I’m participaing in a scaveger hunt sponsored by the Night Owl Reviews website and dozens of authors.
It’s easy and fun to enter and gives you a chance to meet and sample new authors. You get a chance to win one of dozens of gift baskets, some worth over $100 by filling in the missing words in book blurbs.
For entry forms and more details on how the hunt works, click here.
Today I stopped by Lois Winston/Anastasia Pollack’s Killer Crafts and Crafty Killers blog to talk about an issue dear to all our hearts: money. Right. I give a few tips about managing your money, gleaned from my own life experience of poverty, mismanagement, and struggles to keep on top of it. Stop by and offer your own ideas for better ways to manage your cash flow:
http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2013/04/money-matters-with-sheila-guest-author.html
Here’s the ebook cover for A Gift for Murder. What do you think?
This post is part of the Lucky in Love blog hop. Scroll down to the end for information about prizes available and other participants.
Why “Fated Mates” Annoy Me
You’ve read about them, those couples where a man or woman looks at another and suddenly sees colors, an aura, or gets some sign that this is the one, and it’s meant to be. Two random people see each other, the rockets go off, and they just know that they’re right for each other at some deep, primal level that guarantees happily ever after. Because they’re soulmates or fated mates, so it has to happen.
It seems particularly common in paranormals, where forces beyond normal bring two people together like two separate halves of a whole.
I call BS.
The whole “soulmate” thing has a certain appeal, but for all the wrong reasons. It’s way too easy. There’s no risk in the relationship. You may argue with each other, but because this is your soulmate, you’ll find ways to work it out, and it won’t create any permanent damage. You can do pretty much anything or say anything because you’re meant to be so it won’t be a problem.
I understand why the idea appeals, why it seems so romantic. To find the person who is your perfect partner for the rest of your life is a goal worth striving for. To find someone so completely right and perfect for you is an ideal. But that’s really all it is: a fantasy.
You don’t need to work at finding ways to accommodate each other, to live with each other, to settle the issues that divide you.
It’s lazy storytelling because the author doesn’t have to work at showing a developing relationship. The subtle back and forth of people exploring their interest in each other, learning about each other, trying to decide if there’s more than lust at work, and if they can manage to forge a bond and create a family, gets lost when we already know it’s gong to happen. Because it’s fated. I tend to avoid stories that use that trope because it skirts over what interests me most in the romantic storyline: how two people figure out why they’re drawn to each other and how they can combine themselves into a couple.
So…Does the idea of fated mates or soulmates work for you?
My most recent release, The Wizard’s Shield, features a romance between two people who are clearly meant to be together, but they’re not fated mates in the sense that they know the minute they see each other that no one else will do for them. At the start of the story, they have been separated for a long time by circumstance. When they come together again, they have to work hard, overcoming a lot of painful history, numerous differences, and conflicting goals, to reach their happily ever after.
Blurb for The Wizard’s Shield: A powerful wizard with a physics degree and a checkered past invents a shield to ensure he’ll never again be tortured almost to death. The wizarding powers-that-be fear the repercussions of such a device and send his former girlfriend, an accomplished wizard herself, to retrieve the device or destroy it.
When the shield is stolen by the magical mafia, Ilene McConnell and Michael Morgan have to set aside their differences and work together to recover it. Michael claims he needs the device as insurance against the kind of injury and injustice he suffered once before. Ilene maintains its potential to upset the delicate balance of power makes it too dangerous and that it needs to be destroyed. But none of that will matter if they can’t retrieve it before a ruthless, powerful wizard learns how to use it for his own ends.
Trade Paperback Amazon Kindle B&N for Nook Smashwords
Finally – about the prizes: To enter all of the contests, comment here and be sure to include your email address!
My Prize: One commenter here will win their choice of ebook from any of the following: A Question of Fire, Programmed for Danger, The Night Prowlers, A Vampire’s Christmas Carol or a paperback copy of A Gift for Murder.
We have TWO grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times! Everything BUT the swag prize is international.
1st Grand Prize: A $100 Amazon or B&N Gift Card
2nd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!
More information: http://www.carrieannbloghops.blogspot.com/
I occasionally like to feature odd and whimsical things I find on my walks around the neighborhood. This, for instance:
It’s The Trading Stump. There’s a little sign that you can’t read that suggests visitors take something and replace it with something else. It’s mostly a collection of little toys and shells. I was tempted by the yellow rubber duckie in the middle, but I didn’t have anything to leave in exchange.
Smashwords is having a “Read an Ebook Week” sale, and most of my books are included at GREAT prices:
The Wizard’s Shield is only $1.00 with the 75% off coupon code.
A Question of Fire is only $1.00 with the 75% off coupon
The Night Prowlers is $1.50 with the coupon code.
Programmed for Danger is $1.50 with the coupon code.
Be sure to use the coupon code listed on the order page to get these great prices!
It’s taken me a while, but I have some new dragons to add to my collection, including a pair that were a Christmas gift from my wonderful critique partner, Elysa Hendricks, and one I found in a very odd and unexpected place.
This adorable pair was Elysa’s gift. They love their new home on my bookshelf!
I happened to see this on a walk around the neighborhood. I think I’ve walked past this birdbath dozens of times before and never looked very closely:
But the light must have been hitting it just right because I looked closer and noticed something very interesting about the base:
It’s so subtle it may be hard to see, but there’s a dragon embossed on the stone base with his body and tale wrapped around it!
I want one for my garden!
I did an interview with Eliza Knight on her For the Love of Books blog. She asked some pretty interesting questions:
http://elizaknight.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/self-publishing-interview-karen-mccullough/
My book, The Wizard’s Shield, is featured on Julie Kenner’s Hump Day Reads! http://juliekenner.com/?p=5619
A while ago I asked author Fran Fisher to participate in the Next Big Thing Blog Hop. She had some delays due to family emergencies, but she’s here now to tell us about her most recent book, Harbor Breeze!
1: What is the title of your latest book?
My latest book is Harbor Breeze, the second book in the Bayou Cove Series.
2: Where did the idea come from for the book?
My husband and I live on a quiet little bayou harbor on the Gulf Coast. On most afternoons, our neighbors and passing boaters can find us sitting outside watching the activity on the harbor. Before Hurricane Katrina, there was a two story building directly across the harbor with a neighborhood store on the bottom floor and an apartment on the second.
We were talking one afternoon about how much fun it would be if there had been a nice bar and grill where the store was located. That’s all it took for my imagination to take off. Hence, Captain Jack’s Bar and Grill was formed in my mind with all the imaginary characters that frequent it.
3
: What genre does your book come under?
Harbor Breeze is a stand-alone contemporary romance.
4. What actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
For the hero Ryan Browden, I see Matthew McConaughey but with darker hair and for my blond-hair heroine, Reese Witherspoon.
5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Annie Briggs comes home to Bayou Cove to put the past behind her, but with her ex-husband stalking her and unexplainable events happening around the harbor, she can’t risk resurrecting a long-dead romance—but now that Ryan Browden is back in town, his lure is impossible to resist.
6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?
It’s an Indie that has gone through many readings with extensive copy-editing.
7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
The first draft took about seven months, but after a series of editing, I decided the book needed something. I put the story aside while I wrote and sold other stories. When I returned to this one, it was easy to rewrite the draft.
8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
When I think about the Bayou Cove Series, I can see similarities to some of Barbara Freethy’s books, not so much in the stories themselves, but in the themes, the sense of place, and the characterization.
9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?
As I said earlier, I live on the harbor that inspired this story, but because I have lived on the Gulf Coast all of my life, most of my books use the waterways and the islands as my setting.
10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
The themes in Harbor Breeze deal with redemption and forgiveness, family strife and, of course, finding love. Captain Jack’s Bar and Grill, the rundown restaurant on the bayou harbor, gives Annie and Ryan a place to work through their many problems, but more importantly helps them find a sense of belonging in a small community that both of them left behind.
The book incorporates a little mystery, a lot of love, and nice dose of local color. Life in the small community of Bayou Cove moves in slow, rhythmic circles, but beneath the idyllic setting, the men and women of the coastal community face day-to-day turmoil as they search for love and happiness, and in Harbor Breeze, there’s lots of day-to-day turmoil.
The series includes Book I, Threads of Steel, and Book III, Cooling Waters, which will be released in March 2013. Are all stand-alone books set in the fictional Gulf Coast town of Bayou Cove.
Buy Harbor Breeze:
Trade Paperback: http://amzn.com/1481030752
Kindle: http://amzn.com/B00AP7VMFA
Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/harbor-breeze-fran-fisher/1113982796?ean=2940016104423
Kobo: http:// http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Harbor-Breeze/book-JDaX-n1870GNMCJk9io_4A/page1.html?s=oSfZ1XscgUWlFH8y0fVQcQ&r=1
Visit Fran Fisher at www.FranFisherAuthor.com or for sweeter romances with no adult content, visit her at www.FranMcNabb.com