The Kindle edition of The Shadow of Tiamat is available for sale. You don’t have to own a Kindle to read it this way, you can download it and read it on your computer or iPhone or any other number of devices. You can also pre-order The Shadow of Tiamat – Print Edition.

 The BAD news–well, it’s not really bad per se, just kind of funny–is that Amazon has garbled the title of the book so that, as of this morning, it appears on their website as DARGON’S BLOOD CHRONICLES. Don’t anyone blow a gasket, this was an honest mistake. PLEASE STOP SENDING ANGRY EMAILS TO MY PUBLISHER. I appreciate your passion for my work, but you aren’t helping. This will get fixed. This was apparently a mix up between the distributor and Amazon. These things happen.

 Some more good news, I now have an Amazon Author Page. And my book is on Goodreads – albeit, with the wrong title but what can you do?

 So, you can start ordering, adding stars and reviews, whatever you want now. The book is for sale! Hooray! We’re finally there, guys! Don’t let one minor hitch derail this. When you recommend the book to your friends, just let them know that there is a misprint on the title on Amazon but that the title is correct on the book.

So who does this to me regularly in their stories, setting the bar atmospheric? One of my favorite fantasy series is Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels trilogy. The brief interactions between her characters, the silky violence-edged sensual danger of her male characters, who nonetheless are emotionally well developed, always does it for me.

Joey Hill and her vampire queen series pulls off the most emotionally intense stories of love I can ever hope to find. The development of these complex relationships is realistic (not the paranormal parts per se) but true to the emotional psyche and how wounds are overcome in the face of love. Although I don’t try to recreate her style, I always aim for this achievement in the intensity of my characters’ relationships.

The scope of other writers’ world building has influenced me significantly. Kim Harrison comes to mind. So does Charlaine Harris. But also more traditional fantasy writers like Jacqueline Carey, whose epic stories in her Kushiel series have amazed me. I seek to recreate their thoroughness and complexity in their worlds. The first book that influenced my sense of world building, and so important to my dream of becoming a writer, was Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel. Auel’s alternative pre-historic society was amazing.

I’m also affected by economy of words. Writers whose minimalist dialogue conveys everything along with the kitchen sink. Charlaine Harris does this regularly. She particularly does it in her mystery series as opposed to her Sookie Stackhouse series. Tanya Huff has achieved this as well. Like these women, I aim to keep cutting my words to choose only those with the most impact. It’s a long-term goal. I have miles to go.

When you read a book whose words affect your soul like magic, something inside you wants to reach out and capture that. If only, you say to yourself. If I can do it that beautifully, my writing world would be complete. You have to find your own way to the magic, but its wonderful to have so many talented authors to absorb along the way.

 To find out more about my Eden books you can visit my website at www.michellepicard.com or my blogsite at www.michellepicardsblog.wordpress.com. Follow the links on my website’s books page to read excerpts or purchase my books.

 I call shadows pretenders with great fondness. They are, after all, very good at what they do. There is a shadow for everything, so they are very busy. And they are impartial. Both good things and bad things happen in their hidden depths. They are superb actresses and actors. (I think their gender is really dependent on the gender of the shadow caster, but I have no scientific evidence to support this hypothesis.) Shadows are a tad arrogant. But then, they are very cool, so I suppose you could just call it confidence.

 Shadows pair well with scandal, which pairs well with scheming. Because shadows are good at pretending to be other things. Shadows and some of the people in Ruined have that in common.

 Ruined is the story of the Realm of Shadows where the people use the shadows of their Ancestor gods to shift at fast speeds. The Shadow Shifters commune with the shadows, hang out in the shadows and live in the darkness. Of course, in the darkness, motives are muddled. Not everything is as it seems which makes sense because the world of the Shadow Shifters isn’t exactly what it seems on the surface. Everyone on the Court has their own motivations and Vale, as the king, and Jessa, as the Senior Healer, constantly battle to do what’s best for their people against malicious characters and unlikely odds. Their love battles against the shadows: the shadows of their history, the shadows of individual pasts, and the shadows of ancient secrets.

 I hope you’ll travel across the shadows of Ruined with me for a romantic, fantasy tale of Vale and Jessa’s strong bond of love that will be tested, but never broken. All in a realm where passions lead, evil lurks and shadows rule.

 BLURB for RUINED

Jessa is one healing away from death. Under the thrall of her gift, the Court’s Senior Healer risks giving her life in exchange for her patient’s.

Vale is a rebel ruler. When his brother is killed, he’s given the throne and the decree from the Court to produce an heir or lose his family’s hold on the land–and his deceiving advisors aren’t afraid to use murder as a weapon if their directive to stay away from the Senior Healer goes unheeded.

But Vale burns to possess Jessa. The heat between them leaves a wake of smoke, and even the powerful forces above want to bind them in a union that lasts forever. Vale taking another would be a betrayal neither could survive.

Their enemies fear a child born of such a powerful Healer and Warrior, but the true threat lies in the bond forged in shadows and fused in fire.

Ebook: http://www.amazon.com/Ruined-ebook/dp/B005D9J6L2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1312678069&sr=8-2

 Print: http://www.amazon.com/Ruined-Kinley-Baker/dp/1937254143/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1312678069&sr=8-2

My genre is Paranormal Romance. Many years ago, I became captivated by archaeology and paleontology. If I’m not home, I’m out collecting. This past fall I discovered a grinding stone in my son’s backyard. It has six holes and with a little digging, I found the pestle. Not too far away is the fire pit, filled with fossilized bone. I am blessed to live in the Sierra Nevada foothills where the countryside is rife with ancient Native American legends and 49er follies.

My love of science and archaeology is what pushed me into writing Paranormal Romance. I was twelve when I held my first séance. I gathered several friends of mine in the hallway of my home. We closed the doors to make it as black as possible and used the Ouija board. Fifteen minutes later one of the doors blew open, the candle went out, and all five us ran screaming down the hallway into the backyard where sunlight flooded our darkest imaginations with laughter.

Paranormal reality lays deep in my family gene pool. My niece is Erin Renee, Manifestation Mistress, and witch. She recently did a segment for psychic reality show due out this winter. My mother had her experiences, and my sister prefers to not discuss the subject as it scares the bejeezes out of her.

 From archaeology to physics, my imagination runs the gamut. Here are some fun and amazing examples of weird physics: (Special thanks to Tom Chivers.)

1.      All the matter that makes up the human race will fit into a sugar cube—atoms are 99.9999999999999 percent empty space. However, that sugar cube would weigh about five billion tons.

2.      Events in the future can affect what happened in the past. This is part of the quantum world and is well documented.

3.      Most of the universe is missing. What we can see only accounts for two percent of its mass. We know there is more because it has gravity.

4.      There are an infinite number of mes writing this sentence and an infinite number of yous reading it. There are an infinite number of universes existing side-by-side and every conceivable probability is played out.

5.      The faster you move, the heavier you get.

In Gemini Rising, I take on the physics of other world dynamics as it relates to our precious Earth. Many years ago, I studied Zecharia Sitchin and his theory of a 12^th planet in our solar system. Alexander died Oct. 19, 2010, but his theories live on. In fact, in 2005 a 10^th planet was discovered by a group of astronomers using the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory and the 8-meter Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, hence the book’s title, Gemini Rising. 

Thank you for spending time with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed my musings. Questions and comments are always welcome at carroll.louann@yahoo.com. Please check out my website at www.louanncarrollbooks.weebly.com

Warmly,

What Kind of Book Have You Written?
By Sean T. Poindexter

 This is probably the most common question I get asked right after people ask what I do. Or when my friends, sick to death of my tireless self-promotion, ask with feigned shock, “You wrote a book?!?” That just never stops being funny, you loveable bunch  …

In general, people want a short, understandable answer when they ask what a book is about. If I was writing about cowboys, for example, they’d want me to say, “It’s a western.” If I wrote space battles and stories about meeting aliens, they’d want, “It’s kind of like Star Trek .” Or they want a hybrid example, combining two things that heretofore haven’t been combined in a memorable way. Like if I wrote a zombie thriller set in the Old West, I could say it’s like Tombstone meets Dawn of the Dead .  Unfortunately, I’m not very good at defining my own work in these terms. When I try, I usually come off as a prick. For example, I once told someone that my first book is like a cross between Laurell K. Hamilton’s Guilty Pleasures and Cormac McCarthy’s The Borders Trilogy . Yeah, see what I mean?  …just writing it makes me want to kick myself.

I could just say my book is about dragons—since they are the focus of my main series; the word Dragon is even part of the series title!—but that doesn’t really do the trick. Sure, my book is about dragons, but so are a lot of books: everything from children’s books to erotica. When most people hear that your book is about dragons, they assume you’re writing traditional fantasy. Not that I have anything against that genre, but it isn’t what I write. There are many fine authors who do; I’m just not one of them.

I could tell them it’s a love story, but that makes it sound like a romance novel. Again, nothing against that genre, it just isn’t what I’ve written. Yes, there is romance in the books, especially the first one, but the focus of the story is much bigger than that. I could say it has vampires in it, but then they think I’m writing a vampire book. Yes, there are vampires, as well as other monsters like demons and werebeasts, as well as sorcery and so on, but they are just part of the whole world I’ve created for my books—a parallel world that, on the surface, looks just like ours but contains far more than we know about. That is the essence of writing fantasy, but the contemporary setting takes it out of the traditional fantasy genre. So I could say it’s an urban fantasy, but not everyone knows what that means.

In short, when asked what my book is about, I tell them they are about dragons and other supernatural creatures who hide among humans, and a young woman who gets introduced to their world by accident when she falls in love with a dragon. Sometimes I mention the vampires, but only in reference to them getting their asses kicked by the dragons, or that they operate like criminals instead of aristocrats as in a lot of other vampire stories. I’m not putting down anyone’s work, I’m just pointing out how mine is different.

Sometimes I put attention on the action aspects of my book, if it seems like that is what the potential reader asking would like. Usually, younger male readers get more excited about the action elements of the book: the dragons fighting vampires, dragons fighting other dragons, etc. A lot of female readers like this aspect as well, but they also enjoy the romantic element: Meg and Garrett are established as a couple on the first page of the book, so it’s no mystery that they are going to get together, and that eventually Garrett will reveal himself as a dragon. The story that unfolds is how she deals with falling in love with someone who isn’t human, has never been human, and has a very faint idea of how to even act like a human or handle a relationship with an adult woman. The idea of a man being in love with a woman but having absolutely no idea how to act as a result is something with which most women can identify.

I sometimes get asked if there is sex in the book. Yes, there is sex in the book. The whole book isn’t sex-sex-sex, but there are a couple of love scenes: one big one and a few smaller ones scattered about. There isn’t as much sex as there is violence, but I rarely get asked about just the violence. I don’t know if people are just more afraid of reading the sex than the violence, or if they just really want a book full of sex. Either way, the book is written for adults so the violence is described with the same level of detail and color as the sex. It’s just how I write, and most people who have read it appreciate that. I’ve only had one person say they didn’t like the sex, and another who said there wasn’t enough of it. I figure I can’t make everyone like the book, so just write it the way I want.

And that’s what I do: I write the kind of book I would like to read. I try not to imitate anyone else and write what I think is a good story. And that’s what I tell people when they ask what kind of book it is. I say, “It’s the kind of book you could imagine me reading and really enjoying.” Take what you know about me, and pretend someone wrote a book for him. That’s what kind of book I have written. I hope a lot of you like it, too.

  The opening scene in a movie will can set the pace for the rest of the picture. Sometimes a beginning will be all the person watching needs to know they’ve been captured and have to remain in place until they find the answers to the questions that the very first scene sets up.

 One of best opening scenes is the one for Kill Bill, within one minute and twenty-eight seconds you’re hooked.  A badly beaten woman is breathing hard; her bloody face conveys terror as heavy footsteps coming closer. The man begins to speak and asks if she finds him sadistic. You can feel her desperation with every second that passes.

 Unlike movies, in a book the writer cannot begin with music and sounds effects. Instead we have to rely on setting the scene with descriptions and just the right words. The first twenty words of a story have the capacity to catapult your book into either the stratosphere or oblivion.  That’s some powerful ammo there.

 Best Selling Author, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, writes the following unforgettable opening in the book, Call Me Irresistible.

  Read this and you will ask these three questions afterwards.

Why?

How did this come about?

What is going to happen next?

  It wasn’t every day a guy saw a headless beaver marching down the side of a road, not even in Dean Robillard’s larger than life world. “Son of a”" Dean slammed on the brakes of his brand new Aston Martin Vanquish and pulled over in front of her.

The beaver marched right past, her big flat tail bouncing in the gravel, and her small, sharp nose stuck up in the air. Way up. The beaver looked highly pissed.

When a writer begins a book, the opening can sometimes take longer to put together than the entire first chapter.  Although one may know how to begin to tell the story, the opening scene is not always as clear.

 Here are some pointers for writing the engaging first scene. 

1. Start the story and stop abruptly.  Read the first couple of sentences, if they do not set the story up then place your curser at the beginning and start again.

 2. Sometimes the first paragraphs are not necessary. Go ahead and write them, if they are storytelling, then save it for back-story.  Usually the second scene a writer pens is the important one.

 3. Lastly, talk it out with friends, narrate the first scene and then ask them how do they see this scene opening up?  I got an excellent start to a couple of my books that way.

 Here is start to my current WIP, Forever Knight. Does it draw you to ask the three questions?

 Five hundred years. 

Time was either his best friend or his worst enemy, he wasn’t sure anymore. All the years he’d yearned for freedom. Now it was within his grasp. Did he dare take it?

Hildie McQueen
http://crescentmoonpress.com/books/DesperateBetrayal.html
http://www.hildiemcqueen.com/

When I was young, I looked forward to summer like all the other kids. No more school. Staying up late and sleeping in. Spending time outside on a sunny afternoon. Of course, my interpretation of those ideas differed greatly from my neighborhood friends.   Most of them enjoyed riding bikes or playing games like Frisbee or kickball. On an especially hot day, water fights were a given.

 I hung out and played with the others a couple of times a week, but summer meant something completely different to me. I could read anything I wanted all day, every day—even all night if I could stay awake. (Yes, I used the good ‘ole flashlight-under-the-covers trick!) But more often than not, I’d find a quiet place to bury my nose in a book and escape to some foreign place, maybe even another world, with people that had adventures I could only dream of having.                                                                                    Now that I’m…older, things have changed a bit. I have a family and a career. Life is busy. But summer still holds the same charm. The season offers beautiful weather, barbecues with friends and family, and swimming on scorching hot afternoons.

 Of course my love of escaping to foreign places, with people having adventures I can only dream of hasn’t changed—except now I write about those people embroiled in escapades I create in my head. And though I write year round, every season offers its own advantage for creativity.

 Summer’s warm weather allows me the opportunity to grab my laptop, head to the park and sit beneath my favorite tree. Being outdoors, soaking up the sun’s rays while watching everyone else fires up my muse. I’m sometimes surprised by the things my characters do or the direction a story will take!

 When I’m not writing, you can bet I’m reading. Falling into the exciting worlds other authors have created—because every story offers something unique. Each one satisfies my craving for a wild journey filled with interesting places, fascinating characters, or passionate relationships that touch my heart.

 So why don’t you join me beside the pool?         

 You didn’t bring a book?

No problem.

I’ve got just the story for you.

It’s a new paranormal world where an immortal woman’s search for her genetic origin places her squarely in harm’s way, not one but two men possess amazing psychic abilities that help keep the mortal population safe from other preternatural creatures that never play by the rules, and a love triangle that offers soul mates a match—if they’re brave enough to take a chance.

 Moonlight Bleu. Available now.

Print:  http://www.amazon.com/Moonlight-Bleu-Renee-Rearden/dp/0982306563/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1310235258&sr=8-1

 EBook:  http://www.amazon.com/Moonlight-Bleu-ebook/dp/B003XT5R12/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1310235258&sr=8-2

 Nook:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/moonlight-bleu-renee-reardon/1027386147?ean=9780982306574&itm=1&usri=moonlight%2bbleu

Describing a scent in a story can be a challenge. An author offers the illusion of reality using nothing more than words and when it comes to odors that can be tricky, though it helps to use scents that are familiar to most people.

I like the smell of ripe peaches, but once my mother-in-law decided to pick peaches in an orchard and brought a trunk full of peaches to me. I wasn’t really thrilled because she expected me to do something with them before they all rotted away—and that would not take long because we were in the middle of a searing heat wave. Despite the fact that it was one hundred degrees outside, I made peach jam. I made a lot of it. It was absolutely the best peach jam ever but it probably had a lot of my own sweat in it.

 As I was plotting The Company You Keep, I recalled that incident because the heroine lives on a farm where there is an orchard with peach trees. What is she going to do with all those peaches when they are ripe? Of course, she’s going to make jam and a several other things. Not surprisingly, she even has a light peach scent about her. The hero is taunted by that scent throughout the story.

 To focus on the peach theme and write with a sense of the scent, I kept dousing myself with peach cologne as fleshed out the story. I came up with many different ways to describe the aroma. I also ate peaches—fresh and canned—and found they tingled on my tongue.  I spread peach jam on dough and baked scrumptious sweet rolls.  I sampled peach liqueur and wine.  I had a lot of fun and wrote some delightfully sensual scenes. Below is a brief sample from one of those scenes.

He drew her closer. Her protest came out sounding more like a strangled cry with echoes not of fear, but heavy with deeper cravings of want. Her eyelids slid lower. Under the lashes, her eyes took on the softness of a hazy fog. No longer rigid, her body melted against his, her skin blazing as fiery as his own. Above everything, the smothering fragrance of peaches simmered.

 He took her fingers, one by one. His tongue darted out to caress away all remnants of the jam. Then he kissed her palm and felt her shudder. He was hard and aching but it surprised him to see her face flushed, her eyes closed, and her mouth waiting for him, slightly open, rosy and dark. He covered her full lips with his own.

And you know he’s going to taste peaches on her lips. The hero nearly goes over the edge of sanity and much of that is due to the scent of peaches.

 I hope you’ll sample more of  The Company You Keep and fall in love along with Jennifer and Nathan. Perhaps you could spritz yourself with some peach cologne and see if the scent has a special effect on your special someone.

The popularity of shows such as Ghost Hunters, Hauntings, etc. is evidence there is a huge population of people who are fascinated with ghost stories even if they aren’t completely sold on the concept. But come on, let’s face it, we all love a good ghost story. Remember sitting around a campfire, or huddled up in your jammies at a sleep over as someone spun out a terrifying tale that left you laughing and shivering at the same time?

Where is my Gol – den – aaarrrrm? *said in a voice of doom* Loved that one!

Well, I have to admit, I’m one of the people who wants to believe but is still waiting for my own personal experience that takes me over to the true believers. As a nurse, I’ve heard a lot of tales from other nurses who have seen angels hovering over beds, spirits leaving bodies of the dead, and long-dead family members sighted in rooms of dying patients.

I work as a nurse practitioner in a retirement community that has everything from independent residents in villas, to nursing home and dementia unit patients. As the palliative care specialist, I have attended many dying patients and helped ease them into the afterlife.

There is one place in our nursing home where more people die than any other—the back hall where the private rooms are located. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing deadly about this area, it’s just that we try to move dying patients to single rooms so family and friends can gather around them and not disturb other patients.

 I decided to try an experiment–my own little Ghost Hunter episode.

When I bought my Samsung Tablet, I installed an App called Ghost Radar. I know, it sounds cheesy, but I put it to the test. It did not detect any ghosts on the boat where I live, in my office, or in several stores I visited. Then I took it to the back hall of our nursing home and WOW, ghosts popped up all over the place. And so did the goose bumps on my arms! One of the nurses there said to check by the cabinet where the charts are stored. She sees a ghostly figure of a woman standing there all the time. Sure enough the radar went off. Chills…Brrrrrrr.

Truth or Coincidence? Who knows for sure? But it’s interesting, I have to say that.

What are your ghost stories? I’d love to hear them! 

Lara Nance
Author of Memories of Murder