Cover Reveal: 'Endre' by ST Bende

A few weeks ago, the incredibly talented ST Bende took some time out from her busy release schedule to visit with us here on TTP. Now she's gone one step further and I've been given the opportunity to share something with awesome with you guys: The cover of 'Endre', the newest book in the Elsker Saga!

Pretty cool, right? Personally, I'm loving the simplicity of the monotone trees and silvered text. Definite thumbs up from me, ST Bende - I approve.

What's even cooler is the official summary:


Sometimes, finding your destiny means doing the exact opposite of what The Fates have planned.

Winning the heart of an immortal assassin was a dream come true for Kristia Tostenson. Now she's knee deep in wedding plans, goddess lessons, and stolen kisses. But her decision to become immortal could end in heartbreak -- not only for Kristia, but for the god who loves her. Because while Ull would do anything to protect his bride, even the God of Winter is powerless against the Norse apocalypse. Ragnarok is coming. And the gods aren't even close to ready.

Yup. Totally going to be picking this one up when it gets released on September 23rd! What about you?

More about ST. Bende:

Before finding domestic bliss in suburbia, ST Bende lived in Manhattan Beach (became overly fond of Peet’s Coffee) and Europe… where she became overly fond of the musical Cats. Her love of Scandinavian culture and a very patient Norwegian teacher inspired the ELSKER series. She hopes her characters make you smile and that one day pastries will be considered a health food.

You can follow ST Bende on Twitter @stbende, or send an e-mail to stbende@gmail.com.

Before finding domestic bliss in suburbia, ST Bende lived in Manhattan Beach (became overly fond of Peet’s Coffee) and Europe… where she became overly fond of the musical Cats. Her love of Scandinavian culture and a very patient Norwegian teacher inspired the ELSKER series. She hopes her characters make you smile and that one day pastries will be considered a health food.

Author social media links

Blog: http://stbende.blogspot.com/

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/stbende

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stbende or @stbende

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/stbende/

Bridal Title #4: '51 Ways to Save Money and Still Have a Chic and Fabulous Wedding!' by Laura Pepper

Official Summary:

There are plenty of ways to save money on your wedding day. But chic and tasteful ones? '51 Ways to Save Money and Still Have a Chic and Fabulous Wedding!' introduces these to you in this entertaining how-to guide. There's nothing tacky or distasteful here: just good old fashioned money saving tricks that you might not have thought of before. You'll save the price of this book, plus much much more! If you want a chic and fabulous wedding, and still enter marriage with enough money to enjoy newly wed life, then this guide is for you!

Review:

When I downloaded this title the last thing I felt like I needed to do was check the page count, but at $2.99 for a forty-two page book - that with all the extra tall "section headers" and double spacing it end up being less than 20 pages of actual information - I couldn't help but feel ripped off. But that's both a blessing and a curse in this particular instance.

On one hand the it would have been nice to have the longer, more in-depth explanations of her money saving tips. Things like "23. Serve Wedding Cake as Dessert. ‘Cos who really needs two desserts anyway?" were as curtly delivered as they were offensive in their numb obviousness. While we're on the topic of Laura's tips, most of them fall into the category of 'DUH' teetering on the edge of 'WTF?'. Nothing struck me as being chic and/or fabulous and every last one of them could have been copied directly out of any wedding forum anywhere on the internet. But don't just take my word on it, go take a quick spin on Google and search 'Wedding Money Saving Tips', and if you don't find an army of people suggesting you hold your big day in a friend or family members back yard, making your own flower arrangement, having your wedding on an off day (or season), avoiding any holidays or borrowing, begging and stealing anything and everything you can possibly get your hands on than I'll eat my hat.. well, A hat anyway. And at the end of the day I guarantee that the advise you get from that one quick web search will be more thoughtful and useful than the quick one- to two-paragraph quips that Pepper gives in this guide.

On the other hand, at least the title only took about 15 minutes of my time to read - so not the worst experience I guess.

Bottom Line: A rip off of epic proportions that says absolutely nothing insightful about how you can save money on your big day. Do yourself a favor and keep to the forums and the $2.99.

'Once Upon a Guest Post' a Guest Post by Jordan Link

Hey, I’m Jordan, and my debut novel, The Sacrificed, is being released on May 6^th with Entranced Publishing. With that said, I’m flattered to be on such a popular review blog!

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, I found myself dreaming. But replace those elegant gowns with sweatshirts, those arching rainbows with deep gray skies, and you have reality. Of course, I’m not one to dwell on the real world. I have never been, and I never will be.

A few years ago, I found retreat in novels. It didn’t take long for me to discover their magic, especially the magic of fantasy and science fiction. Embodying their brittle pages were places: places where I could go when the comfort of friends was nowhere to be found. My imagination expanded like a wildfire. My own dreams were trapped doves, eager to escape their temporary cages. Friends were no longer a must. There were bounties of characters that could tear at my heartstrings, could make me despise them with every grain of my being. A character, no matter how cruel, would never tell me to close the book and leave.

When I first came up with the idea for my manuscript, which would eventually reach that final rung so many authors aspire for, it was not a fairy tale. It was a dark, romantic tale of rebellion, starvation, and the divisions of a society that would never exist unless I wrote it there myself.

The result was the City of Centsia, the homeland of 16-year-old Emerald Hayden and her winged counterpart, Dusk. Though at first its surface appears to be glittering and pristine, like Snow White’s poisoned apple, it doesn’t take long for worms of the city’s corruption to chew through to the surface.

In the end, a real world Cinderella got everything she could ever wish for: a published novel, a glut of trustworthy friends, and another blank Microsoft Word document just waiting for the next enchantment of her fingertips.

Thank you for stopping by Jordan & best of luck with the upcoming release!

More about Jordan Link: 

Jordan Link is currently contracted with Entranced Publishing for her novel "The Sacrificed", which will be released on May 6, 2013. She won first place in Jack L. Chalker's Young Writers Contest of 2012 for her short story “The Bubble”, and attended Balticon 46 last year. She earned an honorable mention on December 3rd for the Young Voices Foundation Short Story Contest and will be published in their anthology "Oh, the Stories They Tell!" which will be available on Amazon. Her early love of reading inspired an equivalent passion towards writing, and she plans to continue doing so.

Jordan can be found at the following internet watering holes: Facebook, the Twitersphere, her blog & good ol' Goodread  

And don't forget to follow @TheJessle or subscribe to TTP to make sure you don't miss tomorrow's bridal title train wreck! 

Cover Reveal: 'Sleeper' by S.M. Johnston

Today we've got something pretty awesome for you: the never before seen cover to S.M. Johnston's 'Sleeper' (Book I in the Toy Soldier Series).

Not too shabby, right?

More importantly, the story behind the cover sounds intriguing and has already been added to my (ever growing) TBR pile.. too bad it isn't released until December 2nd of this year! 

After a life saving heart transplant, eighteen-year-old Mishca Richardson is plagued by nightmares and an urgent desire to find her birth parents, which she puts down to post-operation depression. But her new heart seems to bring more than a second chance at life in the form of speed, strength and love at first sight.

Now if you aren't familiar with S.M. Johnston here's a little about her:

Sharon is a writer from Mackay in Queensland, Australia who has short stories published in anthologies and was also runner-up in the Australian Literary Review's Young Adult short story contest with KARMA. By day she is a public relations executive and by night she writes weird fiction and soulful contemporaries while her husband, two sons and cat are fast asleep.

And if you'd like to find out more about the title and author - well I've gotcha covered there too. Jump to her Facebook page or follow on Twitter @S_M_Johnston. Once you've done that, check out her website or swing over and see what happening on her blog.

Oh and don't forget to follow @TheJessle or subscribe to TTP to make sure you don't miss tomorrow's guest post from Jordan Link, author of 'Sacrificed'!

April Postmortem Plus May Prologue

With only five posts in April, well, I don't know what to say. I'm sorry might be a good start but I won't sugar coat the truth or try to feed you a line of crude either. I selfishly spent the month catching up on things like Dresden, and rereading parts of the Southern Vampire Mysteries in preparation for the release of the final book on Tuesday.*

Heck, I even read a wedding title, but was so underwhelmed that I didn't bother getting around to putting up a review. Don't worry though, I will... mainly because I don't want anyone else wasting their hard earned dollars on that garbage.(If you haven't guessed, it's going into the DNR bin for sure.)

So, that leaves me with the outstanding question of what am I actually going to get reviewed this month:

• 'Dead Ever After' by Charlaine Harris. This will most likely be the first, proper review that goes up in May. (Aside from the catch-up post for the terrible waste of e-ink bridal title that's going up)
• The entire 'Into the Dark' series by Milly Silver will be going up as well. And I'm super excited about it to boot - so major plus there.
• Lastly, I'll be grabbing a title off the top of the TBR pile by the name of 'The Misremembered Man' by Christina McKenna. The title alone has me intrigued - so it jumps the line.

You'll also want to keep an eye towards TTP for 'Sleeper' by SM Johnston cover reveal tomorrow. Oh, and this month's bridal title? After the last catastrophe, I'm reaching for the well regarded 'The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day' by  Lisbeth Levine & Mindy Weiss. 

*And yes, I've come across the ending spoilers that lay rampant across the landscape. And yes, I'm upset. But in preparation I'm taking a few days off from work so I can have a proper cry and get on with my new, Viking-less universe.