Monday, March 21, 2016
Book Blitz + #Giveaway: Relevance (The Six #2.5) by Sonya Loveday @SonyaLoveday @XpressoReads @XpressoTours #XpressoBookTours
Relevance
Sonya Loveday
(The Six #2.5)
Publication date: March 21st 2016
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult
Relevance
The noun form of the adjective “relevant”.
Meaning “important to the matter at hand”
.
Secretly located in the tunnels under Chicago’s city streets, Cole Enterprise is home to a group of trained soldiers. Jake Aceton is their newest acquisition. Recruited from boot camp before graduation after being handpicked by Grant Jackson, Jake is plunged into the mysterious underground world, forever changing his life.
Regardless of his relevance to Cole Enterprise, Jake has a hard time looking past all he has to give up. Can he learn to live in his own shadow in order to protect those he loves?
EXCERPT:
The serenity of the moment shattered when Riley burst through the door, swearing a blue streak until she realized she wasn’t alone. “Ace. What are you doing in here?”
She didn’t even bat an eye at what I was wearing. Had she been anyone else, I’d have had my ass ripped for being in civilian clothing. “Oliver just took me to get my clothes.”
She noticed then. “Oh!”
I put my hand out, and she stepped into my arms with a heavy sigh. “What’s wrong, Riley?” I asked, gathering her close and kissing the top of her head. Dread ran through me. I had a feeling I already knew.
She tucked her head under my chin and slid her hands down my back until her thumbs found my belt loops. “Nothing.”
I snorted at her lame-ass attempt to cover up how she felt. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Riles. I know you’re not happy with any of this.”
She dropped her hands and took a step back, squaring her shoulders. “I’m fine. It’s just been an adjustment. Nothing I can’t handle.” She pulled out all the stops and managed a smile.
I caught her face in my hands and leaned down to place a kiss between her brows. Right on the spot that pulled together, telling me she was anything but happy. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I’m gonna prove it every day for the rest of my life. I know you’re miserable. I know this isn’t what you wanted.”
“Once we find the leak and figure out what Nicco is up to, we’ll talk with Nadia and Grant and come up with something. Maybe they’ll even want us to transfer to Scotland.”
A real smile broke through that time. “Okay.”
One word was all it took to make the knot in my chest unravel.
I didn’t want to leave Riley, but Oliver was waiting for me in the cafeteria. “I have to go meet with Oliver. Are you staying in here for a little while?”
She shook her head. “I need to meet with Oliver too. I guess we better get going then.”
Riley made it to the door and had it open before I could cross the room.
“Why do you have to meet with Oliver?” I asked, closing the door behind us.
Her hair spilled over her shoulder, hiding her face from me. It wasn’t often Riley had her hair down, so the missing presence of her ponytail seemed odd. Truth be told, seeing Riley with her hair down was like seeing her naked, as weird as that sounded. Maybe it was because the only way I really saw her hair down was when we were… “Oof.” My side ached and my hand went to the offended spot immediately. “What the hell?”
Riley scowled. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
“Um…” She’d been talking to me and I’d tuned her out as I fantasized about her hair being down. “Sorry, I was uh…” Mentally stripping you and watching the way your hair falls over your…
She snapped her fingers in front of my face. “My eyes are up here, Ace.”
I jerked my gaze up to hers, feeling my cheeks blaze. “I know.”
She rolled her eyes and pushed past me into the cafeteria where Oliver waited at one of the tables.
He looked up from the file he had opened in front of him. When he looked between the two of us, he swore. “Please tell me you two aren’t in the middle of some sort of lover’s quarrel.”
Riley flipped him off and then sat opposite of him. I kept the urge to say something smart-ass back at him locked up tight, choosing to sit down instead.
Oliver looked between us again and then back to the file. “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.”
My spine snapped ramrod straight. “We? What we? Because I know you don’t mean Riley too.”
Oliver leaned his elbows on the table as he crossed his arms and looked directly at Riley. “You didn’t tell him?”
“Yes, I did. He wasn’t listening though.”
“What do you mean he wasn’t listening?”
I forced myself to listen instead of drift off as I’d done earlier. Damn her hair. She needed to pull it up and get it out of my thoughts!
“…just like that,” she said, waving her hand in front of my face. “Do you think it’s a flashback?” The fear in her voice startled me.
“I’m not having a flashback,” I answered, shifting myself on the bench seat so I straddled it.
“Then what the hell is wrong with you?” Oliver demanded.
My lip curled as I swung my gaze to him. “I’m dead, so, technically, it could either be classified as everything or nothing.”
Oliver shook his head, tapping the folder in front of him. “Do you think you can keep your corporeal form focused for a minute while we go over tonight’s recon mission?”
—
Author Bio:
Sonya Loveday, first and foremost is a reader, an avid one. It is of that love that brought her to the realization that this was the answer to the nagging persistent feeling that ‘there’s got to be something more’.
The dream came alive in 2009 when she purchased her laptop and began the tedious step of becoming a published author.
When she’s not reading, she’s writing. When she’s not writing, she’s reading. And when she’s not doing either of those things she’s sleeping, shuttling her children back and forth to school, letting the dogs and cats in and out of the house for the umpteenth time in the last hour and dreaming of a clean house.
GIVEAWAY!
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Book Blitz: In the Hope of Memories by Olivia Rivers @RiversOlivia @XpressoReads @XpressoTours #XpressoBookTours
In the Hope of Memories
Olivia Rivers
Publication date: March 21st 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Hope is dying.
Hope Jackson has lived her short life to the fullest, but her four closest friends are dangling on the brink of disaster. Right before dying of a rare heart condition, Hope sets up a scavenger hunt across New York City using her graffiti art. The directions she leaves her friends are simple: Solve the clues hidden in her art, and they’ll solve the problems haunting their lives.
Hope is dead.
Two days after her heart fails, Hope’s friends are thrown together:
Aiden, her best friend, whose plans to attend college have been scattered by his OCD.
Kali, her foster sister, whose last ties to sanity are as razor-thin as her anorexic waistline.
Erik, her high school crush, whose success as an athlete is based on a lie with no end in sight.
And Sam, her online pen-pal, whose perfect life exploded into chaos in the aftermath of a school bombing.
Together, the four teens take to the streets of New York to complete Hope’s scavenger hunt and fulfill her dying wishes. But in order to unravel the clues hidden in Hope’s graffiti, her friends will need to confront their personal demons head on.
Hope is within reach.
EXCERPT:
“Wait!” I slam my hand against the door to stop it from clicking shut, wincing as the splintered wood digs into me. “I’m looking for Hope. Hope Jackson. She said she’d be here.”
My heart stutters a fast and hard beat, like it does right when I get tackled on the field. “No. No, she’s not. She’s the exact opposite of dead. Today is her eighteenth birthday. Her birthday party is about to start right now.”
Official Reason Number Infinity it Sucks to Be Going Blind: When you can’t see right, you can’t stop a fist from colliding with your face. The dude’s knuckles crash into my jaw, and I yelp, more out of shock than pain. I’m about to pound my own fist into the freak when he starts talking again, this time in a tone that’s actually kind of pissed.
“She’s dead, you jerk! You really think it’s funny to joke about that?”
“I’m not joking!” I rub at my jaw with the back of my clenched hand. Part of me is itching to mess up this guy’s face, but a larger part is starting to panic. “You’re the one with the wrong info,” I say, silently praying I’m right. “Hope isn’t dead.”
The dude stares down at his hand and slowly curls and uncurls his fingers, like he can’t quite believe he just threw a punch. Then he whispers, “You’re not messing with me?”
“No! What kind of sick joke would that be? Like I said, I’m just trying to find her birthday party. I got an invite from her, I swear. It said to come here.”
“Oh.”
Apparently, this conversation isn’t weird enough for him, so he has to add in some awkward silence. Fan-freaking-tastic. Just when I’m starting to think he’s slipped into a coma, he says, “Sorry I punched your face.”
I take a deep breath. “Just tell me where her birthday party is, okay?”
“I told you, there is no party. Hope is dead.”
“Christ, are you seriously going to make me explain this again? She’s not dead. It’s her birthday today. As in the day when you celebrate a person being alive.”
“It would have been her birthday,” the dude says, slipping back into his strange monotone. “But now she’s dead.”
The seriousness in his voice makes my gut twist, and for a moment, I wonder if maybe he hurt Hope. My hand edges toward my pocket, but just as I’m considering grabbing my cell phone and dialing 9-1-1, I see a tear trickle down his cheek. It looks strange on his expressionless face, but another tear quickly follows, and then a third. He sniffs and turns away, wiping his right eye on the battered sleeve of his hoodie.
“What happened?” I ask, my voice a cracked whisper. All sorts of scenarios rush through my head—Hope’s plane crashing on vacation, a car accident, getting caught in a wrong-place-wrong-time shooting…
“You don’t know?” the dude asks.
“No. Was it in the news?”
The smallest beginning of a frown tugs at his lips. “Of course not. Why would the news report about a stroke victim?”
“Stroke?” I repeat. “She had a stroke? What…why? What triggered it? She’s a health freak.”
He blinks slowly and then says again, “You don’t know?”
Guest Post
Quirky Research for a
Quirky Book
My
life is far too normal to make for interesting fiction, but you wouldn’t guess
it by looking at my internet search history. When you write about people who
have been screwed over by fate, you end up having to research some really sad,
really dark topics. And also some flat-out bizarre topics no normal chick
should spend her time reading about.
At
this point, I’m pretty sure at least a few government agencies have me flagged
on some sort of Potential Psychopath Watch List. Looking up weird things is
kind of unavoidable when you’re a writer, and while writing “In the Hope of
Memories,” I researched some extremely strange questions. After a while, I
started keeping track of my quirkiest research questions. Among my top
favorites are the following:
- Can
the content of graffiti art make a jail sentence harsher or lighter?
- How
do graffiti artists paint details without getting totally high? (Hint:
they don’t.)
- Can
you hack a store’s standard security system from an Android smart phone?
- Is
it legal to bring a cat into a restaurant?
- What
are the best techniques for smuggling an illegal cat into a restaurant?
- How
fast would a taxi have to be travelling to cause serious injuries to a
pedestrian?
- How
do Ivy League universities detect applications that use forged documents?
- What’s
the most successful way to shoplift?
- What’s
the best part of a car to steal, if you can’t take the whole thing?
- Can
you use allergy medication to stop someone from going into cardiac arrest?
(Hint: shockingly, yeah, you can.)
- What
is the difference between a psychopath, a psychotic, and a sociopath?
- How
do you build a bomb?
- Where
do you buy materials for building a bomb?
- Is
it cheaper for an author to hire someone to erase their name from
government watch lists, or to just move to a secluded island nation?
- Which
website has the best deals on one-way tickets to Tahiti?
Author Bio:
Olivia Rivers is a hybrid author of Young Adult fiction. Her works include the independently published novels “Frost Fire” and “In the Hope of Memories,” along with the traditionally published novel “Tone Deaf” (Skyhorse 2016.) As a certified geek, she enjoys experimenting with new publishing technologies, and her online serials have received over 1,000,000 hits on Wattpad.com. When Olivia isn’t working as a writer, she’s a typical teen attending college in Northern California. Olivia is represented by Laurie McLean of Fuse Literary, and nothing thrills her more than hearing from readers.
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