Teaser: Scorched Skies

It's that time again. Two weeks have passed since the last teaser so it's definitely time to tease you some more. Here's a scene from Scorched Skies (Fire Spirits #2)...

" “Oh definitely. Charlie, give me a hand to get these guys off the road.”

Ari glowered as Charlie immediately bent to toss an unconscious guy over his shoulder, heading towards the thick woodland to dump him there. “Hey, I can help.”

Striding by her with his own unconscious attacker, Jai pointed at the SUV. “Get in the car. I’m pissed at you for getting out of it in the first place.”

Outrage lit through her. “Hey I’m a big girl, I can make my own decisions.”

“Get in the car, Ari!” Charlie yelled now, his own eyes glittering with anger. 

Her mouth fell open, her cheeks blazing with indignation as the two men in her life stared at her, their expressions implacable. She made a ‘pfft’ sound and whirled around, stomping like a child towards the car. “Too much testosterone, infuriating cavemen, need someone else to boss around, stupid jerks…” she kept muttering insults under her breath until Charlie and Jai had cleared the road. Charlie jumped into the passenger seat as Jai pressed a hand to the bonnet of the SUV. The engine immediately started and he walked around, pulling the driver’s door open, bristling with aggression. "

Sam x

Giveaway Winner - Warriors of Ankh

Hey folks, I'm pleased to announce the winner of the Warriors of Ankh Giveaway is...

 Jasmine McIlquham

Congratulations! I've emailed the winner, who now has 48 hours to respond before another winner is chosen :-)

Thanks to everyone who entered. You made me (or rather Eden and Noah) feel very loved!

Sam x  

Scorched Skies - The Book Trailer

Hey folks,

I've written the book description for Scorched Skies (Fire Spirits #2) AND created the book trailer. Check 'em out...

Scorched Skies (Fire Spirits #2) 

The White King has crossed the line, sounded the horn, sent out the wolves.

When blood is shed and life is lost the reality of Ari’s position as both hunter and prey finally sets in. It seems her father will stop at nothing to force her will to his own and distracted by Charlie’s latest mistake and her seemingly misguided attraction to Jai, Ari never thought to fear anyone else but the Jinn King.

Blindsided and attacked, Ari learns a new wolf has joined the hunt. A dark sorcerer believes he knows a way to bleed the power of the Seal and wield it as his own, and he is even less patient than The White King.

The War for the Seal has only just begun… and it’s time for Ari to turn it on its head.

It’s time for Ari to stop acting like the hunted.

It’s time for Ari to become the hunter.

Moon Spell is FREE (for 5 days)

I made a booboo with Moon Spell the other day and it completely disappeared off amazon and I had to republish it... so to apologize for my stupidity Moon Spell (the Tale of Lunarmorte #1) is FREE to download from amazon for the next five days.

Here are the links:

amazon.com - HERE 

amazon.co.uk - HERE 

amazon.de - HERE 

amazon.fr - HERE

amazon.es - HERE 

amazon.it - HERE






sam x

Teaser: This Weeping Frost

This Weeping Frost, the companion novella to Drip Drop Teardrop, is coming along slowly. I'm working on my bigger projects, like Scorched Skies (Fire Spirits #2), so This Weeping Frost gets attention whenever I have a spare moment. That means I have no definite date of release for it unfortunately. I'm also not really sure these novellas can be classified as young adult. They're more for girls in college... so I've decided to not label them YA just as paranormal romance. Anyhoo, I'm halfway through the novella so I thought I'd give you a little teaser...

This Weeping Frost (a Drip Drop Teardrop novella)

Sarah is empty.

Hiding behind a smile, Sarah Lewis is a lonely party girl with a silent home life, absent parents and a well-guarded heart. With a less than extraordinary life, Sarah is shocked when a dark, mysterious stranger begins to haunt her world. And when his haunting footsteps kick up ghosts – memories of a girl who apparently does not exist – Sarah grows steadily more afraid. She may long for a life less ordinary but it is life nonetheless that she longs for… not Death.


But then… Death has never been so compelling before.


Cassius is Ankou.


A tortured soul, Cassius has only one friend - his savior and fellow Ankou, Anonna. Now Anonna is Fallen. Seeking vengeance for her death, Cassius begins to haunt Sarah’s life, hoping to use her to lure in his enemy, the one he blames for Anonna’s Fall. But as he creeps deeper inside Sarah’s world Cassius grows steadily more afraid. He may long for vengeance but not if it means tempting his frosted heart to love.


But then… Love has never been so compelling to Death before...


Teaser...

" “I’ve never seen you here before.” She drew unconsciously closer to him again and Cassius found himself smirking. He could tell she was wary of him… but she was also curious.



It annoyed him that he was just as curious.


Glancing up, Cassius couldn’t ignore the tingling under his skin when his steel eyes met her huge blue ones. They were gloriously rich and dark with long black lashes. Beautiful, sad eyes. He’d waved the strange feeling that had washed over him away when those eyes had first met his. But there it was again.


He shook his head. “I’ve never been here before.”


“So what brings you here tonight?”


You. “Boredom.”


She raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “You seem to have a huge case of ennui.”


It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “Look at you with your big fancy words.”


“Don’t be condescending.”


He wanted to laugh again. He shook his head, gripping his glass tight. He wasn’t here to talk, to get to know her. He was here to use her. As bait. “You’re right. I have a rather large case of ennui. New York is dull. The people are dull.” Run away to the land of the living lonely little girl before Death decides to give you some company.


Sarah snorted. “Ever thought maybe you’re the one that’s dull?”


Again Cassius was taken aback by her forthright attitude. Any time he had chosen to walk among the living, pretending he was human, the ladies had fawned over him.


Just as they had done when he was human.


His was a handsome face… timeless.


Hateful.


“Perhaps you are right,” he murmured in response.


“I’ve never heard an Italian accent like yours before. Which region from Italy do you come from?”


Another surprise. She was observant. “A very old one.”


“Evasion. Charming.”


“I’m not forcing you to sit here with me,” he snapped, glaring at her.


Her eyes widened, her lips parting in shock. Then her face closed as she scowled back at him, her body already moving to slip from the stool.


“Stop.” Cassius reached out a hand, stopping inches from touching her. An inexplicable panic had taken over him. “I apologize,” he almost choked on the words. He turned and waved at the bartender. “Another drink for the lady.”


“You don’t have to…” Sarah trailed off, looking bewildered and unsure.


Cassius eyed her, his mind racing, piecing together a new plan." "



Sam x

Warriors of Ankh Giveaway!

To Enter:


*You must be 16 years or older
*Giveaway is international
*One Winner will win a signed copy of Blood Will Tell, Blood Past and Shades of Blood as shown in the vlog above.
*One Entry per person
*There is no requirement to follow the blog or any of my other social pages.
*Giveaway will end Midnight (GM) Thursday 26th of January 2012. Winner will be announced Friday 27th January 2012.

GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED





Sam x

Let the Teasing Commence...

The first few months of the year always fly in so before we know it March will be upon us and Scorched Skies will be out. So... I think it's time to start teasing :-p
I'll begin with the very first few opening lines of the novel...

Scorched Skies (Fire Spirits #2)

"Rusted earth trembled beneath Ari’s feet, cracks in the thirsty ground glowing ember in the pervading darkness. The air burned against her cheeks as though she were stuck within a circle of invisible fire, her lungs oxygen deprived, her tongue thick and teeth dry. She blinked, disorientated, wondering where she was and how she had gotten there."















Sam x

Cover Art: Warriors of Ankh

I've just uploaded new cover art for my Warriors of Ankh Trilogy on amazon kindle so hopefully that will take effect in the next few hours. The paperback editions are unavailable at the moment as I reformat the new covers. They should be available in 10-14 days.

Here's the thing... I've always wanted to commission my cover artist, the wondrous PHATPUPPY ART to create new covers for the Warriors of Ankh trilogy and lately WOA has increased a little more in popularity so... to celebrate I splashed out and raided Phatpuppy's creative closet. The concept is new and much softer, more artistic, but I think the harder-edged straight-forward concepts from last year were putting potential readers off so I like these. They say YA to me and that's what they should say to my readers. Hope you guys like them too.

BLOOD WILL TELL (WOA #1)

BLOOD PAST (WOA #2)

SHADES OF BLOOD (WOA #3)

Sam x

On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves

On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves

amazon kindle - £1.90

Book Description

When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.

T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family - and a stack of overdue assignments - instead of his friends.

Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter. Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

My Thoughts
*****Awesome Read

I literally felt adrift when I reached the last pages of this amazing novel. I didn't know what to do with myself or if I was really capable of saying goodbye to T.J. and Anna just yet. That's how affecting this story is and how effective the wonderful characterisation is.

On the Island ramped up my heartbeat from the get go. The descriptions of the crash and all the hardships Anna and T.J. have to deal with during their time on the island are so raw and realistic I was frantically pressing the page turn button on my kindle, needing to know what happened to the courageous pair next.
Character-wise you couldn’t find two more likeable narrators. Anna is kind, cool, non-judgmental and brave and yet her vulnerabilities are the best thing about her because I find her more relatable than I’ve found many heroines lately. As for T.J. Wow. He certainly grows up on the island and he turns into the very best of men. *sigh* phenomenal characters. Loved them.
This is a poignant, heart-wrenching, thrilling, emotional ride of a book and I was utterly hooked. One of the best contemporary reads I’ve ever read.  Well-written, touching, well-researched and authentic. It's the real deal. You seriously don’t want to miss out on this one.

Cannot wait to read more from Tracey.

Five massive massive stars!


Sam x

Winners of the Kindle Giveaway!

Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway to celebrate my milestone. There was A LOT of you so I've put the names through random.org to select the winners. Check out the announcement at the end of my vlog. I got lots of books these last few weeks and you know I like to share :-)









Hard copies

.The complete tales and poems of Edgar Allen Poe
.Hushed by Kelley York
.Catching Jordan by Miranda Keneally
.Dark Prince by Christine Feehan
.Dark Gold by Christine Feehan
.Dark Desire by Christine Feehan.
.Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
.The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
.Destiny Binds (Timber Wolves #1) by Tammy Blackwell
.Ripple by Mandy Hubbard

Kindle books

.Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison
.The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay
.Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead
.A Brush of Darkness by Allison Pang
.Soulless by Gail Carriger
.Whirl by Emma Raveling
.Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison
.The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks
.The Black Prism by Brent Weeks
.Temeraire by Naomi Novik
.White Tiger by Kylie Chan
.A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
.Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk
.Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn
.The Season by Sarah MacLean
.Stealing Phoenix by Joss Stirling
.On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves
.The Magician's Guild by Trudi Canavan
.Spider's Bite by Jennifer Estep


OK... Now... for the winners of my milestone kindle giveaway!

First Prize Winner of the Kindle and $10/£10 amazon voucher:

Sylvia Groen

Second Prize Winner of the $30/£30 amazon voucher:

Sophie Green

Runner up prize winners of the $15/£15 amazon voucher each:

Chandra Haun

&

Jennette Gooden

Winners selected by random.org

Congratulations to all the winners! I've emailed the winners and they now have 48hours to respond before new winners are selected. Thank you, folks!

Cheers

Sam x

My Milestone Kindle Giveaway!

When I first started self-publishing back in February 2011 in my head I was thinking how fantastic it would be to reach a personal milestone of 100,000 sales in a few years time. Imagine my amazement and absolute joy to have reached 100K in sales (this excludes free downloads for Smokeless Fire) within my first year of publishing. I have to share 'the happy' with all the wonderful readers who have bought my novels in the last eleven months.

In thanks I'm offering up one lucky winner the all-new wi-fi, 6" E Ink Display Kindle along with the charger and a $10/£10 amazon voucher. The first runner up will win a $30/£30 amazon voucher and the two second runner ups will win $15/£15 amazon voucher.

PLUS: Slumber (The Fade:Part One) will be FREE to download on kindle from midnight (Pacific) tonight for five days on amazon!

Anyhoo...

Giveaway Details:

*One Entry per person
*You must be 14 years or older
*Giveaway is UK & US ONLY
*Entrants should be blog followers (this blog) and have liked my Facebook page  - it is a thank you to my readers after all! :-)
*Giveaway ends Midnight (GM) Monday 9th January 2012.
*Winners will be selected via random.org and winners will be announced Tuesday 10th January. Winners will have 48 hours to respond before new winners are chosen.

To Enter, fill out the form below:

GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED. WINNERS TO BE ANNOUNCED TUESDAY 1OTH JANUARY (I'm heading off to bed now because it's midnight in the UK, but will announce the winners in about twelve hours). Good Luck!


Sam x

Surviving An Apocalypse: Why the Amish will outlast us all...

When I was at university I lived on the extremely busy Cowgate in Edinburgh where all the bars and nightclubs are situated below the student housing and along the street, only two minutes from your door, is the even busier Grassmarket area with more bars. Because of that I got into a habit of wearing earplugs to bed. Apparently it's a habit you can't break even when you move back into a fairly quiet large village. So at who knows what time this morning I failed to hear the huge tree in my backgarden as it was pulled up from its roots in the 100 miles winds that were blasting through Central Scotland. It fell down metres from my bedroom window, and all the heating and electricity was knocked out by the wind too. But was I aware? Nope.

So... I woke up to a huge tree in the backgarden and no electricity and heating... had none all day. When the last storms tore through Scotland just before Christmas people were without electricity for three days in other areas so I was beginning to feel a little bit antsy. A huge part of my job is online so having no internet connection made me more restless than I liked. There was no television to check how bad the damage was elsewhere, no phone signal to phone the council or insurance about the tree... All I can say is thank god for books!

A pity I didn't have this one on my shelf...

It occurred to me when the electricity came back on that I will probably die within the first week of a bloody apocalypse from either ignorance or sheer boredom. I need to learn survival skills. 

Anyhoo, I'm back. So... updates. I have taken all of my novels off Smashwords earlier than I said I would because just the thought of them on there bothered me beyond belief (piracy issues for those not in the know) so they came down. That means they are down from all the other retailers (B&N etc) with the exception of Kobo who has still to take them off their site. And of course my books are always available on amazon. I've been looking into website design and a built-in ebook store so hopefully I'll have something up and running by Spring. 

In other news... *she winces apologetically* ... I'm putting the release date of Scorched Skies back to March 16th. I know, I'm terrible! Unfortunately, the series -which at present looks to be six books - has a lot of plot and world-building that subtly develops over the six books so I had to know exactly what happens in each book before I could attempt to write Scorched Skies. That means research and plotting is taking a little bit longer than expected. I just want book 2 to live up to everyone's expectations because Smokeless Fire, despite being a full-length novel, is really only an introduction to a much bigger, diverse and intricate world. There so much that Ari still doesn't know, so much to be revealed!
So if Scorched Skies is March 16th (*winces even more apologetically*) Sneak Thievery is pushed back to May. Now these are just rough release dates. If I feel Scorched Skies is coming along quicker than expected then I'll release it before then and so on with Sneak Thievery. For now, however, the release dates sit as March 16th and May 11th.

OK... now I best get a move on...


Sam x

Time Mends by Tammy Blackwell

I was surprised at Christmas with a very lovely present from awesome indie author Tammy Blackwell. Knowing what a fan I am of her first novel, Destiny Binds (Timber Wolves #1), Tammy sent me an advanced readers copy of Timber Wolves #2, Time Mends. And can I just say... wow. If you haven't read my review of Destiny Binds you can read it HERE. As a surprise for her readers Tammy announced that Time Mends is now available to download... I highly recommend you do!

Time Mends (Timber Wolves #2)
by Tammy Blackwell

Kindle - amazon UK £0.77
Kindle - amazon US $0.99

Book Description

After a tragic accident leaves her battered, heartbroken, and alone, Scout Donovan would rather hide in dreams than face reality. But things are changing quickly in Scout's life. Soon she's pulled back into the world of Shifters and Seers, with her best friend's fate depending on Scout's ability to protect her. Can Scout pull it together in time to save Talley, or is the past too much to overcome?

My Thoughts
Awesome Read!

The second installment in Tammy Blackwell’s Timber Wolves trilogy is one word: stunning. I didn’t think it possible to love Time Mends even more than Destiny Binds, but add action, political intrigue and mounds of suspense to the witty dialogue and loveable characters and you’ve got a sure fire winner on your hands.

Time Mends sweeps the reader up into the story just after the shocking events at the end of book one (I’m giving no Alex spoilers away… you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens there :-p). I think my favourite thing about book two is Scout’s character development. She works through her heartbreak and all the unbelievable discoveries she encounters about herself and the shifter world and matures and changes without losing that innate, sarky, quirky Scout that made her so likeable in book one. Now she’s even stronger, more vulnerable but determined not to be, more determined to be determined, and as loyal as ever. The relationships between the magical foursome that is Scout, Charlie, Talley and Jase strengthens in Time Mends and by the end of book two my emotions had been so pressed and pretzeled by them my mouth was left hanging open with another NOOOOOOOO! Where is book three?!! I need it NOW!

The characterization may have been my favourite thing about the Timber Wolves trilogy but the plot and worldbuilding have shot into equal position with Time Mends. It’s action-packed, fast-paced, entertaining, addictive and completely intriguing. I was kept guessing throughout the entire book by the many twists and turns and I still have loads of questions. Love it! In fact I loved everything about this book.

Awesome! A rare treat that book two should be even better than the first!

A definite, must read,

Cannot wait for book 3!

Five Massive Massive Stars!

Sam x