Contest Winners and SPAM

 I am so excited to announce the winners of the Race to Reviews contest for Dirty Blood!! Just yesterday we reached a total of 20 reviews between the three major retails sites (Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and Amazon). I tallied entries and have your winners so the grand prize winner is ... *drum roll*.....

TEE!!!! 

Tee will receive the following books in her prize pack: a signed paperback of Dirty Blood, an ebook of Across the Galaxy, an ebook of DreamKiller 1 and 2, an ebook of Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby, an ARC ebook of Descended by Blood by Angeline Kace, and an ARC ebook of Cold Blood, due out this fall.

The two runner ups, who will receive two books of their choice from the list above are....

Heather at Nightly Reading

A Book Vacation

All winners must contact me by Thursday at midnight to receive their prize. You can email me at heatherhildenbrand@yahoo.com. Otherwise, we will go to the next runner up. *All winners were selected randomly with www.random.org.*

Congratulations!!!

Also, stay tuned for the announcement coming soon. I am in the process of uploading the 2nd installment of DreamKiller, my urban fantasy mini-series. DreamKiller 1 is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords for .99 and is a short story of about 5000 words. You can read about it by clicking on the DreamKiller tab above. The story follows Marlena, a 'special' with the ability to literally make her dreams come true, as long as she plays it out exactly as she dreams it. So far, she's been forced to use it to silence her enemies...

DreamKiller 2: Fight or Flight is longer (11,000 words I think) and should be available by the end of this week. I am making it available on its own first and then I will be offering a combined version for $1.99. I will let you know when it's available.

The Race to Reviews contest for Across the Galaxy is still running, so as I mentioned in my last post, if you would like a copy of it in exchange for an honest review, please email me and let me know. (ebook format only)

Also, just a quick headline I want to share. I read an article recently that even your Kindle is no longer safe from SPAM! There have been reports of people buying books, only to download it and open it on their Kindle and find it was an ad for something or a blank file. Here's what the article said:

"Reuters reports that spam has taken form on the self-publishing platform for several factors - namely how cheap and easy it is to republish another work already available, or to just make something else up altogether:

Aspiring spammers can even buy a DVD box set called Autopilot Kindle Cash that claims to teach people how to publish 10 to 20 new Kindle books a day without writing a word..."

You can read the entire article here. It's something to watch out for and honestly, makes me a little nervous. But I also think that Amazon is well aware and expect a solution or at the very least, some sort of tweaking or tightening up of their KDP publishing process very soon. What do you guys think?

New cover for one of my favorites....

One of my favorite books, Sleight, by Jennifer Sommersby, just got a new cover and its gorgeous! But then again, so are the words inside. As you may know, Jenn and I are both a part of Accendo Press, along with Angeline Kace, so I'm sure I sound biased when I say this book is one of my favorites, BUT -

I read this book before Accendo Press was born. Before I knew Jenn, really. And I loved it from the very first page. I am one of her biggest fans. She really is an amazing writer. Don't believe me? Download the free sample and you WILL be hooked, trust me. So I don't feel like a cheater when I say, you NEED to read this book. And the new cover is so amazing, how can you resist?

Now, I'm out the door to shop for sundresses with my mommy so I will be back later....

I'm out like an ugly chic at a beauty contest!

Race to Review Update

The race to 30 reviews is going strong and I want to give you an update on where things stand as well as some more awesome news in the prize category.

First, backstory:
As you know, we're doing a race to 30 reviews, to see which of my titles can get to 30 reviews first. (Across the Galaxy or Dirty Blood.) When one of the titles reaches 30 reviews TOTAL (on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords COMBINED) I will draw winners.

So far, the standings are as follows.....

Dirty Blood - 3
Across the Galaxy - 5

How you get entered: Write a review on one of the following sites: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Smashwords, OR add tags to the book on Amazon. (You must email me that you've tagged the title and what tags you used for this entry to count)

*Note: You can be entered mupltiple times if you review on every site or for both books.

What you'll win:

Here's the big news!!!!

On top of everything I already listed for the Grand Prize winner of each book's drawing, Angeline Kace has offered an ARC of her paranormal romance, Descended by Blood, coming summer 2011, when its ready. Its got vampires and secrets and hottie mcnaughtys so you won't want to miss it!!

So here's a recap of the grand prize packs:

Dirty Blood drawing, Grand Prize: Signed paperback of Dirty Blood, E-copy of Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby, E-copy of Across the Galaxy, ARC of Cold Blood, Dirty Blood's sequel when its ready, ARC of Descended by Blood by Angeline Kace when its ready.

Across the Galaxy drawing Grand Prize: Signed paperback of Across the Galaxy, E-copy of Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby, E-copy of Dirty Blood, ARC of Cold Blood, Dirty Blood's sequel when its ready, ARC of Descended by Blood by Angeline Kace when its ready.

~ That's FIVE free books per winner!!! ~

both drawings will include 2 runner ups who will get 2 free e-books of their choice. (Choose from any of my titles as well as Jennifer Sommersby or Angeline Kace).

I'm pretty excited about this contest and I can't wait to start seeing those reviews pop up so we can draw those winners!! Hurry, go now!!

Oh, wait, one more thing:

In other exciting news...

 Sleight is currently #21 on Amazon for the "YA Love & Romance" category. YAY Jenn!!! I am soooo excited for you and you deserve it because you are an awesomesauce writer!

And I am on lovlivlife reviews today with a special guest post about werewolves: 'The Para and The Normal'. It's pretty awesome. Check it out.

Okay, now I'm done.

Exciting times, people, Exciting times.

 Just incase you haven't noticed, and we'll pretend that you had, I've been noticeably absent from blog posting and such this past week. Well, ALOT has been going happening!

First - The BIG news:

Two of my very bestest, most awesome writer friends - Angeline Kace and Jennifer Sommersby - and I have formed an indie publishing group called Accendo Press. You should definitely check out our site at http://www.accendopress.com/ because its awesome, and then you should bookmark it because it will only get better as we add stuff for new releases and giveaways - but we'll get to that in a minute. So, Accendo.

Accendo came about as a result of how much the three of us already help each other out, with our writing, and marketing, and whatever else we need. So, we decided, let's go one further, and start a press. Basically, publishing our books under the umbrella of Accendo Press gives the reader a guarantee that we've put in the time and elbow grease to make that book a quality peice of literature. AND if you like one of our books, you know you're going to get similar quality in any book put out by us. So, while you're waiting on Jenn's sequel to Sleight to come out, like I am, you could pick up my novel or short story, because you know it's going to be great, too. We're really excited about this, and would love the support of other indies, as we will definitely continue to support you. Creating our own Press is something new and very forward-thinking in the digital publishing market, so we're exciting to be taking an exciting step forward in our careers with this idea.

And we're serious about our mission. Accendo, a Latin word, means to ignite, inflame, or kindle. Which is exactly what we strive to do, in the imagination of each of our readers. Here's Accendo Press' logo:

We love it!

Also:
*Before I go any further, I must say this: To all our fellow indies, we love you so so much but at least for now, we aren't adding any more authors. Mainly because of all the help we do give each other, and if we added to the list, we'd have no time left for writing our own stuff. So, we do still love you, and we will get Twitter Tipsy with you any time you want. Just say the word. I'm sure you guys understand. =)

The other big news, which is more of an update, really, is Dirty Blood. I've been editing like a crazy woman for a week now, and it's almost there, really, it is. I'm working on it today and then need to do another read through, because I really want to catch any misspellings and such. So, should be uploading it Sunday maybe? Will definitely post an announcement and let you know the when of it all, as soon as I figure it out. It's exciting, though, because this book is definitely my best yet, and its such a fun story.

Check back here for Chapter One to be released, possibly Saturday. Oh- and one more thing. New cover for DreamKiller. Thank you Angeline. I love it!! Ir's so perfect. And I just uploaded it, so its on its way to Amazon and B & N's estores as we speak.