Birthday week Winners!

The Winners!

It has been such an awesome week and We have a lot of winners to announce today!

All the winners will also be notified by E-mail. You will have 48 hours to reply on our e-mail or we will pick another winner!!!

Beg for Mercy and Waiting for mercy by Shannon Dermott

The winner is:

Luvfiction96

Haunted by Dana Michelle Burnett

The Winners are:

Amy Michelle

April Hunter

Nicole Peteson

Marina´s tales by Derrolyn Anderson 

The Winner is:

Diane Bojda

The golden Apple of discord by Lauren Hodge

The winner is:

Mindi

Dark seeker and Whispering Hills by Taryn Browning

The Winner is:

Shukri

Do you want to know a secret? by Claudia Carroll

The Winner is:

Nash Nordin

Torn, Broken, scent of tears and Handoff by Dean Murray

The winners are:

Wtchypoo on goodreads

Jeni Monroe 

Shukraan

Darkride by Laura Bradley Rede

The winners are:

Heidi Grange

Angela Acisco

Michelle@bookbriefs

Thank you so much everyone! It has been an awesome year!

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Happy Birthday, day 8: Giveaway of Darkride by Laura Bradley Rede

Today is the last day of our celebration week and today we have a giveaway of the YA paranormal book Darkride by Laura Rede Bradley.

Sandra who reviewed this book give it 4 of 5 stars! You can read the review here

This book has a new cover that we want to share with you all!

So what do you think? Which cover do you prefer?

THIS IS THE OLD COVER

THIS IS THE NEW COVER

Synopsis

Ander McNair used to be the favorite son of a great monster-hunting family – until he was bitten by a werewolf and the hunter became the hunted. Now anything that makes his pulse race, even a kiss from his girlfriend Cicely, is enough to turn him into a monster. When he finally has his chance to earn his cure by killing a vampire prince, Ander finds he has to choose between his own past and the future of the girl he loves. Can a guy who’s not even human learn what it means to be a man?

Luke Marianez used to be an immortal vampire prince – until the witch he loved betrayed him and cursed him with the ability to die. Now he lives in the world of vampire blood bars where the waitresses are the drinks, and dreams about killing the last of the witch’s line so he can live forever. But revenge doesn’t just mean breaking the curse. He wants to break the girl's heart, too.  Can Luke seduce Cicely without falling in love himself? 

Cicely Watson doesn’t believe in werewolves or vampires. She’s not even sure she believes in true love. But she’s about to discover what every werewolf knows:

People change.

GIVEAWAY! ENTER HERE

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Happy birthday, Day 7: Guest post and giveaway with Dean Murray

Wow! Day 7, can you believe it´s been a week already? Lots of giveaways and awesome guest posts and interviews! We don´t want this week to end and that is why we have decided to to add two more days with giveaways to this awesome bitrhday week! But now on to today's post.

Today we Have Dean Murray with us, who have written an great guest post for us. But that is not all, he is also so very kind to give away three packages with three E-books in each, to three lucky winners! And this is awesome because his books are great! So this is something you do not want to miss out on! You can find the form for this international giveaway at the end of this post!

Guest post by Dean Murray

Reading Builds Muscles

I'm probably dating myself a bit here, but long before I had a smartphone, I had a PDA (an old Sony Clie), and I used to read and re-read e-books on it. I was in college at the time, and the ability to stick six or seven books on it and have them wherever I went was incredibly convenient. Bus rides, doctor appointments, anything of the sort was much less of a pain because I could instantly lose myself in another world.

As primitive as those old PDA's were compared to today's smart phones, there was one essential constraint that hasn't really changed between then and now.

Once you get the data into them, you're pretty much good to go. It's always there, ready for use. The difficulty is getting the data in there. There's always ways to shortcut that particular challenge of course. You could type up whatever it was you wanted on your PC and then transfer it over through the synching process, or you could buy one of those portable keyboards and use that to input data. Mostly though, I found myself putting stuff into my PDA on letter at a time off of the touch screen.

I spent the idle moment or two thinking about other inventions that could help bypass the problem, but I think the biggest benefit out of all of that came when I realized that some of those same constraints are present in our own minds.

Once you get a particular bit of information in your head, it's always there, waiting to be recalled, ready to serve as the foundation for a new bit of learning. The difficulty lies in getting the information in there.

Back in the day, all learning was essentially passed directly from person to person, which meant it was perishable and relatively expensive (due to the time involved) to pass along.

The advent of the written word changed all of that. For the first time, knowledge could endure, relatively unchanged for centuries. Even better, once the printing press arrived it still required more effort to 'write' something down than it did to just demonstrate it to someone, but once you 'wrote' it down, you could teach multiple people with almost no incremental cost.

I've probably ranged further afield than everyone was probably expecting, but as technology has advanced, and especially with the advent of the internet, information is now essentially free for the taking. That is especially exciting to me as an author because reading is still the best way to unlock all of that knowledge.

Of course, I don't write anything particularly informative as a general rule, but reading is just like any other skill. The more you do it, the easier it becomes, and nearly everyone who becomes truly good at reading does so because they spent their formative years enjoying stories in some form or another.

If I had one piece of advice for youth, be they grade-schoolers or teenagers, it would be to develop a love of reading. The more you read, the better you get at it. The better you get at it, the easier access you will have to all of the knowledge that will help you pursue your dreams.

Sometimes we genre authors get looked down on by the literary types, but every time I see someone with one of the Harry Potter books, or Twilight, or pretty much any book, it brings a smile to my face. As long as people keep finding compelling stories to write, others of us will read them; thereby building our ability to get data into our 'PDA's'.

Now On to today´s giveaway!

Like I said, we have three packages to give away. Each package include an E-book of: Broken, Torn, Scent of tears and Handoff. 

 

Enter this giveaway

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Happy Birthday, day 6: Giveaway of "Do you want to know a secret?" By Claudia Carroll

GIVEAWAY!

On day 6 of our celebration week we are giving away a copy of "Do you want to know a Secret?" by Claudia Carroll. It is a unused pocket book. Cecilia has read several of Claudias books and love them.

We hope you will too!

Sign up here!

Vicky Harper is still hopelessly single and having to face up to the unpalatable fact that the last time she had a relationship with that highly elusive species, the decent single man, was well before Phantom of the Opera hit Broadway. So, having discovered an ancient book which says you can have anything you want from the Universe...and that all you need do is ask, she decides to give it a whirl. Turns out all she has to do is focus on thinking her wildest fantasies into reality. Kind of like Pollyanna, except with a Magic 8 Ball, a mortgage and a lot of vodka. So, along with her two beyond-fabulous best friends, Vicky decides to put 'The Law of Attraction' into action. Trouble is, 'The Law of Attraction' doesn't come with an instruction manual and Vicky soon realizes that you have to be very, very careful what you wish for.

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Happy birthday, day 5: A new blog design!

You may have noticed a change on our blog! We have a new design and it´s part of our happy birthday week! We thought it was time for some changes on the blog. But as you can see it is much the same, it is mostly the coloring and the header that has changed! So welcome to a new year with us at rather barefoot with some new colors and hopefully a great year with lots of book reviews to look forward to.

So, What do you think about our new design on the blog?

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Happy birthday, day 5: Guest post & giveaway with Taryn Browning

Can you believe it´s been five days already? Time really flies by when you have fun! And so many giveaways already and the week is not done yet! Today we have the honor to introduce an awesome Author Taryn Browning! Her book Dark seeker is Amazing! You can read Cecilia´s review of it HERE

Don´t forget that you can enter all giveaways this entire week so don´t think you have missed something just because you found us late in the game! Just go HERE to see all giveaways

Taryn will give away both her book Dark seeker and another book called Whispering Hills. You can find this giveaway at the end of the post.

GUEST POST BY TARYN BROWNING

She's the Seeker. He's the hunted. What's at stake could kill them both... 

For 17-year-old Seeker, Janie Grey, ridding the Baltimore streets of the undead is an inherited duty passed down from her Cherokee ancestors. Seeker Training Lesson #1: Never trust the undead. After her father’s tragic death, Janie creates her own life lesson: Love isn’t worth the risk. Both lessons are easy to follow until she encounters the flawed Kai Sterdam. At first, she believes he is the hybrid she is trained to hunt. But, when he has human traits, she determines she doesn’t know what he is. As Janie’s intrigue over who Kai is pushes her deeper into his mysterious past, she discovers a shocking truth that is even more harrowing than the evil they are up against. It’s a secret Kai wants to keep hidden, especially from Janie.

For as long as she can remember, 17-year-old Alexis Forbes can hear the thoughts of others. Most recently, she is disturbed by the dark, unfamiliar voice of a frightening killer: callous, cunning, charismatic…and dead. 

She hears his every sinister thought. But she can’t tell anyone. No one would believe her. Alexis is suddenly being haunted by a terrifying past she doesn’t remember, and a ghost with a serious score to settle. Even Chance, the gorgeous new guy she’s falling for, has his own ghostly secret. He’s definitely not like any guy she’s ever met. Alexis soon discovers she has a connection to the dead and it runs much deeper than she could ever imagine. And if the sociopathic entity has his way, she’ll finally be sentenced to the fate she escaped thirteen years ago.

Both Dark Seeker and Whispering Hills are dear to my heart. I love both heroines. Janie (Dark Seeker) and Alexis (Whispering Hills) are strong teenagers dealing with the obstacles of being part of the paranormal world while taking on the more mundane responsibilities of being high school students. Janie was born into a life of hunting vampires, while Alexis was thrust into it by events beyond her control. Plus, both girls find themselves attracted to guys with complicated pasts and dark secrets.

 Alexis wasn't born with her ability to hear the random decisions others make, so she struggles with her "gift," doing her best to fit in when the only people who seem to relate to her have their own otherworldly abilities. Janie, on the other hand, knows exactly what kind of monster she's dealing with. She's been through years of training and has no trouble kicking butt -- until she's faced with a new type of hybrid vampire with dangerous characteristics and abilities unlike the "traditional" vampire she was born to hunt.

Dark Seeker is set in the city of Baltimore, where the high crime rate masks the deaths of countless humans at the hands of the deadly demon-vampire hybrid known as Daychildren. Janie patrols the Baltimore streets, hunting down Daychildren and protecting the citizens of Baltimore, until the threat leaves the city and her suburban high school becomes the target. Janie is forced to enlist the support of an inner-city vampire gang and an incredibly hot "Daychild" with human traits, to stop the Daychildren from following through with their plan.

Whispering Hills takes place in the suburban town of Whispering Hills, Virginia. The crime rate is pretty non-existent until a high school student goes missing. Alexis can hear the killers every decision, including the decision to throw the girl's dead body in Whispering Lake. Unable to tell anyone what she knows, she is forced to rely on the school outcast to find out who committed the murder and stop him from harming anyone else. She comes to realize the killer is untouchable, a ghost back to settle an old score. Even the new guy she's falling for has his own ghostly secret. Alexis has a connection to the dead that runs deeper than she could ever imagine. There is so much more going on in the small town of Whispering Hills than murder. The truth may explain why she can hear people's thoughts, but the truth could also get her killed.

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Well that was an awesome guest post! thank you so much Taryn for writing that post! We have not read whispering Hills but Now we most definitely want to! 

Now on to the Giveaway and The rules! 

On this giveaway we do have rules:

1. You have to be a follower 
2. And I hope you really read this guest post because the will be a question bout it
3. This is an International giveaway
4. The books is in E-book form

FILL OUT THIS FORM TO ENTER

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Happy Birthday, day 4: Guestpost & Giveaway with Lauren Hodge

Today is day four of our celebration week!

We have the pleasure to introduce Lauren Hodge who is the author of " The Golden Apple of Discord". Sandra is currently reading this book and she do not want to put it down. We recommend you to enter our Giveaway of this book cause it is soo good! Below you also find a guestpost from Lauren so you can get to know her a little better.

What made me write this book?

I had written two human romance books for fun and thought I’d try my hand at a paranormal romance. It’s different because you have to set up the rules of your cannon and then operate within them. I looked at it as another challenge but a fun one. Originally I wrote Discord as one big book which clocked in around 210,000 words. After a little research I found that anything over 100,000 words was considered too long for an unknown author. I had to split it but there wasn’t a good place to split it in the middle so I committed trilogy. Then as I went through the rewrite I noticed there were way more things I could do with this story that I had wanted to do the first time around but hadn’t quite figured out how to yet. Discord is about 97K, Abomination (Book two) will be a little over 100K and the third book will be around 100K as well.

Another reason I wanted to write Discord is because I wanted to put strong female and male characters together and see what show they put on inside my head. I also wanted strong, male characters that weren’t emasculated in the presence of strong women…because those are hot. Honestly I’ve been on too many dates with wussy men so I created some strong (yet not man-child) men to spend time with.

Discord is my playground and one of the things I like is the logic of planning assaults. We get to see how these characters use the assets available to them and how they go up against other powerful vampires. While we have this in Discord, we get way more of it in Abomination and even more in the third book.

Why did I become an author?

Honestly, it’s because of my identical twin sister. I was just writing for fun. There is nothing else to do in Tri-Cities, Washington besides get drunk or pregnant so I wrote to amuse myself. Shelby liked Discord so much she said she’s shop it around if I would polish it up. I figured at the very least I’d get to spend more time with the characters inside my head I loved so much, so I did it. What actually ended up happening was that Shelby (twin) became kind of a preliminary editor and I went the self-publish route. I didn’t want to wait for the agent-publisher-bookstore lottery so I got a professional editor (which I worship the ground she walks on) and a cool photographer (another sister of mine) and came up with a way to get Discord into eBook format.

I love self-publishing but understand why people are wary of it. A writer could go through the whole process and put a book on Amazon without never having another person see it. This is NOT what happened with Discord. We put it though half a dozen test readers, five drafts and two editors ( one of which is at www.mytwocentsediting.com). I have yet to get a bad review from any of those people but the free-market will be my judge. That’s what I love about self-publishing. It lets the free market decide, not getting the blessing of a publishing house first and them letting the market have what it decides is good.

What am I looking forward to with the release of Discord?

I personally can’t wait to see what people that don’t know me think of the book. Is it as good as I think it is? My opinion is almost meaningless. It’s like a mother saying her child is cute. No mother is going to stand up and say “My kid is the ugly one” so we can’t believe anyone who touts the merit of their own child. I want to see what people who don’t relate to me as a person think. I want them to pick apart these characters and see if what they do makes sense.

Will I continue to write when the Discord Trilogy is done?

I can’t imagine my life without writing. Every time I come up with a story, it screams to be heard. I don’t write because I’m a good writer, I write because the characters play inside my head until I let them be heard in Word 2010. Discord is not my story but rather a story inside a brain using my fingers to type out.

What’s in store with Abomination?

I will tell you one thing…it’s in Alex’s point of view. The Discord Trilogy is like Lord of The Rings in the way it progresses. The scope of the Discord Trilogy world increases dramatically in Abomination and even further in Book Three. Make no mistake, Discord stands on its own as a good book. You’re not going to get to the end of and think it was just a trailer for Abomination. We have hot guys that don’t disappoint in the masculine department. We also get really cool chicks that know how to laugh. In Abomination, crap gets real but it’s amazing how much further we get to watch these characters go.

THE GIVEAWAY!

Lauren is giving away one e-book copy of The Golden Apple of Discord so one lucky reader! Enter here!

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Happy Birthday, day 3: Awesome giveaway of Marina´s tales by Derrolyn Anderson

Today is the third day of our celebration week!

We just want to say that this has been such a great year with so much new experiences and it is al thanks to all amazing Authors and you readers!

Today we are introducing Derrolyn Anderson here on the blog and that is so amazing because she was the very first author to contact us with a review request almost a year ago! We have had the pleasure to follow her from her very first book in the series Marina´s tales, and we have had the honor to read and review all of four books in the series.

Isn´t perfect to have the very first author who contacted us to be part of our one year celebration?!! We most definetely think so and Derrolyn is so very generous to give away all four books in her series Marina´s tales to one lucky winner! To enter the giveaway go to the bottom of this post.

You can read our reviews by entering the links below:

This is the first book; Between the land and the sea

Something extraordinary is lurking in the deep ocean waters off the coast of Aptos, California. In just a few weeks after moving to the small beach town, sixteen year old Marina has nearly drowned twice, enchanted the hottest guy in high school, and discovered a supernatural creature.

The second book is called; The moon and the tide

Just when things seem to be all figured out, Marina discovers that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than she ever imagined. When a terrible accident exposes her secret, she discovers that her whole life has been one big lie, and has to cope with more than one kind of betrayal.

The Third book is called; The fate of the muse

Trouble is stalking Marina. She’s already escaped the clutches of her formidable foe once, but fate has even more trials in store for her. There are evil plans in the works– plans that threaten both her and her newly found family.

The fourth and last book in this series is called The Turning Tides
Marina has been through a lot in the past year; she knows what she wants, and she decides to take matters into her own hands to get it. When a twist of fate takes her away from Aptos, she returns to find that her whole world has changed once again. A fortune teller’s ominous prediction seems to be coming true and people around her aren’t who they appear to be.

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Now On to this awesome GIVEAWAY! To enter fill out THIS FORM.

This giveaway include all four books in this series in E-book format and it is an international giveaway.

You just have to fill out your name and e-mail address in the form!

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Happy birthday, day 2: Author interview + InternationalGiveaway with Dana Michelle Burnett

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Today is the Second day in our celebration and today we have an Author interview with Dana Michelle Burnett to share with you. At the end of this post you can find the form to enter the giveaway and also read Cecilia´s review of the book in question. It is the second book in the Spiritus series called Haunted and the author Dana will give away three e-book copies of this book!

INTERVIEW WITH DANA MICHELLE BURNETT

Tell our readers about yourself 

I am a single mother living in Lanesville, Indiana. I am the proud Dance Mom (it’s not like television at all) to my beautiful daughter. I’ve written and been published in numerous literary and commercial magazines. 

Can you tell us what the spiritus series is about? 

Sure, Spiritus is about a ghost that falls in love with a young girl that he believes is his wife reincarnated. Since it was his wife that killed him over a century ago, the first book centers on whether he is back for love or revenge. The second book in the series, Haunted, is about how complicated their relationship becomes. The third book, Incarnate, is what I’m working on now and while everyone has their own idea about how this series should end, I’m trying to throw some surprises in too. 

How did you come up with the idea for this series? Where did you find your inspiration? 

The idea came from the town of Corydon itself. I drive through it anytime I go to the grocery. I was just looking at the old houses one day and got to thinking about the people that lived there now and the people that used to live there. 

How would you describe Becca? What drives her?

I see Becca as a people pleaser. She wants to make her Dad happy, she wants to keep Alastor happy, and she doesn’t want to break Jonah’s heart. She struggles to name the things that make her happy. 

Alastor is a fascinating character, how would you describe him? And where did the idea of him came from? 

Oh, I just love Alastor! He’s a cross between Rhett Butler and Charlie Sheen, elegant and charming, but still a bad boy.

How would you describe their love and their impossible relationship? 

War changes people and Alastor came back from the Civil War very changed and found it difficult to go back to a normal life. Becca, in her past life, was traumatized by the siege of Corydon and felt deserted by Alastor. Now, Alastor is a ghost, the ever faithful love, but it’s a relationship that has obvious limitations.

How many books do you plan write about Becca and Alastor and when will the next book be out? 

There is one last book in the series which would make three total. Incarnate, the final book, will be available in the fall of 2012.

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You can read Cecilia´s review of Haunted HERE and the first book review of spiritus HERE

So now on to the International giveaway!

There rules are the following:

• There will be three winners!
• Leave a comment to this post!
• Tell us why you think you should be the winner

FILL OUT THIS FORM TO ENTER THIS GIVEAWAY!

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Happy Birthday to us!!!! 1 year and still kicking!

How nice of you to stop by to celebrate with us!
This year has been amazing for us. When we started this blog we had no expectations what so ever!
Cecilia was on maternity leave and was extremely bored to just be at home all of the time. Then she came up with this idea of starting the blog to make something useful and fun out of her interest for books.
Of course she talked to both her sisters Sandra and Jessica to join her on the blog.
Thats how it all began...
The idea of authors contacting us with review requests was so far away in our minds and we were so happy to receive our very first review request from Author Derrolynn Anderson. Derrolynn will of course join us during this celebration so keep your eyes out.
We are also extremely happy for our followers and it would not be the same without you guys!
It´s so much fun to blog hop and get new ideas of books to read and find other bookblogger friends. It´s awesome to see that there´s so many of us!




This week we will celebrate with Author interviews, guestposts and of course one Giveaway everyday!! Yay!
We will also do a interview on each other so you can get to know us a bit better =)


To kick start our birthday week we would like to start of with an awesome International Giveaway of one of our favorite series! To enter fill out this form 


The winner will receive the 2 books in the Cambion series by Shannon Dermott in e-book format. Press here and here to read more about these  awesome books.

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