My next Pinterest board is about our favorite rogue, Alex.  Whether you hate him or love him, or feel a little bit of both for him, his life is never dull.  Not being fabulously wealthy myself, I had a great deal of fun researching how the 1% of Manhattan live.  If you have millions to spend on lofts and club memberships, it turns out pretty well 🙂

So enjoy oogling Alex’s waterfront views, swanky nightclubs, and the marina where he moors his yacht. Don’t you feel more elite just reading that sentence?

Once again, with the release of the second book in The Gamayun Prophecies, I’m hot to give out some free stuff.  Last week it was free Kindle copies of the first book, Call of Affliction.  This week, it’s copies of the new book, Wings of Ash, and there are two ways to do it.

First, I’m doing a mailing list giveaway.  If you’re already on my mailing list, you don’t have to do anything.  You’ll automatically be entered to win.  If you’re not on my mailing list, what are you waiting for?  I’m not a spammer, I don’t sell your info, and I basically just use it to give you free stuff.  I also only ask for your first name and email address.  FYI, following the blog is not the same thing as being on my mailing list.  Click here to subscribe and enter for a chance to win 2 paperback copies and 10 ebook copies of Wings of Ash.  You don’t have to have a Kindle, any reader or app will work.  You must subscribe by February 13th to win.

The second giveaway starts February 2nd and is a month long and will have a bit more competition.  It’s over at Goodreads.  If your not familiar with Goodreads, you should give it a look. I only discovered it last year, and it’s awesome.  It not only keeps track of books you’ve read and books you’d like to read, but it will also suggest books for you to read next based on what you liked before.  If you want to be social with it, you can also connect with your Facebook friends, reader forums, follow authors, and lots of other goodies.  They have an app as well, which I like.  You can even scan bar codes of books you like in bookstores or libraries so you don’t have to remember titles later.  When I’m at the library, I just pull up my to-read shelf and check out the next few books.  Anyway, now that I’m done extolling the virtues of Goodreads, here are the details of the giveaway.  If you click this link, it will take you to my Wings of Ash giveaway page, where you can enter for a chance to win one of 10 paperback copies.  While you’re there, you can add to your shelf.  You should look for other giveaways while you are there.  There are loads.  I have entered several myself.  Have I mentioned Goodreads is awesome? 🙂

Wings of Ash is officially live and available to buy in paperback and ebook. Those of you that pre-ordered should be getting your ebooks delivered today.  As a special promotion to celebrate the release of Wings of Ash, I’m giving away the ebook version of the first book in the series, Call of Affliction, for Free!  So if you missed the first one, now’s your chance to snap it up.  It will only be free until this Friday, January 22.  Click the links below to get either book.

Book One – Call of Affliction

Book Two – Wings of Ash

I’m so excited about Wings of Ash, I can’t wait until Monday having only given you a quick blurb of what the book is about.  So, I’m going cheat and give you a little bit of a head start.  If you read Call of Affliction, then you might have already read the first chapter of Wings of Ash that I put at the end of the book.  However, right now, I’m going to give you a link to a PDF to the prologue, and the first and second chapters of Wings of Ash, so everyone has a little something new to read until the book’s release on Monday.  Happy reading!

Wings of Ash Sneak Peak

I am pleased to announce that the second book in The Gamayun Prophecies, Wings of Ash, will be released on Monday January 18 in paperback and ebook.  In fact, if you would like to pre-order the ebook, you can do so already by clicking here.  Unfortunately, Amazon does not allow you to pre-order the paperback.

Thanks again to Aria at Resplendent Media for a wonderful cover.  I loved how she not only was able to give Alex blond highlights and hair with obvious product, but managed to have Galine flipping her hair in his face on the cover.

Here’s a little teaser of what the second book is about:

Galine Karsavina knew Alex was trouble from the moment she met him. Now the evil genius with his too handsome face and toothpaste commercial smile is scheming against her. Alex is whispering lies in the ears of her sister and best friend Harper. Unfortunately, Galine has been telling lies of her own for months to keep her identity as the Gamayun a secret. Who will Katja and Harper choose to believe?

Even more troubling, Galine is beginning to suspect there’s more to Alex than just his frat boy exterior. Why is everyone but her so drawn to him and eager to do what he says? Galine struggles to unravel the mystery of Alex alone, determined to keep her distance from Sasha. But in her effort to keep the man she loves safe, has she cut herself off from the one person who might be Alex’s match?

I am pleased to announce that I will be doing a blog tour for Call of Affliction Dec. 21-30 with Bewitching Blog Tours.  I’ll be visiting a different blog each day interacting with readers.  Sometimes the blog will just being doing their own feature about the book, sometimes they’ll be interviewing me, and a couple times I’m doing a guest post where I’m doing character profiles about Galine and Sasha.  If you’d like to follow along, here’s where I’ll be on each date:

Some of the most fun I had while writing Call of Affliction was developing Sasha’s personal history and the cabin where he lived.  I spent a lot of time fleshing out who he was and what he had done before he met Galine.  I also spent a great deal of time online on antiques sites furnishing every little nook and cranny of the place so I could see it all clearly in my mind.  I wanted to make sure everything was historically accurate, too.

Today, I have another Pinterest board to share, this time of all those pictures I stored and saved to create the little corner of the Carolina mountains that is Sasha’s world.  Enjoy!

For those of you reading Call of Affliction that might not be familiar with Durham or even North Carolina, I wanted help you picture the places and settings in the book.  I’ve started a Pinterest account, and from time to time I’ll create new boards to help you visualize what I was seeing as I wrote the book.  Sometimes they are taken straight from my vision boards and notes.

Today, we’re exploring Durham and the specific places in it that Galine visits.  If you’d like to see the board, it can be found here: https://www.pinterest.com/lara6922/galines-durham/  If you haven’t read all of the book, I would consider the spoiler level to be low.  You’ll learn a few things, but nothing major that I think would ruin your experience.  If you can’t stand to know anything before it happens, though, then wait to explore the boards until after you’ve finished the book.

I am pleased to announce that both the paperback and ebook are now up and for sale at Amazon.  If you’d like to check them out, click here.  However, if you’d like a little taste of what the book is like, you can now read a PDF sneak peak of chapter 1.  Enjoy!

I am very excited to be able to show you today the amazing cover for Call of Affliction.  Special thanks to Aria at Resplendent Media for exceeding my expectations.

I also can tell you that the paperback will be available on Amazon this Sunday November 22.  The Kindle version will be available two days later, Tuesday November 24.  You may have to search for the particular version you want (paperback vs Kindle) for a few days until Amazon links them up.

I hope to eventually offer the series across multiple platforms (Apple books, Nook, etc.) and sellers (B&N, independent bookstores, libraries).  However, starting exclusively with Amazon allows me to keep the starting price for both the paperback and ebook lower.  In fact, until Christmas, the Kindle version will be just 99 cents!  Also, for those with a Kindle and Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited, they can borrow Call of Affliction for free.

Don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter before Thanksgiving so you can be entered to win a free copy.