Friday, June 28, 2013

BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: Ruby's Fire by Catherine Stine


Book Info

Ruby's Fire
by Catherine Stine
Publication Date: June 26th, 2013

If everything about you changes, what remains?
Seventeen year-old Ruby, long-pledged to the much older Stiles from the Fireseed desert cult, escapes with only a change of clothes, a pouch of Oblivion Powder and her mute little brother, Thorn. Arriving at The Greening, a boarding school for orphaned teens, she can finally stop running. Or can she? The Greening is not what it seems. Students are rampaging out of control and as she cares for the secret Fireseed crop, she experiences frightening physical changes. She’s ashamed of her attraction to burly, hard-talking Blane, the resident bodyguard, and wonders why she can’t be happy with the gentler Armonk. She’s long considered her great beauty a liability, a thing she’s misused in order to survive. And how is she to stop her dependence on Oblivion to find a real beauty within, using her talent as a maker of salves, when she has nightmares of Stiles without it?
When George Axiom, wealthy mogul of Vegas-by-the-Sea offers a huge cash prize for the winner of a student contest, Ruby is hopeful she might collect the prize to rescue her family and friends from what she now knows is a dangerous cult. But when Stiles comes to reclaim her, and Thorn sickens after creating the most astonishing contest project of all, the world Ruby knows is changed forever. This romantic fantasy set in 2099 on earth has a crafty heroine in Ruby, and a swoonworthy cast, which will surely appeal to the YA and new adult audience.

 Excerpt

I crawl into bed exhausted in a good way. I’ve eaten, I’ve gotten exercise, and I’ve managed to fend off Blane. I’ve checked on Thorn and Radius seems to be leaving him alone. Bea hasn’t said anything truly nasty to me today, though she’s rolled toward the wall again without a word. Now she’s breathing steadily with a soft snore.
Progress, I may not even need Oblivion tonight.
But as I lay there, staring out at the orange-streaked sky and the distant, blinking stars, my mind sinks to a dreadful reverie. I’m standing in front of the garden shelf where the red leaves are trapped under those wide stones. The Fireseed seems to be emitting a high-pitched wail. Blane is there too and he’s pressing his face into mine, his lips biting at my own lips. His meaty arms trap me. He shoves me down on top of Fireseed stalks that crack and split, sending out more high-pitched whees. As Blane’s weight pushes hard against my chest, his face becomes Stiles’—the flared nostrils, bloodshot eyes and accusing stare. “You are mine,” Stiles says. “How dare you…”
I bolt upright, sending such a flurry of fearful energy into the air that Bea chokes in her sleep. Coughing, she turns my way and returns to her steady breathing.
Her eyes could snap open at any second. She could steal my bag of Oblivion or knock it from my hands, scattering the powder over the floor. It would be lost forever. I hold my breath as I pad across the room, reach for the velvety sack in my cloak and feel the reassuring give of the powder. It’s diminishing with every dose, and I won’t be able to make more here. I need to ration it carefully. My heart hammering, I flutter into the bathroom, inch open the drawstring and shake a line onto my wrist. I inhale greedily, desperately.
Stumbling back to bed, there’s only enough time to thrust the precious bag inside my pillowcase before sweat erupts on my upper lip and my eyes roll up.
Then I bump off swollen ridges of pain as I fall deeply into never.

Giveaway 

Thursday, June 27, 2013

BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: Zombie, Incorporated by Jill Elaine Hughes


Book Info

Zombie, Incorporated
by Jill Elaine Hughes
Publication Date: March 25th, 2013

ZOMBIE, INCORPORATED 
Twilight. With zombies.
Eighteen-year-old Katie Allred is socially awkward and unpopular at school. The only child of parents who had her right out of high school, Katie is herself about to leave the nest, even though she hardly feels ready. 
Katie’s new after-school job at the Zimble Box Corporation draws her into the complex social strata of high school cliques and backstabbing friends in ways she never imagined. Katie soon discovers there’s something very strange about the “in” crowd at school---and about her employer, too. Shortly after starting her new job, the Contagion breaks out, plunging her town and the entire nation into chaos as zombie shadow forces come out into the open, ravaging the streets. Katie goes into hiding and her parents disappear, along with almost everyone else she knows. 
But Katie soon discovers she has special powers that help her survive. She’s a Beacon, someone with the innate ability to help zombies produce children. It’s a power her employer — and what little remains of the U.S. government — both want to exploit for their own ends. Not only that, it runs in her family---which has a secret past Katie never knew about until now.
Enter Agent Morehouse of the FBI Special Zombie Control Unit. A reformed zombie working undercover, he suppresses his urge to eat human flesh in order to serve and save humanity. But Agent Morehouse can’t help but be attracted to a Beacon like Katie, and she to him. Even as they fight zombies the world over, they must fight their intense attraction to each other, hoping to keep Katie from suffering  Agent Morehouse’s terrible zombie fate.

Excerpt 

The security guard, a grandfatherly-looking man who smelled like a combination of cherry pipe tobacco and Aqua Velva, smiled and tapped the side of his nose. “If you’ll just have a seat, ma’am.”
Mom obeyed, visibly flinching at the use of the word “ma’am.” She’d had me so young that she often tried to pass herself off as my older sister in public. Obviously she wasn’t fooling anybody today.
                  Mom plopped down in the nearest chair and clutched her purse tightly against her chest, muttering something unintelligible under her breath. Then she cleared her throat and looked up. “Go on in, Katie. I’ll be waiting for you. And don’t blow it. You won’t be able to pay your rent when you move out after graduation without a job. And you are going to move out no later than July 1, even if I have to toss you out onto the street myself.”
                  Subtlety has never been my mom’s strong suit. Neither has parenting. She’s always treated me more like a financial obligation than a daughter. I guess that’s what happens when you get married and pregnant right out of high school like she did.
                  Mom reached into her purse for her lipstick and compact and touched herself up a bit, though I didn’t understand why. She wasn’t the one going in for her first-ever job interview----I was. I stared at her, my feet frozen to the floor. This was really, really happening. I was going into a real job interview in a real office like a real grownup. Not bad for someone who was still in high school. I knew I should feel proud of myself or something, but I didn’t.
                  Mom applied a fresh coating of frosted peach lipstick and smacked her lips. “Good luck. Hurry up, don’t keep them waiting. Otherwise they’ll fire you before you even get a chance to get in there.”
                  I sighed. Not exactly a good way for a mother to inspire confidence. But I was used to that where Mom was concerned. She’d never get the Mother of the Year award. But I’d never get the Daughter of the Year award, either. Between the two of us, we pretty much cancelled each other out.
I took several deep long breaths, and willed my feet to unfreeze themselves from the threadbare gray carpeting. I pushed through the double doors, more than a little frightened of what I’d find on the other side.
                  As I stepped into Mr. Zimble’s office, I ended up not in an office at all, but something else entirely.  At least it didn’t look like any office I’d ever seen before.  It really looked more like a toy store.
Lining the walls were floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves. But instead of books, they were lined with brightly colored cereal boxes, mostly childrens’ cereals like Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms. In between the cereal boxes were unopened boxes of toys. Toys of all kinds—Star Wars action figures, Strawberry Shortcake dolls, Bakugan games, GI Joes, and a bunch of stuff that looked like it was from the 70s and 80s that I’d never even heard of.  There were lots of Halloween-themed toys, too—werewolves, Frankensteins, mummies, and zombies.
                  Lots of zombies. There were a bunch of Evil Dead toys on one shelf, and about sixteen different versions of one of the zombie villains from Scooby-Doo. I recognized it right away because they still ran that episode of Scooby-Doo on Cartoon Network all the time, even though it was ancient, like from the sixties or something. All untouched and perfect and sealed in the original packaging. 
                  In between the regular toys and cereal boxes were tiny little cheap cardboard toy-things, the kind that you usually find in cereal boxes and Cracker Jacks. Stupid stuff like stickers, cardboard footballs like the kind you’d toss around in study hall, and those little thin pieces of plastic that show different pictures when you flick them back and forth. At the end of the room was a huge mahogany desk, also covered with toys and brightly colored boxes—leaving just enough space for a laptop, desk pad and phone. Behind that desk sat a funny-looking little old man that I assumed must be Mr. Zimble.
                  And when I say funny-looking, I really mean funny looking.  He reminded me of something you would see in a cartoon.  Or maybe a video game.
                  He was short. Very short. So short that his head barely made it above the edge of his desk, and he sat in a huge leather-upholstered chair that was almost twice as tall as he was—looking at him reminded me of seeing one of my toddler cousins sitting in my grandfather’s old La-Z-Boy.  He had a perfectly bald head that shined under the florescent lights like Mr. Clean. He wore huge black hornrimmed glasses that were almost twice as wide as his head, along with big bushy white eyebrows and gray hair growing out of his ears.  By the looks of him he had to be almost ninety years old. Or maybe just sixty. But definitely old. 
                  Mr. Zimble saw me come in and smiled wide.  So wide, in fact, I thought his face would break in half.  He had large, white even teeth that looked fake.  He pushed back his huge leather chair from the ginormous desk and stood up.  But it looked like he must have been sitting on a box or something, because when he got down from the chair he disappeared behind the desk for a moment.  I didn’t see him full-length until he came out from behind it.
                  Mr. Zimble was a midget.
                  Or rather, a little person.  I think I read somewhere that little people find the term “midget” offensive or something.
                  He held out his tiny hand, and I reached down to shake it. “Hello there,” he said in a deep voice that didn’t match his small stature at all.  “You must be Katie Allred. Tell me, are you any relation to Gloria Allred?”
                  “Who?”
                  He laughed—a deep, resonating laugh that reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West’s singing guards in The Wizard of Oz. I blinked my eyes a couple of times just to make sure they weren’t playing tricks on me, but when I opened them, Mr. Zimble was still just as short as he’d been before.                 “Gloria Allred is a famous Hollywood lawyer,” he said. “She’s on TV a lot, I thought you might be related.”
                  I had no idea what he was talking about. “We definitely don’t have any lawyers in the family,” I said. No, we were mostly a bunch of working stiffs. I remember Mom talking about a second cousin who worked as a high-level computer programmer someplace, but as far as I knew that was the most important job anybody in my family had. Except maybe for my uncle Lou who worked as a garbage collector on a military base in Kentucky. You know, for like a government pension and everything.
                  My family isn’t exactly what you’d call successful. At least not in the traditional sense. If you could afford rent and gas in your car, that was successful enough for us. At least, that’s what my parents always said. Small wonder they’d never bothered to put away a college fund for me. For the past four years, the recurring mantra at our dinner table was, “Katie, forget college. You have to go out and get a job and support yourself the minute you graduate, just like we did.”
                  “Well, here I was thinking you could get me Gloria Allred’s autograph.” Mr. Zimble seemed a little disappointed. “I do know for a fact you’re related to Bud Weidle, though. My top line foreman in the box plant. I understand Bud is your uncle?”
“Yes, he is.  Uncle Bud is on my mother’s side.  He’s technically my great-uncle since he’s my mom’s uncle, but we don’t call him that.”
                  Mr. Zimble motioned for me to take a seat in one of the hard wooden chairs in front of his desk. I sat down and instantly felt at least a foot shorter.  The huge wooden desk suddenly towered over me, as if it were the Grand Canyon and I were standing at the bottom of it looking up. Mr. Zimble climbed back up into his chair, and now he looked like a giant. It reminded me of a room at the carnival funhouse, the one with the tilted floor and the funny mirrors.  You know the ones—at one end of the room you’re a fat midget, at the other end you’re a tall, thin giant and your head knocks up against the ceiling.  Mr. Zimble was kind of like that, except he was like what would happen if the carnival funhouse room got turned into a person.
                   He gazed down on me from his high perch like an evil king out of a fairy tale. I craned my neck to see if there was a wooden box on his chair to give him more height, but I couldn’t tell from such a steep angle.
Okay, so this was weird. I suppressed an urge to bolt for the door. If I screwed up the interview after my Uncle Bud went to all the trouble to arrange it for me, Mom and Dad would be furious. I knew I’d never hear the end of it for as long as I lived.
                  “Your Uncle Bud is one of our best employees,” Mr. Zimble went on. “He’s been with us for almost forty years.  I remember when I first hired him.  He wasn’t much older than you then, we hired him right out of high school. He started at the bottom and worked his way up. He runs the secondary production line now, a big step up from when he swept the factory floor and took out the trash. I like to see my employees work their way up the system on their own merits.”
                  “Does that mean I’ll be sweeping the factory floor and taking out the trash?” I blurted out. “I thought this was an office job.” Before the words even made their way out of my mouth, I was already embarrassed.
                  He laughed again, somewhat higher-pitched this time.  In fact, his laugh started out low and deep, but then seemed to get higher and higher, faster and faster, like when you speed up a recording, until he almost sounded like one of the Chipmunks. But then when he started talking, his voice sounded just like it had before. So maybe I just imagined the whole thing.
“It is an office job, Katie. I won’t have a pretty young lady like you working on the dirty, loud factory floor.  You’re not strong enough to lift the pallets or run the pressing machines either, I can tell just by looking at you.

                  I probably should have been offended by this, but I wasn’t. Feminism and equal rights were fine and all, but you’d never see me lifting pallets or running machines. No way. That was sweaty work made for fat hairy old men. Fat hairy old men like my Uncle Bud who smelled like a mixture of cherry Jell-O and trash. (Seriously, he did. So did his entire house. Don’t even get me started.)
                  “Well, that’s good,” I said.  “What exactly will I be doing? Uncle Bud said it was just typical office stuff, typing and filing and answering phones and stuff. Or maybe packing boxes to put on the train?  I saw on the way over here you guys use the trains to like, ship stuff.”
                  “Yes, that’s exactly right, Katie,” he replied, picking up a tiny plastic werewolf figurine and toying with it between his gnarled fingers. I saw that the skin on the backs of his hands was paper-thin, almost transparent, showing a roadmap of knobby blue veins pressing up from underneath. “I can see right off the bat that you’re a real go-getter.  To answer your question, you’ll be doing all the typical office work, plus things like making coffee and running errands. You’d be working under the supervision of our chief office manager, who started out ten years ago right out of high school as an entry-level office girl, just like you’ll be.”
                  I realized with some trepidation that this really wasn’t an interview at all. Mr. Zimble had already decided to hire me sight-unseen. Which on the surface seemed great, but there had to be a catch. I might be only eighteen, but I wasn’t born yesterday, either.
                  But what was the catch? Other than the fact this whole place seemed like something out of the Twilight Zone and Mr. Zimble reminded me a lot of a cartoon villain, it still seemed just like any other place to work. “So, um, does this mean I got the job?”
                   He smiled wide enough to show the tops of his dentures. “Yep. Your Uncle Bud says you can type and you’re a nice girl and a hard worker, so that’s good enough for me. When can you start?”

Giveaway

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

WOW #36

Split Second (Pivot Point #2)
by Kasie West
Publication Date: February 11th, 2014

Life can change in a split second.
Addie hardly recognizes her life since her parents divorced. Her boyfriend used her. Her best friend betrayed her. She can’t believe this is the future she chose. On top of that, her ability is acting up. She’s always been able to Search the future when presented with a choice. Now she can manipulate and slow down time, too . . . but not without a price.
When Addie’s dad invites her to spend her winter break with him, she jumps at the chance to escape into the Norm world of Dallas, Texas. There she meets the handsome and achingly familiar Trevor. He’s a virtual stranger to her, so why does her heart do a funny flip every time she sees him? But after witnessing secrets that were supposed to stay hidden, Trevor quickly seems more suspicious of Addie than interested in her. And she has an inexplicable desire to change that.
Meanwhile, her best friend, Laila, has a secret of her own: she can restore Addie’s memories . . . once she learns how. But there are powerful people who don’t want to see this happen. Desperate, Laila tries to manipulate Connor, a brooding bad boy from school—but he seems to be the only boy in the Compound immune to her charms. And the only one who can help her.
As Addie and Laila frantically attempt to retrieve the lost memories, Addie must piece together a world she thought she knew before she loses the love she nearly forgot . . . and a future that could change everything

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: Vigilante Nights by Erin Richards


Book Info

Vigilante Nights
by Erin Richards
Publication Date: July 18th, 2013

A "good boy" will do anything for vengeance when a gang rite kills his twin sister. Will Lucas win, or follow his sister Silver into the darkness?
After a hideous car wreck, Lucas wakes from a coma to find that his world is gutted. Not only is his beloved twin sister, Silver, gone forever, but Lucas is broken in body and spirit. He will never be a college athlete, and is robbed of what he now realizes was the most important bond of his life. Although they weren't identical twins, Lucas and Silver shared a bond so fierce it defied reason, and was nearly supernatural.
After her death, that bond seems to endure when Lucas sees Silver everywhere he turns. Either he's crazy, or Silver is trying to tell him something about the California gang initiation they stumbled into that cost Silver her life. Lucas is bent on revenge, turning on Raymond, Silver's former boyfriend; the one Lucas never wanted her to date. He forms a posse of vigilantes to take out the gangsters responsible for Silver's death, but he risks not only his own life, but the love of the new girl on his block, who knows more about Lucas and Silver than can be accounted for by mere chance.

Excerpt 

Silver’s babbling continued at racecar speed. Seriously, I didn’t want to hear about the new target of my sister’s lust. The fallout of her last crush with one of my friends still jacked me up. Memories surged and my gut pinched. Ex-friend now.

A blissful moment of silence descended. I peeked at my twin in the passenger seat. Brow puckered, she sucked on the straw to her daily iced mocha. My gaze slid past the speedometer clocking me at ten over in a fifty-five zone.

“Something feels weird tonight, Lucas.” Her tone turned somber. “Maybe you ought to slow down.”

“Meaning?” I felt her apprehension, a feeling I’d grown used to over the last week since she’d kicked Raymond—our collective ex—to the curb.

She shrugged. “Just a weird vibe I’ve had since we left the mall.”

“Raymond still bothering you?”

Silver looked out the passenger window. She didn’t have to hide the tears I felt from her in our weirdo twin bond. Hoping to lighten the mood, I gunned the car on a clear stretch of the frontage road. Despite her heebie-jeebies, I knew she loved the speed as much as I did.

Night had sneaked up on us as we left Monterey behind. We zoomed past the dimly lit Welcome to Sea Haven, California sign. Population 28,342, give or take ten million in an influx of farm workers from the inland counties, yearly tourists, and summer resort peeps.

The thumping drone of the Red Renegade’s new headers oozed ’68 perfection. Or as sweet as the Camaro SS should’ve sounded back in 1968. “Camaro sounds badass, you think?”

“I guess.” Silver sighed, knocking her cup on her thigh. “Do you think I did the right thing?”

“Dumping Raymond?” Incredulous, I glanced at her. “Hell, yes.”

“He’s still your friend. He keeps calling me.”

“We’re football teammates. Nothing more. I’ll make sure he stays away from you.” I tweaked her hair. “You know he’s gunning for my spot.”

“You’re the best quarterback the school’s ever had. Coach would never,” Silver said thoughtfully, jingling her silver bangle bracelets.

Good enough to get three scholarships to killer schools. “I am perfect, aren’t I?” I teased, wanting to slide her mind off douche bag Raymond. He’d never know how much I hated him for the way he treated my twin. If I didn’t continue to keep the peace, he’d get all vindictive on her, like he did with other girls who quit taking his crap. I’d bite my tongue into pieces before I let on how much I knew about him . . . pressuring her . . . before she was ready. A slow burn spiraled up my chest. Screw him.

Dropping my speed, I felt for the glassy shift of the four-speed transmission. I’d spent junior year restoring the Camaro, using all the money from my weekend gopher job for my mom at the resort. I finished the last engine mods in time for summer break in two weeks. I was raring to open up the Red Renegade on the public track.

“I’m still ticked about my cell,” Silver said, her long blonde hair streaming out the open window, her mind already switching gears as usual. “Karma’s like a boomerang.” She swished her drink. “It always comes back ’round.”

I snorted. “In your case, it always bites you in the butt, and I gotta wipe up the mess.”

“Not always, Lucas.” I deflected her playful backhanded slap. “You owed me a trip to the mall. Besides, I didn’t lose my cell. Someone stole it out of my purse.” She danced her fingers on her silver bangles into a tinkling vibration. “I needed a new phone anyway. Screen was shot.” A giggle slipped out. “Karma’s a bitch.”

As we neared the speed trap on County Coast Road, I eased up on the gas. The small-block engine thumped and growled, the exhaust burbling defiantly. Few cars zipped past, driving south toward Monterey. Cops wouldn’t clock me going more than seven over north of the Sea Haven sign. This stretch of the frontage road had already earned me a speed warning. Lucky for me, I weaseled my way out of a ticket by promising to install a Borla exhaust on the sheriff’s Corvette. Killer small town bribery.

Silver traded my quick grin with her evil squint. Her evil squint was one of her poker “tells.” That particular tell meant the hard drive was spinning in her head. Which led me to believe she knew who nicked her cell. Man, I felt sorry for the poor sucker.

She slurped down the dregs of her mocha and tossed the empty cup in the pristine backseat, missing the trash bag by a mile. “Oops.”

“Silver! My car’s not a trash bin.” I knocked my fist on the gearshift, glowered for half a tick. We approached the STOP sign at the Ocean Avenue intersection. I downshifted and rolled to a full stop. The streetlight across the intersection bathed the red car in amber fire and ghosted the stickweeds along the side of the road. Light glinted off a small spot in the ditch to our right.

“Jeez, go find your happy place, will ya? I’ll get it when we . . .” Silver cranked up her window so fast I thought she’d just discovered that sea air killed genius brain cells. She mashed her elbow on the door lock. “Someone’s hunched over in the ditch.” The seat harness squeaked as she squeezed closer to the center console. “Oh. My. God. A body’s lying down there, too.”

Giveaway