Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

Today I welcome Krysten Lindsay Hager and her new book Landry in Like! Genre: contemporary clean teen fiction Landry in Like (Landry's True Colors Series: Book 3) ​ Things seem to be going well in Landry Albright’s world—she’s getting invited to be on local talk shows to talk about her modeling career, her best friends have her back, and her boyfriend Vladi is becoming someone she can truly count on…and then everything changes. Suddenly it seems like most of the girls in school are into hanging out at a new teen dance club, while Landry just wants to spend her weekends playing video games and baking cupcakes at sleepovers. Then, Yasmin McCarty, the most popular girl in school, starts to come between Landry’s friendship with Ashanti. Things take a turn when Yasmin tells Vladi that Landry is interested in another boy. Can Landry get her relationships with Ashanti and Vladi back or will she be left out and left behind?   Excerpt: I wanted to call my friends a...

HOT TICKET is available as a free ebook on Amazon from January 10 – January 14, 2016, and is also available in print at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Excerpt: (Backstory: Juliet has just come from the principal’s office after accidentally hitting the most popular girl in school in the face during a hallway collision.) At lunch detention, all I could think about was how I better get a shame ticket for accidentally punching Cindy. There's just no way the ticket dispenser could ignore the fact that I just punched the most popular girl in school in the face, right? But still, I worried that the dispenser was going to ignore me again.  I'm basically the only sixth grader without a hot ticket. This wouldn’t be a big deal if I didn’t go to John Jay Jr. High.  (Triple J, for short.)  Everything is hard enough as a 6th grader.  We’re the lowest on the totem pole.  The tadpoles of the pond.  But it’s even worse to be a tadpole without a hot ticket. Hot ...

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2016. Do you have any big plans for the year? Quick housekeeping. I'm posting a chapter a week of Worth the Effort, Ella's Story over on Wattpad . A new chapter goes up every Monday. I'd love if you follow, read, recommend, rate - all that jazz. Though the novella is free to download on all e-platforms, so hop on over to my blog if you'd rather just read it all at once. Onto 2016. I usually have big, clear writing goals, but this year I don't. I hope I publish something this year, but I don't have anything under contract and I don't have anything close enough to being finished to feel confident I can make it happen. But I'm not too stressed about it. I know what I can accomplish, I'm just not really inspired to accomplish big things this year. And you know what? That's okay. It gives all you readers out there time to catch up on reading my books (wink!) As I announced in my last post, we have decided to contin...

I must take care of some InkRipples business before I get to this month's post.    Mary Waibel ,   Katie L. Carroll  and I have decided to continue the meme into 2016, and we'd love for you all to join us! We have a new streamlined name: #InkRipples (formerly Ripples in the Inkwell) and brand new images to go along with it.  We also have a new set of monthly topics for discussion in 2016: January - Travel #InkRipplesFebruary - Chocolate March - Feminism April - Poetry May - Memories June - Movies July - Inspiration August - Guilty Pleasures September - Banned Books October - Masks November - Heritage December - Cookies How can you participate? Glad you asked because there are lots of ways. The idea of #InkRipples is to toss a word, idea, or image into the inkwell and see what kind of ripples it makes. We provide the topics and will be blogging about them on the first Monday of the month. You can spread your own ripples by blogging a...

Welcome to my stop on the Twisted Sisters blog tour! Here's a link to the host list if you'd like to follow the tour  Click Me! Excerpt I sense movement, and in the next moment Tracy throws herself at the barrier, a screaming, howling banshee. She fights against the magic barring her. Static electricity sparks through the room, zooming around, visible in the darkness. I push Kacie behind me as the manic ghost continues her relentless assault on the barrier. A deafening boom reverberates through the room, followed by a wave of energy. I push Kacie down, falling on top of her to shield her from the ghost’s wrath. Pain lances up my back like thousands of cat claws, making me cry out both in shock and pain. I glance back—Samson and Delilah hiss their displeasure at Tracy, their claws digging into my back. The claws retract when I yell at them, and all the other pain surfaces. Ignoring the throbbing in my ribs, I roll to my side to free Kacie, sending the cats leapi...

Five years ago today I became a published author with the publication of The Weaver. I suppose technically I was published before that with several short story publications to my name, but my goal was to have a book published, and that goal was realized on December 10, 2010. I still chuckle at how anti-climactic the moment was. I found The Weaver available on Amazon. I lifted my laptop and spun it in all directions to show off the Amazon page to my family. Then the oven timer beeped and I got up and finished cooking dinner. Yeah, being a published author is just that sexy. But I’ve had many amazing moments too. The Weaver was a finalist in a couple award contests I entered it in. It received (still receives—bless all you reviewers out there) really positive reviews. And it opened the door for me to step into classrooms. One of my favorite things to do as an author is to be able to visit with readers. Plus, it doesn’t hurt when you walk into a room and hear a child whispe...

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Judith Natelli McLaughlin and revealing the cover for her middle grade novel Dear Diary, E.P. Thompson Here . More about Dear Diary, E.P. Thompson Here Dear Diary, E. P. Thompson here. Worst. Year. Ever. First semester in sixth grade, and my best friend Debbie has dropped me because my boobs aren’t big enough. Well, she didn’t say that exactly, but I just know that’s the reason. Then I got paired with Adam Berry, the biggest pencil-protecting geek of the decade, for the never-ending, semester-long math project. And as if that’s not bad enough, Thomas Maxwell, the cutest boy in my grade, only pays attention to me when I’m making a total fool of myself. Ugh. Weirdest thing of all: it seems Lucas C. Tanner Middle School has a full-on, bona fide thief! Now all the teachers are going crazy and all the students are too, because Mrs. Peule has promised to make this year a living nightmare until the culprit is caught. We have to fin...