Blog Tour: TIMELESS (Maiden of Time #3) by Crystal Collier Meet Your Doppelganger Quiz + Giveaway!

Welcome Crystal Collier here today to share her new book and introduce you to YOUR Maiden of Time doppelganger!

Title: TIMELESS

Series: Maiden of Time, #3

Author: Crystal Collier

Pages: 253

Publication: November 1, 2016

Publisher: Raybourne Publishing

ISBN: 9781629830056

TIME IS THE ENEMY.

In 1771, Alexia had everything: the man of her dreams, reconciliation with her father, even a child on the way. But she was never meant to stay. It broke her heart, but Alexia heeded destiny and traveled five hundred years back to stop the Soulless from becoming. 

In the thirteenth century, the Holy Roman Church has ordered the Knights Templar to exterminate the Passionate, her bloodline. As Alexia fights this new threat—along with an unfathomable evil and her own heart—the Soulless genesis nears. But none of her hard-won battles may matter if she dies in childbirth before completing her mission.

Can Alexia escape her own clock?

BUY: Amazon | B&N

What reviewers are saying:

“A magical, fast-paced, romantic adventure…” --T. Drecker, Bookworm for Kids 

“A story of love...true and forbidden love. There's mystery…tension, action...everything.” –Chrys Fey, author of Ghost of Death 

"SWOON." --Sherlyn, Mermaid with a Book Reviewer

     The ground exploded next to Alexia’s foot. She stumbled backward, her broken-sword-turned-dagger clasped tightly in one fist as she scanned the horizon through raining debris. Men writhed across the beach in rawhide jerkins or white tunics bearing red crosses, the chaos of clashing metal like the roar of hungry lions.

Lions. The symbol woven into the enemy’s armlets and stamped upon their wooden shields—an emblem that marked them as King Edward’s elite killing force.

Lovely. Now the enemy had a catapult. Not that their sheer numbers weren’t bad enough. On a ship beyond the war-torn beachfront stood the wooden monster that had launched a boulder and scarred the earth next to her.

A jolt in her womb brought her hand up, the babe within pounding to break out and join in the battle. Soon. Very soon her child would enter the world, and her chance to save the Passionate would end. “You will have your time, little one.”

Alexia’s mere nineteen years were far too few to be with child and centuries away from her husband and home, far too few for her to be in the midst of a war. She clutched the pendant dangling around her neck, heavy metal too dull to hold any monetary value, and focused on the power stored within, pulling at its strength. Golden energy trickled into her fingers, like being filled with sunlight. The world around her slowed.

Weapons crept toward their intended targets, and battle cries thrummed, a rumbling bass.

Five months ago she’d discovered this raggedy band of talented people like herself, the Passionate. Unlike the powerful sub-society of Passionate she’d left behind, these were vagabonds and nomads, a struggling force who gathered others like themselves and fled to safety. They were more suited to living in holes and caves than behind four walls. Many had been rescued from noblemen who enslaved them and used their talents for gain, which brought about the current conflict: too many of the rich had lost their precious prisoners. They begged King Edward to send the Knights Templar—his witch hunters—after their slaves.

Alexia stepped through the slowed conflict, her burlap skirts pulling against her swollen womb like chainmail made for a giant.

READ MORE EXCERPTS

DOPPELGANGER QUIZ

Have you ever met someone who looks and acts like someone else you know?

These doppelgangers exist in life, so it makes sense they would exist in literature. Today, you can meet your alternate ego in the Maiden of Time trilogy. Answer 5 simple questions to find out which character is most like you. (Some villains included.)

Crystal Collier is an eclectic author who pens clean fantasy/sci-fi, historical, and romance stories with the occasional touch of humor, horror, or inspiration. She practices her brother-induced ninja skills while teaching children or madly typing about fantastic and impossible creatures. She has lived from coast to coast and now calls Florida home with her creative husband, four littles, and “friend” (a.k.a. the zombie locked in her closet). Secretly, she dreams of world domination and a bottomless supply of cheese.

Find her online HERE.

(Email address is required for awarding prizes.)

Blog Tour: Into the Light (Into the Dark #2) by Caroline T. Patti Guest Post + Giveaway!

Welcome to the INTO THE LIGHT by Caroline T. Patti blog tour! 

Today is my stop on the tour and I have for you an author guest post and giveaway! 

Hope everyone enjoys this post! :)

Into the Light (Into the Dark #2) 
by Caroline T. Patti 
Publication Date: August 23, 2016 
Publisher: Month9Books

Mercy’s family is back together and the threat of danger appears to have passed. But any relief she feels is short lived as she is ripped from her body and thrown in jail. Gage and Nathaniel’s plans to break Mercy out won’t exactly be easy. Stuffed full of a chemical binding agent, Mercy is trapped inside the body of a convict without the ability to breach and set herself free. Unfortunately for Mercy, being trapped in jail becomes the least of her problems when she meets her evil twin, Justice.

Purchase at BAM | Chapters | Amazon | B&N | TBD

Book #1 -Into The Dark

A girl’s sweet sixteen party is supposed to be among the most memorable events of her life. But on the night of hers, Mercy Clare wakes in the waiting room of a hospital with no memory of how she got there. To make matters worse, she’s wearing something she’d never be caught dead in: her best friend Lyla’s clothes.

Mercy’s nightmare is just beginning. The doctor arrives to tell her that it’s she who lies in the hospital bed waiting to die. A trip to the bathroom confirms Mercy’s fears, as Lyla’s face stares back at her and Lyla’s curvy figure pokes through her tight clothes.

But finding out what’s really going on won’t be easy. Because if Mercy wants her body back, it might just cost her Lyla’s life.

Purchase: Amazon | Kobo | B&N | Chapters | iBooks | BAM | TBD

If you could spend the day with any author (dead or alive) who would you pick? What would you do and what topics (or questions) would you ask?

Unfortunately, this post comes easily to me as one of the authors I’d always hoped to meet passed away recently. Lois Duncan is a huge part of why I became an author. I was fortunate enough to grow up right around the block from one of the biggest libraries in the Bay Area: the Santa Clara Public Library. And since I had lots of freedom as a kid to ride my bike around the neighbourhood or walk to the grocery store with my friends, I very often ended up including a stop to the library during one of these outings. The library has been remodelled since the 1980s, but I remember the old layout clearly. Walk through the double doors, turn right at the end of the check out counter, head straight for a bit, and turn right again for the children’s section. It is in these shelves that I found Lois Duncan books. They were riveting. Stranger with my Face is definitely one of my favorites, and though it was entirely unintentional, Into the Light does share the story line of a girl who is capable of leaving her body. I could not get enough of Locked in Time, the story of a family who does not age. The idea of being ageless seemed both fascinating and horrifying, and no matter how much time I’ve devoted to answering the question, what would I do, I still haven’t come up with one. Is living forever a good thing, or a bad thing? I honestly have no idea.

First and foremost, if Lois were alive today, I’d want to say thank you for filling my childhood with so many wonderful stories. I actually did correspond with her once when I was first starting out. I emailed her to tell her how much I loved her books and she very graciously wrote back to me. She explained, I assume with a heavy heart, that she no longer wrote stories for young adults after the murder of her own daughter.  I remember reading that email and thinking what a remarkable woman she must be for opening up to someone she doesn’t know, for still encouraging me to write, and for being a mentor when her muse, if you will, had left her.

On the day of her passing, I took to Twitter to join in the collective mourning, and admittedly, I was jealous of all the authors who’d met her in person. Though I was not so lucky, I do have my email memory to cherish forever. I hope that in some way Lois knows how deeply she inspired so many people, and I hope that she and her daughter were reunited in the afterlife, if there is such a thing.

About The Author: Caroline T. Patti

Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads

Caroline T Patti is the author of The World Spins Madly On and Too Late To Apologize. When she’s not writing, she’s a school librarian, mother of two, wife, avid reader and Green Bay Packer fan. You can chat with her on Twitter: carepatti or find her on Facebook: Author Caroline T Patti.

Giveaway Information:  Contest ends Sept 9, 2016

• One (1) winner will receive a scrabble tile book cover charm (US ONLY)
• Five (5) winners will receive a digital copy of Into the Dark and Into the Light by Caroline T. Patti (INT)

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Book Release Party: Legacy (Andalucían Nights #3) by Hannah Fielding + Giveaway! Win a designer handbag worth $225!

Welcome everyone to the book release party for author Hannah Fielding new novel, LEGACY! 

Be sure to enter the giveaway below to win a fabulous designer handbag! Enjoy!

Title: Legacy 

Series: Andalucían Nights #3

Author: Hannah Fielding

Paperback & ebook, 448 pages

Expected Publication: August 25th, 2016 

Publisher: London Wall Publishing

Genre: Contemporary Romance

A troubled young journalist finds her loyalties tested when love and desire unearth dark secrets from the past.

Spring, 2010. When Luna Ward, a science journalist from New York, travels halfway across the world to work undercover at an alternative health clinic in Cadiz, her ordered life is thrown into turmoil. 

The doctor she is to investigate, the controversial Rodrigo Rueda de Calderon, is not what she expected. With his wild gypsy looks and devilish sense of humour, he is intent upon drawing her to him. But how can she surrender to a passion that threatens all reason; and how could he ever learn to trust her when he discovers her true identity? Then Luna finds that Ruy is carrying a corrosive secret of his own…

Luna’s native Spanish blood begins to fire in this land of exotic legends, flamboyant gypsies and seductive flamenco guitars, as dazzling Cadiz weaves its own magic on her heart. Can Luna and Ruy’s love survive their families’ legacy of feuding and tragedy, and rise like the phoenix from the ashes of the past? 

Legacy is a story of truth, dreams and desire. But in a world of secrets you need to be careful what you wish for…

Purchase at: Amazon / AmazonUK / B&N

Check out the others books in the series here!

Hannah Fielding is an incurable romantic. The seeds for her writing career were sown in early childhood, spent in Egypt, when she came to an agreement with her governess Zula: for each fairy story Zula told, Hannah would invent and relate one of her own. Years later – following a degree in French literature, several years of travelling in Europe, falling in love with an Englishman, the arrival of two beautiful children and a career in property development – Hannah decided after so many years of yearning to write that the time was now. Today, she lives the dream: writing full time at her homes in Kent, England, and the South of France, where she dreams up romances overlooking breath-taking views of the Mediterranean.
Hannah is a multi-award-winning novelist, and to date she has published five novels: Burning Embers, ‘romance like Hollywood used to make’, set in Kenya; The Echoes of Love, ‘an epic love story that is beautifully told’ set in Italy; and the Andalusian Nights Trilogy – Indiscretion, Masquerade and Legacy – her fieriest novels yet, set in sunny, sultry Spain.

Find Hannah @

Website / Twitter / Facebook / Goodreads

Hannah is giving away this super cute handbag to one lucky winner. 

It's a Karl Lagerfeld ‘Choupette on the Beach’ bag worth £155/$225.

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Blog Tour: Life After Juliet by Shannon Lee Alexander | Guest Post + Giveaway!

Hello, everyone! 

Welcome to the blog tour for Life After Juliet by Shannon Lee Alexander! Today is my stop on the tour and I bring you a great guest post from the author all about writing about her favorite character in the book. There is also a fabulous giveaway going on too so be sure to enter that below to be able to win some amazing prizes! Enjoy!

Book Title: Life After Juliet

Author: Shannon Lee Alexander

Release Date: July 5, 2016

Genre: Contemporary YA

Becca Hanson was never able to make sense of the real world. When her best friend Charlotte died, she gave up on it altogether. Fortunately, Becca can count on her books to escape—to other times, other places, other people... 

Until she meets Max Herrera. He’s experienced loss, too, and his gorgeous, dark eyes see Becca the way no one else in school can.

As it turns out, kissing is a lot better in real life than on a page. But love and life are a lot more complicated in the real world...and happy endings aren't always guaranteed.

The companion novel to Love and Other Unknown Variables is an exploration of loss and regret, of kissing and love, and most importantly, a celebration of hope and discovering a life worth living again.

Purchase at:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo

Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.ca | Entangled Publishing

I’m not sure how long I’ve been back in school. I don’t really do days anymore. Time is measured in pages. I’ve read 3,718 pages since Dad dropped me off on the first day. It’s been 108,023 pages since Charlotte died. I’ve read 150 pages since I stepped on the bus this morning. It’s been ten pages since I thought of Charlotte.

She’s not coming back, and I don’t know what else to do, so I keep turning the pages.

However long I’ve been back at Sandstone High, the advanced literature and composition teacher, Mrs. Jonah, informed me yesterday that I am no longer allowed to “sit like a bump on a log, reading books” in her class. I find this strange, but then, I don’t understand the real world. I’ve given up trying to make any kind of sense of it. Today in class, I am sitting like a bump on a log, staring out the window.

Sandstone is a typical high school, unlike the fancy math and science school on the other side of town that Charlie graduated from last spring. It’s the kind of building that’s been pieced together—add a wing here, convert a gym there, dump mobile units here—throughout the decades as the town’s population grew and it had to be quickly expanded. There’s no one defining style. It’s a mishmash. The kids who go here are also diverse, so it’s not hard for me to fade into the background.

Lit and Comp is a junior course. The guidance counselor signed me up for it at the end of last year. She described it as a lively class full of opportunities for personal and artistic growth. In other words, it’s my worst nightmare. I’ve decided growth is overrated.

Mrs. Jonah’s classroom is long and narrow, with a wall of windows down the side. She’s decorated the wide windowsill with spindly spider plants, stacks of books, empty vintage Coke bottles that catch the sunlight, and a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, which is strange since she’s not a science teacher.

Mrs. Jonah raps on her desk now to get our attention. She stands and brushes invisible lint off her black pencil skirt. Tall and unafraid of wearing high heels, she towers over everyone in the school, even the basketball coach. Her pixie haircut and makeup are always perfect. She’s the most with it human I’ve ever seen.

“Time’s up,” she says. “Please, pass your quizzes forward.”

I’ve been done with my quiz for what would have been about twenty pages, if reading were still allowed in Lit class. I pass my paper to the boy in front of me. He runs his hand through his choppy black hair and smiles. His lips are chapped, and the smiling pulls the raw skin too tight. It makes me wince. I instantly feel bad, because I remember this guy.

Max. He was in Mr. Bunting’s World History class with Charlotte and me last year. He was the only student at Sandstone who spoke directly to me after Charlotte died. He came right up to me in history, cleared his throat so I’d look up from my book and said, “Sorry for your loss.”

I remember I got up and left the room. It was either that or start crying.

He’s still looking at me now. I should say something, something nice, like “Thank you for your condolences.” Instead, I look out the window again.

Max sighs, soft like the riffle of book pages, as he turns around and passes our quizzes forward. I’m used to that sound. It’s the sound of my father when I refuse to put my book down and come join my mother and him. The sound of my mother when she realizes I’ve been listening to the book characters in my head instead of her. Lately, I’m really only safe lost in the pages of a book. Outside, in the real world, it’s like I’m walking around with no skin. Everything hurts.

 

I asked author Shannon Lee Alexander to pick her favorite character in her novel and talk about why she chose him or her. What was most fun and what most challenging to write about for them, etc... Here is what she had to say.

As a writer, I’m a pantser. I don’t plan my stories before I start. I generally begin knowing who the main characters are, where they are beginning, and a vague idea of where I may end up at the end of the story. Everything else is always a surprise to me as I’m writing.

When I began LIFE AFTER JULIET, I knew the swoony, sweet Max Herrera would be an ally for Becca Hanson. And I knew Darby Jones would be her worst nightmare. What I didn’t know was that just as Becca was going to fall for Max, I was about to fall in love with Darby Jones in a big way.

Darby started out as a caricature—the typical mean girl stock character. But almost immediately, she began to take control of her scenes (in true drama queen style) and direct them in new and amazing directions I hadn’t considered. She diligently corrected all my misperceptions about who she was and what her purpose in the story was to be.

The more I wrote her, the more I loved her. And I wanted readers to get to see the real Darby, behind the Queen of the Drama Club persona she wore so often. 

The biggest gift Darby gave me was the understanding that I wasn’t trying to write a love story for Becca, even if she happens to fall for a guy in the course of telling the story. For Becca (and for Darby, too), this story was about finding herself. Darby helped me see that. And then, she helped Becca see it, too.

Darby is never going to be an easy character for anyone to like. She’s direct, unfiltered, and unapologetic. She’s driven and demanding. She’s kind of a pain in the butt, but she’s also loyal and caring and kind to those she loves. You just have to get to know her to see it.

Characters like Darby are my favorite thing about writing. The way they grow and change a story really reflects the way writing can help you grow and change as a person, too. Darby is a reminder that you can’t judge a book by its cover, or a drama queen by her eye rolling either.

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Shannon Lee Alexander is a wife and mother (of two kids and one yellow terrier named Harriet Potter). She is passionate about coffee, books, and cancer research. She spent most of her time in high school hiding out in the theater with the drammies and techies. Math still makes her break out in a sweat. She currently lives in Indianapolis with her family.

Giveaway Information:  Contest ends July 15th, 2016

Open internationally, but prize packs ship only to US. International winners will receive Amazon gift cards (listed below).*

• Grand prize: Hyperboles are the best EVER! tote bag, a 4oz. Novelly Yours Antique Books candle, Toe-meo and Juliet Shakespearean socks, Life after Juliet poison and dagger necklace, Velveteen Rabbit note card, signed Life after Juliet bookmark and bookplate*
• 1st Runner Up: Hyperboles are the best EVER! tote bag, a 4 oz. Novelly Yours Antique Books candle, Toe-meo and Juliet Shakespearean socks, Life after Juliet dagger earrings, signed Life after Juliet bookmark and bookplate*
• 2nd Runner Up: 2oz. Novelly Yours Antique Books candle, Life after Juliet dagger earrings, Velveteen Rabbit note card, signed Life after Juliet bookmark and bookplate*
• 3rd Runner Up: 2oz. Novelly Yours Antique Books candle, Life after Juliet dagger earrings, signed Life after Juliet bookmark and bookplate*

*All contests are open internationally, but international winners will receive the following:

• Grand prize: $25 Amazon gift card, signed signed Life after Juliet bookmark and bookplate
• 1st Runner Up: $20 Amazon gift card, signed Life after Juliet bookmark and bookplate
• 2nd runner up: $15 Amazon gift card, signed Life after Juliet bookmark and bookplate
• 3rd runner up: $10 Amazon gift card, signed Life after Juliet bookmark and bookplate
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