First Fight/First Kiss Blogfest - Day 2

Danielle of Entertaining Interests and Jackie of Bouquet of Books are hosting this awesome blogfest. The rules are:

• Share your 1st FIGHT and 1st KISS scenes in your MS’s or WIP’s. Crack open your current project or dive back into an old one. We want to feel what your characters feel. From the sting of their first fist-to-the-face to the tingling taste of their first kiss.
• If you’re not a writer, please share with us your real life firsts. We want to read and experience them all!
• Post 1 will be on Tuesday, June 12 - Share with us your 1st FIGHT scene on your blog. It can be physical or verbal, fists or magic. Whichever you want to share.
• Post 2 will be on Thursday, June 14 - Share with us your 1st KISS scene on your blog. It can be a peck on the cheek or a full fledge kissing session. Whatever you would like to tell us.

So, it's first kiss time. I have to be hones;, I've only written two and a half chapters of this book so far, so there aren't any kisses in it yet. But this is how I imagine the first kiss to go. I apologize for how rough it is.

A bit of context: Bex and Grey are two members of an undercover team sent to infiltrate the Wilkes cartel. Grey is the cartel leader, and Bex is his arm candy. As they get closer to the cartel, Sebastian Wilkes (the oldest of three sons) invites them to a party for his daughter's confirmation, which is where they are now.

"Come here," Grey murmured a few hours later, pulling Bex away from Sebastian's mistress mid-conversation.

"What?" she snapped. "I was just talking to her about—"

"Yeah, I know. This is more important." He dragged her to an alcove in the hallway between the parlor and the dining area.

Bex kept quiet, waiting for Grey to say something. But he didn't need to. She heard Sebastian's voice, far angrier than she'd thought him capable. "—less than fifteen minutes! How could we not have known about a fucking raid?"

"You'll watch your tone with me, boy."

Bex's breath caught in her throat, and she looked up at Grey, whose blue eyes were shining with the same exhilaration she was feeling.

Morton Wilkes. Cartel Patriarch.

"I thought he never left Montana," Bex whispered, her voice barely a breath so as not to attract their attention.

"I guess sometimes he does."

"Well, damn."

He was still looking at her with those eyes, and she started to realize just how close they were standing. Her stomach flipped, and she frowned. Now was not the time for this. Morton Wilkes was in this house. In the next room. And she was a professional.

Still, even a professional could acknowledge that Grey smelled good. And that he cleaned up really, really nicely.

They both jumped when something crashed in the parlor, and Sebastian pounded out of the dining area. "Shit," Grey muttered. "Shit shit shit."

They had only a second before he passed right by their hiding place, which would become startlingly less discrete when he did. "I saw this on an episode of Castle once," she muttered, sparing a half-second to wink at Grey before she shoved him back against the wall and kissed him.

Oh, wow.

Grey's hands slid down to her waist, creating a little trail of shocks along her sides. She gasped through her nose, opening her mouth to him, deepening the kiss, curling one hand in his hair and fisting his suit jacket with the other. He pressed closer, shifting so his leg was between hers and her body was flush against him. She moaned.

"Garrett?"

Hearing Benson Wilkes' voice made Grey jerk away and knock his head against the wall. Bex jumped back too.

"Benson," Grey said, rubbing his chin and definitely not meeting her eyes. "Lovely party."

Benson grinned lecherously, and Bex had to work to slip her "silly bimbo" persona back into place lest she slug him. "It is indeed," Benson said.

100 Twitter Followers Giveaway Winners!

Congratulations to Leigh Covington and Cassie Mae, the winners of my 100 Twitter Followers Giveaway!

Leigh won an ebook copy of The Eternal Queen by K.S. Lewis.

Cassie won an ebook copy of Soul Mates: a different kind of Love Story by Jeanne Donnelly.

Congratulations to both of you! I'll be sending you emails so I can get the books to you.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks to everyone who's been following me on Twitter.

First Fight/First Kiss Blogfest

Danielle of Entertaining Interests and Jackie of Bouquet of Books are hosting this awesome blogfest. The rules are:

• Share your 1st FIGHT and 1st KISS scenes in your MS’s or WIP’s. Crack open your current project or dive back into an old one. We want to feel what your characters feel. From the sting of their first fist-to-the-face to the tingling taste of their first kiss.
• If you’re not a writer, please share with us your real life firsts. We want to read and experience them all!
• Post 1 will be on Tuesday, June 12 - Share with us your 1st FIGHT scene on your blog. It can be physical or verbal, fists or magic. Whichever you want to share.
• Post 2 will be on Thursday, June 14 - Share with us your 1st KISS scene on your blog. It can be a peck on the cheek or a full fledge kissing session. Whatever you would like to tell us.

I wasn't sure if this had to be the first fight between the couple, but, well, I haven't written a scene like that yet, so I'm just going with the first fight scene in the book. Which also happens to be the first any scene. It's kind of long, so, um, sorry about that.

The magical gun vibrated in her left hand as it recharged, and Bex Addison idly wondered why it couldn’t reload as quickly as the Beretta in her right. Still, she held them pointed in opposite directions, hoping to stall her attackers until the gun had time to recharge.

A Magical Explosive Triggered Attack—or META—was so much more satisfying than an ordinary bullet.

A bang against the warehouse door focused her attention, and she shifted both guns to point at it. Another bang, this time accompanied by a dent, then another and another, until the door blew open, bits of metal and magic and debris crashing into the boxes that were acting as Bex’s cover. She shot the Beretta three times without looking, hoping Adrian wasn’t stupid enough to be running through that door. Dueling screams told her she’d hit a mark at least twice.

Not that it was stopping them. She counted quickly. The two she’d taken down now, plus the four she’d hit before they’d cornered her in the warehouse. Adrian had taken out three when she’d last seen him. He probably had a few more kills under his belt, but even without, there shouldn’t be more than a half dozen left.

Fucking Burn-Outs.

In the decade or so since scientists had figured out how to bottle and sell magic, it had become the hottest drug on the market. Every cartel in the country had figured out a new way to package it—smoke it, swallow it, sniff it, shoot it. The only problems were its highly addictive properties and its equally high volatile nature. There was no telling what magic could do to you.

Magic addicts were called Burn-Outs. Empty husks of men whose only concern was getting their next fix. They traveled in gangs, but they’d kill each other for even just a small dose.

And it was Bex’s job to catch them.

“B!”

Bex jumped, her head jerking up to see Adrian waving through a hole in the ceiling. “How’re the pickings, sweetheart?” he called, his lazy drawl making him sound like he should have been at a country club in Georgia rather than a boarded-up warehouse in Caldor County.

“Slim,” she called back. “Can’t be more than five or six left, I’d say.”

“Just three or four, prolly,” he argued, then she heard the thundering BOOM of his .357. “Make that two or three.”

She laughed. “Well, come on down here. I think they’re trying to figure out how to get through the doorway without getting their heads blown off.”

A moment later, he touched down next to her, not a hair on his pretty blonde head out of place. Bex was jealous. She’d never been able to master levitation. “You got ol’ Eloise fired up?” he asked.

Bex glared at him. “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to call it that.” She put her hand on the magical gun. Nearly there.

“You agreed. I think Eloise is perfect name for such a lovely lady.”

“It’s my gun. I decide what to call it.”

“Her. Guns are always women.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

She raised an eyebrow in challenge, but Adrian answered promptly, “They’re beautiful to look at, deadly when necessary, and can have great power in a compact body.” He added a visual once-over to Bex’s 5’4” frame to emphasize his point.

“Aw, you old sweet-talker,” she deadpanned, and his careless grin widened.

“The ladies love a charmer.”

“How would you know?” she asked. “You’ve been married for 147 years.”

Adrian gave an obscenely loud sigh. “Six months, B. You were at the wedding.”

Bex hefted Eloise—the gun—into her hands and nodded at him. “In this job,” she said, “six months is the same thing as 147 years.”

Then she fired at the door to the warehouse.

The META would have deafened them both if not for the magically enhanced earplugs they wore, the ones that only blocked sounds over a certain decibel level. It would have blinded them if not for their goggles. And it would have eliminated them if not for the fact that they were behind it, not in front of it.

There were no Burn-Outs left on the other side.

“Hoo-ey!” Adrian crowed, pushing his goggles to the top of his head. “That baby is something else!”

In Bex’s hand, the gun purred softly, and Bex powered it down before it started to recharge. There was no way to shut the gun if there was magic stored in it. And there were very few ways to safely discharge the magic.

Also, there's a little over a day left to enter my 100 Twitter Followers Giveaway. You can win a free book! Check out the post to enter.

Teaser Tuesday - 6/12/12

A couple great books came out in the last few days (particularly Nyrae Dawn's What a Boy Needs and Kelley Armstrong's The Hunter and the Hunted), but before I can read them, I need to finish the one I started: No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong. Which I'm re-reading. For about the sixth time. (It's my favorite of her Otherworld series.)

Jaime, who knows a thing or two about showbiz, is on a television shoot in Los Angeles when weird things start to happen. As a woman whose special talent is raising the dead, her threshold for weirdness is pretty high: she’s used to not only seeing dead people but hearing them speak to her in very emphatic terms. But for the first time in her life–as invisible hands brush her skin, unintelligible fragments of words are whispered into her ears, and beings move just at the corner of her eye–she knows what humans mean when they talk about being haunted.

She is determined to get to the bottom of these manifestations, but as she sets out to solve the mystery she has no idea how scary her investigation will get. As she digs into the dark underside of Los Angeles, she’ll need as much Otherworld help as she can get in order to survive, calling on her personal angel, Eve, and Hope, the well-meaning chaos demon. Jeremy, the alpha werewolf, is also by her side offering protection. And, Jaime hopes, maybe a little more than that.

The rules for Teaser Tuesday are:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
• Then hit up Should Be Reading to add your link.

And the teaser:

"Scream and I'll snap your neck. Understood?" Jeremy's tone was soft and even, like a patient teacher warning a difficult child.

Also, keep an eye out for my First Fight/First Kiss entry later today.

Also, also, just a little over a day left for you to enter my 100 Twitter Followers Giveaway. Win a free book!

The Art of Movie Trailers

After I graduated college but before I got my first job, I thought I wanted to make a career out of making movie trailers. Sometimes, the previews are the best part of a movie to me. I love words and live and die by the pen, but even the best books (and movies and TV shows) don't arouse the same feelings as a truly spectacular 2:30 minute movie trailer. Obviously, even the best trailers don't satisfy me the way a good book does, but there's something about a great trailer that can make my heart pound. It can make me laugh or cry. It can fill me with nostalgia or grief, all with minimal backstory and character development. It's truly an art form. How do you decide what to include? How do you tell enough of the story to make people interested, but not enough that you're giving too much away? And don't even get me started on the music. Nothing else is as powerful in as short a time.

Yesterday, I watched the trailer for The Perks of Being a Wallflower. And then I watched it again. And again. Then I showed it to my mom. Then I watched it again. Then I mulled over it for awhile (and came up with a new story idea, but that's not important). Then I watched it again this morning. I don't know what it is about this trailer, but I think it's incredible. It captured all the things I felt in high school--loneliness, confusion, awkwardness--and all the wonderful feelings that come with finding a great group of friends. By the end, I'm grinning with tears in my eyes and thinking about how much I want to call my high school friends.

To me, the ideal trailer tells a story. It's not just things blowing up or a few funny scenes slapped together. So I scoured the internet (er, YouTube) for some trailers I consider to be really good. What do you think? Are there any others that stand out in your minds? Do you even pay attention to them?

An example of where blowing stuff up (in conjunction with a story) works. It is an action movie, after all.



An example of where the trailer was better than the movie. Also, where the trailer is built around an emotion, not a story.



What I like about this trailer is that it leaves out a huge part of the movie. You won't know what it is until you watch it, but it completely floored me.



Out of all the HP trailers, I think this one had the most complete story to go with the action and emotion in it. They're all pretty awesome though.

Also, if you like winning books, go check out my 100 Twitter Followers post from yesterday, where you can enter to win a free ebook of either The Eternal Queen by K.S. Lewis or Soul Mates: A different kind of Love Story by Jeanne Donnelly.

100 Twitter Followers Giveaway!

You guys have no idea how excited I am to have reached 100 followers on Twitter. Well, that's probably not true, since I imagine everyone else feels pretty much the same way when they hit 100 followers. But still... I'm excited.

And I'm really grateful to all the people who've accepted me so quickly and easily into the blogging community. I wanted to give a shout out to a few really awesome people who made me feel welcome and way less awkward when I first started blogging (all those four months ago): K.S. Lewis, Emily R. King, Kyra Lennon, Cassie Mae, Rebecca Belliston, Leigh Covington, and McKenzie McCann. It's nowhere near a complete list of the wonderful friends I've made, and I appreciate every one of you.

SO in the spirit of that appreciation, I'm giving away two ebooks! The first is K.S. Lewis's The Eternal Queen.

Here's a quick summary from the Facebook page:

Eternal Queen Anastasia has been kidnapped from her own Rebirth Ceremony – not that the seven Royal Lords will let anyone know. Though they, themselves, soon start dropping like flies, as rumors spread on the suspicious whispers of the people. Mrs. Deedly and Mrs. Dummley – who are absolutely not sisters – just want to find what their long, unwieldy scarf has snagged during their walk through Lower Rung. It's a boot, attached to a foot, attached to a dying man in the cemetery. At the same time, Bogart Bugly of Rainbow Tower has found himself a young, injured, gem of a girl, and he's going to make gold on this one. In the Palace, the newly promoted Lord Septimus has his own ideas about the future of the city and its Queen.

Mystery, murder, and mayhem all abound in The Eternal Queen, which follows a young girl named Red, a mischievous rogue named Wolf, and the determined new Lord who calls himself Hunter. As Red opens her eyes to a world she can't quite understand, she must come to terms with the Queen, the city, and the precarious relationship the two have shared for centuries.

The second book I'm giving away is Jeanne Donnelly's Soul Mates: A different kind of Love Story (edited by Shannon Donnelly).

And here's the blurb from her website:

After a tragic death on mean city streets, a woman meets God and begs him to let her reincarnate to bring the heavenly message of unconditional love to the world. Follow the adventure when she is tossed back to earth as one of the smallest dogs on the planet.

There will be two winners, one for each book. In the Rafflecopter entry thing, you can specify whether you want a specific book or either (in case you've already read one of them), and I'll randomly choose. June 13th is the last day to enter the drawing.

And while you're waiting, check out the authors' blogs: Adjective, Not a Noun (K.S. Lewis) and One Aimless Writer (Jeanne Donnelly). They are both amazing women who wrote fantastic, engaging books. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Teaser Tuesday - 6/5/12

Since last Teaser Tuesday, I think I've read four books (not counting this one). I had a nice, lazy weekend, and I got a chance to really sit down and read, instead of having to steal moments early in the morning or before bed. It was lovely. I read Matched and its sequel Crossed by Ally Condie, Shadow Bound by Rachel Vincent, and The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong. And I highly recommend all of them (though technically Shadow Bound is a sequel, so I don't recommend that until you read Blood Bound).

This week I'm reading The Calling by Kelley Armstrong. It's the second book in the Darkness Rising series. I love Kelley Armstrong's books. Can't get enough of them. Her Women of the Otherworld series got me started in urban fantasy. She's also kind of my author idol. The things she does for her fans--from publishing free online short stories to spending her own money shipping bookmarks to people who pre-order her books--are above and beyond the call of duty. I hope when I'm a successful, published author (going for optimism), I can be like her.

The Darkness Rising trilogy is a sequel of sorts to her Darkest Powers trilogy (set in the same world with different characters, and the two worlds will collide eventually). I put off reading it, even though I loved the first trilogy, because... well, because I'm not wild about the name Maya, and that's the MC's name. Yeah, I know it's a stupid reason. But then a bunch of other authors updated their series, and I got distracted. But I'm super excited to be reading it now, and I know I'm going to hate having to wait for the third book.

WARNING: Because this is the second book in the trilogy, the blurb contains some spoilers for the first book. The teaser contains no spoilers.

Maya Delaney’s paw-print birthmark is the sign of what she truly is—a skin-walker. She can run faster, climb higher, and see better than nearly anyone else. Experiencing intense connections with the animals that roam the woods outside her home, Maya knows it’s only a matter of time before she’s able to Shift and become one of them. And she believes there may be others in her small town with surprising talents.

Now, Maya and her friends have been forced to flee from their homes during a forest fire they suspect was deliberately set. Then they’re kidnapped, and after a chilling helicopter crash, they find themselves in the Vancouver Island wilderness with nothing but their extraordinary abilities to help them get back home. Plentiful action and romance in this second installment in the Darkness Rising series will keep readers enthralled to the last page.

The rules for Teaser Tuesday are:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
• Then hit up Should Be Reading to add your link.

And the teaser:

I broke the surface again, and this time managed to get a breath. Then I heard Nicole screaming for help--that something had her, was pulling her down.