The Rocker That Needs Me Tour Stop: Excerpt + Giveaway

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Title: The Rocker That Needs Me

Author: Terri Anne Browning
Purchase Links: Amazon | B & N

Synopsis:

The Demon… 

 I’ve been fighting my own demons for most of my life. The alcohol seems to numb the pain, but it never makes the nightmares go away. All I want in life is a little peace. When I met my angel it felt like I found it, but there is so much standing between us. Why does she have to be so young…? 

 The Demon’s Angel… 

 Meeting Drake was the best thing to ever happen to me. I found my friend, my soul mate. But he lets my age stand between us. There is something that haunts him, and I selfishly want to be the one that helps him conquer his ghosts. If he would just let me in, let me closer, I think I could help him…

*mature content. Not for readers under 17.

                                 Excerpt

          Lana’s POV

Sometime much, much later, my tears finally started to dry and the cold that had numbed me started to thaw enough to make me realize that I should be mad. I was in love with Drake, and after Friday night, I was sure that he was in love with me too, or that he at least cared about me as more than a friend… Now, with him fucking some other girl in his hotel room, unconcerned that I would hear him, I knew that I had been wrong.  

All I would ever be to him was his friend, and I would have to accept that. But there was no way I could carry on the way we had been the last few months. I wasn’t that good of an actress. I sucked at pretending, especially when my feelings were involved. And they didn’t get any more involved than they were right now.  

It would kill me to have to see him day after day, knowing that he had gone from lying in bed with me one night to screwing some other chick the next. Maybe that was how it worked in the rocker world—okay, so I knew that that was how it worked in the rocker world, but I couldn’t deal with that kind of messed up shit.  

As the night dragged on, I realized what I had to do. It was going to be hard. It meant doing things I had promised never to do, but sometimes you had to do what was best for you, not what was best for someone else.

The Guys Are Props Club Tour Stop: Excerpt + Giveaway

(click the picture to follow the tour!)

Title: The Guys Are Props Club
Author: Ingrid Seymour
Published: July 15, 2013
Genre: New Adult Contemporary Romance

Purchase Links: 

Amazon | CreateSpace

Synopsis:

During her senior year in high school, Maddie Burch promised herself not to ever fall for a cute guy – or any guy – again. Cute guys are players and not to be trusted, a fact she learned the hard way when her first boyfriend ran her heart through a paper shredder. Two years later, her promise is still intact, and she’s determined to make it through college without falling victim to another creep. She has her job, school and The Guys Are Props Club to keep her mind and hormones in check. 

The club was founded by Jessica, Maddie’s best friend. It is a sisterhood of girls who have fallen prey to heartless jerks and who have vowed to turn the tables. Once a semester, Jessica requires members to “do onto others as they’ve done unto you.” Setting the example, Jessica’s next play is Sebastian Capello, a theater major with heartthrob looks and a flair for Latin dance, whose heart she plans to break the way hers was once broken. 

What the friends don’t know is that Sebastian is different. Despite his perfect looks and popularity, he’s not a jerk. He doesn’t play games to get his way. Instead, he keeps it real and goes after what he wants with honest intentions. And what he wants is not a bombshell like Jessica, but a down-to-earth girl like Maddie – even if it causes a riff in the girl’s friendship. Even if it means getting Maddie to break her personal vow. 

*** Due to language and sexual situations this book is recommended for ages 17 and older.

  

                              Excerpt 

 “Isn’t he an absolute caramel?” Jessica asked, following my gaze.

“Who?” I pretended to be looking at Cristina as she instructed Sebastian’s new partner.

“Sebastian, who else?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s . . . good looking.”

“Good looking?” Jessica looked appalled. “That would be like calling the sky blue when it is clearly celestial.”

The Perfect Game by J. Sterling: Excerpt & Giveaway + The Game Changer Teaser

Title: The Perfect Game (The Perfect Game, #1)
Author: J. Sterling
Published: October 11th 2012
Purchase Links: Amazon
Synopsis:

He's a game she never intended to play. 
And she's the game changer he never knew he needed.

The Perfect Game tells the story of college juniors, Cassie Andrews & Jack Carter. When Cassie meets rising baseball hopeful Jack, she is determined to steer clear of him and his typical cocky attitude. But Jack has other things on his mind... like getting Cassie to give him the time of day.

They're both damaged, filled with mistrust and guarded before they find one another (and themselves) in this emotional journey about love and forgiveness. Strap yourselves for a ride that will not only break your heart, but put it back together. 

Sometimes life gets ugly before it gets beautiful...

Excerpt

Introduction to Jack

Jack walked, no, make that sauntered, over to where I stood. His black cargo shorts and tight-fitting gray baseball t-shirt did a number on his body. The definition of his arm muscles rippled against the fabric, accentuating his well-defined shoulders on his six-foot frame as his arms swayed. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at me like I was some tiny, helpless creature who didn’t have a clue it was about to get eaten alive by the most beautiful, albeit dangerous, creature in the jungle. 

I almost felt violated.

Afterlife Academy: Excerpt + Author Interview + Giveaway

Title: Afterlife Academy
Author: Jaimie Admans
Published: March 15th 2013
Purchase Links: Amazon |
Amazon UK
Synopsis:

Even being dead isn’t enough to get you out of maths class.

Dying wasn't on sixteen-year-old Riley Richardson's to-do list. And now, not only is she dead, but she's stuck in a perpetual high school nightmare. Worse still, she's stuck there with the geekiest, most annoying boy in the history of the world, ever.

In a school where the geeks are popular and just about everything is wrong, Riley has become an outcast. She begins a desperate quest to get back home, but her once-perfect life starts to unravel into something not nearly as great as she thought it was. And maybe death isn’t really that bad after all... 

Welcome to Afterlife Academy, where horns are the norm, the microwave is more intelligent than the teachers, and the pumpkins have a taste for blood.

Excerpt

           CHAPTER 1

I have always been a good girl. I’ve always been a girl who never gets into trouble. In fact, the one and only time that I do something even vaguely wrong, do you know what happens?

I die.

At least, that seems like the most logical explanation, given the circumstances.

I remember impact.

And then nothing.

I open my eyes and look around. I am standing in front of the school gate.

Of all places.

It’s freezing. Something feels wrong. I’m just pulling my jacket further around myself when I hear a voice to my left.

“You,” it says angrily.

It startles me and I spin around to see Anthony.

Of all people.

Somehow I have gone from being in the car with Wade to standing in front of the school gate with the geekiest, most boring, weirdest nerd boy from my form.

“You,” I snarl back at him.

He sighs.

I huff out a breath, which appears in front of my face because it’s so cold. It’s the middle of April. It shouldn’t be this cold.

I look around and realise something is really wrong with this place.

We’re standing on the road outside our school gate.

Except we’re not.

On the road, that is.

I mean, we’re outside the school. Our school. And we’re standing on a road. But this isn’t the road. There are no cars. No houses. No sandwich shop opposite. There’s nothing but an endless country lane. There is nothing in either direction. Just a plain tarmac road. And trees. Lots of trees.

I glance back at Anthony to see if he’s seeing this too. Obviously he is because he’s looking around, clearly just as bewildered as I am.

“What happened?” I say, more to myself than to him.

Nightmarish Dates, Teasers + Giveaway: Love Love - Beth Michele

Title: Love Love
Author: Beth Michele
Published: May 6th 2013
Purchase Links: Amazon | B&N
Synopsis:

Gabrielle Willis is smart. She's funny. And oh yes, she's a bit klutzy. 

When Gabrielle left sunny California bound for the energy of Manhattan, she was willingly leaving the life she had known for the new life she would create. But was she really leaving something behind or was she running away? 

On the outside, Gabrielle Willis has it all under control. A new life in Manhattan, a great roommate, and a good job. But she is haunted. Haunted by a memory she's tried to forget and by a family who's abandoned her. But what happens when what's on the outside is only an illusion and in perfect contradiction to what's buried deep within?

Enter Dane Rhodes. He's gorgeous, smart, and sexy as hell. Just what Gabby wants, or so she thinks. But when she meets Brad Dixon, the sweet guy with the crooked smile, he begins to make her see that the very thing she is trying to run from is the very thing that just may push her to see the light.

Teaser

Sweat is clinging to my palms, my pulse visibly racing through my heated skin.  I’m having a hard time controlling my breathing as the elevator ascends to the twenty-seventh floor. So much for the time I spent in yoga class.  I wring my hands repeatedly and slowly count to ten. When I finally get to ten, the elevator pings.  Steadying my wobbly legs and wiping away the moisture trickling down my forehead, I head down the hall to apartment 27-F, attempting one last deep, calming breath before I ring the doorbell. 

Pity Isn't an Option: Excerpt + Giveaway

Title: Pity Isn't an Option
Author: Jessica Brooks
Published: March 8th 2013 by CreateSpace

Purchase Links: Amazon | B & N | 
Smashwords | The Book Depository

Synopsis:

Seventeen year-old Jonas' blood disorder has taken away everything that matters. Sixteen year-old Hattie's father has gone and lost his marbles. When Jonas' perfectly healthy twin brother and Hattie's crazy dad are drafted into the President's army, Hattie's dad disappears. Jonas and Hattie embark on a journey to find him, and find something they'd lost long ago in the process.
                                                                         

Excerpt

The photo that set the mood for the scene

There’s a small wad of ugly, gray fuzz with googly eyes glued to the top of it, perched at an odd angle atop my mailbox. Which means Jonas is waiting for me nearby, so I look up the hill, past Gran’s house. Something’s moving off behind her back fence, heading up the path. The sun is nearly down, but I have a few minutes.

Instead of finding Jonas behind the fence, however, I find a second fuzzball man. This one’s wearing a little paper hat made out of a clip from our local newspaper, the Wanless Wanderer. The hat is in the shape of flags you see sometimes on toothpicks, cut from some sort of recent picture because it looks as though he has two eyes sitting on the top of his head. It’s a little bigger than what I can remember as an average-sized cherry. A perfect size for the big ball of lint, if I do say so myself. I try to remember how much heavier a cherry is as I nestle Mr. Fuzzy carefully in my palm and walk up the Norton’s driveway. My mouth puckers. This food imagining needs to stop, I think, as my stomach growls. And right before I knock, a psssstt! sounds loudly somewhere off to my right.

Jonas is at the mountain line, hiding behind a tree where the hills begin, next to his parents’ ancient, now used as a storage unit for who-knows-what, falling-apart camper. He’s curving a finger in the air, motioning at me; tiny little birds fly in and out of the tree as I rush over.

“What are you—”

Playing For Keeps by Emma Hart: Cover Reveal + Excerpt

Lately, I just wrote a review for Emma Hart's The Love Game (click here to see it) and I loved it so much! So today on our blog, we'll be revealing the cover for Playing For Keeps.. *drumroll*

Title: Playing For Keeps (The Game, #2)
Author: Emma Hart
Expected Publication: June 24, 2013
Synopsis:

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Emma Hart, comes the second book in The Game series, and the story everyone wanted after The Love Game… 

She's in love with him. 
He's trying not to love her. 
One night changes everything. 

Aston Banks never meant to get close to Megan Harper – not even for that one night. Haunted by a childhood he refuses to face, he knew she could break through every wall he’d ever built and tear them down without even realising she was doing it. 

Cover Reveal and Excerpt: Glass Hearts by Lisa De Jong

Hey everyone! Say hello again to Lisa De Jong because for today, we will be doing the cover reveal for Plastic Hearts' sequel, GLASS HEARTS..

Click here to read my review of Plastic Hearts

And now, *drum roll please*
Presenting, the cover of Glass Hearts..

Title: Glass Hearts (Hearts, #2)
Author: Lisa De Jong
Expected Date of Publication: June 28, 2013
Genre: New Adult Contemporary
Synopsis:

Can a relationship survive on love alone? Is love truly enough? 

Dane and Alex’s relationship has never been easy, but now they have a fresh start without the pressures of Alex’s family. Together they try to move forward while continuing to struggle with a past that they can’t seem to escape. 

Shucked Book Blitz: Giveaway + Excerpt

Today on our blog, you will all have the chance to read an excerpt of Shucked and also get to win some awesome prizes. This tour is organized by Xpresso Book Tours.

Title: Shucked
Author: Megg Jensen
Published: April 14th 2013
Genre: YA Contemporary
Synopsis:

Suburgatory meets Indiana Jones...on a farm 

Fifteen-year-old Tabitha has had the kind of life that would impress even the greatest adventurers. She's escaped a croc attack in the Amazon, walked the length of the Great Wall of China, and earned a black belt in taekwondo in Korea. She owes her worldly experience to her mother's career in archaeology, but when her mother takes on a dangerous new assignment, Tabitha is devastated to learn she can't tag along. 

 Instead, she's forced to live on a midwestern farm with her grandparents where she'll have to attend a full year of public school. It's Tabitha's greatest nightmare, because despite all her adventures, she has no practical experience with the one thing that frightens her the most - other teenagers. 

Her math teacher is her mom's old high school boyfriend, she can't tell the friendly girls from the mean ones, and she develops a major crush on a boy she knows she can't trust. And just when she thinks she'll never get the hang of this normal teenager thing, an attack brings the danger of her previous life right up to her midwestern porch. Who could have ever guessed getting totally shucked would bring her face-to-face with her most exciting adventure yet?

Purchase:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Kobo

Excerpt

     And now I had to face math too? I prayed for a tornado or anything to whisk me away from this school. Instead, a boy stood in the doorway, blocking my entry to the classroom. 

     His back to me, all I could see was his stringy blond hair. I had the strangest urge to run my fingers through it - fingers covered with shampoo, that is. I shuddered at the grossness of it. What? Did he just get off the tractor before heading into school? 

     “Excuse me.” I nudged him with my knee as I ducked under the outstretched arm of the boy next to him. The other boy moved, maybe about a centimeter, as he turned his head to look down at me. Then I was struck. 

     Oh, Aphrodite, his eyes alone forced my stomach to plummet down to my toes. Gorgeous, dark brown Asian eyes. Who was this boy and what planet did he come from?He looked unlike every other midwestern homegrown pod person in this high school. My jaw dropped. My brain scrambled. 

     “Annyong hashimnikka.” I wanted to hit myself on the head with a blunt object. Stupid, stupid, stupid, speaking Korean instead of English. 

     “Huh?” he asked, a smile spread across his face. Dimples, there were dimples. “Did you just tell me good afternoon in Korean?” 

     I nodded. 

     “That’s cool.” He reached down and put his arm around my shoulder. “How’d you know I’m Korean?” 

     “I lived there for a year,” I stammered, struck by his eyes. 

     “My parents taught me a little here and there when I was growing up. Too bad there isn’t an opportunity for me to learn more with the Korean adoption groups in Chicago. There isn’t enough free time on the farm for that." 

     My knees quivered as he led me over to an empty desk. What was wrong with me? Did my exile to cheerleading turn me into a weak-kneed teenage girl? I dropped my math book on the desk and gazed up at him. 

     “Long day?” he asked. “You look a little glassy eyed.”  

     Buddha give me strength. It was obvious. He knew. 

     “Leave her alone, Alex.” Becky elbowed her way between us. His arm slipped off my shoulders, leaving my skin hot and tingly. I wasn’t feeling well all of a sudden. 

     Maybe my vomiting fears were about to come true. 

     Alex turned around and skulked to the back row. He struck up a conversation with a geek next to him. A girl geek. Jealousy gnawed at my gut. I might need to kill Becky for sending him away. 

     “Sorry about Alex,” Becky said, rolling her eyes. “He’s such a player.” 

     “You think he’s a player?” I asked. “Really?” 

     “He’s dated almost every girl in school.” Becky drew quotes in the air when she said dated. 

     “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, eyeing him again. He leaned over closer to the geeky girl and twirled a bit of her hair around his index finger. She giggled. I reached to my belt for a sword before I realized I wasn’t in taekwondo and that I wasn’t allowed to hurt unarmed geeks. 

     “He’s a serial dater. He’s different. He’s hot. He knows it. Everyone has fallen for him at one time or another. Anyway, Alex is trouble. Stay away from him.”

Meet the Author

 

I've been a freelance parenting journalist since 2003 and began writing YA novels in 2009. I co-run DarkSide Publishing, am a member of SCBWI, and I blog about writing while juggling freelancing, volunteering, and family life. I live in the Chicago suburbs with my husband, two kids, and our miniature schnauzer, Ace.

Goodreads | Twitter | Facebook

Giveaway Time! 

Release Week Event: Paris Love Match: Excerpt + Giveaway

Title: Paris Love Match
Author: Nigel Blackwell
Publisher:Bandit Publishing
Release Date: May 2, 2013
Genre: Romance humorous
Age Group:  New Adult
Event organized 
by:  AToMR Tours

Book Description:

Getting a taxi in Paris can be hell.

Piers Chapman expected a boring business trip to Paris. 

What he didn't expect was to fight over a cab with a beautiful girl.

After a bad meeting, Sidney Roux just wanted to hail a cab, go home, and have a glass of wine.

She didn't expect to fight over a cab with some pompous British tourist.

Neither of them expected another man to jump in their cab.

Or to be involved in a gun fight.

Or a car chase through the streets of Paris.

Or for the man to die.

But they're thrust together when the mob demands they return what the dead man stole.

Will Piers and Sidney work together?

Will they find what he had stolen?

Will they stay alive?

And will they do the last thing they expected?

Will they fall in love?

                                        

    Excerpt 

      “Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

“A shower. Are you going to have a shower?”

“Yes, right.” He turned to the shower. “Are you going to—“

“Look away? Ewww, yes. Of course.” She turned around to face the same corner as he had. “I’ve got my eyes closed.”

He removed his coat, decided not to ask her to place it over her head as she had done to him, and hung it on a peg on the wall. Then he took his shirt and jeans off and self-consciously folded his boxer shorts inside them. There was nowhere to put them.

“Would you hold my clothes?”

She nodded and held out her arms.

He flipped the lever that started the water. It was lukewarm. The soap was in a push button dispenser and he quickly covered himself in lather. He shivered. “Takes a while to warm up, doesn’t it.”

“You only get one shower for your euros.”

“Oh, thanks. Vital tip that.”

“You were the one that jumped in.”

He tried to keep his back to her. “This is getting bloody cold.”

“Hey, you have a scar.”

“I thought you had your eyes closed!”

“I can’t stand here all this time with my eyes closed. It’s not normal. How did you get your scar?”

“Fell out of a tree and tore up my shoulder when I was young.”

“No, not the one on your shoulder. The one on your bu—“

He crunched up, covering himself. “Do you mind?”

“I was only trying to make conversation.”

The water was freezing now. The overhead fan was still blasting away. He could feel his skin prickling with the cold. He swept a blob of shampoo through his hair and rinsed it away immediately, thrashing his hands to clear the soap off his body. He snapped the tap to off and ran his hands over his body to wipe off the water. “God, I’m cold.”

“Turn on the dryer,” she said.

He pressed the button and nothing. He pressed again. Then he thumped and banged it. Nothing happened. He was shivering uncontrollably. “Oh, god. One shower, one run of the dryer.” He ran his hands over his body, trying to ward off the cold and flicking more water onto the sopping wet floor.

She leaned over to the sink and pulled a handful of paper towels from a dispenser. “Here.”

“Are you closing your eyes at all?”

“Will you stop being a wimp?”

She juggled the towels in her hand and backward-passed them to him. At the same moment his clothes fell out of her other hand.

He dived to grab them from the wet floor. She did the same. Their heads cracked, his eye socket against the back of her skull. A storm of twinkling lights erupted in his vision and darkness threatened to overcome him. He slid down and sat on the floor. “Oh, god, why’d you do that?”

She picked up his clothes from the wet floor. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

He grunted and held his head in his hands.

“Wow. You’ve got abs,” she said.

He sighed. “Everyone’s got abs.”

“Yeah, but not ones you can see.”

He drew his knees up to his chest. “That’s because I’ve got no clothes on.”

“I meant—“

There was an insistent knocking at the door followed by Little’s high-pitched squeak. “You two are wasting time.”

Piers rolled his head forward. “Oh, shit.” The twinkling lights swam around in circles.

“Go away,” said Sidney, “we’re busy.”

“So I can hear. You two lovebirds might be having fun, but you’re wasting time. Get out here.”

“Oh, god. Give me my clothes,” said Piers. He heard a burst of schoolgirl sniggers from outside.

About the Author

Nigel Blackwell was born in rural Oxfordshire in England. He has a love of books, a PhD in Physical Chemistry, and a black belt in pointing out the obvious. As a teenager he toured Europe and loved seeing the wonders of the world and the people in it. Since then he has been fortunate enough to travel across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Japan, and hasn't been anywhere that doesn't have the potential for a story.

He now lives in Texas with his wife and daughter, where they enjoy the sunshine and listen to the coyotes howl at night.

Find the Author

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Purchase links:

Amazon | Barnes and Noble

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