The Masquerade Crew

Buffer The following is syndicated from kaysnovelnook.com  and is posted here with permission. Kay Froebel, Masquerade Crew Member Have you read The Smartest Girl in the Room ? Good. If you haven’t, I am willing to overlook this obvious blunder on your part. For now.  I have a special love for this series, mainly due to it’s strong female roles. You know me, I would take a kick ass girl over a simpering idiot any day. (Think Buffy- before the show got weird- versus Bella Swan.) The New Pioneer Series by Deborah Nam-Krane, featuring The Smartest Girl in the Room , Family You Choose , and the third installment, The China Doll due to be released soon, is a brilliant series containing four very different women struggling through the ups and downs of life and love.  Now I have been a pretty big fan of this series, and I was lucky enough to nab the author, Deborah, for an interview. I got to poke her brain with a stick, and it was qui...

Buffer Tell everyone a little bit about yourself.  Greetings fellow bookworms, my name is Kay. I’m a bit quirky, far too vocal, and as sarcastic as they come. I am the mother of two beautiful girls and a fluffy mutt, and wife to a total nerd. I aman editor, a book reviewer, and a blogger. I am also notoriously impatient, so beware if you are writing a series and haven’t finished it yet. I implode if I have to wait for the next book. Not a pretty sight.

Wide Open Spaces By Katrina M. Randall Follow the author on Twitter http://katrinamrandall.wordpress.com/

Cover links to Amazon.com The following is syndicated from  jeannicolerivers.com  and is posted here with permission. L ast week I pressed the “approve” button for the final edits on my first novel,  Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers,  and it was more difficult than I could have ever imagined.  Over the past year as I composed the novel I could not wait for the moment to finally be finished, to have completed one of the “biggies” on the bucket list, to be able to say, “I have written a novel, I’m a writer, I have arrived!”

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by  Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer .  It's a chance to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and  share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog. 

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F ebruary is going to be Fantasy month. So, we are looking for book review requests from that genre. We are only going to open it up for a few days, so authors, you have until the end of the month (and thus the end of the year) to get your fantasy request in.

T his blog is more than just a book recommendation site. Yes, that's the main purpose, but it isn't the only car on the train. The greater purpose goes beyond books, from simply suggesting the next book you should try to the power behind the written word, which is much more than simple entertainment.

Most people who know me — online and off — would probably agree that although I can be difficult to get along with at times, I'm a decent guy overall. If someone disagrees with me, that's fine. If they don't want to follow my tweets, this blog, etc ... that's also fine. I lose followers everyday for a variety of reasons. I don't usually make a stink. What I will not allow without a fight is publicly slandering my reputation, especially when your interpretation is so far off the mark.

The following is syndicated from Devorah Fox and is posted here with permission. When I first wrote  The Lost King,  I didn’t have a series in mind, but a funny thing happened on the way from the beginning to the ending. I got to the conclusion of the tale but not the story. Robin, the lost king, had learned a lot but still had a lot to learn. Readers recognized this because they asked me, “What happens next?” and “When’s the next book coming out?” I was pleased that readers so liked the characters that they wanted to spend more time with them.

Cover links to Amazon.com

Cover links to Amazon.com

The following is syndicated from  devorahfox.com  and is posted here with permission. In the publishing industry, much has been made of “the sophomore curse” that seems to bedevil authors’ second books. They’re sometimes criticized for being not quite as good as the first, and it’s not always the authors’ fault. Many years may have been spent writing the first book which received meticulous attention and was polished to a gleaming shine before being released. After its publication fans clamor for more. 

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Although the theme for January will be YA (young adult), I'm taking Cover Wars in a different direction for the year. I want to be able to connect one month's Cover Wars to the next, and strictly following the theme of the month won't really allow those options to be viable. If you are new to Cover Wars, check out December's Cover Wars Post .

Cover links to Amazon.com

Cover links to Amazon.com

Cover links to Amazon.com

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by  Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer .  It's a chance to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and  share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog. 

Cover links to Amazon.com

Cover links to Amazon.com The following is syndicated from  westernfictioneers.blogspot.com   and is posted here with permission. BE THANKFUL FOR WESTERNS I pretty much ran through the various heroines, heroes, horses, villains and sidekicks in my previous posts. I had to think twice about what to address next -- and figured since Thanksgiving is coming up, I'd ask some of the readers an important question. WHY ARE WE THANKFUL FOR WESTERNS?

The following is syndicated from  westernfictioneers.blogspot.com   and is posted here with permission. I've been mulling over all month about a topic. Western weather, and how brutal cattle drives and prairie farming must have been. Another real life western hero, or heroine... or a plug about my re-release of the Spur-Award winning Double Crossing. But then I thought about one of the most popular Western Fictioneer members,  Dr. Keith Souter (w/a Clay More)  and thought, "hey, he's a doctor. I have some questions about stuff I see in movies or books."

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The following is syndicated from  jeannicolerivers.com  and is posted here with permission. Character is all about fear, tragedy and outcome. We have all heard the quote, “It is not your beliefs that make you a good person, but your actions.” and from thinking like this we derive that it is what you do, especially in times of adversity that forge ones character. In order for writers to develop a complete and engaging character they MUST reveal the answers to the following three questions about the character:

If you would be willing to write an honest review,  please request a free copy of this book at the bottom of the post.

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  The art of gossiping, gabbing and chatting with awesome book bloggers!

Cover links to Amazon.com

Cover links to Amazon.com

Cover links to Amazon.com

If you would be willing to write an honest review,  please request a free copy of this book at the bottom of the post.

Buffer A selection of the collected work by Lucy Pireel (Novelist and writer of short fiction) Do you like fairy tales? Fairy tales how they originally were, before Disney took them over?

Buffer Accepting Their Claim and Wronged Desires LOVE CHAINS LeTeisha Newton and Lillian MacKenzie Rhine have partnered together in a co-op marketing duo the likes that have never been seen before. "Love Chains" has become the calling card for their novels Accepting Their Claim and Wronged Dersires , respectively, to be released from Amira Press in early 2014.

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by  Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer .  It's a chance to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and  share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog. 

Cover links to Amazon.com

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Buffer   Conversations with authors and writers from the self-publishing world.

  The art of gossiping, gabbing and chatting with awesome book bloggers!

The following is syndicated from  jeannicolerivers.com  and is posted here with permission. People read for adventure, for the chance to escape to a place that is exciting and different.  Part of the art of being a writer of great stories is the ability to bring your reader into the scene, to place them dead center of a dramatic shootout or right alongside the main character as she fights off an attacker. While there are many ways to bring your reader into a scene, I find the way that works best for me is to engage all of their senses.

Buffer Top Ten  Time Travel  Films of All Time  by Matt Mitrovich When it comes to writing fiction, my greatest influence has always been films. I don’t know exactly why it is, but the visual medium seems to excite my creativity in ways even the best books can’t match (and I have read a lot of books). With the release of my new time travel story “Road Trip” (published in the anthology Forbidden Future ) I decided to share some of the films that inspired me to write it. So without further ado, here is my personal list (in no particular order) of the best time travel films of all time.  

Buffer Steampunk Fashion 101   By A. W. Exley  Author of The Artifact Hunters series First off, let me say that contrary to rumours circulating, steampunk is NOT what happened when goths discovered brown! Lol Steampunk fashion is about bringing to life Victorian fashion with a twist. There is only one basic rule - start off Victorian or Edwardian and then add to it, or subtract in the case of hemlines…

R ecently an author got upset that we were promoting a negative review (and more importantly that we included the Twitter handle in the blog post title, further spreading the promotion). We ceased promotion in this case, but DeeJay and I both feel that we shouldn't treat negative reviews any different than positive ones.