Mina Vaughn's Blog, page 4
September 5, 2013
bookalicious:
Cookie Monster Learns a Lesson from Tom...
fickleheartwoozyeyes:
adventuresofcomicbookgirl:
magicalwayslea...
Apparently prints of the Swedish book covers can be purchased here.
wow they are beautiful!
holy shit i love this especially the gof one the trio looks so tiny and sassy and great!!!
uhm these are so much better….than any i’ve ever seen
Makes me love HP all over again.
September 1, 2013
Please share! Last day to get How to Discipline Your Vampire for $1.99
Everyone loves a bargain, right? Today is the LAST DAY to get bestselling vampire romance How to Discipline Your Vampire for just $1.99. Share with your friends! http://amzn.to/1brX1bT
August 27, 2013
Change Your Settings and Make Siri Call You MISTRESS
Hi, everyone! This morning, my agent Jessica Sinsheimer told twitter all about the time we made Siri our sub…well, ok, maybe not sub…but she does now call us both Mistress. :)
In honor of How to Discipline Your Vampire's release, we're holding a Make Siri Your Sub contest. The first three people to tweet/FBt/tumblr/blog proof of their phone calling them MISTRESS get a copy of How to Discipline Your Vampire. Here’s a video on how to make the change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89eiHW_1z90
Have fun and good luck! Make sure to tag me, minavaughn
August 26, 2013
What a week!
Well, my debut How to Discipline Your Vampire came out a week ago today and I finally have time to sit and process all that has happened.
Last week I became an author. I had always been a writer, but when that book loaded on my Kindle with a real cover and formatting, it hit me. Things were getting real.
Then, when HTDYV hit number 33 on the Kindle best seller charts under vampire romance, I nearly fainted. Seriously? I was stunned. I mean, happy, sure, but stunned nonetheless. I was on a list with JR Ward and Sherrilyn Kenyon?!
But the coolest thing this week has been the feedback. People sending me quotes they like, little notes of encouragement, and even ideas for sequels! I can’t believe how wonderful the community of romance readers has been. I’ve had support from other writers all along, but validation from readers feels so amazing.
Anyway, this is just a post of gratitude. Thank you to my wonderful agent Jessica Sinsheimer for believing this book. To Micki Nuding and the Simon and Schuster team for wanting it to be out there in the world. To “the filets”, the girls who taught me everything I know: Gin, Nina, Alice, Deb, Erika, Shannon, Katherine, and Leisa. To my incredible street team, who helped me out just because they wanted to, and who made me feel like I had fans before anyone knew me. To all my writer friends on twitter who had encouragement, RTs, and advice a mile wide. And now, to a new group…readers. Thank you for making the end result of this journey something more incredible than I could have imagined.
August 22, 2013
Winners of the HOW TO DISCIPLINE YOUR PITCH Contest!
This was hard. These pitches and excerpts were so fantastic that I couldn’t just pick two winners (and a most improved)…so my wonderful agent Jessica Sinsheimer picked her top four as requests!
Here are the winners of the free passes:
Becoming Hero
Pieces of One
Winner of the “most improved” pitch is:
Crossing the Divide
Jessica would like to see query and first ten pages (sent to submissions@sarahjanefreymann.com):
The Diva Diaries
Have Mercy
Becoming
Dive
Congrats! Those who didn’t make it, I look forward to seeing you in the slush phase of Pitch Madness! Thanks for participating!
August 20, 2013
Pitch 25: Down is Up
Name: Shannon Lumetta
Title: Down is Up
Genre: contemporary romance
Word count: 120K
pitch:
Lucie Graham has premonitions of a future with the emotionally detached Grey Kennedy, a hitman with a past he’s killed to forget. When their lives converge, fireworks ignite, but their secrets could kill them both.
first 250:
"You can’t be real, Angel."
His words caressed my ears in such a way that led tingles in a waltz down my spine to circle my hips and fade somewhere in the tips of my curling toes.
I spun around expecting to find him, the man who would own my heart. My smile quickly lost its grip and fell away. Where I’d have en happily lost in fathomless blue eyes, I found simple kindness in hazel. I should have captured a smile like ice cracking as it corrupted his lightly-freckled cheeks. Instead, a different stranger altogether stared back at me.
"Miss?" The ruddy-faced gentleman offered sympathetically.
"I-I’m sorry,” I sputtered, choking on disappointment and unexpected emotion. I’d anticipated a beautiful man with chestnut surfer curls and his soul in his eyes. "I thought you were someone else."
He nodded with an understanding smile. I ducked my head into the book in my hands just before a tear of frustration escaped down my cheek. I felt cheated, foolish. I tried to focus on the words on the page, but my mind was stuck on a heartbreaking grin that may not even exist.
No! I know he’s real. But who is he? Have I lost him with the rest of my memory?
With only specters of the future and no past to cross-reference, it was increasingly difficult to shoulder the weight of my own expectations. My heart had beat wildly when I envisioned his smile, as though I was alive, at last!
Pitch 24: The Jossing Affair
Name: JL Oakley
Title: THE JOSSING AFFAIR
Genre: Historical fiction
Word Count: 160,000
A Norwegian secret agent, posing as a deaf fisherman, falls in love with a lonely German-American widow accused of betraying her husband. In wartime, love and trust are not always compatible.
He found the young man lying in the snow, his battered body pushed deep under the brambles at the bottom of a ravine. If it had not been for the sound of the car door slamming, Hans Gunnerson would never have found him. Already the blanket wrapped around him was covered with down-like flakes of snow, hiding the bloodstains stiffening on the shoulders and back. Soon he would be lost forever to frost and mold.
A snowstorm that had threatened all day had finally come off the fjord. In record time, the snowfall had gathered strength and was hissing and whirling with a vengeance. It filled up the snow-laden woods with a dull silence. All for a car door.
Like a ghost Gunnerson pressed back against the rock and stood still. Dead silence. Then faintly, a second and third metallic thud. Two more doors had been opened and shut. There was a car on the logging road.
Torn between curiosity and caution, Gunnerson stayed where he was. The trail was well hidden from the road. Eight yards beyond, it switched back sharply to the right, away from the road and landslide which were down and some distance away. He crept forward in a cautious crouch. Obscured by the drooping spruce boughs, he was able to see the car, confirming his worst fears.
It was a black limousine, the kind favored by the Gestapo. Two officers dressed in the uniforms of the all-Norwegian SD stood beside it.
Pitch 23: Dive
Name: Lauren Spieller
Title: DIVE
Genre: YA Fantasy
Word Count: 56000
Pitch:
Fifteen-year-old Kiro has been training to become a cliff diver since he was small, but his dream of completing this male rite of passage is put on hold when a strange girl demands to participate in the male-only dive.
First 250:
The cliff drops off so suddenly you could miss it in the dark. My people say many did, upon a time, but we’ve since learned to be mindful of the way the earth feels beneath our feet. The sharp dig of a jagged rock, the cool brush of a tall reed: they mean more to you when they are the last thing you feel before you take the dive.
I have yet to take the sacred leap off the upper cliffs of Makai, but I learned these things from the words of men. Although I always long for the dive, never have I felt it in my bones as I do tonight, standing among my tribesmen, our torches held above our heads in prayer for my father.
My brother steps forward, his face lifted to the winter sky. “We send the songs of our hearts to you, Chief Nagandi, and we ask that you carry them with you into the next world.”
Tan’s voice is strong and clear, but I know too well the sorrow that sits heavy in his chest. I wish to reach for his hand, but I’m too old for such displays, so I lift my torch higher. I should be singing the prayer along with my brother and our kin, but I cannot bring myself to voice these final words, even though a year has passed since my father died.
Instead, I stare at the grave faces of my fellows, lit by fire and moon.
Pitch 22: Through a Glass Darkly
Name: Kimberly Vanderhorst
Title: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy
Word Count: 78,000
Pitch: Grace craves sanity the way other girls crave chocolate. But when her “imaginary” boyfriend’s life is threatened, and monster shadows curl through Mom’s eyes, she must enter the looking glass to stop the madness.
Excerpt:
I dragged my bedroom mirror to my terrace window and tilted it upward, watching it fill with stars and darkness. I pretended that if I filled it with other things, the monsters couldn’t get in.
The stars became frozen fireflies, trapped in the rectangular jar of the wood-framed mirror, and the dark oak grated against itself as I shifted the mirror to set them free. Now, with the mirror facing me, I was the one trapped in the jar, caged and flightless.
Like a penguin at the zoo. A poetry-spewing, piano-pounding, monster-fighting penguin.
My smile gave way to the dark as a wall of inky fog swallowed my reflection whole. Suddenly I was nothing. Not a penguin, not a girl, not anything. I touched the surface of the mirror lightly with my fingertips, trying to cling to the wispy remains of my courage. But I flinched as massive, reptilian heads penetrated the fog and butted against the inner surface of the glass.
You don’t scare me anymore, I thought at them. But it was a lie. Every day, it was a lie.
Their scaly hides glistened in the murky light of their shadowed world, rippling with the churning power of their heavily muscled torsos. One of them smashed a triple-clawed hand against the barrier, its nostrils flared, its fangs snapping silently.
I resisted the urge to slam my own hand against the glass, to feel it splinter beneath the force of fear-born anger. But no. No more breaking. That would be crazy.
