book – Page 18 – Sincerely Karen Jo

PosseBlitzBanner

Posse: Legends
T. Hammond
(Posse, #1)
Publication date: October 26th 2017
Genres: Urban Fantasy, Young Adult

It should have been an easy job.

Track the jackal. Locate the girl. Rescue said girl. Return bad puppy to the Council for questioning.

As leader of the Posse, a paranormal alliance, shapeshifter Lexa O’Clare thought she’d seen everything over the past millennia. Neither she, nor her vampire partner, Etienne, expected this case to be different.

A fugitive werejackal leads them to a secret lab where supernaturals are unwilling subjects in genetic experimentation. The Posse uncovers a conspiracy implicating high-ranking members of the Inter-species Council.

Can anyone’s motives be trusted?

Lexa: a shapeshifter sheriff who also proxies for humans killed before their destinies are fulfilled.

Etienne: a Knight Templar, turned master vampire.

Yasmin: a dragon who walked among the gods.

Jade: an historian & Fox-familiar to a cranky dragon.

Sentinel: a gargoyle who mourns the fall of Atlantis.

Richard: a witch with a target on his back.

Tris: a rare polyshifter with an eye for a sexy male.

Rhys: four months ago he was human…

Goodreads / Amazon

—

EXCERPT:

I rocked forward on my arms so I could lean closer and hear more clearly. My attic bedroom was directly above the coven leader’s desk, and from this angle, I had a clear line-of-sight to the witches gathered below. It’s surprising how, after all this time, they still hadn’t caught on to the fact I was spying. I could see and hear everything they discussed. Note to self: when creating a sound-dampening spell, it’s not sufficient to muffle the walls, windows, and door—the floor and ceiling should also be considered.

The peephole had been a fortuitous mishap. I’d been practicing my air-moving skills when I accidentally created a small tornado. Hey now, it was a little one, only a couple feet tall—it’s not like I created a whirlwind of epic proportions. Did you know, if you got air spinning fast enough over a single focal point, it’s possible to drill a hole in a wood floor? It was easy enough to make a plug to conceal the damage, and my room’s simple privacy spell was always active, so there were no worries of discovery. Even if they’d looked up—and they never looked up—my magic was flawless enough they’d see an unblemished ceiling. Cocky witches.

Each coven contained a main circle of twelve witches, plus a priestess. The strongest groups consist of extended families who could pick and choose the most promising amongst themselves, but most covens are formed from a collection of individuals with varying degrees of power and skill. Mother Nan’s coven was moderately talented, with a core group of six sycophants, err…I mean, mature practitioners, all of which were crowded around her desk—standing, of course. The seventh witch was Lea, a semi-strong practitioner who still lacked emotional control over her mouth and her magic, but was her mother’s favorite daughter.

“He’s an abomination.” Mara spat the words as if they left a foul residue in her mouth.

“Too true,” Betti agreed, as was her nature.

“It’s a miracle we haven’t been killed in our beds,” Ella said, lips pursed in sour disapproval.

“Oh, definitely, in our beds.” Betti nodded in quick little jerks, like a bobble-head doll.

Coral sniffed. “It was touch-and-go while he went through his let’s-set-everything-on-fire phase.”

Oh, come on now, I’d been sick, running a high fever. I was seven! You’d think, after all this time, they could let it go.

Author Bio:

T, a paranormal romance and urban fantasy author, feels writing is not a calling so much as it is a compulsion. No one is more surprised than she is when characters take over the plot and dialog, (re)directing stories in directions she had not (consciously) intended. Although T starts out each novel with a basic outline, she finds one or two chapters into the novels, not only have the characters shredded her outline into tiny unidentifiable pieces, they use the resulting confetti in a nose-thumbing parade.

T is fully convinced the writer is the tool a story uses to tell its tale.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

GIVEAWAY!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hello lovelies and welcome to my stop for Sparked Blog Tour. If you’re new to my blog, welcome to Sincerely Karen Jo. Today I have a very fun guest post from one of the talented authors of this awesome book. Malena Watrous stops by to share what it’s like to co-author a novel with Helena Echlin. So let’s get to it!

SparkedTour

We’re Having a Novel!

By Malena Watrous

When Helena and I first met at a mutual friend’s cocktail party, it was one of my first evenings away from my one-year-old son, and she was pregnant with her first child. She looked very glamorous in a long silvery dress, with a snake bracelet coiled around her upper arm. I bring up the fact that I was a new mother and she was about to become one, because in the years that followed, we found that co-authoring a novel is a lot like having a baby together.

Phase 1: Infatuation

We started talking at that party, realized how much we had in common: we loved all of the same novels, we’d both written adult novels, and were itching to try writing YA. We wanted to write a novel with real and memorable characters that also involved magic and mystery. We both felt a isolated writing alone, and thought it would be cool to try writing collaboratively. Also, we naively assumed, two writers meant half the work—right? So with butterflies flitting in our stomachs, we made a follow-up date to talk plot.

Phase 2: Gestation

After I shared an idea I’d been mulling over for a YA novel, Helena immediately figured out where that story could go, and we were off. For the first seven months, ideas poured out of us in a frenzy of inspiration. We’d meet every Monday at a San Francisco coffee shop, making a list of scenes we needed to write, and divide them up, spending rest of the week separately drafting our “assignments.” Then we’d email each other the drafts to edit.

Phase 3: Labor

Months seven to nine required us to finish the first draft, which wasn’t quite as easy as starting it because our plot had gone a little berserk. There was mystery, romance, horror, an ancient prophecy—and pie shakes. It all had to form one coherent book with an ending that wrapped everything up. We powered through, and celebrated with a dinner party that concluded with the same cake that our protagonist eats at her birthday party in one of the book’s final scenes, a carrot and beet cake with cream cheese frosting.

Phase 4: The baby and toddler years

But bringing the baby home is when the real work begins. And with co-writing a book, revising was when we really had to knuckle down. We wrote this novel in a froth of inspiration. Revising it was a more sober process that required making conscious decisions about what wasn’t working and how to fix it. We didn’t always immediately agree on the problem or solution, which anyone who has tried to be a parent with someone else probably can relate to. (“Why do you get up every time he cries? You’re just teaching him not to sleep through the night!”) But we persevered through more drafts than I dare to count and made the book into something we are both proud of.

Phase 5: Starting over?

Now our book has been published, we’re thrilled that it is out in the world, but we have extra time on our hands. And what do you do after your baby grows up enough that you finally have some of your freedom back? You take a deep breath and decide to do it all over again. That’s where we are now. A sequel is brewing in our minds. We are starting up our Monday brainstorming sessions, getting ready to write the sequel. We know that what we learned as a result of collaborating on the first book will help to inform the process of writing the next book. But we also know that there are no real shortcuts to writing a novel. Collaborating is not really half the work, but it’s definitely twice the fun!

Sparked

Helena Echlin and Malena Watrous

Sparked Cover

Publication Date: October 3, 2017

Publisher: Geek & Sundry

Add on Goodreads

Fifteen-year-old Laurel Goodwin wakes up to find her older sister Ivy missing from their Airstream trailer in the Oregon redwoods. A recurring nightmare convinces her that Ivy was abducted, but no one takes her dream seriously, including her mom. Laurel, a loner, has to learn to ask for help, and Jasper Blake, a mysterious new kid who shares her love of old books, quickly becomes her ally. Together they find their quiet town holds a deep secret and is the epicenter of a dark prophecy.

Laurel soon learns that her worst enemies, mean girls Peyton Andersen and Mei Rosen, are developing powers that she needs to find and save Ivy. With time running out, Laurel realizes that power doesn’t always take the form that you expect. And once she learns to look beyond her snap judgments, she develops an unexpected gift of her own.

About the Authors

Hello! We are both novelists, but if you’ve ever tried to write anything, you know that writing can be a lonely, angst-filled business. So one night over a cocktail or two, we came up with a solution: write our next book together. Malena already had an idea: a girl’s sister is kidnapped and she has to rely on mean girls with superpowers to get her sister back. We couldn’t resist seeing where that story would take us – a wild ride that includes a loner girl who wants to be a writer and a gorgeous boy who can shoot fire from his eyes but also loves to talk about books. And an ancient Zoroastrian prophecy. And pie shakes. (OK, so maybe we got a little carried away.)

We’ve both published solo novels (check them out here and here) and had no idea how co-writing would work out, but we pounded out the first draft in a white-hot frenzy of inspiration we called “the Vortex.” One of us would write a scene and send it to the other with a note: “My apartment is a pigsty and I haven’t eaten all day. #inthevortex.” We wrote the book we wanted to read as teenagers: a supernatural thriller with healthy doses of horror and humor. Oh, and of course there’s romance. You have to wait a long time for the only kiss in the book, but isn’t that the case with all the best kisses in books?

Follow Helena and Malena – Website | Twitter

Join the Rafflecopter Giveaway

Two (2) winner will receive a copy of Sparked by Helena Echlin & Malena Watrous (INT)

Tour Schedule