Monday, May 19, 2014

Dark Cotillion Tour and Giveaway


Dark Cotillion
By Hadena James

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BLURB:

Brenna Strachan is half-Demon, half-Witch and it’s the eve of her 30th birthday. This means that she will stop aging and come into all her Demon powers. But there are forces at work hoping to keep her from Maturing. They must kill her in the short time that she is mortal. If they fail, she will take her place among the most powerful beings on Earth. What will it cost her to survive?


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Excerpt Three:


“I have silverware; there are at least a dozen boxes of assorted disposable utensils in the drawer.”

“Metal utensils?”

“Uh, yeah, my mom gave me a box of old silver when she gave me the china dishes.”

“China dishes?” He rolled his eyes as Gabriel snickered. “Do you have anything except antique Bone China place settings?”

“Ewww, they are made of bone? One more reason to use paper plates. Stop setting those things on my damn table.” I looked pointedly at Gabriel.

“No, Ani, she has almost nothing in her kitchen, except disposable and fine antiques that should be used only on very special occasions.” Gabriel looked back at me and stuck out his tongue.

“I tried to give the fine stuff back to mom, but she refused to take it. She said some nonsense about every homeowner needing a good set of dishes.”

“Let me get this straight,” Anubis shook his head again, “you have no food and even if you did, we couldn’t cook it unless it was microwavable, and then we would have to eat it on plates that are probably a couple hundred years old, with silverware that is probably older?”

“Sounds accurate,” I lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry; I’m just not very domestic.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Plotter or pantster?
Pantser all the way!

2. What books have influenced your writing style?
HP Lovecraft’s short stories, Mister B Gone by Clive Barker, and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

3. Classics or something else?
Not Tolstoy, everything else is fair game for my reading pleasure.

4. Favorite ice cream flavor?
Um, oddly, I don’t like ice cream… However, about once a year, I drink a milkshake and it’s almost always vanilla.

5. Favorite type of character to write about?
Damaged but strong.

6. Tell us one thing about you that no one knows.
I sleep in socks… all year long.  I actually have trouble sleeping without my socks.

7. Name three things on your desk right now.
A strange little pewter statue of a dolphin glued to a dragon’s tear, a statue of Anubis, and a deck of cards.

8. What is next on your writing timetable?
Book one of my new fantasy trilogy.



AUTHOR Bio and Links:
I’ve been writing for over two decades and before that, I was creating my own bedtime stories to tell myself.  I penned my first short story at the ripe old age of 8.  It was a fable about how the raccoon got its eye-mask and was roughly three pages of handwritten, 8 year old scrawl.  My mother still has it and occasionally, I still dig it out and admire it.

When I got my first computer, I took all my handwritten stories and typed them in.  Afterwards, I tossed the originals.  In my early twenties, I had a bit of a writer’s meltdown and deleted everything.  So, with the exception of the story about the raccoon, I actually have none of my writings from before I was 23.  Which is sad, because I had a half dozen other novels and well over two hundred short stories.  It has all been offered up to the computer and writing gods as a sacrifice and show of humility or some such nonsense that makes me feel less like an idiot about it.

I have been offered contracts with publishing houses in the past and always turned them down.  Now that I have experimented with being an Indie Author, I really like it and I’m really glad I turned them down.  However, if you had asked me this in the early years of 2000, I would have told you that I was an idiot (and it was a huge contributing factor to my deleting all my work). 

When I’m not writing, I play in a steel-tip dart league and enjoy going to dart tournaments.  I enjoy renaissance festivals and sanitized pirates who sing sea shanties.  My appetite for reading is ferocious and I consume two to three books a week as well as writing my own.  Aside from introducing me to darts, my SO has introduced me to camping, which I, surprisingly, enjoy.  We can often be found in the summer at Mark Twain Lake in Missouri, where his parents own a campground. 

I am a native of Columbia, Missouri, which I will probably call home for the rest of my life, but I love to travel.  Day trips, week trips, vacations on other continents, wherever the path takes me is where I want to be and I’m hoping to be able to travel more in the future.

http://www.facebook.com/hadenajames

hadenajames.wordpress.com

@hadenajames

Newsletter:  http://forms.aweber.com/form/77/48212477.htm





Hadena will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour.
Follow the tour for more chances to win!



9 comments:

Mary Preston said...

Gorgeous cover - did you design it?

marypres(AT)gmail(DOT)com

Goddess Fish Promotions said...

Thanks for hosting!

Maria said...

I happen to like paper plates myself...lol....Thanks for sharing the excerpt and good luck with the tour!

Hadena James said...

Thanks for hosting me today!

I hired a budding artist to do the cover. Dark Cotillion was the first she had done. It did turn out well.

Can you find all four overlords in it? It's almost like a hidden picture.

Rita Wray said...

Great excerpt, thank you.

Kit3247(at)aol(dot)com

Leslie Soule said...

Great excerpt and interview!

falcondraco at Hotmail dot com

Krisha Scannapieco said...

This conversation is one of my favorites from the book as it perfectly describes the kitchen in my first apartment lol!

bn100 said...

Nice interview

bn100candg at hotmail dot com

karin said...

thanks for sharing ,the book and cover both look amazing!

cookiesmasher5@yahoo.com