Thursday, April 28, 2011

Cover Reveal: TRANCE

I saw this cover a few weeks ago, but now have a final version to show off. TRANCE is the first in my (what I'm currently referring to as) MetaWars series from Pocket, due October 25, 2011. I really love this cover--from the L.A. setting (palm trees!), to Trance's hair and powers.

Enjoy!

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The cover copy:


Kelly Meding’s war-ravaged Los Angeles is ground zero for the ultimate Meta human showdown in this sexy, action-packed new series.

Fifteen years ago, Teresa “Trance” West was a skilled telepath and a proud member of the Ranger Corps. But ever since the Rangers were inexplicably rendered powerless at the climax of the devastating Meta War, she’s bounced from one dead-end job to another. Now her powers have reappeared just as mysteriously as they vanished— only they’re completely transformed and more potent than ever. And they’re threatening to destroy her.

Trance heads to Los Angeles to track down the surviving Rangers and discover who restored her powers—and why—but a phantom enemy is determined to kill them before they can reassemble. As they dodge his deadly attacks and come to terms with their new role as heroes, Trance and the rest of the team set out to annihilate the sinister madman . . . only to discover their own powers are his greatest weapons.


ETA: Artist is Don Sipley.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Third Snippet: Another Kind of Dead

Three months to go until ANOTHER KIND OF DEAD hits shelves! So here's another snippet from the book, this time from Chapter Seven. There are, of course, minor spoilers for this story's plot.

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Five minutes or so before the call was expected, I was in the bathroom, hands braced on either side of the porcelain sink bowl, glaring at myself in the mirror. A wave of nerves had hit, leaving me completely unsettled. I'd walked into unknown situations before, faced unknown enemies alone, and even tackled one particularly nasty hostage situation involving my late partner Ash and three Halfies. I had no reason to be so scared of this phone call.

No, that wasn't true. [redacted name] had something that, if released, could be truly devastating to this city. He wanted us to give him two unknown vials of liquid, for his own unknown purposes. In an unknown location, with a very uncertain outcome.

I hated the word "unknown."

I splashed cool water on my face and patted dry on a frayed towel. Compared to the rest of their apartment, the bathroom was oddly tidy. I guess they had some standards of cleanliness when it came to their throne. Even the mirror lacked water spots or toothpaste spray. I had a clear view of my face. The tension bracketing both brown eyes, lips pursed so tightly they were almost gone. Familiar and foreign—mine and hers. Sometimes I still glanced in a mirror and expected my old face—blond hair cut short and uneven, wide blue eyes, pale skin. Not the dark-haired, curvy, freckled-nose woman I'd been for nearly two weeks.

The door opened and shut. "You okay?" Wyatt asked. He shuffled behind me, and our gazes met in the mirror's reflection.

"If I say yes, will you believe me?"

"Not while you're hunched over the sink like you want to vomit."

"What happens if we don't get the crystal back?"

"We deal with it."

"Deal with it?" I rounded in the tiny space, long hair whipping across my face. "I saw that entity in Tovin's body, Wyatt. I have never been so terrified as when I looked into its face and knew it could snap me in half before I could blink. It was the ugliest, most evil thing I've ever seen. We can't just deal with it."

Warm palms framed my cheeks. I wrapped my hands around his wrists. His outward calm helped, even though I imagined his insides quaked as hard as mine. No one else had seen the Tainted elf; my description could never do the terror justice. He couldn't understand.

"We. Will. Deal. With. It." Each word from him fell like a promise, driven home by the gentle crackle of energy around us. I tried to believe in that promise.

Then the damned cell phone rang, and my stomach clenched. We parted. I fished the phone out of my jeans pocket as I led the way back into the living room.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Audio Books Are Coming!

I mentioned this on Twitter a week or so ago, but now that contracts are winging their way to the appropriate parties, I'll officially announce it.

We've sold audio adaptation rights for the first three Dreg City books (Three Days to Dead, As Lie the Dead, Another Kind of Dead) to Tantor Audio! The books will be narrated by Xe Sands, and the first, Three Days to Dead, will be available May 30th. Yep, in just over a month! How awesome is that? As Lie the Dead will follow on 6/20 and Another Kind of Dead on 7/26 (same day as the paperback release!).

I'm really excited to hear Evy's world come alive, and I'll definitely be doing some giveaways once I have a few copies in my hands.

For now...

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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Happy Easter

No matter how you may (or may not) celebrate today, don't forget: microwaving marshmallow Peeps is FUN!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

The Good, the Bad, and the WTF?!

THE GOOD

I'm a huge horror buff, which I bet is no surprise at this point. When the first Scream film came out in 1996, I was in high school. I'd seen the slasher films from the eighties, and I loved anything scary. But at the time, very few horror films were being made and released by major studios. And Scream was exactly the creative boost that the horror genre needed at the time. It revitalized the genre, while making fun of itself at the same time. I'm a huge fan of the entire trilogy.

Needless to stay, I was absolutely pumped when I heard that Scream 4 was being made, with original director Wes Craven, original screenwriter Kevin Williamson, and original stars Neve Campbell, David Arquette, and Courtney Cox. How could a fan not be stoked for this?

So I admit to going into this film with pretty high expectations. And you know what? For once, my expectations were very much met, maybe a little exceeded. Scream 4 was brilliant. It does for the glut of horror film remakes what the original film did for the dying slasher genre: it exposed the cliches, makes statements on society, and it also (minor spoiler) remakes the first film! Remakes it in a hugely original way that I didn't always see coming.

Horror fans may still appreciate this film, but if you haven't seen Scream 1-3, then don't bother with Scream 4. You just won't have the same experience.


THE BAD

So there was once a time when I loved "Glee." I bought the boxed set of Season 1 at the end of last summer and I spent an entire weekend watching it. It hooked me. I loved the characters. I loved the stories. I loved what they were doing with the songs and musical numbers, and how everything flowed well.

Cut to the hot mess that's been Season 2 so far, and can I just say "Gah!"? Gah!

The show's been on a month hiatus, and the last aired episode was amazing. It was the Regionals ep, and the cast sang original songs. It was tense, it was emotional, and it was what the show used to be.

A new episode finally aired last night. I watched it this morning. Gah!

I just don't have the energy to rant on everything that I thought sucked about last night's episode. So I'll talk about the only good thing (besides the fact that Paltrow is gone for the foreseeable future). The corridor confrontation between Kurt, Blaine, Santana and Karofsky--pure gold. I loved Santana getting up in K's face, and I really hope this is setting up for what was promised to us earlier this year. There is a lot of potential with the Karofsky character, and I'm afraid the writers will butcher it, like they've managed to butcher most of this season.

One more "Gah!" for good measure....


THE WTF?!

Last week, ABC Daytime announced the cancellation of daytime soap opera staples "One Life to Live" and "All My Children," leaving the network's daytime lineup with one soap opera ("General Hospital"). GH joins what will become only four surviving soap operas on network television (ABC's "Days of Our Lives," and CBS's "The Bold & the Beautiful" and "The Young and the Restless"). OLTL and AMC become the third and fourth soap to be canceled in the last two years.

I watched "One Life to Live" for a few months last year and then stopped once the stories I was following ended, and most of the actors were fired. But it wasn't a terrible show, and I'll mourn its loss. I can agree that television is changing, and that maybe soap operas are a somewhat dated format. But there are still loyal viewers and fans out there, and it sucks that they are losing shows they've watched for THIRTY or FORTY YEARS. That's a lifetime.

I think my major complaint is that these dramatic serials are being replaced by more cookie cutter talk shows. I mean, really, do we need more groups of people gabbing at each other over inane topics? Really?

I don't know. But I do applaud Hoover for listening to their consumers and pulling their ads from ABC. Some might say it's counterproductive to pull ad revenue from a show that relies on it to stay afloat, but it's already canceled, no? I can't imagine ABC Daytime would eat humble pie and reverse the cancellations, so why not show them exactly how their fans feel about this betrayal?

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Another Kind of Dead Cover Copy Reveal!

As previously splashed all over Twitter yesterday, the back cover copy for ANOTHER KIND OF DEAD is up. You can finally find out (more or less) what Evy's next adventure is about!

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She can heal her own wounds. She can nail a monster to a wall. But there’s one danger Evangeline Stone never saw coming.

Been there. Done that. Evy Stone is a former Dreg Bounty Hunter who died and came back to life with some extraordinary powers. Now all but five people in the world think she is dead again, this time for good—immolated in a factory fire set specifically for her. Evy and Wyatt, her partner/lover/friend, can no longer trust their former allies, or even the highest echelons of the Triads—the army of fighters holding back from an unsuspecting public a tide of quarreling, otherworldly creatures—they can trust only each other. Because when the Triads raided a macabre, monster-filled lab of science experiments and hauled away the remnants, they failed to capture their creator: a brilliant, vampire-obsessed scientist with a wealth of powerful, anti-Dreg weaponry to trade for what he desires most of all—Evy Stone: alive and well, and the key to his ultimate experiment in mad science.


Evy and Wyatt are back, and they're facing a brand-new foe...who might not be so new, after all. *cue dramatic music*

What do think?

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

A Challenge Was Met -- At the League

I've posted over at the League of Reluctant Adults today about a book, a challenge, and probably one of the strangest things that most of us have never eaten.

Check it!