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Interview with Meglena Ivanova Author of The Legend of the Moonstone

Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Title: The Legend of the Moonstone
Author: Meglena Ivanova
Series: Sacred Stones Trilogy
Genre: SciFi /Fantasy
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Release Date: Aug 8 2013
Synopsis:

When Daniel first met Professor Stransky,
he was only fifteen. Daniel was amazed by everything in the hall. All gems and minerals the Professor had exhibited behind the glass panes seemed to bewitch him, and the story of the Moonstone changed his life and philosophy thoroughly. What happened the day they met, predestined events that would have happened anyway, but this was the best way to start them.
After his encounter with the Professor, Daniel improved his results and soon was admitted to the University where Stransky taught. It had been several years since the meeting between the mysterious Professor and the boy with extraordinary power. Some very important moments of this meeting were engraved in the memories of both of them, but they seemed to be replaced by others, required by the present. When they met again, the thought of these past memories lurked in their minds as if this meeting had not been fully completed and that gave them no peace day or night. For a long time none of them had remembered their first encounter. While Professor Stransky was telling the legend of the Moonstone, however, something had broken in both of them and they had started tying up the events of their lives that had led to this current moment when the story of The Moonstone was perceived as fact rather than fiction.

Giveaway & Review Atlas by Becca C Smith Blog Tour Start

Monday, March 17, 2014
Title: Atlas
Author: Becca C Smith
Series: The Atlas Series Book #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Red Frog Publishing
Release Date: Nov 2013
Edition/Formats Available In: eBook & Print
Blurb/Synopsis:
Kala Hicks never imagined she’d be fighting demons, angels and gods when she joined the Navy. But when her elite covert military team is on a mission aboard Air Force One and Kala is forced to shoot the President her life changes forever.
The moment the President is killed the Titan god, Atlas, speaks to Kala, telling her that she has to do his job by committing one act of atrocity every four days… or the world will end. Kala faces off against creatures of legend; from demons determined to make her fail and plunge the Earth into chaos, to angels who don’t trust her to do the job and are willing to kill her to claim it for themselves.
Pitted against the forces of good and evil, Kala must choose whether to save the world by doing the unthinkable, or sit back and let it burn.
Four days later, she’ll have to do it again.

Spotlight Conspirators of the Lost Sock Army and Loose Change Collection Agency by Dan O'Brien

Sunday, March 16, 2014

You’re never too old to have one more adventure 

Brought to life by Steve Ferchaud’s vibrant drawings, this story for all ages by Dan O’Brien lets us know that it is never too late to have one more adventure. 


An Excerpt:


Robert Pendleton opened one eye as the light of a passing car flashed over the window, shattering the darkness into prisms. He rolled onto his back on the beat-up couch and yawned as he reached his hands up and rubbed his eyes unceremoniously. 

He looked out over the darkness at the digital clock. The red digits spelled out a quarter ‘til midnight––nearly fourteen hours of sleep. He smiled and grabbed one of the cushions of the couch, burying his head in it. Just enough sleep, he reminded himself. Robert felt that anything less than twelve hours of sleep was very nearly too little. 

He grasped blindly for the TV remote. 

Groaning as he lifted his head, he looked at the empty table––his eyes drawn by another flash of a passing car. He couldn’t see clearly, but he knew that the remote had been there before he had fallen asleep nearly half a day ago. 

“Could have sworn….” he mumbled as he pushed himself up and brushed his hand around the top of the table, finding nothing. “Where did….”

Another groan escaped his lips as he lifted his body to a sitting position and threw aside the cluster of pillows that he had gathered around himself. He reached out for the lamp, but instead knocked it to the floor with a resounding thud. 

Robert muttered as he stood up from the couch, and then sank to his knees to search around in the darkness for the fallen lamp. Reaching around on the shadowed floor, shards of the broken lamp scattered like pieces of light. 

He turned his head, peering beneath the large space underneath the couch and saw the reflection of the buttons on the remote. The off-gray piece of machinery was underneath the couch––only darkness lingered beyond it. He reached out as he spoke again. 

“How did it get all the way down there?” 

Robert flexed his hand and strained as he twisted his back to reach farther; yet, the remote remained just out of reach. He pulled his arm away with a huff and craned his neck to the side, staring underneath into the darkness below the couch. 

His eyes widened as he saw the impossible: there was something beyond the remote. He shook his head and closed his eyes, whispering to himself that he didn’t see what he thought he had.

“I saw a little man,” he whispered to himself as he opened his eyes once more and nearly gasped as he did so. 

The figure was closer now and he could make out the outline clearly. A tiny man rested just beyond the remote. 

“What in the name of…?”

“Not here in the name of nobody, laddie. I be a friend though,” crooned the miniscule figure as he interrupted Robert and stepped forward, placing a hand on the darkened and slick surface of the remote. 

A tam-o’-shanter crested his bright red hair, the shaggy mane blending perfectly into his equally crimson, neatly trimmed, beard. 

A billow of whitish smoke drifted from the long-stemmed pipe that he held clenched between his lips. 

Robert fell back and knocked aside the adjacent table. Rubbing his eyes, he spoke a single word: “Leprechaun.”



About the Author:


Dan O’Brien, founder and editor-in-chief of The Northern California Perspective, has written over 20 books––including the bestselling Bitten, which was featured on Conversations Book Club’s Top 100 novels of 2012. Before starting Amalgam, he was the senior editor and marketing director for an international magazine. In addition, he has spent over a decade in the publishing industry as a freelance editor. You can learn more about his literary and publishing consulting business by visiting his website at: www.amalgamconsulting.com. Contact him today to order copies of the book or have them stocked at your local bookstore. He can he reached by email at amalgamconsulting@gmail.com



Would you like to win a remarked copy of Conspirators of the Lost Sock Army and Loose Change Collection Agency signed by the author and illustrator?

Simply follow the author here and here and a few winners will be randomly selected on March 20th!

Giveaway & Spotlight After Life Lessons by Laila Blake & L.C. Spoering

Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Title: After Life Lessons 
Authors:  Laila Blake & L.C. Spoering
Series: After Life Lessons #1
Genre: Post-Apoc Romance
Publisher: Lilt Literary
Release Date: April 8, 2014
Blurb/Synopsis:
Hulking shadows emerge out of the chaotic flurries of the blizzard. Something is dying, and so they come, like vultures.
After months of struggling south to escape the zombie-infested remains of New York, a snowstorm traps 23-year old artist, Emily, and her son in an abandoned gas station. Starving and desperate, they encounter Aaron, an Army medic on a mission of his own, who offers them a ride to ease the journey.
The road is a long and dangerous place to travel, and every day brings a new threat. But fear and adrenaline also drive the two closer together; they find laughter and a budding attraction that starts to thaw at their numb and deadened feelings. And that’s when the pain really starts to hit, when places long thought lost prickle back to life. Eventually, they will have to fight not just for survival, but for a future together, or their broken world will swallow them whole.


Giveaway



Cover Reveal Complication by K.A. Salidas

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Title: Complication
Author: K.A. Salidas
Series: Chronicles of the Uprising (#2)
Genre: Paranormal/Dystopian 
Publisher: Rising Sign Books
Release Date:  2014

Narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Magistrate, Mira travels west, toward the coast. With three weakened human fugitives accompanying her, she searches for the mythical land of Sanctuary. 
After encountering a pack of wolf shifters, headed by the charismatic—and brazen—Stryker, Mira learns that Sanctuary is real after all.  Caldera Grove: home of the Otherkin. Hidden in the mouth of a dormant volcano, it has protected its residents from humans since the early days following the great cataclysm. For Mira— a vampire— Caldera Grove is a land of peace; an escape from the relentless persecution of the humans who once enslaved her, and an end to the daily struggle and bloodshed of being a gladiator. 
For the humans accompanying her, Caldera Grove means death. Humans, greedy and untrustworthy creatures, are destroyed before they can penetrate its borders. 
To plead her case for entry into Caldera, Mira must abandon her companions, albeit temporarily, and follow Stryker into the heart of the city. What she finds within Caldera Grove presents her with an unenviable decision between her own desires for freedom and peace, or honor and the human companions who risked it all for her.



Places to find K.A. Salidas


Cover Reveal Night Moves by Kristen Strassel

Title: Night Moves
Author: Kristen Strassel
Series: Night Songs Collection Series (#2)
Genre: NA Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Foreword Literary
Blurb/Synopsis:

Melanie Vaughn’s job ruined everything. Her social life, nonexistent. Her relationship with her boyfriend, a hostile roommate situation. She resolves to fix everything one snowy afternoon, but instead comes home to discover her boyfriend is already exploring other options. Blonder, bustier options. Rage drives Melanie to do the unthinkable.

When Soul Divider was on the top of the world, so was Ryder Maddox. When the band faded into obscurity, Ryder’s luck plummeted with it. In a last ditch effort to rekindle the band’s heyday, Soul Divider teams up with powerful vampire clean leader, Talis de Rancourt. In return for her services, the band pays the ultimate price for never ending fame.

Now on the run, Melanie meets Ryder in a middle of nowhere hotel. She never expected her teenage rock star crush to be as lost and as in need of a companion as she is. Their connection is all consuming, even before they find they share another kinship: murder.

The newly turned vampires in Soul Divider still have a lot to learn. The police and public begin to connect the girls that go missing or die in sync with the band’s tour schedule. Back at home, clues are also adding up against Melanie as well. Between constant media coverage and unrelenting attention from the authorities, Melanie and Ryder find themselves in unchartered territory.





Kristen shares a birthday with Steven Tyler and Diana Ross.  She spends each day striving to be half as fabulous as they are.  She’s worn many hats, none as flattering as her cowboy hat: banker, retail manager, fledgling web designer, world’s worst cocktail waitress, panty slinger, now makeup artist and aspiring author.  She loves sunshine, live music, the middle of nowhere, and finding new things to put in her house.  Kristen is represented by Pam van Hylckama Vlieg of Foreword Literary.

Places to find Kristen


Places to find Night Moves

Goodreads