Spotlight on…Lara Adrian

Lara Adrian‘s news letter was recently released, and in it she gives a bit of information about the 11th book of the Midnight Breeds series, Edge of Dawn.  For those of you who read Sterling Chase’s story, Darker After Midnight, you will remember that it ended with enormous storyline changes for everyone, vampire and human alike.  This next book will quite the game changer when it comes out on January 22nd.

          Twenty years after the Order’s vanquish of their chief adversary, conflicts and skirmishes continue for the Breed, violence escalating toward war. Peace seems elusive, but the Order and their allies will not rest until it is won.

For Mira, raised with the Order from the time she was a child, and now the formidable captain of her own team of warriors for the Order, the fight is personal. War has cost her a great deal, though nothing more precious than the life of someone she loved dearly. Vowed to avenge his death, Mira blazes into every battle like a Valkyrie, poised to make her enemies pay. Until an unexpected encounter with a rebel leader brings her face-to-face with a startling truth, and a betrayal that will cut through her every defense . . . straight to the core of the wounded woman whose faith has never been tested more, nor her heart more deeply torn.

At one point, there seems to have been a question about whether book 10 was the end of the series.  There was just nowhere to go without suddenly adding a ton of new warriors, and that would have felt like an afterthought.  But with this time-jump, it looks like the Midnight Breeds books can continue on indefinitely.  I do have to say, this idea intrigues me, and I will excited to get my hands on the next book.

From the Author Pages…

Updating time once again…

• While the very, very long delayed Alejandro’s Sorceress is apparently going to make it to e-release sometime next week, it looks like Alyssa Day is also going to be re-releasing her previous novellas in e-format as well.  Wild Hearts in Atlantis (originally published in the Wild Thing anthology) will be released on October 2nd, and Shifter’s Lady (from the anthology Shifter) will follow on November 6th.
• Originally scheduled for a mid-January release, looks like Jennifer Estep‘s third Mythos Academy book, Crimson Frost, is up at Amazon for preorder for December 24th.
• Looks like Lara Adrian is getting in on the e-book re-release thing, too.  Written under the name Tina St. John, Lara has recently released the Dragon Chalice series in e-format (Heart of the Hunter, Heart of the Flame, Heart of the Dove).  Turns out they will also be coming in trade paperback format, as well.  Details to come.
• There will be a compilation book from Sherrilyn Kenyon featuring all of the short stories written for St. Martin’s Press.  Dark Bites will feature Fear the Darkness (first time in print), and an all new short story starring Acheron.  This one will be out on November 5th.
• oh, and the blurb for the upcoming Elder Races novella from Thea Harrison, Devil’s Gate, is now out.  I am still iffy about a medusa lead – snakes ain’t my thing – but who knows?

Synopsis…

When it comes to love between a medusa and a Vampyre, it’s every man, woman, and snake for themselves.

As a coroner, medusa Seremela Telemar has always felt more comfortable chatting over a dead body than over drinks. But when her wild niece, Vetta, runs off to Devil’s Gate, a lawless town that has sprung up overnight in a modern-day gold rush, she knows she has to extricate her before the rebellious girl gets into real trouble. Though she’s confident in her head snakes’ ability to defend her against attackers, Seremela is still a bit nervous about braving this modern-day Wild West by herself.

Vampyre Duncan Turner is not about to let his new co-worker go into that chaos alone. His Vampyric power and lawyer smarts make him the perfect ally, and the fact that he already had his eye on Seremela for more…personal reasons, doesn’t hurt matters. Any romantic thoughts pull up short, however, when they arrive at Devil’s Gate and learn Vetta is set to hang by morning.

In order to save Vetta and themselves, Seremela and Duncan are going to have to fight fire with force and magic with fangs. And pray they make it out of Devil’s Gate alive.

 

From the Author Pages

A few more updates to be made…

• Alexandra Ivy has posted her upcoming release schedule, and she is gonna be busy.   After Fear the Darkness (Kane and Cassie’s story) on August 28th, there will be two re-releases from her Immortal Rogues series.  My Lord Eternity will be out on December 1st, and My Lord Immortality will be out on December 31st.  February or March will see a novella featuring Levet, and that will be followed by another novella in May that will introduce the new Sentinels series.  As if that wasn’t enough, June will be book 10 of the Guardians series (featuring Santiago and Nefri), and the first full book of the Sentinels series will be released next fall.
• The very pretty cover for Gena Showalter‘s first Otherworld Assassin book, Last Kiss Goodnight, was added to her page.  Love that one.
• Ditto the cover for Shadow’s Claim, the first book of Kresley Cole‘s IAD spin-off series The Dacians, was also added to her page, along with the cover blurb.
• Amazon.com has put Lara Adrian‘s next Midnight Breeds book up for predorder.  Edge of Dawn (Mira’s story) will be released in hardcover on February 1st.
• Nalini Singh has upped a great excerpt from Archangel’s Storm over on her website.  Niiiice.
• and finally, Richelle Mead has started a really cool feature over on her blog.  For the first time in quite a few years, Richelle is starting up an entirely new series (Age of X), and she is blogging the entire process step by step.  From set up to character backgrounds to world building, she is describing the whole process, and it is quite an interesting read about what exactly goes into building a series.

From the Author Pages

Every week, I try and update the author pages with whatever new info or covers have come out, etc.  I thought I might just summarize what I did this past week in a post.

• Alexandra Ivy‘s next Guardians of Eternity book, Fear the Darkness, will be out a couple of weeks earlier than planned.  It is now an August 28th release.  Also, on her official blog, there is a small excerpt from the first book of the new series she is starting up called The Sentinels.
• There has been some question about what is up with the very slow release schedule of C.L. Wilson.  Well, turns out that illness forced a delay to her schedule, but things are still on the go for The Winter King, and then Bel and Galen’s Tairen Soul books.
• There will be another Bound novella from Cynthia Eden.  Bound by the Night will be released next week, but the cover and blurb have been upped HERE.
• Ilona Andrews is re-releasing Magic Dreams, the short story originally published in last years Hexed anthology, in e-format on June 26th.
• From what I can tell, it looks like Jacquelyn Frank will be releasing the first book of a Nightwalkers spin-off series on October 30th.  Forbidden is part of the Bodywalkers series.  Amazon still lists it as Seduce Me in Shadows, but the write up is correct.
• Jeaniene Frost is also re-releasing a previous anthology in e-format.  Night’s Darkest Embrace was originally in Haunted by Your Touch, and was set in the new world of Nocturna.  It should be out on November 13th.
• The future of the Midnight Breed series from Lara Adrian was sort of up in the air, but it appears that now a bit of info is starting to come out about book 11.  Edge of Dawn will be out later this year, and will feature a now grown-up Mira.
• oh, and I did a bit of a switch around.  I deleted the author section for Rhyannon Byrd, but I also created a new one for Cassandra Clare, which can be found HERE.

Pick of the Week…

I have a strange relationship with Lara Adrian books.  For some reason, as I have bored people with before, her books don’t stay with me.  I follow the series faithfully, read all of the books…and then promptly forget them.  Not just get a bit fuzzy on the details.  Forget them.  Storyline, character names, the main couple – everything.  When the next book comes around, I spend the first half trying to remember who everyone is, and what their story was.  I do enjoy the books, but I just can’t seem to make them stick.

Except for Chase.

Sterling Chase, aka Harvard, has always stood out.  Right from the first time he made an appearance, he made an impression.  And while I forget everyone and everything else, Chase has always held my attention.  Maybe it is because his story has been building over the course of almost 10 books, maybe it is because he has slowly been descending into his own hell, but my pick of the week is Chase’s story, Darker After Midnight.

Synopsis…

In the dark of night, a blood war escalates within the hidden world of the Breed. After existing in secret for many long centuries, maintaining a fragile peace with the humans who walk beside them unaware, a single act of retaliation has put the entire vampire nation at risk of discovery. It falls to the Order—a cadre of Breed warriors pledged to protect their own and humankind alike—to stop Dragos, the power-mad vampire at the center of the conflict, before his push for domination can explode into catastrophe.

At the center of the Order’s quest is Sterling Chase, once a morally rigid enforcer of Breed law, now a warrior fallen from grace, whose biggest battle is the one he wages against his own savage nature. With addiction beckoning him toward eternal darkness, Chase’s path to redemption has never seemed more out of reach. But when his eyes meet those of Tavia Fairchild, a beautiful witness who identifies him at the scene of a mission gone terribly wrong, Chase finds himself drawn to the woman—and convinced she is something much more than she seems.

Pulled into a vortex of intrigue and danger she can neither resist nor understand, Tavia is uncertain whom to trust. And while everything sane and logical warns her against getting close to Chase, she cannot deny that the handsome, deeply haunted male stirs something primal and ravenous within her. But even as she surrenders to her cravings, nothing can prepare her for the shattering truth of who—and what—she truly is.

As the Order’s enemy mobilizes for the battle of the ages, Dragos and his Minions unleashing a hell on Earth like nothing ever seen before, Chase and Tavia are thrust into the heart of the violence. With time running out and the streets running red with the blood of innocent lives, both Breed and human, together Chase and Tavia must find a way to defeat Dragos once and for all—or die trying.

I am not sure on the state of the series after this.  Lara Adrian’s site lists at least two more books to follow, but the publisher’s site seemed to infer that this is the final book.  Then again, who gets published in hardcover for the last book of a series?  Still not sure what is going on with that.

Upcoming E-books

Ok.  I have bored all with my refusal to get into the whole e-book thing on a couple of different occasions.  I was feeling pretty smug about the whole thing, too, clinging to my beloved paper-and-ink books with the shiny covers.  And then sometime in the last couple of days I started to notice something that rocked the boat a bit – a few series that I follow faithfully are releasing new stories that will be available ONLY in e-format.  Huh.  That sucks.

Coming up on December 5th is A Taste of Midnight from Lara Adrian‘s Midnight Breeds series.

A shimmering holiday gala lights up an ancient castle in the Scottish Highlands, but beautiful widowed Breedmate Danika MacConn feels alone in the crowd. Even among the friends and festivity of the Darkhaven celebration, she can’t forget her lost love, a fallen warrior of the Order. Her brief return to her mate’s homeland has become treacherous after rejecting the advances of a dangerous Edinburgh crime boss with a taste for blood sport. As Danika seeks to expose the vampire and his dark trade, she discovers an unexpected ally in his forbidding, enigmatic henchman, Brannoc, a man who exudes heat, danger, and dark menace—and seems somehow achingly familiar. Bran has his own reasons for wanting to keep Dani out of his employer’s business . . . and his own secrets he means to keep buried. The last thing he needs is to get tangled up with a woman who tempts the wildest part of his Breed nature—especially when that woman is Danika MacConn, the one woman capable of bringing him to his knees.

Now, for this next one, you have to head over to Samhain Publishing.  It will be releasing an Elder Races story from Thea Harrison on December 13th, called True Colors.

Meeting your soulmate? Great. Preventing your possible murder? Even better.

Alice Clark, a Wyr and schoolteacher, has had two friends murdered in as many days, and she’s just found the body of a third. She arrives at the scene only minutes before Gideon Riehl, a wolf Wyr and current detective in the Wyr Division of Violent Crime—and, as Alice oh-so-inconveniently recognizes at first sight, her mate.

But the sudden connection Riehl and Alice feel is complicated when the murders are linked to a serial killer who last struck seven years ago, killing seven people in seven days. They have just one night before the killer strikes again. And every sign points to Alice as the next victim.

Shannon K. Butcher will be releasing an e-book from her Sentinal Wars series early next year called Bound By Vengeance.  There is a pretty nifty cover, but no other info available as yet.

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Now, this next one confuses me.  Alyssa Day is supposed to be releasing a Warriors of Poseidon story in December – but there is no trace of a link as to where you can download Alejandro’s Sorceress.  And there is no info, cover blurb, nada.  Just a cover.   Strange.  And it is due out in a couple of weeks…

Now, that is not to say that I am against the e-books – I’m not.  Authors like Kresley Cole, Ilona Andrews and Jeaniene Frost are all going back and re-releasing their novellas in e-format, and I think it is great.  I would just like there to be a print option for us paper-lovers.  I don’t even mind buying an anthology just for one story – I do it all the time.   A while back, I read an interview with Christine Feehan somewhere where she talked about how print runs for romance books are down since people are buying more e-format stories, but that not printing books is forcing people to go in an electronic direction.  It seems like a catch 22, and still leaves me wondering if I just might have to take the plunge one day, after all…

Cover Lover – Two Biggies

I was trying to be a good girl (after spilling the proverbial beans about Jennifer Estep’s Spider’s Revenge cover before she was ready) and hold off posting these two until I was sure it was safe.  Since I have seen them both posted elsewhere, I figure it is ok.  Both of these are heading into their hardcover debuts next January, and both are highly anticipated by most.   Me included.

First up.  LOTHAIRE!  Sorry, had to get that out of my system.  Lothaire, the 10th full book in the Immortals After Dark series from Kresley Cole, is a January 10th release.

HARVARD!  God, I am such a book-nerd.  I love Harvard, aka Sterling Chase, from Lara Adrian‘s Midnight Breeds series, and I was starting to despair of ever getting his story.  Darker After Midnight will be released on January 24th.

Hm, interesting.  I don’t actually love either one of these.  Don’t dislike, just…not the oomph I was expecting, I guess.  They are nice, but lacking the wow factor.  Or, I should say that the pictures of them are lacking, but I have high hopes that the real covers pack more of a punch.  Of course, I am so happy to get them they could come wrapped in a paper bag and I would be thrilled, so what am I talking about?

Darker After Midnight Updates

I was excited when I realized that Lara Adrian was finally, finally set to write the story of Sterling Chase, aka Harvard.  He has been the one I have been waiting for ever since he was first introduced all those books ago, and things have gotten more than a bit intense for this former straight and narrow male.  Now his book, Darker After Midnight, marks the first hardcover release for the Midnight Breeds series, and a few details are starting to come out now.  Looks like this one has an official release date of January 24th, 2012, and the cover blurb has now been released.

Synopsis…

In the dark of night, a blood war escalates within the hidden world of the Breed. After existing in secret for many long centuries, maintaining a fragile peace with the humans who walk beside them unaware, a single act of retaliation has put the entire vampire nation at risk of discovery. It falls to the Order—a cadre of Breed warriors pledged to protect their own and humankind alike—to stop Dragos, the power-mad vampire at the center of the conflict, before his push for domination can explode into catastrophe.

At the center of the Order’s quest is Sterling Chase, once a morally rigid enforcer of Breed law, now a warrior fallen from grace, whose biggest battle is the one he wages against his own savage nature. With addiction beckoning him toward eternal darkness, Chase’s path to redemption has never seemed more out of reach. But when his eyes meet those of Tavia Fairchild, a beautiful witness who identifies him at the scene of a mission gone terribly wrong, Chase finds himself drawn to the woman—and convinced she is something much more than she seems.

Pulled into a vortex of intrigue and danger she can neither resist nor understand, Tavia is uncertain whom to trust. And while everything sane and logical warns her against getting close to Chase, she cannot deny that the handsome, deeply haunted male stirs something primal and ravenous within her. But even as she surrenders to her cravings, nothing can prepare her for the shattering truth of who—and what—she truly is.

As the Order’s enemy mobilizes for the battle of the ages, Dragos and his Minions unleashing a hell on Earth like nothing ever seen before, Chase and Tavia are thrust into the heart of the violence. With time running out and the streets running red with the blood of innocent lives, both Breed and human, together Chase and Tavia must find a way to defeat Dragos once and for all—or die trying.

The cover art should be released shortly.

Random Updates

Wow, it has been a bit of a dry spell post wise for the last couple of weeks, but at least I dug up a couple of new tidbits…

• well, Bond With Me from Anne Marsh, was scheduled to be released a couple of months ago, but has now been pushed way, way back to July of next year.
• Shayla Black‘s Embrace Me At Dawn has been all over the place release date wise, from the end of this year to early next year to next summer.  Well, now we will have to wait until February 2012 for the next installment of the Doomsday Brethren series.  That is a huge push back, I wonder what is going on with this title?
• and another one that has seen a bit of a shift is Gena Showalter‘s The Darkest Surrender.  Originally planned for July 2011, it looks like Strider’s story will now be a October 2011 release.
• In her newsletter, Lara Adrian gave us a couple of hints about book 10 in her Midnight Breed series.  Chase’s story (finally!) will be called Darker After Midnight, and should be available next fall.  I can’t wait.
• I know there are a lot of Nicole Peeler fans around, and it looks like the fourth book of her Jane True series will be out next August.  It will be called Eye of the Tempest.
• After License to Ensorcell, Katharine Kerr‘s next book will be called Water To Burn.  It should be available next August.
• There has been a bit of a change for the next Dragon Kin book from G.A. Aiken.  Looks like the September 6th release date is still a go, but the title has changed from How to Drive a Dragon Crazy to The Dragon Who Loved Me.
• I have no info on this one yet other than a title, but Sharie Kohler is set to release a new paranormal on August 30th.  It is called Night Falls on the Wicked, and I hope it is part of the Moon Chasers series.
• Book three of Caris Roane‘s Ascension series will be called Wings of Fire, and should be available at the end of next August.
• Looks like the very successful Midnight series from Nancy Gideon will be adding at least one other title.  Bound By Moonlight will be released on July 26th.
• Alix Rickloff will debut a new historical paranormal next June 28th, this one called Lord of Shadows.

Pick of the Week

September 26th – October 2nd, 2010

There are a lot of new releases this week, but I am picking the newest Lara Adrian Midnight Breeds book,  Taken by Midnight.  This one is number eight in the series, with number nine due next summer.  The big one, for me at least, will be number ten, when we will finally get Harvard’s story.

Synopsis…

Her desire for revenge is ice cold…In the frozen wilds of the Alaskan interior, former state trooper Jenna Darrow was taken hostage by a deadly vampire who terrorized her for hours, feeding on her blood and leaving her more dead than alive. But Jenna did survive – albeit as an altered being…Now Jenna wants revenge on that vampire, and for that she must turn to the very race of beings who terrify her the most: the Breed. But of all the Breed warriors it is Brock, the immense, forbidding male who makes Jenna feel most at ease.

Even more unsettling are the unbidden emotions Brock stirs within her. And the affair that begins as a physical understanding devoid of emotional strings soon blazes into something much deeper – but just as their passion flares white hot so does a ghost from Brock’s past threaten to break their fragile, forbidden love.