Blog Blitz: Excerpt and Giveaway! -- Sword by Amy Bai

Sword by Amy Bai 
Publication date: February 10th 2015
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

About the Book

Sword shall guide the hands of men . . .

For over a thousand years the kingdom of Lardan has been at peace: isolated from the world, safe from the wars of its neighbors, slowly forgetting the wild and deadly magic of its origins. Now the deepest truths of the past and the darkest predictions for the future survive only in the verses of nursery rhymes.

For over a thousand years, some of Lardan’s fractious provinces have been biding their time.
Kyali Corwynall is the daughter of the Lord General, a child of one of the royal Houses, and the court’s only sword-wielding girl. She has known for all of her sixteen years what the future holds for her–politics and duty, the management of a House, and protecting her best friend, the princess and presumed heir to the throne. But one day an old nursery rhyme begins to come true, an ancient magic wakes, and the future changes for everyone. In the space of a single night her entire life unravels into violence and chaos. Now Kyali must find a way to master the magic her people have left behind, or watch her world–and her closest friends–fall to a war older than the kingdom itself.

Purchase Links

Amazon

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Cover2CoverBlog Giveaway! 

 1 Ebook of Sword

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Ends 3.10.15

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Blitz-Wide Giveaway!

A print copy of Sword (which comes with an extra short story and character sketches) and a poster of the cover 

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 Below is an Except from Sword by Amy Bai

Enjoy!

Recent Reads: William Shakespeare's Star Wars by Ian Doescher

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
Series: William Shakespeare's Star Wars #1
Publisher: Quirk Books
Publication Date:  July 2, 2013

 

Format: Hardback
Source: Won from Quirk Books Egg Hunt (Spring of 2014, I think)


Rating:


 


 


Goodreads Synopsis: 

Inspired by one of the greatest creative minds in the English language—and William Shakespeare—here is an officially licensed retelling of George Lucas's epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. ’Tis a tale told by fretful droids, full of faithful Wookiees and fearsome Stormtroopers, signifying...pretty much everything.

Reimagined in glorious iambic pentameter—and complete with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations—William Shakespeare’s Star Wars will astound and edify Rebels and Imperials alike. Zounds! This is the book you’re looking for.

 Review: 
I have seen the Star Wars movies, I am not a super-fan like a lot of people, but they are wonderful movies and this book is just as wonderful. I was very surprised at how well this worked - Star Wars in verse as a play .... by William Shakespeare -- weird, but oh so good.

What I found wonderful about it, is that it keeps the story very well even with the Shakespearean language and feel - all the characters are still there, all their key lines are still there and the plot is just as exciting as on the big screen. I was VERY impressed by this and it had me laughing at how wonderful it was put together. Ian Doescher did this story justice and the illustrations that are included just make it even more dramatic. This was so much fun to read.




 

Guest Post w/ Giveaway!: Top 10 Rituals When I Write by Jeanne Barker author of The Intergalactic Adventures of Queen Bea

Welcome to my tour stop for The Intergalactic Adventures of Queen Bea by Jeanne Gransee Barker. I have a great Guest Post for you today :)

The tour runs February 16-27 with reviews, author interviews, guest posts and excerpts. Check out the tour page for more information.

About the Book

Genre: Young Adult, Sci-Fi

Everything she’d ever known was a lie. Now Bea must find the courage to trust her own voice to save not only herself — but an entire planet.

At almost 15, late-bloomer Bea Parker has just discovered that her aunt, uncle and cousins—the only family she’s ever known—aren’t actually related to her and don’t know anything about her birth parents. Then a strange, high-tech device shows up in her room in the middle of the night with a note promising answers about her shadowed past. This alien technology takes her on a journey that forces her to leave behind Earth, and everything she knows, to meet her destiny.

Goodreads

On sale for only .99 cents on Amazon for a limited time! 

The below Guest Post was written by Jeanne Barker.

Top ten rituals I like to do when I write

1. BIC. The first thing I do is get my Butt In the Chair. Obvious, I know. But not always easy to do. There are always other—very loud—draws on my attention.

2. Prevent electronically interruption. I quit my email app, turn off my ringer, close Facebook and Pinterest. I know there are apps that are great gatekeepers for this—I haven’t tried them yet. For now, simply closing them is usually enough.

3. Light a candle. Call me woo-woo, but I light a candle and invite the muse. (This is my favorite of my pre-writing steps. :-) If nothing else it focuses and honors my creativity. And I use a scented candle, so it smells nice. Bonus!

4. Turn on music. I try to have it match the mood of what I’m writing. I can’t listen to anything with words in it. I envy those authors who can. If I hear lyrics, I listen to them. Next thing you know I am following their story and not mine. I can’t help myself. Instead, I listen to movie soundtracks. I have tracks from love scenes, chase scenes, scenes that build tension, etc. Sometimes I choose a generic background scores and set it and forget it. But I always have something playing to drown out the world around me.

5. Get a solid picture of where my scene takes place. If I have to I’ll do a quick—less than five minute—search on the web. I know I’ll never find exactly what I’m looking for. I just need enough similarities to help me solidify the idea in my head. Enough so I can be visually grounded before I move my characters around in the space. Saves time in the long run.

6. Re-read what I wrote yesterday. Again, not more than five minutes. Just enough to ensure I’m in flow with whatever I’ve already got on the page.

7. Check my outline. I break my outline down and have a few sentences on my virtual notecard for each chapter. I make sure I know where I’m going before I begin.

8. Set a word count or time goal. Some days are just more prolific than others. I can tell what kind of day it will be before I begin. If I sense I’m going to be digging out words with my bare knuckles, I set a time goal. Then I just stay there until I meet that goal. Often just knowing I won’t let myself get up frees me to actually write. And no matter which I goal set, word count or time, I’m always proud of myself when I achieve it.

9. Write. Duh, of course. But I find it amazingly easy to let steps 5–7 expand to fill a whopping amount of time. Since I know that about myself I watch out for it.

10. Write the first sentence in the next scene or chapter. I hate starting on a blank page. Because time is tight I often have to stop when things are flowing. So the first sentence of a new chapter is easy at the end of a writing session. Not so much when I’m coming to it cold. Having it there is a good way to get me going.

 

About the Author

I discovered science fiction when I was four. My father loved Star Trek, the original series. Every Friday night he’d make a big deal of getting the house quiet so he could hear the TV. The importance of it drew me in. And then I was hooked on other worlds, molecules being scrambled and reformed, and meeting totally logical aliens. As I grew older and continued to watch, I loved the idea that a story could explore our contemporary dilemmas couched in two-tone faces or hidden with green skin. Science fiction was the “gateway genre” that led me to fantasy and paranormal fiction.

I began my first novel at age 12. I still have the ring binder with the hand-written pages of OOTG-1 (that stands for Out of the Galaxy)—the story of the first manned expedition to venture forth beyond our galaxy. Alas, after about thirty pages my hand got tired and the crew never left the Milky Way. But that experience sparked a lifelong love of writing which  has continued through my school days to the present.

When I'm not enjoying the alternate universes of my written creations, I live, work, and play  Seattle, Washington.

Find the Author

Website | Facebook | Twitter 

Five (5) $10 Amazon gift cards (5 winners)

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This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.

Building the Book Pile #127

Welcome to Building the Book Pile!  A Weekly meme inspired by Stacking the Shelves

Hello Readers, Bloggers, and Awesome people! 

What's Happening?! 

How was your week ? Let me know in the comments.


Hello all! I hope your week was a good one. We got more snow :/ I am starting to want warmer weather now. Wow so much snow. Here is a picture of out snow/plow pile from our driveway ... LOOK AT ALL OF IT!

Anywho... otherwise this was a fun week. Work was busy (as always), but at home I got a lot of reading done. I finished The Subtle Knife (finally) and a graphic novel and read another novella for review - so all in all I am getting through books. The blog had an interview post too this week - you should go read it! And next week I have a top 10 post from an author. I am trying to do more than *just* reviews :) 

How are you liking these posts? Or are reviews all you need?

How was your week?

Giveaways Going on NOW

    

Coming up on the Blog... 

  Blog Tour: Guest Post -- Top 10 Things When I Write by Jeanne Barker w/ giveaway

Recent Reads: Eliza Bluebell by A.J. York (MG)

Blog Blast: Sword by Amy Bai w/ giveaway

The Taylor Swift Book Tag (I was tagged a while ago by Liliana)

Recent Reads: William Shakespeare's Star Wars by Ian Doescher (Adult)

No Books Received this Week
Only Comics :)
 

I picked up 

The New 52: Harley Quinn #14 -- A Day in the Life

The  New 52: Harley Quinn Valentine's Day Special -- Just Batty Over You (Blank Variant Edition)

and

The New 52: Harley Quinn Annual (Variant Cover)

 

Have you missed anything lately? 

• Review: Princess Ugg #7 by Ted Naifeh (comic) - 5 stars
• Blog Tour: Review - Taking Chances (Paranormal Investigations #2) by Rita and TJ Webb (New Adult) - 5 stars
• Interview: Leigh Raines author of We're All Mad Here
• Review: The Life After by Joshua Hale Failkov and Gabo (GN) - 4 stars
• Review: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (YA/MG) - 4 stars
• Updates for the Read-a-thon posted at : Progress Post

 

  Comment and leave me a link to your Round-up/ STS/ Weekly...anything post and I will happily stop by and say hello!

 Happy Reading!

Recent Reads: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
Series: His Dark Materials #2
Publisher: Knoph
Publication Date: November 13, 2001  

 

Format: Paperback
Source: Bought/ My Home Library -TBR Jar for January 2015


Rating:



Goodreads Synopsis: 

Lost in a new world, Lyra finds Will--a boy on the run, a murderer--a worthy and welcome ally. For this is a world where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and witches share the skies with troops of angels.
Each is searching--Lyra for the meaning of Dark Matter, Will for his missing father--but what they find instead is a deadly secret, a knife of untold power. And neither Lyra nor Will suspects how tightly their lives, their loves, their destinies are bound together . . . until they are split apart.

 Review: 
It has been a long time since I read the first book in this series, The Golden Compass, so it took me a few chapters to really remember everything that was going on - after that I was pulled right back into the story. This book does a good job re-setting the stage from the first book and adds a lot more to the tale.

From what I gather, a lot of people were upset that this book follows Will, a new addition to the tale, versus Lyra the strong young girl; but I loved that aspect. This could be because it took me a while to get to it, but I think he added a lot to the plot-line and the overall story to come.

Will is a young boy who happens upon a world that is not his and by chance meets Lyra, the main character from the last book. Together they learn about dark matter and the bigger picture of what is happening in their universes, including why they can pass through to other worlds. I really enjoyed the interaction between Lyra and Will and how well they work together to discover what is happening. It was good to also see this softer side of Lyra since she has been on the run and battling so much so far (the first book).

This installment was a really good lead up to the finale of the Dark Materials trilogy - new characters come in, some old ones die off (sadface!!!), new instruments needed by both sides of the war, and who will get them??? The ending was a cliffhanger - which was the only thing I didn't like, but I am amped up to read the last book, because with the cliffhanger also came a HUGE development about Lyra's involvement...

I really enjoy this series so far and will definitely be reading the final book sooner or later.




 

Recent Reads: The Life After Volume 1 by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Gabo

The Life After by Joshua Hale Fialkov (Writer) and Gabo (Artist)
Series:The Life After, Volume 1
Publisher: Oni Press
Publication Date:  January 28, 2015

 

Format: ebook
Source: From Oni Press in exchange for an honest review. Receiving this book in no way effects my opinion or review.

Rating:


Goodreads Synopsis: 

Jude's life is nothing special. It seems like every day is just a repeat of the last one, until one day, he meets a woman and can suddenly see into her past -- revealing that he is actually in Purgatory for suicides. Now that he's awake, he and the legendary Ernest Hemingway are on the path to change things in the afterlife for the better. Of course, that might not sit very well with the bigwigs down below or up above. Can just a few people change the course of billions of souls? Collects the first five issues of the ongoing series.

Review: 
Talk about a weird book. I am not sure about this one - I was between a 3 and a 4 rating but because it was so off the wall I gave it 4 for creativity. The Life After is a play on heaven, hell, and various purgatories - but also something more, everything is kind of creepy...

Jude is living his own form of Groundhog's Day, the same thing on repeat forever - all of a sudden he realizes that his 'life' isn't what it seems, there are forces controlling his and the lives of everyone around him. Once he realizes that he can break free from this all sorts of craziness happens and heaven and hell are both after him for screwing up their system. 

I found this book both wacky and interesting though. Jude is the main character - seen by the reader as almost Christ-esq, then we have Ernest Hemingway as his guide/ teacher the whole thing reminds me of Dante... Although more sci-fi and nightmarish. 

The story is good, people are out to get Jude, Hemingway trying to help, them getting into lots of trouble, characters popping in and out. I thought it was very creative...just very strange.




 

Interview: Leigh Raines, author of We're All Mad Here

Today we are joined by Leigh Raines, the author of We're All Mad Here a New Adult release from French Press Bookworks about a 19 year old trying to figure out life while in college and her realization that everyone is a little crazy. More info on this book after the interview.

Leigh was marvelous enough to answer some questions for us, and I am happy to have her. Hope you all enjoy the interview. 

Welcome to Cover2CoverBlog, thank you for joining us.

First could you tell us a little about yourself?

I'm a 29 year old freelance writer living in New York City with my fiancee and french bulldog. A lot of my time is spent with my nephews and nieces, reviewing television shows for work, and reading. "We're All Mad Here"  is something I began working on as a type of therapy about 8 years ago and it evolved over the years.

How did you get into writing? Any tips for aspiring authors?

I've been writing for as long as I can remember. Growing up I was always a better English/History student than Math/Science. In college, I majored in Journalism and took creative writing. The best tip I've ever gotten was to write whenever you feel inspired and don't worry about the direction a story is going. Never start at the beginning. Also, read as much as you can.

Tell us a little about We're All Mad Here. What was your inspiration for the book?

The inspiration was my own experience with anxiety and depression in my sophomore year of college. I didn't feel like there was a novel out around that time that truly dealt with those issues but in a very common way. Anyone is susceptible to going through these issues, no matter their upbringing, background, etc. I wanted to tell that story.

Which came first – the plot or the characters? 

That's hard to say, but probably the characters. I knew what I wanted the characters to go through but not the endgame. Both have evolved over the years through edits and rewrites.

What is your favorite part about the writing process? Do you have a special writing spot?

My favorite part is when I hit a stride and get really excited about a scene. That moment when you brainstorm and have a stream of conscious that flows out onto the page. No special writing spot, I take my laptop to bed a lot (which is terrible for my insomnia.)

Is there anything about you that would surprise your readers?

Hmmm, this is always a tough question. I think since I was born and raised in New York and my story takes place at a college in New England, people would be surprised that my family has a second home in Georgia and I always had a secret desire to live in the south.

If you could spend time with any author, who would it be and why?

No way could I narrow it down to just one!!! How about five? Lesley Jones, Colleen Hoover, Tarryn Fisher, Abbi Glines, and Jamie McGuire. "Beautiful Disaster" was the first book that I read in the New Adult genre and it opened this whole world to me.

What do you have planned next? Are you working on anything currently?

I would love to do a spin off on each of the main girls. I've worked a little on Ella's book, but right now I'm mainly focusing on WAMH.

 What are you reading right now? Do you have any book recommendations for the young adult/ new adult reader?

Right now I'm finishing up "My Unexpected Forever" by Heidi McLaughlin. Admittedly I'll be re-reading 50 Shades before I see it this week. (how could I not!) Up next I have "Beautiful Redemption" by Jamie McGuire, "Fuel the Fire" by Becca and Krista Ritchie, and "Slow Burn" by Kristy Bromberg. February is shaping up! What I'm dying for is the second part of "Never, Never" by Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher. Those are two talented women.

ABOUT THE BOOK

We're All Mad Here by Leigh Raines
Publisher: French Press Bookworks
Publication Date:  December 10, 2014
Genre: New Adult 

 

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Jade Thompson had the kind of adolescence you would find in a Norman Rockwell painting. But at 19-years-old when her seemingly normal life is flipped on its head, she's forced to take a closer look at the relationships in her life and the decisions she has made.

It feels as if she has fallen down a rabbit hole. As she returns to college and stumbles through her new reality, she finds herself more than a little lost. With the help of her three closest friends, we spend the year with Jade through her ups and downs where she discovers everyone is a little bit mad in the world.

Find the Author

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Blog Tour: Review and Giveaways! -- Taking Chances by Rita and TJ Webb

Taking Chances by Rita Webb and T.J. Webb
(Paranormal Investigations #2)
Publication date: January 7th 2015
Genres: New Adult, Paranormal Romance

About the Book:

How far would you go to save a friend?

People are going missing in Kodiak, Alaska.

The evidence: bloody bear prints larger than any bear Jason or Emma have ever seen and black ooze that can eat the flesh from bones.

Bears don’t wander into busy shopping districts, turn off security alarms, and break into stores. When Emma’s friend goes missing, Jason and Emma realize the cops aren’t up to handling the situation.

Something’s wrong in the paranormal world. Can Jason and Emma fix things before someone else gets hurt?

WOW, just WOW! I really enjoyed Playing Hooky, but this book was AMAZING! I had so much fun with Emma and Jason and loved the alternating point of views, they were great for this tale. 

Emma is faced with a missing sister and now she is home dealing with her distraught parents, missing girls in the town, and an influx of supernatural beings. Jason is trying to figure out who/what he is and on top of that he wants to know why all the girls are missing. They work together with a spectacular cast of characters to solve the mystery and try to save the girls. What I think is great about this series is that, it is called the 'Paranormal Investigations' series - an normally what you get with such a series is a lot of non-related mysteries solved by the same people - here you are getting a bigger and better story with each mystery and I adore that.

What I loved most about this book was the romance, Jason is wonderful to Emma and I swoon over that. Their interactions are adorable and I love reading about characters being in love - it is wwonderful, especially around Valentine's Day (I am a sucker, I know it). And I won't spoil it, but there are huge plot bombs dropped throughout this book about Emma and Angelina that were OMG moments for me - I definitely didn't see them coming (and normally I am pretty good at that).

This book is for a more mature audience as it does have some sexual content, but it is done very tastefully. It also is a pretty short book, which I read in one sitting, and it had a wonderful flow and the plot was deep enough to keep me reading. I am very interested to see where this series is going - there is a lot of plot development left to come and I am super excited about it all.

Fan of paranormal romance and an New Adult reader, you should pick this one up. It is a lot of fun for a quick read.

Where to buy it! 

(The entire series will be free from Feb 9th to the 13th)

for Playing Hooky (Book #1)

for Breaking Angelina (Book #1.5)

for Taking Chances (Book #2)

Blog Giveaway!

Signed Copy of Taking Chances

 Open to US and Canada only. 

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Tour-Wide Giveaway!

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About the Authors

Our adventure started with a camping trip and a bottle of whiskey. Apparently Rita is a scary monster, and TJ needed liquid courage to give her that first kiss.

When not fighting over who gets to read our favorite books first, we’re swapping kisses, plot ideas, and movie quotes in the kitchen.

Together, we home-school our three girls, who keep us busy with art, science projects, books to read, dance classes, and walks about the park.

Come play a little hooky with us by getting our first book for free on our website:  http://TJandRita.com/Playing-Hooky 

Find the Authors

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