'm hoping to release Deceptive Cadence in July 2014.
So now I'm reading. Yes, reading. It's been so long since I just read something I'm really excited about it. I have a few NetGalley books, plus a nice collection of books I won, so hopefully you'll be seeing some reviews here soon.

Winners for the 500 Follower Giveaway!

The winners are posted! Go here to see. I will email the winners soon. Congrats and thank you to everyone who entered and for all your support!

Kiya: Mother of a King

So I now have a release date for book two of the Kiya trilogy. Kiya: Mother of a King is lined up for a release on 25th of October, 2013. That's right! About five months away!

My question is, what would you like to see on the cover? I really want Naomi with Tut and Malachi but I'm concerned that might be too busy. So, what do you think? I need to send in my cover ideas asap so let me know in the comments what you think would look awesome!

My Girl!

So, now it's coming up to summer here in Arizona, I need to think about letting the dog come in during the heat of the day. The problem is, the desert pollens and dust give me terrible allergies, so this means dog bath!  Yes, my lab mix is a typical dog who romps and explores everything that gives me really bad allergies, so if she wants to avoid the heat she must suffer regular hose downs, and today marked the beginning of the bathing season for her.
She's a medium haired dog, low maintenance was a must for me when we adopted her because we had a malamute at the time and I didn't want to deal with grooming two dogs while I was preggers. Despite this, she's been shedding like crazy because it's getting into the hundreds already during the day. So, once we'd finished the bath I had enough fur to make a chihuahua. But she's so pretty now!!! And here she is -



She's not really very good at staying still, so they're all a bit blurry!!!
Anyway, it was nice to spend time with her and my daughter in a crazy, squirmy, wet dog smelling bath time. I feel like I've been so busy lately I haven't spent enough time with either of them.

500 Followers Giveaway!

To say a great big THANK YOU to all my twitter followers, I'm going to giveaway a signed paperback copy of Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh along with a bookmark and maybe something else! Unfortunately this physical giveaway is US only because I need to pay for postage, but for non-US residents I'm going to give away an ebook copy!

So, follow the prompts below for your particular region of residence and thank you so much for all your support throughout my journey thus far, and hopefully continuing on in the future.


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My Shiny New Book Deal!

Yup, I'm very excited to announce I got a new book deal. It's for Branded, which I mentioned once before during the Next Big Thing blog hop, as well as two Six Sentence Sunday posts (Here and Here) The deal is with Soul Mate Publishing and I'm excited to see what a different publisher has to offer since I've loved Curiosity Quills so much. But don't worry, the rest of the Kiya trilogy will still come out with CQ. As I said, I love them!
But Branded is different from CQ's normal genres, which is why it's going with Soul Mate. It's a Romantic Suspense with religious and racial themes. I love it, and worked hard to keep it from being racist while also touching on real and sensitive matters.
So anyway, keep an eye out for it and I'll definitely keep you posted!