What Author Lisa Desroaches (Original Sin) Does When Not Writing

Today through The Teen Book Scene, I welcome Lisa Desrochers who tells us about what she does when she's not writing.

When I’m not writing, I’m doing this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or watching this:

Or this:

Or going here: (Singapore)

Or here: (Italy)

Or here: (Yosemite)

I just fed my daughter’s tarantula a cricket…so there’s that, but I often forget to feed my kids. #Momfail  And never, under any circumstances, do I clean. Anything. Ever.

Even so, I actually stay pretty busy. I have a physical therapy clinic, where I am most days, and I lecture medical seminars several weekends a year. In between all of that, there’s reading other people’s books.

There are so many good ones and not enough time.

Oh yeah…there's also parenting my children…who, as I mentioned, I’ve kept small by forgetting to feed. My husband’s hobby is doing everything around the house and yard. He loves it. Really. I don’t have any hobbies. Except sorting my Skittles into stacks by color. But that’s not really a hobby. It’s more of a life skill. 

I’d share…but no. Sorry.

So go on July 5th and get Lisa's second installment of the Personal Demons series, Original Sin and if you haven't checked out the first book yet, run out and find a copy of Personal Demons. 

   

Book Tour: Revelations by Laurel Dewey

 
Revelations by Laurel Dewey

Publisher: The Story Plant

Publish Date: June 14, 2011

Paperback, 464 pages 
Fiction, Suspense
Jane Perry #3
 ISBN: 978-0984190553

***My review will come later today, but I am really enjoying this book so far***

About Laurel Dewey

Laurel Dewey was born and raised in Los Angeles. She is the author of two nonfiction books on plant medicine, a Silver Spur nominated Western novella, hundreds of articles, two previous Jane Perry novels, Protector and Redemption, and the Jane Perry novella, An Unfinished Death. She lives in Western Colorado with her husband.
To find out more about Laurel and her books visit: http://www.laureldewey.com

 

 

About Revelations

The small, upscale Colorado town of Midas had barely registered on Sergeant Detective Jane Perry’s radar before her former boss and current colleague told her she needed to join him there for a case. All she knew was that it was a long way from Denver — both in terms of physical distance and sensibility. Jacob Van Gorden, the fifteen-year-old son of a prominent area businessman, has disappeared, and all signs point to his abductor being Jordan Copeland, a man who committed a similar crime decades ago. There are indications that Jacob is still alive, so the clock is ticking, but as Jane investigates Copeland, she begins to have doubts about his guilt. And at the same time, she begins to uncover trails of devastating – and even deadly – secrets all around Midas.
Meanwhile, Jane must deal with two considerable secrets of her own. One hits her like a left cross before she leaves Denver, and the other creeps up on her from the most unlikely of places. On top of this, Hank Ross, owner of a bar in Midas, has somehow managed to find a way beneath Jane’s armor-plated defenses, forcing her to contend with feelings she hasn’t allowed to surface for a very long time.
Revelations is the most powerful and personal Jane Perry novel yet. Teeming with the passions and ambiguities that make Laurel Dewey so compelling to read, it is a breathtaking story of mysteries revealed and withheld.

Book Excerpt

Jane was so deep in thought that she didn’t see the infamous bridge on the left hand side where Jake allegedly went missing. She’d asked Weyler for directions to the spot before ducking out of the sidewalk news conference. Jane actually noted the speed trap camera warning sign before she saw the bridge. She drove another half mile before locating a safe place to turn around on the narrow two-lane highway. An idea sprung to mind. She floored the Mustang and sped well past 60 mph on the 45 mph road, blasting past the first and second speed camera located just across from the bridge. It was a test. She wanted to see if the damn thing worked and, if it did, how clear the bridge was in the photo. Her reasoning was cloudy but one of those back pocket possibilities. If the photo proved to be sharp enough, she would strongly suggest that Bo discreetly replace the speed camera with a 24/7 security camera so the bridge could be monitored remotely. The idea had a dual purpose. The first was mundane. Due to the signage, drivers would still be under the impression that the camera would only click for speeders and thus, slow down at that point making it somewhat easier to distinguish vehicles. The second idea took into account human nature. Often, the kidnapper returned to the scene of his or her crime. Perhaps, with this seemingly brazen kidnapper, he would chose to leave a message or clue on the bridge. As much as Jane despised Big Brother and the monitoring of law-abiding citizens, installing a temporary rolling security camera at this location made sense.
After blowing through the speed trap, Jane turned around and headed back to the bridge, parking the Mustang at the edge of the somewhat rickety overpass. She got out of her car just as a determined gust of cold wind beat against her body. She raised the collar on her leather jacket and stood for a moment in the center of the fifty-foot bridge. She could see the rushing river between the cracks of the warped planks. The temperature at this location was decidedly colder, thanks to the freezing water below her feet, still clutching ice chunks along the banks. Jane’s acute senses awakened again. The frigid air felt like a knife cutting her face. The sound of the river below seemed deafening and lawless in its intensity.

FTC Information: I received this book from the publisher through Pump Up Your Book Promotion for an honest review.  I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws.  I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.

The Research that Went Into Writing Cursebusters by Julie Smith + Giveaway

The Research that Went Into Writing Cursebusters by Julie Smith

When I started writing CURSEBUSTERS! I had three elements in mind—a girl who gets sent to Bad Girl School, Mayan cities, and a kick-ass adventure.

Bad Girl School was my name for the schools “for troubled teens” so many kids I knew had ended up in. When someone very close to me landed in one, I got couldn’t help wondering how you’d function with the kind of rules they have in those things. People watch you 24/7; you can’t even speak unless spoken to. Make-up’s forbidden, but that’s nothing. So are mirrors! And don’t even mention email or phones.

It seemed to me that if you were in a place where they watched you 24/7, it was going to be pretty hard to have a kick-ass adventure. So I decided Reeno, my teen-age heroine, would have to time-travel. I’d been to Mexico a lot and always been blown away by Mayan cities and culture. What better place to go, I thought, than an ancient Mayan city?

The first thing I had to research was what kind of adventure one might have there and soon found something huge staring me in the face. The 2012 Phenomenon! That, in case you’ve somehow missed it, is the idea that the world will end in 2012 because the Mayan calendar does. Well, Reeno would just have to stop that from happening.

Okay, good. Kickass adventure lined up. Now to research Mayans. I went out and bought a bunch of books. These people were fascinating! I just couldn’t get enough. I even made a special trip to Mexico City to see the model Mayan city the Anthropology Museum. Here are five fun Mayan facts I learned:

1. Since crossed eyes were considered beautiful, kids often had to wear a beadbetween in the middle of their foreheads to train their little orbs. Sort of like braces—really irritating at the time, but what a result!
2. Flat heads were also fashionable, so babies’ heads were tied between boards to squeeze them to perfection.
3. Ball games were sometimes played using a human head as the ball.
4. A favorite taste treat was chocolate, especially when fermented into a deliciously intoxicating drink.
5. Jade was a treasured material for jewelry. (Some things are cross-cultural.)

Believe or not, every single one of those facts plays some part in my story except for the one about the baby boards. For instance, if you were going to time-travel back to a Mayan city, what would you take as gifts? Why carved jade, of course. Oh, boy, and chocolate! Can you imagine how many forms of it have been invented since the Ninth Century? Oreos, peanut butter cups, brownies, Heath bars, cream-filled cupcakes…every kind of treat in the world. You’d have the whole city at your feet. And Reeno does!
People literally follow her around.

But you know what I couldn’t find? Everyday stuff, like whether the Mayans had furniture or not. Did they use torches or oil lamps? What did they eat for snacks? Where did they keep those gorgeous costumes they wore? Did they have closets? Who knows? I made those parts up.

Next I had to research magic, because Reeno’s got to do a little of that to pull off the save-the-world feat. So I learned to levitate and build protection shields. All right, kidding about the levitation. But I did learn how to build protection shields, and anyone can do it. Needless to say, the process is too long to describe here. But I think you’ll find CURSEBUSTERS! very instructive on the subject. As for levitation, I did learn to simulate it. Have you seen our trailer yet? What goes up stays up! Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/mm9P06

 

Thanks Julie for joining us today - great post- I love learning what writers go through to write their books.

Giveaway
Along with the Teen Book Scene tour, I have one copy of Cursebusters! to give away.  Open to US only.  Ends 6/21/11.  Simply fill out the form below.  For an extra entry, leave a comment about the guest post.

If you can't see the form below, you can find it here.

Book Review: Don't Stop Now by Julie Halpern

Don't Stop Now by Julie Halpern

Publisher:Feiwel and Friends

Publish Date: June 7, 2011

Hardcover, 240 pages
ISBN: 978-0312643461
Young Adult, Fiction

My Review:

I read and really enjoyed Don't Stop Now.  It's just one of those books you pick up read, escape for a few hours and when it's done, you realize it's brain candy.  Nothing too harsh to think about (in these days following the Wall Street Journal article) and it's the kind of book that definitely has it's place in the midst of young adult books that deal with harsh subjects.  We need the break every once in awhile to just kick back and not really think when we read a book and Don't Stop Now did that for me. (Just so you know I am not knocking books that deal with teenage realities, I read them as well and think they have an important place among young adult books.)



Now that is not to say there aren't issues in the book, there are and some of them are difficult, but they are on the periphery and the fun of the road trip is in the spotlight..  Lillian (Lil) and Josh are the stars as they go off across the country to find Penny who leaves a cryptic message that just says "I did it.".  Penny has been a sort of friend this year, one on the periphery where it seems she wants to be.  But Lil vaguely remembers her talking about a guy she met that lives in Portland and a plan to fake her kidnapping.  This is all Lil and Josh need to take off across the country on a quest to find Penny and bring her back since it appears that she has faked her own kidnapping.  As they travel they sort through why she left, what she needed to get away from and also Lil deals with her feelings for Josh who has been her best friend since freshman year.  Lil has crushed on Josh since they met.  So in between the wacky places they visit and the strange conversations they seem to have, they work through problems and face new ones one by one.


I really love Ms. Halpern's writing, it sounds just like a teenage girl and a teenage boy right after graduation.  I also love intuitive things that Lillian would say or think like this quote below when Penny's dad called Lil because Penny was needed that day to babysit her little sister Annabelle:

"And no, it's not a shocker.  Sometimes I think the only reason her parents had Penny was so that they'd have a babysitter for Annabelle.  Like My Sisters Keeper, but in reverse and without cancer."

Then some things are just funny like:

 "Right.  They're very concerned with historical accuracy at the Don Q Inn.  That's why they plopped a heart-shaped bed in the middle of a cave"

And sometimes Lil just seems to get to the heart of the matter:

"I think you just don't want to deal with the fact that we're getting old.  Not man-boob old, but old enough.  It kind of sucks that we have to, you know, be responsible and stuff, but it's also kind of cool.  We get to be responsible.  For our own lives. Instead of relying on people and being disappointed, we get to rely on ourselves.  You can't do that when you're mooching off your dad and playing music in his basement."

Whatever the time or setting during this book, Ms. Halpern gets to the heart of the matter of what it is like to be a teenager just graduating from high school and on the cusp of becoming an adult.  And she does it in a playful way that makes the book just plain fun to read.  I would deem this a perfect summer read whatever your age.  Bad language is kept to a minimum and sex is only alluded to.  It's good clean fun and a fun book to read.


My Rating:  4.0/5.0

About the Book:

On the first day of Lillian’s summer-before-college, she gets a message on her cell from her sort-of friend, Penny. Not only has Penny faked her own kidnapping, but Lil is the only one who figures it out. She knows that Penny’s home life has been rough, and that her boyfriend may be abusive. Soon, Penny’s family, the local police, and even the FBI are grilling Lil, and she decides to head out to Oregon, where Penny has mentioned an acquaintance. And who better to road-trip across the country with than Lil’s BFF, Josh. But here’s the thing: Lil loves Josh. And Josh doesn’t want to “ruin” their amazing friendship.

Josh has a car and his dad’s credit card. Lil has her cellphone and a hunch about where Penny is hiding. There’s something else she needs to find: Are she and Josh meant to be together?

About the Author:

A native to the Chicago suburbs, She have been a school librarian for more than ten years (old much?).  She live with my sweetheart husband, illustrator Matthew Cordell, and their gloriously large Siamese cat, Tobin.  In her spare time she like to read, watch TV, play Sims 2, and travel.

Website
Blog

FTC Information: I received this book through The Teen Book Scene to review for the current tour.  I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws.  I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.

Book Review: Trace of Fever by Lori Foster

Trace of Fever by Lori Foster

Publisher: HQN Books

Publish Date: May 31, 2011

Paperback, 400 pages 
Fiction, Romantic Suspense
Men Who Walk the Edge of Honor #2
 ISBN: 978-0373775750

My Review:
Why I read this: I like Lori Foster books and read the first one in this series and really liked it so I couldn't wait to read the second book.



My thoughts:  
Oh my, if Trace wasn't taken and Priss wasn't a tough kick-butt woman (plus the fact that I am happily married), I think I would have to go search for Trace Rivers (or whatever last name he was going by at the time).

This book is hot!  And really it's just the tension, Ms. Foster is wonderful in building the sexual tension and the romance.  But that is not all there is to this book.  There is quite a bit of suspense.  What makes Trace tick?  Can he get to the bottom of Murray Coburn's business without being figured out.  Who is Priss, what is she doing and what is she hiding?  All of these questions pop in the book and the plot is so well-done that the almost 400-pages of reading went by really quickly then I was upset when I was done.

Of course, the characters are essential.  Trace isn't just a hot, hunky man.  He's a tough-guy with a soft side for his sister (who makes her first appearance in When You Dare) and a protect all attitude for his good friend Dare and his wife Molly (also from When You Dare).  He also has a distinct sense of right and wrong and he won't hesitate those on the wrong side, but protect and do all he can for those on the right side of things.  I liked Trace from the beginning.  He's not a perfect good-boy, far from it, but he's not a complete bad boy either, and that is why Ms. Foster named this series, Men Who Walk the Edge of Honor.  They truly do, Dare did, Trace does and Jackson is the same for the third book and I can't wait to get to know him more.  Trace is a man's man and also one women swoon for, especially Priss, but not at first.

Priscilla Patterson, may look mousy and average and seem like the type of woman that can be manhandled and walked all over, but Trace quickly figures out that she is not all that she seems.  But somehow he must keep her story up to protect her from the biggest bad guy, Murray Coburn, who Priss insists is her father.  But Trace also knows she is up to more than it seems.  Priss is more than she seems, she's tough and she's out for revenge and with Trace she wants to experience all she has missed in men.  I really like Priss.  As with a lot of Ms. Foster's female characters, she's not one to sit and take being walked over or frisked (except when a hot man is doing the frisking).  Priss can stand on her own.  She also does not trust easy or fall in love easy, but Trace is making her list of don'ts extremely hard to keep.

Both protagonists are amazing characters and I like that we get to go deeper than pretty packaging with both of them.  On the other side of the coin, Ms. Foster has also created some true bad guys in Murray Coburn and his sidekick/lover Helene.  Both are as evil as it gets and their evilness is what keeps you on the edge of your seat through the entire book.

Great protagonists, evil bad guys, romance, suspense, this book has the best of all of these.  I loved Trace of Fever.  It's one of those perfect romances to read and enjoy on these hot summer days.  So run and pickup this book to throw in your beach bag, pool bag or your purse to read and take you away from real life for a few hours.
If you missed it the first book in the series, When You Dare is still available and the series will finish out with Savor the Danger on June 28.


My Rating: 4.75/5.0


About the Book:
Undercover mercenary Trace Rivers loves the adrenaline rush of a well-planned mission. First he'll earn the trust of corrupt businessman Murray Coburn, then gather the proof he needs to shut down the man's dirty smuggling operation. It's a perfect scheme—until Coburn's long-lost daughter saunters in with her own deadly plan for revenge.

With a smile like an angel and fire in her eyes, Priscilla Patterson isn't who she seems to be. But neither is the gorgeous bodyguard who ignites all her senses. Joining forces to plot Coburn's downfall, Priss and Trace must fight the undeniable heat between them. For one wrong move, one lingering embrace, will expose them to the wrath of a merciless opponent….

About the Author: 
Lori Foster first published with Harlequin in January 1996. Her second book launched Temptation Blaze and her 25th book launched Temptation Heat. Since those early days, Lori has routinely had 6 to 10 releases a year. She's a Waldenbooks, USA Today, Publisher's Weekly and New York Times bestselling author with over 50 titles published through a variety of houses, including Berkley/Jove, Kensington, St. Martins, Harlequin and Silhouette.
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FTC Information: I received this book from Tricia Carr at Media Muscle (Meryl L. Moss Media Relations) for an honest review.  I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws (if Amazon had an affiliate program they would be required to collect sales tax).  I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.