Second Book in the Remedy Series

The second book in the Remedy series (Keep You From Harm is the first book) will release this spring. I'm working away on it now. We'll be hearing some of the next story from Lucas’s point of view.
 
By the way, please don't hate me because of my cliffhanger. I love series books, and cliffhangers heighten the excitement. At least they do for me. Especially when the book is filled with characters I want to read more of. It's something to look forward to. Right? Yes? No? Sigh. Well, I tried. As for me, I love it that I get to live in Raielle and Lucas's world again. It's a whole lot more interesting than mine.

I’ll keep posting updates here when I have them. As the release date closes in, there will be teasers! Stay tuned.

Thank you so much for reading!

Keep You From Harm is available now

It's live on Amazon. B&N and iBooks should appear any day now.

Starting next week, I'll be typing away on the follow-up. More to come on that soon.

The rollout of Keep You From Harm is beginning. Because each book seller takes a different amount of time to post new books, I started early with some - and surprise! It took no time at all. So the paperback is already available on Amazon, and I just found the digital version on Kobo. Amazon and Barnes and Noble ebooks will start to appear by mid-week.

Keep You From Harm - Coming this September

Anticipation - New Book

So, my friends and relatives tell me that this is my best book yet. I guess you have to consider the source. Although, I have to say that this is the most fun I've ever had writing.  This one has been an obsession for me since I typed out the first scene, and then rewrote it, and then completely reworked it all over again. Did I mention that this one took me over for months?

The tentative release date is September 27^th. But because I’m impatient and excited, here’s a peak at the title and the blurb.

Title: Keep You From Harm

Secrets…

 

They weigh you down. I’ve kept a secret all my life. It’s my mother’s secret, too. I inherited it from her along with a unique ability that only we possess. She’s gone now, another victim of addiction. If her death isn’t enough to bring me to my knees, her betrayal flays me to the bone. Because the secret my mother and I have been keeping is just one of many she'd kept. She never told me I have an older brother. And now he’s here, eager to be my guardian.

There is no one else. So I move across the country to live with this stranger, my brother. But experience has taught me that most situations are temporary and forming attachments only leads to hurt in the end. That’s why I’m determined to keep to myself in this new place, struggling to seem aloof while I’m quietly breaking apart. 

Then I meet Lucas…

His magnetism is hard to resist, and most girls at school aren’t resisting. I don’t fall so easily though, especially not for guys who use their good looks as a weapon. From the start, our interactions are tense and volatile. I know it’s because I’m denying the unwelcome desire that grips me when he’s near. I think he feels it, too. He looks at me with an intensity that threatens to unhinge my resolve. Soon he’s trying to break through the walls that past hurts have built.

But I’m not what I appear to be, and it wouldn’t be fair to get involved with him. At least that’s what I tell myself. Until a terrible act of violence reveals that Lucas has a secret, too. It’s a secret that links us together and ties us to an evil history I could never have imagined.

Goodreads Giveaway Winners and a Runaway Poodle

I went to the post office first thing this morning and dropped the books in mail for the three winners. Thanks for entering!

While at the post office, my daughter pointed to the lawn in front of the church across the street. There was a little white toy poodle just standing there by itself watching the rush hour traffic zoom by. I glanced around and didn’t see anyone who looked like the owner. I was thinking about calling the police or taking a walk over to it, when a women and two children (they looked to be around 9 and 11 or so) yelled “There she is!” from across the way. It took them several minutes to get across the busy street to the dog. When they were about a foot from it, the dog took off, right across the street. I sucked in a breath as the owners hands came up to their mouths, all of us watching the near miss as the dog dashed across the road.

Then my daughter and I proceeded to watch them chase this dog back and forth as it kept racing away, having the time of its life. The children were crying by now. A few cars stopped, and the drivers tried to help, but that dog wasn’t having it. Finally, the poodle u-turned away from the road and ran into some woods with the mom and the kids yelling and giving chase.

“Why is that doggie running away, Mommy?” my daughter asked as we got into our car and drove back home.

“The dog is just playing,” I told her. “He doesn’t know how worried his owners are and how dangerous the street is.”

“That’s why you tell me not to go in the street. You would be sad, too, if I ran into the street like that doggie. Right, Mommy?”

 “Yes, sweetie,” I replied gravely. “That’s absolutely right. That’s why I never want you to do that.”

“I don’t want to do it either.” She agreed.

Woo hoo!! – I’m cheering silently.

So, I got an errand done and an inadvertent lesson in all before 7:30 in the morning. Hopefully, it wasn’t at the expense of that cute white poodle. I hope you’re safely back at home, girl.

I Don’t Do Angst In The Summertime

Thank goodness I finished the first draft of my next book before the real warm weather hit. It’s angst-ridden and moody. I just can’t pull those off the same way when it’s a beautiful, sunny, eighty-degree day outside. And I don’t want to. I want to plant flowers in my backyard. I want to go for a run. I want to plan a beach day. I want to take my daughter to the park. I don’t want to guess the motives of the nefarious characters surrounding me. I don’t want to suffer the trials and tribulations of first love. I don’t want to deal with the ink covered lead singer of the local garage band who won’t stop hitting on me. Yeah, not me, but the main character. Her life is one upheaval after another. Her life is “the winter of our discontent.” While mine is “made glorious summer by this sun of York.”

Yes, I’m distorting Richard III for my own purposes. If you couldn’t tell from my first book, I like the anti-hero.

Sometime Soon - Some Backstory

Sometime Soon has been out for almost a week now, and people are slowly starting to find it. This book was a detour on the road to my first YA paranormal series. If all goes well, book one is due out in the fall. In the midst of all the plotting and character development for what is turning out to be a really fun paranormal story to write, Sometime Soon raised its hand and asked to be noticed again.

I wrote the first draft over five years ago. For some reason, I found myself returning to it this past winter. It was such a light, fun story to revisit, full of anecdotes from my real life. So, I decided to polish it up and release it. I haven’t done a major release blitz for this one. I’ve got some low-budget advertising coming in a couple of weeks, and I sent it to a few bloggers and fans of the first book. So far, they have been very kind in their reviews.

Sometime Soon isn’t going to change the world, but I hope it’s entertaining. It’s the kind of story I like to read when the stress and anxiety of my everyday life is more than enough, and I don’t want my fiction twisting me up in knots. There are no cliffhangers here folks!

Here are the reviews Sometime Soon has received so far:

The Autumn Review - Erin Reviews

Brittany And Bianca Blab Books

It's live! It's early! But the freak-out is right on time.

Sometime Soon is available. Since I finished the formatting earlier than expected, I went ahead and released it. If you’d like to read it, you should be able to find it online everywhere and in every format.

Lindsay at Cover Lure did my terrific cover, and she kindly invited me to guest post on her Web site. Check it out. http://www.coverlure.com/

More phone ranting - the HTC One X

My daughter’s babysitter came late to the smartphone party. She had a basic phone with texting and saw no need for a smartphone. But when her contract with AT&T was up for renewal, AT&T convinced her to upgrade to a smartphone with a data plan. It didn’t take much convincing since everyone in the world has a smartphone. Well, not quite, but that was how she felt. She paid $150 dollars out of pocket, a good deal of money for her and for a lot of people, for a discounted HTC One X Android smartphone as part of her contract renewal and upgrade.  She loved it for almost a month – for a little over the time it took for the 14 day return policy for the phone to expire. After that time, it stopped working. The HTC One X screen now consistently indicates that there is no SIM card being detected in the phone, and so she cannot make or receive calls. But there is a SIM card in the phone. To make this error disappear, she must turn the phone off and back on again. When she does this, the phone works for a few hours before the SIM card not detected problem reappears.

She told AT&T about her issue. They were very nice but said that they hadn’t heard of this problem before. However, they agreed to send her a new HTC One X phone. She agreed. She got the new phone and it worked for almost a week before the same SIM card error appeared on this second phone. Frustrated and unhappy, still without a working phone, she called AT&T again. They said all the same things as before and offered to send her another new HTC One X phone. She obviously balked at that resolution and told them she wanted a different phone. They informed her that because she was past the 14 day return period, the HTC One X phone is the only one she is entitled to unless she wants to pay more money out of pocket for a different phone. She is not going to be eligible for another discounted phone from them until her contract is up for renewal again in two years. Nice, huh?

A quick Google search shows that lots of people with this HTC One X phone are having the same SIM card problem. It’s interesting that AT&T claims to have no knowledge of it. HTC has also been made aware of this issue and they are telling customers who call them to try a factory reset. If that doesn’t work (which it apparently doesn’t in the long term), then to get a new phone. Again, very nice. I’ve read that some people are affixing clear tape to the back of the SIM card to keep it more secure in the phone, and this sometimes fixes the issue. But it’s not working for everyone and really, should you have to do that?

So as a consumer, if this happens to you, you’re out of luck.  Unless, like my babysitter, you break down into tears with a sympathetic AT&T support person who grudgingly agrees to send you a basic phone, free of charge, to hold you over until your contract renewal in two years. Because obviously the fact that you bought a smartphone that only worked for a little over 14 days is your own fault.

Wintertide Trade Paperback Available

http://goo.gl/fkcnm

Publishing my very first ebook was pretty exciting and nerve-wracking - still is really - but holding the actual book in my hand makes it all the more real. I’ve been getting an incredible amount of support from people who have read the book. Thank you so much! It’s not exactly the type of story where readers yell “I loved it!” (Now that I've written that sentence, I do believe one review said exactly that.) It’s too dark and the characters aren’t really intended to be likable. Although, I can’t help but like Daniel. He's my creation. 

I’ve also had the inevitable bad reviews. I try not to let them get me down. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and nearly every book out there has both good and bad reviews. What I’m finding interesting are the diametrically opposed views of the story readers are having. After reading the book, people are getting very different things out of it. That's kind of cool, actually.

I’m also finding it difficult to divide my attention between Wintertide post-writing work and new book polishing work. I’m very into the next book since I’m completely immersed in it right now. It’s hard to change my focus back to Wintertide every time something comes up for that story. The new book, as I mentioned in an earlier post, falls into the Women’s Fiction genre. I’m afraid any readers I’ve managed to attract with Wintertide may find that the next book is not quite their cup of tea. But I hope not.

In the meantime, I’ll have more news about Wintertide in the coming weeks and I’ll have release information for the new book soon.

Again, thanks for reading!

Surreal Saturday

Wintertide hit #1 on Amazon's free suspense and free teen bestsellers lists during its free promotion day this past Saturday. It hit #16 on the top free overall bestsellers list.  Over 11,000 people downloaded it. This would appear to be a great promotion result for Wintertide. At least, I think it seems that way. It was a bit hard to enjoy though. We were in the middle of a blizzard. I was stuck in the house with a bored three year old. The company I hired to plow me out didn’t arrive until after 8 PM. I spent the day waiting for them and sweating over whether they were actually going to show up or not. Overall, it was a weird but exciting day.

Bluetooth Issue Fixed!

It’s official. I’ve been exercising iOS 6.1 for about 5 days now. You can call me in my car and my iPhone won’t hang up on you. I still can though.

I Don’t Want To Be Too Hasty

But I think iOS 6.1 may have resolved my iPhone 5 Bluetooth issue.  My post from a few weeks ago “My Cat Cracks Me Up, But My iPhone Is No Joke” describes the issue I’ve been having trying to answer calls in my car hands-free over Bluetooth. Calls were just dropping. As of this morning, I have successfully answered two incoming calls in my car. Woo hoo! I’ll keep testing it over the next few days to be sure, but this may be fixed.  I am ridiculously excited about this.....It really is the little things sometimes.

O Brave New World

I’ve entered two new arenas this month. The first is self-publishing. The second is children’s birthday parties. I’m not sure which one is stranger.

My daughter and I are addicted to Angry Birds. She’s just discovered it and she insists that I get her to the next level each time she plays. I’m all too happy to oblige. This is way better than Mr. Potato Head.

I just don’t understand how everyone can be so active on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, their blog, and even Linkedin. I’ve got a Twitter account now because I’ve been told that I MUST have one to promote my book. Well, I follow five people and one person follows me (thanks btw!). I’ve tweeted nothing so far. I’m not sure, but that might defeat the purpose of having the account.

I’m doing a final revision of another book that I plan to self-publish on Amazon. This one probably falls into the chick-lit category. I realize that the publishing world says chick-lit is dead, but I still read it. Anyway, when I sit down to write, the story comes out the way it comes out. I just don’t see paranormal vampire and werewolf tales seeping out of my brain. I almost wish they would. They sell so very well, and it’s a trend that is far surpassing its fifteen minutes.

Pats lost. Very upsetting. But having two coaches who are brothers taking their teams to the Superbowl is pretty interesting.

Last weekend was the “no pants subway ride” day on the T here in Boston . I understand that it’s a humorous improv thing that takes place in lots of cities now. But being half naked while riding the T? If I could wear a hazmat suit when I took the T, I would. I have seen some disgusting things on those trains. College kids coming home from frat parties ride those trains. Nevermind the rats.  Seriously, you want to wear pants while on the T and anything else you can find to cover yourself.

Nick Jr. Night Time Programming for Moms - Are They Serious?

When the television in my house is on, it’s tuned to Nick Jr. My three year old daughter loves all the shows on that station. Don't even think about watching anything else. If Ni Hao Kai Lan is on, she's glued to that set. Lately, I’ve been seeing commercials in-between her shows for programming that they are apparently running at night. They’re calling it NickMoms (or something like that) and they’re saying it’s for “mom time” when the kids are finally asleep and you get those few precious hours to yourself that you look forward to each day.

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at this. Do they seriously think I’m going to watch Nick Jr. once my daughter is asleep? I can’t change that channel fast enough. Forget CNN, forget CSI, forget NCIS, forget Bravo (yes, okay, I watch those housewives shows) I need more Nick Jr! Come on. Seriously???

My Cat Cracks Me Up, But My iPhone Is No Joke

My cat thinks he’s a person and I haven’t told him otherwise. At the end of a hard day’s work consisting mostly of napping and begging for food, he likes to take it easy and let it all hang out.

Next topic: I’m so disappointed in my iPhone 5. I had an old 3GS that was great. But it was heavy and bulky and when the iPhone5 came out, I was due for an upgrade. Big mistake. Being an early iPhone 5 customer is no fun. It seems everyone has heard about the map issues and the camera issues, but my biggest issue, which Apple is still not admitting even exists despite message boards filling with complaints, is Bluetooth. I cannot answer calls in my car hands-free using Bluetooth. When I attempt to, the person on the other end cannot hear me and the call gets dropped after a minute or so. I can pair the phone with the car, no problem. I can make outgoing calls over Bluetooth without issue. I can stream music from my phone over Bluetooth just great. But I cannot answer an incoming call without physically picking up my phone and manually toggling it to the phone speaker and back to the car’s hands-free system.  Unless I do this, I lose the call. Having to do this for each incoming call while I’m driving is dangerous.  So, I find myself calling my phone names and turning Bluetooth off when I get in the car.

Big surprise, when you go to the Genius Bar or call Apple, they blame the car. They say the Bluetooth in the car must be old. The car is brand new and it supposedly supports the latest versions of Bluetooth. My car manufacturer was nicer, but they blame Apple. I think they’re right. A quick Google search shows that tons of people have this same iPhone 5-specific issue with all kinds of different car models. I’m just so mad about this. If Apple would admit to the problem and say that they’re working on it, I wouldn’t feel so frustrated. But they’re complete silence on the issue is hard to believe. Maybe iOS 6.1 will finally fix it. Rumor has it (not Apple) that it might. Pretty, pretty, please.

Dexter Is Done But Downton Abbey Is Back

Do I fit into anyone’s demographic? Is there anyone else who loves Dexter and Downton Abbey equally?

“Black Metallic”

by Catherine Wheel. This is one of my all-time favorite songs. It was in my head quite a bit as I was writing Wintertide. It’s really the perfect theme song for Daniel. It’s part of Daniel’s playlist at the end of the book. I think I anguished over that playlist almost as much as I did over the book as a whole. When I first heard “Absolute Zero,” I thought that was a good song for Daniel, too. I made it the first song on his playlist. But the overall feeling of it is much too passionate to be a theme song for Daniel. The moody atmospheric sound of Black Metallic and my interpretation of what that song is about, suits him much better. I really wanted to add more Disturbed songs to the playlist, but they just didn’t fit the story - too much relationship stuff and too much emotion overall. Daniel just isn’t a real emotional guy.

There Are No Icebergs on Cape Cod

Yes, I’m aware of that. When I showed the cover of Wintertide to my brother-in-law, that was his first comment. I looked through thousands of stock photos to find the one that I finally used for the cover. This was the only one that was actually affordable and had the following: a guy about the right age who could represent the main character in the book, a winter scene with ocean - which is the setting for the story, and good spacing for the book title and some other verbiage. All in all, the photo fit the bill.  And if you can suspend your disbelief just a bit, he could be standing on the sea cliff from the story and not on an iceberg. (“Iceberg, right ahead!” Sorry, I can’t think iceberg and not think about that movie quote.)

Write What You Know (Sort Of)

That’s what all writers are encouraged to do. Everyone, even those who do not write, have heard that advice. But it can’t be taken too literally. Otherwise, there would be no hugely over-hyped and over-written vampire genre. Oh no! (Actually, I have read and liked some of those books.)

When I told my family that I was going to publish a book that I had written, they all assumed it would be a heart-warming coming-of-age story or maybe a chick-lit book.  “You should write about all our crazy relatives,” I’ve often heard and still do hear. But then I gave them all copies of Wintertide...and they started looking at me funny. I could read the unspoken thoughts behind their bewildered eyes. Who the hell is she and what really goes on in her head? Did she really write about what she knows? The answer is yes.....and no. Daniel's personality is very similar to mine. Seth is derivative of several people I’ve known. Eddie is, as well. But I took those characters to places I’ve never been. It is “what I know” about them that anchors the characters and hopefully makes them believable even though the circumstances they find themselves in are rather extraordinary.