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. :)

Claudia Must Die and Happy Holidays

Today I'm excited to share the new release by TB Markinson, Claudia Must Die. Congratulations, TB! If you don't already know TB you should really check out her work. She is a prolific and talented writer and a super nice person to boot. 

One quick note before I get to the book. I don't think I'll be blogging the rest of the month so I want to say Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year now! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season. I am getting back on track with writing and blogging and life in general and I'm looking forward to starting fresh on the blog in January.  

And now to the book!

Blurb:

Claudia doesn’t feel like herself anymore—she feels like prey. Her husband’s hired goons have stalked her all the way to Boston and will only stop their pursuit once she is dead.

Divorce is not an option. Instead, she has stolen a bunch of her man’s money to disappear into another life.

In order for Claudia to live, someone else must die. A lookalike college student becomes the target capable of freeing her from an awful marriage. 

The plan goes horribly awry. Instead of murdering Claudia’s double, the assassins shoot the woman’s lover who is the cousin of a powerful Irish mobster. Claudia becomes hunted by all involved. Can she survive? Should she? 

Excerpt:

At first, everything had been roses and wine. When others warned her about Dennis, Claudia laughed it off.
“Use your head,” Claudia’s mother had said. “How could a man in his early thirties make so much money owning a handful of run-down bars in two small towns in the West?”“What, you think he’s a drug dealer or something?” Claudia had broken into hysterics. “He hardly looks like a gangster, Mother. Dennis doesn’t wear any jewelry. Not even a wedding ring.”
In Claudia’s mind, a gangster would at least wear a gold necklace. And, he had excellent table manners. There was no way Dennis could be a thug. How many scrawny five-foot-six guys were?
         They had married after seven months. Neither had intended to marry so quickly, but they had visited Vegas for a long weekend, got drunk, and got hitched. It wasn’t until Claudia moved into Dennis’s house that she started to notice things. He wouldn’t come home for days, and when he did, he refused to tell her where he had been. He racked up a lot of mileage on her car, not his. When Claudia asked about it, his reply was a cold stare that made her legs feel like jelly. Granted, one of his bars was in Greeley, but that was only a twenty-minute drive from their home in Loveland. How did the miles add up so quickly?         After a year, they started to fight constantly. Verbal arguments. After another year, the fights turned violent. Claudia ended up in the hospital—still nothing serious enough for her to walk out. Not yet. Instead, she started hoarding cash. In the beginning, it was a little bit here and there. It was simple. Claudia would request cash back when she used her debit card at the grocery store. Dennis liked her cooking; he never questioned how much his wife spent on food. When she realized her embezzlement plan would take years, not months, The Hunted chose a more drastic solution. The next time her husband crossed the line … 

Purchase links:

Amazon (US)   /  Amazon (UK)

About the author: 

T. B. Markinson is an American writer, living in England. When she isn’t writing, she’s traveling around the world, watching sports on the telly, visiting pubs in England, or taking the dog for a walk. Not necessarily in that order. T. B. has published A Woman Lost, Marionette, and Confessions From A Coffee Shop.   

Mailing List:

Sign up to TB’s New Release Mailing List here. Your email will never be shared and you will only be contacted when a new book is out.

Links:

Twitter        Facebook        Blog        Goodreads     Amazon Author Page

Best of luck to TB and Happy Holidays to all! See you in January. :)

Beacon by Angela Brown

My Untethered Realms buddy Angela Brown has an exciting new release with Evernight Teen called Beacon and I'm happy to host her today as she kicks off her blog tour. Please join me in saying congratulations and best wishes to Angela! Now I'm turning things over to her for an intriguing (and creepy!) look at Beacon. 

You are Colony Material

You should be glad you wake up to a world where murders, burglaries and sexual assaults are a thing of the past, only items you read about in your most recent digital historical texts, vagrancies of The Fold and the failed America of before. There are no physical books to weigh you down, no book bindings to stretch on your fourth read through of your favorite Colony-approved novel, no new book smell to bother your senses. All your basic needs and some of your wants are taken care of, all for one small price: a fresh bag of your blood, once every quarter, for the rest of your life. The rules in The Colony may seem a bit much, but they’re for your own good.

C: Execute command: Cancel Communication

Hi! You don’t know me, and as long as I do my job right, you never will. I’m just a Net pirate hacking The Colony’s comms server. They send little broadcasts like that crap above on the regular to the registered citizens. I can’t help wondering how many of the poor schmucks know they’re being brainwashed…or if any of them know, do they even care? I try to NOT let questions like that bring me down. I know some out there realize all this “Colony perfect” is too good to be true. Just as everything walking on two feet ain’t human or vampire (Frag calling them “vampeer”. I never liked their re-imaging campaign.)

There’s more you can learn about The Colony in this book, Beacon. It’s got one thing going for it from the jump: It’s NOT Colony-approved, so you know it’s good.

You can find out more about Beacon below. I better get back to deleting a few more of these brainwashing gimmicks from the communications queue before The Colony realizes I’m here.

Your friendly Net pirate.

Out.

Beacon - For seventeen-year-old Macie Breen, life in The Colony is a daily norm of being the odd girl out, that is, until everyday predictable slams to a screeching halt. Forced to the capital city of Bliss, Macie's life becomes a horrific unraveling as she confronts daunting truths about The Colony as well as who, or what, she really is.

Buy links: Evernight | Amazon

Excerpt:

            The corner of Thane’s lips curved in his infamous smirk. “I’m here to protect you from you, silly.” The elevator dinged our arrival to our floor. Thankfully, floors for the Attendees were guarded by other Surreption agents, to prevent citizens from accessing them by surprise––and to keep out the expected rebel against Bliss.

            I fell silent, thinking about Thane’s answer. Any other day, it would have been a joke. We’d ha, ha, ha, laugh it off as Thane being the smartass he was. I’d punch him in the shoulder. He’d feign pain and we’d move on. But now, what if he was right? Not just keeping me from taking my anger out on some pink-haired guy making fun of me. But from whomever—or whatever—I really am. What if it was the world that needed protection from me?

Author bio:

Born and raised in Little Rock, AR, Angela now calls Central Texas home. She's a lover of Wild Cherry Pepsi and chocolate/chocolate covered delicious-ness. Steampunk, fantasy and paranormal to contemporary - mostly young adult - fill her growing library of books. Mother to a rambunctious darling girl aptly nicknamed Chipmunk, life stays busy. Her favorite quote keeps her moving: "You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Contact links:

e-mail: tomewriter@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AngelaLBrownWrites
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ALBrownwrites
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6476148.Angela_Brown