Featured Author: Alicia Michaels

Title: The Bionics

All Blythe Sol ever wanted was to be a normal girl. Yet, her dreams of following in her father’s footsteps by joining the military after graduation are crushed when nuclear war comes to the United States in the year 4006. Tens of thousands are killed in a series of attacks on many major cities, while thousands more are left injured from the devastation of the blasts, or terminally ill from the effects of radiation.

When the government offers the sick and injured a second chance as part of the Restoration Project, how could they refuse? Hoping to put her life back together after the blasts take both her arm and her eye, Blythe enrolls in the program filled with hope. She never expects that the bionic additions will change her life so drastically. When it is discovered that those outfitted with the robotic parts have become enhanced beyond the limits of ordinary human ability, normal can never exist for her again.

The Bionics become targets of the government, as fear of them spreads across the nation, further enflamed by media propaganda and political conspiracy. Forced to go into hiding or face execution, society’s outcasts band together to form the Restoration Resistance—an underground rebellion which Blythe becomes a part of in order to survive. She could never imagine that joining them would thrust her at the forefront of an imminent revolution, or that it would put her in a confusing tug-of-war between two of her fellow soldiers—Gage Bronson, the mysterious new addition to the Resistance, and Dax Janner, her best friend. Even though Gage is rapidly capturing her heart, she is forced to face the possibility that her feelings for Dax might just go beyond friendship. However, with impending war and the threat of death hanging over her head, Blythe hardly has time to worry about anything as trivial as a love life...

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Featured Author: Becky Doughty

TITLE: A Light in the Dark: Book Two of The Fallout Series

BLURB:

On stage, Tish Ransome sings about heartache and passion, betrayal, and about love gone wrong… but she knows very little about any of it in real life. The rockstar princess who swears like a pirate—literally—is loved and adored by family, friends, and fans alike, and her world is filled with good things, her future bright.

Behind the scenes, however, trouble is brewing. When Tom, her best friend and co-founder of the Marauders, tells her he’s leaving the band after graduation, Tish must find a new wingman to step into Tom’s hard-to-fill shoes. The moment she hears Sebastian Jeffries play, she knows he’s the one.

Yet with Sebastian comes a taste of the things Tish only writes about, and she can’t resist the lure of the tortured artist. Sebastian, likewise, is drawn to Tish’s brilliance, but like a moth that hovers too close to the flames, is he killing himself just to be near her? Can Tish save Sebastian before it’s too late, or will he pull her down into the darkness with him?

Becky Doughty is the author of the best-selling Elderberry Croft Series, The Fallout Series, The Gustafson Girls Series, Waters Fall, and more. She's also the voice behind BraveHeart Audiobooks. She writes Women's Fiction with strong elements of romance, as well as Young Adult and Coming of Age Fiction. Becky is married to her champion of more than 25 years. They have three children, two of whom are grown and starting families of their own, and they all live within a few miles of each other in Southern California. They share their lives with too many animals, a large vegetable garden, and a strange underground concrete room they're certain was built for dark and sinister purposes....

A Light in the Dark (Book 2): Amazon  ~  Barnes & Noble  ~ Apple

All the Way to Heaven (Book 1) - FREE:  Amazon  ~  Barnes & Noble  ~  Apple

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Featured Author: Sherry D. Ficklin

Title: Playing With Fire

Blurb: 

One brilliant young hacker. 

One experimental government aircraft. 

One chance to keep it all from going up in flames. 

Still recovering from her troubled past, Farris is no stranger to change. But when the military transfers her father across the country to an experimental aircraft squadron, settling in to a new life is the least of her problems. As a series of apparent computer glitches threaten the security of the fleet and the blame falls on her father, she decides to put her computer skills to use digging up the truth. Soon she's drawn into the perilous world of a hacker who is determined to ground the fleet—at any cost.
When all signs lead to someone close to her as the mastermind, Farris will have to burn more than bridges to get to the truth. She will have to risk her fragile new life to uncover the identity of the cyber criminal before they can escalate from harmless tampering… to all out murder.

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Featured Author: Lila Felix

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Title: Lightning Kissed

Blurb: Colby Evans can leap from one country to the next in a heartbeat. She can see every sunset in every time zone in the same day. She can travel across the world in a flash. She defies gravity and physics with every breath she takes. She's tested her abilities and found them limitless. 
She is the lightning. She is Lucent. And nothing can stop her. 
Except him. 
Theodore Ramsey isn't supposed to be able to flash like Colby. The power of travel is passed on from mother to daughter in their people. Except once in every hundred generations. 
Theo is the one. 
He can flash like Colby. And it makes him a target to their enemies and to himself. His abilities change everything he knows about life and throws his future into an uncertain tangent. In fact, the only thing certain in his life is the love he feels for Colby. 
Their love defies time and space and has been the only constant thing in their lives since childhood. But even their infallible love will be stretched to its limits. 
She will risk her life to protect him. But he will risk everything to protect them all.

The Idea Factory

Last month, after I sent out a newsletter asking what subscribers wanted to see in future ones, some responded they wanted to hear more about me and my writing process. A few wrote sample questions. The most repeated one was, where do you get your ideas?

I think this is probably the most asked question authors get from readers. One writer--I don't remember who--said they have a pat (sarcastic) answer.

Where do you get your ideas?  Oh, I order them from the Idea Factory in Illinois. Ha-ha-ha. They say it with a straight face and hope the other person has a sense of humor. The thing is, this question doesn't have an easy answer. But since so many people are interested, I thought I'd give it a shot.

My ideas come from numerous places: movies that I think I know where they're going and find out it isn't how that writer wrote it, newspaper articles, songs, things friends say, books, etc.

The idea for Vampires Rule came to me when I was watching a vampire movie (horror movie, not Twilight), and I started thinking about the adjustments a person had to make when they got turned. Then I imagined what it would be like for a person who got changed back into a mortal. Could they return home to their family? Would the family accept them? Would their vampire friends let them go? Could the return to school and take up where they left off?

A lot of my ideas come from questions, strange questions that start going through my head when I'm bored.

The idea for Bait (the Order of the Spirit Realm series) came from how much I love the show Supernatural. It's the best thing on TV, in my opinion, and I've watched each episode at least fifteen times. The older episodes anyway. 

I was thinking about the life of monster hunters and decided I'd like to do a Supernatural type book with a girl hunter as the MC. It seemed only natural to me to make her into a Van Helsing since he's the most famous hunter in history. I also had the idea for a rock star slash vampire slayer a long time ago. Nick Gallos (lead singer for Bad-Rock) was supposed to have his own series, but he fit in so well in this one. 

And he was the perfect guy for Bay-Lee. His strengths make up for her weaknesses, and visa-versa. He says he fell in love with Bay-Lee when she threw him up against the wall and demanded he mentor her like he said he would. This is also when I fell in love with them as a couple. 

My upcoming Dragon's Breath series comes from my love of Greek Mythology, dragons, and boys who dream of being superheroes. 

The Witch-Game books happened because by the time I started shopping my vampire book around, Twilight was a big hit, and publishers repeatedly told me (and my agent) that the market was flooded with vampire books. So she and I decided that vampires and werewolves and ghosts were out. I needed something that hadn't been seen a million times.

Teen witches using their powers to play games at school seemed like the perfect solution. That idea came to me when I asked myself what I would have done at that age if I had powers. The answer? Use them to play games with my friends and influence boys. :)

Anyway, that is how I get my ideas. They come from different places, but one thing is always the same. It takes a long time for them to grow into fully realized material. Sometimes months. Sometimes years. 

My dog of thirteen years died this week, so I wanted to write a little something in honor of her. These are the things I will always remember about her:

1. She loved to do this cute fake-out like a basketball player. Am I going left? Am I going right?

2. When I hugged her, sometimes she would make this sound like she was talking to me.

3. She thought it was her job to keep an eye on the cows, but most of the time she was playing or napping. When she saw me coming out of the house, she would jump up and start barking at them and running at the fence. Then she'd look at me like, yeah that's right. I'm doing my job.

4. Her favorite thing was taking walks with me to the back fence. It's about fifteen acres from the house, so it was quite a ways. She'd run off, try to find something to chase, but she always kept me in her line of sight as if she didn't want me to get lost.

5. Whenever I was upset or hurt, she always came over to put her head either on my lap or against my leg.

So, Sheba, I want to say that I will miss seeing your beautiful face every day. I wish we'd had more time together, but I know you are in heaven, probably running as fast as you can. Love you.

Thanksgiving Thirty

Sorry. Didn't make it to thirty books. Health issues. Maybe next year.

1. Bible: Because I can't live without God's guidance, his love, and his protection. I have no idea how non-believers make it through a single day.

2. The Outsiders: Because this was my first YA book, the one that started it all. It made me realize that I wanted to do that. I wanted to make up other worlds and live in them.

3. Harry Potter: Because this is the book that got me reading YA again after I quit years ago. The awesome world-building in this series has no rivals. It's a magical place where kids and adults alike can lose themselves for a few hours.

4. Twilight: Because the book struck such an emotional chord in me. I know there are a lot of Twilight-haters out there, but this book reminded me of what first-love is actually like. Falling in love is hard on a tender heart.

5. Vampires Rule: Because this was the first YA I ever wrote and answered a question that weighed heavily on my mind for years. What happens when a vampire loses his fangs and his immortality but still has to fight werewolves?

6. The Demon's Lexicon: Because this book has such an awesome brother relationship in it. I loved these characters so much that by the end of the trilogy I couldn't write for a solid week. I just kept wondering why I didn't have brothers like Alan and Nick in my book. This book, the first in the series, also has an AWESOME surprise ending.

(I don't have a pic of the book cover, so here are Jace and Clary from the movie)
Found it.

7. City of Bones: Because this is the type of book I enjoy the most, and it's the closest to how I write. In fact, that's how I discovered it. A friend read City of Bones and told me that it reminded her of my writing. I was flattered after I picked up a copy and read it for myself.

8. Shiver: Because of the unique idea, at least it was unique to me, of people that change into wolves when it gets cold. They spend their winter months in fur, lol. Plus, it had a cute love story.

9. Need: This book is by Carrie Jones and deals with pixies. That's right. You heard me. Pixies. And that is why I loved it. The series also has a cool love story with two leading men. Which one will Zara choose? Read them and find out.

10. Bait: Another one by me, yes. This, to date, is my most involved series. Many twists. Lots of secrets. The love story involves Van Helsing's daughter and a not-so-dead rock star.

11. Vampire Diaries: Because this was written before Twilight and was so awesome that people believed the author had ripped off Bella and Edward. Not true. But Twilight did breathe life into it, and now the book is a series.

12. The Phantom Tollbooth: When I was a kid, the teacher read this to us every day. I think it was the second grade. This book sparked my imagination. It's the first book I can remember getting totally lost in.

13. Marked: Read this right after I finished Twilight, and I was on a vampire kick. The series lost me after the third book, but I love how this one started. Imaginative.

14. The Iliad: A lot of people think I'm crazy for loving this one as much as I do, but the idea of Greek gods behind the scenes, some on each side, sparked my interest in mythology.

15. Vampire Academy: Yeah, read this while still on the vampire craze. There are so many interesting stories with fanged creatures in them.

16. Pet Semetery: This is the only book that scared the stuffing out of me. I remember reading it one day in our tiny apartment when I was sixteen. My brother walked through the door, and I screamed. The book flew through the air. That's how good it is. In fact, if I want a scary read, that's my go-to book.

17. It: As long as we're talking about scary books, this one has an evil clown. Enough said.

18.