Book Cover Release: DUSTY by Mary Elizabeth & Sarah Elizabeth

 

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Releasing July 14, 2014

 

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Synopsis

Bliss knows all about bad choices but has yet to make them herself. With an innocent heart, she searches for freedom and finds it in the delinquent down the hall.

Dusty is a foul-mouthed troublemaker, tear-maker and heartbreaker. The boy with summer sky-blue eyes knows to stay away, but he can’t resist the girl who made his house a home.

She’s his reason, but he might not catch her when she falls.

She loves him. He loves her crazy.

This is what happens when a love made of secrets is kept with rules instead of promises.

 

Excerpt

Chapter Ten

Buried beneath the blankets, I press the phone to my ear. Dusty doesn’t realize I’m back on, so I listen to him smoke: light, inhale, exhale, sigh, laugh. Hearing it is almost as good as actually seeing his lips around the end of a joint.

“I’m back,” I whisper.

“Beautiful, beautiful, baby Bliss. Baby, baby Bliss.” He laughs, taking a hit.

My dad’s a juvenile court judge. Our dinner table talk usually consists of him complaining about the kids he sees coming in and out of his courtroom. It’s an epidemic, he says. Children Bliss’ age using drugs. And it always ends with, Bliss, never give into peer pressure. It starts with a little grass.

Maybe it is some kind sweeping epidemic, but weed doesn’t sway Dusty the way my dad claims it does other people. It soothes him. It makes him funny and honest and tolerable.

My dad doesn’t know everything.

“I thought about you all day,” Dusty says softly, lazily. “I miss your face. I miss your candy wrappers all over my room. I miss your cold toes on my legs under the covers.”

“Oh, yeah?” I grip the phone tighter, pressing my knees together. The sound of his low voice sends chills up and down my arms. I bite my bottom lip and curl my toes.

“Come over,” he exhales.

I roll onto my side and turn my face into the hoodie’s hood, inhaling the faint sent of vanilla. I’m lit up, full of crazy butterflies and overriding happiness. This boy makes me smile bright.

“I’ll take my mom’s car. I’ll come get you.” He’s only half-kidding. “Say yes.”

“You’ll drive high?”

“I’m not high.” There’s a moment of silence before he chokes on his laughter. “I’m so fucking high.”

I revel in his tone, and his voice, and his silly, half-slurred words while I lie in the dark pretending he’s close.

“I’m so hungry, Bliss baby. If you were here, I’d probably eat your elbow. I’d eat your—”

“Dusty,” I cut him off. “Tell me a secret.”

“I love you,” he says.

 

 

MeetTheAuthor

 

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FACEBOOK * GOODREADS * TWITTER * WEBSITE * DUO FACEBOOK PAGE

Mary Elizabeth is an up and coming author who finds words in chaos, writing stories about the skeletons hanging in your closets. Known as The Realist, she is one half of The Elizabeths—a duo brave enough to never hide the truth. Born and raised in Southern California, she’s a wife, mother of four beautiful children, and dog tamer to one enthusiastic Pit Bull and a prissy Chihuahua. She’s a hairstylist by day but contemporary fiction, new adult author by night. Mary can often be found finger twirling her hair and chewing on a stick of licorice while writing and rewriting a sentence over and over until it’s perfect. She discovered her talent for tale-telling accidentally, but literature is in her stranglehold. And she’s not letting go until every story is told.

To follow Mary’s upcoming solo and collaborative projects, she can be found at her website http://www.maryelizabethlit.com/.

Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of their collaboration, Innocents, will be released on July 14, 2014. And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014.

If you’d like to contact The Elizabeths, they can be located on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheElizabethsDusty?ref=hl.

Sarah Author Pic

GOODREADS * TWITTER * WEBSITE * FACEBOOK * DUO’S FACEBOOK PAGE

Listener, messenger, secret keeper, Elizabeth, and TrueLove, Sarah works two jobs by day so that she’s able to really work by night. She’s written since she was old enough to hold a marker, and her writing bridges the sacred and profane, from first love to forbidden, with a longing for truth and a passion for hearts. She is currently based in Kansas City where her army is comprised of one little buffalo. Her best friends are girls named Moses and Bunny. Her hero is a boy named Bishop, and the one she loves has ocean eyes. In addition to Dusty, Sarah also has a collaborative novella, Light and Wine, due to be released on June 8th, and her solo work will be featured in the anthology Branded, this August.

Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of their collaboration, Innocents, will be released on July 14, 2014. And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014.

If you’d like to contact The Elizabeths, they can be located on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheElizabethsDusty?ref=hl.

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Check Out Becca Fitzpatrick’s Black Ice Book Cover

Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick -- exclusive EW.com imageEntertainment Weekly revealed an exclusive look at Becca Fitzpatrick’s new book Black Ice.

Britt Pfeiffer has trained to backpack the Teton Range, but she isn’t prepared when her ex-boyfriend, who still haunts her every thought, wants to join her. Before Britt can explore her feelings for Calvin, an unexpected blizzard forces her to seek shelter in a remote cabin, accepting the hospitality of its two very handsome occupants—but these men are fugitives, and they take her hostage.

Black Ice hits shelves October 7th!

 

REVIEW: Rachel McAdams Stars in Another Time-Related Movie, ABOUT TIME

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I have to start by saying that I had my doubts about this film, ABOUT TIME. My first thought was, Why is Rachel McAdams in another romance movie about time traveling? Unfortunately, I can’t compare the two films because *gasp* I never saw THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE. I know, I am a disgrace to woman-kind for not seeing every Nicholas Sparks film. That’s beside the point. ABOUT TIME follows the story of a freshly 21 year-old Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) who discovers he comes from a long line of time travelers. His father, played by the eccentric Bill Nighy, is the anchor of the story. His guiding wisdom transcends the overarching theme — time does not drive life; life drives time. Life should, thus, be centered around the moments rather than the years that have passed.

Perhaps I’m getting too metaphorical. What you are thinking now is .. How does Rachel McAdams play into all this? Well, I’m getting there; trust me. Tim’s great, world-changing manifesto when asked what he will do with his new-found ‘talent’ is not to change history — because he provisionally can’t do that anyways — but to pick up a girlfriend. Time traveling sure is handy when you have those first date jitters. Even with time on your side, Tim proves that getting a girlfriend is a lot harder than it looks. It’s not until he moves out of his parents’ house in Cornwall and into the big, mysterious abyss of urban life that he meets the love of his life, Mary (Rachel McAdams).

I don’t want to give too much away in this review because, quite frankly, words never do motion picture justice. I will say, however, that Domhnall Gleeson’s performance is quite charming. He is definitely not what you’d picture as leading man material, but I have to say that the chemistry that him and McAdams have is so believable. They work off each other well. Gleeson, in particular, makes you feel his character, Tim. His expressions are heartfelt. McAdams gives a great performance, as usual, but what struck me the most about her was how envious of her bob and bangs I became. I know, you’re supposed to look at her acting, blah blah blah. It’s Rachel McAdams we’re talking about. She always gives A+ performances, so if I want to talk about her hair and fashion (which had Anthropologie written all over it, metaphorically, not literally), then so be it!

One topic that resonated the most with me was the notion that although time-traveling had its perks, it came down to the fact that life is such a precious thing. Life cannot be ‘saved’; life can only be cherished. There becomes a time in your life that you have to decide to move-on, to keep living, to make tangible the intangibility of the future. We all wish that we could take back those moments in life that embarrassed us or made us scared or changed the path we were once taking, but in actuality, it was those moments that have shaped us into who we are today. Can you image how your life would be if you made every decision play out just as you wanted it?

With all of that being said, would I recommend this film to my fellow female audience? Hell-to-the-YES! ABOUT TIME is by far a chic-flick. I’m not sure the male audience will enjoy it unless they don’t mind being that shoulder to cry on during the tougher, emotional moments of the film. Ladies bring your friends, a few tissues, and maybe a gallon of ice cream because you’re in for a Notebook-like experience.

ABOUT TIME hits theaters nationwide on Nov 8th.

J.M Darhower’s “Sempre: Redemption” Cover Reveal

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In this thrilling and sexy follow-up to Sempre, two young lovers struggle to keep their relationship intact after they become deeply enmeshed in the dangerous mafia-run crime ring they once tried to overthrow.

Haven Antonelli and Carmine DeMarco have been through a lot. Haven was taken in by Carmine’s father, and with his family’s help, she escaped a gruesome fate. However, saving Haven from the dark intentions of a mafia family cost Carmine a steep price: he was forced to swear loyalty to them.

Now, still passionately in love, Carmine and Haven must face the fall-out of Carmine’s forced service, as Haven discovers terrifying secrets about the family that enslaved both her and her mother—and why she matters so much in this intricate web of lies.

 

What do you think of the beautiful cover for Sempre: Redemption? It will be released on December 23rd, 2013 – a little over a month after Sempre re-releases on November 25th, 2013!

Pre-order links:

S&S.com | Kindle | iBookstore | Nook

 

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About the author:

JM Darhower is the author of countless stories and poems, most of which only she has ever read. She lives in a tiny town in rural North Carolina, where she churns out more words than will ever see the light of day. She has a deep passion for politics and speaking out against human trafficking, and when she isn’t writing (or fangirling about books) she’s usually ranting about those things.

Chronic crimper with a vulgar mouth, she admits to having a Twitter addiction. You can usually always find her there.

Author’s links:

 Twitter | Facebook | Website

Veronica Roth Writes To Fans Explaining End of “Allegiant”

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After a very controversial and highly talked about finale for the “Divergent” trilogy, author, Veronica Roth wrote a long blog post explaining the ending of “Allegiant”. Check it out below but please be aware there are SPOILERS below!

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR “ALLEGIANT” BELOW!

So, I am back from tour– all the events last week were wonderful. The lovely Christian Madsen and Ansel Elgort joined me for the New York City stop, I read little pieces from the Four short stories in Dallas and San Francisco, and I sang backup for my brother in Downer’s Grove. I met so many wonderful readers with thoughts and insights and stories and T-shirts and marshmallows, and it was a great time.

All week, people who had read Allegiant were asking me the same question, and people on the Internet were asking, too. I answered it very briefly in a spoilery MTV interview that went up today, but I wanted to post a longer answer that goes a little deeper for those of you who are interested. I’m trying to be very careful about marking spoilers, so hopefully all this works.

Warning: this post will spoil the end of Allegiant for you if you read it. Like within the first three paragraphs. So please proceed with caution. And if you quote this post on any other site, please do your fellow readers the kindness of marking or tagging spoilers well. Thank you!

allegiantspoilersIn my college creative writing program, we had a rule: during workshop, when your story is being critiqued, you aren’t allowed to say anything. This is to give your peers the freedom to interpret your work and point out the flaws in it without you shouting them down; it’s also because your defense doesn’t actually mean anything, though you might think it does. If your explanations and intentions are not clear to the reader, buried inside the text, that isn’t the reader’s fault, it’s the author’s.

Responding to readers’ comments about the Divergent books has always felt the same way to me, like it would just be me shouting other people down when I should be letting them speak freely, and as badly as some criticism hurts (and it does, because I’m only human, after all), I never, ever want that.

So that’s not what I’m trying to do here. A lot of people have been asking me why Tris died at the end of Allegiant, and what I do want to do here is answer that question as well as I can. But if you’re concerned about my voice imposing itself over your own, please stop reading this post– that’s the last thing I want. I don’t want to tell you how to read these books or even to tell you there’s one right way to read them. I just want to offer you some insight into how I personally found my way to this ending, if you’re interested in hearing it.
Before I get into it, I’m going to say a few things, though:

1. You are allowed—encouraged!— to continue to feel however you want to feel, or think however you want to think, about the ending, no matter what this blog post says. I’m the author, yes, but this book is yours as well as mine now, and our voices are equal in this conversation.

2. Just because I try to do something with my writing doesn’t necessarily mean that I do it well, so there is also room to say “Okay, I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think that what you were trying to do worked.”

I’ve said before that this ending was always a part of the plan, but one thing I want to make clear is that I didn’t choose it to shock anyone, or to upset anyone, or because I’m ruthless with my characters—no, no, no. I may have been ruthless with other characters, in the past, but not with her, never with her. And I wasn’t thinking about any readers when I wrote this book; I was thinking about the story, because trying to meet the expectations of so many readers would be paralyzing. There’s no way to please everyone, because that mythical book with the ending that every single person wants can’t exist—you want different things, each one of you. The only thing I can do, in light of that fact, is write an honest story as best I can.

What happened to Tris’s parents at the end of Divergent was in some ways the catalyst for the rest of the series. Before that point, Tris had rejected her parents’ values and beliefs in a very tangible way by choosing Dauntless. She struggled throughout Divergent to reconcile two identities: her Abnegation identity, which Four points out to her, and her Dauntless identity. It’s just before her mother gives up her life that Tris figures out how those identities fit together, combining selflessness and bravery and love for her family and love for her faction all together under one umbrella: Divergent. It’s a moment of triumph followed by a moment of total devastation, when Natalie dies so that Tris can escape. And then Andrew follows soon after.

Tris’s parents’ deaths were revelatory moments, both for Tris and for me. For Tris, they seemed to awaken her to the power of self-sacrifice out of love; she later handed over the gun to Four rather than kill him, essentially giving her life rather than taking his. She said something in that moment about the power of self-sacrifice, but her actions don’t quite apply that power in the best way—letting herself get killed, at that time, was maybe noble from a romantic perspective, but wouldn’t have saved the Dauntless from being simulation-controlled zombies, and wouldn’t have saved Tobias from his own simulation.

For me, Tris’s parents’ deaths made me realize that though Tris had tangibly abandoned her parents’ faction, she was never quite able to separate herself from them, never quite wanted to; that the true struggle of her character, the one she had never been able to let go of, was to figure out how to honor her parents while still maintaining her distinct identity. That was her struggle in Divergent in a more subtle way, but it was also her struggle in a far more obvious way in Insurgent.

Tris spent Insurgent warring with grief and guilt in light of her parents’ deaths and of her hasty actions in shooting Will to save her own life (which is the opposite of what she does for Tobias, further showing that Tris hadn’t quite figured out how to be selfless at that point). The “selfless” acts she thought she was performing in Insurgent—charging upstairs during the Erudite-Dauntless attack unarmed, spying on Max’s conversation with Jack Kang without a weapon, and then handing herself over at Erudite headquarters even when she’s asked not to—were more self-destructive than anything. She rationalized those self-destructive acts by calling them selfless, but when she was about to be executed, she realized that her parents didn’t give their lives for her just so that she could die when it wasn’t necessary. She realized that she wanted to live.

She emerged from that near-execution with new maturity: she valued her own life, she wanted to solve problems without resorting to violence, she sought truth over destruction. That Tris had not quite figured out what selflessness was to her, but she had discovered what it wasn’t: self-annihilation.

That was how Tris was at the beginning of Allegiant. She was no longer risking her life for no reason. She was still struggling with her beliefs about selflessness—but this time, she was wondering whether Caleb, when he volunteered to go on the one-way mission to the Weapons Lab, was motivated by love or guilt. She struggled with whether it was ethical to let Caleb’s sacrifice happen throughout the rest of the book. And while she was struggling with his decision, she was also struggling with her own identity; her constant questioning about what selflessness is was inextricably linked to her sense of self, as it had been for the past two books. This struggle finally came to a head when she and Caleb were running toward the Weapons Lab, and she said this: “He is a part of me, always will be, and I am a part of him, too. I don’t belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don’t belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the fringe. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me—they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.” (455)

After that, Tris entered the same role her parents played when they died for her. She loved and gave her life for Caleb even after he betrayed her, the same way her parents loved and gave their lives for her after she left them for Dauntless.

But this time, unlike in Insurgent, the act wasn’t self-destructive. Tris’s peculiar relationship to the serums was that she was able to overcome them (like the Dauntless fear simulations and the Candor truth serum) unless on some level she wanted them to work (like with the Amity peace serum). So when she passed through the death serum outside the Weapons Lab and it didn’t kill her, that suggested she wasn’t seeking her own destruction. She was truly acting out of love for Caleb.

At the end, she had a conversation with David where she told him her beliefs about sacrifice, that it should come from love, strength, and necessity. That was a Tris who knew what she believed about selflessness. Who knew who she was. Who knew what she wanted to do. In each book she tried to emulate her parents’ sacrifice, and in each book she didn’t seem to understand what that sacrifice really was, until Allegiant. And it’s only in Allegiant, when she had a strong sense of identity, when she had a keen understanding of what she (and her parents) believed about selflessness, that her journey was over.

I thought about reaching out with my authorial hand and snatching her from that awful situation. I thought about it and I agonized over it. But to me, that felt dishonest and emotionally manipulative. This was the end she had chosen, and I felt she had earned an ending that was as powerful as she was.

In Insurgent, before she’s “executed,” she screams into nothingness, “I’m not done yet!”

In Allegiant, she asks her mother, “Am I done yet?”

And her mother says, “Yes. My dear child, you’ve done so well.”

I understand being upset about the loss of a character you care about, and I’m so glad you care about her, because I do, too. I am proud of the way this ending mirrors those of the other books, of the way it reflects the realistic (given the dystopian, dangerous setting) losses of those books, the way it shows what Tris is truly made of, and the way it concludes her hard-earned transformation. I think her love for her brother is beautiful, powerful.

I have heard a wide range of reactions to the book, and I accept and respect all of those reactions as valid. But my personal feelings about the ending haven’t changed. I will miss her, that Tris voice in my head. But I’m so, so proud of her strength.

WATCH: Veronica Roth’s First SPOILER FILLED Interview about “Divergent” with MTV

Veronica Roth sat down with our favorite MTV correspondent, Josh Horowitz, and talked about the conclusion of her epic “Divergent” trilogy.

WARNING: There are spoilers ahead. Do not watch this video if you are avoiding spoilers. SPOILERS!

WATCH: Veronica Roth Reads First Chapter of Allegiant

The third and last installment in the Divergent series,  Allegiant, has officially been released. Veronica Roth recorded a special midnight message to Divergent fans and joins in the Allegiant madness by reading the first chapter.

Check out Veronica Roth reading the first chapter of Allegiant in the video below:

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Order your copy of Allegiant here.

New VAMPIRE ACADEMY: The Ultimate Guide

VAMPIRE ACADEMY fans your ultimate guide to your favorite and #1 international book series that’s also been turned into a major motion picture has arrived! Coming out December 31, fans will be able to re-visit the world of VAMPIRE ACADEMY in a whole new way, going deeper into the halls of St. Vladimir, examining the spirit bond between Rose and Lissa a little closer, and so much more! Best of all look who’s on the cover….Zoey Deutch who plays our beloved lead character Rose Hathaway in the upcoming film being released on Valentine’s Day 2014.

So make sure you sink your teeth into the must-have collector’s item for every fan of Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series, complete with color photos from the set of the movie! Preorder your copy now on Amazon.

James Dashner “The Eye Of Minds” Out Today

James Dashner, the author of the best selling series “The Maze Runner”, released the first book in a new series today. The series is entitled “The Mortality Doctrine” and the first book in the series is “The Eye Of Minds”. The series set in a world of hyperadvanced technology, cyberterrorists, and gaming beyond your wildest dreams . . . and your worst nightmares.

James Dashner will also be going on a book tour starting tonight in Salt Lake City! Check out his website to see if he’s stopping in your town! http://www.theeyeofminds.com/tour-schedule/

Check out this awesome trailer for the book.

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