Tracey Ward's Blog, page 7

FREE Weekend!

Until the End is free today and Saturday. Writing on the Wall and In the End will be free Sunday and Monday.

It's the weekend to start a new series so if you haven't read either of these yet, now is the perfect time!

Happy Friday and Happy Reading, everyone!

**For some reason the free promo for Writing on the Wall fell through on Amazon. I don't know why this happens, but it's not the first time. Instead of free, I've made it $0.99 today and will set it up to go free Monday.

Feeling Fearless?

It's been a long time since Sleepless came out. Since the prison, the Jabberwock and, of course, the bird. But most importantly, don't you feel like it's been a long time since Nick? I miss him.

For those of you eagerly yet patiently waiting for Fearless, here is a Nick fix and proof positive that I am working on it! I've taken a lot of time with this story because, to be honest, as much as I love Joss, Ryan, Ali, Jordan, Anna and Roarke, there is a special place in my heart for Alex and Nick. I have a lot of love for these two so I'm taking my time and telling the conclusion to their story right. Trust me, it will be worth it. :)

So here it is told from Nick's POV, Chapter One of Fearless.

http://www.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/4/5...

Backs is Out Now!

There's kind of a long story about why Backs is out early, but as much as I love telling stories, this one isn't particularly interesting so we'll skip it and go straight to the happy ending - Backs Against the Wall is available right now!!!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IN56IW8

So go grab your copy and get all the answers to those terrible, awful cliffhangers I left you with in Writing.

Is Ryan one of the new captives in the Colony?
Can Vin survive the attack by Caroline?
Is there any more pumpkin pie?!?!
But most importantly, is Joss a Wendy? Or a motherf-- well, you know ;)

Backs ARC Giveaway - Completed

I'm feeling very excited about Backs and decided to do a random giveaway today. The first 5 people that comment with a favorite line from Writing on the Wall will win a free Advanced copy of Backs Against the Wall (EPUB, PDF or MOBI).
And... go!

Thank you to everyone who entered! This was fun to see what your favorite quotes from Writing on the Wall were. I hope everyone enjoys their ARC of Backs Against the Wall and if you missed out on the giveaway, keep your eyes peeled for Backs Against the Wall on March 1st! It's almost here :)

Backs is coming...

I am so excited for March 1st! I'm hoping you all will love Backs as much as you liked Writing. Joss is changing, opening up and Ryan is right there with her this time.

Below is an aggravating excerpt. Also, to give you a feel for how I pictured the characters in the Survival Series, here's a look at a dream casting I did in a recent interview with Kristen at Pretty Little Pages. The girl is seriously wonderful. In depth reviews, great taste in books (she's a fan of mine so that right there speaks volumes!), plus she's funny which to me means everything. Go check her out!



Joss - Emma Watson because I love her, she's adorable but kick ass and she was hilarious in This Is The End.

Ryan - Liam Hemsworth because he's not a popstar Disney twig (I'm looking at you, Efron!)

Crenshaw - Jeff Bridges because he can play crazy better than anybody and still be so loveable.

Trent - Tom Felton because no one trusted Draco Malfoy but deep down, didn't you want to?

Vin - Ryan Gosling. If you have to ask why, you were picturing a hot pimp all wrong and I feel sorry for you.

Ali - Mandy Moore because she could play unstable and a little crazy without losing your faith in her.

Jordan - Chris Pine because of the eyes and the cavalier attitude. I feel like he could lose his hand and keep on smiling.

EXCERPT:
“What is it?” I whisper, knowing whatever it is, it isn’t good.

Trent stares at me patiently, his weird, light eyes looking white in the firelight.

“We aren’t walking out of here in the morning,” he replies, his deep voice vibrating through my bones.

I swallow hard. “Why not?”

“Because they’re coming.”

My vision goes funny, fuzzy. I’m having trouble breathing. “No one is coming. No one knows we—“

“I can hear them,” he interrupts me, his voice hushed and calm. “They’re not even trying to hide themselves. They want us to know.”

“Why?” I whisper, my eyes glued on his. My ears straining to hear the evil that speaks only to him.

“Because,” he says, his voice dipping lower. I can hear it then, behind his words. Footsteps. Slow, unhurried. Patient. “They want us to run.”

I bite my lip until I taste blood, willing myself not to cry out. Not to jump up and run, to leave them both behind.

“Who?”

I hear the screech of metal over the pavement. It’s not far off. A blade being drug over the ground. A warning. A promise.

“You know who.”

I nod hard.

“The--"

Backs Against the Wall - Preview Chapters

Backs Against the Wall is coming March 1st! If that still seems like too long to wait, which it does to me too, go to my website and download a preview of the first 5 chapters of the book before its release.

http://www.traceywardauthor.com/survi...

Dissever - Early Release and On Sale!

Dissever is out now and only $0.99 for the next two days!

Get your copy of this historical paranormal romance complete with a peek at the first chapter of my newest project, The Seventh Hour, coming this fall.

Backs Against the Wall - Excerpt

I'm almost done with Backs Against the Wall, the second installment in the Survival Series! I'm hoping to have it out in early March.

While Ryan is not in this excerpt, I promise there's a lot of him in this story. This book is also where we start seeing ties to the Quarantined Series really kick in. Some familiar names, places, a few faces...

The room is small but warm with two beds, one small desk and a window that has been all but boarded shut. The beds are nothing but old, bare mattresses with blankets tossed over them. I notice that the floor is covered in clothes. I glance at Trent in surprise, shocked to see that Mr. Methodical is a pig at heart, but whatever insult or question I had for him dies on my lips.

The wall beside one of the beds has been hollowed out, the drywall stripped down, the insulation yanked out. In its place is shelf after shelf secured between the wood. On those shelves are more books than I can ever remember seeing in one place. I’m sure I went to the library at some point as a child, but I honestly can’t remember and right now, I truly do not care. Even if those libraries of the old days had housed a million books, they couldn’t compare to this. To one wall full of treasures saved and preserved in a world where everything and everyone wastes away to ash and dust.

“They’re Ryan’s,” Trent tells me, seeing my stare. “He’s a bit of a collector.”

“Little bit,” I mutter in agreement.

“That’s his bed on that side if you want to lie down and rest. He won’t be back for another few hours. You may as well get some sleep.”

I feel myself blush at the idea of laying in his bed. Honestly, I think I’d be more comfortable laying in Trent’s. There’s something less…I don’t know. Meaningful about it, I guess. Sleeping in Ryan’s bed, well, I almost feel like I’d enjoy it too much.

“I don’t want to bleed on his bed,” I say lamely, gesturing to my jacked up arm.

Trent quirks an eyebrow at me, not buying it. “You’re giving his bed more credit for cleanliness than it deserves.”

“That doesn’t really entice me to jump right in.”

Trent shrugs before taking a seat on his own bed. “Stand then. It’s your call.”

I’m too tired to stand. I’m too beat down, exhausted, aching tired to be proud or embarrassed either. I carefully step through the room, mindful of the piles of clothes on the floor, trying to avoid them, but failing. Then I carelessly collapse on his bed. The sigh that escapes my lips is pure joy leaking from my soul. I slept on a bed in the Colony. It was weird and awesome at the same time, but I also resented it. It was always a sign of the world being forced on me, of the lie they were all living. But this is different. This mattress is far less comfortable, far more worn and it smells of dude. It has the faint scent of a very familiar soap made by the wizard of the woods and the earthy smell of good old fashioned stink. It’s earth and sweat. Grass and warm skin.

This I kind of love.

Dissever - Chapter One

Dissever is coming soon! I'm thinking it will be out in February instead of March. I'm excited to release it. But be warned - there are no zombies. There is, however, some cool shit that happens and the love story (because I don't write books without them) is, in my completely biased opinion, pretty beautiful.

I'm finally uploading Chapter One to it's Goodreads page so people can take a look. It will also be on my website www.traceywardauthor.com. I hope you guys like it and will give it a read when it comes out :)

Here is a little piece of what's in Chapter One:

“You’re pretty,” he said suddenly.

I realized I had been staring at his face, memorizing it. I had no illusions I’d ever see him again. I wanted to bottle this time and carry the memory of it, of him, with me forever. But now he was staring at my face too and I felt myself blush.

“My father says I’m a piglet,” I muttered, looking away.

“You make a very pretty piglet.”

I snorted a laugh, looking up to find him smiling at me, his blue eyes laughing.

“What’s your name?”

“Roarke. But all of my friends call me Ro.”

“May I call you Ro?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” he said, his smile widening. “You’re my friend, aren’t you?”

I was. And he was mine. A true to the bone friend who thought I was pretty and played fantastic games with me as though I was nothing fragile and nothing special. Nothing other than Anna, which was all I ever wanted to be. It was the first friendship I’d ever had. It would prove to be the only one that would ever truly matter.

That moment hidden in the sun dappled orchard beneath a perfect azure sky, that was the first time I fell in love with him. It would happen again, many more times over the years. Sometimes more than once a day, in degrees and frequency too great to recall, but this particular one, this first one, I will remember forever. And forever, I now know, is a very long time.

Dissever Sneak Peak

Dissever is done! I have written the last word and I am so excited :) Here is a little sneak peek of what's to come with this story. In this section, Roarke and Anna are 10 and 9 years old.

Queen Elizabeth Anne died two years later. Despite dining with the Royal Family almost every night, I knew very little about her save for the similarities in our names. I asked my mother once if she was named after me. She laughed and told me it was probably so.

King Phillip never shed a single tear, not that I saw, but Prince Frederick was despondent. Though I never saw him cry, I will forever remember his cheeks being blotchy and red. He was growing into a young man more and more every day. After the death of his mother, I swear I hardly recognized him. It made me fearful for what would happen to Roarke, who was only one year younger. I prayed for the good health of his mother every night.

“How old is your mum?” I asked him one afternoon. We were sitting in the grass eating apple slices and cheese curds that squeaked against my teeth as I chewed.

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Very.”

I frowned. “No, she can’t be very old. She doesn’t have any white hair.”

“Then kind of. She’s kind of old,” he amended.

“Do the Tem Aedha really live forever?”

He looked up at me, suddenly paying attention and frowning. “Who says we live forever?”

“Everyone. I hear it all the time. You live forever, you speak to the trees, some of you can fly, though if that were true I don’t understand why you don’t leave the island. If I could fly, I’d leave. I’d leave tomorrow.”

“Well it’s not true. We die just like you. We do everything just like you. We aren’t different, Anna.”

“Yes you are,” I replied, catching his eye. “You are completely different and utterly wonderful.”

He smirked at me. “You’re mad.”

“Yes,” I agreed, intentionally squeaking my cheese in my cheeks.

“How is Frederick?”

I lowered my eyes, feeling sad just thinking about him. “He’s upset. Always very sad. The funeral is tomorrow. I don’t want to go.”

“But you have to?” he asked. When I nodded he sighed. “You have to do a lot of things you don’t want to do.”

I snorted. “Yes.”

“I wish I could go with you. I’d hold your hand and let you cry on my shirt.”

“I wish you could too.” I felt my heart pound in my chest as I considered my truth, then I whispered, “I wish you could always be with me.”

“Me too,” he whispered back, no hesitation.

We smiled at each other conspiratorially, sealing our secret inside the manicured walls around us.

“How did she die?” Roarke asked abruptly. “No one in our village knows.”

“I don’t know. No one here knows either. I guess it was the storm.”

“The lightning storm a few days ago? That’s when she died?”

“They think so.”

“How do they not know?”

I glanced around, knowing we were alone but double checking anyway.

“They can’t find her body,” I told him quietly.

His eyes widened. “Then how do they know she’s dead?”

I lowered my voice further, forcing Roarke to lean in closer. I wasn’t supposed to know any of this and my father would lose his mind if he heard me talking about it. It was all things I’d overheard whispered at dinner when people thought I wasn’t listening. But I was always listening.

“They found her shoes and a scrap of her dress. That’s all. And it was surrounded by dead grass. Everything else was alive, but the grass in a circle around her shoes was completely dead.”

“Was it burned? Was she struck by lightning?” Roarke asked, taking a bite of his cheese, loving the mystery.

“It wasn’t burned, just dead. No one knows what happened to her. It’s like she disappeared. And you know what else? They say no Queen’s body has ever been found. They die all the time and none of them are ever seen again. They call it the Queen’s Curse.”

Roarke looked at me dubiously. “No Queen has ever been buried? Ever?”

“Only one,” I insisted. “Forever ago one Queen died of old age in her bed, but her life was awful. Her’s and the King’s. All kinds of things went wrong for them.”

“Like what?”

“Like unborn babies and strange illnesses. Like a terrible storm with fiery rain and huge waves that swept people out to sea. The same storm that brought in a ship full of strangers that crashed in The Shallows…”

“The night my people arrived,” he said in a hushed tone.

“What are you two whispering about?” Roarke’s mother asked, suddenly appearing in the orchard.

“Nothing,” Roarke said immediately.

“Uh huh,” his mother replied doubtfully. “I know that ‘nothing’ and it always means something. Usually something I’ll end up apologizing to someone for.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong in a week.”

“Oh, well, let’s throw a party for you. Roarke hasn’t misbehaved in days. Ring the church bells and shout for joy.”

I giggled as she pretended to dance in celebration. Roarke scowled at her.

“You’re being weird,” he told her.

She laughed. “Oh, honey, if you’re just now realizing that your mother is weird, you’re not nearly as smart as I give you credit for.”