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I love you,’ Buttercup said. ‘I know this must come as something of a surprise to you, since all I’ve ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn’t matter.’ Buttercup still could not look at him. The sun was rising behind her now; she could feel the heat on her back, and it gave her courage. ‘I love you so much more now than twenty minutes ago that there cannot be comparison. I love you so much more now then when you opened your hovel door, there cannot be comparison. There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my ears adore you, my knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey. Do you want me to follow you for the rest of your days? I will do that. Do you want me to crawl? I will crawl. I will be quiet for you or sing for you, or if you are hungry, let me bring you food, or if you have thirst and nothing will quench it but Arabian wine, I will go to Araby, even though it is across the world, and bring a bottle back for your lunch. Anything there is that I can do for you, I will do for you; anything there is that I cannot do, I will learn to do. I know I cannot compete with the Countess in skills or wisdom or appeal, and I saw the way she looked at you. And I saw the way you looked at her. But remember, please, that she is old and has other interests, while I am seventeen and for me there is only you. Dearest Westley–I’ve never called you that before, have I?–Westley, Westley, Westley, Westley, Westley,–darling Westley, adored Westley, sweet perfect Westley, whisper that I have a chance to win your love.’ And with that, she dared the bravest thing she’d ever done; she looked right into his eyes.

-William Goldman, The Princess Bride

We’re told this is the final Dynamite teaser in this campaign. A guy with a gun… a little hard to guess this one.

Hm, a magician in a top hat…who COULD this be?

We hear it was a rough day at Dynamite Entertainment’s Mt Laurel, NJ offices yesterday, as a car hitting a telephone pole took out their website. But they’ve been heroically dropping some teasers so we’ll play along. What can this be? Definitely has the pulpish feeling we’ve come to expect from DE. BUt we’re all or guys with swords lurking in swamps, so bring it on and Hail it.

I’ve been researching and trying to write a story based on my family’s experience in World War II for about ten years now, ever since Dad started to open up about his experience. For ten years we’ve been sitting down with each other, talking about events, locations and his experiences, getting clear about the “when” and “wheres” of his time as a prisoner. When we first sat down together, it was difficult for him to remember just how many prisons he was in and how long he had been a prisoner. But, together, we pieced the puzzle together. I’ve read that “why” isn’t a very spiritual question. I kind of like that insight.

I’ve tried five different times to write the story as a novel. And, well…it just wasn’t happening. Each attempt fell apart for one reason or another. And then, after I’d taken only a few storyboarding classes at Art Center at Night, creative fireworks went off and I saw the whole story. I like to write my novels cinematically, so I guess the transition to screenplays is natural, even as I have a lot to learn. Part of the reason why this story hasn’t come together as a novel has to do with the fact that the scope of the story has seemed so epic to me, spanning several generations, and like my screenplay writing instructor said, “that’s the trouble with true stories”…all the details. The story needed focus and that’s what I’ve been working very hard on over the past few months. Here is the opening scene from Gamelan.

EXT. JAPANESE POW CAMP, TJIMAHI, OCCUPIED JAVA 1943

A bamboo and barbed wire fence. An old, white man’s emaciated wrinkled, shaky hand clenches three cigarettes. The boney, but steady hand of HANS (19) takes the cigarettes from the old man.

HANS hammers a crooked nail into a rough-hewn wooden plank.

NINETY YEAR OLD MAN WITH A DUTCH ACCENT (V.O.)

Liberty is something you can’t understand until it’s taken away. You become a different person. You become a prisoner. You learn what it is to survive.

Last weekend my family had a reunion where we celebrated Dad’s 90th birthday!

Happy Birthday Dad! 

I don’t know about you, but I’m psyched for this SuperBowl. Heard this one’s being called the Bowl Bowl, or the 4/20 bowl…hee-hee. I love the Broncos now because my daughter just moved to Colorado and I’ve spent a lot of time there this year. At the Denver airport there’s this huge bronco statue and it’s eyes are lit up red at night…it’s really fierce looking. So, this Super Bowl weekend…I’m for the Broncos! I haven’t written about football much, but I have written about a fictional sport that’s just as intense–airboarding, a combination of snowboarding and surfing IN THE AIR. Here’s an excerpt of what happens during the snowboarding finals on planet RETHA…a parallel planet to planet Earth. This SuperBowl excerpt is from my SciFi Romance Starjump Series, book 1 TRANSFER STUDENT, an intergalactic tale of beauty and the geek:

Two Worlds––Two Teens––One Wish

Geek Rhoe and Surfer Ashley would never be friends.
Even if they lived on the same planet.
But, they’ll become so much more.
They’ll transfer.

In a teleporting experiment gone wrong, Ashley, a Beverly Hills surfer, and Rhoe, a brilliant geek from planet Retha, swap lives when they make the same wish at the same time.

“Get up!”

I roll over in Rhoe’s bed-net. Maybe Mr. Bright-And-Early will go away and leave me alone. I just want a few more Ashley-minutes to myself.

“Rhoe, The Finals…,” Yuke says in my ear so loud my eardrums stop drumming, if web-footed aliens even have eardrums.

Blech. Just as I roll over, away from him, and close my eyes––so not wanting to get out of this weird bed-net for another whole day of Ashley-in-Wonderland––Yuke wraps his hands, his very warm hands, across my tummy and pulls me over so I roll back to face him. Tingles climb up my part-frog-part-bird spine. All I see are Yuke’s webbed-feet. Turns out a girl can overlook a few gruesome details when said gruesomeness sports a gnarly six-pack bulging through a nearly see-through neoprene shirt. Yuke is hot in a winged-alien-way. A way I never thought I’d crush on until now. His golden gaze had already cast a spell over me. But I didn’t really pay attention to the rest of him. Something about the way he grabbed my stomach makes me want to kiss him. Kiss a guy as a guy. I want to kiss Yuke so bad even that thought doesn’t cool the way I feel at all. I want him to wrap me up in his wings and kiss me. Now. I don’t even care that I have alien morning breath. And I can’t even enjoy the dream of kissing him before it’s happening. Again. I gasp at the spot in my shorts that looks like a tent.

We’re both guys. I repeat over and over in my head, trying to tame my wild crush as I place my hands over my alien bulge.

“Rhoe, get out of your net. We’ve only got fifteen livcecs to make the lineup,” Yuke says sitting on the floor peering up at me. “Neron’s sick. Only another Astral can be his alternate… Xanny’s at Leadership Council all day. I need you.”

I need Yuke too. He has no idea how bad. I just wish I could tell him without freaking him out. I’ll do anything Yuke says. He’s that gorgeous. I don’t even care what I look like. A guy wouldn’t really primp before helping a friend anyway. Lineup. Board. Yuke wants me to go surfing? This place is getting better and better. I look down at my webbed-feet. They’ll make catching a wave easy but the clunkers’ll be hard to maneuver on a board.

“Rhoe!”

“Yeah, yeah.” I want to move but I’m nervous it will come back, believe me, no one needs to see… that. Yuke darts around the room grabbing random crap. I eye a pair of pants that hover behind Yuke while his back is turned but when I leap for them he spins around.

I freeze. Hoping, praying it’s, gone. The heartbeats in my throat practically suffocate me. Bum-bum-bum-bum, Bum-bum-bum-bum. I wonder if having two hearts makes Rhoe fall harder when he’s in love. Like now. Maybe Rethans love twice as much as Earthlings. When Rhoe breaks up with a girl, it must hurt more. Or, maybe the other heart is more like a spare. Anyway, I’m falling farther faster for Yuke than I have for any boy. Ever. Maybe it’s the lack of gravity. I can’t stop it, whatever-it-is.

“Where’s that crazy powder you like to gleam your board with?” Yuke asks all ready to go.

No matter how much I know that I’m a guy and Yuke’s a guy, no matter how many times I tell the Ashley part of me it’s OK to kiss Yuke, I’m still just a girl who’s nervous about a hot guy standing in her alien bedroom. Make that an incredibly-hot-alien-guy-that-I-seriously-want-to-french-even-though-I’m-a-guy-and-he’s-a-guy. That hot.

“Let’s go. I’m not letting you miss your shot this ray. It’ll help you forget about the invention competition,” Yuke says.

Not. I never forget. And, I always win. Even if I get munched doing it like at last year’s surfing expo in Malibu, and I’m so not going into that now. I’m going to prove to Yuke that I’m not who he thinks I am. That Rhoe isn’t who Yuke thinks he is. I just have to figure out how. Rhoe’s brilliant. That’s obvious. And then, when I do convince Yuke, all those geek losers will know Rhoe really won the invention competition. We won the invention competition.

“Wait. What day is it?” I ask.

“Day?” Yuke says grabbing a jar of green powder.

“Rayling. What Rayling is it?”

“It’s 3 of 7 in the time of Falco,” he says.

Damn. I know I’m missing it. The one year I’ve been invited and actually have a shot at winning The Open Women’s Division at the Laguna Beach Invitational, snagging the scholarship I’ll need to go to med school and say goodbye to freaking Wellesley, driving a station wagon, and being Mr. Right’s wife or a movie star. My mom’s plans for me. I mean Wellesley is cherry, gorgeous even, but I love California. I’d die if I couldn’t surf year round. I know that’s why Mom wants me to go there. She’s a hater, can’t stand surfers. Rhoe better not screw up. What am I thinking? Of course he’ll screw it up.

I might not be able to do anything about the way Rhoe rips the waves. But, if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s Karma. So I’m going to do whatever it takes to make him win everything here. If I rock these finals or whatever-they-are, he’ll do the same for me. I pull a shirt over my hairy, flat chest and stare at my floppy feet. I hope the waves are good to Rhoe.

Yuke tosses me a board and gives me that look. The one that freaking melts me––the real me, deep down inside this alien body. I catch the board in one hand as we run out the door. I can’t believe I catch it one hand. Yuke’s board is propped up next to the front door and a little longer than mine. He grabs it on his way out the door. My board wobbles as I run.

“What kind of a surfboard is this?” I say stroking the wood grain. Admiring the thinness of it. This is going to be fun.

Yuke hops onto his board, squares his frog feet and bends over to adjust their suction. I could watch him adjust his suction all day.

“Shouldn’t we wait until we’re at the water before we…” I say just as Yuke hops into the wind. He sails over my shoulder away from me, toward one of the suns.

These lunatics surf air? Of course they do. Gulp. I’ve walked into some bizarre unreality TV show and I so wish someone would vote me off this freaking alien island. Now. Thanks, Rhoe. Thanks a lot. The next time you feel like making a random Earthling into your science fair experiment make sure YOU DON’T PICK ME. I’m going to die.

It’s just like surfing. It’s got to be. That’s what I tell myself mostly because of my belief in Karma and that since it owes me so bad, surfing the air is going to ROCK. But there’s this little part of me that’s keeping me calm, overly calm. Because it knows that if I freak out, I’ll die.

Yuke disappears over the purple horizon. I slide my wiggly board under my ginormous feet and leap into the air just like Yuke did. The gust has its way with me tilting me one way and then the other. I overcompensate and whirl to the ground. And it doesn’t get any better. It’s all leap, whirl, fall, repeat. Repeat. Yuke has to know the truth now. He has to face it. I’m not Rhoe. There’s no explaining this Lameoid behavior. One minute Rhoe’s a championship flyer and the next a championship faller. Is the time ever right to tell a hot guy that I’m really a girl alien transported into his best friend’s body? And that I want, no need, to French him. No, I didn’t think so. Yuke’s long gone, but not for long. He doubles back, no doubt wanting to track down what his one-time-quarky-now-psycho best friend is up to.

“Hi,” I say, wanting to be ok with kissing him. He’s that hot. And at this point, I have nothing to lose. I’ll never fit in here.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?” he says, like he just caught me with another guy––well, if I was a girl and he was my boyfriend and I was with another guy.

Here’s what I want to say, um, I’m getting another erection just looking at you and your golden-eyed gorgeousness and I’m so kissing you when you realize who I really am. But I go with, “Ah, remember what I told you. At the academy?” I ask.

“Yes,” Yuke says, staring out in front of us like it’s the Sahara or something, like we aren’t a few livcecs away from wherever-we’re-going. I know because I can hear music and crowds and stuff.

“I’m not Rhoe,” I say, desperate for him to get it. Desperate for his stare. For him to stare at the real me that way.

“We’re so late,” Yuke says. And his golden eyes, the ones that melt me every time he looks at me, dim just a little. He rides the wind like a pro. And as I ride behind him somehow it feels like we’re about to cross the Frenemy Line. I mean I can’t say that I blame him. I’m a total screw up as Rhoe. A total Rhoe wanna-be. It’s weird how sometimes a person can feel the moment when a friendship changes.

My gut’s hollow, worse than when senior-stud Gordon Haley stood me up my freshman year. My biggest social climbing date score that year was foiled by a ghastly opportunistic senior who hijacked Gordon with promises of putting out in ways a freshman never could. I’m over it, can you tell?

On Earth, I haven’t been much of a friend. I use people for what they can do for me or for what being with them can get me. Most of my friends come and go. I say good-bye way easier than hello. I’ve only kept two friends in four years at Beverly Hills High, Sean and Tiff. I switched everyone else up. If Rhoe does anything to screw me out of the only friendships I have left, I’ll kill him. That’s why Yuke not getting the real me hurts so bad. Because it feels like I’ve known him forever and because Yuke is different than any other guy I’ve liked before. I know this because I don’t want anything from him except a kiss. One single kiss.

I slide my board under my feet, adjust their suction and leap into the air. My board is still flimsy in the gusts, but my alien skin adheres better to the board. The wind blows harder. I lean into it and adjust my angle.

The wind is a wave, the wind is a wave, I keep telling myself.

But my life reading the sea is lost on the wind. And when I see Yuke flying back toward me I almost lose it completely.

Yuke tosses me a helmet.

I catch the helmet, but lose my balance and spin over then under my board, again and again. The helmet falls out of my hands. My board lands nose-down in a meadow and I tumble to the ground, landing super-hard on my shoulder. My bad shoulder. The one that got munched at last year’s expo in Malibu when I ended up on the wrong side of the last wave. Good thing I’m in Rhoe’s body or this would’ve hurt like hell.

Wild grass ripples in the wind. The blades sparkle in the afternoon suns. The warmth relieves my sore, twisted muscles. I pick up my helmet and eyeball my board, lying in the tall grass.

“Got another one?” I ask. Yuke glides across the meadow and makes a perfect landing next to me.

He opens his visor. “Right, like you’d ride any other board? How many tries did it take you and your dad to reach perfection?”

I love the idea of riding an alien, hot-dog board. I smile. I hope it’s too girly a smile. That he’ll see right through Rhoe to me. But he just walks off, shaking his head.

Rhoe and his dad were super close. I’m closer to my dad than my mom, but that’s not saying much. Dad’s a corporate big deal who doesn’t have time for me. When he’s home, I try to pretend everything’s normal. Mom’s so much happier when he burns the candles at both ends. He’s around less. She gets to spend more. It’s a win-win.

“Yuke, where am I in the lineup?” I ask.

“Same place you always are. First. But… you’ll be a back a few spots. Because of your fall the other day. But that’s only if we make it in time.”

I put my helmet on, pick my board up out of the meadow and launch back into the air. Every time I leap into the sky, it feels like the first time. I know if Rhoe ever figures out how to switch us back and I do go home, I’ll miss soaring. This feeling. I’ll miss Yuke. I’ll miss lots of things.

I lean one way and then another, not quite crashing into Yuke. If I’d had breakfast, it would be bubbling up inside of me. I rock back and forth, remembering my combustion envy over my friends who surf the heavies during storms and Santa Anas. They’re gorgeous in their lack of wipeout fear. I need to be that gorgeous today. But I’m far from it now.

A smooth breeze lifts me over Yuke.

And for some reason I see my biggest wipeout ever. The one I took at last year’s expo. I took off on a straight up-and-down wall, made the drop and raced off on an eight-foot left slide. It broke so hard then began to curl and crack over me. The wave closed out and buried me. I plunged into the salty white foam. Thinking down was up, I hit my head on the rocky bottom. I stroke my temple to feel my scar, fifteen stitches. Something I always do before a big ride, to remind me how tough I am.

But my temple is smooth. The stitches aren’t there.

I’m not me.

If Rhoe gets munched in the sea, what will happen to me? To us? I drop fast and hover beside Yuke, wishing I could claim the control I have, but I know it’s just the way the wind’s blowing.

Sean says the ocean is a living, breathing thing and, like a stranger, to never trust it. Don’t turn your back on the ocean. I hear him as clearly as if he and I were standing on the beach at Zuma.

What if Rhoe turns his back on the ocean? Why do I trust Yuke so much?

I tip to one side, grab hold of my board and roll over the nose again and again, but I stay in the air. Yuke looks my way, my geek moves reflect in his visor. We ride in silence, something new.

“What’s up?” I ask like I airboard every day. I’m good when the wind is slow and steady, terrible in the gusts, not like that’s a big surprise.

Yuke shakes his head and says, “Rhoe, the old you would have been ready to go two raylings before it was time. I would have been the one you dragged out of bed. The old you would never have settled for a spot in The Teller’s Festival. I don’t care how big of a deal it’s supposed to be. You a Teller? What’s going on with you, Rhoe?”

Rows of flags peek just over rolling hills in front of us. The hills turn into cliffs and the cliffs into mountains.

“I already told you. I’m not Rhoe,” I say, taking as deep a breath as this gentle planet will let me.

We lower ourselves over a path and land. Yuke doesn’t kick up as much dirt as I do. My less-than-perfect landing ends up with me falling into a bush.

Yuke takes off his helmet and says “Prove it.”

Damn he’s thick. Rhoe wouldn’t wipeout like I did. I get all jittery. “Look at me. You know it. Rhoe doesn’t wipeout like this. Whatever, look, I can’t think about wipeouts before a ride okay? It’s bad Karma,” I say.

Yuke’s expression softens, with a look in his sexy twinkling eyes like we’d just seen each other for the first time after a long, summer separation. His gaze warms a place deep inside my hairy, flat chest.

“Karma?” Yuke asks.

I crawl out of the leafy bush and say, “It’s the universal energy in the galaxy.” I lean in closer to him wanting to more than just talk. “It means if you do good things good things will come back to you. And if you do bad things, bad things will come back to you.”

The hippies at the beach tried to convince me to give up my queen-of-B.H.S.S.-back-stabbing ways with the same lecture but I wasn’t exactly the believing-in-Karma-kind-o gal. Not until now. Turns out, Karma’s a bitch. But, if they would have said, “If you don’t listen to us, you will swap lives with a genius boy alien who uses you for his science fair experiment and said geek will be your only hope of ever getting home,” well, maybe I would have paid more attention.

“What have you done to my best friend?” Yuke asks seeing me for the first time.

It’s the biggest moment of my life. I don’t know how to describe the intergalactic pull between us. It’s more than bodies and more than friendship. More than boys and girls. It’s souls. And my soul and his, no matter what we look like on the outside were born to be together. He inches closer to me. I inch closer to him. And we look at each other as if we don’t believe the other is real. Like we can’t believe we’ve found each other. If there really is only one soul in the universe that’s meant for another, what about all of the souls that spend an eternity a galaxy apart?

I love Karma more than ever before. I love it because it brought me to Yuke. I love it because I’m a better person with frog feet. At the same time, there’s no way in hell I’ll ever survive riding a freaking airboard. But, Rhoe already didn’t win the New Invention Competition and totally deserved to. He’s not going to be a quitter too. I won’t let him, I mean us. We aren’t quitters.

But what if Rhoe or I die? Does Karma even notice when two teenagers are a whole galaxy apart and need each other to survive?

Yuke puts a hand on my face and stares into my soul like no boy has ever done before. I want him in a way I’ve never wanted anyone else. If I’m going to die airbording, I’m going out kissing Yuke.

Check out the other Super Bowl excerpts today at the Society of YA Storytellers, click here to read more excerpts and have a great Super Bowl weekend!

A big shout out to all my fellow YA Storytellers :D 

K.C. Blake
Bryna Butler
Heather Hildenbrand
Patti Larsen
Quinn Loftis
Liz Long
Melissa Pearl
L.M. Preston
Stacey Rourke
Christy Sloat
Suzy Turner

Hey all, hope you’re having a great week! I just began reading SAFER OUTSIDE and have to share a teaser with you. I’m excited about going on Liz’s journey. Her story might be the perfect “curl up” read to take the edge off this crazy cold weather! Enjoy

Liz
Starting my sophomore year at a new school was bad enough but trying

to pull off a new persona seemed a bit ridiculous. I’d grown up with a lot of

the kids at that school but in the two years since they’d seen me, I’d lost twenty

pounds and changed by name. I kept asking myself if they would accept me as

the new and improved “Liz” or if they’d laugh at the feeble attempt dorky “Beth” 

was trying to make a new start? — Teaser from SAFER OUTSIDE

Mature YA Romance by Kristina Renee

Safer Outside, Book One of the Outside Series

When Liz moves to a new high school, she hopes for a fresh start. School is her escape from the violence at home and her only hope for breaking the cycle of
poverty she was born into. Trying to shield her siblings from her stepfather’s fury gets harder each day so when she meets Logan, she thinks it will be a
harmless distraction from the fear.

She’s Wrong.

Logan has the resources to change her life but at what cost? Her relationship is the best thing that ever happened to her but it could also be the worst. If she’s
not careful, she may lose everyone that’s important to her. But it’s hard to be careful when you’re fifteen and in love.

For readers 16+

The Seven Caves

Lucia is a small seaside town perched on the cliffs of central California. Discovered by Don Gaspar de Portola and his soldiers late in the 18th century, the town is named after the day of its discovery––December 14, Santa Lucia Day.

On a day not too long ago, a local caretaker of an estate just to the south of Lucia, known only as Point 16, received a visitor. The stranger said he was from The Vatican and inquired as to seven caves that The Vatican had listed in its archives from the manifest of the town’s discovery centuries ago. As he further stated that the caves were sure to be located off the coast of Point 16, the caretaker dismissed the man’s strange way of talking but became obsessed by his manner of dress which included a spectacular sword with rubies inlaid in its handle.

The caretaker scratched his head. He’d kayaked up to the caves a time or two and had paddled inside a little ways. The only person the caretaker knew that ever sailed inside the caves any distance at all, and at that only a quarter of a mile, was long dead. Rumor was that the seven caves all met up in the very center of The Santa Lucia Mountains. The mysterious visitor surprised the caretaker when he knew that the caves were the color of blood and shocked him when he spoke of a great temple with treasure inside.

The caretaker told the stranger that the caves were real enough, but that no one he knew had ever been able to sail deep into the caves to discover any temples or treasure.

The stranger thanked the caretaker and went on his way. The caretaker, uneasy about the stranger, decided to follow. The stranger rode his horse to the beach beside the caves and climbed into a simple dugout canoe. Primitive by any standards. Its oars like branches.

The stranger paddled and paddled. The caretaker could only watch from shore. As the surf drew out to sea more of the cave entrances became exposed. When the great swells crashed into the cliffs the waves churned powerfully in the caves and splashed back out to the open sea. Yet, the stranger didn’t veer from his course, one that would soon place him inside the nearest cave.

The caretaker began to sweat. The stranger had paddled his small canoe in an angry sea yet his navigation, indeed the boat itself, seemed unaffected by it. The caretaker searched the coast close by for a kayak sometimes hidden in the brush by the owner of Point 16.

He longed to paddle into the caves. Make that discovery. For, he knew the sea better than most around these parts. Certainly, he would be able to keep up with the stranger. As luck would have it, he found an abandoned canoe. And so he too paddled out to sea.

The sun disappeared behind a cloud and the chill of the fog invaded the caretaker’s bones. A great cloud river of fog moved from north to south over the Pacific, inching to shore. Upon a great break of an early evening wave the stranger disappeared into the first cave.

The caretaker followed.

The next thing the caretaker remembered was fading in and out of consciousness as Search and Rescue revived him. The caretaker asked about the stranger but was told no other body and no other boat was found, not unusual in the rugged depths of the central coast.

The caretaker’s dreams were filled with the stranger and endless trips into the caves, alive with treasure.

When the caretaker came to he was quite inconsolable. Gone mad with a fear of the sea. He tossed back and forth in the sandy soil trying to get away from those that had saved him when he spotted the stranger’s sword, stuck in the sagebrush. The caretaker wrapped his hands around the rubies and pulled the sword out of the brush. Don Gaspar de Portola was engraved in the silver blade, dripping with blood.

Get the anthology free for The Nook here.

Happy Halloween!

A wonderful lady sent this to me in an email this morning and it inspired me, and so I want to share it with you too. Have a wonder-filled week!

“We lay there and looked up at the night sky

and he told me about stars called blue squares and red swirls. 

I told him I’d never heard of them.Of course not, he said,

the really important stuff they never tell you.

You have to imagine it on your own.”

-Brian Andreas, Traveling Light, Stories & Drawing for a Quiet Mind

Celebrating the release of The Jamieson Collection with Harper Collins, today’s post gives you a look inside the books and a great giveaway! Title: Rock and a Hard Place (The Jamieson Collection, #1) and Snapshot (The Jamieson Collection, #2) Author: Angie Stanton Publisher: Harper Collins Release date: September 24, 2013 (re-release with Harper Collins) Genre: Contemporary Age Group: Young Adult Event organized by: AToMR Tours; http://atomrbookblogtours.com Rock and a...

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Click here to enter the Kindle Fire Storytellers release day giveaway!

Fictional Candy is posting an exclusive excerpt today. Click here to read!

Thanks for joining the party! And because if how many of you commented yesterday, I’ve posted the first five pages of THE STORYTELLERS here. 

So excited about THE STORYTELLERS release-day giveaway CLICK HERE TO ENTER.

Click here to see the dream cast at Reese’s Reviews

Thanks for helping to spread the word about THE STORYTELLERS!

Want more? For every comment on this post I’ll post a page of The Storytellers….thanks for stopping by!

So excited about the release of THE STORYTELLERS on Tuesday, Sept. 10. Here’s a sneak peek at the dream cast and an exclusive journal entry from one of the four storytellers, Julia Fairchild. I hope you can join the tour, enter the giveaway & check out the whole dream cast Monday, Sept. 9 at the fab blog Reese’s Reviews! Also on Monday, Fangirlish.com hosts me for a guest post too. To check out all the exclusive excerpts, interviews, playlist and book trailer click here. Hope to see you on the tour

Scarlett Johansson as Julia (photo credit: wikipedia.com, taken at July 2013 San Diego Comic Con)

“My gut finches. Something mysterious

causes me to question,

haunts me.

I pay attention

and listen, but part of me is blind

and deaf.

Until, I learn to fly

to thrive not just survive.

More unimaginable than leaving,

staying.

Suffering is a choice.”

-From the journal of JULIA FAIRCHILD, author of Desert Demon in THE STORYTELLERS

Bradley Cooper plays Carl (Julia’s husband) and Blake in Julia’s fictional world

The official release day is this Tuesday Sept. 10th….but, pssst. THE STORYTELLERS released a little early on Amazon! #squeeee

Here’s a video from one of the songs on THE STORYTELLERS playlist. The entire playlist will debut 9/20 on the tour.

Congrats to Jodi, Kerri, Diana, Aimee & Daniela, winner of THE STORYTELLERS Cover Reveal e-ARC giveaway! There’s more giveaways on the book blog tour starting next week, and lots of exclusive excerpts, interviews and the book trailer & dream cast reveals too:D I hope you can join in the fun that gets started on 9.9.13. Thanks so much for all your support!

The release is only days away now. Squeeeing about the awesome tour! Click here to get the scoops about the tour &the Goodreads contest. Enter the giveaway here, closes midnight on Sept 1st! Hope you can join the fun starting Sept. 9 with a boat load of exclusive content, dream cast reveal, the book trailer premiere and more giveaways

I’m riding the UtopYA high! Super excited about all the wonderful writers and readers and bloggers I met & old friends I had the pleasure of hugging and catching up with. And because of how fabulous they are, I’ve been really inspired in my own work. I thought I’d share this pic. It’s gorgeous! I’m loving Boulder…a stop on my way home, where I’m having an great time catching up with my daughter.

I always think edits will go faster than they actually do. LOL. This morning I think I spent an hour on these two graphs alone. My goals was to do a read through to catch inconsistencies. But I found myself tinkering with every word. It’s fun to find just the right word, of course… Travel is funny. I always seem to injure myself somehow when I’m on the road. I’ve got a nice raspberry on my leg where I ran into a sharp corner somewhere. And I have brain farts too. Like this morning when I thought my laptop had finally died, when it just completely ran down and was out of a charge. LOL! I’m blaming it on the altitude. YIKES! I guess my brain isn’t used to being high off UtopYA & a mile high

Here’s a teaser from the two graphs from The Storytellers I worked on this morning, it’s the beginning of my first adult novel which releases this August:

Grandma Olive gripped the arm of her antique cherry rocker and braced herself, inching up out of its seat. She took to her feet, smoothed a strand of hair off her moist forehead and stared into little Alexandra’s eyes. “Little lamb,” she said, “good stories have a life of their own.”

Not even a breeze had graced the front porch on that that muggy, August Chicago night but chills raced over Alex’s body anyway. See the moonlight had cast a glow over Grandma’s face, exaggerating her wrinkles and bathed her gray eyes in such a way Alex thought Grandma had taken one step closer to the grave. The heat had cast a surreal spell too, enough to melt butter in the kitchen and fantasy into reality while neighbors spun stories long into the night on the porch, as they had every summer Wednesday in Alex’s memory. Whatever the reason, the moonlight or the heat, Grandma’s words became larger than life, haunting Alex and her world changed in a heartbeat. 

From page 97:

“Survival is not so much about the body, but rather it is about the triumph of the human spirit.” –– Danita Vance

Chapter 14

“Wednesday arrived sooner than Claire hoped. Since the discovery of her lake oasis, she spent every day there and the first night had been close. She even needed to run part of the way, but she made it. Now she knew the way and knew it took and hour and forty-five minutes each direction.”

Consequences by Aleatha Romig

The Storytellers, my upcoming adult novel, is about four writers whose stories all come true for each other. Here’s a teaser. Meet Alex:

Alex missed Lars and the power he had over her. Every time she saw him her body reacted viscerally. She longed to be with him. When they had to be apart for a week over the summer, she could barely deliver her lectures in Aman due to the ache she felt inside. A hollowness. An invisibility. She knew the day they met that they’d be lovers. Lars had written her four times in the last two weeks. He had a way with words that brought her to her knees. He’s the only man she ever wrote back.

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Valiant have released a teaser today, which teases (as teasers are wont to do)  something coming up in July..

Well, I’m not a betting man, apart from the lottery which I bet on and lose every week – but could this be a new series from Valiant?  Hmmmm…

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Marvel have been teasing a new project called #1, which has been suggested to be a weekly comic, or some kind of compendium, or… well, who knows. At any rate, a new teaser has surfaced, revealing the creative people who will be featured in the project, as well as the news that the announcement for #1 will come next weekend, at South By Southwest. There are plenty of names involved –

Some of the most notable names on there are Warren Ellis, Ed Brubaker and Joss Whedon, all of whom seem somewhat unlikely at this point to be releasing new work for Marvel. Especially Whedon, whose involvement would surely come with a teaser in itself – despite apparently only being able to write one comic script every seventeen months or so, he’s a big name, and would bring a lot of attention to Marvel comics.

So what is this? It looks to be some kind of reprint, or some way of celebrating the books Marvel perceives to be the most important they’ve done. The presence of John Cassaday on the teaser probably connects to his work with Whedon on Astonishing X-Men, and you can also pair together several other creative teams, such as Rick Remender and Jerome Opena, or Matt Fraction and David Aja.

But at the same time, all these creators listed here are fairly contemporary – if you’re going to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the X-Men, there’s no way you should be allowed to exclude Chris Claremont. So what the devil (as Claremont would no doubt write in his 50th Anniversary X-Men Comic, which by the way I WANT TO READ) is this meant to be?

Hi all!

I haven't done a teaser for a while and thought I'd post one today. If I'm not careful, I'll probably end up posting my whole book (just kidding . . . I know my chances for publication would be pretty much nil if I did that!). But seriously, I do so love the feedback from everyone. It's very encouraging!

Today I'm posting from TRAIN WATCH (yep, I'm still revising it, adding scenes here & there, etc.).

Here's the setup for the scene: Cleo, my protagonist, is on her way to the train station in Winston-Salem, NC, with her mother, brother, & grandfather, as well as the kind schoolteacher that she & her mother befriended at the previous station in Hamlet. (And just a reminder, the year is 1941)


Cleo looked up from her book, wondering why Mrs. Grissett was frowning so. Mama also noticed.

"Is there anything wrong, Mrs. Grissett?" Mama asked.

"Why, no dear, not especially. I was just thinking about your Cleo's big dreams is all." She tried to face Cleo but could only turn halfway as they jammed so tightly in the old Roadster. "It's a beautiful thing to realize such big dreams as yours, Cleo, but don't forget to look back every now and then. There are others dreaming right behind you."

"Yes, ma'am," Cleo said, heat rising to her cheeks.

Turning back to Mama, Mrs. Grissett continued, "You know, the young ones today don't realize that good, qualified Negro teachers are still needed down here, as well as up North.

Cleo dropped her chin and closed her book. She blinked back the tears that threatened to drop any second. Maybe she did read too much like Otis said. She really hadn't meant to sound so self-centered. And it wasn't that she had anything against working in the South--okay, she was against working in the fields--but it was just . . . just . . . that she knew, no felt, something bigger was in store for her in New York.

"Cleo! Cleo!"

Mama was shaking her shoulder so hard she thought her collarbone would come unhinged. How long had she been lost in thought? "Yes, Mama?"

"Didn't you hear me calling you, girl? What's wrong with you?"

"I'm fine, Mama. I was just thinking is all."

"Well, child, that's the saddest look of "fine" I've ever seen." Mama shook her head. "Cleo, this here's a mean, hard world. And I don't mean just here in the South. The North has its problems, too."



Well, that's it for today. Thanks so much for reading!

Hi everyone!

Well, I'm back with another "teaser" today but it's not from my middle-grade work-in-progress. No, this time it's a very brief snippet from one of 2 picture books that I'm working on. It's about a young duckling who, while out on a stroll with his family, gets separated from them as he tries to chase a rabbit.


From LITTLE DUCK DEVIN:


CR-U-N-N-N-CH! CR-U-N-N-N-CH! CR-U-N-N-N-CH!

Last in line behind his brothers and sisters, Little Duck Devin turned to see . . . a rabbit, munching on a carrot. It hopped right past him and his family. Little Duck Devin flew fast behind it.

WHOMP!

Little Duck Devin rubbed his beak. Where DID that rabbit go?

YIKES! What was THAT he heard? Oh! It was just his stomach grumbling! He waddled on until he came to . . .

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH! A highway!

Little Duck Devin waddled and hopped, first this way, then that. But the cars and trucks zoomed right on by.

Would he ever see Mama and Molly and Holly and Tevin again?



I welcome any criticisms/suggestions/feedback as picture books are NOT my strong suit but I love the challenge of writing them anyway.

Thanks for reading, guys! :)


**Oh yes, if anyone's interested in reading the whole thing (about 5 pages), you are more than welcome. I'll swap you for another PB or a 1st chapter of your MG. Just shoot me an email! :)

Hi all . . . I haven't posted a teaser in quite a while and just wanted to run this by folks . . . it's a relatively new scene I've been trying to develop.

Just to set up the scene for you: my main character, Cleo, has gone to visit her great-grandmother (Ma Murr), a former slave, who lives a bit farther out in the country.

From TRAIN WATCH:

Ma Murr said, "Do it, chile! Run for your life!" She got a faraway look in her eyes. "Yes, yes." She nodded. "Just like I ran for mine. Mmm. hmm. You want to be free. Lum and Jenny ain't free 'cause they still working for Boss Man. But you, chile, you has a chance to be free. Grab it!"
She twisted around, causing Cleo to abruptly stop combing her silvery, waist-length hair. "You hearin' me, chile?"

Cleo blinked. "Y-Y-Yes, Ma'am." Ma Murr always gave her the willies with that piercing stare.

Ma Murr smiled, content with her preaching. "Good. Good. Go on home, now. We's finished for today."

Thanks for reading!