Guest Blog: This or That with the characters from CYA2: The Sext Crime

Book Tour: 212 by Alafair Burke

212 by Alafair Burke

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition

Publish Date: June 7, 2011

Paperback, 368 pages 
Fiction, Suspense
ISBN: 978-0061561320

*** My Review will be coming later today, I am at a neurologist appointment that is 3 hours from home, but will get the review up when I return home this afternoon.   ***

About the Book:

In New York City, nights are dangerous. Days are numbered.
A celebrity mogul’s bodyguard is slain in his boss’s luxurious penthouse at an exclusive Manhattan address. At NYU, a sophomore is menaced on the Internet, stalked, and killed. Phone records reveal a link between the NYU student and a murdered real estate agent who was living a dangerous double life. Detectives then learn that the dead real estate agent shared a secret connection to the same celebrity mogul who’s bodyguard was murdered…

These cases, equally sordid and shocking, end up falling to NYPD homicide detective Ellie Hatcher and her partner—who soon find out that this is just the tip of a terrifying iceberg.

About the Author: 

Alafair Burke is the bestselling author of six novels, including 212, Angel’s Tip, and Dead Connection in the Ellie Hatcher series. A former prosecutor, she now teaches criminal law and lives in Manhattan.
Learn more about Alafair at her website, connect with her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.

Alafair’s Tour Stops

Wednesday, June 8th: The House of the Seven Tails
Thursday, June 9th: A Bookish Way of Life
Monday, June 13th: Chaotic Compendiums
Wednesday, June 15th: Life In Review
Thursday, June 16th: My Reading Room
Monday, June 20th: Chick With Books
Tuesday, June 21st: A Bookworm’s World
Wednesday, June 22nd: Jenn’s Bookshelves
Thursday, June 23rd: Rundpinne
Monday, June 27th: red headed book child

FTC Information: I received this book from the publisher through TLC Book Tours 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.

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.