The winner of digital copies of Cattitude and Miracle Pie by Edie Ramer is:
101StrangeAngel
Congrats! You have until midnight, EST, Sunday, Oct. 28 to e-mail me or I will pick another winner.
Thanks again to Edie for doing the guest post and to everyone who left a comment.
Today, I’m please to welcome Edie Ramer to my blog. Edie is one of my author friends. She’s the author of Stardust Miracle, Dead People, and other books. Take it away, Edie:
STRONG HEROINES:
Garrison Keillor uses this phrase to describe the fictional town of Lake Wobegon: “Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
Books with strong women and good-looking men are my favorites. (I take “above average” children for granted.) Though my first introduction to stories was fairy tales, where the average heroines are passive, I quickly graduated to Nancy Drew, devouring her mysteries. At the same time, I loved Wonder Women comic books. In my teens, I found great books filled with strong women, like Little Women, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Pride and Prejudice. I love a strong heroine and dislike whiny heroines.
Jennifer writes three series with strong heroines. Gin, the assassin heroine in her Elemental Assassin series also runs a barbeque restaurant. So she kills and cooks. I honestly think the cooking part might be harder for me. I’m sure my husband would agree. Her other heroines are strong in different ways. You won’t find a weak one in the bunch.
And the men … She does well by them, too. They are good looking. And usually they have a few dollars or more in their many bank accounts – which often makes a man look even more good looking.
Since my first published book, Cattitude, in which a cat changes bodies with a woman and thinks anything a human can do, she can do better, my heroines have been strong. That includes the woman in my Miracle Interrupted books. In Mo’s Heart, the fifth book, Rosa Fabrini is probably one of the emotionally strongest characters I’ve written – and it’s something the hero loves about her.
Here’s a short excerpt from Mo’s Heart that takes place after she’s been forced to leave her home, and she’s temporarily staying in an apartment above the hero’s restaurant – right next to his.
All this ran through her mind in a second as Mo stopped beside her. “It’s not a palace.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do in a palace.”
“You’d be the queen. Anything you wanted.”
She laughed, surprised by his comment. Surprised that she had laughter in her. “I’d rather be a cook.”
“You are that. The best sous-chef in the village.”
There was a quiet moment between them, and a sense of peace sighed inside her as she looked at his serious face and knew he saw her as a strong woman, a woman who was temporarily down but not out. Never out. Not as long as she had breath.
She stood taller.
“The furniture is pretty ugly,” he said.
“I don’t know. The couch is the same color as your eyes.”
“Do me a favor?”
She looked at him. He never asked her for favors. “Of course.”
“Run downstairs and get my chef’s knife and bring it back up here.”
She laughed again and felt a shift inside her. Kind of like she imagined the earth felt when a boulder in a precarious spot moved. “Why?”
“So you can gouge my eyes out.”
GIVEAWAY TIME:
Edie is offering up digital copies of Cattitude and Miracle Pie to one winner. To enter, just leave a comment on this post talking about some heroines that you like.
The giveaway will be open through midnight, EST, Wednesday, April 17. The winner will be randomly selected and announced here on the blog on Friday, April 19.
ALL ABOUT EDIE:
Edie Ramer is funnier on the page than in real life. A multiple award-winning writer, she writes stories with heart, attitude, and magic. She lives in southeastern Wisconsin with her husband, dog and one important cat. She’s happy to do what she loves nearly every day.
MO’S HEART will be available online any day. For more information, visit edieramer.com and follow Edie on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.
Thanks so much for being here today, Edie.
The winner of e-copies of The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf and The Sevenfold Spell by Tia Nevitt is:
May
Congrats! You have until midnight, EST, Sunday, March 10 to e-mail me with the format that you want — Epub, Kindle, or PDF — or I will pick another winner.
Thanks again to Tia for doing the guest post and to everyone who left a comment.
Today, I’m pleased to welcome paranormal romance author Tia Nevitt to my blog. Tia is one of my author friends. She’s the author of the novella, The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf. Take it away, Tia:
Question: Hi, Tia. Thanks for taking the time to guest blog. Please tell us about your latest release, The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf.
Tia: Hi, Jennifer! Thanks for having me.
The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf is a retelling of Snow White. With this story, I wanted a heroine who was as unique as Talia was in The Sevenfold Spell (also a novella). Therefore, I wrote it from the point of view of one of the dwarfs, who I made female. Gretchen hears about a sort of a dwarf refuge, a farm owned by dwarfs and run by dwarfs. She travels there in search of love.
And of course, she wanders right into a fairy tale. I tried to do the same thing that I did with The Sevenfold Spell — fill in plot holes, and approach the story from new angles. But the Snow White story is much more straightforward than Sleeping Beauty.
The biggest unanswered mystery is the identity of that face in the magic mirror. So I decided to make him the prince! I then tied the whole story in knots and let the characters find their own way out.
Question: What inspired you to write The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf?
Tia: After coming up with my idea for Sleeping Beauty, the confiscation of the spinning wheels resulted in the unemployment of thousands of spinsters, I brainstormed ideas for several other fairy tales. As I said in the question above, the man in the mirror was the biggest mystery. Who was he, and why did he find the evil queen so beautiful?
Question: You’ve also written another fairy tale-themed story, The Sevenfold Spell. What interests you about fairy tales?
Tia: The same sort of thing that draws me into the fantasy genre as a whole. I love stories that can fill me with a sense of wonder, or stories where ordinary people — with no powers — have the guts to take on the supernatural.
Fairy tales started out as tales for an adult audience, but I learned to love them as a child, as most people do. I didn’t read fantasy when I was a teenager or a new adult. But once I discovered it, I never went back. I write all kinds of fantasy, not just fairy tales. But I had to start somewhere!
Question: What’s your favorite fairy tale?
Tia: Beauty and the Beast. I learned that story at an older age than Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty. Both characters intrigued me so. I like that story because Beauty is willing to sacrifice her future for her father, and because the Beast is so tormented and convinced that he could not be loved.
Beauty is a much more mature heroine. She does not idly dream of balls, or handsome princes. She is the one who gets all the action. She saves her father, she saves the Beast, and she saves his entire household of servants.
Question: Is The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf part of a series? If so, how many stories are planned?
Tia: At least three. I am working on my Beauty and the Beast story now. In it, the time limit for the Curse has passed, and the Beast is doomed to remain a beast for all of his days. In the original version of the story, the servants were all made invisible; they were not turned into inanimate objects. Well, when the time ran out for the Beast, it also ran out for them, and they are doomed to remain invisible forever as well.
The Beast decides to look for a nonmagical way to break — or to cure — the curse.
I also have a mostly complete draft of Cinderella, but I had a hard time with the premise. Once I finish my Beauty and the Beast story — which I am quite excited about — I’ll try to tackle Cinderella again.
So three for certain, but maybe four!
Question: What are some of your favorite books and authors?
Tia: I read a wide variety of genres. An enduring favorite series of mine is Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion. The same goes for Dragonlance and its authors. More recently, I have enjoyed your novels :D, David Anthony Durham’s Acacia series, KS Augustin’s space operas, John Scalzi’s science fiction, and a recent discovery of mine is Nicole Luiken’s epic fantasy, Gate to Kandrith. I already pre-ordered the sequel!
Question: What’s next for you?
Tia: I have been working on a time travel historical that spans a range of time from modern day back to the 20s, and the Civil War. It is quite an ambitious project with a lot of research required, and I expect to work on it for another year. I also have been self-publishing a dystopian series of short stories, but I won’t do a book launch for those until later this spring, when I have the third story ready. It’s been fun, but I’m not taking them very seriously. They are highly experimental!
Beyond that, who knows? I always have way more ideas than I have time to write!
GIVEAWAY TIME
Tia has generously offered up digital copies of The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf and The Sevenfold Spell to one winner — Epub, Kindle, or PDF — winner’s choice. The giveaway is open worldwide, and the winner will be randomly chosen.
To enter, just leave a comment on this post talking about what your favorite fairy tale is.
The giveaway will be open through midnight, EST, Wednesday, March 6. The winner will be announced here on the blog on Friday, March 8.
MORE ABOUT TIA
Not even a stint in the military as an aircraft mechanic could erase Tia Nevitt’s love of fairy tales. To this day, she loves to read (and write) books that take her to another place, or another time, or both. She also dabbles in calligraphy, violin, piano and songwriting. Tia has worked on an assembly line, as a computer programmer, a technical writer and a business analyst. She lives in the southeast with her husband and daughter.
Tia’s novella, The Sevenfold Spell, won the 2012 EPIC ebook award for Fantasy.
You can find Tia online at her website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.
Thanks so much for being here today, Tia.
The randomly selected winners of the three print ARCs (advanced reading copies) of Deadly Sting, the eighth book in my Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series, are:
Demi Bradley
Samantha Dawson
Celeste Stahl
Congrats, winners! You have until midnight, EST, Sunday Feb. 24 to e-mail me your mailing address so I can send the ARCs out to you. After that, I will pick other winners.
And thanks to everyone who left a comment. I appreciate all the nice words about my books, and I’m that glad you guys are looking forward to more of Gin’s adventures (and Gwen’s too). Plus, you guys gave me a bunch more books to add to my own TBR pile.
Anyway, thanks again, and happy reading!
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