giveaway winner and free copies of DreamKiller

I'm so excited to announce the winner of the pawprint earrings giveaway. Congratulations to:

DIANA!!!! 

Thanks for becoming a blog follower and enjoy the earrings. You'll also be getting a signed bookmark for Dirty Blood. =) Enjoy!

Now, I promised info on how to win free copies - yes, more than one - of DreamKiller, Book 1 & 2 - the combined version. Here's the deets:

Shana at A Book Vacation is doing a special 2-day review post today and tomorrow for 1 and 2 and she will be giving away 5 copies of DreamKiller to 5 lucky winners, in the e-book format of your choice. So make sure to get over there and enter to win one of those!

And Wednesday, she will be posting a special short story prequel to DreamKiller that I've written from Lukas' point of view. It involved his days in the circus as a fortune teller and gives a great look at some of his past before joining the other 'specials' and meeting Marlena. That's all the details I can spill for now, so be sure to check that out tomorrow.

Oh and one more thing:  THREE more days until Descended by Blood by Angeline Kace!!!!

new DreamKiller available!

DreamKiller, Book 1 and 2 is now available on Amazon for .99. It's a combined version of the two I already have out and is a better value at .99 total (instead of .99 for each segment.) Here's the cover:

There will be a special giveaway coming up, too, so check back (hint: Tuesday) for more details and where you can go to win a copy. 

And DON'T FORGET to enter in the comments section in the post below for the paw print earrings. Giveaway ends 8/22. Just leave your name and email addy in the comments. You can follow my blog for an extra entry, just let me know your GFC username. I'll announce the winners for that and the giveaway deets for DreamKiller, Book 1 and 2 on Tuesday. Here's the earrings if you haven't already seen them:

Adorable!! And, if you haven't already heard of my DreamKiller series, here's the 4-1-1:

Most people's dreams are hazy and long forgotten by the time their eyes blink open. Most people's dreams don't literally come true either. Marlena's do...


In Book 1:
Little Hearts Orphanage has always been a safe haven for 'special' individuals. Azura, the headmistress, has gone to great lengths to ensure the resident's true abilities remain secret from those who would exploit them. Her mantra: The secret must be protected at all costs.
That's where Marlena comes in. Raised in the orphanage, under Azura's wing, she has committed herself and her 'gifts' to Azura's service - and to wiping out those who seek to expose Marlena and the others for what they truly are.

Book 2:
In the last thirty-six hours, Marlena’s entire world has shifted. She trusted her gut, and the word of a stranger, defied the only parental figure she’s ever known, and went up against the most powerful tracker the ‘Specials’ had ever seen.
Now Korian is dead and Azura has named Marlena the number one suspect. She has no choice but to hide. In a seedy apartment in the slums of downtown, Lukas tells her the truth about how she became an orphan.
It’s time to decide where Marlena will place her loyalty and whether the truth warrants a fight or flight…


DreamKiller 1& 2 is a combined volume of both short stories currently available in the Specials Series. It is a short story totaling 15,000 words.


Fans of X-men and Heroes, this is for you!

Dirty Blood is getting a makeover

Hey peeps. If you haven't already heard (which means you haven't yet been on Facebook or Twitter today) there's big news: Dirty Blood got a facelift!!!

I've been working with the amazingly talented author - and cover artiste - Sara Reine, author of Six Moon Summer, to come up with something new and edgy that I think fits the series as we begin to move forward, beyond book one. Sara claims she only does the cover thing as a hobby, in between writing, and I agree she is a very talented author and should keep writing, but she's also amazing with cover art and swag and pretty much anything else I've asked her to make for me. So I need to send out a big, fat Thank You, Sara!!! I can't wait to continue the cover project and start on book 2!

Alright so.... here it is:

Since you can't see me right now I'll just tell you, every time I look at this thing I grin really big and stupid because I love it. =)

I've also asked a few blogger friends to help me reveal this so there are several places you can go to catch another glimpse of this fabulous cover AND get yourself entered into one of the giveaways that EACH blogger is hosting for a chance to win an ebook copy of Dirty Blood. Here's the list:

Nightly Reading
Coffee Mugged
Paranormal Opinion
The Unlocked Diary
LovLivLife Reviews
Sleep, Eat, Read
Seeing Night 
Bookish Babes
A Life Bound By Books
Jamie B Musings
A Cupcake and a Latte
Sassy Book Lovers
AwesomeSauce Book Club

Make sure you go and enter at one (or all) of these places. In the meantime, I've decided to do my own fancy, shmancy giveaway for all the werewolf lovers, whether you've read Dirty Blood yet, or not. And I'm excited because this is the first in a series of giveaways I'll be doing over the next few months all using these awesome wolf charms! Check it out:

Aren't they awesome!! The stone is a dark red (like the color of blood) and the paw prints are silver. Krystle, my personal swag/jewelry designer, is a genius!

Alright, so to enter, leave your name and email in the comments below. You can follow my blog to gain an extra entry, just make sure you let me know what your email address is or have it listed on your profile somewhere. The giveaway ends on August 22nd, I'll hold a random drawing, and the winner will be announced the following day. Good luck!

I spy a tease....

My living room looks sort of like an I Spy game right now. You know the ones; where there's a whole page FULL of clutter and you're supposed to find a fish, an eyeball, a yo-yo, and a Tootsie Roll wrapper... or something like that. Yeah, except in mine you would find the red marker, a gold pirate coin, (sadly, a fake) and maybe a AA battery.

Seriously, my living room floor is covered in coloring books, crayons, markers, (my 5 yr old's new favorite hobby- along with finishing everyone's sentence with "Your Mom.") the couch pillows, a knight's shield, a toy army tank, today's newspaper, a toy drum set, flip flops, a deck of cards, sunglasses, color-it-yourself posters, a monster truck, a washcloth, shorts.... and a partridge in a pear tree.

The thing you have to understand, though, is that my house is not usually messy like this. I'm not so much a neat freak as 'anti-clutter'. A product of a cluttered childhood home. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't dirty or gross or a hoarder house (my aunt teases my mother that she's a hoarder and she gets really pissy about it, kind of hilarious) or anything, but the house was small to begin with and there was just stuff everywhere. Magazines, knick knacks, toys, stuff you don't need but you can't throw away. Because of it, I am so anti-clutter that when stress gets to be too much, my therapy isn't just cleaning but throwing things away. Seriously. I'll feel much better if I can throw stuff away. The bigger it is, the better I feel. I don't know why.

And yes, somehow I still manage to own furniture.

(If I start to run low on potential trash, I might open a business that advertises me coming to your home and throwing away your clutter... backup career.)

Anyway my living room. Its the new I Spy. Not normal for me but then, it's summer, and I do have kids, and I just haven't really cared that much lately. Probably being sick for part of the week had something to do with it. And being pregnant. I don't have the jaw-set determination to do ALL the housework myself anymore. My kids (8 and 5) are doing more and more. Like laundry, and mopping, and dishes. And have you ever seen a 5 year old wash a pot and pan? Not exactly sanitary when it's finished. But I smile and put it away anyway and I don't bother rewashing it until right before I need to use it again. That way he thinks he did a great job. Besides, with baby #3 on the way, its high time I let go of all the OCDness that makes me do everything on my own. It's just not going to happen. I need help. And if help comes in the form of little midget fingers then so be it.

On another note, something exciting happening Monday so stay tuned. Major giveaways and fun news. I won't say any more because I've always been such a tease (just ask my 9th grade boyfriend) but you will like it and in the end, unlike him, you will be satisfied. Just check back on Monday. =)

Oh! I Spy a fly swatter!

Have you read this yet?

I should be writing, not writing

I feel guilty a lot lately. Like no matter what I'm doing, I should really be writing. I'm only accountable to myself though and anytime that happens, its easy to fall off the wagon and justify stupid stuff. But seriously, its been hard to write this summer. As I'm sure all of you who have kids know. But its not just them. I wish I could blame it all on them. Its tempting. But its also me. I'm easily distracted and I love summer so if there's something fun to do, I get all "Oh, something shiny!" and toss the computer aside and grab the car keys and run. Even when I'm "working" in other ways, like checking my FB and Twitter and managing my giveaways and other stuff that I've dubbed as "work" so that I don't have to be specific when my kids want something and I have to get them to go away by saying, "Mommy's working". Even then, I still feel like I'm slacking. Just like I'm doing with this very blog post. Slacking. I'm not even writing about anything important or exciting. I'm writing about the fact that I should be writing.

But the fact is, I've gone and said something I can't take back. I've said, many times over now, that book 2: Cold Blood will be out by the end of the year. And even now, when I finally got serious and started putting in my 2k words a day, I'm still only about halfway done. I don't like that. I want to be all the way done because I require a lot of time for edits and rewrites to make myself feel better. And even though it might sound like no big deal to just change the release date, it is because I am the type that can't stand the thought of feeling like i lied. Also, for those of you who are coming into this late or just plain missed that post, I'm pregnant. And due in December. And I know that if I don't get this book out before baby comes, it won't get here til Spring. Or the ending will be really weird based on writing it when I was sleep deprived or something. So I have to finish. Which means I need to end this whiny blog post and go write.


P.S. Don't forget my Goodreads giveaway is going on until August 8 for a signed paperback of Dirty Blood. If you haven't entered, go now.