Book Blitz: Awakened by CJ Anderson with Giveaway

 

Title: Awakened

Series: The Gods and Guardians Trilogy #1

Author: CJ Anderson

Published: August 28th, 2015

Genre: YA Sci-Fi Fantasy

Content Warning: Mild violence

Recommended Age: 13+

 

Synopsis

 

The new guy in town has a few secrets …one of which is the ability to levitate and use telekinesis to move objects – Dru Sanjay hasn’t been able to share his secrets with anyone. That is until he meets…HER.

 

Alayna West can see and experience emotions as color. Her only desire is to complete high school, go to college and create a better life far away from her rural roots. But plans change when she meets…HIM.

 

When Dru and Alayna meet they experience a hair raising, skin prickling, and unexplainable connection. As Alayna is drawn into Dru’s world, she learns of the Guardians; others like her who have special abilities, whose genetics can be traced back to the Gods. Only the Gods and the other Guardians are actually extraterrestrials who have been banned from Earth for the last 2,000 years.

 

Alayna’s plans for a better life are shot to H-E-double toothpicks when she discovers another gift and Dru struggles with keeping his last secret. All the while, the chemistry between them, along with outside forces, pose a threat that could change their futures forever.

 

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Excerpt from Awakened – Book 1 of the Gods and Guardians series by CJ Anderson

 

"It all happens so fast. Dru is calling my name and I look up toward the cliff. When I move my head I catch a glimpse of something in my peripheral vision; something big, something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight. It’s some sort of large and scary looking creature and it’s prowling straight toward me.

 

The creature is as large as a bear, but it has the body and head of a lion with something that looks like a goat rising out of its back and a long tail, at least six feet long, whipping around with the head of what looks to be a large, creepy venomous snake. My pulse quickens as if fear itself were trapping me and I’m incapacitated.

 

I think I must be either a) dreaming, b) crazy, or c) dead because then I see Dru flying through the air. What the hell? He is going to kill himself! What is he doing?

 

Dru slams into the monster; it flies through the air and then drops to the ground. As far as I can tell, with the exception of the snake, which is partially smashed beneath the body, the monster is knocked out. The snake head is making a high pitched hissing sound and it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

 

Then, Dru is right beside me holding me tight against him. Both of our hearts are pounding.

 

“Alayna! Alayna, luv, are you OK?” Dru asks, his voice uneasy.

 

I’m baffled. “Me? Am I OK? What about you? You just jumped, no flew, no, I don’t know what the hell you did but you just slammed into a...a …a…was that a chimera?!...and after jumping from that height, you just walked away!” I stammer.

 

“I know,” Dru says, “and I can explain. But first, I think we need to head back the way we came before our friend wakes up. She is going to be pissed off!”

 

He grabs my hand and we run. I’m fast, but it’s hard to maneuver through the woods with all the brush and vegetation, much of which is waist high.

 

We’re about a quarter mile from the motorcycle when we finally see the trail. Dru slows down for just a moment, looks around and grabs my hand. “Faster!” He yells. “It’s coming.”

 

I chance a quick glance behind us and see three enraged heads. One is roaring, one hissing, and one is making a terrible ear-deafening bleating sound. I run faster than I have ever run before, even faster than yesterday at the track. Adrenaline is rushing through my veins so quickly that it keeps me going.

 

We’re almost there but the creature is gaining on us. We can see the motorcycle at the bottom of the cliff. All we have to do is run down the hill and turn the corner and we will be home free."

 

About the Author

 

CJ Anderson has been obsessed with science fiction and fantasy for as long as she can remember. Star Wars, Superman and Transformers are among her earliest memories. But it was Madeline L’Engle’s book, A Wrinkle in Time, that first grabbed her attention as an elementary student to the genre in the world of books. She has been reading Young Adult, Science Fiction and Fantasy ever since!

 

Creating stories has been a life-long journey for CJ. As a young child she create stories to tell her imaginary friends. Later on in school, when she became bored during class, adventures in fairytale lands, were a common theme running wild in her imagination. It never really occurred to her to write them down, though, until she was older and taking a class on creativity. Once she started writing, she never wanted to stop. She says it’s one of the best decisions she’s ever made.

 

CJ has been teaching Gifted & Talented for six years and has been both encouraged and inspired by her students. She lives in Iowa with her husband, two beautiful daughters and two cats. When she isn’t writing, teaching or spending time with her family, you can find her working out, reading or fangirling, of course! The God Kissed: Awakened is her first novel and the first book in a planned trilogy.

 

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Giveaway Details

There is a tour wide giveaway. Prizes include the following

A $25 Amazon gift card

5 $5 Amazon gift cards

 

Giveaway is International

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Blitz: Show Time by Phil Harvey

Title: Show Time

Author: Phil Harvey

Published: April 2nd, 2012

Publisher: Lost Coast Press

Genre: Thriller

Content Warning: Mild sexual content and language

Recommended Age: 18+

 

Synopsis:

 

Future viewing audiences have become totally desensitized to violence and entirely dependent on sensation to escape their boring workaday lives—an addiction nurtured by the media with graphic portrayals of war and crime and with so-called reality programming. Now, TV execs in pursuit of the only things they care about—higher ratings and bigger paychecks—have created the ultimate reality show: Seven people, each bearing the scars of his or her past, are deposited on an island in the middle of Lake Superior. Given some bare necessities and the promise of $400,000 each if they can endure, the three women and four men risk death by starvation or freezing as the Great Lakes winter approaches. The island is wired for sound, and flying drones provide the video feed, so everything the contestants do and say is broadcast worldwide. Their seven-month ordeal is entirely unscripted, they can’t ask for help or they forfeit the prize, and as far as the network is concerned—the fewer survivors the better.

 

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Excerpt from Show Time by Phil Harvey

 

Day 198

 

THE SNOW WAS DEEP, drifting and crusting into whorled shapes under the pale sky. The thermometer nailed to the tree at the edge of the camp area read minus 11, inching down toward the minus-40 line where Fahrenheit and Celsius were equal. Ambrose had a bet with himself that it wouldn’t go that far.

 

He puffed his breath out, watched the faint cloud quickly disappear in the dry Lake Superior air. I’m going to do it today, he thought. I’m going to start today. The time has come.

 

He walked carefully to the tree where three wood saws hung, and selected the smallest, a band-type saw with an eighteen-inch blade stretched between the ends of a bowed metal tube. The teeth of the saw were deeply serrated, worn from cutting wood, hundreds of small logs and sticks that had kept them from freezing. He tested the teeth. For all the work they had performed, they remained remarkably sharp. This saw would do, this saw and his hunting knife.

 

He checked the leg pocket of his pants for the waterproof match container. In the same pocket there were three fire-starter pellets. No shortage of those.

 

As Ambrose left the clearing, Maureen and Ashai looked up. Ambrose flipped his fingers in a little wave. Ashai nodded back. Maureen looked at him for a moment and then went back to the tedious job of softening boiled lichen with her teeth. It was all they’d had to eat for five days.

 

Ambrose walked slowly and with great care along the trail to Rudy’s camp, the little saw hanging heavy in his hand. As he walked, his eyes darted from side to side, alert for a rabbit or a vole or perhaps even a fox, but there was no sign of edible life, only fir trees and yew bushes.

 

Ambrose had been hungry before. He had gone without food for three days on a camping trip in Manitoba. It had not been pleasant, but at the end of the third day they had arrived back at their truck and driven straight to an all-night diner at the intersection of Route 124 and old route 42 where their hunger was soon sated with pancakes and maple syrup.

 

Here, it had settled into a rhythm. When he woke in the middle of the night, and again in the morning, well before dawn, there was an empty feeling in his stomach, an urgent pull, a void. He knew the feeling would come, and he was afraid of it. Usually, it went away for a few hours during the daylight. Then it came back.

 

Sometimes, with the others, Ambrose drank hot water just to have some feeling in his belly, but the water didn’t make the empty feeling go away. From the dreaded gnawing, it would progress to a sense of weakness. At the really bad moments, when he sat or lay in the darkness, he could feel his strength draining from his extremities toward the center of his body, a sense that his vital parts were demanding nourishment, and his blood was pulling his energy inward like a turtle retracting its head and legs.

 

At those moments, Ambrose felt himself becoming weaker and, truly, when he stood up afterward he felt as though his body would not do what he asked, chop wood or walk far. At such moments there was no question of returning to the den he shared with Cecily. He sat down or lay back and hoped for that terrible draining, weakening sensation to go away.

 

It didn’t take long to reach the clearing on the north shore. What was left of Rudy’s shelter was barely visible under the deep snow, but it was enough to mark the shallow grave where they had left Rudy’s body two months before.

 

Ambrose went to work. Under a stiff, frozen tarpaulin and a few inches of frozen dirt lay a hundred pounds of frozen meat. It was time.

 

There was a layer of fresh powder and then a crust, but the crust was thin and Ambrose broke it with his boot heel, quickly uncovering Rudy’s grave. The blue tarp just showed through the dirt. They had dumped enough soil on top of the tarp so the foxes and raccoons wouldn’t find it interesting. With the body frozen, there would be no smell. On that, at least, they had been right. There was no sign of animal digging.

 

Ambrose pushed the soil back with his gloved hands, standing from time to time to kick at a heavy frozen clod with his boots, then working again on his knees until the blue tarp over Rudy’s body was uncovered. He tugged at the corners of the tarp near where he knew Rudy’s head would be. It took some more kicking and digging until the corners came free. Then he pulled the tarp back slowly, one corner, then the other. There was Rudy. Frozen solid. His once-dark face was nearly white, ashen. One hand stuck off awkwardly to the side, the head turned back in the direction of the main camp.

 

Ambrose slid his hunting knife carefully out of its sheath and slowly, fearfully, began cutting the back of Rudy’s parka pants.

 

***

 

“Do you think they’ll do it?” Janice McNeely said. She was staring at the #12 monitor.

 

Jimmy Asaki looked up. “Yes,” he said. “They’re starving.”

 

“They’ve uncovered him. Look.”

 

“I see.”

 

“If they do it, do you think Bud will air it?”

 

“Probably.”

 

“Maybe they’ll keep it away from the open mikes.”

 

“I don’t think they care about that anymore. I don’t think they care what reaches the open lines. They’re fighting for their lives.”

 

About the Author

 

Phil Harvey’s fiction has appeared in twenty-two literary magazines, including Phantasmagoria, which nominated one of his stories for a Pushcart Prize, and Antietam Review, which named another the winner of its annual contest. Most recently his work has appeared in The MacGuffin, Natural Bridge, and the Dos Passos Review.

 

Harvey’ nonfiction includes: Let Every Child Be Wanted, which drew praise from former President Jimmy Carter; Government Creep, which, as one reviewer noted, “proves that government has invaded virtually every nook and cranny of our lives,” and The Government vs. Erotica, which Publishers Weekly and Booklist praised, the ALA Intellectual Freedom Roundtable nominated as the year’s best book on intellectual freedom, and Media Coalition called “a frightening, enlightening story.”

 

By day, Phil Harvey is president of DKT International, a non-profit family planning and AIDS prevention organization, and president and majority shareholder of Adam & Eve, a mail-order business that sells sexually oriented books and films.

 

He lives with his wife, Harriet Lesser, in Cabin John, Maryland. He is stepfather and grandfather to several very promising kids. He welcomes emails from readers who have serious and thoughtful questions about any of his stories, novels or books.

 

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Book Tour {Interview} Cursed Rebel by H.G. Lynch with Giveaway

 

Title: Cursed Rebel
Author: H.G. Lynch
Published: July 14th, 2015
Publisher: Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Recommended Age:  15+
 
Synopsis:  Never trust a pretty face. My grandma taught me that. She warned me about the Fair Folk but I never believed her…until I was kidnapped by one. And damn, he is pretty.

 
But Fin was sent to bring me to his King, and if I want to survive the Otherworld, I have no choice but to trust him – for now.

 

Oh, and did I mention my sexy best friend is hunting me? I should’ve listened to Gran.

 

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Excerpt from Cursed Rebel by H.G. Lynch:

 
Looking at the faery boy in front of me, with his exquisite features and striking eyes, I thought that Grandma had been right. I was realising she had been right about a lot of things. I wished I’d listened to her better, wished I’d believed her when she warned me about the Fair Folk.

 
Staring into those inhumanly bright eyes, seeing the glitter of something cruel beneath that prettiness, I whimpered. I didn’t mean to, and the second I did, I wished I hadn’t. I couldn’t show fear there, or the beautiful monsters would tear me apart like well-disguised lions.

About the Author:
 
H.G. Lynch is a Scottish Paranormal Romance author, avid reader, and cat-lover. She spends most of her days writing, while wrestling her cat, Sooki, off her laptop. She believes that chocolate cake can save the world, and is highly caffeine-addicted. She loves horse-riding, Star Trek, and snow. Her books are dark fantasy romances, usually with a bad boy and a bad girl. Sometimes with zombies, sometimes vampires, sometimes other things.

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Author Interviews

 

Where’s home for you? North Eastern Scotland

 

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned? To believe in myself and not judge myself by others’ opinions.

 

What is your most embarrassing moment? Eh….I’d really rather not say. Let’s just say I’m scarred for life.

 

What’s your favorite line from a book? “It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.” – William Herondale, Clockwork Prince

 

Are any of your characters inspired by real people? A few. One is based on myself, another is based on my best friend.

 

Do you have a routine for writing? Not really. I just require peace, an idea, and a lot of Cola.

 

Where and when do you prefer to do your writing? At night usually, or first thing in the morning. In my bed or on my bedroom floor.

 

What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received about your writing? Oh God. I don’t know. Probably that my book made someone cry – that sounds mean, but it proves to me that my characters are connecting with readers, that readers are feeling the story. That’s the most important thing to me.

 

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to write? I’ve written some pretty heart-breaking scenes in some of my books, ones where I’ve had to stop typing because my tears were getting on the keyboard. They’re always hard because I know I’m making my characters suffer.

 

What are you working on now? Several things. I have an endless amount of ideas.

 

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Giveaway Details:

 

There is a tour wide giveaway. Prizes include the following:

 

$15 Amazon gift card

 

Giveaway is International.

a Rafflecopter giveaway