Friday, September 13, 2013

#PitMad

Edited:

The original post was available on September 12 "#PitMad Day" only.
However, I have added a tab for my YA novel that I am querying, and I have left the short pitch here.


Title: UNDER THE VIOLET SKY
Genre: YA fantasy
Words: 88,000

16-year-old Melinda learned about Salem witches in eighth grade. Luke learned from his ancestors, the creators of the magically protected society he lives in. For three hundred years that society has been kept secret. Now an uprising has spilled outside its barriers threatening to expose – or worse – to destroy it. As Luke fights to save his world he struggles with his feelings for Melinda, a mortal. Melinda finds herself in the middle of a civil war she doesn't understand, with a target on her back, and in love with a boy she may never see again.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Getting to Know You

Thursday's Children creators Rhiann and Kristina are hosting the Like a Virgin Contest. Click here to go to the website for more information. Part of the festivities include the Getting to Know You Blog Hop, where contestants are answering 7 question.

Here are my answers:

1. How do you remember your first kiss?
  This is really sad, but I remember my best friend Kathy more than the boy or the kiss. Lol. Kathy and I were babysitting a neighbor kid. It was a summer night, probably around 11. The kid was in bed. Kathy and I were hanging out in front of the house when a group of neighborhood kids came by. Among them, the boy I liked and had been flirting with. Eventually, Kathy went inside and the others left. Just as the boy started to kiss me we heard a muffled scream and then a grunt. He started to kiss me again, when all of a sudden Kathy comes limping and dirty from the side of the house, past us, and back into the house. She apparently tried to sneak around from the back, so she could spy on us. What she didn’t realize was that the homeowners had dug a huge hole on the side, next to the house, to build a chimney to the basement. Needless to say … she ruined the mood.


2. What was your first favorite love song?  Against All Odds by Phil Collin


 
3. What’s the first thing you do when you begin writing for the day?  I really don’t have a routine or ritual. 
 
4. Who’s the first writer who truly inspired you to become a writer?  Don’t roll your eyes, but Stephenie Meyer. I had written a few picture books, but when I read Twilight I became obsessed. I was going through some health issues at the time, it was way to escape. Then I decided to shift my obsession into my own characters.



5. Did the final revision of your first book have the same first chapter it started with?  No. My first chapter changed more times than the rest of the book combined.

6. For your first book, which came first: major characters, plot or setting?  I just started writing and exploring with a couple of characters. I had a setting in mind, but no plot. I wrote a lot, filling a notebook. None of that actually ended up in the book. Also, I wrote the entire first draft in first person and later changed it to third.

7. What’s the first word you want to roll off the tip of someone’s tongue when they think of your writing? Obsessed.


 A weekly blog hop where
writers share their inspirations

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Monday, July 1, 2013

In Stone Release Day & Blog Tour

Hey guys!
I'm so excited for In Stone's release! Louise is an absolute doll. Check out the short excerpt below. I know you'll want to read more. Also, make sure you enter the Kindle Fire giveaway.


Title: In Stone
Author: Louise D. Gornall
Publisher and Imprint: Entranced Publishing, Blush
Genre: YA paranormal romance
Release Date: July 1
Length: 120 pages

Blurb:

Beau Bailey is suffering from a post-break-up meltdown when she happens across a knife in her local park and takes it home. Less than a week later, the new boy in school has her trapped in an alley; he’s sprouted horns and is going to kill Beau unless she hands over the knife.

Until Eighteenth-century gargoyle, Jack, shows up to save her.

Jack has woken from a century-long slumber to tell Beau that she’s unwittingly been drafted into a power struggle between two immortal races: Demons and Gargoyles. The knife is the only one in existence capable of killing immortals and they’ll tear the world apart to get it back. To draw the warring immortals away from her home, Beau goes with Jack in search of the mind-bending realm known as the Underworld, a place where they’ll hopefully be able to destroy the knife and prevent all hell from breaking loose. That is, provided they can outrun the demons chasing them

Buy Links:







Short Excerpt:

As a general rule, nobody walks the Switch on account of the overgrown nettle bushes, a pungent aroma of foot infection, and a collective fear of encountering something feral. However, the Switch shaves at least ten minutes off my journey, and lately I don’t trust the dark. I blame my encounter with the almost-corpse, two nights ago. Before then the dark was just a natural progression; something to be slept in, a different color in the sky. Now, shadows make me jump, and the dark carries a silence that makes me think of funerals. It breathes life into creatures that had always been safely contained behind a TV screen. I make my way down the Switch, striding over vicious flora and trying to ignore the occasional nip that sinks straight through my jeans.

“Hey, Beau!” A voice from behind startles me. When I turn, Gray is jogging in my direction, thwarting thorn bushes with his bare hands. “I was looking for you.”

The hairs on the back of my neck bristle. My hand is in my pocket, and my fingers are wrapped around a slender cylinder of pepper spray as he reaches me.

“Well you found me. What’s up?”

“There’s something I need to ask you,” he says sheepishly. He hammers his toe against the ground, grinding it nervously into the dirt and crushing several stems of dandelion into gold dust. He giggles; it’s a soft, sweet sound that suffocates my hostility. He reminds me of Mark moments before he’d asked me out on our first date. Maybe this guy could be the one to liberate me from my social network sabbatical. Maybe my slightly-too-heavy eyeliner and my reputation as the mortician’s daughter hasn’t freaked him out.

“Really?” Surprise raises my pitch. “What’s that?” The pepper spray is abandoned in my pocket.

“Where’s the knife?” he replies, snatching my throat and slamming my back up against the concrete wall. It’s so forceful, so hard, that my spine ripples. Red flashes across my vision. The muscles in my neck go slack, and my head flops forward. He stabs his thumb up under my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye. His eyes are like the moon; cold, giant circles of icy-silver. But a change in his eye color is nothing in comparison to the change happening on either side of his head. I don’t understand it. It makes me wonder, briefly, if what I’m seeing is a side effect of the migraine pills Leah slipped me at lunch. Gray is growing horns. Giant grey horns that slide out of the side of his skull and then curl like springs around his ears. They’re animal.

Review Snippets:

Straight away I was drawn in by the story and Louise's fantastic writing style, and I really struggled to put it down.”

If a story can have me so invested that it brings out those kind of emotions in me - whether happy or sad - then I know I've found another to add to my favourites, and In Stone was one of those books.”


About the Author:


Louise is a graduate of Garstang Community Academy. She is currently studying for a BA (Hons) in English language and literature with special emphasis on creative writing. YA aficionado. Brit bird. Film nerd. Identical twin. Junk food enthusiast. Rumored pink Power Ranger. Zombie apocalypse 2012 survivor. She is also an avid collector of book boyfriends.

Author Social Media Links:



Giveaway – Open Internationally

To celebrate her upcoming release, Louise is giving away an ecopy of IN STONE and a Kindle Fire to one lucky reader! One runner-up will also win an ecopy of IN STONE. UK and US residents are eligible to win the Kindle Fire. If you live outside the UK or US and your name is drawn, you will receive an Amazon gift card valued at £160 (GBP) instead. The winners will be announced July 29. Good luck! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway



Friday, June 21, 2013

Thursday's Children 6/20/13

A weekly blog hop
where writers share their inspirations.
Please join us!

I'm having a tough time finding inspiration ... it's been a bad week.
It all started last Friday afternoon when I went to Wal-mart to pick up a Father's Day present for my husband, and some things for a beach getaway with extended family. 

I left the store with $300 worth of stuff in my grocery cart. Then stopped just outside the main entrance to give a dollar to some kids raising money for some athletic group.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon --about 5:30. We hadn't had a day like this in a while. Besides some fibromyalgia pain, I was feeling pretty good. The parking lot wasn't crazy. I'd remembered where I had parked the car, because it was one of the first parking spaces. Score!

Then ... I got hit by a pickup truck.

That sucks. A LOT.

heard him hit the gas and saw him cut the corner. Unfortunately, I also saw that he was looking the other way, trying to beat another car coming from a different direction. With split seconds to think, and only a matter of feet until impact, it's really hard to know what to do.

I decided it might be better if he hit the cart first. I was told by the Wal-mart manager (who has reviewed the security footage of the accident) that I probably did the right thing. The grocery cart took the brunt of the initial impact. The manager also said the cart was "done for."

The good news is, nothing seems to be broken. They x-rayed my lower back/pelvis, right ankle and right forearm, and did a CT scan of my head and neck. I'm still in a lot of pain, mostly my back and right hip.

It's all been downhill since the accident.

Beach getaway was a bust, leaving that extension of my family broken. I ended up staying in a crappy motel for a couple of nights, and coming home early. The weather was gray and rainy most of the time as well.

Then I found out last night that my father, who lives in Calgary, is going to lose EVERYTHING from massive flooding.


I've always believed that bad things come in threes. So guess what? I'm done.

But wait ...

I always try to see the positive side of things.

So, I'm going to remember ...

I did have a good time with the people I was with in the small motel room.

I did get to see some sights and experience some places that I wouldn't have if everything had gone according to plan. We ended up in Wildwood, NJ.

Wildwood did inspire a story idea. (Which reminds me, I better write that down.)

And, I could have been laid up in the hospital with serious injuries.



Or worse ...




At least I'm not that horseshoe crab.

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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Thursday's Children 5/30/13

Inspired by animals ...
A weekly blog hop
where writers share their inspirations.
Please join us!


I love animals. All animals. They have an innocent quality about them. Well, except cats. Cats are rarely innocent. But I love them anyway.
We've had a cat for 16 years. Her name is Mouse. She's not pictured here. Click here to see her and the poem she inspired. I must confess, my real love for cats didn't happen until 2 years ago. This isn't a secret, Mouse knows why.

So, what happened 2 years ago?

I met this little girl. We adopted her from a shelter. Her name is Dr. Penelope Puddles, MD. She specializes in ear, nose and throat. We call her Penny for short.
But her full name is on the records at the vet. I love getting the post card reminder. "Dr. Penelope Puddles, MD is due for her rabies shot."
A month after adopting Penny, we had to stop in at the shelter to prepay for her spay appointment.



That's when this little guy, Jeffrey, ambushed us. That's right. Ambushed. My daughters and I were standing at the front counter, and all of a sudden this little guy is climbing up my leg. Some of the older cats are allowed to wander the shelter, but not the kittens. They are kept separate.
Anyway, I pick him up and say, "Where'd you come from?"
The lady behind the counter was surprised. She had no idea how he got out. She scooped him up and put him back in his enclosure.
About a minute later he was back at my feet, meowing with the tiniest, squeakiest, cutest meow I've ever heard.



A couple of months later our area suffered massive floods and devastation. Many animals were among the displaced.
This little girl. Wanda, was found under a car in a parking lot, barely three weeks old. She was listless when we brought her home. We immediately got formula in her mouth using a syringe, and were relieved when she started perking up.
Over the next few days my daughters and I found three more cats and kittens. We nursed them all back to health and found each of them homes. 



Here are Jeffrey and Wanda, now.
They are so much fun.




We've rescued a lot of animals over the years.


This is a red eared slider that was bought on the streets of NYC, by a teacher in my daughter's school. The teacher (whom was not my daughter's) bought two for her classroom. They were about an inch and a half at the time. If you're not aware, it is illegal to sell them under 4 inches long. And the streets of NYC is NO PLACE TO BUY A TURTLE. I'm not going to rant. *unclenches fists* 
Big surprise, within a day one turtle was dead and the other was not doing well. I picked my daughter up from school that day. She was sobbing when she got in the car. She told me about the turtle situation. So, I marched up to the classroom, and demanded the turtle. "I'll give you twenty bucks for the turtle." It got slightly complicated and ugly. But I got the turtle. We had him for about three years, until he was of legal and safe size, and found him a nice home. By the way, in those three years he had two ear infections. Did you know they had ears? Did you know they could get ear infections? lol. I didn't. And surgery is the only way to treat them. Yes, surgery. Twice.    



This is a mud turtle that someone found IN THE WILD while visiting Georgia, and decided it was a good idea to bring home as a pet. They had him in a plastic container. He's a cute little guy, however he is trying to bite me in this picture. lol.






For about a year we were involved with Mainley Rat Rescue, fostering rescued rats until they found a home.
Rats are very sweet, and make good pets.






We adopted two greyhounds through Monica's Heart greyhound rescue. They are the BEST.

Davinci and Newton





Not all of the animals we've had were rescues.
For instance, the button quail that my oldest daughter decided to hatch herself. lol.

What's cuter than a tiny button quail?







Five tiny button quail
in your hand.







I love tiny things.
Like this toad that
we got as a tadpole.






And this crested gecko
eating from a spoon.






I even surprised myself by falling in love with this sand boa. Never thought I would like a snake.










Chinchillas! Ohmigosh, I love my chinchillas!

Janice Tripplehorn



Helen Merriweather
We have three saltwater tanks. It's surprising how relaxing it can be just watching the fish and other critters in there.


The reef tank is probably my favorite.


Here I am with a fennec fox, a prairie dog, and a coatimundi. Oh boy, did I want to take each of them home! :(





There's no better way to relieve stress than spending time with a beloved pet. 
Do your pets, or animals, inspire you?

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