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New Release! SCENT (The Delta Girls #3)
Book 3 in my Young Adult paranormal romantic suspense series is now available! Scent is a stand-alone story but also continues the overall mystery from book 1 (SIGHT), so if you haven’t read the first yet, the details are HERE. Book 1 is currently on special for 99c at some retailers.
SCENT is told from Sasha’s point of view. She can smell the future! 🙂 But she needs her sisters and their respective senses to be able to put their predictions together in order to help others and themselves.
Here is the book description:
Five extraordinary sisters discover that they each have a unique talent, an extra-sensory perception that enables them to see what others can’t. It makes them incredible, it puts them in danger, and it brings them closer to learning the secrets that have haunted them their entire lives. These are the Delta Girls.
Sassy Sasha is having an online interlude with a secret admirer. She’s convinced it’s the gorgeous Taylor Petrenko behind the romantic emails.
There’s little time for love, though. As new developments come to light around their father’s disappearance, the Delta Girls start to question just how well they knew their father. The sisters experience increasingly detailed and troubling sensory predictions that bring fear and uncertainty, weighing them down with the responsibility toward helping those in danger.
Sasha distracts herself with the excitement of newfound romance, refusing to partake in further analysis of the visions. When her sisters cover for her so she can sneak out for a date, her sense of scent becomes heightened and awakens the memory of a vision she shared with her sisters. Sasha realizes a moment too late that she is in danger, and must gather all of her strength if she is to save her own life.
SCENT is published by Diversion Books and is now available in both print and ebook from all online retailers, with audiobook to follow, and can be purchased or ordered from physical bookstores as well.
Links:
- FREE & fast international shipping from Book Depository (all 5 books available to order/preorder).
- Diversion Books
- Amazon US / Amazon Aus / Amazon UK
- iTunes/iBooks US / iTunes/iBooks Aus
- Kobo
- B&N
You can also add SCENT to Goodreads here.
I hope you’ll enjoy the 3rd book in The Delta Girls series! Book 4 (TASTE) is releasing in April 2016.
~ Juliet xo
THE DELTA GIRLS:
SIGHT (Savannah’s story) – now available!
SOUND (Serena’s story) – now available!
SCENT (Sasha’s story) – now available!
TASTE (Tamara’s story) – Coming April 2016
TOUCH (Talia’s story & the series conclusion)- Coming July 2016
NEW RELEASE! Book 2 of The Delta Girls: SOUND
Today is the official release day for SOUND (THE DELTA GIRLS #2)! 🙂
This is the 2nd of my 5 book series. It is a stand-alone story with romance, mystery, suspense, and of course the paranormal, but also continues the overall mystery from book 1 (SIGHT), so if you haven’t read the first yet, the details are HERE.
SOUND is told from Serena’s point of view. She can hear the future! And not only that, she starts to hear voices from spirits that are haunting the house that the boy she likes lives in.
Here is the book description:
Five extraordinary sisters discover that they each have a unique talent, an extra-sensory perception that enables them to see what others can’t. It makes them incredible, it puts them in danger, and it brings them closer to learning the secrets that have haunted them their entire lives. These are the Delta Girls.
Serena and her sisters read a private letter their father wrote to their mother, revealing a clue about his disappearance that they never knew about before. But as they struggle to gain further insight through their sensory visions, trying to solve the mystery continues to prove elusive.
The Delta Girls try to move on, balancing their supernatural abilities with the daily trials of being teenagers. Studious Serena teams with the classroom outcast, Lara, and her charming brother, Damon, for a school science project. They end up studying more than they bargained for, though, when strange noises come from rooms in Lara and Damon’s house. There are voices, but only Serena, with her special powers, can hear them. This is until the trio experiment with Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and are able to record and hear them on the computer.
Bringing in her extraordinary sisters to help, Serena must figure out who the voices belong to— and what they want—if she is to have a chance at stopping an impending tragedy before it’s too late.
SOUND is published by Diversion Books and is now available in both print and ebook from all online retailers, and can be purchased or ordered from physical bookstores as well.
Links:
- FREE & fast international shipping from Book Depository! (all 5 books also available to order/preorder)
- Diversion Books
- Amazon US / Amazon AUS / Amazon UK
- iTunes AUS / iTunes US
- Kobo
- B&N
- Booktopia (AUS)
You can also add SOUND to Goodreads HERE.
I hope you’ll enjoy the 2nd book in The Delta Girls series! Book 3 (SCENT) is releasing in January 2016.
~ Juliet xo
P.S. – For info on the first book in the series, SIGHT, click here.
New book deal: THE DELTA GIRLS – YA Series
I’m excited to announce that my Young Adult romantic mystery series is going to be published by Diversion Books! I’ve been keeping the premise of this book a bit of a secret and I’m so glad to finally be able to share it with you…
THE DELTA GIRLS is a five-book series about five sisters who can glimpse the future with one of the five senses each…
When the Delcarta sisters gather around the bed of their comatose youngest sister, Savannah, the unexpected happens. Not only does the sixteen-year-old awaken, but a unique ability awakens inside each of them: the five sisters can glimpse the future with one of the five senses each; Savannah with sight, Serena with sound, Sasha with scent, Tamara with taste, and Talia with touch.
Their gift only works by working together, so they must put aside sibling rivalry and collaborate, putting their sensory glimpses together to form a complete picture and work out the significance of their predictions.
As they experiment with their unique psychic ability and try to keep their secret on a ‘need to know’ basis while attempting to have a normal teenage social life with fun, friendship, and romance, they come across mysteries to solve and people to help in their small town community of Iris Harbour. But the one mystery they long to solve more than anything is the disappearance of their father nine years earlier.
Their determination to find out what happened takes over their lives and sends them on an unstoppable journey of discovery that will test not only their powers, but their inner strength and bonds of sisterhood.
Each book will be told from the point-of-view of one sister, and titled according to that sister’s particular psychic sense:
Book 1: SIGHT
Book 2: SOUND
Book 3: SCENT
Book 4: TASTE
Book 5: TOUCH
The Delta Girls are Savannah, Serena, Sasha (triplets), and Tamara and Talia (twins). The ‘delta’ part of the title relates to delta brainwaves that normally only occur in deep sleep and comas, but have been linked to psychic ability.
The books will be available in both print and ebook, with the first book releasing in Spring 2015 (American Spring, so Australian Autumn!).
You can follow my Pinterest board for the series HERE. And stay tuned for the launch of a new website just for The Delta Girls. To keep updated, make sure you are either subscribed to this blog and/or subscribe to my email newsletter, and/or follow me on Facebook and Twitter, and the dedicated Twitter account for The Delta Girls is HERE.
THE DELTA GIRLS
Five Sisters. Five Senses. One Gift. No Instructions.
Ten Awkward Questions with Emma Mills
In this segment, authors will be subjected to a list of awkward questions that may reveal more about themselves than they really wish to share, and they will receive a score on the ‘Braveometer’. If they choose to answer only five questions, they are a ‘Brave Author’, if they answer 6 to 9 questions they are a ‘Mega-Brave Author’, and if they answer all 10 questions they are an ‘Ultra-Brave Author’!
Today, please welcome YA author, Emma Mills, who is celebrating the release of WitchHunt!
1. If only one of your books could have been / could be published, which one would you choose? (C’mon, I don’t want to hear ‘Oh, I love them all, there’s no way I could choose.’ Time to be ruthless, these are the Ten Awkward Questions after all!)
Hmm the problem with this question is that so far I have only written a book series and you really need to read them in order! So it would need to be WitchBlood, because without the beginning the rest wouldn’t make sense! However, WitchBlood was my first attempt at writing and since then I have learnt a LOT! And I know from my reviews that my books have become better with each new release… so WitchBlood (but I should probably do a re-edit!)
2. Okay, now which one of your children/family members would you… nah, just kidding! Which of the following words most accurately describes your best personality trait (you must pick only one!):
Punctual. Good listener. Neat. Graceful. Generous. Cheerful.
Hmmm Punctual…possibly, but mostly ‘last minute’. Good Listener… I try to be. Neat… definitely not and I don’t think I’m particularly cheerful either. Maybe Graceful is the best (I still have the ‘bottom in/shoulders back’ posture that was drummed into me at ballet school). I was training to be a dancer until I injured my back at age 17.
3. Which of the following words most accurately describes your worst most challenging personality trait (even if you’re perfect, you must pick one):
Always late. Blabbermouth. Slob. Complete klutz. Scrooge. Grumpy pants.
Haha! It’s a choice between Slob and Grumpy Pants! Recently as I’ve been selling our house I have been forced to be tidier and clean more often, but due to the extra stress of my husband working 250 miles away I think I’ve been extra grumpy… So let’s go with Grumpy Cat… who I feel a certain affinity with!
4. Have you ever had a romantic crush on one of your characters? Who and why?
Hmm generally all the WitchBlood fans seem to love the vampire Daniel (as they should) but because I created him as a main character and know all his idiosyncrasies it feels weird in an almost incestuous way… I also have a soft spot for the clan leader Sebastian. It’s a power thing, also he’s very sexy!
5. When writing an important scene, do you act it out to allow you to better describe what’s happening?
Erm no! No acting here, but I do visualise it. I’ve always been excellent at daydreaming; in fact it showed up on my school report cards many times! So the characters become very real in my head.
6. Do you talk to yourself when writing or coming up with plot ideas?
Yes, I both talk to myself and hum a lot! But when your kids are at school and your husband is working 250 miles away, you have to talk to someone right? I even talk in my sleep…
7. Who would be ideal to play YOU in a movie of your life?
My life is going to have to get a LOT more interesting for there to be a movie made… but if I was to choose an actress… I’d go for Liv Tyler because I love her. I love that she’s not skinny, that she got to be an elf and she’s got similar hair to mine. She’s also only 1 year younger 🙂
8. If you could be any book character for one day, who would you be and why?
I’m tempted to choose Bella Swan, not because I love her character, but because I’d get to stand at the top of a redwood tree with Edward Cullen… but I think I’d have more fun choosing to be Thursday Next from Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. It’s about as close as you can get to travelling through time & space (minus The Doctor) AND you travel into literary classics. What could be better?
9. You’re about to be left on a deserted island for a year, and while your basic food and water needs will be met, you can only bring one extra thing from the following. Which would you choose?
a) A pen and notepad that never runs out
b) An unlimited supply of books
c) An unlimited supply of chocolate, coffee, or alcohol (your choice)
d) A gorgeous man/woman depending on your preference
I hate these questions and refuse to answer… I can never choose and will never get stranded on a deserted island… see I told you I could be grumpy!
10. If you had the attention of the whole world for two minutes what would you say?
Errm ‘Hi…’ and ‘Errm what the heck is going on? Why do you want to kill each other? And can we please start being nicer to animals?’ Then I’d sidle away quickly and quietly… blushing bright red!
Thanks Emma, you have been awarded Ultra-Brave Author on the Braveometer! Okay so question 9 was almost an answer, but I’ll give it to you 😉
Emma’s latest release: WitchHunt
As the Christmas season is ripped apart by the news that Jess’ old friend Alex has been turned into a vicious killer, festivities are dropped, Jess returns to England and the hunt begins. But Alex isn’t the only one being hunted, for Mary has found a way to extinguish the entire bloodline of Malden witches, and it is Jess’s book of shadows that’s the key. As things hot up, Jess finds she must leave Daniel and the safety of Manchester in a final hunt for her nemesis, Mary. In a fight-off that only one of them can survive, loved ones will fall… daemons will rise… but who will survive?
Find Emma online:
Facebook | Blog | Twitter | Goodreads |
Buy US:
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>>WIN! To score an ecopy of WitchBlood, the first book in Emma’s paranormal YA series, please leave a comment below. Bonus entry if you like Emma’s Facebook page (let us know in the comments that you’ve liked it).
Winner will be drawn 18th November and notified via email and on this blog. Good luck!
Novellas: The Writer’s Quick-Fix
Writers often slave over their manuscripts for months, sometimes missing out on sleep, and the writing is only half of it. Then comes editing, revising, editing, and so on. But because we love our craft we keep going – book after book after book. There is nothing like the reward of a finished book and a story well told.
Another option for those who need a writing ‘fix’ is to try your hand at writing a novella. Longer than a short story but shorter than a novel, novellas allow us to tell a story in a shorter amount of time but with that same thrill of creating characters and scenes that will take us (and the reader) on an emotional journey.
Shorter doesn’t necessarily mean easier though – you have been warned! You still need to work on characterisation, goal, motivation, and conflict, and be able to show enough character growth through the shorter word count. But they are usually much quicker to write and edit, and because of the advance of e-publishing and self-publishing, novellas seem to be more widely available nowadays.
Novellas can be produced more quickly, you can explore certain ideas that may not be sustainable through an entire novel, they are good for seasonal stories (eg: Christmas), and they can also be used as prequels or sequels to longer works of fiction. For the reader, they are a bite sized read that can be devoured in one go during a lunch break or before bed, but often still providing that same sense of emotional satisfaction that comes from reading a novel. They are a good way to discover new authors too, without committing to a full length book.
I recently wrote my first novella, STARSTRUCK IN SEATTLE; the first in a series of novellas linked by a quirky character named Lulu. It took me about three weeks to write the first draft. And when I say three weeks, I don’t mean three full-on weeks, I mean snippets of writing time here and there around motherhood and other duties! So if I didn’t have much else to do, I could probably have written it in about a week (says the optimistic part of me 😉 )
How did I come up with the idea for my novella? Sleepless in Seattle was on television and because I am a sucker for stories of ‘fate’ and romance that is ‘just like magic’, an idea about an online matchmaker and Love Coach came to me. But in this case, the matchmaker has a little secret. Here’s the blurb for the story…
Actress Anna Hilford has a major crush, but not on just any guy – Karl Drake, the leading actor in the television drama on which she works as an extra. Sick of being loveless and second best in the shadow of her famous sister, Anna seeks the help of Lulu from LuluTheLoveAngel.com to give her the courage and determination to follow what she believes is her destiny and transform from ‘extra’ to ‘leading lady’ in both life and love. What she doesn’t realize however, is that Lulu really is an angel and destiny has other ideas.
I found writing this novella fun and rewarding, though still a bit of hard work here and there! And in case you’re wondering, Lulu’s website does exist, though she told me she’s having a little vacation on Cloud Nine and will hopefully be back soon 😉
~ Have you written a novella? Feel free to give yours a plug in the comments.
~ Do you read novellas? What are some that you’ve enjoyed reading recently?
JULIET MADISON 