Author Spotlight
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a safe fun holiday. The beginning of the new year always has me reflecting on the past year and thinking about what I can do to improve in the upcoming. Trial and error has taught me to keep my resolutions simple and few if I want to meet them all (I found the more resolutions I make the more I fail to keep…), this applies to Novel Reaction as well as my personal life. There are a couple of things Novel Reaction is going to do in the coming year:
- Resume the Books-to-Movie Challenge each month (goodness knows Hollywood is not coming up with anything original anymore).
- Monthly author spotlight on titles that were originally released in print and are now available in ebook (older print books).
- Resuming the bookish news postings, I don’t know about you but I miss them.
So how about you? Any new resolutions that don’t involve losing weight? 
Novel Reaction is excited to welcome author Edie Ramer (I have reviewed Edie’s Dead People which can be found here) to discuss something near and dear to my heart. Edie Ramer is one of the author’s of the anthology Entangled who is generously donated every dollar made from this novel to Breast Cancer Research. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer the first time when I was 16, which she beat and we got an amazing ten years with her before it came back but it was four years ago this month that I lost my mother to breast cancer so you can understand why I find this project so worthwhile. Not only do you get a great collection of short stories by some great authors, you are helping donate money to a great cause.
Edie is going to share with us how she was able to get this amazing group of authors together on such a worthwhile project.
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I’m Edie Ramer, one of the writers and editors of ENTANGLED, A PARANORMAL ANTHOLOGY. This whole project was a labor of love, without the “labor” part. From the fabulous cover donated by Laura Morrigan to the formatting by Lori Devoti, and from Amazon’s KDP people (who probably don’t realize how helpful they were) to Stacia Kane (who wrote the best foreword ever), everyone pitched in to make the anthology a success. Most of all are the amazing stories from the uber talented authors. They’re generous, too, because every dollar made from this will go to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
I’m a breast cancer survivor. It’s been eleven years since my mastectomy, and I’m lucky it hasn’t returned. My critique partner and friend hasn’t been as lucky, and I want researchers to find a cure. And I want them to find it fast.
One of the first authors to accept my invite to be in the anthology was New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan. I immediately sent a squee-mail to Misty Evans, my co-editor, saying, “Allison said YES!!!” Allison and I were in the same critique group before she sold her first book. I critiqued her second published book, which she wrote in 18 days. (That isn’t an error; she really wrote it in 18 days.) At the time she had five young children, one just a baby. I remember thinking that I could never complain again that I didn’t have time to write. This same book, THE HUNT, hit the extended New York Times list. It’s like her to go the extra step and write a novella for Entangled that took my breath away as I read it.
Jennifer Estep wasn’t able to be part of this Round Robin, but I wanted to give her a shout out. SPIDER’S REVENGE, the fifth book in her Elemental Assassin series is just out, and she’s a bit busy. In her short story, HALLOWEEN FROST (a Mythos Academy story), Gwen Frost and her friends are in for more tricks than treats when they run into a mythological monster intent on killing them.
In my story, THE FAT CAT, a witch and a wizard battle for the souls of seven women. The wizard has the god of war on his side. All the witch has is a fat, black cat. You can read an excerpt here, but I thought I’d leave you with the first line of the story:
Of all the cat houses, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.
You can find out more about me and my books at my website, http://edieramer.com. I hope you’ll love reading the stories in ENTANGLED as much as I did.
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Thank you Edie for sharing how you brought about this great collection of stoies. I know that I will be purchasing a copy of Entangled and I encourage you to do the same. A ebook copy can be purchased at Amazon here.
Creating Sanction NH, by Terry Kate
Is Sanction New Hampshire a Real Town?
The Sanction Chronicles is a Young Adult Series that follows the Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, and one human through the school year at Wind Haven High School. So with a population like that could we use a real town?
When I started writing The Sanction Chronicles I thought to myself, “Let’s just make a fake little town and have everyone be a supernatural being.” Easy right? What was I thinking! There are places to build and name, maps so the authors know where everything is, and a whole town’s worth of people to name.
With a book coming out every month September – June readers get to catch up with what has happened to the series’s main characters, but you also get to see more of the town and its residents. Which means the authors are constantly building. Like:
- The BOT Bar – The Blood On Tap is the town’s Vampire hangout serving mugs of the red stuff and the occasional soda.
- Shredded Bits Pizza – Home of The Shredder Pizza, a werewolf favorite covered with raw meat and tons of it. Everyone in town eats there but this is definitely a were favorite.
- Under Grounds Coffee House – Well, what else do you name a place directly across from a graveyard?
We can’t fit every bit of Sanction into the books, so we have created a blog to go along with the town where you can meet residents not in the books. You can see more details on the characters and scenes that did not make the book, from characters like the three I have included below.
This is a new kind of book, and the great part is that there is always something to read. Either a book or on the blog. You can keep up with your favorite characters there and on Twitter and Facebook where they come on and talk about their lives. We want readers to experience our town and love it as much as the authors do. So check out The Sanction Chronicles and meet the September characters below.
Sanction – Blog * Twitter * Facebook
Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books on Board * Smashwords
The three stars of September?
Hope
Wow, he’s hot.
Too hot.
Hope’s skin was uncomfortably warm, the heat getting worse every minute. She smelled smoke, or was that part of the dream? He’s smoking hot, that’s it. Hope settled back to admire his dark hair and bright eyes. At least I dreamed up someone worth looking at.
She sighed. Life in Sanction was good.
Not was, is—is good.
So what if awake she missed Dream Guy. Missing Dream Guy, a.k.a. DG, did not make the rest of her life lonely. She never got to see him for very long anyway. These dreams didn’t last. Now he was here, but for how long? She wanted to enjoy the time, but it was just so damn hot!
His voice broke into her thoughts. “Hope. Hope. You need to wake up.”
Like hell I do. Just minutes after getting here he wants me to leave? No way. She was staying asleep and right here. He was free to do whatever he wanted.
Jessie
Bored with watching another five fir trees go by, Jessie turned to study Marcus. He was six-one, blond, and an asshole with a wicked set of fangs. He flashed them with every word out of his mouth. “You have to think about what people will say. We aren’t kids anymore. Everything we do reflects on the Vittori name.”
Jessie took great joy from pointing out the obvious. “I am not a Vittori.” She wasn’t a vampire, born, or made. She was human.
After a pause he continued, “You live with the family.”
“In the servant’s quarters. I think everyone gets the picture.”
“You and your mother are not servants.”
“We are not part of the family either.”
Nate
Nate closed the front door quietly. He glanced around for his father. So far no sign. Nate let out a breath and shrugged his backpack from his shoulder. He’d been walking on eggshells ever since he got back a few weeks ago. Eight years away wasn’t enough to wipe the slate clean between them. Nate’s jaw tightened.
Nobody gets a clean slate.
He’d made it to the stairs when the voice hit him from behind.
“What the hell are you doing home?”
Nate turned to face his father’s frown as the older werewolf walked out of the kitchen.
“School’s over,” Nate mumbled, trying not to cringe.
“Don’t be a smart ass,” his father growled, moving closer step by step.“What about football practice?”
“Cancelled.” Nate licked his lips. “It’s the full moon.”
- END -
Welcome To Sanction – The Sanction Chronicles – Year One Volume One
Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books on Board * Smashwords
Novel Reaction is excited to welcome author Dana Mentink as part of our Murder and Mayhem celebration!
Dana Mentink lives in California where the weather is golden and the cheese is divine. Her family includes two girls (affectionately nicknamed Yogi and Boo Boo.) Papa Bear works for the fire department and he met Dana doing a dinner theater production of The Velveteen Rabbit. Ironically, their parts were husband and wife.
Dana is a 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year finalist for romantic suspense and an award winner in the Pacific Northwest Writers Literary Contest. Her October release, Betrayal in the Badlands, won a 2010 Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award.
She spent her college years competing in speech and debate tournaments all around the country. Besides writing, she busies herself teaching Sunday school and working in second/third grade combination class. Mostly, she loves to be home with her family, a dog with social anxiety problems, a chubby box turtle and a quirky parakeet.
Dana loves to hear from her readers via her website (www.danamentink.com) or her Facebook reader page.
Hello, Novel Reaction! How nice to be here. My name is Dana Mentink and I write inspirational romantic suspense for Harlequin. This month marks my seventh book with them, entitled Buried Truth. It’s the second of three books set in the South Dakota Badlands. Sounds like a good locale for a ‘run for your life’ kind of adventure? I thought so. It’s a place of extremes, from violent summer lightning storms to relentless winter winds. Rich in fossils, poor in nutrient rich soils and nonetheless home to hundreds of species of animals.
When in the planning stages of writing a suspense novel, the setting is always foremost in my mind. This is not to say an author couldn’t write a rip snorting novel that takes place in regular old suburbia, but I find the more hostile and unusual the setting, the more interesting the story. To that end, I’ve crashed a plane in the remote Cascade Mountains, hidden characters in Alaska just shy of the Arctic Circle and stranded people in the Arizona desert. I find it works just as well to set a comedy in an out of the way place, as I did in an eBook I wrote about a city slicker who has to manage her aunt’s trailer park in Seepwillow, Arizona, a hundred miles from nowhere. The setting becomes a character itself, either an antagonist to the hero or a backdrop which can reveal the roots of the character’s psyche.
So what am I busy thinking about now? Another series set in the Guatemalan jungle, or maybe a historical which starts during a horrific journey to the rugged California gold fields via the Panama crossing. Either way, you can be sure those poor characters will prove their worth or die trying as they navigate their fictional world. The harsher the setting, the better the story will be!
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Thanks Dana for sharing with us about the importance of setting. I have to admit I picked up her latest novel Buried Truth based on the desolate looking cover (review to follow). Living in the extreme desert of Arizona I am always intrigued by novels set in a desolate location, wondering how the characters will survive not only the crazy killer after them but the extreme elements also.
