Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Waiting on Wednesday: Velveteen!

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Veleveteen
by Daniel Marks
Random House Children's Books
October 9th, 2012
Velveteen, #1
YA

Synopsis via Goodreads
Velveteen Monroe is dead. At 16, she was kidnapped and murdered by a madman named Bonesaw. But that's not the problem.

The problem is she landed in purgatory. And while it's not a fiery inferno, it's certainly no heaven. It's gray, ashen, and crumbling more and more by the day, and everyone has a job to do. Which doesn't leave Velveteen much time to do anything about what's really on her mind.

Bonesaw.

Velveteen aches to deliver the bloody punishment her killer deserves. And she's figured out just how to do it. She'll haunt him for the rest of his days.
It'll be brutal . . . and awesome.

But crossing the divide between the living and the dead has devastating consequences. Velveteen's obsessive haunting cracks the foundations of purgatory and jeopardizes her very soul. A risk she's willing to take—except fate has just given her reason to stick around: an unreasonably hot and completely off-limits coworker.

Velveteen can't help herself when it comes to breaking rules . . . or getting revenge. And she just might be angry enough to take everyone down with her.

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So this is one that's been on my 2012 wishlist since last year. I'm not entirely sure what I think of the cover. I think I like it. Either way, the story sounds really dark and twisty and I hope it turns out to be just that. Can't wait for this one! What do you think?


Monday, March 26, 2012

An Excerpt from Intangible by J. Meyers!

Hello everyone! Thanks to the lovely J. Meyers, I have an excerpt for you all from her new YA novel, Intangible! Check it out...

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Excerpt from Intangible
by J. Meyers

Marc ran outside, looked up and down the street for them, opened his mind up to find the man’s distinct thoughts again, but they were gone. Out of range. He could have used more information, could have listened further for more details. But he grinned suddenly, as realization hit, and felt like jumping around like a squealing toddler in a kiddie pool.
It was them.
He knew it was them. He’d finally found them after months of trespassing into people’s heads, fingering their thoughts. Using his gift.
Curse.
Whatever.
There had always been voices—thoughts—he could hear. For as long as he could remember. The slight hum of people’s thoughts in the background of his mind was normal for him—nothing he would pay attention to, nothing standing out. When he wanted to know what someone was thinking, he could tune in to that one person. Like a radio, each individual was a different frequency in his mind. A little focus and he was in.
Truth be told, he’d used it to his advantage. Usually a little foray into a girl’s mind to find out what would impress her, make her happy, make her want him. Man, he got to be good at that. Very good. If a girl was worrying about her new haircut, he’d compliment her on it. If she was berating herself for saying something stupid, he’d tell her how intelligent she was. It was so easy. And so effective. Whatever the worry, all it took was a small comment to make her feel good and he was in.
It had seemed like a gift.
Once.
Two years ago something had changed. He didn’t know what had happened or when exactly it had started because he hadn’t even noticed it at first. It had snuck up on him. Bit by bit he had to work harder—focus more intensely—to keep the background thoughts to a hum. Random thoughts would stand out loud in his mind whenever he let down his guard. It was only after he found himself struggling continually to keep people’s thoughts out of his head that he realized something was wrong.
And then one day he couldn’t keep them out. His mind was overrun by everyone’s thoughts all at the same time. As if his radio was tuned to every station simultaneously. With the volume up loud.
He couldn’t make sense of what anyone said to him—couldn’t filter out their words from the overwhelming racket in his head. And with it came pain. Deep, debilitating pain. Migraines like he’d never known. A constant deep ache, sharpened with every sound, every shard of light, every small movement of his eyes. And vomiting.
The doctors were useless. Every test came back negative. It was all in his head, they said. Well, yeah, it was. But not in the way they meant. He couldn’t tell them what was really going on. He could already hear their skeptical thoughts about the migraines. They’d never have believed him about the voices, the thoughts he could hear. Besides, he’d already learned that lesson. The hard way. He couldn’t tell anyone the truth.
So on paper he was fine.
In reality he was tortured.
And that was how they’d found him. The Shadows.
He had been curled up as tight as possible, whimpering from the pain and noise wracking his head. They’d whispered to him from their dark corner, offering relief. He hadn’t wondered how the hell they’d gotten into his home, what they were doing in his bedroom. He hadn’t had the good sense to be scared. He hadn’t even wondered how he was able to hear their words through all the noise in his mind. He’d just forced his arm to reach out and open up his hand.
He would have done anything to make it stop.

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A big thanks to J. for this tantalizing little teaser! I'm really glad I have this sitting on my shelf waiting for me to pick it up because this excerpt has really got me wanting to read it even more than before. What did you think? Has this excerpt got you wanting more? Well then...

Buy Intangible
Paperback / Kindle / Nook

And check out J. Meyers:
Website / Twitter


In My Mailbox (118) & Facebook Page!



In My Mailbox
IMM is a weekly meme hosted and created by Kristi at The Story Siren and was inspired by Alea at Pop Culture Junkie.

Bought for Kindle
~The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater (Only $3.99!)
~The Dark Divine by Bree Despain
~The Lost Saint by Bree Despain
~The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (Only $0.99!)

RAK Gift from @luvdaylilies
~A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan (Only $3.49!)

For Review from Kate
~The Sphinx Project by Kate Hawkings

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Apparently this past week was load up my kindle week. lol. Big thanks to @luvdaylilies for the RAK and to Kate for The Sphinx Project. The Dark Divine and The Lost Saint were only $1.31 each when I got them but they've gone back up, so glad I snagged them when I did. So many great books and can't wait to read them all. Hope you all got some great books as well. :D

Oh and I almost forgot...guess who now has a Facebook page for her blog? I do! You should, like, you know, totally go like me.



Thursday, March 22, 2012

Embrace Blog Tour: Falling in Love at 17!

Falling in Love at Seventeen
by Jessica Shirvington

Falling in love is easy. Staying in love … more complicated.

At 17, life is about new experiences. It is about self-discovery, friends, adventure, mistakes, career and university choices. And let’s be honest, there are not many 17 year olds out there that aren’t interested in falling in love.

But how many are truly interested in falling in love with THE ONE at 17?

I’m not sure I was. In fact, I probably wasn’t. I was planning to take the world by storm – solo. So when I met Matt, well, actually … it was pretty darn amazing. But it was a little frightening too.

When we first got together, it was sweet and young and … perfect. I was head over heels. But things became complicated quickly. He was an up and coming athletic star and I was working in hospitality. So basically he worked hard in the day, and I worked hard at night. His lifestyle demanded routine and healthy living, mine … not so much. But we were determined to make it work.

Falling in love so deeply at a young age made it difficult to be as reckless as our friends. We watched them coast in and out of short, fun, but meaningless relationships and it just seemed so different to what we had.

Writing the Embrace series has been an opportunity for me to pour some of the incredibly intense emotions of young love into Violet’s story. It has been important for me as a writer, and a person, to recognize that it’s completely realistic for someone at her young age to experience the full effect and heartbreak of love. Violet is one hundred percent invested with her heart. She makes bad choices, but we have to. She regrets many of her decisions, because we all do. And she fights for what she loves, because she is compelled to. Violet’s story is unique to her, I don’t pull on parallel scenarios from my own life, but I do pull on the emotion of intense love. Love that I think adults sometimes forget that 17 and 18 years-olds are very capable of feeling.

I often find one question helps a lot of adults, who maybe disagree with this view, to be more open minded: Do you remember you first true love? Do you ever wonder what your life would’ve been like if you had stayed together? For some, the answer is a resounding NOT INTERESTED, but for others … the pause says it all.

Matt and I celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary in March - I believe jewelry is in order ;)

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I hope you all enjoyed that guest post. I know I did! Feel free to leave any thoughts or comments below. I'd love to hear what y'all have to say.

Embrace by Jessica Shirvington
Buy It Now:




Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Waiting on Wednesday: Tiger Lily!

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Tiger Lily
By Jodi Lynn Anderson
HarperTeen
July 3rd, 2012
YA

Synopsis via Goodreads
15 year old Tiger Lily, proud and fierce, wild and misunderstood, doesn't believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland, and immediately falls under his spell. Peter is unlike anyone she's ever known. Impetuous and brave, big-hearted but hard to reach, he both scares and enthralls her. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland's inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. Soon, she is risking everything - her family, her future - to be with the haunted, hunted, courageous boy who loves her. When - as a punishment for her rebellious ways - she is faced with marriage to a terrible man in her own tribe, she must choose between the life she's always known and running away to an uncertain future with Peter. With enemies threatening to tear them apart, the lovers seem doomed. But it's the arrival of Wendy Darling, an English girl who's everything Tiger Lily is not, that leads Tiger Lily to discover that the most dangerous enemies can live inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

From the New York Times bestselling author of PEACHES comes a magical and bewitching story of the romance between a fearless heroine and the boy who wouldn't grow up.

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Okay first off, I love how different the premise is for this compared to a lot of the stuff coming out this year. Okay well true...it is a retelling...and there have been a lot of those lately. But I see serious potential with this one and really hope that it ends up being as good as I think it will be. And that cover? Gorgeous! What do you think? Will you be giving this one a shot?




Monday, March 19, 2012

Money Savin' Mondays (25)

So I realize I haven't done one of these in forever! I've come across some amazing deals lately so I decided to try and do another one of these and hopefully get back to doing them regularly again. To find out more on why I started this you can read the first post. If you decide to use the Money Savin' Mondays title, I'd appreciate a small mention for coming up with the name. Also, you can stay up to date on the latest bargains through out the whole week by following my twitter @PixieBookDeals. Other bargains can also be found in sidebar. Now, onto the deals.

~Kindle $0.99 to $4.99~

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Sunday, March 18, 2012

In My Mailbox (117)







In My Mailbox
IMM is a weekly meme hosted and created by Kristi at The Story Siren and was inspired by Alea at Pop Culture Junkie.

For Review from Harlequin Teen
~ARC of The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

For Review from Author
~Intangible by J. Myers
~Bookmarks

For Review from Random House
~Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard

From Lori
~ARC Every You, Every Me by David Levithan
~ARC Lie by Caroline Bock
~Trafficked by Kim Purcell
~Blood and Flowers by Penny Blubaugh (My Review)

Bought $0.99 for Kindle
~On the Fringe by Courtney King Walker

RAKs from Mary (@sweepingme)
~Hex, a Witch and Angel Tale by Ramona Wray
~Lady of Devices by Shelley Adina

FREE for Kindle
~Loramendi's Story by Angela Carlie
~Parallel by Claudia Lefeve
~Enchantment by Charlotte Abel (No longer free.)
~Taken by Charlotte Abel (No longer free.)
~Coexist by Julia Crane
~Six Moon Summer by S.M. Reine (No longer free.)
~All Hallow's Moon by S.M. Reine (No longer free.)

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So these books are what I've gotten over the past two weeks. I'm currently reading The Immortal Rules and really like it so far. The books I got from Lori are some from a box of books she brought with her to the Dark Days signing last weekend and she let me and Shannon pick some out that we wanted. Thanks Lori! And thanks to Mary for the RAKs, Paul with Random House for Wanderlove, and J. Myers for Intangible. Can't wait to read all these. Hope you all got some great books as well.



Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Waiting on Wednesday: Ashes of Twilight!

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Ashes of Twilight
by Kassy Tayler
St. Martin's Griffin
November 13th, 2012
YA

Synopsis via Goodreads

Wren MacAvoy works as a coal miner for a domed city that was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century to protect the royal blood line of England when astronomers spotted a comet on a collision course with Earth. Humanity would be saved by the most groundbreaking technology of the time. But after nearly 200 years of life beneath the dome, society has become complacent, and the coal is running out. Plus, there are those who wonder, is there life outside the dome, or is the world still consumed by fire? When one of Wren's friends escapes the confines of the dome, he is burned alive and put on display as a warning to those seeking to disrupt the dome's way of life. But Alex's final words are haunting. "The sky is blue."

What happens next is a whirlwind of adventure, romance, conspiracy and the struggle to stay alive in a world where nothing is as it seems. Wren unwittingly becomes a catalyst for a revolution that destroys the dome, and the only way to survive might be to embrace what the entire society has feared their entire existence.

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Adventure? Romance? Conspiracy? Yes, please! This sounds like is going to be really good read and I can't wait for it to release. Though it appears I'll be waiting quite a while. *looks at release date* So whatcha think? :D




Friday, March 9, 2012

MIA Report: Grief, Stress, and Why Cancer is a Bitch

On Monday, March 5th, at 4:05PM my dad passed away. If you were following me about a year ago you might would have seen the post in which I announced that my dad had been diagnosed with small cell lung cancer. I had come home from Spring Break and on Sunday, March 4th, gone to Augusta to be with my dad. Before I had left for Spring Break I was under the impression that my dad had a couple weeks left. By Saturday things had taken a turn for the worst and he started declining rapidly. The man I went home to was not the daddy I had left behind when I went off to college. Seeing him like that is something that'll be burned into my brain for all eternity. Mom says the only reason he made it that long is he was trying to stay alive long enough for me to get there. When I arrived and saw him, I told him it was okay. That I would miss him and it would hurt but that whenever he was ready to let go, I'd be right there. I told him how much I loved him. And I cried and held his hand. When I had laid down for a nap on Monday, mom woke me up and told me to hurry, that he was gone. The preacher that had been there on Sunday had told me that when my dad went it would probably be when no one was in the room. He was right. But that didn't stop the twinge of guilt from not being there.

This year so far has been so stressful, with my dad being sick and then taking a fairly heavy coarse load at college. And I swear this past week has taken years off my life. I leave back for college today and the next week will be loaded with school work. Things should be getting easier from here. But they aren't. I'm starting to feel that I won't truly get to breathe until the beginning of May, when the semester ends and I can go home for the summer. These next two months are going to be so rough between trying to keep my head above water at school and cope with the loss of my daddy, who I loved so much. When my grandmother passed away August of 2010, it had the opposite effect that I would have expected, with me getting posts up like mad. In no way, shape, or form do I see that as going to be the case this go round. I'm going to try and get posts up on occasion so my blog doesn't go totally dead but I can't promise much more. Please bear with me folks. I love you guys so much.

In Memory of Jimmy (James) McNair
December 4th, 1959 to March 5th, 2012




Both these photos are old. The first being from 2006, the second from 2008. You never realize how long it has been since you had your picture taken with someone you love until it is too late. That said, I like that both the pictures were taken in his element. My dad was a damn good pilot and he loved his job. I got a message on Facebook from an old co worker of his who'd heard about his death telling me he was one of the best pilots they'd ever had. And coincidentally, I'm in my Relay for Life committee shirt in the second photo.


Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Waiting on Wednesday: Forget Me Not!

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Forget Me Not
by Carolee Dean
Simon Pulse
October 2012
YA

Synopsis via Goodreads

Ally is devastated when a scandalous photo of her is texted around school. With her reputation in shambles and her life essentially over, she hides out in a back hallway, trying to figure out where everything went wrong.

Elijah has spent time in that hallway too. He landed there after taking a whole bottle of sleeping pills. Now he can see ghosts, and he knows what Ally has yet to suspect—that she's already half dead, and one choice away from never coming back.

Elijah has loved Ally for years and would do anything to save her from her in-between place. But if she’s going to live, Ally must face her inner demons, and find the will to save herself.

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Wow. This sounds like it is going to be a very powerful and possibly emotional read. Can't wait for this one to release! And I love how simple the cover is too. What do you think?



Monday, March 5, 2012

The Syndicate Blog Tour: A Fun-terview with Shelena Shorts!



Hello everyone! So the lovely Shelena Shorts asked me to be a part of her blog tour for her newest YA book, The Syndicate, coming out in July. So for my stop, we did a "Fun-terview", as I have done a more traditonal one with her before and wanted to spice things up. Check it out...

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TBP: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

SS: I'm a mom of three. My day job is in the education field and I write at night and read during every free minute. I'm also a huge love story junkie!

TBP: Describe your upcoming book, The Syndicate, in nine words or less.

SS: An action packed YA conspiracy mixing attraction and risk.

TBP: Do you have any tattoos? If so what are they of and if not, what would you choose if you HAD to get one?

SS: Yes, three small sunflowers on my back.

TBP: If you were to dye your hair an unnatural color (such as pink, purple, etc.) what would it be?

SS: Pink!

TBP: If you could go back into history and interview any author that is no longer living in our time, who would it be and why?

SS: Emily Dickinson. There are so many stories about her being a recluse and although I wouldn't go that far and call myself one, I'm definitely a homebody and can understand her comfort in solitude. I'd love to pick her brain and find out what she was really like.

TBP: You wake up one morning only to realize that you are living the life of a starring role character in an old film. Who are you and from what classic movie?

SS: I would be Rose, from the Titanic, because through it all she discovered what's important in life, and I would make sure Jack made it up onto that piece of wood in the end!

TBP: You are dared to audition for American Idol. What song do you pick?

SS: This would be hilarious, because I'm not even kidding when I say I cannot sing. Not even a little. But if I HAD to pick, I'd go with Hero, by Mariah Carey, because I swore I used to sound good when signing that song:)!

TBP: You murdered a celebrity. Who was it, why, and how?

SS: I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you.

TBP: If you could be any Disney Princess, who would it be and why?

SS: Belle from Beauty in the Beast, because I love a story where someone can see goodness in people.

TBP: Anything else you'd like to add before you go?

SS: That I love The Book Pixie! Seriously, there are some reviewers and online friends I could never forget and you are one of them. Thank you for your awesomeness and constant support. I really appreciate it.


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Awww I love you too! And I hope you all enjoyed the interview! Be sure to not only keep your eye out for The Syndicate, but to check out Shelena's Pace Series as well. It is one of my personal favorites!

Pre-order The Syndicate





Buy The Pace
Paperback / Kindle / Nook

Buy The Broken Lake
Paperback / Kindle / Nook

Buy The Iron Quill
Paperback / Kindle / Nook