Vote For Cover Art – Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down
It’s that time again to give me your thoughts and feedback on the cover art for my new book coming out this month, Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down. Anyone who comments on the covers on the website will be automatically entered for a chance to win a copy of one of my books (your choice of books). This time I was able to narrow it to a picture I liked, but I’m still trying to decide on the font. I’d also love to hear constructive criticism and ideas for how to improve them if you have any suggestions. Please keep in mind that they have to be not only eye-catching, but easy to identify when much smaller in ads and for sale on websites.
Here is a little blurb of what the book is about:
“It was ironic that this happened to me; I was never a night person at heart. So you can see right off the bat why a vampire was the very last thing I would have chosen to be.”
Anja Evans wakes up in the morgue with a helluva hangover. She chalks it up to a strange brush with death and gets back to her life as a music student in San Francisco. It takes almost eating her best friend before she figures out… she’s a vampire. When a dark and dangerous vampire shows up at her door asking to see her license and registration, Anja assumes Bishop is a regular cop. But breeding among vampires is strictly controlled, and her unlicensed status makes her an enemy of The Order. Struggling to find a balance between her former life and her undead one, Anja tries to blend school and living up to her new identity, all while searching to find the elusive Viking whose blood gave Anja the strength of a vampire hundreds of years old.
A Taste of Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down
I’m done with the first pass of edits for my new vampire series Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down! So now it’s off to the next part of my editing team and I thought I’d share a little taste.
This scene takes place after Anja finds out that Bishop is there to take her into custody since she doesn’t have the proper license to be a new vampire. It’s from his POV and has a little bit of insight into why he’s there and his role in The Order.
*********
Bishop had no idea what he was doing.
It was not a normal thing for him, not by a long shot. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone so far off book. It was supposed to be a routine call. Check the girl’s papers, fine her Sire for letting her turn up in the morgue pronounced as dead, and do what he did best; scare the hell out of him to keep him from ever getting sloppy like that again. So why was he standing in her living room holding her purse while she made herself pretty?
He wasn’t used to letting a slip of a girl wind him around her little finger. But there was something about her… when she’d first opened the door the night before, she’d knocked him speechless. For a moment he’d almost thought he was seeing Carys again after so many years…
She wasn’t, of course. They had the same long, golden hair, the same heart shaped face and her innocent, blue eyes were close. But her mouth was wrong; the lips too full, her smile too hesitant. Not that there was anything wrong with the girl’s lips… why was he thinking about her lips again?
The Order always came first. He’d pledged his life too many years ago to count. For endless nights he’d upheld the laws, meting out justice as he saw fit. Bishop was more successful at it than most because while he didn’t have a love of violence, he recognized when it needed to be used without anger, and understood just how much pressure to apply. So while his first instinct had been to try and protect Anja, his sense of duty led him to do the right thing. She had to be taken into custody. Let one go and you set a dangerous precedent; wasn’t that how he’d been trained? And if it became necessary to close those pretty, blue eyes forever? He would deal with it when the time came.
Speaking of time, he’d been more than generous in allowing her time to change into dry clothing. It wasn’t as if she could catch a chill now, and where she was going there wasn’t any need for fancy preparations. Bishop set down her bag, approaching the bedroom door with a brief knock. “Miss Evans? I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think you could hurry it up?” Nothing but silence greeted his ears, and he frowned as he rapped again. “Miss Evans?”
Between the Scenes with Iris – Lexi from The Touch
Five minutes with Lexi from The Touch
Iris: Iris here, I’m talking to Lexi Morgan, artist and amateur sleuth of late. Thanks for joining us today, I know you’ve been through a lot lately.
Lexi: Yeah, it’s no problem. I’ve never been interviewed before.
You’ll have to smack me if I say something stupid, okay?
Iris: You’ve got a deal. Now I noticed the gloves. Interesting fashion statement.
Lexi: It’s not so much about fashion as it is for protection.
Iris: You have a thing about germs? It’s spiders for me.
Lexi: Ooh I hate spiders too! [her face scrunches up adorably] But no, it’s not a germ thing. Didn’t your people tell you? I thought that was why you wanted to talk to me. I can see things whenever I touch an object, like who held it last or what they were doing, stuff like that.
Iris: Yeah? That’s fascinating, and it works on anything?
Lexi: Yep, any object. It comes in handy when you want to know who drank all the milk and put the container back into the fridge. [she grins]
Iris: I’ll keep that in mind if I ever come over to your place. So if I gave you this pen…
Lexi: I’d rather not… [her hands ball up into fists]
Iris: I promise, I didn’t do anything nasty with it.
Lexi: I believe you, but I’d rather not go down that path. The next thing I know there’ll be a line around the block with people asking me to touch things.
Iris: But you did use your gift in order to help find your niece when she went missing, right?
Happy Turkey Week!
Wouldn’t it be great if we could take the whole week off for Thanksgiving like my kids do from school now? I could laze around, drinking cocoa, wrapping X-mas presents, watching cheesy Hallmark movies on TV, getting to some writing when I felt like it… on second thought, that’s not such a hot idea after all. For whatever reason, I need the stress of a deadline to help me produce, and so far so good this month, it’s Day 21 of NaNoWriMo and I’m up to about 62,000 words of my new vampire novel, Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down.
I just finished the final update of my Vampire Diaries Fanfic, Dark Side of the Moon and that always gets me to thinking about starting something new. I can’t wait to start the next one, but it’ll have to wait a few weeks I think until the novel is edited and ready to go. I might even take a break and get to some reading I’ve been looking forward to (Got Storm Chaser by Mark R. Hunter already downloaded to my Nook and ready to go!) before I start the next book in The Fallen series.
I’m looking forward to some turkey with family and friends this week. I always make the same delicious recipe with lemons, rosemary and dijon mustard. (I know it sounds a little weird, but it makes the best gravy!) I’ve just about got my holiday shopping done too except for some online purchases, how about you guys? Are you going to brave the Black Friday deals or settle in with some cocoa and hit the online sales?
A Taste of Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down
Day ten of NaNoWriMo and I’m going strong! Up to 32,626 words so far, and it’s going well. I thought I’d give you guys a little taste. Here is our heroine Anja who has just woken up in the hospital morgue, to the surprise of the guys about to transfer her to the Medical Examiner’s office.
(I should preface this by saying in the spirit of National Novel Writing Month, this is an extremely rough draft. Punctuation and such is bound to be way off.)
A millisecond before the sheet came off, my eyes popped open and a high, keening cry leaked out of me like the air out of a balloon; my only available version of a scream, I suppose. The effect was electrifying. Both men screamed, and like a switch was flipped, I felt the energy rush back into my limbs. Filling my lungs with air, I screamed right back at them, and we stared at each other, all of us screaming for a good ten seconds before the room got really quiet.
“You’re… you’re…” The guy dropped his clipboard as he backed up a few feet. The other man, the one who came to get me I assumed, continued to stare at me like I had just risen from the dead, which was understandable.
“W-where am I?” My voice sounded shrill to my ears and I couldn’t help but wince, doing my best to swallow back my fear. I felt… wrong somehow, but I couldn’t quite identify why, finding myself in such strange surroundings was too distracting.
“Shoreline Memorial Hospital in San Francisco. You’re um, you’re supposed to be dead.”
“I’m sorry…” slipped out reflexively, though what I had to be sorry about, I couldn’t imagine. Shoreline was the same hospital Bridget worked at, and I wondered if she knew I was there. I was tired of lying down and I might have said something to that effect as I pushed myself up to a seated position, but I was too busy looking at my surroundings to be sure if I’d spoken out loud. It wasn’t my own bedroom, or a hospital room as I’d assumed until they started talking about death, but what looked like a morgue, based on my experience with tv and movies.
I was still half lying on a gurney, but a large stainless steel table stood in the center of the room, with holes drilled through it for drainage of various… ugh, I didn’t want to go there. “I feel…” dizzy, confused, itchy, nauseous, sore, tired…wrong… “…different.” My tongue finally supplied and I again marveled at the sound of my own voice. Was it my ears or the timbre of my voice that had changed? It was impossible to tell.
“That’s understandable, you’ve been dead for over an hour,” the morgue attendant replied distractedly, bending to pick up the clipboard.
Between The Scenes With Iris – Adam
Five minutes with Adam from Angel of Mercy
Iris: Iris here, I’m talking to everybody’s favorite fallen angel Adamiel, or Adam as he goes by these days. Thanks for joining us today, I know you like to keep a low profile.
Adam: You called, I came. [He shrugs nonchalantly, reclined in the chair with lazy grace]
Iris: If only it was always that simple. Are there many fallen angels living among us? Sam shot me down on this one.
Adam: I haven’t taken role lately, but there’s a fair number of us, yeah. Most of them keep to themselves though, they’ve got notions of working off their sins or something. [A roll of the eyes is given]
Iris: But not you?
Adam: I’ve suffered plenty, believe me. If God had wanted to torture me further he would have done it. No, I believe in taking pleasure where you can.
Iris: Sounds like an enlightened way of looking at it. I gotta ask, what’s with the all in black look. Do you have a thing for Johnny Cash? Would a little bit of color hurt every now and then? [He is dressed from head to toe in black. Boots, jeans, shirt, jacket, the whole shebang]
Adam: You don’t like it? Most women do. [Those bright blue eyes flash playfully and I have no trouble believing that. In fact, it takes me a minute to remember what I'd asked him]
Iris: No, it’s a good look for you, I admit. But it sort of paints a certain picture. Are you really still the same bad boy who’s been debauching his way through the past two thousand years? Or have things changed?
Adam: I’ll just say that some things have changed, but I won’t go into detail beyond that.
Iris: Because you’re worried that admitting you have feelings for Mercy will put her in danger? [He drops a quick wink, but doesn't say anything else] Who do you think might be listening in?
Adam: You never can tell who’s paying attention. For the moment Mercy will have to get along without me.
Iris: Is that such a good idea? Aren’t there a lot of people after her? What about this prophecy I keep hearing about?
