Goodreads giveaway ended, Indie Book Buffet to begin

The 4 autographed paperbacks of Love or Lust have been claimed through the Goodreads giveaway contest.

Congratulations to the winners.

Those of you still looking to win yourselves a free copy of the book should check out the first issue of the Indie Book Buffet eZine coming Thursday.

Also — you can keep reading the blog and perhaps subscribe to it.  You never know when I’ll post a code or link for a free copy somewhere.

Now & Forever ABCs (John & Marcia)

John Adrian Conners & Marcia Helen Conners née Abrams

12 June 1963 & 28 August 1966
Lutheran & Jewish

John is the eldest child of Josette & Charlie, a bee farmer in Oregon.

More modern minded than his parents, as are many of his siblings, so has augmented his sales in local grocer‘s shops with an online honey and beeswax store.

Marcia, his wife, makes a hobby of candle making.  Using the wax supplied by her husband to make various scented candles from oils and herbs.  When she isn’t making candles, Marcia runs a web design business.

The happy couple have three children, a daughter and two sons:  Gloria, Adam, and Jeremy.

Now & Forever ABCs (Mlle Jeanette)

Mademoiselle Jeanette Louise Marie Deveraux née Olivier

22 June 1964
Roman Catholic

Mademoiselle Jeanette, as she insists her students call her, is a Parisian ballerina who studied at L’École de Danse de l’Opéra de Paris and performed with various ballet companies including the Opéra National de Paris until after the birth of her second child when she elected to begin teaching instead.

In the late nineties Gabriel, her husband, was offered a promotion that caused the family to locate to Tacoma. Undaunted, Mademoiselle bid adieu to her French students and had an appointment with a real estate agent to look for a location for her new school scheduled the very day after her plane landed in Seattle.

She is a quirky woman who loves to laugh and to see her students laugh. While her English is letter perfect, and if she cares to she can speak with a nearly Oxfordian English accent, she does not make the conscious effort that such a feat requires for her, and has been known to exaggerate her native Parisian accent to various levels just to see the smiles it elicits.

Hers is a repertory school, Jeanette having never lost her love of the stage, and combines her favourite class of students:  children. As a result she accepts experienced students between the ages of eight and eighteen.  Though many of her students give up dance after graduation, a fact that she is quite philosophical about, those who have gone on to careers as dance instructors or performers have been successful, a fact that she is quite proud of.

Now & Forever ABCs (E & F)

I’m not actually sure I’ve got an E or F.

I’m going to have to dig through my notes.  I mean, I know there’re Es and Fs in the story … or within the setting, but I’m not sure they’re anyone on screen or anyone who’s been more than a recurring face in my mind that the girls pass in the school hallway.

If I haven’t found anyone by the time I go to bed tonight I’ll try to get started on the Js.  There’s several of them, and I want to post entries of many (most?) of them.  And for those wondering, no, I actually do not have an obsession with the letter J, it just happens that the pool of names I’ve encountered in my life has a very high J-quotient, so when it’s what I’m more likely to hit.  Hell, I’ve got 2 Jacobs in Love or Lust and I’m fair certain I’d never dream of naming my child Jacob!

Now & Forever ABCs (Chris & Sophie)

Christopher Vincent & Sophia Eleanor Johansson

1 March 1994
Roman Catholic

Chris and Sophie are two years ahead of Lauren & Sally at Immaculate Conception, and in her Theology class.

They’re twins who bear remarkable physical similarities to one another, but almost no personality traits in common.

Both are athletic and fit.  Chris runs track, and Sophie being a tennis player (though not on the school team).  Both are fairly tall and with features classic of their Swedish ancestry.

In personalities though, the two could be no more different.  Sophie is stuck up, proud, snarky, a bit of a gossip, exceedingly fashion conscious, haughty — generally, she is not a nice person and doesn’t much care; she feels that as someone rich and beautiful that the world is laid out before her and that anyone less beautiful and with less affluent parents are lesser beings.  Chris, on the other hand, is thoughtful, kind, intelligent, gentle.  Humility isn’t exactly a trait of either twin, though Chris comes closest to expressing it — both dress in ways that make the wealth of their parents apparent, she drives a brand new BMW convertible and he a new Corvette, but Chris does try to not to use his good looks to advantage versus his sister who is willing to play the succubus to get her way.

Chris is planning to go Brown to study political science, while Sophie intends to go to school in Paris to study … mostly European men … but also classical mythology and Latin.

Goodreads giveaway

4 Autographed copies of Love or Lust up on Goodreads!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Love or Lust by Jaye Em Edgecliff

Love or Lust

by Jaye Em Edgecliff

Giveaway ends July 27, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Now & Forever ABCs (Bertrice)

Bertrice Skye Klasson

22 February 1996
Roman Catholic

Bertrice, better known simply by B, is one of Immaculate Conception’s more notorious gossips.  She enjoys having the choicest news first and being the one to tell the dirty little secrets of the school to those who’ll hold still long enough to hear.

She’s a very tiny girl, smaller than Lauren even, and without the musculature with incredibly pale skin due to her insistence on constantly protecting herself from UV rays to somewhat ridiculous extremes.

She’s musically somewhat skilled and fairly talented.  She plays piano very well and is in the school’s Jazz Ensemble class, and is in her church’s choir.  Though her dream is to marry an insanely rich man, or to design Haute couture fashions.

Bertrice’s mother was a huge fan of Bertrice Small‘s novels and named her for the author and her favourite book, Skye O’Malley her parents had actually bet each other over the sex of their child when learning Tasha was pregnant, the prize being naming rights.  Bertrice has actually been known to begrudge her sex because of this, firmly believing she’d rather be named Felix Aragorn.

Mission accomplished!

It’s a 3-star review, but I’m proudest of this one.  I started Now & Forever to be inspirational for both the sorts of parents and teens that the story is about, but also for their friends and families.  To see a positive review from one such parent of one such teen is very warming:

14286745

Sandy Grassini‘s review

Jul 10, 13
It’s a week before her freshman year when Lauren Conners is thinking, for what feels like the billionth time, of breaking up with her boyfriend of the past couple of years. In a seeming answer to her fervent prayers for guidance she looks up into the hypnotic eyes of the quiet little Washington town’s exotic, dark, and alluring new addition.The two fall immediately for one another when their eyes meet. But Lauren can’t be sure – is this love at first sight? An answer from God to her prayer for guidance? Or is this simply lust as she wrestles with newborn passions and desires for the beautiful creature that has entered her life?

The relationship is fraught with other issues on top of the poor young ballerina’s internal and spiritual uncertainty: the two attend the best school in the area, a private school, Immaculate Conception, a Catholic school Lauren has attended since she was in sixth grade and where she has a reputation as a pious, studious, bright, Good Girl. So … what’s the problem here? Oh, her newfound love (or is it lust?) is a girl.

The author has done a fabulous job with each individual character. both girls and parents have great sense of humors. Both parents are very laid back and easy going and suport both their children as they embark on their journey to see if what they have is real.

Sally is a young freshman who saw Lauren and thought it was love at first sight. Lauren feels a connection as well. Even though Lauren isn’t sure about her sexuality, she embraces her feelings towards Sally. Puppy love is so sweet, isn’t it? I call it puppy love because we are talking about 2 14 year old kids. Do they even know what real love is all about. Lauren questions whether or not she’s only lusting after Sally due to her looks and not feeling that same love in return.

Sally has the best sense of humor and I love the way she makes everyone laugh.

Lauren is a sweet freshman who is having difficulty trying to figure out why she does not feel more toward her boyfriend then just friendship. She is confused. Until she meets Sally. Sally also has a great sense of humor. You will see this throughout the book. They are both so sweet, I would ben honored to have them as my own daughters.

As a parent with a daughter that was younger than these two are and faced with the same situation, I thought I was a good candidate to read and rate this book.

Now back to the additional characters. You have both parents, who have been very supportive of the girls new found love. I can relate with these parents, because I have an open communication type relationship with my daughter and she knows she can come to me for anything. I did love these characters, because they were very laid back and easy going. Both loving their daughters very much and the huge key here is the support. They were also very encouraging and helping the girls deal with their sexuality. i would be happy to call them as friends if it were my daughter in this situation.

I rated this book 3 stars. The book was well written, great format. Its basically the day and the life of 2 teenage girls trying to figure out who they are. There wasn’t really any excitement to this book, just normal teenage stuff. I do get what the author was trying to accomplish here, but I would have liked to see more of a story line versus just every day life.

Oh! IBooks is live!

I just learnt that Love or Lust has been live on iBooks for the past ten hours!

Here’s a link

I’m very happy. IBooks is my favourite ebook platform and store.

Well … that’s depressing

Well, the one star on Goodreads was updated to include a review. They posted it on Amazon too.

I must say, it’s odd to see someone posting a one star review of something they say they didn’t finish. It’s typically considered bad form – unless the review was: This book wasn’t even spell checked, it’s unreadable. Technical merit, or more to the point a lack thereof, being a quite valid exception.

Still, it’s far less that which bothers me. It’s that it criticises the story for being what I say in the blurb. There’s something troubling about this. I know I can’t expect to please everyone, but I never expected it to come in the form of a complaint that the book couldn’t be finished and the elaboration on why was that it was a love at first sight story about high school freshmen … as stated in the description.  There’s also criticism of Lauren being both gay and Christian which I cannot comment on politely so shan’t try.

I think I could have been amused, but some people have said the review was helpful, and this was one of the worst sales days since it launched.

And that’s what awaited me when I woke up this morning … on my birthday. (Really, today was my really for real birthday – I thought of putting the book on special sale or something, but thought of it too late, sorry).