Autographed books ready to roll

Here's the link for autographed copies of Uprising, first book in the Fires of Providence
series.

 The link is for orders within the United States and  includes the autographed book, random swag, and priority shipping via USPS.

International friends, I haven't forgotten about you! I'll post links as soon as I figure out which shipping option is  most affordable ,or you can message me directly for pricing information.

If you'd like a personalized inscription, please provide the name in the message section of the order page. Otherwise, it's just the signature.

Click away!

~ Dawn

Things I Learned Watching Spartacus

Allow me to break words.
After four epic seasons, Spartacus has come to a dramatic and heart-wrenching end. I cannot allow a show such as this to fade without proper tribute, so I present things I loved and learned watching Spartacus:


Kids are dicks.

The Gladiator Forearm Slap.

More than a handshake and less that a hug, this move screams Bromance.

Want to have some fun? Try picturing any two women in the series greeting one another like this. Heh.


Oenomaus.

"I'll take 'Baddest mother-fucker on the planet' for 1000 danari, Alex."

*Apologies*

The first word every Roman baby speaks.

Has the magical ability to erase all grievances.

*

A new song for Oktoberfest! 

Or baptisms and funerals, depending on which side of the family is hosting.

Kids are dicks.

Severed heads send strong messages .

Texting is all caps...doesn't.

(Ashur is totally air-texting here)

***

If anyone says you'll be properly attended, you're going to die.  

***

Spartacus Meets the Matrix

Agron meets Cirque De Solei

Crixus meets an 80's Grunge Band

Gannicus

         

Part surfer dude, part rock star, all gladiator: this guy lives for wine and women and conditioner. When he's not indulging in those things, he kills men blindfolded and talks like Ozzy.

***

"It's no easy task, to sever a man's head."

Thanks for the heads-up on that, Crixus.
***

SAXA 

"I am equal to any man !"

She said it. She proved it. And she's quite possibly the best girlfriend ever.

Kids are dicks.    

                                         

The Missio

Gladiator-talk, loosely defined as taking your toys and going home.

Naevia

"Even if we find her, she won't be the same woman from memory."

Because the original actress was replaced, perhaps? I see what you did there, DeKnight.

GAY GAY GAY!

No agenda, no political statement, no one batting an eye.
How cool is that?

Gold Masks

Might want to look under those before you get too excited.

***

There's more, but this post is starting to look like a Tumblr page so I better wrap it up.

Thank you Team Roman and Team Rebel.

You will be missed.

~Dawn

Uprising Deleted Scene #2 Rise at the Clinic

Walk write this way, please...

I was taught that every scene, every line, every word, should do one of two things: Advance the plot or build a character.

Even when this standard is met, there's still the issue of wordiness. If you can say something using 5 words, don't use 50. Hell, don't even use 6. Few books look good in purple.  

Sounds easy enough (not!) and you're confident all unnecessary words have been eliminated. Then the noble editor arrives, charging into the fray on a white horse, sword in hand, ready to cut, slice and kill all irrelevancies. This scene, for instance!

This was a scene I loved, but the editor suggested it be eliminated or, at the very least, be shortened to speed the pace. Hearing those words...it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest Indiana Jones style. Still, I wasn't going to risk seven years of bad luck by arguing with an editor. :)

There were some character insights I wanted to keep, so I opted to re-work this scene into a shorter version. It's gone from the story, but remains within my melodramatic soul.

Rise at the Clinic
(original)

She crushed down the trash, but was intercepted by Tammy, a Veterinary Technician with a long string of initials after her name from various specialty degrees. Common courtesy 101 was not part of the curriculum.

“Put this person in exam one.” She thrust a file at Rise and kept walking.

Rise looked down at the client record in her hand. “I don’t know how.” She’d only been trained in janitorial duties.

“Jesus Christ,” Tammy hissed, striding back. “Go out there. Call the name and put the dog on the scale.” She was talking deliberately slow. “Write down the weight. See this little line where it says ‘weight’? Right there. Ask the owner what’s wrong and write it down it this big, white area. Then put the chart on the door. It’s not rocket science. I’ll take care of the part that requires actual skill.”

Tammy blew out of the room, and Rise took a moment to process the situation. She didn’t want to make a mistake, especially not after Tammy’s comments. Rise headed to the lobby and tried to look natural, like she did this job every day. Doctor Mark was still out there with his potential next ex-wife, and Rise hoped he noticed how she was going out of her way to be helpful. She could use a raise.

“So, what seems to be the problem with Picasso today?” Rise asked once she had the client in the room. The dog was some sort of mixed breed, all different colors with a curling tail going in circles so fast it was a miracle she didn’t propel off the ground.

“She’s a rescue,” the woman said, and Rise had to attune her hearing to understand the accent that was like something out of a movie. “All of my dogs are rescues, okay?”

It sounded like she said ‘oil of my dogs are rez-cues’ and Rise tried not to laugh. How this woman came to be in Indianapolis was probably a great story.

Rise wrote down ‘rescue’ on the chart and nodded.

“I never had problems with any of my dogs before,” the woman continued and she waved her hand. Her nails were at least three inches long and bright red. “But this one, I have a problem with. I love my dog, okay?”

“Okay.”

“She uses the bathroom on the floor, even though she knows she’s supposed to go outside. I think she does it just to make me mad, because like I said, she knows she’s supposed to go out. And she barks when it rains.”

“She barks?” Rise had to stop herself from saying ‘bachs’.

“All the time, when it rains! And it rains a lot here, on account of all the farms. I know the rain is good for the corn, but it’s not good for my dog.”

Rise wrote that down, the important parts anyway. She left out the stuff about the corn.

“So I’ve got no history about this dog, I adopted her from the shelter back in New Jersey. That’s where we’re from.”

“Never would’ve guessed,” Rise whispered, far too quiet for the woman to hear.

“So I’m thinking the dog might have been born with a mental problem; maybe she got it from the mother? Or maybe she’s not a smart dog, I dunno, I’m not a doctor. But my husband, he works over at the pharmaceutical company now, right? He tells me that drug, the one for the suicidal women, you know which one I mean? He tells me dogs can take it. Is that right?”

Rise stared at the woman, remembering why she preferred dealing with dog shit over people. She had no idea what to write down or how to answer the question. Picasso was sniffing at her feet and she patted her head, stalling.

“You’ll need to ask Doctor Mark about that.” That was the go-to answer when techs didn’t know the answer.

“Well yeah, that’s why I drove all the way over here with my dog. I love my dog, but I can’t have a dog that uses the bathroom in the house. And the barking at the rain! I tell her, ‘no bark Picasso, no bark!’ But that doesn’t work with her.”

“I totally understand.” Rise added another falsehood to the list she was racking up today. Picasso looked to be a nice dog; she was sitting now, with her tongue hanging out.

Rise retreated from the exam room a little defeated. She caught up with Tammy and did her best to explain the situation, but the tech just rolled her eyes. Rise had no idea what that meant. She went back to getting the trash.

Namaste ~
Dawn

Which way does your writing swing?

Do men and women write differently? Can the gender of an author be determined by the words they choose? Some say yes and there's a test to prove it.

Check your writing

I was curious to see if this really worked, so I copied a few pages from my work-in-progress and pasted everything into the analyzer. My results?

Genre: Informal

  Female = 243

  Male    = 970

  Difference = 727; 79.96%

  Verdict: MALE

Does this mean I can stop shaving my legs?
~ Dawn

Hero to Zero in Three Minutes Flat

Allow me to serve as a warning for others.

A little while back, I found myself shuttling my daughter and her BFF to some sort of angst-ridden teenage event. They're huddled in the backseat, heads down over their cell phones and whispering about things I probably didn't want to hear anyway. Then, quite unexpectedly, they spoke. To me.

I never prepared for this particular eventuality. I mean, how often does a person engage their cab driver in conversation? I regrouped, and the following conversation ensues:

"I hear you wrote a book, Mrs. Jayne."

The honorific and overly- polite tone should've been my first clue something dastardly was afoot, but I just bobbed my head, grinned like an idiot, and hoped she had e-readers and expendable cash. I checked the rear-view mirror. I sense genuine interest. Score!

"So...what's it about?"

Eeek! Okay, play it cool, no big deal, just a question. I can do this. Don't look too anxious, keep it short. Don't want to scare her off.

"It's about angels, and...." I proceed with the synopsis, almost verbatim from the back-cover. I'm cool as a cucumber. I am rocking this!

"So...it's fiction?"

I would've thought the whole angel-element already cleared that up, but I don't say so. I make every attempt to sound quasi-bored as I answer various questions: How many pages? Did it come out this year? This is more interest than my own family has shown, and my leg is bouncing around like a dog getting a belly-run.

Then, unbelievably, the BFF asks about the characters!

At this point, I'm Sally Field.



Most writers talk for-ev-er about their characters. At least that's what I'm telling myself, because...well, I pretty much did.

There's more furious discussion about the plot and other things. I'm spending more time watching her decidedly not-bored expression instead of watching the road, so I wrap things up with a strategically placed verbal cliff-hanger. Then I hear this:

"What are the primary themes in the story?"

Crickets. Lighbulb. Devastation.

My reaction to finding out my pen-name is Cliff Notes?
















Trust no one.

Peace ~
Dawn

Book Launch! Lucifer ~ a novel by Annabell Cadiz

I am so excited to be a part of the launch for this book! I've been looking forward to this, and cannot wait to grab my copy and start reading!

                                                        Lucifer

(Sons of Old Trilogy, Book 1)

Author: Annabell Cadiz

Genre: New Adult, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Supernatural

Published: January 31, 2013

Synopsis: Have you ever wondered what could be hiding in the shadows?

Well, for eighteen-year-old Zahara Faraday, she doesn’t have to wonder. You see she comes from a lineage of Light Witches, those who have chosen to help protect and serve between the supernatural world and the human world. The only problem is Zahara, like her father Solomon, is as human as a human being can be whereas her mother, Mia, and her Aunt Catalina, were born as Light Witches. As a family they hunt down rogue supernaturals—creatures who harm humans or who have committed an act against their kingdom. 

Zahara’s hunting skills are usually kept dormant since her parents would prefer she live life as a normal human girl without knowledge of the supernatural world. She plans on doing just that—except when she finds a couple being attacked by fairies, she has no choice but to step in. Before she can return to pretending to be blissfully ignorant, Zahara encounters a problem she isn’t the least equip to handle: Bryan Hamilton, the good looking new co-worker she has to help train. In a heartbeat, her best friend, Becca King, has set her up on a double date with herself and her new crush, Rekesh Saint-Louis, who happens to be the most powerful leader of the biggest Imago Coven in South Florida –supernatural creatures with the ability to control water . . . and suck out human souls. 

Zahara has no time to focus on how she’s going to explain her double date with her best friend and the enemy they have a tentative truce with to her parents because soon one of the members of Mia and Catalina’s coven is found murdered with a strange tattoo of a snake with wings carved into his arm.

Zahara is then thrown into a whirlwind battle with an angel determined to have revenge against God, an Imago coven she doesn’t think they should trust, and slew of dream-eating fairies and powerful Nephilims, hybrid children of angels and humans, more than happy to rip her to shreds.

Normal just got a deadlier definition.

Excerpt

The fairy moved slowly, his eyes roaming the park for movement. He sniffed the air as the breeze wafted through the bushes then turned his attention sharply back to the bushes. Zahara jumped back to her feet to steer him away from Becca and took off running. The fairy ran after her, moving so fast Becca thought he could merge with the wind. She let out a long breath and stumbled out of the bushes, knowing her best friend couldn’t fight him alone.

Zahara just ran, trying to find a place to hide and catch her breath, but seeing none. She staggered forward as the wind pushed her from behind and was suddenly gripped by the neck by a hand composed of pure muscle. The fairy threw her onto the ground and raked his nails across Zahara’s face. Zahara managed to cover her face with her arms, and cried out as she felt the skin ripping open.

“Hey! Get the hell away from my best friend, you demon, tree-hugging bastard!” Becca yelled and rammed herself into him. She fell to the ground with the fairy and drove the dagger into his side as hard as she could. She flipped herself up off the fairy and jumped back to her feet, standing hunched forward with her muscles locked as the fairy stood.

He removed the dagger from his side and threw it onto the ground, eyeing Becca with a hard glare. Zahara aimed another arrow at him, but the fairy swung his arm out, throwing Zahara into the air with the strength of his power. He pounced on Becca, who managed to dodge him and stay on her feet. She eyed the dagger quickly, trying to measure how far she would have to jump to retrieve it. The fairy moved toward her and Becca leapt, except she couldn’t move. Her arms and legs were as rigid as an iron board. She couldn’t even blink.

The fairy curled his lips into a wicked smile and grabbed her hair, yanking her head back forcibly and bringing his lips to hers. Becca tried to close her eyes. If she closed her eyes than he wouldn’t be able to steal her memories or her dreams, but she couldn’t make her eyes listen. Her brain was sending out a loud warning signal, but nothing was happening. The fairy opened his mouth slightly and inhaled deeply. Becca saw the memory before it left her. It was the one where she had gone to the Father-Daughter Dance at church with her dad the year before. She could feel the memory fading, her dad’s smile and warm arms around her disappearing into darkness, as the memory was sucked out through her lips, a thick layer of blue, corporeal energy, before being transferred into the fairy’s mouth. Becca could feel tears streaming down the side of her face.

Zahara got onto her knees, and wavered back and forth as she tried to shake the pain out of her head. She grabbed another arrow from the canister strapped across her shoulders and aimed for the fairy. She blinked a few times, since her vision was still out of focus, shifting between seeing Becca and seeing a blurry version of her. She shut her eyes tightly and opened them again, staring intently at the fairy, and shot off the arrow. The arrow bounced off some kind of shield the fairy had put into place.

Zahara growled underneath her breath and took off running toward Becca and the fairy. She could see the blue stream of energy escaping Becca’s lips and felt her heart pounding in her veins as she roared and launched herself at the shield. The fairy paid no heed to Zahara’s attempt to save her best friend. Zahara pounded her fist against the invisible shield. She stepped back, breathing hard, and stabbed one of the arrows into the shield as hard as she could. The shield cracked and burst open as the tip of the arrow set itself on fire.

The fairy hissed at Zahara and threw Becca onto the ground. Zahara tried to aim the arrow at the fairy, but was once again thrown back by his power. Zahara lifted her head and grabbed the bow. She tried to get to her knees—every muscle in her body protesting—so she could aim another arrow, but the fairy threw her back again. Zahara cursed under her breath as her bow flew out of her hand and she was smacked into the back of a bench.

Zahara looked up toward the fairy, feeling behind her back for another arrow, but finding none. She cursed under her breath again. She had forgotten to restock them after training. The fairy was moving with slow steps, his eyes blazing in triumph as he neared her. He was enjoying having finally worn out his prey and Zahara scowled at him.

Suddenly, the fairy turned his head sharply to the right and another figure emerged. Zahara’s shoulders slumped back. She could not handle fighting off two of them; she wasn’t even sure how to defend herself against one of them without any kind of weapon. But Zahara realized the fairy wasn’t moving anymore. He was crouched forward and his hands were in fists. Zahara looked at the new figure and cringed. It was Rekesh. His skin revealed his true nature as he slid off the glamour and the moonlight caressed his bare neck and face, turning his skin silver.

Rekesh was an Imago, a creature born of a mermaid and the fallen angel Kutiel. He could move ten times faster than any human and had the strength to rip a human apart with his bare hands. During the day, he looked like an ordinary person but at night, in the moments Rekesh dropped the glamour of magic, his skin would turn silver because of the power of the moon. The moon controlled the ocean and since his ancestry connected to the water, when nightfall came, his strength increased, and so would his power to control the element of water, if he had not been exiled from the Celeste Kingdom. Rekesh, like any Imago exiled, was stripped of his elemental power, but that did not make any less dangerous.

            “You have one chance to make this easy for yourself,” the Imago spoke out. He had his hands placed behind his back, eyeing the fairy with patience as if he were training a puppy.

            Zahara used the back of the bench to help her rise slowly to her feet, keeping her eyes on the fairy and Rekesh.

            “This does not concern you, Moonlighter,” the fairy spat. 

            “Attacking humans is against the law, Pixie,” Rekesh said. He had not moved. His demeanor was as relaxed as when he had first stepped into the battle.

            The fairy curled his lip at the last word. “You are no longer part of the Royal Court. I do not answer to you.”

            Zahara inched toward her bow, which was stuck in a bush twenty feet from where she stood.

            “You are in my domain. Any supernatural creature caught attacking humans will be captured and returned to the Kingdom from which you were exiled for sentencing. Now, I can see you will not make this easy for yourself, so I suggest enough of the idle pleasantries,” Rekesh said, before he launched himself toward the fairy so fast Zahara barely had time to take a breath.

            Zahara took off running as Rekesh and the fairy fought, moving with the wind. She could hear the thundering of fists and the cracking of broken bones, but could not see them. She didn’t care. She ran to Becca, determined to get them out of there before either one of the supernatural creatures had time to recover.

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  About the Author: Annabell Cadiz was born in the sweltering heat of South Florida. She was raised surrounded by Puerto Rican chefs and band of siblings that weren’t all related to her.

A self-proclaimed nerd and book-a-holic (her room does hold much evidence to prove her claims are justifiable), she created TeamNerd Reviews to showcase her EXTREME love for novels where, along with her best friend, Bridget Strahin, she hosts book reviews, interviews, giveaways, Indie Shoutouts and much more.

She also blog tour services for authors. She also had the pleasure of being published in three separate issue of Suspense Magazine. She also adores Cinnamon Teddy Grahams, has an addiction to Minute Maid Orange juice, and is a proud Jesus Freak.

 Lucifer is the first book in the Sons of Old Trilogy.

Where to Find the Author

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It's a Major Award!

UPRISING has been nominated for two awards on the yearly Editors and Predators reader polls!

If anyone would like to cast a vote, you can do so right here:

Best 2012 SciFi or Fantasy

Best 2012 Cover art




The polls require e-mail verification before a vote is counted - excellent feature to curtail ballot-stuffing. Humble gratitude for those who click.

Winners will not receive a leg lamp.
Bummer.

~ Dawn