The Grave Winner by Lindsey R. Loucks

Blurb:

Leigh Baxton is terrified her mom will come back from the dead -- just like the prom queen did.

While the town goes beehive over the news, Leigh bikes to the local cemetery and buries some of her mom’s things in her grave to keep her there. When the hot and mysterious caretaker warns her not to give gifts to the dead, Leigh cranks up her punk music and keeps digging.

She should have listened.

Two dead sorceresses evicted the prom queen from her grave to bury someone who offered certain gifts. Bury them alive, that is, then resurrect them to create a trio of undead powerful enough to free the darkest sorceress ever from her prison inside the earth.

With help from the caretaker and the dead prom queen, Leigh must find out what’s so special about the gifts she gave, and why the sorceresses are stalking her and her little sister. If she doesn’t, she’ll either lose another loved one or have to give the ultimate gift to the dead – herself.

Bio:

Lindsey R. Loucks works as a school librarian in rural Kansas. When she's not discussing books with anyone who will listen, she's dreaming up her own stories. Eventually her brain gives out, and she'll play hide and seek with her cat, put herself in a chocolate induced coma, or watch scary movies alone in the dark to reenergize.

She's been with her significant other for almost two decades.

Links:
Add The Grave Winner to Goodreads.
Check out Lindsey’s website.
Follow Lindsey on Facebook.
Follow Lindsey on Twitter.

Can You Believe? Resurrecting Harry.

 

A big welcome to our guest blogger Constance Phillips. Constance is the author of Resurrecting Harry. Here's what she says about creating a believable world for readers.

 

One of the key elements of writing paranormal and fantasy books is creating a world in which your reader can believe. Of course, with these brave new worlds, the possibilities are endless. Often the worlds we create look nothing like this one we live in.

None of that matters if the reader understands the universe we create and trusts that it can exist according to the rules we’ve outlined.

 The world I’ve created in Resurrecting Harry is one where Harry Houdini escapes the confines of death to return to this world and help his beloved Bess come to terms with her mourning. He is charged with saving her from a path of self-destruction.

Seems like a pretty unbelievable premise, even if you accept that a new life exists after we pass from this one. But the process – and one I hoped I’ve done well – is to create a set of circumstances that allowed my reader to believe.

That kind of unyielding faith is it the cornerstone of what made Houdini so successful. In his act, it was essential that he get his audience to believe he could transcend time and space or move unmovable objects to escape his confines, even though it was only an illusion.

Faith, love and belief in a spouse are the emotions that would keep a widow in mourning longer than normal. The desire to keep an illusion alive could keep a heart lost in grief and unable to move forward. Teaching that woman to believe in humanity, and the healing power of love, is quite a task.

And that is the heart of Resurrecting Harry, learning to believe.

 

A Blurb from Resurrecting Harry:

Can the greatest escape artist ever known break the grim reaper’s chains to save the only woman he’s ever loved?

In order to save Bess from self-destruction, Harry Houdini puts his afterlife on the line by entering a wager with purgatory’s keeper. He gives Harry a younger face and body, and a new name: Erich Welch.

Bess clings to his promise to deliver a coded message from beyond the grave, determined to provide the bridge for him to cross, even if that means befriending her husband's sworn enemy.

Erich needs to help Bess over her loss and put her on the road to healing, but will any good come from resurrecting Harry? 

Bio

Constance Phillips lives in Ohio with her husband, two ready-to-leave-the-nest children, and four canine kids. Her perfect fantasy vacation would involve hunting Dracula across Europe with her daughter, who also digs that kind of stuff. When she's not writing about fairies, shifters, vamps, and guardian angels, she's working side-by-side with her husband in their hardwood flooring business.

Constance is actively involved in her local Romance Writers of America chapter (MVRWA) and the Southeast Michigan chapter of the United States Pony Club. When not writing or enjoying the outdoors, she loves reality television or can be found at a Rick Springfield concert (just look for the pink Converse high tops).

 

 

Bite Me and Other interesting ways to Market Your Book

I'm just back from the grocery store and something caught my eye. On my way out of the store, I noticed something on the community billboard, amidst the flyers for chinese auctions and weight loss plans. It was an adorable postcard of a dog with wings. Above it the title BITE ME. Since I love dogs (and who doesn't), I took the time to read the few words on the card. BITE ME is a memoir written by a meter reader. Now isn't that clever I thought. Not only the premise but also the way in which the meter reader/author was marketing herself. Now I haven't always been a friend of the marketing aspect of the whole writing world. In the beginning of my career, self-promotion was a downright uncomfortable thing. In fact, when the marketing person at my first publisher invited me to a lunch with a bunch of New York librarians and asked me if the date was good for me, I initially said, "Well, if that date doesn't work for me, you can go ahead without me." There was a pause on the other end of the line at that point and then she proceeded to explain that the luncheon was for me. Well, that freaked me out! As did many other attempts I made at getting me and my book out there in the public sphere. For a shy person like me, marketing has always been as comfortable as putting on a suit made of pine needles.

But since the internet has taken over our lives and turned the publishing world on its ear, marketing has become a bit more palatable for me. I recently had a consultation with Eliza Cross from Cross Media. Eliza is a publicist and an author herself. She maintains four blogs, each one focused on the various aspects of her creative and professional life. She has a bacon blog for her bacon cookbook and a blog for her upcoming contemporary romance. In our discussions, Eliza emphasized that an author needs to be present on the internet. She said an author's first priority should be Goodreads.com. Having an author page on Goodreads that links your blog and gives your readers an opportunity to interact with you on the one passion we all have in common - reading - is great. Next, she suggested I create a dedicated author page on Facebook. Previous to this, I had my personal FB page, but Eliza said that my author page should be focused on all things writing, rather than personal tidbits. The last thing Eliza recommended was having a Twitter account. I was rather relieved, however, when she said that Twitter should take up no more than five minutes of my day since the stats show that Twitter does not reap a lot of rewards due to the rapid fire pace of the feeds.

So going back to BITE ME. Aside from a great title and a cute picture on the postcard, I loved that the author had the chutzpah to pin the card in a place where I least expected it. I don't know if I'll buy the book, but it has made me curious. And it's that curiosity that we want to spark in our reader because the next step, we hope, is a purchase.

So tell me, have you come across a book in an interesting way and has that way made you want to buy that book?