Yes, yes. I know you already know all about me and my famous cat, but I thought you might like to know I’m over at Author’s Block for the next few days being reamed interviewed about this, that, and the other *g*

Why do I think you might like to know?

Because there’s a giveaway or two :)

Just leave a comment after my Author’s Block interview, and you’ll be in the draw to win an electronic copy of one of my backlist books, plus an electronic copy of my latest release, Lightning Rider.

Winner will be drawn on 10th February.

Cheers!

M

I’d like to introduce my guest , the lovely Shona Husk, author of The Goblin King – the first book in her Shadowlands series, and a current finalist in the ARRA Awards favorite paranormal romance of 2011 category.

Today Shona is celebrating the February 1st release of Sharing Sirus, her third erotic romance featuring sexy vampire rock band Lucinda’s Lover.

She’s promised to share a snippet from Sharing Sirius with us — can’t wait!

So dig out your fan (to fan your face when you read this excerpt), pull up a comfortable chair and read on!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Crossing Boundaries

(With Shona Husk)

I like challenging myself as a reader and writer. It’s good to step beyond the comfort zone and try something different. In this case it was making the jump from reading ménage stories to writing one. And what a jump. It’s like a triple shot of romance :)

While there were times I wondered if maybe I had leaped too far, I figured that it was too late to turn back. I had the story plotted, and I loved the story, but triple the romance means triple the work—there’s a whole lot going between every person involved. But as I wrote I realised that was what I liked when reading a ménage story. That extra emotion makes the HEA that much sweeter, especially since I make my characters work hard to get there.

Sharing Sirius also has the honour of having my first m/m scenes (because I thought if I’m writing a ménage it has to be all hands on everyone—I don’t do things by halves).

Here’s a little snippet of Jack and Owen the two sexy heroes of Sharing Sirius:

“It’s my turn. You will listen. Your heart is in the right place—it’s one of the many reasons I love you and it’s the reason I’m not going to kick you out.” Owen stalked towards him, lithe like a predator. And Jack was the prey.

Jack couldn’t hide the smile that curved the corners of his lips. Owen seemed more like the man he’d first known, full of life instead of bored with it all. Was it working already?

“Do you know what it feels like to have your lover catch you with someone else?”

Jack shook his head. “It’s fine.”

It didn’t feel fine, it chaffed like wet linen, but he wasn’t about to admit that. This was not the moment to compare bruises. Owen was obviously regretting what had happened, even though it had given him a new grasp on life.

“It’s not fine. Once the door had been opened, I was unable to look away, such was the need in my veins to find a way to live. Now I have to live with that and the look on your face for the rest of my life.”

“At least you’ll have a life.” Did Owen not realize how much it had cost Jack?

“Caught between the two of you like a bone between two starving dogs? No thank you.”

Jack heard his heart stop. “You’re breaking up with me?” His words came out stilted. “But it was what you needed. You’ll die of boredom.” Hadn’t Owen said he wasn’t kicking him out? What was he going to do? He risked a glance out the window and saw the sun. Oh no. “Don’t make any hasty decisions, we can make this work. A roster or something.”

Owen put his hand on Jack’s chest, over his heart, then it slid up and cupped the back of Jack’s head. He brought their foreheads together.

“I’m not old. I’m ancient, even for a Vampire. I have loved and lost more times than I can count. And I have no intention of starting again.” He kissed Jack, hard and rough. His tongue pushed in, claiming.

Jack gave in, believing that after everything they would be okay, changed but okay. He let the tension he’d been holding on to ease away. Glad to be back in Owen’s arms. Jack gasped and waited for the cut of fangs, but it never came. Owen was too skilled to ever be caught out. The Vampire’s other hand trailed over Jack’s thigh and caressed the growing hard-on, coaxing his flesh to harden further. Jack bit back the moan and flicked his tongue against Owen’s fangs, seeking out what he wanted.

Owen ended the kiss, but kept his hand on Jack’s cock and the back of his neck. The grip of his hands left no doubt who was in command.

“You hungry for a bite?” Owen whispered against his lips. “Want to feel some fang?”

“Yes.” All the blood rushed from his head to his shaft as Owen’s hand stroked his length. Owen’s nail scraped down the fly of Jack’s jeans as if he were considering undoing it. Jack held his breath. He wanted Owen.

Jack’s fingers brushed Owen’s hardening cock.

Owen stepped back. “Then get it from Katya.”

~~~

Sharing Sirius is book 3 of the Lucinda’s Lover Vampires.

In ancient Vampires, boredom can literally kill. When Jack sees Owen beginning to succumb, he knows he is no longer enough. Owen needs the blood of another lover to survive. So Jack turns to Katya, hoping she can entice Owen into living again.

At first Katya denies her lust to her boss, even though she’s wanted him for years. With Jack promising to look the other way, she has a scorching-hot encounter Owen.

Owen doesn’t want to admit what is happening to him. He doesn’t want to cheat and break Jack’s heart, and yet he can’t resist Katya. But Katya and Jack have their own sexy plan. And neither of them intend to lose Owen.

~~~

Check out Shona’s Lucinda’s Lover vampire rock band books at Jasmine Jade/Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

For more information about the Shadowlands series and Shona’s other books, please visit Shona’s website.

Follow Shona on Twitter, and Facebook.

Anyway, aside from breakfast in bed and having DH cook dinner, best Birthday present ever? Well, now I have a Kindle and I no longer have to squeeze a book into my over-stuffed handbag, it was a substantial voucher to spend on Kindle books, and a couple of others to spend on print books at various stores. Yes, I’ve embraced eBooks with a vengeance, but I’ll never stop my love affair with the printed book. For me, it’s all about having the best of both worlds :)

Speaking of eBooks, I’ve just released another one: Lightning Rider is now available at Smashwords, and will be rolling out to Amazon, B&N, iTunes etc shortly. So if you’re after a novel-length paranormal romance with a sci-fi twist of the “sweeter” variety (i.e. no graphic bedroom scenes), then this could be for you. (For more deets, check out my Books page.)

I first wrote Lightning Rider in 2007 after reading a travel article about slickrock bike tours in Moab, and stats about the high incidence of lightning strikes in Utah. I’ve always loved the concept of Lightning Rider Elementals, (Novik is absolutely my favorite Elemental!) so I figured it was time to dust this story off, spruce it up and put it out there. I hope you’ll feel inclined to give this romance a try and see how my two heroines (one human and one alien) manage to get to happy ever after.

And speaking of independently published eBooks, if you like paranormals, have a thing for less-than angelic angels, and you don’t mind a teenage protagonist, you can’t go past Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days Book 1) by Susan Ee.

I spotted this book listed on a very well known book review blog, and decided to check it out. To my amazement it had well over 100 5-star reviews on Amazon and was only US$0.99c  for the Kindle version. So I grabbed it. And boy, what a terrific read. Very dark, gritty, fast-paced and at times horrifying. Loved every bit of it!

Here’s the blurb straight of the book page on Amazon:

“It’s been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels’ stronghold in San Francisco where she’ll risk everything to rescue her sister and he’ll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

Recommended for ages 16 and above.”

At the time of publishing this post, Angelfall had 188 5-star reviews, and is still priced at US$0.99c on Amazon US so it’s well worth purchasing. And remember, you don’t have to own a Kindle to read a Kindle book. Just download one of the free Kindle apps for your PC, iThing, Mac or whatever and you’re good to go.

Can’t wait to get my hands on Book 2!

Oh, and a heads up:

I’m gonna be over at Authors Block from Feb 4th to 8th with an interview and a couple of giveaways for one commenter. Up for grabs is an electronic copy of Lightning Rider, and a choice of one of my backlist eBooks.

Hope you’ll pop on over!

Here’s my reading list for January:

• Sushi For Beginners by Marian Keyes
• Wolf Who Rules by Wen Spencer
• Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days Book 1) by Susan Ee
• Glory In Death by J.D. Robb
• The Blushing Bounder by Meljean Brook**
• Vixen by Jill Myles**
• Kitten-Tiger & the Monk by Carolyn Crane**
• Immortal In Death by J.D. Robb
• The Case of the Flashing Fashion Queen by Norah Wilson
• Baby, It’s Cold Outside by Carly Carson
• Pride’s Run by Cat Kalen
• Rapture In Death by J.D. Robb
• Dragon Blues by Edie Ramer
• One Foot in the Grave by Jeaniene Frost
• Brightest Kind of Darkness by P.T. Michelle/Patrice Michelle
• At Grave’s End by Jeaniene Frost
• Ceremony In Death by J.D. Robb

**Wild & Steamy anthology

Cheers!

M

Just a heads up on a few things that’ve either happened, or are due to happen in the next week. Figured you’d all rather have it in one hit than be bombarded with separate posts, right? Right.

First up:

~On 24th Jan, I was over at the mega-talented Kylie Griffin’s blog as part of her An Author’s Life series of posts. Kylie always has great questions, by the way. So we discussed everything from writing techniques and deadlines, to fan mail and just-for-fun stuff.

~A couple of weeks ago, I was put on the spot with a bunch of reeeally hard questions! interviewed by the Wattpad team about all things writerly and a few things that weren’t :) Unfortunately we had some technical issues with Skype, meaning bits of the interview didn’t tape properly and had to be cut. That podcast has now gone live and you can check it out on the Wattpad  Insider blog or, if you’d prefer, here’s the direct link to the Wattpad channel on SoundCloud. (Note that the sound quality is a bit up and down due to those aforementioned technical issues, and I found that earphones worked better than listening to it via my computer speakers.)

~I’m being interviewed next week by Lisa Flaus, author of 2012 The Final Revelation — will post the link on the Blogging and Giveaways page as soon as it goes live.

~And finally, because I know you’ve all had enough of me by now, as a special treat I have a guest scheduled for Friday 3rd February. My guest is Shona Husk, author of The Goblin King (a current ARRA finalist in the favorite paranormal romance of 2011 category). Shona’s talking about crossing boundaries, and sharing an excerpt from her Feb 1st release Sharing Sirius. Don’t miss it!

:-)

M

I’m very excited to have a new cover to share with y’all. And I thought it might be interesting to share just how this cover came to be.

The book is Lightning Rider, a bit of a “different” romance in that it features two heroines and two heroes — and no, it’s not a menage-a-quatre. *g* It’s a contemporary paranormal romance with a sci-fi twist.

Here’s the high concept:

Andie Brennan dies in a lightning strike and is miraculously healed and brought back to life. But now she’s sharing her body with an alien—the same alien who rode the lightning bolt that killed her.

So the gist is that Andie, the heroine, has a Lightning Rider Elemental named Karylon trapped inside her. And the two heroes of the piece are Jake, who’ll do anything to protect Andie from her manipulative ex, and Novik, a Lightning Rider who’ll do anything to help Karylon break free from Andie and return to the Elemental plane. Plus, the omniscient Keeper of Portents is about to use Novik to further its grand design. How much is Novik prepared to risk to be with Karylon again? And more importantly for Andie and Jake, who is he prepared to sacrifice?

See? Not exactly a normal romance.

First up, I decided to change the title from the original “When Lightning Strikes” to “Lightning Rider“. I did this because with an eBook cover, you have very little time to impress readers, and very little space in which to do it. By that, I mean that generally eBook buyers are perusing thumbnails. So aside from pictures and fonts that are going to be clearly shown on even the tiniest version of your cover, you also have to have an eye-catching cover that conveys what kind of story it is straight up.

I figured if I used “When Lightning Strikes” readers might expect a straight contemporary romance–it didn’t really speak to the paranormal aspect of the story. And “When Lightning Strikes, a paranormal romance with a sci-fi twist” didn’t really do it for me as a title, even if there had been enough space to stick all that on a cover and still have it be readable in thumbnail form. I went with “Lightning Rider” because I felt it had more chance to immediately convey to the reader that this is a story with a paranormal or sci-fi aspect.

BTW, I subscribe to Joel Friedlander‘s insistence that eBook covers need to be treated differently to print covers. For me, it’s clear, clean and simple concepts, with clear easy-to-read fonts that stand out in a thumbnail all the way, baby. So if my independently published book covers look a little simplistic to you, it’s because I want them that way. (And as Joel complimented my cover designer for the covers of The Crystal Warrior and Freaks of Greenfield High when I submitted them for his October eBook cover design awards, I think I’m on the right track.)

For Lightning Rider, Rob (my husband) and I wanted to include a slickrock landscape element: Rob, because he thought the slickrock landscapes were visually stunning, and me, because the slickrock setting is an integral part of the Lightning Rider story for 3 reasons:

1. Lightning Rider was inspired by an article I spotted about slickrock bike tours in Moab. The article mentioned that Utah has the second-highest incidence of lighting strikes in America. That kicked the warped authorly part of my brain into gear, and I came up with the idea of aliens who ride lightning and use the bodies of humans who’re killed in a lightning strike.
2. The story starts off on a slickrock bike tour in Moab.
3. The story’s climax takes place on a 4WD trail in Moab called Hell’s Revenge.

We also toyed with including a mountain bike in the photo, provided the cover model had her helmet off, and was looking directly at the camera. And we were both agreed that “lightning” had to be a part of the cover.

Now came the difficult part: finding the right cover model to represent Andie, the human heroine of Lightning Rider.

After scouring royalty-free stock photo sites (like, every spare moment for an entire week until my eyes felt like they were bleeding!) to find just the right model, and hoping she’d be as perfect as the model I found to use on the cover of Freaks of Greenfield High, I lucked out big-time. And, BTW, I’m using “lucked out” in the Kiwi sense of having No. Damn. Luck. At. All.

I was very specific in the kind of “look” I wanted–a little to0 specific, as it turned out. Both Rob and I agreed that we wanted a strong stance and a serious expression for our heroine, and she had to be in casual clothes–or at least, exercise clothes. Plus, I envisioned Andie with curly auburn hair and green eyes. We had major headaches with this too-specific brief. It’s about as difficult as finding decent stock photos of good-looking guys with long blond hair! *cough* From The Ashes *cough*

This time it wasn’t me who found the perfect photo, it was my long-suffering husband. And after checking out his “Andie” I had to agree. He’d found two strong photos, both with the same model.

The first had the model on a mountain bike, sans helmet, looking back over her shoulder directly at the camera. And I thought, “Whoa, awesome! That could be straight out of the book! ” The second photo had her standing, staring straight into the camera.

In the end, after much debate we both chose the second photo. It was a much stronger photo, and we felt it had more visual impact than the one with her on the bike–the whole keep it clean and simple and go for visual impact thing again.

“But hang on,” I hear you splutter. “This cover model sure doesn’t have curly auburn hair!”

Excellent point. I was happy to compromise on the “curly” hair, because in the story, I mention that Andie’s ex-boyfriend didn’t like her curls, and used to insist that she straightened her hair–it speaks to the power he had over her that she would adhere to his wishes about how she looked and dressed, BTW. And yes, he is a thoroughly unlikable guy. As for the hair color? Well, Rob didn’t want to muck with it to that degree as he’s not a professional cover artist and he worried it would look too fake.

So here’s one of the really cool bits about being an indie-author: I went back to the manuscript and rewrote Andie as a brunette. Sometimes an author’s gotta do what she gotta do, especially when she’s one of those nit-picky people who hates it when cover models don’t match up with the author’s character descriptions.

Right. So we had our stunning slickrock landscape scene, we had our “Andie”, and we had a really awesome shot of a lightning strike that made me want to “squeeeee!”.

Next, Rob mocked up a cover to see whether the three specific photos he wanted to use would “work” together before he purchased a license to use them–no point in spending money to purchase them if the photos didn’t work together.

We both really liked the look of the cover mock-up, so I approved the design, and Rob purchased the licenses for the three royalty-free stock photos we’d chosen.

Now it was up to Rob to do his PhotoShop magic.

He had to cut “Andie’ from her background so she didn’t look like a bad cut ‘n paste job when overlaid over the background, warm up her skin tone, and play with the lighting so it looked more like an outdoor shot. He also had to shorten her reeeeally long, French manicured nails, which just didn’t work with the whole chick-on-a-slickrock-bike-tour look we were going for! The devil is in the details….

Once he’d found the perfect title font from the thousands he’d purchased, he played with positioning of all the cover elements, color shading, tones, layering, and perspective. Next, he mucked with subtle font enhancements for the title. And finally, he scanned hundreds of different fonts to find one for my author name.  Ironically, he ended up using the same font we’d used for my name on my Crystal Warrior series covers.

Total time spent? Around four solid hours–not counting the hours spent squinting at thumbnails on stock photo sites and choosing the final photos.

And the final result?

I love this cover! It looks great in black and white, too.

And, as an added bonus, Rob and I are still speaking to each other ;-)

**Lightning Rider is out now**

To find out more, please visit my Books page.

~~~

One-Stop Shops by Maree Anderson (for Writers Gone Wild)

eReader Daily News**

(Click here for my eReader Daily news page link) 

Super E-Books.com**

(Click here for my Super E-Books page links)

Stories of Romance**

Note: my author spotlight is scheduled for 25th Feb, so can’t give you a link yet.

1500 Authors**

(Here’s the link to the YA page that features one of my books)

(Here’s the link to the romance page that features one of my books)

Kindle Author

The Kindle 3 Books

Book Buzzed

The Kindle Book Review

Digital Book Today

Indie Reader

Kindle Finds

Kindle Spice

Indie Books List

Bargain Books for Your Nook

The Frugal eReader

Pixel Of Ink

~~~

There are heaps more, of course, and I’m still compiling a master list. But I hope this helps!

Cheers,

Maree

When I start dreaming scenes.

Seriously. No bull, that’s what happens.

And when those dream-scenes start crossing over to my waking world, and affecting my concentration, I know my muse has decided to bring in the big guns, and it’s get those scenes and characters and their story out of my head and into a Word document, or face the music… in my case, distraction to the point of being in la-la land. Or being unable to get my tongue around what I need to say (it’s very clear in my head but I can’t manage to enunciate it with any degree of coherency). Or forgetting what I asked someone 5 minutes ago and repeating myself — much to my immediate family’s irritation.

Right now, I’m starting to dream scenes for a sequel that readers of my first published YA, Freaks of Greenfield High, are begging me to write. And normally, I’d be delighted by this turn of events and eager to get started on Jay’s latest adventure. Unfortunately, I have not one, but two projects I need to complete before I can start on Freaks 2. First up, is finishing the editing for Lightning Rider and colluding with my DH on the cover. And after that I need to get started on the point-of-view rewrite of the third Crystal Warrior book, Jade’s Choice.

So let me go on public record as getting down on bended knee before my cranky muse, and apologizing profusely, and begging her to hold off making me a total insomniac for just a few more weeks until my schedule is cleared to write this sequel. I figure at least by the time I get around to writing it, I should have dreamed the entire freaking book, and be able to write it in double-quick time.

One can always hope, right?

And this quite neatly brings me to today’s Word of the Week.

I’m always fascinated by the sheer number and variety of “ology” words present in the English language. (Check out this website for more weird and wonderful “ologies” than you could poke a stick at!)

And aside from easy ones like biology and geology and cometology (yes, there is such a word, and it does actually mean the study of comets!) a large majority of them seem so abstract, about the only thing I can safely deduce is that they are, in fact, alluding to the study of something…

…which was exactly this case when I came across this little beauty: oneirology. Color me clueless. The study of… gee, I dunno, oneirs, perhaps?  *wry grin*

ONEIROLOGY: noun — the scientific study of dreams

Not to be confused with…

ONEIROMANCY: noun — the use of dreams for divinatory purposes.

So there you go. And perhaps if I was au fait with Greek, and had therefore known that oneiro is Greek for “dream”, then I might have had a clue. But alas, I only took French in school, and a year of Mandarin.

As for me and my penchant for dreaming scenes from sequels, I’ll just remain thankful that my dreams aren’t being subjected to a scientific study. I don’t quite know what science would make of the stuff I dream about when Ms Muse is prodding me to write a new story. It’s a writer-thing — I hope!

Oh, and before I go: just a reminder that I’m the featured author over at the awesome YA Beyond blog today. So if you’re at all curious about when I knew I wanted to be an author,  how my kids influence my writing, and which author I’d LOVE to meet, then pop on over to YA Beyond and check it out.

:-)

M

Hi y’all,

It’s a fly-by post today, I’m afraid–especially since it’s practically Friday and I’m supposed to have posted this on Thursday. Ooops. Apparently time moves differently when you’re chock-full of antihistamines….

So rather than a post about anything in particular, I’m posting little sound-type-bytes of hopefully interesting stuff *g*

1) Remember my first independently published book, The Crystal Warrior? Well, since I last posted about it when it was first released in around August last year, it’s had some wonderful 5-stars reviews:

“The chemistry between these two jumped off the page, and there was no putting The Crystal Warrior aside until I’d made it all the way through. Loved it from the first page to the last!” ~ InTheBook

“The sexy alpha male hero had me hooked from the beginning and I loved the sassy heroine who tamed him (just enough). The plot unfolded at a fast page-turner pace. Finding The Crystal Warrior was like finding a Paranormal Romance Gem. I can’t wait for the next book in the series.” ~ BookLover1960

“… an intelligent, fast, action packed read with a feisty, sassy heroine Chalcedony and a really hunky hero, Wulfenite. This book has it all including laugh out loud humor, danger, twists and turns, and both protagonists have gut wrenching choices to be made that leave you wondering right to the very end.”~ rowenamaywrites

“… the author has crafted [this story] with enough emotion, suspense and twists that I found it hard to put down. It’s easy to see why it won the Clendon Award! I sure hope Ms. Anderson doesn’t make us wait too long for the sequel!” ~ Anne Kane

“… everything about it was beautifully crafted. Characters felt real – even ancient warrior Wulf – and I loved the interaction between modern day independent heroine, Chalcey, and her hero. There was humour, angst, passion, the works! ~ Jennifer Lynne

2) Being 90,000+ words, I’ve decided to raise the price from $2.99 to $3.99.

So if you’d like to give The Crystal Warrior–and/or Book Two of the series, Ruby’s Dream–a try, then now’s good *g*. (Note that as at today, the prices have been raised on Smashwords and already rolled out to iTunes, but the lower $2.99 price still applies to Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Sony, Diesel, and All Romance eBooks.)

3) Can’t remember The Crystal Warrior from a bar of soap? Don’t worry, I’m not at all offended. August was a long time ago *g*

Here’s the blurb:

She’s a dancer, and the most important thing in her life right now is the success of her new dance studio. He’s an alien Crystal Warrior with one big-ass curse hanging over him. In a moment of weakness she lets him seduce her. Now they’re magically bonded and his life is in her hands. (Winner of the Romance Writers of New Zealand Clendon Award)

Chalcedony (Chalcey) has given up on men. Who’s got time for all that angsty dating crap when she’s got a new dance studio to run? Then she’s given a piece of wulfenite crystal and Lord Wulfenite, Keeper of the Shifting Sands fief, literally pops out of the crystal and plants one on her. Wulf is the man of her dreams… or at least, dressed like an ad for We Love Leather, with killer abs and delectable pectorals, he sure looks like the man of her dreams. But if there’s one thing Chalcey’s learned: If it looks too good to be true, then it sure as heck probably is too good to be true! And Wulf proves to be no exception.

Wulf doesn’t stop to wonder why he’s so attracted to Chalcedony. All he knows is he’s finally escaped from a centuries-long hell and he wants this woman – more than anything he’s wanted in his entire life. Chalcey doesn’t stand a chance. Before she realizes what’s at stake, she’s bonded with him and his life is in her hands. She knows she should walk away and leave him to his fate. No way is she planning on getting stuck with a guy who used to steal women for breeding stock! But the more she learns about Wulf and his past, the more conflicted she becomes.

Only when the Crystal Guardian’s curse threatens everything Chalcey’s worked so hard for, does she finally realize what’s truly important. But even if she can figure out how to save Wulf from his fate, it might be too late.

(For reviews, buy links and to read an excerpt from The Crystal Warrior, visit my website Books page.)

***

4) Have you checked out the calorie-free 99c eBook treats on offer at the Book Lovers Buffet yet?

There are around 140 eBooks on offer — all 99c each — from a huge variety of authors, including moi. (Sale ends January 15th so don’t miss out. I’ve already bought a heap *g*.)

Speaking of 99c eBooks, my paranormal YA, Freaks of Greenfield High, is included in the Book Lovers Buffet YA and paranormal sections. Just sayin’…

***

5) Freaks has also garnered some great reviews since it released in September last year:

“If you liked Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles you will love this YA book. I devoured this book in two nights. It totally played out like a movie in my head. Anderson’s descriptions of cyborg Jay were amazing. It was fast paced, riveting, real teen language that I loved and I didn’t want it to end. I seriously hope Anderson will write a sequel featuring more cyborgs.” ~ Renee Pace (Nitty Gritty YA Writings)

“[ Jay and Tyler’s] personal growth as well as their relationship issues are true to life–both heartbreaking and heart warming. This author has become a must read for me. Although this book is a YA, I found I couldn’t put it down and read into the early morning hours.” ~ L.J. Charles

“This book has one of the best heroines ever. When I started the book, I was just going to read a little before going to bed. I ended up finally shutting off my Kindle at 2am. I finished the book the next night. A really enjoyable story. It moved fast, and I think adults will like this as well as teens.” ~ E.S. Rose

“There are three things I’d like to see more of in fiction: ninja, bionics, and cyborgs. Maree Anderson has provided us with the latter, enclosing it in a YA tale of…well, coming to terms with feelings, but the author takes that sap and executes it superbly so it’s no way near as cheesy as it sounds. Read this, and you’ll understand why Jay Smith is so awesome – she’s my new favourite heroine.” ~ Tez Says

But the reeeeally big news is….

6) Freaks of Greenfield High was chosen in December by the Wattpad crew to be one of their featured stories. Huge coup because it means mega-exposure, and a way for me to get my story out there to my target audience.

As at about five minutes ago, Freaks has had more than 103,000 reads from Wattpad readers, and more comments and votes than I can poke a stick at. The feedback has been incredible and the support I’ve had from the Wattpad community continues to astound me. Looks like I’m going to be writing a sequel to keep the Wattpaders happy *g*

7) If you can’t remember what the heck Freaks of Greenfield High was even about (hey, it was released in September, after all) here’s the blurb:

When a teenage cyborg is forced to hide out at a small-town high school, the unthinkable happens: she falls in love. (Winner of the Maryland Romance Writers Reveal Your Inner Vixen contest, YA category.)

Jay’s a cyborg who looks just like normal teenage girl. She’s super-strong, super-smart, and she can even appear to grow and age like a human. When a covert organization intent on using Jay as a weapon comes after her, she needs to find a place where she can blend in. Greenfield High seems perfect… except that the boys all think she’s totally hot and keep hitting on her, and she has no clue how to handle the attention. Who knew high school could be so perilous?

To add to her confusion she’s evolving – experiencing human emotions for the first time. And when she encounters ex-jock-turned-outcast Tyler, he sends her logical brain into a spin. She’s just starting to get the hang of this girlfriend/boyfriend thing when her pursuers track her down. Now’s sooo not the time for a cyborg to fall in love and get all emotional!

***

And finally, just for fun (and because we’re all grownups here on Writers Gone Wild)….

8) This from Jim Johnston:

“There are some literary subjects that have become total cliches and an attempt to describe an erect penis is one of them.” Click here to read more “On the subject of penises”.

WARNING: Do not attempt to drink coffee–or anything for that matter–while reading this or you will be sorry.

Cheers, and Happy New Year!

Maree