Cover Interview and Upcoming ARC and Swag Giveaway

Hi all!

Today I'm over at the awesome Gypsy Book Reviews discussing my cover for The Nightmare Affair. It's got some sneak peeks into the book along with some other fun stuff. Plus, Ashelynn is super nice and smart and you should follow her blog anyways because it rocks. Go check it out here. 

Also, be sure to show up next week as I'm going to be holding a giveaway for Renegade by J.A. Souders. This book is amazing. I tore through it, completely engaged by the creepy, intense, and weirdly beautiful story. The ARC winner will also receive a swag package for The Nightmare Affair - a bookmark and one of the extra-awesome Arkwell Academy Student Guides. I've got photographs off the guide over on my Facebook author page. It includes custom artwork based on the book and an in depth look at the world it takes place in. There will also be two runners up who will receive the swag package as well. Entering will be easy and painless, I promise.

See you then!

***Originally posted at www.mindeearnett.com. You can comment here or there***

Book Rec: The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Loftin

I had the good luck to read this fantastic book last November. I tore through it and loved every second. It's deliciously gruesome and wonderful, a modern Hansel and Gretel. It also has one of my all-time favorite supporting characters, the delightful Andrew. Oh, and the cover rocks, too. The book comes out today. Go get it! See the description from Goodreads below:

When Lorelei's old school mysteriously burns down, a new one appears practically overnight: Splendid Academy. Rock-climbing walls on the playground and golden bowls of candy on every desk? Gourmet meals in the cafeteria, served by waiters? Optional homework and two recess periods a day? It's every kids's dream.
But Lorelei and her new friend Andrew are pretty sure it's too good to be true. Together they uncover a sinister mystery, one with their teacher, the beautiful Ms. Morrigan, at the very center.

Then Andrew disappears. Lorelei has to save him, even if that means facing a past she'd like to forget – and taking on a teacher who's a real witch.

What Lorelei and Andrew discover chills their bones – and might even pick them clean!

***Originally published at www.mindeearnett.com. You can comment here or there*** 

Book Red: SHADOW AND BONE by Leigh Bardugo

So yeah, the title of this blog deserves the "understatement of the year" award. I'm not just recommending this book. I'm screaming as loud as I can, "GO BUY IT NOW!" Seriously, I had the fortune to get my hands on an Advanced Readers Copy, and I was completely enamored with the story, the writing, the characters, and the world. Yeah, everything in this is as good as good can be. Read the description from Goodreads below and then get thee to a book store as soon as you can. You won't regret it. I guarantee it!

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha…and the secrets of her heart.

***Originally published at www.mindeearnett.com. You can comment here or there.***

Hex Hall Love

Some of you might be aware that I pitched my debut novel The Nightmare Affair to my lovely agent as Veronica Mars meets Hex Hall. So it goes without saying that I'm a big fan of Rachel Hawkins. And guess what? She's coming to my home town (read: Dayton, Ohio),Thursday night for a signing! Woohoo! *does happy dance*

So if you live in the Dayton area, you can find out more about the signing here: http://www.booksandco.com/calendar.html

And if you haven't already, be sure to check out the Hex Hall series. The first two books, Hex Hall and Demonglass have been out for awhile and the conclusion Spellbound released a few days ago.

***Originally published at www.mindeearnett.com. You can comment here or there.***

TEMPEST Time

So awhile back, I held a contest to win an ARC of Tempest by my lovely agent sister, Julie Cross. Now I’m thrilled to announce that Julie is coming to my hometown this Thursday night. That’s right. She’ll be at the Centerville branch of the Washington Centerville Public Library at 7:00 on March 8^th. The event is free and you don’t need to register to attend. More information can be found at http://www.wclibrary.info/.

And in case you haven’t read Julie’s book yet (um, why not???) check out the description below. Oh, yeah, and it's going to be a movie soon, too. How cool is that? Hope to see you there!

The year is 2009. Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.

That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.

Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.

But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler. Recruit… or kill him.

Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.

***Originally published at www.mindeearnett.com. You can comment here or there.***

Book Rec: DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE By Laini Taylor

You guys, you guys, you guys...I just can't say how much I enjoyed this book. The word that comes most often to mind is "entralling." And I was. Completely. Thank goodness there'll be a sequel. I can't recommend this book enough. The language, the story, the heartbreak...so beautiful and so very unique and different. Read it now. You won't regret it. This is my first Laini Taylor book, but I'm quite certain it won't be the last!

From Goodreads...
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Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?
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Book Rec — Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Read this!!!

Nuff said.

Just kidding. But seriously, this book is astoundingly good. It’s got everything you could want in a horror tale: scariness, humor, action, love, you name it. Oh, and in case you’re too much of a bum to click on the link to the description on Amazon (…kidding…). Here’s the description:

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.
But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas's life.

Cool right? Although, even the description doesn’t do this one enough justice.  Sounds a bit like Supernatural, yes? Well, it definitely has the same kind of sassy feel, but bled through with Tim Burtonesque imagery that is as beautiful as it is startling (and awesomely gruesome in parts). I dare you to go here and read the first chapter and then NOT want to read the rest. Go on, give it a shot, but be warned, the book doesn't come out until the end of this month!

Really, my only complaint is that I wanted Anna Dressed in Blood to be about a zillion pages longer. And yet it was the perfect length with a perfect story arc and a homerun ending. Did I mention it was perfect?

So yeah, lucky me (and definitely lucky you, dear readers), the sequel to Anna is already in the edit stage. That’s great news. Trust me, Kendare Blake’s is a writer whose stories you’ll want to get lost in (even if those stories might eat you alive). Or maybe because of.

Happy Reading

The Scorpio Races, a Horsewoman’s Perspective

First of all, this is not a review of The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. It’s more of a love letter. Because I LOVED this book. The premise of this YA Fantasy is pretty simple: set in the contemporary world circa 1920s or thereabouts, there is an island called Thisby whose waters (and at certain times land) is inhabited by magical flesh-eating seahorses. And once a year some of the more courageous of Thisby’s inhabitants, capture, train, and ride those horses in the Scorpio Races, a huge tourist-attracting event. The story, told in two alternating first person points-of-view, focuses on two of those riders who both have desperate and heartbreaking reasons to win the race.

Now, as a horse woman with years and years of experience both in the saddle and on the ground, I was a little concerned about the idea of flesh-eating monster horses — as in why would I want to read about that? I mean real life horses can sometimes be scary enough without razor-sharp teeth and a craving for meat and blood. Horses are big and often unpredictable. They have minds and personalities of their own. It hurts when they bite, kick, run you over. They can even kill you.

But then I started to hear good things about the story and decided to give it a try. I’m so very glad I did. Not only did the story blow me away with its beautiful setting, fierce/wonderful/fully-real characters, and a tension that builds like a slow scalding fire, but it also moved me on a deeply personal level, the level where my love of horses resides. When I finished it, I felt as if Maggie Stiefvater had reached inside me, captured my love of my horses, and wove into her story like magic. It was as if she’d written it just for me. It’s the story version of my love for this guy and his love for me:

First as a baby…

And now today…

You don’t have to be a horse lover to love this story, but being one makes the experience all the richer. Horses are more than pets. They’re trusted friends and partners. When you climb on a horse, you must trust it to carry you and to take care for you. You ask it to submit and to give, even as you submit and give back. There’s no feeling quite like it in the world — and The Scorpio Races embodies it.

P.S. Be sure to come back in the fall. I plan on holding a contest to give away the book (unfortunately, the ARC I read isn't mine, and I wouldn't be able to part with it even if it was, I love it that much)

HUGE Recommendation For Divergent by Veronica Roth

I think this summarizes my feelings about this book best: Veronica Roth has found a permanent fan in me. I plan on reading everything this girl writes that I can get my hands on. I loved her debut novel Divergent, which I just finished reading this morning. I won’t give a review or even a summary here because it’s not really my thing and because there are far better reviews/summaries available elsewhere.

Divergent is a YA Dystopian in the same vein of Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games, a series I very much enjoyed as well. But I have to say, I like this one better. It’s not perfect, and I have lots of questions I hope will be answered in the next book, but whereas The Hunger Games is a blatantly political novel (which is pretty par for the course with Collins) Veronica’s novel is more of a morality tale. And Veronica’s message seems far more honest to me and far truer.

By the end of Divergent I didn’t feel as though I’d been manipulated into seeing the world from someone else’s point of view. It didn’t make me feel ashamed of who I am. Just the opposite. Now it may be that I feel so strongly about this novel because the morality of it is my morality, the things I believe in, but I can’t tell you for certain. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

All I know is that Divergent is a good story with a strong, fascinating female protagonist. And it’s the type of story that needs to be told more often, one about love and self-sacrifice and what it truly means to be brave.

And I also know that its author, Veronica Roth, is truly brave.

I need to say a huge thank you to my agent, Suzie Townsend, for recommending Divergent to me. Otherwise, I might have overlooked this fantastic story. And man of man, I can’t wait for the next one!

Book Recommendation — White Cat by Holly Black

I loved this book. Seriously. It was great. The main character, Cassel, is like a young Sawyer (from Lost) mixed with a fresh-out-of-the-military Michael Corleone (from the Godfather).

White Cat has lots of twists and turns, and zero predictability. It’s also already available in paperback (yeah, I’m a little late to the game on this one, but it was way worth it).

Even better, the sequel, Red Glove came out in April. Go check it out!