YzhaBella's BookShelf: September 2010

9/30/10

~NEW WINNER~ Awakened by A Kiss by Lila DiPasqua

Thank you all for participating in this event!

Your time and thoughts are very much appreciated and I hope to "see" you all again real soon!

The original winner of this event has failed to respond so I've picked a NEW WINNER!!!

Carrie at In the Hammock Blog
Who said...
I want my boyfriend to awaken me with a kiss!!
Thank you for the contest :) I've been excited to read this one!!

Congrats Carrie! Please email me at yzhabella (@) live (.) ca,
with your mailing info within the next 5 days!

Reviews are written on a volunteer basis and are only the opinions of the individual review author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and/or views of the author, publisher, or public readers in general Copyright © YzhaBella's BookShelf 2010

9/26/10

90 Days of Nightmares - Win a Kindle DX!! - Guest Post by Scott Nicholson

The Writing Journey
By Scott Nicholson
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

Every life has one great love story.

Hopefully it involves your romantic partner of choice, but usually the love story begins way before you are conscious of your body and some of the tricks it will later play on you, or the odd chemical disturbance known as “attraction.”

For me, the love story is with the magic of books, and how those experiences led me into creating, dreaming, and loving on paper and now in digital form. My family was very poor, but somehow my mother managed to scrape together enough money for a set of encyclopedias, back when those forgotten tomes came bound with thick covers.

The set was accompanied by a set of “Childcraft” books that contained Classical myths, stories, projects, and household science experiments. I spent many hours flipping through those books, and despite numerous attempts starting with “Aardvark,” I never made it through the entire encyclopedia set end to end.

However, those books taught me the power of words, and personal escape into lands of knowledge and fantasy. From there it was on to Dr. Seuss and Robert Louis Stevenson and eventually discovering I could make up new lands myself, with crayons and paper. I can freshly recall that shiver of delight from those rare instances when I had sheets of blank typing paper. I usually scribbled on the backs of used pages, so an entire sheet was an exciting invitation into the unknown.

I even had a typewriter in my adolescent years, a cheap, clackety, troublesome thing whose keys would stick. Even then I was trying to make “books,” create stories like I had seen them in real books. I guess I knew I was going to be a writer, though I had no understanding of what that entailed.

All I knew was the joy of escape, and that secret pleasure of discovery that always made me feel a little naughty and guilty, as if I were getting away with something and should be off doing worthwhile work like fixing cars or hammering nails.

My teens were filled with lots of stories and poems scrawled out in spiral-bound notebooks, many of which I still have today, though they are stacked in the attic where no eyes can be damaged by them. Shakespeare, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Bradbury were all mixed in those pages, and I contributed to the school newspaper and then embarked on college writing classes. After veering into rock bands and using songs as a creative outlet, I eventually got back to the realization that “Someday I am going to be a writer.”

Someday started, and now I had nearly two decades of influences, and I decided it was time to get serious–which meant write every day or feel guilty for not doing so.

Twelve novels, six screenplays, four comics series, and 70 short stories later, not to mention a career as a newspaper reporter, I still have that same thrill of exploration, even though it’s via a blank computer screen instead of a sheet of white paper.

And even today, I haven’t divined the mystery of stories. I just hope I can inspire one person the way all those books of my youth inspired me.

All I know is the joy of escape, and that secret pleasure of discovery.

---------------
Scott Nicholson is author of 12 novels, including the paranormal thrillers Speed Dating with the Dead, The Red Church, and Creative Spirit. He’s also written four comic series, six screenplays, and more than 60 short stories. His web site is www.hauntedcomputer.com.

To enter to win the Kindle DX, simply leave a post comment within seven days and include contact email. At the end of the tour, one number will be randomly selected by the staff of the Watauga County (NC) Public Library.

You can also enter to win a Kindle 3 by subscribing to the tour newsletter at scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. A Pandora’s Box of e-books will be randomly given away through Scott’s Twitter (follow “hauntedcomputer”). No purchase necessary and the contest is international. All details at http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/blogtour.htm

9/15/10

Interview w/ J.K. Beck: When Blood Calls, The Shadow Keepers

Hi JK! Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to host an interview with you on YzhaBella’s BookShelf! I very much appreciated the chance to review W.B.C. and can’t wait for the rest of the series!

Thanks! I’m happy to be here!

Can you share a few “tid bits” about your self?

Ohh! Fun. Tidbits, huh? How about these:

I overlapped going to law school with my dad (his last quarter was my first).
I was an extra (and a production assistant) for the movie Future Kill (which has great Giger artwork for the poster)
One of my major student projects in film school was a silent vampire movie. (I really wish I still had it; lost the reels a few moves ago).
If I couldn’t be a writer, I’d love to be in Broadway musicals. But I’m a terrible actress and can’t sing a note, soooooooo.
I once prosecuted a drunk driver who tried to use the fact that he’d been chugging NyQuil as a defense (the prosecution won).

What made you decide to use a different pen name for The Shadow Keepers?

The books are really dark—much darker and even a little bit twisted—and that’s a different vibe than my Julie Kenner stuff. Also, while The Blood Lily Chronicles was somewhat dark, that was urban fantasy, not romance. My last single title romance as Julie Kenner was a very quirky, tongue-in-cheek romance. So the name change made sense.

Can you share with us some of the deciding factors behind your decision to write this new paranormal series?

Believe it or not, that’s a really hard question. I was working on putting together a proposal for another series (less paranormal, more suspense) when the idea just hit me—a paranormal judicial system hidden inside our own system. The idea stayed with me, and as I mulled over it, it grew and grew until I couldn’t let it go and wrote a proposal describing the world and the system and the major players. So basically, the idea just wouldn’t let go of me!

Readers/reviewers have slotted The Shadow Keepers within a few different genres / sub-genres such as paranormal romance, urban fantasy, dark paranormal, etc. Which genre would you say best represents this series?

It’s paranormal romance, because the primary story arc is Luke and Sara’s story. But under that umbrella, it’s definitely dark paranormal with a heavy urban fantasy element. I love mixing up genres, and suspense and paranormal are two of my favs!

Sara is a strong, intelligent and extremely brave female lead who seems to take the reality of the Shadow world in stride. Can you share a bit about how you came to “meet” Sara? Is she the result of pure imagination or was she created based on a person(s) that you know?

I think all characters area a construct, bits and pieces taken from people you’ve met or seen coupled with pure imagination (and that, of course, is coupled with/colored by the people in your life). But based on a specific person? Not really. I drew a bit on my own experience as an attorney, of course, especially the experience of going from a world I knew (civil litigation/first amendment and entertainment stuff) into the role of a prosecutor (which I did for a couple of months through an awesome program offered at the time by the Los Angeles County Bar Association). Sara’s a realist, and while she’s shocked to learn the things she does, she’s not the type who would deny it or freak out by it. She deals; that’s who she is.

Luke! Whew! He is one hot vampire! =)…Luke is a very dangerous vamp, yet his ultimate reasons for the things he does are, in a “bad boy” way, actually very honorable. Was it hard for you to create the “bad boy” who was bad azz enough to get the “job” done, but still good enough to make Sara, and the reader, fall head over heels for him?

It was, actually, and he’s still an extremely dark character. But he’s true to his own sense of justice and his loyalty (to Sara and to others close to him) is unbreakable. I wanted, with Luke, to write someone with a horrible, tortured past, who’s been working his whole very long life to get past certain things. And ultimately, it’s his love for Sara that helps him through it.

I understand that the next two titles, When Pleasure Rules and When Wicked Craves, are set to release Sept. 28th and Oct. 26th, respectively. Will this be the whole of the series? Or, can readers possibly look forward to more “bad boy” goodness in the New Year?

There are three more Shadow Keeper books already in the works – yay! We nailed down the titles recently: When Passion Lies, When Danger Hungers & When Temptation Burns. And they each feature a character that you meet in one (or more) of the original three books!

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at jk@jkbeck.com, friend me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/authorjkbeck) or follow me on twitter (www.twitter.com/jkbeck)

Is there a formal “Blog Tour” planned for The Shadow Keepers?

Nothing formal, but I’m doing a lot of guest blogs and interviews over the fall. I’ve been pretty good about keeping my schedule updated, so you can find me here: http://jkbeck.com/contact/events/

Are there any live promotion events (i.e. signings) you’d like to share with us?

Sure! I’ll be signing in San Antonio, Texas (9/26) later this month, and in Houston, Texas in November (11/6). Those events are on the calendar, too!

Quick! In one sentence! Do your best to convince readers to check out The Shadow Keepers!

Hot vamps, suspense, and a dark sexy edge! Check it out! And, oh! I have a book trailer. Give it a peek: http://jkbeck.com/the-shadow-keepers/fun-stuff/jkvideo/

Thank you very much for allowing YzhaBella’s BookShelf the honour of reviewing When Blood Calls and hosting this interview! I very much enjoyed book one and can’t wait for When Pleasure Rules!

Thanks so much!!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

With hot sex, murder, suspense, and mystery, When Blood Calls is a brilliant kick-off to what promises to be a great new series!
(WBC has been reviewed by YzhaBella's BookShelf! Please check out my review here!)

When Blood Calls (The Shadow Keepers, Book1) by J.K. Beck
The Random House Publishing Group
August 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-440-24577-3 (0-440-24577-X)

From the Publisher
Attorney Sara Constantine is thrilled with her promotion—until she finds out that she must now prosecute vampires and werewolves. The first defendant she’ll be trying to put away? Lucius Dragos, the sexy stranger with whom she recently shared an explosive night of ecstasy.

When Lucius kisses a beautiful woman sitting next to him at the bar, he’s hoping only to avoid the perceptive gaze of the man he’s planning to kill. But what starts as a simple kiss ignites into an all-consuming passion. Charged with murder, Luke knows that Sara is determined to see him locked away—unless he can convince her that he’s not a monster. And that might mean making the ultimate sacrifice.

Coming next in the series:

When Pleasure Rules (The Shadow Series, Book 2)
September 28, 2010

Seven innocents have been brutally murdered in Los Angeles, yet the Shadow Alliance has no suspects and no leads. As the body count mounts, the age-old feud between vampires and werewolves threatens to explode.

Lissa Monroe—a strong-willed, ravishing succubus who entices men to surrender their souls—agrees to go undercover for the Alliance. Her mission: infiltrate the mind of werewolf leader Vincent Rand, a ferociously alluring enemy who exerts a powerful hold over her. As the City of Angels teeters on the brink of apocalypse, these two adversaries must join together in order to survive an even more lethal enemy hidden in plain sight.

When Wicked Craves (The Shadow Series, Book 2)
October 26, 2010

Petra Lang is cursed never to love. One touch of her skin unleashes the vilest demons. Sentenced to death by the Shadow authorities, who fear she’ll turn her curse against them, Petra is rescued by vampire advocate Nicholas Montegue. As their bodies merge and transform into mist, Petra feels an erotic longing.

Nicholas risked his own life to save Petra, yet he knows he can never give in to the explosive attraction he feels for her. But the deep yearning they share tempts them. Together, they must find a way to lift the curse. For only a love this strong has the power to overcome such monstrous evil.

Find J.K. Beck on the Web:
Website
FaceBook
Twitter

Thank you, JK, for joining us! I very much appreciate your participation and I can't wait to read more of this great series!!!!!

9/14/10

Guest Post & Giveaway w/ Dakota Banks "Sacrifice" Mortal Path Book 2

Good Day Ladies and Gents! Please allow me to welcome Dakota Banks to YzhaBella's BookShelf! Dakota is celebrating the recent release of Sacrifice: Mortal Path Series Book 2 with several Blog Tour type activities and today she's generously provided a wonderful post introducing a bit about herself! Oh! And Dakota has generously offered up one signed copy to a lucky participant! Contest is international and ends 9/30 11:59pm est.

So, without further ado, I'd like to "pass the mike" to the lovely Dakota!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Thanks for having me on your blog, YzhaBella. It's a pleasure to be here.

I saw my first pumpkin of the year yesterday. Three of them, actually, perched on a neighbor's porch. Besides the usual memories triggered by the site of pumpkins, it brought home something else: I'm behind schedule in writing my next book. I had it all planned out. I'd be at a certain point by Memorial Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I'm accustomed to breaking a project down into segments and completing them by intermediate deadlines, based on my background as a computer consultant. Piece of cake, right? But delivering computer software is nothing like delivering a novel. For one thing, when working with milestones and critical paths, I had an anxious client hovering over me tracking the intermediate steps. With writing, all I have is a deadline written into a contract, a deadline I agreed to--but it seemed so far away when I signed the contract.

Normally I write every day, seven days a week, and have no problem with deadlines. Right now there are two things affecting me. I'm having a lot of fun with the release of Sacrifice. I love book releases, when I go from talking over a work in progress with my editor to putting it out there for others to read. I even love the nervous high of waiting for reviews. And the second thing is my husband bought me a complete set of Stargate TV seasons. First you have to realize that I watch very little TV. It was the first thing to go when I needed time to write. Now, to my utmost shame, I am addicted to watching 3-5 episodes of Stargate every night, sans commercials. Will they never end? Curse him for being considerate and buying something I love!!

I've found out that when I start writing at my usual 10pm, I can write through the night with no trouble. But if I watch TV first, my brain is shot. I couldn't write a coherent sentence, much less a lyrical and meaningful one, even if Teal'c appeared and offered me a foot massage as a reward. (I have a crush on him.)

Dakota: I am weak.
Teal'c: Indeed.

All of this weakness will go away with the last episode and I'll be the Night Writer again. I know I'm going to have to work harder to make up for lost time and I know I'll be able to do it. Something in my day will have to be given up to do so, and I accept that. This flexibility and having fun at releases are two of the reasons that writing is the only life for me. The other reason is that I can't imagine doing anything else. The writing "bug" is a virus that makes you well and whole.

I'd like to include a short excerpt from Sacrifice, the second book in the Mortal Path series. In this scene, Maliha has gone to Israel, seeking help from a man she'd worked with thirty years ago. He's gotten old; she hasn't. This is their first encounter after so many years.

The city of Tel Aviv-Yafo perched like a majestic Golden Eagle gazing out over its dominion, the Mediterranean Sea. It was not lost on Maliha that there was an Israeli Desert Eagle handgun that was equally as in-your-face as the city she'd just landed in. A taxi to the White City took her through office buildings, banks, and hotels that gradually yielded to cafés, parks, and the signature white concrete buildings designed by Jewish architects who left Nazi Germany.

Abiyram Heber's apartment building stood up on piers that let the desert wind sweep underneath it. She was about to enter the building when she spotted her friend working in the garden space set aside for residents.

She called his name, and he turned to look at her. He took his glasses down from where they were riding on his hat and looked again.

"Yes, it's me. Let's go somewhere we can talk."

"Come closer." He leaned on his rake.

He was about sixty years old. His hair had thinned and gone white. His cheekbones were sunken a little and his eyebrows had grown thicker, but his eyes were as sharp and intelligent as ever. There was still strength in his frame and he had the easy movement of someone long used to keeping his body in top shape.

"My dear." His voice was welcoming, but he didn't reach out to her. "It's been so long. What is it now, thirty years?"

"Yes."

He leaned forward and studied her face, his keen eyes taking in every inch. She knew he would question her appearance and would test her before he would accept her. She expected no less. She also knew that he was armed and would use his weapon if she didn't pass the test. Their meeting was like that of two lone wolves, each assessing the other. Abiyram's eyes scanned the vicinity for those who might be close enough to hear their conversation, even checking the balconies above. A few children played in the shade of the building next door, but other than that, they were alone.

"You are lovely, so lovely, just as you were when you danced with Oskar, what was his name, Oskar ..."

He was referring to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of East Germany in a mission with Abiyram in 1984.

"Mauser. I didn't dance with Oskar Mauser. I broke into his office while you regaled him with your stories of the arrest of the Butcher of Lyon the year before."

"Ah, of course. They say the memory is the first to go."

In your case I think it will be carved on your gravestone, "He never forgot anything."

"Remember when you smuggled that capsule to me right under Vatkov's nose? He never suspected that you dropped it into my drink. Hah!"

"We can reminisce all you want, Abiyram, but I know what you are trying to do and I don't blame you. I show up a lot like the woman you knew thirty years ago and you don't trust me. All right. Something that was not on any report, not known but for the two of us. When I passed you that tiny capsule, it was through a kiss. We were posing as husband and wife. You were so nervous that you bit my tongue."

"So I did, my dear. How did the unfortunate Louisa Kalb die?"

"Louisa Kalb burned to death in a car accident, but she is fictional. You made her up to have someone to blame for the loss of the Arkon papers that I stole from you, early on before we even knew each other well. You told me this later on, the night I slapped your face for insulting Winston Churchill. Enough?"

"Why don't we get out of the sun?"

He took her to a fourth floor apartment with a shaded balcony. They sat outdoors sipping wine.

"Tell me, how is it that you have remained so young?"

There it is. The question I'd hoped never to be asked. Three choices: lie, tell the truth, or be mysterious.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Thank you very much Dakota! We very much appreciate you sharing a bit about yourself and for providing the excerpt! I can't wait to crawl between the pages and enjoy this next installment of the Mortal Path Series!

Where to find Dakota on the web!
Website
Blog

Here's a handy Amazon link to grab your own copy of Sacrifice: Mortal Path Book 2!

As previously mentioned, Dakota has generously offered up a SIGNED =) copy of Sacrifice to one lucky participant! Contest is international and ends 9/30 11:59pm est.

General Requirements / Rules
***You MUST follow Requirement 1-3 to to qualify!*** Extra Entries are appreciated, but not a necessity!

Open to EVERYONE!! No PO Boxes Please
Please be or become a Google Friend Connect Follower
Comment here with your email address AND a meaningful comment about the Post, The Mortal Path Series, OR a short note about what you liked about the excerpt provided and whether it has enticed you to grab your own copy of the series!
Contest Ends 9/30/10 11:59pm est.

Extra Entries (These entries will not qualify if Requirements 1-3 have not been previously posted)

In a SEPARATE POST FOR EACH (please include the email addy used for the initial qualifying entry)

Share this event on FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, Blog Post, Blog SideBar, etc.
Comment (*meaningful*) on the BookShelf review post of Dark Time: Mortal Path Book 1
Comment (*meaningful*) on any of the review posts at YzhaBella's BookShelf - Pls advise which one!
Become a follower of YzhaBella's BookShelf on NetworkedBlogs - See button in right sidebar
Become a friend on GoodReads - See button in right sidebar
Become a friend on FaceBook - See button in right sidebar

REMEMBER! Contest Ends 9/30/10 11:59pm est.

Side Note / Disclaimer
I mention *meaningful* when posting comments as this requirement(s) is my effort to encourage discussion and activity on YzhaBella's BookShelf. Most importantly, comments are a great source of feedback for me and I'd like to make sure I am providing you all with the content and entertainment you are looking for!

Thank you all for participating!