Friday, May 24, 2013

Giveaway: THE RULES by Stacey Kade - Guess Who?

The Rules
By Stacey Kade
Hardcover, 416 pages
Expected publication: April 23rd 2013
by Disney-Hyperion

GoodReadsAmazonBN

1. Never trust anyone.

2. Remember they are always searching.

3. Don’t get involved.

4. Keep your head down.

5. Don’t fall in love.

Five simple rules. Ariane Tucker has followed them since the night she escaped from the genetics lab where she was created, the result of combining human and extraterrestrial DNA. Ariane’s survival—and that of her adoptive father—depends on her ability to blend in among the full-blooded humans in a small Wisconsin town, to hide in plain sight at her high school from those who seek to recover their lost (and expensive) “project.”

But when a cruel prank at school goes awry, it puts her in the path of Zane Bradshaw, the police chief’s son and someone who sees too much. Someone who really sees her. After years of trying to be invisible, Ariane finds the attention frightening—and utterly intoxicating. Suddenly, nothing is simple anymore, especially not the rules…

Last week Good Choice Reading and 4 other bloggers revealed 5 character profiles. This week we will play a game called Guess Who?

We ask a question that the author submitted to us based on her characters, you leave a comment guessing which character it is, and whoever guesses correctly on EACH blog today through Friday wins a signed copy of The Rules.

Missed the Character Highlights? Check them out HERE. 





So are you ready to play? LOL!







Who are the only two blood-related characters profiled? (As far as we know...)

A. Rachel Jacobs and Dr. Arthur Jacobs
B. Mark Tucker and Ariane Tucker
C. Rachel Jacobs and Mark Tucker
D. Zane Bradshaw and Rachel Jacobs
E. Ariane Tucker and Dr. Arthur Jacobs







As a former award-winning corporate copywriter, Stacey Kade has written about everything from backhoe loaders to breast pumps. But she prefers to make things up instead.

She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, Greg, and their two retired racing greyhounds, Tall Walker (Walker) and SheWearsThePants (Pansy).

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Leave a comment with your guess and a way for us to contact you. 

Then make sure you've visited all the other blogs! 


And play again for a chance to win a signed copy of The Rules

US/CANADA only.
WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED MONDAY, MAY 27th. 


Good Luck! 



Cover Reveal: DARKER DAYS



Darker Days (Darker Agency, #1) by Jus Accardo

Synopsis: Jessie Darker goes to high school during the day, but at night she helps with the family investigation business. Cheating husbands and stolen inheritances? They’re your girls—but their specialty is a bit darker. Zombie in your garage? Pesky Poltergeist living in your pool? They’ll have the problem solved in a magical minute. For a nominal fee, of course...

When gorgeous new client, Lukas Scott, saunters into the office requesting their help to find a stolen box, it sounds like a simple case—until the truth comes out. The box is full of Sin.

Seven deadly ones, in fact.

They’ve got five days to recapture the Sins before they're recalled by the box, taking seven hijacked human bodies with them. Easy peasy—except for one thing...

There’s a spell that will allow the Sins to remain free, causing chaos forever. When the key ingredient threatens the life of someone she knows, Jessie must make the ultimate choice between love and family—or lose everything.




Excerpt


“So not your biggest fan at the moment,” I said, closing the office door behind me. The runofffrom my jeans had soaked my sneakers pretty good. With each step, I gave a slight squishing noise accompanied by an annoying squeak against the old tile floor.

From across the room, Mom stared. “What happened to you?”

“It attacked me.” Tossing my bag on the couch, I sank into her chair and made sure to grind my butt into the cushion. Got it nice and wet. I was all about sharing the love—and right now, the love was soggy.

She laughed, waving a folder in my direction. “Surely you’re overreacting. It was one little zombie. They don’t attack people.”

“I’m serious, Ma. It tried to drown me. And the client assaulted me with ugly footwear. As far as punishments go, I’d say we’re probably square. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“You’re serious?” Amused expression now replaced by concern, she crossed the room and leaned over her desk to get a better look at me.

“As a coronary.” Once I was sure the chair had sponged up all it could, I stood and huffed past her. Pulling at my favorite T-shirt—the word Fate inside a blood red heart, is a four letter word on the back—I said, “Child welfare would not be happy to hear you tried to feed your only child to a walking corpse…”

“But why would it attack? Did you provoke it?” Folding her arms, she frowned. “Insult it, perhaps?”

I winked at her. “Provoke it? Sure. I went and wiggled my ass in front of it yelling lunch just to see what’d happen.” I’d called it Stinky, but that didn’t count as an insult. Something couldn’t be considered an insult if it was true, right?

Right eyebrow twitching, she fought against a smile. “But you’re okay, right? No bites, broken bones, head injuries, possessions…?”

I smiled and did a little twirl. “All in one piece and still me.”

Mom had a checklist she went through at the end of each job. I was known for taking almost as much damage as I inflicted.

“Oh, and you’re probably going to get a call from the client. I sorta smashed her fence in the process.”

Mom groaned. “I told you to be more careful.”

“It’s not like I tried to break anything.”

“Something tells me you didn’t try hard enough not to break anything, either.”

“In my defense, it wasn’t a simple trap and slap…”

“We can’t afford this.” She reached down and pulled a white envelope out from under a stack of papers. “This is the bill for that Mercedes you smashed.”

“Oh! So not my fault. How was I supposed to know that Spring Heel was gonna land on the car? If it makes you feel any better, I think he was aiming for my head…”

“If you keep this up, we won’t even be able to afford the rent.”

She was right, of course, and it made me feel horrible. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m a wrecking ball wrapped in blue jeans. Take my cut of this job and put it toward the repairs. Keep my paycheck for the next month, too.” A good start, but it didn’t feel like enough. Sure, it would cover the damages—I hoped—but I felt guilty about upsetting her. The bills that were piling up kept her awake at night. This was only going to make things worse. We got a fair amount of business, but the overhead in our line of work was sky high.

As much as I hated the idea, I knew what would cheer her up. “I’ll even throw in pet possessions for the next month.”


JUS ACCARDO spent her childhood reading and learning to cook. Determined to follow in her
grandfather’s footsteps as a chef, she applied and was accepted to the Culinary Institute of America. At the last minute, she realized her path lay with fiction, not food, and passed on the spot to pursue writing. Jus is the bestselling author the popular Denazen series from Entangled publishing and is currently working on the first book in a new adult series due out summer 2013. A native New Yorker, she lives in the middle of nowhere with her husband, three dogs, and sometimes guard bear, Oswald.


Book Blast: Overexposed


Young Adult
May 24th 2013 by Star Bound Books
Links: Amazon | Smashwords

In the tiny town of Willowspring, just about nothing ever happens except for layoffs, hockey games, and your average melodramatic teenage angst.

But that was before.

Vi, Ashley, and Macy are just trying to make it through the school year without one more humiliation when they team up for a simple photography assignment: create a story through a series of photographs. Can't be too much trouble, right?

Wrong.

The shutterbugs happen upon Willowspring High School's darkest secret. When everything around them starts to crumble after trying to do the right thing, their only hope is to stick together.






When the door opened to the alley behind the rink, I realized two things. One, it was freaking colder outside than it was in the bleachers by the ice, and two, Brianna Jones (A.K.A Bra stuffer) was already out there.

The three of us walked out as if it was perfectly normal to be there but Brianna didn’t even notice us. We walked to the opposite side of the alley and huddled together. We hoped it would look like we were keeping warm, but we were trying to hide both the cameras.

Watching Brianna was rather dull. She was just standing there, talking on her cell phone and it wasn’t even anything remotely interesting. We took pictures anyway, because like Mr. Bennett said, you need the before, during, and after to tell a story with photographs.

“Look! She is checking that car’s doors! That isn’t her car, is it?” The quiet clicking of the shutters on our cameras was almost deafening to me. I swore each click was louder and louder as we watched Brianna try to break into a car.

Finally, the last door she tried, the back passenger side, was open. She slipped in and a second later, the dark car had a red glow inside. She climbed back out, shut the door, and walked over to the wall, smoking a stolen cigarette.

“She just broke into someone’s car for a cigarette? Seriously?” Ashley was just as flabbergasted as the rest of us. Why would anyone risk committing a crime for a smoke? “Oh! She is moving again!”

Click, click, click. I took more and more pictures. I hated that they were all from the same angle, but spys have to do what they have to do to keep from being caught, all the while still getting the images.

Brianna walked back to the car and put the cigarette out on the hood. Lucky for whoever owned it there was a layer of snow to put it out before it could burn the paint. Then she leaned over and used the mirror. She pursed her lips, showed her teeth to check those, then she lifted her head slightly.

“What is she doing?” I whispered.

“I’m not sure.” Macy said breaking away from the group. “I am going over there, different angle.” Before I could stop her, she had gone back across the alley to the other side. She was braver than I was. Ashley watched her closely before turning back to me.

“Let me take some. I promise I won’t hurt Jilly.” I knew I had to hand it over. I promised her she could use it. Even knowing that, it didn’t make it any easier.

“Okay. Here.” I took the strap from around my neck and quickly placed it around hers. The minute the fabric was firmly against her skin, she took off, too. “Ash, what are you doing?” I whisper yelled to her.

She just put a finger over her mouth to shush me and she got even closer to the car than Macy had. I figured that made me look out so I opened my eyes and ears and tried to make sure my best friends didn’t get caught.

I looked over my shoulder to check the door to make sure we were still alone when all of a sudden I heard a scream.

“YOU LITTLE BITCH! GIVE ME THAT CAMERA NOW!” When I turned back to see what was going on (although I was pretty sure that either Macy or Ashley had been caught by Brianna) I saw my girls running towards me, with Brianna not far behind.

“Run!” Ash and Macy yelled through giggles. I turned and headed to the door and held it open for them. As soon as they passed through I closed it and the three of us went straight out the front door and to Macy’s truck.

“What on earth just happened?” I asked when I caught my breath. Ashley handed Jilly back to me and I flipped it on. The minute I pressed the play images button I began to laugh. The first one was of Brianna screaming at the camera. I pressed the next button and then it was a picture of her finger in her mouth. The next one was a picture of her finger in her nose.

I died laughing. Brianna Jones was a booger eater. I bet her boyfriend would love to know that.

“Oh, Ashley, you are amazing!” Then the truck erupted in laughter and because Macy’s dad had given her a twenty to get food at the overly expensive rink, we headed to the diner for some hot cocoa and French fries for half the cost. Who said teenagers were irresponsible with money?






Growing up, Adrianne couldn't get her hands on enough books to satisfy her need for the make believe. If she finished a novel and didn't have a new one ready and waiting for her, she began to create her own tales of magic and wonder. Now, as an adult, books still make up majority of her free time, and now her tales get written down to be shared with the world.

During the day, Adrianne uses her camera to capture life's stories for clients of all ages and at night, after her two children are tucked in bed; she devotes herself to her written work. Adrianne is living the life she always wanted, surrounded by art and beauty, the written word and a loving family.

As a young adult and new adult author, Adrianne James has plans to bring stories of growing characters, a little romance, and perhaps a little magic and mythology down the line for her readers to enjoy.









Thursday, May 23, 2013

Cover Reveal: WATERFELL



Hi lovelies! Welcome to my stop on the WATERFELL by: Amalie Howard cover reveal. I absolutely love Amalie and I'm super excited about this one!! So check out my snippet of the cover!


Intriguing. Gorgeous. Mysterious. RIGHT?!


Seventeen Magazine Summer Club author Amalie Howard spent her childhood with her nose stuck in a
book, from Grimm's Fairy Tales to Anne Rice, and everything in between. She is the author of Bloodspell and a published poet. She received a bachelor’s degree from Colby College in International Studies and a certificate in French Literature from the Ecole Normale SupĂ©rieure in Paris, France. When she's not writing or devouring other people's novels, she reviews books for TheLoopNY. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.



- Guest Post -


What was the one thing you wanted most in your cover?

I wanted a provocative cover that would stand out in a sea of other books, no pun intended, and I think that’s what I got. I wanted my cover to really speak to potential readers. The colors are brilliant, the imagery is mesmerizing, and it tells a story. You can see something in this girl’s eyes—feel something. It’s almost as if she’s calling out to you to rescue her, and you kind of want to. You want to know more about her and what she has to say. So by the time you read the back of the book, you already know you’re going to be her friend for a little while. That’s compelling.



To see the next piece of the cover make sure you head over to BOOKS COMPLETE ME at 11:00am EST!

The full cover will be revealed sometime this afternoon on the Harlequin Teen's Facebook Page after all the pieces have been revealed!

Also, If you'd like to get to know Amalie's writing even better make sure you head here and enter my giveaway for a signed copy of her book Bloodspell!

Giveaway: Just for the heck of it!


Hey loves! So lately I've been to a few signings where I may have just happened to pick up some extra books! Since I love these authors and I love you all I couldn't help but share! So happy (early) summer!

- Whats Up For Grabs! -


1) Signed copy of UNBREAKABLE by: Liz Norris
Plus and extra content booklet which has an alternative beginning and end + two other awesome scenes.



2) Signed copy of BLOODSPELL by: Amalie Howard


3) Signed copy of TREMBLE by: Jus Accardo



Awesome set of books right?! 

- There will be 3 winners

- There will only be one rafflecopter this time. So only enter if you're okay with winning any of the three.

- International

- Good luck! :)