Monday's Beginnings (179)

It's Monday...*crickets*...

Okay, so what have I been doing?  Um, I'm not sure.  I did finish a book and a beta novella last week.  The weekend was spent trying to get a few things organized for me here on the blog and such.  But I still feel as I'm no further ahead than I was on Friday. *sigh*

This week, we'll see how it goes.  I'm taking a sanity day on Friday.  I need a day to me.  So, I'm going to find a local Pub and take my laptop and try to do some rewrites while there.  And relax.  That's the thing.  I've been a bit stressed lately, so I want some down time.  And that's what I'm hoping for.

Current Read:
Forbidden Love by Robyn Sadler

Finished Last Week:
Wrayth by Philippa Ballantine
and a Beta/back novella

Reviews to Come:
Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews
Magic Gifts by Ilona Andrews
The Crown Tower by Michael J. Sullivan
Grave Peril by Jim Butcher
Outpost by Ann Aguirre
Wrayth by Philippa Ballantine
Captivated by S.A. Archer & S. Ravynheart
Keeper of Secrets by S.A. Archer & S. Ravynheart
Uprising by S.A. Archer & S. Ravynheart

Book Reviews Posted:
By Jackie this week:
Night's Darkest Embrace by Jeaniene Frost
Leashing the Tempest by Jenn Bennett

Podcast Reviews Posted:
Tales from the Archives Vol 2 #8 ~ Curtain Call

Movie Review Posted:
No movie review, sorry, been running out of time.

Books and Covers Shared:
Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews
Masquerade by Sarah-Jane Lehoux

Special Posts:
Freebie and Deals, on Nook too (40)
I got a Button!

Nanowrimo Rewrites Update...for February.

I did not do a Flash Fiction Friday.  I'm going to have to schedule my time better to do this.  I really enjoyed these.  I'll try.

My WANT List...so I've added 4.  Well..two of which are new books in series I'm already loving and two are new series completely!  Oh, I'm so in trouble. lol.

Received Last Week:
Free Ebooks:

These were free novellas starting a new series's I found.  Sound good!

Photographs & Phantoms by Cindy Spencer Pape
Goodreads Synopsis:
Brighton, 1855

As a member of the Order of the Round Table, Kendall Lake is overqualified to be investigating strange phenomena at a seaside photography studio. But since the photographer is related to the Order's most powerful sorcerer, Kendall reluctantly boards a dirigible to Brighton.

Amy Deland is haunted by a shadow that appears in some of her recent portraits. In each case, the subject died within days of the sitting. Does she have her grandmother's gift of foresight, or has she somehow caused the deaths?

As Kendall and Amy search for answers, their investigation draws them together in a most improper way--but it seems the evil presence in the studio is determined to keep them apart...

Clutch: I am Just Junco Dot Com by J.A. Huss
Goodreads Synopsis:
How long can you lie to yourself before it all comes apart?

In 2152 the avian race is on Earth looking for something stolen from them decades ago – their genetics. At the center of the search lies the Rural Republic; a small backwards farming country with high hopes of military domination and a penchant for illegal bioengineering.

19 year old Junco Coot is the daughter of the Rural Republic’s ranking commander. She’s the most foul-mouthed, wildly unpredictable and ruthless sniper the Rural Republic has ever trained. But when her father’s death sparks a trip into forbidden places, she triggers events that will change everything she knows to be true.

As an elite avian military officer, Tier’s mission is to destroy the bioengineering projects, kill Commander Coot’s daughter, and return home immediately. There’s just one problem. Junco isn’t who she claims to be.

With no one to trust, not even herself, Junco must confront the secrets of her past and accept her place in the future, or risk losing herself completely.

CONTENT WARNING The I Am Just Junco series is NOT YOUNG ADULT. This series contains foul language and graphic violence.

Cursed by Darkness by Anna Sanders
Goodreads Synopsis:
Winx is a daevor: a demon who can coerce people into killing themselves. After using her powers to avenge her sister’s death, she’s sentenced to have her wings severed and serve as a soldier. But Winx refuses to play by the rules. She goes into hiding at a BDSM club in Los Angeles where nobody would think to look for a deadly daevor.

Keaton’s friends and family are under attack by savages–people who arise from death as soulless monsters. Winx is the only one with the power to defeat them, and Keaton is determined to harness her dark powers… no matter what it takes.

Cursed by Darkness is the first in an urban fantasy trilogy by Anna Sanders, available Fall 2012!

Altdorf by J.K. Swift
Goodreads Synopsis:
ALTDORF, a novel of The Forest Knights

A wild land too mountainous to be tamed by plows…
A Duke of the Holy Roman Empire, his cunning overshadowed only by his ambition…
A young Priestess of the Old Religion, together with a charismatic outlaw, sparking a rebellion from deep within the forests…
And an ex-Hospitaller caught between them all.

“Re-imagining the William Tell legend—without William Tell.”

At the end of the thirteenth century, five hundred orphans and second sons are rounded up from villages in the Alpine countryside and sold to the Hospitaller Knights of St John. Trained to serve as Soldiers of Christ, they fight in eastern lands they know nothing about, for a cause they do not understand.

Thomas Schwyzer, released from his vows by the Grandmaster of the Hospitallers, returns to the land of his birth a stranger. Once a leader of men, and captain of the Order’s most famous war galley, he now settles into the simple life of a ferryman. He believes this new role to be God’s reward for years of faithful service fighting the Infidel in Outremer.

Seraina, considered a witch by most, a healer by some, is a young woman with a purpose. A Priestess of the Old Religion, and the last Druid disciple of the Helvetii Celts, she has been gifted by the Great Weave to see what others cannot. Her people need her guidance and protection now more than ever. For Duke Leopold of Habsburg, in his efforts to control the St. Gotthard Pass, builds a great Austrian fortress in Altdorf. Once finished, the Habsburg occupation will be complete, but the atrocities visited upon her people will have just begun.

Set in medieval Switzerland, ALTDORF, a novel of The Forest Knights, is the first book in a two-book series.

The Demi-Monde Winter by Rod Rees
Goodreads Synopsis:
EXPERIENCE THE ULTIMATE IN VIRTUAL REALITY. The Demi-Monde is the most advanced computer simulation ever devised. Created to prepare soldiers for the nightmarish reality of urban warfare, it is a virtual world locked in eternal civil war. Its thirty million digital inhabitants are ruled by duplicates of some of history's cruellest tyrants: Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Holocaust; Beria, Stalin's arch executioner; Torquemada, the pitiless Inquisitor General; Robespierre, the face of the Reign of Terror. But something has gone badly wrong inside the Demi-Monde, and the US President's daughter has become trapped in this terrible world. It falls to eighteen-year-old Ella Thomas to rescue her, yet once Ella has entered the Demi-Monde she finds that everything is not as it seems, that its cyber-walls are struggling to contain the evil within and that the Real World is in more danger than anyone realises.

The Demi-Monde:

1. A subclass of society whose members embrace a decadent lifestyle and evince loose morals. 

2. A shadow world where the norms of civilized behavior have been abandoned.

3. A massive multiple-player simulation technology that re-creates in a wholly realistic cyber-milieu the threat-ambiance and no-warning aspects of a hi-intensity, deep-density, urban Asymmetric Warfare Environment.

4. Hell.

Welcome to the Demi-Monde, the ultimate in virtual realitya military training ground and vivid, simulated world of cruelty and chaos run by psychopaths, madmen and fanatics. 

If you die here, you die in the Real World . . .

In the year 2018, the Demi-Monde is the most sophisticated, complex and unpredictable computer simulation ever created, devised specifically to train soldiers for the nightmarish reality of urban warfare. A virtual world of eternal civil conflict, its thirty million inhabitantss bloodthirsty mastermind Maximilien Robespierre. 

But something has gone horribly wrong inside the Demi-Monde, and the U.S. presidentand the Real World is in far more danger than anyone knows. With the help of resistors determined to understand their world, Ella must race to save Norma and stop an apocalypse . . . but the clock is ticking.

Blending fact and fantasy, history and religion, military and existential themes, epic adventure and dark wit, dystopia and steampunk in a wholly original and driving narrative stream, The Demi-Monde: Winter is inventive fiction at its finest.

For Review:

Masquerade by Sarah-Jane Lehoux
Goodreads Synopsis:
Starting over isn't easy, especially when the world isn't ready for you to change.  Sevy, thief turned assassin turned mercenary, isn't having any fun adjusting to a normal, law-abiding life.  Luckily for her, an old partner in crime arrives with an irresistible proposition: a getaway to a tropical island, an adventure of a lifetime, and an amazing friendship ready to blossom into an even more amazing romance.

Things are looking up for Sevy.  That is, until a pack of maniacal fairies with a taste for human flesh arrive on the scene.

Now she must unravel a web of magical intrigue hidden behind the outwardly idyllic atmosphere of the islands of Belakarta.  Nothing is as it seems, and no one can be trusted.  Trapped under the spell of a handsome and mysterious stranger, Sevy must fight fairies and tricksters to regain her freedom.

Or spend an eternity as a sorcerer's plaything.

Gifted:
Unlikely by Frances Pauli

Won:

The Curse by Sharrilyn Kenyon & Dianna Love
Goodreads Synopsis:
On a mission to find a traitor, Evalle becomes the catalyst that unleashes a 2000-year-old Medb curse on the Beladors…and the world.

The Medb coven sends a team of deadly Svart Trolls to capture Alterants, starting with Evalle. To stop the troll-led gang wars erupting in Atlanta, Evalle borrows a weapon from her Black Ops friend Isak and, in the process, exposes a secret that complicates her tumultuous love life just as sexy skinwalker Storm surfaces with news of where he’s been – the last place she expects. But Evalle has bigger problems when she discovers the real target in jeopardy and the game changes with no time left on the clock.

And...also I got a My Keeper Kase by Dianna Love.  It's so neat as it's full of book covers that are SIGNED!

Purchased:
After learning about the print version of Changeling not going back in, I purchased both it and Trance which I've been wanting for far to long.

Trance by Kelly Meding
Goodreads Synopsis:
Kelly Meding's war-ravaged Los Angeles is ground zero for the ultimate Meta human showdown in this sexy, action-packed new series. Fifteen years ago, Teresa "Trance" West was a skilled telepath and a proud member of the Ranger Corps. But ever since the Rangers were inexplicably rendered powerless at the climax of the devastating Meta War, she's bounced from one dead-end job to another. Now her powers have reappeared just as mysteriously as they vanished-- only they're completely transformed and more potent than ever. And they're threatening to destroy her.

Trance heads to Los Angeles to track down the surviving Rangers and discover who restored her powers--and why--but a phantom enemy is determined to kill them before they can reassemble. As they dodge his deadly attacks and come to terms with their new role as heroes, Trance and the rest of the team set out to annihilate the sinister madman . . . only to discover their own powers are his greatest weapons.

Changeling by Kelly Meding
Goodreads Synopsis:
The second in a new series by popular urban fantasy author Kelly Meding, about an X-Men-like group of young people with superpowers who must find a way to work together.

Five months ago, Dahlia Perkins was a struggling newspaper journalist whose biggest responsibility was paying her rent on time. After learning she has the ability to absorb and deflect massive amounts of heat and fire, Dahlia is struggling to find her place as the newest hero in an established team of former Rangers freelancing their abilities in post-Meta War Los Angeles.

The team’s first major case: two discarded human skins. One is a John Doe, the other was a janitor for Weatherfield R&D, a scientific research and development firm Dahlia once investigated—and she’s itching to investigate them again. The ability to use and shed another person’s skin isn’t a power any of them have encountered before, nor something any of their former Meta enemies possess. But when a third skin appears and one of Dahlia’s teammates is nearly killed by an assassin’s bullet, it’s clear someone else besides Weatherfield is targeting the Rangers—and their killer may not be Meta at all.

It seems as it was a big week in getting books around here.  Oh my poor Nook is so overloaded.  I need to quit looking at freebies...

So, how did your week go?  How does the new week look?

Here's wishing you all the best in words and pages.