First Bitten by Samantha Towle

Walking home after a night out drowning her sorrows with her best friend, Carrie, Alexandra Jones stupidly takes a phone call from her cheating ex-boyfriend, Eddie, and in her anger hurls her phone into the forest before her.

But when Alex goes to retrieve her phone from the undergrowth, she and Carrie come face-to-face with a monster they never even knew existed, a Vârcolac (a nightmarish vampire-werewolf hybrid) and he's in search of fresh blood. The next thing Alex knows, she is staring at the impossibly handsome but mysterious Nathan who has helped bring her back to life, but not to the life she left.

To her horror, she discovers she has now become a blood-drinking Vârcolac herself and  is the only female of her kind, with the potential for breeding a whole new army of Vârcolacs if they can only track her down and press her into service.

And while Alex gets to know Nathan and his shape-shifting family as they offer her the protection she so desperately needs, unbeknown to all of them, the Vârcolacs are getting closer

What I thought:

I'm ultra-excited to have found such a brilliant new series! First Bitten is Book 1 in The Alexandre Jones Series and I devoured it in a day. I don't want to give anything away, so all I'll say is it has all the elements to make up the perfect urban fantasy: a very real and sympathetic main character, a terrifying supernatural situation and the hottest love interest you could imagine. It's all these things, without being  at all predictable and I can't wait for Book 2!

Congratulations, Sam Towle, looks like you've got another page-turning bestseller on your hands.

Links:

Samantha's Blog

First Bitten on Amazon.com

First Bitten on Amazon.co.uk

The Forever Girl Giveaway Winner!

The winner of The Forever Girl Giveaway is Janelle Madigan!

She gets an ebook and a beautiful scented candle,

courtesy of author Rebecca Hamilton.

Hey Janelle, can you use the 'Contact Me' page to send over your email and address

so we can get your prizes to you. Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who entered! xxx

Free For One Day! Becoming Edward by Faye Meredith

Just thought I'd let you know that Faye Meredith's fantastic novel

Becoming Edward is free to download today!

A guy starts dressing up like Edward Cullen to attract a girl who’s a massive Twilight fan. Trouble is he gets it wrong and it kind of goes to his head, with disastrous consequences.

Becoming Edward is set in the UK and is a light-hearted, fun novel about what happens when obsession goes too far. Perfect for both Twilight and non-Twilight fans.

Faye Meredith talks about Becoming Edward

Becoming Edward has turned into a bit of a Marmite book (for those of you outside the UK, Marmite is a sandwich spread that people either adore or can't stand). It's really divided opninion amongst readers, which I never expected. Some loathe it, others love it.

I guess some readers were expecting another Twilight and, while it does have a love triangle, that's about as far as the similarities go. The characters are just ordinary people,and are a little bit flawed. It's more about how Twilight affects these people and makes them behave.

Rachel wants to find her own Edward Cullen to sweep her off her feet. Clive is in love with Rachel but can't figure out how to get through to her, while Lewis decides the best way of attracting her is to change his player ways and dress up like Edward. But like most guys he completely misses the point of why women love Edward. And it's this that makes the gears grind in the story.

It's not a spoof or a send up. I happen to be a massive fan of the saga and made sure that Becoming Edward doesn't mock or belittle Twilight. All the humour is at the expense of the characters in Becoming Edward, never Twilight, which I hope people appreciate!

If you want to get hold of your free copy today, here are the links:

Becoming Edward on Amazon for Kindle (UK)

Free on Thursday 8th March 8am - Friday 9th March 8am GMT

Becoming Edward on Amazon for Kindle (US)

Free on Thursday 8th March 12am-12pm Standard Pacific Time
     

The Forever Girl Book Tour - Guest Post & Giveaway

I first met Rebecca Hamilton on Authonomy, a writer's site run by Harper Collins. We chatted and bantered on the forums and then she gave me some very insightful advice on writing, specifically to do with a character's viewpoint, and how readers will often connect more fully with your protagonist if you write from inside their head and show events unfolding purely from their point of view.
Out of the hundreds of excerpts I read on the site, Becca's is one of the one's which stuck out most vividly and I'm beyond excited to see her novel has finally been published. It's on my kindle to read asap!

GIVEAWAY!!!

Rebecca has kindly agreed to give away an ebook copy of The Forever Girl  to one lucky winner. And if you live in the US, you'll also get this fantastic Forever Girl scented candle - gorgeous! 

All you have to do to win is leave your name in the comments box below.

The Forever Girl

Sophia Parsons’ family has skeletons, but they aren’t in their graves... Solving the mystery of an ancestor’s hanging might silence the clashing whispers in Sophia's mind, but the cult in her town and the supernaturals who secretly reside there are determined to silence her first. As Sophia unknowingly crosses the line into an elemental world full of vampire-like creatures, shapeshifters, and supernatural grim reapers, she meets Charles, a man who becomes both lover and ally. But can she trust him? It’s not until someone nearly kills Sophia that she realizes the only way to unveil the source of her family's curse: abandon her faith or abandon her humanity. If she wants to survive, she must accept her who she is, perform dark magic, and fight to the death for her freedom.

Rebecca Hamilton On Writing

I probably spend about 10% of my writing time actually writing. Writing is the easy part. All you have to do is follow your emotions, put your imagination to paper, and keep asking the ‘what if’ questions you’d never want to answer yourself in real life.

Beyond that, there’s listening to your beta readers, rewriting, trading critique, re-writing, revising, editing, copy-editing, proofreading, deciding that it still needs another re-write, having to revise, edit, copy-edit, and proofread again. And on it goes, with not one of those steps being as easy as they sound to those who don’t know what each of those skills entail.
Of course, we get all the help we can. Sometimes it’s free…other times, it only requires we sign over our life.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Writing isn’t a job. Some can say they will sit at their desk from 9:00 to 5:00 and write—or work on any of the above mentioned writing activities. But writing is a lifestyle. You are working on your writing while you read. You’re working on it while you shower. While you sleep, change a baby’s diaper, do the dishes…you’re writing. When you walk through a forest trail and you notice a large oak tree that looks completely out of place among a forest full of redwoods or when you notice the receptionist at your optometrist’s office is squinting to read her paperwork … you’re writing.

Writing is just one of those things that, in my experience, consumes you. It becomes part of who you are. You live your life, same as before, but everything means more now. Everything is valuable. Writing becomes an outlet for life.

This is where you can find Rebecca:
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads

Don't forget to leave your name in the comments box below if you'd like to win a copy of The Forever Girl and that gorgeous scented candle!
The contest closes at midnight on March 9th

WOOD SPIRIT - A New England Horror Story

Johanna Frappier is one of those authors who makes me envious with her whip smart originality and fantastic storylines. Her latest novel Wood Spirit is, in my opinion, her best book yet. It's spooky, grizzly and hilarious with a cast of characters so real I'm sure she can't have made them up. This book had me pinned to its pages.

We're introduced to ghostbuster, Sebastian Park, and it's not love at first sight - he's a self-proclaimed womaniser and con-artist. But when he's called to a job in the too-good-to-be-true town of Peachtree, the place works some kind of magic on him, making him question who he is and what he's doing with his life.

If you like your comedy black and your horror left-of-centre, then this is most definitely the novel for you. I give Wood Spirit five black blood-dripping stars.

Wood Spirit is available from the following places:

Amazon

Smashwords

Barnes & Noble

Cameron's Law by Mia Darien

Author Mia Darien is up on the blog today, talking about her vampire novel Cameron's Law.

Vampires are people, too. Cameron's Law says so. Vampire and public face Sadie Stanton called Adelheid, CT home and it attracts a lot of attention. It attracts a lot more when vampires start attacking werewolves without provocation.

Can Sadie keep the community from descending into chaos and war before it brings all of to harm? And can she do it when she herself gets thrust into the spotlight?

What will readers like about your book?

Oh my, this is a tricky question, because I believe that every reader brings something different to and from a book. But... I've been told that I'm a fairly humorous writer, by anyone who enjoys a dry and often kind of sarcastic wit!

Otherwise, I try to take a spin on the vampires and werewolves genre that not everyone is doing, though I know I'm not the first to do it. I think people will enjoy seeing these mythical beings in "real life" as themselves. To read about their struggle to fit into a human world when they're not human. I like to think the struggle speaks to the... well... human condition. Or maybe Inhuman condition? Amidst other external trials and tribulations, in the form of mysteries and suspense and drama. All that fun stuff.

What inspired you to write it?

I actually started writing this series when I was a teenager, more than a decade ago. I set it aside for a while as life got so incredibly crazy but never forgot the stories and characters, so I turned back to them with a more mature eye and here we have the stories written, being written and will be written. What inspired it all, though, I'm not sure I could say. It was a long time ago! But the mythical has always fascinated me. I used to just thumb through the "Werewolf Encyclopedia" and be totally engrossed. I have no idea where it came from, but I run with it.

Do you have any new works in the pipeline?

Yes, indeed! I always have new works in progress. The second book in the series, “When Forever Died,” is now available and I am writing the third book in the series, as well as several other projects in various states of completion.

Who are your favorite authors?

These days? Let's see. P. N. Elrod has been a long time favorite. I count her Vampire Files series as a big inspiration for the writing I do now. Joe Abercrombie is a top five favorite these days. I’m in a new apoplectic fit waiting for his next book. "The Firebringer Trilogy" by Meredith Ann Pierce is one of my favorite books of all time. I love a lot of classics too, like Austen the Bronte sisters and so on. I like a lot of authors, so it's hard to narrow it down really.

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.

I still watch "Sailor Moon" from time to time, but only the original, subtitled and uncut Japanese version! ('Cause that totally makes up for this little guilty pleasure.)

Mia Darien has lived in New England all of her life and knows that no matter where she goes from here, New England is always going to live in her. Presently, she still lives in the land of snow and fast talkers, with her husband, her son and her pets. She writes a bit of everything genre fiction (horror, romance, mystery, fantasy and science fiction) and thinks it sounds like an odd joke: a unicorn, a space monster, and a pair of zombie lovers walk into a murder investigation...

Mia's Website: http://www.miadarien.com

Cameron's Law on Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/117615