YA Indie Carnival ~ Kiss and Tell

Welcome again to our Friday edition at YA Indie Carnival! Our theme...kiss and tell, baby! It's still February, the month of romance, so let's read about some more kissing, shall we? This is another excerpt from Fateful. Enjoy!

Shifting closer, Ethan brushed her tears away with his own cheeks, knowing she was crying even if he never looked at her directly.

When her only response to his words was to shed more tears, Ethan changed tactics and began exploring her face with his fingertips. As always the touch soothed her, and she pushed at his chest trying to escape it, because she could also smell the curse magic and it was starting to affect her.

Darn him, she thought when he only drew nearer. That wasn’t what she needed and the potion that made her want the death he could give further saturated her senses. It wasn’t long before she was doing the same to him, dragging careful fingers over his profile, over his cheeks, into his hair.

Taking a peek, she noticed his eyes were still closed and she could look as much as she liked without being overpowered by his trance-like gaze. Danielle felt herself become pulled into a burning moment of which something sweetly innocent became something more without ever crossing lines. They had been closer than this physically during the day, but for some reason, this limited contact, before the sun made its morning appearance, felt more intense. Danielle slid closer, pressing her wet cheek to his.

They had never allowed themselves to be this close at night, not even the first night they tested his influence on her, and while she knew in the back of her mind this wasn’t wise ... as her brain became drunk with dark magic she found she didn’t particularly care.

Aware of the fact Ethan wasn’t allowing himself to breathe, she believed it was because he didn’t want to smell her blood, and secretly thanked him for it. Or, she thought, as she smashed against his body, maybe it was so he wouldn’t overpower her with his super-potent breath.

Knowing full well it was probably reckless of her, Danielle decided she could partake in the less-potent version from his skin. She slid her nose under the line of his chiseled jawbone, filling her lungs selfishly with his delectable bouquet. Moving her nose up to meet with his she stole the forbidden kiss she wanted.

She never stopped tracing his skin with the pads of her fingers, dragging them along his nape and then into his hair. With palms sliding up her back, he grasped handfuls of hers. She sighed, and rolled her head back. Had she really just exposed her neck to a vampire? Did her curse-poisoned brain care? When Ethan accepted the invitation and pressed his lips to her skin, her breaths came faster as he tickled her throat with feathery kisses.

During the day this contact would have been perfectly fine, but at night … they were playing with fire. And it seemed that neither one of them was willing to stop.

He traced his lips down to her collarbone and tickled her further, gliding them across her sensitive skin. He slid his fingers along her neck, across the top of her shoulder and onto her arm, where he gave her a tender squeeze.

When she placed her hand on the side of his cheek, trying to bring him back to her, Ethan hesitated, and turned his face away as if he feared he had bad breath. Watching his expression, she thought she saw an internal battle wage within before he took a big breath of air, held it and turned back like he was diving deep under water. As Ethan pressed firmly closed lips to hers, Danielle wondered if maybe they were underwater. But the thought was almost too far away to really grasp with the logical and responsible parts of her brain.

Until next time....And as always, take a moment to check out my other carni friends at YA Indie Carnival.

1.Laura A. H. Elliott author of Winnemucca & 13 on Halloween
2.Bryna Butler, author Midnight Guardian series
3.Heather Self
4.T. R. Graves, Author of The Warrior Series
5.Suzy Turner, author of The Raven Saga
6.Cheri Schmidt, author of the Fateful Trilogy
7.Rachel Coles, author of Into The Ruins, geek mom blog
8.K. C. Blake, author of Vampires Rule and Crushed
9.Patti Larsen, The Hunted series and The Hayle Coven series
10.Amy Maurer Jones, Author of The Soul Quest Trilogy
11.Dani Snell's Refracted Light Reviews
12. Fisher Amelie, author of The Understorey
13.M. Leighton, Blood Like Poison Series, Madly, The Reaping
14.Kimberly Kinrade, Bits of You & Pieces of Me, Forbidden Mind
15.Madeline Smoot, Missing, Summer Shorts, and The Girls
16.Cidney Swanson, author of Rippler
17.Gwenn Wright, author of Filter
18.TG Ayer
19.Melissa Pearl, Author of The Time Spirit Trilogy
20.Heather M. White, author of The Destiny Saga
21.Roots in Myth, PJ Hoover
22.Courtney Cole Writes

Forever (Book #3 in the Fateful Series) is available in print!!!

I hadn't seen it show up on my Amazon page, so I was wondering what the deal was, but I just realized they haven't linked the ebook edition of Forever with the paperback. For those of you who want the paperback, just click on the photo below:

Follower Love Giveaway Hop!

(This giveaway is now closed. Thank you to the 185 people who entered. As soon as I have the names entered into Virtual Hat, I'll email the winner directly.)

Wow!!! With more than 300 chances to win, this giveaway is massive! Thank you I'm a Reader, Not a Writer and Rachael Renee Anderson for hosting. Please tell your friends about this one folks, don't let them miss out on such a great giveaway!

The prize:
Win Danielle's Fairy necklace just like the one mentioned in Forever, book 3 in the Fateful Trilogy!!!

This beautiful piece was given to Danielle by the fairies in Forever. It is handmade from antique brass findings and chain from VintaJ. The aqua crystals are real Swarovski faceted beads. The center drop is a pale aqua, 8mm, Amazonite bead. The beautiful antique brass bead in the back is so pretty you can wear it backwards for two different looks. This Victorian design is unique and will be a piece that people will ask where you got it from. The matching aqua crystal earrings are included in the set. On my website, I charge $39.99 for this set. (Note: The three-way connector in the center will be slightly different, seems I can't purchase that one any longer, but the replacement is equally as nice, if not better! If I have time, I'll take some more photos for you.)

To Enter:
MANDATORY: Follow my blog via GFC or email and fill out the form at the bottom of this post so that I may be able to contact you if you win.

Optional for extra chances to win:
+1: Like my Facebook Fan Page.
+1: Post a comment telling me why you want to win this necklace.
+1: Share this giveaway with your friends via Facebook or Twitter. (You may only do this once during the 8 days this giveaway runs. ;)

Thank you for visiting my blog, and thank you for entering my giveaway. Before you go, may I share a special valentine message from me to you, my wonderful followers...

A writer is not successful if not for their readers.

From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU for taking a chance on me, and for allowing me to share my stories with you! It’s my deepest wish that I’ve been able to entertain you, or enchant you, or distract you from any distress that might be in your life, or touch your heart, or uplift your soul with my books...even in one small way.

I’m perfectly aware of the fact that I’m nothing special. I’m just someone with an over-active imagination. Because of this, I’m not sure how to adequately express how much your uplifting blog posts, kind comments, and encouraging emails mean to me.  Each one touches me and brings a smile to my face that lingers for days. I cherish each one of you for your generosity towards me. If it was not for your kindness, I couldn’t keep sharing the stories that are such a part of me. I’m sharing a bit of myself with you and that’s a terrifying thing sometimes. Again, I say THANK YOU!

New YA Paranormal Romance book release from writer Susan Hatler!

Announcing a new release from writer Susan Hatler!

If you're looking for some new YA paranormal romance to read...here you go!

Description:
High school junior, Kylie Bates, can suddenly read minds. When she touches people’s hands, she’s able to see their deepest thoughts. As if that’s not freaky enough, her dad sends her to help hottie detective, Sam Williams, track down a missing girl. Way too much pressure, especially for a girl who can’t watch Scream without getting nightmares.

Then, finding the missing girl leads to much more than Kylie’s prepared for. Like discovering that her dad has been lying to her. That she has a family she never knew about. That the girls have powers similar to hers. Oh yeah, and that someone is out to get her.

When the detective’s teenage wanna-be-cop cousin, Trip Williams, approaches Kylie at school insisting she help him solve the case, she discovers Trip might be the only one she can trust, and the only one to help her unravel the secrets behind her mysterious gift.

What are readers saying?
If you love YA romance with a dash of paranormal and a sprinkle of humor, this is for you. I've read Susan Hatler's other work, like My Last Blind Date and Boyfriend Bylaws and they're all cute. Great, in fact. But Shaken is full length, and let me tell ya, she packs a lot of story into this one. Much meatier. Don't get me wrong, it's still a sweet romance in the usual Susan Hatler style, but Shaken kicks it up a notch. Cute, humorous and totally sweet romance, but it goes deeper than that. I almost took up chewing on my finger nails! ~ From Cecilia's reviews 


Click on the links below to buy:

YA Indie Carnival ~ Be Mine...

Just in time for Valentine's Day our theme this week is all about romance. Each of us will share an excerpt with some smooching in it. Enjoy!!!


This excerpt is from Fateful and I chose it because a large number of my readers have highlighted part of it according to Amazon.

...Note: This series is not suitable for anyone who doesn't like glittering fairies, vicious pixies, hot vampires, the dashing Mr. Darcy, arachnids, or large amounts of snogging...

Fateful:

With a gasp, she noticed they were now surrounded with what seemed like hundreds of fairies. Everywhere she looked there were tiny glowing sprites; flitting here and there around them, and touching them. Danielle felt them tugging at her clothes playfully and sliding their tiny fingers across her flesh raising goose bumps. She shuddered as they released her hair from the elastic confines. She then felt them stroke the loose strands and tickle her cheeks with itty-bitty kisses. Danielle didn’t dare move. They did the same to Ethan, however, and he appeared to be accustomed to it, and enjoying it.

He smiled at her with intense rapture and stepped toward her. Placing two fingers gently under her chin, he closed her gaping mouth, which she hadn’t realized had fallen open. She looked into his magical, sapphire eyes, and was smitten immediately. He wrapped his strong arms around her to steady her.

“Still sore?” he asked affectionately.

“Yes, but I don’t care.”

Ethan chuckled warmly, brought his hand to her face and pressed his lips to hers. She mmm’d verbally at his touch, a reaction which sent the fairies giggling merrily. He smiled against her mouth when he heard their snickering.

They continued to play with her hair as Ethan kissed her, his lips caressing hers almost hungrily, almost devouring her. It was an exotic experience, and almost too unbelievable. She was standing in an enchanted forest, being kissed by a vampire, surrounded by hundreds of colorful fairies. This never could have happened in her wildest dreams, and she thought she was pretty creative.

When he released her from the kiss, he gently kept her close and whispered, “Now watch.”

Enchanting music filled the air. It drifted on the breeze as if the trees, the lush plant life, and even the insects were the instruments—the kind of music only fairies could make. Then the fairies danced and flew in circles around them. It took her breath away. Fairies pranced while they played toothpick-sized flutes, fairy couples danced and twirled, and many fairies skipped and flitted about. It was incredibly surreal. She was so glad she’d come even with her aching body because this was well worth it.

Guest Post ~ Unfurl by Cidney Swanson Release Tour and Giveaway!

Hi Cheri! I’m so excited to be here today as part of my Unfurl Release Tour. I thought I’d share something today about how I got started writing full time. I hope you will enjoy!

It took two fifteen-year-old boys to convince me to follow my heart and start writing full time. Fifteen’s this great age. You’ve survived the battle arena of middle school and probably made it through your first year of high school. And in some part of you that maybe doesn’t hover on the surface, you know—absolutely know—that you can do something great.

Yeah, maybe a person or circumstance in your life has shoved that knowledge down to the deep end of the pool and tied it there with a big rock, but you still know it’s there, it’s true, and it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks because you know it.

Look around at the adults in your life: how many of them still know this, carry it around in their pockets? One? Two? Zero? We get old and we get tired and we forget that we ever felt this way once. I mean, adults write sentences like “It’s never too old to be what you might have been” precisely because we have to see it spelled out in black and white to even remember what we knew at fifteen.

Four years ago I found Eragon by Christopher Paolini. I was standing in my Costco, looking at the books table (the coolest part of Costco.) As I browsed, I overheard these grandmas talking.

“Wrote it when he was a teenager, and he’s a real nice kid. He home-schooled with one of my grandchildren.”

Well, you can bet that caught my attention. This gorgeous book was written by a teen? Whaaat? Anyway, I bought the book and loved it. And I thought to myself, Wow. This kid: he’s like, fifteen, and he didn’t have any issues with writing a freaking long book. He just did it. And then did it again.

That same year, I noticed another fifteen-year-old (my son) knocking out a couple of novels every couple of months. And I thought to myself: Wow. Where do you get that kind of belief in yourself and your abilities that lets you just do what you want to do?

And it’s like this light popped on, blinding me: when you’re a teenager, you know that you can do anything. Seriously, Teens. Can. Do. Anything. As a late-bloomer, I’m probably not the best person in the world to convince you of this fact, but look: someone else said it too! (Better than I did.)

So on March 20, 2009, I told myself: “No more ‘I’m-going-to-write-a-novel-someday;’ I need to just write. Like those fearless fifteen-year-olds. Forget ‘someday.’ This is someday.”

You know how adults or teachers say that their kids teach them so much? (Yeah, we do say that, and if you’re a teen and the adults in your own life aren’t saying it, that sucks—they should, because it’s true!) So anyway, it took a pair of undaunted teenage boys to teach me that if I wanted to do something bad enough, I needed to just start. Today.

No matter what your age is: be that fifteen-year-old version of yourself. And if you are fifteen? Do what you know you can do. Do it now before you get old and forgetful and busy doing things that don’t really matter to you anyway. Take it from a late-bloomer. Nuff said.

Thank you, Chris Paolini, for showing me that it’s okay to do what you dream of doing and that if you weren’t too young to do it, then maybe I wasn’t too old. And thanks to my son, the ‘JWS’ to whom I dedicated my first book. Because if it weren’t for him and Paolini and their teenager-ability to just do stuff, I wouldn’t be writing novels today.

And that would just be sad.

Thanks so much, everyone, for the chance to stop by and visit today! Come say hi anytime!

Linkies:
cidneyswanson at gmail dot com
http://cidneyswanson.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/cidneyswanson
http://twitter.com/#!/cidneyswanson
Books for sale: http://amzn.to/x8grXl
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/search?query=cidney+swanson
Librarything: http://www.librarything.com/author/swansoncidney

YA Indie Carnival ~ To Trailer or Not To Trailer?

Hmm, what a great question...I'd like to do a poll for this one. What do you think? Do you watch book trailers? Do you like them? Would you buy a book based on one? Please take a moment to answer my poll on the sidebar. I'll leave it up over the weekend, and it closes on the 6th. Also, I'd be interested to hear your comments, so please leave one if you have time. ;)

Personally, I really do like watching them, but only if they're AMAZING. Unfortunately, the amazing ones are very hard to find. For me, I need to see appealing images and maybe some animation of some kind all blended together with music I like listening to. Most of the time I'm thinking "eh" and I'll close it before it's done. I'd just rather check out the author's website or blog, and the book's synopsis along with reviews to make the decision to buy. But this raises another question. Does the trailer make you go out and check out the book further? Does it make you curious about a book?

I suppose I'm rather picky about what I like. I actually got a little frustrated trying to find ones I like to share with you for this post...but alas, there are just so many that drive a bit crazy. Anyway, I suppose that just makes the good ones shine a bit more, right? Here are some trailers I do like...plus, check out the blogs from my fellow carnis-links are at the bottom of this post. They have some good trailers too!







As you can tell, I tend to like the animated ones, with good music... Sadly, one of my favorite book trailers has been blocked for copyright infringement. It was Letters to Elise by Amada Hocking, the one that's orange, not the redone one. Loved the music and the graphics. You can see it here on her blog, but you can't play it. Again, I loved the trailer, but it won't make my buy the book. I'm just not interested in it. Just like the monster one above. Well-done trailer, but not my genre.

I do plan to make trailers for my books, eventually. So my answer to the question is, yes, trailer! But I won't put them out if they're not what I think is AMAZING. Anyway, don't forget to answer my poll and leave a comment. Until next time....And as always, take a moment to check out my other carni friends at YA Indie Carnival.

1.Laura A. H. Elliott author of Winnemucca & 13 on Halloween
2.Bryna Butler, author Midnight Guardian series
3.Heather Self
4.T. R. Graves, Author of The Warrior Series
5.Suzy Turner, author of The Raven Saga
6.Cheri Schmidt, author of the Fateful Trilogy
7.Rachel Coles, author of Into The Ruins, geek mom blog
8.K. C. Blake, author of Vampires Rule and Crushed
9.Patti Larsen, The Hunted series and The Hayle Coven series
10.Amy Maurer Jones, Author of The Soul Quest Trilogy
11.Dani Snell's Refracted Light Reviews
12. Fisher Amelie, author of The Understorey
13.M. Leighton, Blood Like Poison Series, Madly, The Reaping
14.Kimberly Kinrade, Bits of You & Pieces of Me, Forbidden Mind
15.Madeline Smoot, Missing, Summer Shorts, and The Girls
16.Cidney Swanson, author of Rippler
17.Gwenn Wright, author of Filter
18.TG Ayer
19.Melissa Pearl, Author of The Time Spirit Trilogy
20.Heather M. White, author of The Destiny Saga
21.Roots in Myth, PJ Hoover
22.Courtney Cole Writes