Friday, June 21, 2013

Bewitching Blog Tours Sizzling Summer Giveaway!


Check out these four awesome giveaways! 

Giveaway One: Kindle and swag packs



Giveaway Two: Print Books





Bewitching Giveaway Three: YA Books





Bewitching Books Tours Summer Giveaway Four- Ebooks











Monday, June 17, 2013

Special Guest - Poppet!

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting a phenomenal and one of the most elegant writers I've had the pleasure of reading - Poppet.... 

JET:  Can you tell us about your most recent book?

Poppet: Master of Umbra is about Ewan, the chief of the Eagle clan in the Scottish highlands. The Frost giant series continues in this book saturated with humor, friction, and impending war. Someone has incited the Eagle's and Raven's to wage war with one another, the reason is clear when Emma displays her gifts which mark her as one of the last surviving Thurs (like Thor, but a race of them). The sexual tension is overwhelming when Ewan finds a lost eagle and takes her home. Little could he know Deliah was on the cusp of death, her ex boyfriend having reached her first. Given two choices by Odin, two friends come head to head to handfast with Deliah, all while dealing with outside stresses and drama. This is sexy, dark, and violent.

JET:  What drew you to paranormal romance?

Poppet: Anything is possible in this genre, and that's why I love it.

JET:  What’s been your most challenging hurdle on the road to publication? 

Poppet: It's still challenging.

JET:  What was your favorite moment in the journey?

Poppet: Being signed to Wild Wolf Publishing and finding that they are the best group of individuals to ever own a publishing house. I love them to bits!

JET:  Which authors had the most influence over you growing up?

Poppet: Enid Blyton had a big influence as a young child, from there I jumped to Koontz and King, reading them before I was even a teen, finding I love horror. Horror movies gripped me early on in my life, I love being scared witless.

JET:  When did you know you wanted to take the plunge into the writing world?


Poppet: Sometimes life circumstances leave you with just your dream as an option. I decided to try, or die trying.

JET: What’s the craziest thing you’ve done in the name of book research? Most interesting fact you uncovered? 

Poppet: Drowning. I didn't mean it to be research but boy have I used that experience!

JET:  Of all the novels and stories you’ve written - which one is your favorite?  Why?

Poppet: At the moment my favorite is Ye Mistress of Baphos Hall. Why: because it's an olde worlde classical fairytale, set in mediaeval Alba, which is also three stories in one. No two people will read the same story.

JET:  Any advice (from a writer’s standpoint) for the novices out there?

Poppet: Just hang in there. It doesn't get any easier, be careful who you trust, and expect to have your heart broken regularly.
JET: All right - now that I’ve hammered you with the big questions, let’s tackle my favorite (and geeky) quick ten. . . starting with...Paper or Plastic?
Poppet:  Paper
JET: Steak or Tofu?
Poppet:  Neither
JET: Beach or Mountains?
Poppet:  Mountain
JET: Country or Rock-n-Roll?
Poppet:  Rock'nRoll
JET: Leather or Lace?

Poppet:  Leather

JET: Angels or Demons?

Poppet:  Demons

JET: Paper or Digital?

Poppet:  Paper

JET:  Silent Film Classics or Cheesy B Rated Horror?

Poppet:  Silent classics

JET: Twilight or True Blood:

Poppet:  True Blood
JET: Coffee or Tea?
Poppet:  Coffee
JET:  Thank you for indulging me.  Before we wrap this up, can you tell us what you're working on now?  What's next?

Poppet: The sequel to Darkroom (Over Exposure), Moonshine Express (a diabolical train ride), Viridian Vamporium (the final book in the series), Ascend in Ius (a new PNR series), and the final novel in the Valhalla Series, The Master of Skadi.

JET: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat on my blog.  Folks, you can find out more about Poppet and her work at the following places:

But before I let you all go, I thought I'd give you a teaser - the book blurb for Master of Umbra and an excerpt, courtesy of Poppet...


Deliah is in grave danger, running for her life from a man who needs her dead, when serendipity plants her in the path of the Master of Umbra.

Inducted into the mysterious Eagle clan of the Scottish highlands, Deliah is torn between her fate and destiny when kin clash for her affections. Falling for the scandalous villain who heads the Berserkers of the Hebrides, her fragile hope is snuffed out early by revelation and impending war.

The only mantra she can cling to is the one uttered in heartfelt promise; that love comes back.

Because that's what love does.

Link on Amazon US:
Link on Amazon UK:

Excerpt:

Weary after setting Emma up for the night, I walk into my chambers when a loud purr calls me to my bed. The ragamuffin stretches, lifting her tail to pad soundlessly over my quilts, pawing at my jeans for me to lift her.
“Hello Bella, why is your mommy sleeping in daddy bear's bed?” I whisper, giving her a chin scratch, distracted by Liah curled into a pillow, exposing the gun for all to see.
Circling the bed quietly, I silently take off my bloodied shirt as I don't want to alarm her. Peering closer, inspecting her pale cheeks, it looks to me like she's been crying.
What the hell happened now? I'm in just the right mood to crack open a few more skulls.
Foul tempered, I shake her, “Deliah? What's the matter darling?”
Brown eyes as dewy as a doe's open to engage my stare, her dilated pupils contracting against the light, when the waif jumps up to fling herself at me, clamping my neck with skinny arms and hiding her face in the crook, giving poor Arrabella enough of a fright to arch her back and crab-walk to the edge of the bed.
“Liah?”
I've expended energy this day to heal Emma and am not inclined to deplete my reserves to scavenge her mind for the details. She can just tell me the old fashioned way.
“Sweetheart, tell me what happened.”
“Just...” she sniffs, pulling back from her noose tight grip to stare vulnerability up at me, kneeling on my bed, precious and pretty and far too lithe in those thigh hugging jeans. “I feel stupid now.”
“It wasn't stupid if you decided the only safe place in my kingdom is the king's bed. Who threatened you?”


Thanks for swinging by today.
Until next time...
Ciao

JET

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Special Guest: Lynne Cantwell

My Urban Paranormal Metaphysical Fantasy Romance
By Lynne Cantwell


I’ll be honest with you.  Half the time, I don’t even know what category to put the Pipe Woman Chronicles in.

Back when I began writing Seized, the first book, the point of the exercise was to try my hand at writing an urban fantasy.  I had read a few series in the genre by then, and it seemed to me that its elements included a female protagonist who finds herself with some sort of paranormal powers.  With those powers, which she might not ever figure out how to control, she is called on to take sides in what is often a battle between good and evil.  The main character is usually also the narrator.  And usually, it seems, there’s a shapeshifter in there somewhere – sometimes it’s the main character, sometimes it’s her love interest, and sometimes it’s both.

As an added bonus, if there’s a smokin’ hot relationship going on, and a “happily ever after” ending, you could also call the book a paranormal romance.

So I designed the series along those lines.  Naomi Witherspoon tells her story in first person.  She’s a successful lawyer and an even more successful mediator; she’s got a handsome boyfriend who’s a bit of a jerk, but he’s just proposed to her, so yay; and then out of the blue, a Lakota Sioux goddess enhances her powers of persuasion so that she can mediate a power-sharing agreement between the Christian God and all the pagan gods and goddesses that His worship has displaced.

You see the problem.  Who’s the good guy?  Well, Naomi is, but she’s batting for the pagans.  Does that
make God the bad guy?  And if religion is going to be explored, then maybe we’re going a little deeper than the typical urban fantasy, where the good guys always go after the monsters.

Another author recently suggested to me that the Pipe Woman Chronicles might be metaphysical (or philosophical) fantasy.  One definition of that is a story in which the characters ponder the meaning of life and whether free will exists, and in which deities directly influence events.  Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series is an example of metaphysical fantasy. 

My author friend is right – I’ve got some of that here.  My characters do talk about free will, and the gods definitely interfere in their lives. But “metaphysical fantasy” sounds kind of…I don’t want to say pretentious, exactly, but that’s the word that comes to mind.  Even the alternate term, “visionary fiction,” seems a little overblown.  I’m just trying to write an urban fantasy here!  All I wanted to do was to write a series that included paranormal elements, but no vampires or werewolves.  Not that I’ve got anything against either vampires or werewolves, mind you – I just think they’ve been a tad overdone.

So maybe what I’ve written is magic realism?  As appealing is the notion is, I don’t think so.  One key element of magic realism is the sense of dislocation, of diaspora, among the characters; the magic is an outward manifestation of the emotions that the characters cannot otherwise express.  And while Native Americans certainly qualify as dislocated, I’m not really using magic that way in my story.

Plus there’s Joseph Curtis, the smokin’ hot shapeshifter who Naomi falls for.


So I guess I’m back to calling the Pipe Woman Chronicles an urban fantasy, with paranormal overtones and metaphysical/visionary undertones, and some romance for good measure.

PIPE WOMAN CHRONICLES

Naomi Witherspoon lives in interesting times.  At the winter solstice, she was Seized by a Native American goddess to mediate a power-sharing agreement between all the pagan gods and goddesses and the Christian God.  Then, as her relationship with her new boyfriend Fissured, she Tapped a wellspring of strength – her Native American heritage.

Now, Gravid and due any day, she must conduct the mediation of her life.  Will she succeed?  Or will it all go up in smoke?

The answers to those questions, and more, can be found in Annealed, the final installment in the Pipe Woman Chronicles, an urban fantasy series by Lynne Cantwell.

It began at the winter solstice
And it ends...
Now.

About the Author: Lynne Cantwell

Lynne Cantwell has been writing fiction since the second grade, when the kid who sat in front of her showed her a book he had written, and she thought, "I could do that." The result was Susie and the Talking Doll, a picture book, illustrated by the author, about a girl who owned a doll that not only could talk, but could carry on conversations. The book had dialogue but no paragraph breaks. Today, after a twenty-year career in broadcast journalism and a master's degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University (or perhaps despite the master's degree), Lynne is still writing fantasy. In addition, she is a contributing author at Indies Unlimited and writes a monthly post for The Indie Exchange.

GOODREADS - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/696603.Lynne_Cantwell  
FACEBOOK - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lynne-Cantwell/
BLOG - http://hearth-myth.blogspot.com/"
AMAZON - http://www.amazon.com/Lynne-Cantwell/e/B005JTP5NE/
TWITTER - https://twitter.com/LynneCantwell/


See below to enter the giveaway!