Book to be Excited About – The Renegades

Secret Identities.
Extraordinary Powers.
She wants vengeance. He wants justice.

The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies—humans with extraordinary abilities—who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone…except the villains they once overthrew.

Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice—and in Nova. But Nova’s allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.

Guys!  I am so excited about Marissa Meyer’s announcement that she will have a new book out this Fall!!

I love everything she has written so far and just finished Heartless earlier this month with a review to come soon.  She is definitely a favorite writer and really knows how to put you into the world of her stories.  I get so stoked when I find out that writers I love have books coming soon.  The only part I don’t like is the wait!  I love X-men; I used to read and collect the comics.  I also love the super hero movies, so the fact that she has a super hero novel coming out is really exciting.  Are y’all excited too??

Cover Reveal – Before She Ignites

Hi Guys!  It has been interesting getting back into the swing of things now that I don’t have to worry about any homework and school lectures and due dates.  I still somehow manage to have a full schedule though!  There just isn’t enough time in the day to do everything I want/need to do O.O

So for those of you who haven’t seen this yet, Jodi Meadows has a new book coming and she just reveled the cover on Friday!  It is so beautiful!  I have loved all of her book covers and this one is no exception.  My two favorite parts of the cover are the crown that is glowing and the letter S with its awesome dragon tail.

Not only is the cover really awesome looking, but the book sounds like it is going to be a fun and exciting read.  I mean…DRAGONS!!  Really can’t wait for it!

If you would like to read Jodi’s post about her cover and her excitement about being a bigger part of the design process for it, you can find it here!

Now for the gorgeous cover!!

ISN’T IT BEAUTIFUL!!??

Why must I wait until September???

Updates!!

Hey Guys!  I know it has been a LONG WHILE since my last post, but school must come first.  It has been going really well and I am thoroughly enjoying the program!  I have a 4.0 GPA and have been invited into honor societies, so I am pretty stoked about that.  I have always been an overachiever when it comes to school 🙂 I just can’t help myself.  I will be finishing my Bachelor’s in creative writing in October and will probably be continuing on to get my Master’s.

Writing has always been my number one passion, so I am so happy I am finally able to do a program for it.  Since I have gotten through most of the program and really settled into the rhythm of my big change, I am going to start posting reviews again.  I have been so busy with school that I don’t get to read as often as I would like, but I will still do them when I can.  I have two holds I am excited about that I am waiting on at the library.  One is Marissa Meyer’s final book of the Lunar Chronicles series Winter, which has been one of my absolute favorite series ever!  She is brilliant with the way she has done her fairy tale re-imaginings, and if you haven’t started this series, I highly suggest you do!

The other book I am excited about is the first in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Bones, and yeah, I know I should be ashamed of myself for not having started this one yet.  I have been watching the show though, which has been a lot of fun.  I definitely like Dominic Sherwood as Jace better than Jamie Campbell Bower.  There is so much that is different from the movie that came out a couple years ago and I know the TV show will be more accurate since they get to stretch it out.  Have any of y’all been watching the show?  What do y’all think so far?

I will be posting a review soon, so keep an eye out for that.  I hope everybody has been doing well!

Updates and Such

Hey guys!  Long time no posting, sorry about that.  As I mentioned before in one of my last posts, I started school back, which is very exciting (I’m one of those dorks who love school!) and I’ve had to do some adjusting with being so busy in life, work and now back to school.  All I have been able to read for the past couple of months is Shakespeare since that was my first class and it has been fun and I should finish with a 98!!  My next two classes are going to be Humanities and World Mythology (which I’m super excited about) and I have definitely been enjoying the online classes so far and it works great with my schedule.  I am going to try to start posting reviews again and though I won’t be able to post as much stuff as before I started school back, I still will be doing some!  I’ve also taken on a lot at the house, and by a lot I mean people.  Due to some bad circumstances, I have 4 extra bodies at my house, my mother in law, her mother, my brother in law and his cousin.  So needless to say, it is a bit cramped (we already had 4 bodies to begin with so now it is up to 8)!!  Thanks to those of you who have still been checking my blog and being patient while I got settled into my new routine.  I look forward to discussing more bookish things with you all!

 

P.S. Are any of you going to be attending YALLFEST?  I will be there for my 3rd straight year and CAN’T WAIT!!!

News & Updates

So, some of you may have noticed I’ve been missing for a bit.  Well, it isn’t without good reason.  It has been hard to keep up with everything lately with how busy I have been and how crazy everything was for the past little bit.  I had three of my family end up in the hospital and I have also been dealing with my own health issues.  I almost lost my nanny to a stroke, which I posted about earlier and thankfully she is doing much better, but sometimes it can still be hard for her.

As for my own health issues, I have a couple different things going on, luckily none are life threatening, but can be tough to deal with and depressing, so I haven’t felt like doing a whole lot lately, including reading, so it has been hard recently to feel up to some things.  I even debated on ending the blog, which I genuinely do not want to do, but it is getting so so hard to keep up with it lately with everything that is going on and life in general.  But I REALLY REALLY do not want to end it because I do love it and the people that are in the blogosphere.

I also made a really important decision two weeks ago, and that was to apply to go back to school to get a bachelor’s in creative writing.  I know it isn’t necessary to have a degree to become a writer, but I feel like it is something I need to do for myself because I love school and I love writing and I really want to embed myself in it.  This will make me busier as well, along with work since some big things may be changing for me at work, though nothing is finalized yet so I can’t say with certainty right now.

With all of this stuff keeping me busy, it is going to make it hard to keep up with updating regularly on here, but for now, I am not going to stop blogging, but I will post when I can, which probably is not going to be near as often as I’d like.  And thank you so much to those who kept posting for my meme Cover Crush, even when I couldn’t get myself going to do it.  So that is what has been going on in my life and I hope everybody is doing well!

End of Hiatus

So my one week hiatus turned into two weeks, but I will be posting again now.  I had to take the hiatus due to a family emergency.  My nanny ended up in the hospital with a bad stroke and I spent a lot of time at the hospital when I wasn’t at work.  She is doing a lot better know thankfully and they got her to the hospital in enough time to give her TPA, which is a special medication for stroke patients that have to be given within a small window of time and I’ll tell you right now, that stuff is amazing!  Thanks to it, she is still able to move her arm and leg that were affected and it reversed a lot of the damage from the stroke that could have potentially been permanent.  The biggest difficulties now is still her speech and a few memory issues.  She couldn’t speak at all for the first few days, but talking to her yesterday, she is starting to make full sentences again, though her speech is slow and she still garbles some words.  I’ m just really grateful that she was with my mom when it happened and they recognized what it was right away and called the ambulance.  I’d love to hug the person that created the TPA meds for sure!  I hope none of you ever have to experience the terror of a loved one having a stroke but if you you do I hope everybody knows how to spot the signs and act F.A.S.T.

 

Short Hiatus

Hey guys!  I’m going to have to take a short hiatus for about a week because of a family emergency that happened this weekend.  I’ll be back soon as I can.  Happy reading!

Psycho Inside Me Blog Tour Excerpt & Giveaway!

 Psycho Inside Me
Bonnie R. Paulson
Author: Website | Twitter | Facebook |Goodreads
Buy it: Amazon | The Book Depository
Add it: Goodreads

 I killed my first victim at thirteen years old – my age, not his. He was going to rape me, him and a couple of his friends. And so, I killed him. And then… I killed again. And again. 
At seventeen, I’m killing four to six times a year – maybe more. Don’t stress out. I only go after the pedophiles and rapists. There are more out there than I could cover in a lifetime. 
Saying I did this on my own would be selfish. Enforcing justice holds a glory all its own. But now, my lifelong friend and backup, Deegan, has been arrested. I have to decide if I want to give myself up and take his place or leave him with all the damning evidence. I don’t want to stop killing. But if I let him take the fall, I can’t kill anymore. And I need to keep doing that. 
But the worst part of it all? I love him.

Excerpt

We stopped beside my bike.  I ran my fingers through my loose hair.  “Thanks for the flower.”

“Of course.  Together, right?”  He leaned with one arm above his head on the wall beside the bike rack.  “I don’t think the two crimes will be linked.  The techniques and circumstances were too different.  We should be in the clear.”  The late springs sun already worked on kissing his blond hair lighter in spots.  I couldn’t stop staring.

“I wanted to talk to you about that.”  I folded my arms and titles my head.

He brushed his bangs from his eyes. “Oh?”

“Yeah.  I was thinking it’d be good to, I don’t know, continue?”  I bit my lip and looked down.  How was I supposed to propose we find other sickos?  He’d never shown anything other than guilt regarding our actions.  While I had more complex emotions surrounding the circumstances, I didn’t doubt the sincerity or weight of the feelings he had.

The silence drew my gaze.  We stared into each other’s eyes.  He spoke first, his voice soft.  “Do you really want to do this?”

I shook my head no while saying, “Yes.”  Pressing my fingers to my forehead, I stopped moving.  “I’m sorry.  It’s not that I want to do this, like I want to?  It’s more like I almost feel like I need to.  Two people who no longer can hurt anyone else.”  Despair welled inside me.  “You think I can sleep afterwards?  I feel sick, can’t eat.  But then I saw Kari’s face when she heard he was gone and I… I felt a sense of accomplishment, like I’d done a good thing.”  I covered my face, breathing deep – the hot air recycling back to warm my skin.  Sliding my fingers onto my eyelids, I pressed up onto the upper curve of my eye sockets.  “But how can what I’ve done be good, right?  It’s wrong to kill.  It’s wrong to feel good about it.  It’s wrong to think about a possible next one.”  I dropped my hands.

Deegan watched me, his eyes sad and his lips curved in a side smile that held no humor.  “I don’t know how much of what we’ve done is necessary, you now?”  He shoved his hands into his jean pockets and hunched his shoulders.  “Do you know how many of these guys get off everyday?  Or they get such light sentences and then they’re released to go hurt more kids again.”

I spun from him, raising my hands and beseeching the sky.  “What are we doing?  Murder is wrong.”  And to so bluntly use the word slapped me across the face.  Murder.

Make sure you click the link below for a chance to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card!!!  You can find the other tour stops here.

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About the Author

 

There are people who know a lot about a little, we’ll call them experts. Then there are people, like Bonnie, who don’t specialize, but rather gather information like pebbles in their pockets and drop them like Hansel & Gretel in the stories they write.

The question is, do you want to follow them back?

 

Certified as a Radiologic Technologist, Bonnie prefers a touch of medical in her storylines. Don’t be surprised if romance somehow runs through a hospital or comes in contact with a paramedic. It’s just how she rolls. And you know there’s nothing more romantic than an 18 gauge needle poking your vein!

 

 

She and her Hubs delight in dirt biking, snowboarding, fishing, cooking, eating, spending time together and more with their adorable children.

My 2014 Reading Challenges

So this year, I am doing 4 challenges.  I didn’t do so hot in last year’s challenges, but I did have my own IRL challenges I had to deal with, so it’s ok.  This year though, I am not going to try to over exert myself and I’m definitely wanting to finish all of these and surpass my goals if I can.  We will see how it goes this year 🙂

I definitely think I can outdo myself this year since last year I read a whopping 35 books.  I see people reading 200 books and I just shake my head at myself, lol.  I am going to stay safe with the level Breaking a Sweat, which is 11-15 more books.  My goal for this year is 50, which seems so tiny in comparison to these super readers out there (seriously, how do some of y’all do it?!).  Hopefully I won’t have anything too crazy this year to keep me from my goal.

 

My shelves have so many books on them that I have bought, but still haven’t read yet, so this challenge is a necessity!  I really should be ashamed that I had to grab up all those books I just had to have, but then..there they are…staring at me…still unread.  So, TBR Pile Challenge, here I come!  I am going to commit to A Firm Handshake and try to read between 1-10 of my stack, which doesn’t seem like much, but there are so many books coming out I want to read too!

 

This one is always one of my favorite challenges because I love finding new favorite authors.  I will be including known and debuting authors for this challenge and I hope to find plenty of new favorites!  I am going to commit to 15 for this year.

 

I LOVE to compare between movies and books, though I am a watcher then reader, so when I found this challenge I knew I wanted to participate.  I think I will start off with Movie Devotee, which is 6 books, and see how it goes.  Maybe I’ll get more in than I hoped 

Discussion – Blog Roll Cuts

So I was going through my Awesome Blogs I Follow page and checking on the blogs I have listed to see if they were still up to date.  Sadly, there are a lot that haven’t posted in quite some time, stop posting all together or the blogs have disappeared and no longer exist.  I like to keep that page current with active blogs, ones that my readers would like to keep up with and are still active.  I don’t like having to cut anybody from the blog page but I also do not want blogs that are no longer active or missing up for my readers.  When I went through and checked this time I had 4 full sticky notes of blogs that are on my cut list.

 

There are 43 blogs on this list 😦  About 2/3 of the list are blogs that are completely gone or haven’t posted in at least 6 months.  The others are on my list to watch and see if they update since they are getting close to being inactive for 6 months.

I really do hate having to cut anybody and I hate seeing blogs come to an end, but I also understand that some people get too busy to be able to keep up with the demands of having a blog.  Sometimes people begin and don’t realize the work that goes into them, I know I didn’t whenever I first started.  What is yall’s  opinions on keeping your blog list current?  Do you cut old blogs that no longer post or do you keep them up in case other readers still might want to see it?  Do you have a specific time limit on how long the blog has been inactive before you decide to cut them?  I hate having to do it but I want the page to be as accurate as possible for my readers.  Let me know your what you guys think!