Heart To Heart Book Cover Reveal

Heart To Heart Book Cover Reveal

It’s been a busy, busy year and finally my next novel is ready to go. Welcome to the Heart To Heart book cover reveal!

Heart To Heart is the sequel to Blood To Blood and volume 2 in the Angelica Brown Series. The paranormal romance sees Angel Brown dealing with some serious coming of age stuff while caught up in the midst of a love triangle with… I’ll let you figure that out, but if you’ve already read Blood To Blood you’d have a good idea.

We’re so excited about the cover we decided to make a puzzle out of it. Check it out below and see if you can put it together. It’s intermediate level so you could get a challenge. I absolutely love the cover and hope you do, too. Have fun! P.S. the image appears below the puzzle just in case you get stuck. 😉

Stay tuned… soon Heart To Heart will be available for pre-order on Amazon. You’ll have a chance to purchase the digital edition before your friends and before the paperback even comes out. Heart To Heart will be officially released in November 2014. In the meantime, here’s a quote to go with the puzzle:

“He loomed above me, despite my heels. I looked up, and it was over. Our eyes locked as everything—the crowd, the music, the room, my very breath—melted away. ” – Angel Brown

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Heart To Heart Book Cover Reveal

Heart To Heart Book Cover Reveal

Heart To Heart Book Cover Reveal

Check out Blood To Blood: Book One in the Angelica Brown Series on Amazon.com

How to Make Your Dreams Come True in 5 Easy Steps

How to Make Your Dreams Come True in 5 Easy Steps

In Blood To Blood, Angel Brown vows to follow her dream of being a singer despite incredible challenges. This is in line with the book’s theme: pursuing your dreams and conquering the blockages along the way.

Besides music and writing, one of my passions is talking to young people about following their dreams, and giving them concrete details about how to go about making those dreams into reality.

I recently spoke to the young folks at Fenway High School and Boston Arts Academy about my books, writing and manifesting dreams. I believe teenage life represents the perfect storm of opportunity. Like kids, teens usually have big dreams, but unlike kids, teens usually have people telling them what they can’t and can’t accomplish.

Like my mom used to say “There’s no such thing as can’t.” I love nothing more than showing people how to prove the naysayers wrong. Here are 5 easy steps to take to make your dreams, whatever they may be, come true.

  1. Identify – Target exactly what it is you want to do. Be specific.
  2. Educate – Whether it’s taking classes, reading books or picking the brains of someone doing what you want to do, you can never stop learning. Learn all you can about your chosen craft.
  3. List – Make a list of the steps you need to take to reach your goal. This is the foundation of your plan and something you will continue to tweak and adjust over time.
  4. Execute – Do the things on your list. Finish them one at a time, and do your best. Be patient with yourself and the process.
  5. Persevere – Never give up. Surround yourself with people who will support and/or inspire you. Ignore the naysayers, even if it is your own family. Don’t believe anyone who says you can’t pursue, and reach, your dream.

Repeat the above steps until you reach your goal. And then repeat these steps for any new goals you have. These are basic dream manifestation tactics.

Thanks to all the schools that have opened their doors so far and allowed me to meet all the fabulous young dreamers out there. Keep making your dreams happen!

 How to Make Your Dreams Come True in 5 Easy Steps

Upcoming 2014 Novels

Upcoming 2014 Novels

Hi folks, I have great news! I’m happy to announce release information and titles for my next two upcoming books. Here are the upcoming 2014 novels with a little taste of what to expect:

The first release will be To Protect and Serve. It is the first in a series of books based on a character from Blood to Blood, Justin McCarthy. In Blood to Blood we met Justin who is a blood donor for the book’s blood-drinking heroine, Angel Brown. In To Protect and Serve, we enter his world before he meets Angel. Eighteen year-old Justin hails from a long line of Boston Police Department officers, so prepare yourself for plenty of crime and action. The book is due to drop in April 2014.

The second release will be Heart to Heart, the highly anticipated sequel to Blood to Blood. Due in May 2014, Heart to Heart will see newborn Shimshana Angel deal with the highs and lows of her way-to-complex teen love life while dealing with new pop star fame, blood lust, and immortal powers.

Keep your eyes peeled for excerpts, cover reveals and more over the coming months.

Ok, I’m going back to writing. Cheers!

Upcoming 2014 Novels

tentacles Cover Reveal

tentacles Cover Reveal

Here it is! I know some of you ladies have been waiting for more Sawyer Creed. Well here he is! But just remember, in tentacles he is only sixteen…

tentacles Cover Reveal

tentacles Cover Reveal

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Sawyer Creed’s invisible, yet undeniably real, tentacles have seemingly killed every family member who ever hurt his mom– including his alcoholic dad.

Now on mom’s wedding day, Sawyer’s uncontrollable ability puts his family in imminent danger. When the tentacles stretch purposefully toward mom and her new husband, the first guy who’s treated her well, Sawyer, realizing that he’s on a path to destroy the ones he loves, vows to take charge of his destiny by  making mom tell him the truth about why he’s different.

The tentacles seem to do his subconscious bidding when he’s angry or scared. Sawyer suspects it is a family legacy, a birthright mom denies. There is only one person who has the answers, one person who can help Sawyer have some semblance of a normal life; and that person, his grandmother and the matriarch of the Creed family, is also the person mom has hidden him from all of his life. tentacles is a short story prequel to the novel Blood To Blood.

As I posted earlier, I’m thrilled about this short story and it is my hope that it will hold everyone over until the next book is released.

Readers of Blood To Blood will remember Sawyer: the mysterious, brooding producer Angel Brown vows to hate. tentacles is a family drama which takes us back in time, before Sawyer meets Angel, to a turning point in his life.

As of tomorrow, February 19,  tentacles will be available exclusively on Kindle, but soon you’ll be able to download the e-version on other platforms.

tentacles

Blood To Blood: New Summary

Blood To Blood: New Summary

I’m swapping out my old summary for a new one which I think gives potential readers more of an idea of what Blood To Blood is about:

Blood To Blood: New Summary

Blood To Blood: New Summary

Enter the world of Bostonian teen Angelika Brown: budding singing sensation—and descendant of an immortal race of sun-loving blood drinkers known as Shimshana (the vampire prototype). Angel defies her parents’ traditions of higher education by dropping out of high school to be a pop star. She has an amazing voice, but she’s also maturing into a full-grown Shimshana complete with fearsome power and insatiable bloodlust. What’s worse, her soaring vocals are now capable of destroying everything, and everyone, within earshot—including her girl group, their mysterious producer and Angel’s hunky new blood donor. Will Angel quickly learn to control her new abilities or will her killer instincts bring her promising career, and her life, to an end?

I’m glad to have the control to decide how I want my writing to be presented. My former summary, which can be found in this press release, worked well as an industry pitch but I love giving potential readers what they need–the realness! Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on this!

Blood To Blood: New Summary

Why Angel Brown Doesn’t Swear

Why Angel Brown Doesn't Swear

Why Angel Brown Doesn’t Swear

I’ve been having the conversation a lot lately. You know. The conversation about young adult books and why it’s important, at least to me, that they be actually written with a young adult audience in mind. I’ve been talking to a lot of readers about why the heroine of Blood To Blood, Angel Brown, doesn’t swear and, at the age of sixteen, is still a virgin.

We’ve all heard, ad nauseam, about how the young adult book market is growing by leaps and bounds. But any fan of YA literature, and classics such as Little Women, Lord of the Flies, or The Hobbit (one of the biggest fans would be me) can tell you it’s not a new thing, it’s not a trend and YA is here to stay.

But one relatively new, and glaring, aspect of YA book readership is the fact that the majority of consumers, specifically of the YA fantasy genre, is way older than the age defined as YA audience. Seemingly, the average reader is a Kindle or Nook-toting 30-something year old mom with 1.37 kids and that audience age can go as high as the 50s and beyond.

Fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 – nicknamed YA books — are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44 – Bowker

Part of this phenomenon, well-documented with the Twilight series, seems rooted in the fact that women of all ages love a good story involving the blossoming of the heart. Moms love to relive the fluttery feelings they had for hot guys when they were still young and it all seemed so exciting and over-the-top. I myself got hooked on Twilight right as my marriage was falling apart and lost myself in memories of those feelings that I once had and missed terribly.

So there’s nothing wrong with old-ass women such as myself writing and reading YA books, but what happens when something labeled and marketed to a young adult is geared towards said old-ass women?

There are a number of YA series out there that depict their teen heroines as potty-mouthed, sexually adventurous, fashion-plate, overly made-up biatches alá 80s/90s music videos. As if said old-assed women want to somehow go back in time to re-invent themselves as vampire huntresses, immortals or simply the most popular, hottest chick in school. At what point do we take responsibility for shaping how young adults see themselves and relate to the world? What happens when every other sentence features an expletive? Seriously, why not utilize more adjectives; overused swear words, like many love-lives, get old and boring quick.

Why Angel Brown Doesn't Swear

Why Angel Brown Doesn’t Swear

Take an example from ultra-violent Clockwork Orange, the 1963 classic featuring raging, raping, killing teens and a society out of control. As dark as the subject matter of this once-banned book gets, the author Anthony Burgess didn’t use swear words as a crutch or carrot, and instead developed the characters and their world through the use of unique language which, in turn, offers an expanded view into the underlying themes.

Am I a saint? Hell, no. My book’s only in pre-release right now, and already it’s gotten criticized for depicting earth craft (sometimes called witchcraft) and blood rituals. But, I feel strongly about young girls who read my books coming away from them without the feeling that it’s somehow ok to lower your standards of personal civility and self respect in order to be, or be perceived as, sexy. Preachy, maybe. Everyone’s cup of tea? Certainly, not. But that’s why Angel, with all her amazing powers, is as straight-laced and conservative as any character I’ve ever written.

At the end of the day, I believe authors have a responsibility to their audience. As responsible adults it’s up to us to decide whether what we’re writing is truly for young adults or for the unrequited fantasies lurking within our own grown-up subconscious.

Why Angel Brown Doesn’t Swear

November 7, 2014: Edited with the Heart To Heart cover

Blood To Blood Excerpt

Blood To Blood Excerpt #1: “The good thing about having a sister who can fly is that you never have to wait for her too long. Cici soon bounded up the steps from whatever hidden spot it was she had dropped out of the sky. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a slim thermos. “Drink,” she ordered. The smell wafting out of the metal container confirmed it was blood. Before I could even think about it, I drained it quicker than you could say, “Type A.”

And that was that.

No trumpet fanfare. No divine choir singing from parted cumulus clouds or anything else I’d fantasized would accompany such a momentous occasion. Nonetheless, I was now a bonafide blood drinker.

I broke out in a cold sweat. “More.”

Blood To Blood is currently available in pre-release through Amazon Kindle. Buy or borrow it today!

Blood To Blood Available in Pre-release

Blood To Blood: Available in pre-release via Amazon (Kindle). Buy or borrow today!

Blood To Blood Novel

Blood To Blood Novel

Finally, after 3 years of writing, re-writing, editing and querying over and over again, my book is out and in the world. Blood To Blood, available in pre-release, is my first novel.

*Major exhale* Phew!

I am so very excited to be sharing these characters with everyone! There’s something very liberating about knowing that I did my part to infuse these characters with the personalities they showed me, and now it’s out of my hands.

During pre-release, the book will be available exclusively through Kindle where you can buy or borrow it. The official release, which will see it available across multiple platforms as well as in hard copy, will be in October 2012.

There’s nothing more I can do with this book except hope that readers enjoy it and fall in love with Angel, Sawyer and Justin, too.

By the way, you may wonder how I chose to celebrate this momentous occasion. I went to see Dark Knight Rises. It rocked. However, my prayers and love energy go out to the people whose lives were forever changed by the senseless killings at a screening this past weekend.

Well, I’m off to write the next story. Hmmm…it may include at least one of the above-mentioned Blood To Blood characters. In the meantime, enjoy an excerpt.