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    Rob-Con set for July 30-31 …

    Rob-Con 2016I’m doing something fun in a couple of weeks. I’ll be one of the many writers, artists, vendors, fans, and more attending Rob-Con 2016. The event will be held on July 30-31 at Viking Hall in Bristol, Tenn. from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. both days. Admission is $15 for one day or $20 for both days. Kids under 5 get in for free.

    I will be signing books on Saturday only, July 30, starting at 9 a.m. and going until 1 p.m.

    Rob-Con 2016 will feature writers and artists signing and selling their books and artwork, along with vendors who will have everything from comic books to toys to games. If it’s related to comic books, comic book movies/TV shows, or fantasy movies/TV shows, you can probably find it at Rob-Con 2016. Folks are encouraged to come in costume, and one of the highlights of the weekend is the costume contest, which will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, July 31.

    Now, I don’t have a superhero costume, but I do have several superhero T-shirts (Captain America, Black Widow, etc.). So that’s what I’ll be wearing. I always see lots of folks wearing really cool superhero T-shirts, which usually leads to me going online and ordering more superhero T-shirts for myself. LOL.

    Whether it’s a comic book convention like Rob-Con 2016 or a romance-writing convention like the RT Booklovers Convention, cons are always a lot of fun. It’s just really great to meet and hang out with people who are passionate about comics, books, writing, or whatever the con is about.

    Comic book and fantasy conventions are held in towns all across the U.S. (and world). If you’re unsure if there’s a con in your area, ask the folks at your local comic book store if they can point you in the right direction. Here’s hoping that you can make it to a con sometime soon.

    What about you guys? Do you plan to attend any conventions or book events this summer?

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    Novellas and short stories — Do you read them?

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    Note #1: This post will also appear on Tuesday, July 5 at Magical Musings.

    Note #2: I’m giving away 5 copies of Bitter Bite, Elemental Assassin #14, U.S. only. To enter, use the form at the bottom of this post.

    Unwanted finalUnwanted, e-novella #14.5 in my Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series, will be released on July 18. Woot!

    I’ve written several e-novellas for this series — Thread of Death, Kiss of Venom, and now Unwanted — along with short stories like Carniepunk: Parlor Tricks. There are also several free short stories for this series on the Free Reads page of my website.

    I enjoy writing the e-novellas and short stories — especially since many of them are from the secondary characters’ points of view.

    Unwanted is an e-novella that takes place after the events of Bitter Bite, book #14. It is told from the point of view of Finnegan Lane, Gin’s foster brother. If you’ve read Bitter Bite, then you know that Finn definitely needed his own story after everything that happened in that book. And a hug. 🙂

    Finn is one of the most popular characters in my Elemental Assassin series, and I’ve had many requests from readers over the years to write something from his point of view. After everything that happens to him in Bitter Bite, it seemed like the right time to finally give him a story. (And I also had time in my writing schedule to do it as well.)

    Writing the e-novellas and short stories really lets me delve into my secondary characters and show their emotions and feelings about everything that’s going on around them. It also lets me expand my overall world building and show different parts of Ashland, my fictional city, that I might not get to visit in a regular Elemental Assassin book.

    But I know that not everyone will read all the e-novellas and short stories, so I try to make each one of them almost like mini adventures for the secondary characters. That way, if you want to read the e-novellas and short stories, you are getting a complete story. But if you don’t want to read them, then you’re not going to miss out on anything that ties in to a major storyline in the main books.

    To me, the e-novellas and short stories are just fun bonus material for fans of my series, like all those behind-the-scenes features that you see on so many movie and TV show DVDs these days. I hope to write more of e-novellas and short stories and explore some of my other secondary characters. Time and writing schedule permitting, of course.

    What about you guys? Did you read e-novellas and short stories that tie into book series? Why or why not? What are some of your favorite book series?

    UNWANTED INFO

    Unwanted is about 20,000 words — around 75 pages — and will be available as an e-novella only. There will not be any print or audiobook versions at this time.

    Unwanted is priced at $1.99, and it is up for pre-order at the following sites:

    Amazon Kindle / Barnes & Noble / Books-A-Million / Google Play / iBooks / Kobo

    And here is the e-novella description. This contains major spoilers for Bitter Bite. So if you absolutely do not want to be spoiled, skip reading the e-novella description.

    The New York Times bestselling Elemental Assassin series continues with a new e-novella—from the point of view of Finnegan Lane, the foster brother of Gin Blanco, and a fan favorite of readers of the series.

    The fallout from his disastrous “family reunion” in Bitter Bite has left Finn feeling hurt, angry, and depressed. He can barely stand to look at himself in the mirror, much less eat any of the delicious barbecue from Gin’s famed Pork Pit restaurant.

    But when the funeral for a slain security guard at his bank turns into a showdown with some nasty underworld giants, Finn knows that he must act in order to protect an innocent family.

    Finnegan Lane might be the most unwanted man in Ashland these days, but he’s determined to try to make amends for his past mistakes…

    You can read an excerpt from the e-novella here. Scroll down, and click on the Read Excerpt tab.

    I hope that everyone enjoys the e-novella when it is released. Happy reading!

    BITTER BITE GIVEAWAY

    To gear up for Unwanted, I’m giving away 5 copies of Bitter Bite, Elemental Assassin #14, U.S. only. To enter, use the form below.
    a Rafflecopter giveaway

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    Elemental Assassin reading order …

    So I’ve been getting some questions about the reading order for my Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series.

    Book #15If you’ve looked at some of the online booksellers, you’ve probably noticed that the reading order on many of the sites is not correct. For some reason, it seems like many of the online retailers are now counting e-novellas and short stories as actual, full-length books in the series, which throws off the reading order. For example, I’ve seen Unwanted, e-novella #14.5, listed as book #18, and Unraveled, book #15, listed as book #19. And so on and so forth.

    I’m not sure if this is happening to other authors, or just to me, since there are so many works in my Elemental Assassin series now.

    Anyway, my publisher has been working to correct the problem, but I don’t know when it will be fixed — or if it even can be fixed. But if the books/e-novellas/stories look misnumbered online, then this is probably the reason why.

    You can always find the correct Elemental Assassin reading order here on my website, and I usually include the book/e-novella number when I talk about the various works in the series. Hope that helps. Thanks!

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    Young adult books then and now …

    4 Comments

    Note: This post will also appear tomorrow at Magical Musings.

    Several months ago, one of the ladies in my yoga class asked me about my young adult books, including Bright Blaze of Magic, the third and final book in my Black Blade young adult urban fantasy series.

    We started talking, along with the other ladies in class, and they mentioned something interesting — that their kids and teens in general these days just don’t seem to read the same books that their parents did. Specifically, that it seems like teens prefer to read fantasy books instead of the Nancy Drew mysteries and other classic books that their parents read when they were teens.

    The Secret of the Old ClockI keep thinking about this conversation because I loved reading Nancy Drew when I was growing up, and I specifically remember the cover shown at left. I read several different versions of Nancy Drew, and I also loved reading Trixie Belden, Sweet Valley High, the Baby-Sitters Club, and just about any other book/series I could get my hands on. I checked them all out from the library and read and re-read them time and time again.

    Looking back, it seems like I read more mysteries and contemporary books when I was young. I don’t remember reading a lot of fantasy books until I was in high school. That’s when I discovered authors like Terry Brooks and David Eddings.

    But once I started reading fantasy, I fell in love with the genre. I just loved all the fantasy books with all these characters going on these epic adventures and trying to save their kingdom, world, etc. from the bad guys. I like to read books with a little bit of everything in them, and to me, fantasy books were the perfect combination of action, adventure, magic, danger, and romance. And they still are today. Discovering fantasy books when I was a teen is probably one of the reasons why I write fantasy books today.

    Oh, I still read mysteries, romances, westerns, spy thrillers, and more, but fantasy books definitely hold a special place in my heart. And the more I think about it, the more I think that my yoga ladies are right. Just browsing through the young adult section at my local bookstores, it seems like most of the young adult books are fantasy books. And it seems like most of the big books that all the book blogs are talking about are often young adult epic fantasy books.

    So why is that? I think that maybe as teens get older and start becoming more independent, that they want to read about characters who are doing the same — folks who leave the safety of their homes/towns behind, go on these epic adventures, and use their magic for the greater good. I think there’s something that’s universally appealing about that, no matter how old you are, but that it really resonates with folks when they are in their teens and trying to figure out who they are and what they want to do in life.

    What do you guys think? Do the teens that you know prefer to read fantasy books? Or do they read a wide variety of books?

    Bright Blaze of Magic finalBright Blaze of Magic is out now. You can order the book at all the usual sites, including the following:

    Amazon Kindle / Amazon print / Barnes & Noble / Books-A-Million / Google Play / iBooks / IndieBound / Kobo

    The audiobook is available through Audible and Amazon, and Brittany Pressley is once again be the narrator.

    And here is the book description:

    BAD THINGS ALWAYS COME IN THREES…

    As a thief, I’m good at three things: hiding in the shadows, getting in and out unseen, and uncovering secrets. I put these skills to work for the Sinclair Family, one of the magical mobs that run the tourist town of Cloudburst Falls.

    Everyone knows Victor Draconi wants to take over all the other Families—and kill every last Sinclair. What they don’t know is that I’m on to him, and no way will I let the man who murdered my mom get away with hurting all the other people I care about. Especially when I’ve got places to break into, stuff to steal, and Devon Sinclair fighting right by my side…

    I hope that everyone enjoys the book. Happy reading! 🙂

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    Unraveled, Elemental Assassin #15, up for pre-order …

    2 Comments

    Book #15Unraveled, book #15 in my Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series, will be released on Aug. 30.

    The book will be available in print, e-book, and audiobook formats from all the usual retailers. It is up for pre-order at the following sites:

    Amazon Kindle / Amazon print / Barnes & Noble / Books-A-Million / Google Play / iBooks / IndieBound / Kobo

    The audiobook will be available through Audible and Amazon, and Lauren Fortgang will once again be the narrator. The audiobook pre-order links will be going up closer to the release date, probably sometime in mid-July.

    Here is the Unraveled description. This contains some spoilers from Bitter Bite, book #14. So if you haven’t read that far in the series yet, you may want to avoid reading the description below.

    What could go wrong when you’re trying to unravel a decades-old conspiracy? 

    As the current queen of the Ashland underworld, you would think that I, Gin Blanco, would know all about some secret society controlling things from behind the scenes. I might be the Spider, the city’s most fearsome assassin, but all my Ice and Stone elemental magic hasn’t done me a lick of good in learning more about “the Circle”. Despite my continued investigations, the trail’s gone as cold as the coming winter.

    So when Finnegan Lane, my foster brother, gets word of a surprising inheritance, we figure why not skip town for someplace less dangerous for a few days? That place: Bullet Pointe, a fancy hotel resort complex plus Old West theme park that Finn now owns lock, stock, and barrel. At first, all the struttin’ cowboys and sassy saloon girls are just hokey fun. But add in some shady coincidences and Circle assassins lurking all around, and vacationing becomes wilder—and deadlier—than any of us expected.

    Good thing this assassin brought plenty of knives to the gunfight …

    I’ve always wanted to write a western, and part of Unraveled, book #15, Aug. 30, takes place in an Old West theme park. So the book is my take on a western, Spider-style, of course, with Gin facing down some evil cowboys, among other bad guys. 🙂

    You can read the first chapter of Unraveled by going here. Scroll down, and click on the Read Excerpt tab.

    I hope that everyone enjoys the book when it is released.