This World Bites by Loni Townsend

I'm honored to be one of the stop's on the tour to promote This World Bites, by everyone's favorite Ninja Squirrel Loni Townsend. Loni is here today with an excerpt but before I get to that let me share the awesome cover for her book:

Yay, Loni!

And now here is an excerpt that went right to my Walking Dead lover's heart. :D

Chairs scraped the floor, pushed backward to be vacated. Dropped forks clattered as they struck plates, abandoned with half-eaten meals left behind. Each fleeing footfall was fast paced and directed toward the door. Huh. Guess the bite was a bit more serious than I’d thought.

The waiter’s face paled and a small frown creased his full, kissable lips. Wait, no, strike that. His face was already pale. “There is no vaccine for a zombie bite. Poor boy. So young too.”

Zombie, eh? I had a name now, though the condition didn’t sound good.

Duke dropped his voice and leaned toward me. “Perhaps kill him now, before he turns.”

I prepared to calm Michael. If there was one thing he hated, it was being treated the age he looked. Guardians stopped physically aging when their elemental master reached maturity. Technically, he was older than I was, but we chose not to broach the topic.

I gathered my will and pushed down the surge of emotion threatening to explode from the volatile guardian. Controlling my guardians was one of the benefits of the inextricable bond between us. Most of the time, I used it for long-distance requests or voiceless prompting when I didn’t want to look bossy. It was really great when I had a hankering for ice cream.

Book Blurb:

It’s her first day on a new world and Cera’s already found trouble. Michael, her guardian, has been bitten by a zombie and will soon join the undead ranks.
Everyone tells her there’s no cure, but Cera isn’t one to be deterred. She’s willing to face off with zombie hordes, demon slavers, and black market informants if it means she’ll find a cure for Michael. But she’s not the only one hunting for something.
Something is hunting her.

Links:

Goodreads ~ Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Kobo

About the Author:

Loni Townsend
Wife. Mother. Writer. Ninja. Squirrel.

By day, she writes code. By predawn darkness, she writes fantasies. All other times, she writes in her head.
People call her peculiar with a twisted sense of fashion, but don't let those understatements fool you. Her behavior is perfectly normal for a squirrel disguised as a human. That's part of being a ninja—blending in.
She makes her home in Idaho with her sadistically clever—yet often thwarted—husband, two frighteningly brilliant children, and three sneaky little shibas.
Find her on her blog or social media.

Contact info:
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | Goodreads

Congratulations, Loni!

Don't Forget to Breathe by Cathrina Constantine

I'm so happy to be taking part in the cover reveal for the latest great book by Cathrina Constantine, Don't Forget to Breathe. Congratulations, Cathy!! I think this cover is extraordinary.

Book Blurb:

Sixteen-year-old Leocadia arrives home from school to find her mom’s bloody body. Unaware that the killer still lingers, she rushes to her mother’s side, only to be grabbed from behind and then everything fades to black.
After a year of retrograde amnesia and battling personal demons, Leo’s dreams are getting worse—she’s starting to remember. More bodies are discovered and they seem to be oddly linked to her
mom’s unsolved homicide.
When Leo allows her friend, Henry, to drag her to the haunted Lucien Mansion, misty ghosts appear, ghosts that just might lead her to her mother’s murderer.
Will Leo let her memories threaten her into a relapse or, will she fight to find her mother’s killer – only to become his next victim?

This seems like such a creepy read! I know I will love it. The book will be out on February 7, 2015 from Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing.

To celebrate the release, Cathrina is hosting her first Facebook party with ebook prizes and a giveaway. You can join the party here.

Congratulations again and best of luck to Cathrina! :)

And as you can see from my Thunderclap at the side of the page I am very close to 100 supporters now! Thanks to everyone who has supported me so far. If you haven't please consider adding your support here! I would happily return the favor any time.

Polar Day Excerpt, #SpecFic Chat, and Thunderclap

My new book Polar Day will be out on February 5 and I thought I'd share a little taste of the book here today. This excerpt features Aleksei Nechayev, the antagonist of both Polar Night and The Turnagain Arm. Aleksei is a supporting player this time around, but he's still up to no good. :)

The inquisitive Fairbanks detective Danny Fitzpatrick had ruined the peaceful home Aleksei had maintained in the Arctic town of Coldfoot for decades. He enjoyed checking in on the detective and, while he couldn’t help but feel a strange fondness for the man he had chosen to let live, he always hoped to find him struggling with some new problem. He was tickled to see that this time he got his wish.
Aleksei grinned from ear to ear as he read about the mysterious fires that were plaguing Fairbanks while the city suffered through its worst heat wave in history. How fascinating! And by all accounts, the police, including the dear detective, had no idea who was starting the fires or even how they were doing it. 
Fire was one of the few things Aleksei feared and hated as much as humans did. He still remembered the time he had been nearly burned to death by a male witch not long after he’d arrived in Alaska. He couldn’t help but wonder if a supernatural force was responsible for these fires as well. Was there a witch on the loose in Fairbanks?
Since he was safe and sound on the other side of the world, Aleksei desperately hoped so. How would his favorite detective deal with a situation like that? And what of the fire starter? What was his, or her, motivation? What was the game? 
His lousy winter here in Australia had suddenly taken a surprisingly lovely turn. Clearly, the summer in Fairbanks was turning out to be more horrific than anyone there could have imagined. He couldn’t wait to see how it all unfolded. It was going to be such fun.

If you'd like another peek, you can also read the first chapter here at my website. And to enter to win a signed copy of the book, check out my Goodreads giveaway. 

Also, my writing group Untethered Realms has started a new monthly chat on Twitter: #SpecFicChat. We're talking about all things Speculative Fiction. M.Pax kicked things off on Friday with the topic "Punking it up. What’s the attraction of Steampunk?" The chat is ongoing and you can join in any time - just use the #SpecFicChat tag. River Fairchild will be hosting the next chat on Friday, February 20. If you're interested in Speculative Fiction please jump in and join us!

Finally, thank you to everyone who has supported my Polar Day Thunderclap campaign! At the time of this writing I'm at 80 supporters and only need 20 more to get my message sent out. If you haven't already and are willing to support me please do so here!

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend and has a good week ahead! :)

Thunderclap, Ice Fest, & a Goodreads Giveaway

Hello, all! I hope your week is going well so far. Last week was a busy one for me as I took my mom to her last round (yay!) of chemotherapy. She is feeling great, but now all we can do is wait to see the results of her PET scan in February and hope that the cancer is gone. These past six months have certainly been emotional for my family and we are all so glad to have them in the past.

Bookfest @ IceFest

The end of last week was fun though as I participated in BookFest at IceFest in Hamilton, Ohio on Saturday with my bookfest buddy Tara Tyler. We had such a good time! I'm always amazed how much I enjoy these fests considering how introverted I am, but I have gotten to the point where I really enjoy the interactions. It was great to meet not only readers but also local authors and I made some great new friendships. I also learned about some other regional groups and fests that I intend to explore, so I'm excited about that. And last but not least I sold a few books so all in all it was a very successful day.

If you haven't been to any book festivals or conventions and have the opportunity to go to one I highly recommend doing it. :)

Last week I mentioned my plan to shamelessly beg for support for my Thunderclap campaign that I started for the release of Polar Day on February 5. I'm more than a week late but am now here to beg! I need 100 supporters in order for my little message to go out so if you are able to throw some support my way I would be so grateful! And I will gladly return the favor at any time. Just click on the widget to support the campaign:


Finally, I have started a Polar Day giveaway on Goodreads and am giving out 3 signed copies of the book. The giveaway is active in the US and UK, Canada, and Australia. Click below if you are interested!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Polar Day

by Julie Flanders

Giveaway ends February 10, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I'm looking forward to hopping around and catching up with everyone after having to step back a bit from the blogosphere last week. :)

Untethered Realms News from Christine Rains & Angela Brown

As many people know I am proud to be part of the Untethered Realms writing group. So it's exciting for me to be able to share great news from two of my fellow UnRealms members and help spread the word about their work.

I had also planned to shamelessly beg people to help me promote the Thunderclap campaign I want to start for Polar Day today. But as is typical for me lately I can't seem to get in gear to actually set up the campaign, so I will save my begging for another day. Twelve days into 2015 and I am apparently still as lazy as I was in 2014. One of these days I will get my focus back.

For now though I'm happy to share the new release from Christine Rains, Loose Corset. Yay, Christine!

Loose Corset is the first installment in Christine's Dice & Debauchery trilogy with Ellora's Cave. It's a contemporary erotic romance and was released on Friday, so here are the purchase links for you to get your copy now:

Amazon
B&N
Kobo

You can also add Loose Corset on Goodreads.

Unfortunately my Word and Google drive software decided to act up last night when I was trying to open the document with the book blurb on it so I can't share that here, but you can read the spicy synopsis at any of the above links. In addition, Christine is hosting a fun and geeky giveaway this month to go along with the release. Enter through the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post!

I also want to share some awesome new covers from Angela Brown for her Shadow Jumpers Trilogy. (I've read the first one and it is a fantastic book!)

Here are the original covers, which were wonderful in their own right. But as Angela put it, these covers did not let readers know that the titles were part of a series.

So Angela conferred with designer Heather McCorkle and together they came up with these exciting new covers!

Duty or love...there can be only one.

A love worth fighting for...

Aren't they gorgeous? I've been meaning to read Book 2 for ages anyway and this made me want to hurry up and get to it ASAP.

Just click on the covers to get the titles on Amazon.

Congratulations and best of luck to both Angela and Christine! :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

IWSG and the Excitement/Anxiety of New Ideas

Hello fellow IWSG'ers! Welcome to the first IWSG meeting of 2015. That 5 at the end of that number is hard to believe, isn't it? I feel like the year 2000 and all the hype and hysteria surrounding Y2K was just a few years ago. I know I'm old when time moves that quickly.

Since our group has been around for a while now Alex and the other organizers have asked us to share a brief intro with this month's post. So if you don't know me already, I'm Julie and I am the author of three books - Polar Night, The Ghosts of Aquinnah, and Polar Day, which will be released on February 5, 2015. I also wrote a novella called The Turnagain Arm. I write fiction with more than a hint of the paranormal and I love dark stories of all kinds. I just debuted my new author tagline - "Mysteries Untethered by Time" - this week. I'm an animal lover and if you're around this blog for any length of time you're sure to meet my dog Clancy and my cat Nate. In addition, I'm (slightly) obsessed with Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. And finally, I'm a sports nut and rabid Ohio State Buckeye fan who is over the moon that my Buckeyes are in the National Championship next week. :D

As to my insecurity, I am actually super excited about some ideas I have for new books but also struggling with total anxiety and convinced I will never get the books written. One idea involves my Polar Night and Polar Day detective Danny Fitzpatrick with a new supernatural adversary - an extremely malevolent ghost. The other takes place during World War I here in my hometown of Cincinnati and is a bit like my Ghosts of Aquinnah book in that it is a historical story that also involves a ghost. It's safe to say I really love writing about ghosts!

But in spite of the fact that I have these ideas hopping around in my brain I've only managed to write one measly chapter, the first chapter for the Cincinnati book. I know I need to just sit down and write but I can't seem to focus. Perhaps I need to go back to this muse that has worked for me in the past.

http://www.jimchines.com/2011/04/comic-amusement/

I hope by next month I'll be able to report a little progress so my new muse doesn't shoot me in the back of the head. Wish me luck!

One of my goals for this month is to visit members of the group who are new to me, so I hope to meet lots of new people while also catching up with old friends.

Happy IWSG, all!

A New Look & a New Line for the New Year

Hello and Happy 2015! I hope this will be a wonderful year for all of us out here in blog land. I had a fantastic holiday and after taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging I'm excited to be back and looking forward to catching up with everyone.

One thing I'm excited to share is this new blog banner made for me by the amazing Erin of edhGraphics. I love it! I've wanted a blog banner for a long time but I've never hired anyone to make one because I had no clue what I actually wanted the banner to be.

But thanks to my sister I finally have something else I've always wanted - an author tagline. I couldn't come up with a single thing and mentioned my frustration to my sister, who thought up "Mysteries Untethered by Time" almost immediately. I love the line as much as I love the banner! Once I had the line I contacted Erin and she did the rest.

I'm excited about the tagline because it fits not only my published works but also my ideas I am trying to shape into new stories. I'm going to post more about those ideas in Wednesday's post for the first IWSG meeting of 2015, but suffice it to say I haven't moved much past the idea stage at this point. But with the new year and much of the stress of 2014 behind me I am optimistic that will change.

I'm also excited because my new book Polar Day will be released one month from today! This will be almost exactly two years since Polar Night was released so that is kind of fun. It's been an amazing two years to say the least. It's safe to say I will have a lot more to post about Polar Day in the coming weeks.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and here's to an even better 2015. :)