Posting Issues

Ok, I'm not trying to be thick here, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to comment back when someone leaves a comment on my page, or on anyone else's blog for that matter.  After I type in the comment box, I have tried every option from the pulldown box and it's just not letting me post anything!  I'm sure it's probably me being stupid, but I just wanted to say I am not intentionally ignore anyone who leaves me a comment....If you guys have advice, please leave me a comment! :)  And if your advice works, you will get a comment back from me.  :) 

Woo Hoo! Book Trailer!!

Hi everyone,

I made a book trailer!  I know it might be ameteur, but I must say I am proud of myself!  Check it out!

Excerpt!

So I'm thinking this might be my last excerpt...I don't want to unravel the whole story on my blog...And speaking of unraveling-this excerpt does reveal a bit of something that you might not be aware of when you first start reading my book...so it could be a little bit of a SPOILER...  That being said, if you don't mind, read on, if you want to be surprised, don't read any further!  :)  Taken from Chapter 28:

Mandy had fallen into a dreamless sleep when she had gotten to the sanctuary of her own room.  She was woken by a knocking at her door.  She sat up quickly, trying to shake off the sleep fog.  She looked at the clock.  4:30.  Almost dinner time.  She wondered if her parents knew she hadn’t been in school today.  The knocking began again.

“Yeah?”  Mandy called, clearing her throat from the sleepy goo that had made its home there as she snoozed.  “You can come in.”  Mandy’s door pushed open, revealing her mom standing there.

“Hey honey.  Rough day?  I came up earlier and saw you were asleep,” Mandy’s mom started.

“Um, yeah.  Guess I was tired,” Mandy said, unsure of what to say.

            “Well dinner’s almost done,” Mandy’s mom turned to go but stopped.  “Oh, and your friend Lucas called earlier too.  I told him you had fallen asleep and he said he’d just drop by later.  Now don’t get flustered, but I kind of invited him to dinner,” Mandy’s mom grimaced sheepishly, clearly aware of the potential trouble she had gotten herself into.

            “Mom!” Mandy screeched.  Her mouth fell open and her hands dropped uselessly to her sides.  “Why’d you do that?!” 

            “Now, Honey, calm down.  Lucas is a nice kid, I didn’t see the harm in helping your friendship along.  It’s nothing.  So what if he eats dinner with us for one night?  It’s not like you were serious with that Stephen kid.  Right?”

            “Mo-om,” Mandy moaned, turning the word into two syllables.  “Sometimes you make me so mad I could scream.  It’s not your business who I am or am not friends with.  I’m not five anymore!” Mandy stormed past her mom and downstairs.  She could smell enchiladas bubbling away in the oven, her favorite.  She would bet her mom had mde them as a peace offering.  She walked past her dad who happened to be passing through the room and started to fling open drawers, grabbing utensils to set the table.  Mandy’s mom was hot on her heels. 

“Now honey!  Come on!  Be reasonable,”  Mandy’s mom began.  Mandy slammed the silverware drawer shut with a thud, ingoring her mom’s comments.  She began noisily throwing the forks and knives down on the table.  Just then the doorbell rang. 

            “I’ll get that,” Mandy’s dad said too fast, obviously eager to get away from the angry kitchen.  Mandy rolled her eyes and flopped down into her chair crossing her arms in front of her chest, waiting.

            “There’s Lucas,” Mandy’s mom said softly to no one in particular.

            “Oh really?  I wouldn’t have guessed,” Mandy spat out sarcastically.  “I mean, I might have guessed that if I had invited him to dinner, but I didn’t invite him to dinner.  Oh that’s right, my mother invited him to dinner.” 

            Mandy’s dad walked back into the kitchen tailed by Lucas.  Mandy’s mom gave Mandy a glance that said to behave with just a look.  Then she quickly pasted on a smile.  Mandy refused to be part of this.  She didn’t even pretend to smile or even look up.  She stared at the table in front of her until her mother’s chirpy voice called out, “Mandy, Lucas is here.”

            Mandy bit the inside of her cheek, fuming at the way her evening was going.  She felt her nostrils flare and thought this must be what it’s like to be one of those bulls tormented in Spain.  She pictured her head with bull horns and her nose with a gold ring dangling from of it.  The image pushed her towards an inexplicable peal of laughter, which she barely choked back.  She was definitely losing it.  “Hey Lucas,” she managed to say, trying to sound nonchalant. 

            “Hey Mandy,” Lucas greeted her.  He moved towards the table, unsurely.  “Can I sit with you?”

            “Help yourself,” Mandy gestured to the seat across from her.  The wooden legs scraped noisily across the linoleum floor.  Mandy’s mom stood with her back towards them, fluffing up a pot of Spanish rice.

            “I tried to call you earlier, but your mom said you were taking a nap.”

            “I was,” Mandy said curtly, evilly eyeing her mother’s back.

            “I didn’t see you at school today, just wondering where you had gotten off to,” Lucas said, eyeing her knowingly.

            “What’s it to you, it’s not like we hang out nowadays,” Mandy said curtly.  Mandy kept her arms crossed in front of her chest.  Of all the days for her mother to do this to her.  Lucas cleared his throat, sounding uncomfortable.  His fingers drummed across the kitchen table.  Mandy felt a slight twinge of triumph at the fact that she had at least succeeded in making this awkward for everyone if she was going to be forced into a situation she had not asked for.  She looked up from the table to gauge Lucas’s face, and the triumphant feeling dissipated like it had never even been there at all.  In a split second the feeling was replaced by sheer terror. 

            Lucas had cleared his throat not because he was feeling awkward and uncomfortable.  He had been trying to get Mandy’s attention.  He was scowling at Mandy, his eyes narrowed until all you could see was a slit of his flashing green eyes.  His mouth was turned down in a sneer mixed up with a frown, his nose wrinkled in disgust.  The hand that had been drumming continued to do so, while his free hand moved across the table.  His finger was out and pointed down like a pencil, like he was drawing pictures mindlessly across the wood. 

            Mandy felt the blood rush out of her face as she sat up, dropping her arms from her chest and instead gripping the edges of her chair.  Something was not right here, that much was clear from Lucas’s expression.  She felt her mouth turn down in a frown.  She watched Lucas’s hand with the extended finger gliding across the polished surface.  All of a sudden she realized he was not aimlessly doodling.  His finger was writing something over and over again, invisibly across the table.  Long diagonal drag down, short diagonal drag up, short diagonal drag down, long diagonal drag up.  W…long drag straight down.  I…straight drag down, drag across the top.  T…Half a circle.  C…two long straight drags down connected by another drag across the middle.  H.  Mandy gasped audibly as things clicked into place in her head.

            Mandy’s mother turned around.  In the time she did Lucas impressively smoothed his face out like he didn’t even know how to look upset, much less sneer.  Almost imperceptibly, he gave a half shake of his head in Mandy’s direction.  Mandy swallowed noisily.  “Everything ok?” Mandy’s mom asked looking from Lucas to Mandy.

            “Yeah, I just need a drink,” Mandy said scraping her chair back so quickly it bumped into the wall behind her, leaving a small brown mark. 

            “Don’t forget your guest, Mandy.  Lucas, what would you like?  We have milk, apple juice, soda…” Mandy’s mom suggested.

            “Soda would be fine,” Lucas practically purred as he smiled sweetly at Mandy’s mom and then at Mandy herself.  Mandy swore she could feel the bile rising up in her throat.  She turned the tap on at the kitchen sink and poured herself a glass of water, chugging it down and ignoring Lucas’s request for the moment.  Once it was gone she turned to the fridge and looked for the soda.  There were two 2 liters inside.  One was a

Diet Coke, which had been sitting there, opened, lonely, and untouched for the past couple of weeks.  No one drank it besides Nana.  Then there was a brand new bottle of Mountain Dew, fresh with its carbonated bubbles eager to quench a person’s thirst.  She chose the Diet Coke, knowing it would be flat and unpleasant.  She poured a glass in a chipped tumbler, not bothering with ice.

            “Mandy, you should have gotten Lucas a glass,” Mandy’s mom said obviously embarrassed.

            “That’s ok,” Lucas said quickly with a smile.  “Tastes the same.”

            Mandy looked unapologetically at Lucas and slid the soda down across the table towards him.  She pushed it a little too hard and oops, wouldn’t you know it didn’t stop where it should have but tipped right off the edge of the table and onto Lucas’s lap.  Now it was Mandy’s turn to sneer.  She heard the sudden intake of her mother’s breath and she wiped the sneer off before her mother had time to turn around and catch her.  She tried her best to look horrified.  “Oh, geez, sorry Lucas!  I’ll get you a towel,” Mandy said running from the room.  She tried as best as she could to stifle the laugh that was threatening to explode.  She grabbed a ratty old towel from the cupboard and came back into the kitchen to find her mother mopping up the mess as best she could with paper towels.  Mandy flung the towel at Lucas and she could almost feel the heat of his anger radiating out of him. 

          

In the Works...

Hi everybody,

It's been a few days since I've written, mainly because I've been super busy looking for ways to promote my book.  There's a lot of good resources out there, but I'm actually finding that the number of resources is a bit overwhelming!  I've been sending out email after email, mainly to different book blogs, looking for reviews/interviews/guest posts, etc. 

I am having a really great resonse though, so luck must be on my side.  I'm a guest blogger on http://thefairytalenerd.blogspot.com/ on August 31, and will be doing a giveaway of my ebook, so if you have time check it out!  I've also got some more guest blogs & interviews in the works, so I'll let you know as they come around. 

Oh and I now have facebook and twitter pages for my book, just to confuse me more!  :)  I have to figure twitter out as I've never used it...but you can find me under Enchanted179 on both sites!

I'll probably be posting one last excerpt later today.  I don't want to give away the whole story, so I figure I can't really keep posting them or I'll end up with my whole book on my blog! 

So stay tuned and have a great Monday!

Guest Blogging!

I'm excited to say that I'm a guest blogger over on AlaskanBookCafe today...
You can check me out here:  http://alaskanbookcafe.blogspot.com/  and find out a little bit more about me and what inspired my book as well as a new excerpt!!  Cristi at AlaskanBookCafe reviews books on her blog (she'll be doing a review of mine in the near future) so stop and browse around on her site for a while and find some good reads!  :)

Have a great day everybody!

Frustrated!

Who knew that self-publishing a book could be such a pain?!  Honestly, if I'd known, I don't know if I would have attempted this...so maybe it's better I didn't know...

As I've mentioned before, my book's formatting has issues.  But I found someone to fix it.  Even having someone fix it has not been as easy as I had hoped though.  I thought I could just email him the copy, he'd fix it, mail it back, and voila! good to go!  Sadly that has not been the case...

My first two attempts to email the book were met with a message that the file was corrupted and wouldn't open!  My third attempt was successful...sigh of relief.  So tonight I get an email from my fix-it friend that it is all fixed...Yay!  Go to open it and what do I get but a message that the file is corrupted and won't open.  At this point I am ready to bang my head repeatedly into the wall, or pull my hair out strand by strand, or both...

I want so badly to just have my book be in perfect condition and just worry about promoting it, but it seems it is never ending issues right now.  So in the meantime, I'll be hitting up the wine bottle and hoping and waiting for a response from the person that fixed it...hoping that a.) he writes back and b.) he knows what to do, cuz I certainly don't! 

If it is ever cleaned up and good to go I will be soo happy!  Cross your fingers I put that update up on my blog...SOON! 

New Excerpt!

I've been promising you all a new excerpt, so here it is, taken from Chapter 6: 

          “Mandy,” a soft voice whispered close to Mandy’s ear.  Mandy heard it, but she wanted to sleep a little longer so she decided to ignore it.  She was still so tired she felt as if she had just gone to bed.  Mandy knew it must be morning and that she must have slept through her alarm clock since her mom was trying to wake her up.  “Mandy,” the voice persisted. 

            Mandy groaned and pulled her pillow over her face.  “Mandy,” said the voice again.  Mandy felt the pillow be pulled away from her eyes.  She knew the charade must be up, she would have to give in to the day now.  She forced her eyelids to open a bit in a squint, prepared for the morning light to be bright and painful, but instead darkness met her eyes.  She rubbed her hands against her eyes and half sat up in bed.  It was still dark, she was not imagining that. 

            “Mom, what are you doing?” Mandy asked appalled that she had been called awake at this ungodly hour.

            “Mandy,” the voice said again, softly.

            “Mom?” Mandy asked quietly, her voice icy in her throat with the sudden panic that was enclosing around her.

            “Mandy,” said the feather soft whisper.

            Mandy looked around quickly, willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness.  She could see no one in her room.  There was no light coming in from out in the hallway or further in from the house, no light shining in from the windows.  She was surrounded by the pitch black, alone in her bed except for the voice.  She felt a scream rising in her chest but it would not come out.  Mandy felt paralyzed with fear.

            “Mandy,” the voice was very faint now. 

Mandy had the sudden urge to pull the blankets up over her head and hide, but she knew that was pointless.  She summoned all of her courage, which wasn’t very much and said to the disembodied voice, “What do you want?”  She was almost more terrified to hear the answer than to hear the whispered voice again.

“Come,” it breathed. 

Mandy was certain of one thing: she was definitely not getting out of her bed willingly.  She grabbed hold of her blankets and pulled them up a little higher and tighter to her body.

“Now,” it instructed.

Suddenly a gust of air blew in though Mandy’s open windows.  It was cold, the summer nights always cooled off drastically.  Coolness blew in right off the waters.  The wind seemed to wrap its icy, invisible arms around Mandy, embracing her in its powerful nothingness and pulling at her unrelentingly.  

Before she could scream she was somehow not in her bed anymore but out in the dark night.  Her house was gone.  Her bare feet felt the crisp grass beneath them.  The land was flat.  There seemed to be a house in the shadows but Mandy couldn’t make it out clearly.  The lonely moon peeked out a little from behind some silver clouds, sillouhetting a few tall yet crooked looking trees.  They reminded Mandy of skeletons, all bony and knobby, the branches pointing like long, skinny fingers.  Mandy followed the outline of the branches to the end, realizing suddenly that something was looped on one of the bigger branches.  She took a few steps closer, squinting in the darkness, trying to make out what the object was. 

It was dangling.  The wind whipped around Mandy and gave the object a push as well.  It began to sway a bit from the gusty breeze.  A break in the clouds soon allowed the moon to show itself completely, illuminating the horror before Mandy’s eyes.  A corpse it was, dangling from a rope tied about the tree branch.  The head was at an awful angle, unnaturally bent to the side.  It was dressed in outdated clothing in muted tones of brown.  A blouse and long skirt.  The breeze pushed it again, making it swing gleefully.        

This time the scream did find its way out of Mandy.  She screamed and screamed, staring in unparalleled fear at the traumatizing sight in front of her eye.  She wanted more than anything to back away, to run away, or to at least look away or close her eyes, but she couldn’t.  It was as if her body was not under her control anymore.  She continued to shriek until finally she located her legs and they began to respond to her commands and move her away. 

Mandy ran blindly, not caring which direction she went so long as she got away from this horrid place.  She had only gotten a few paces away when she tripped over something, perhaps a tree root poking out of the ground.  She fell on her stomach and found herself staring at something directly in front of her.  It was a large gray stone.  A slab.  A headstone.  Her eyes began to read the carving even though she knew what it said before she did so. 

“Here liest quite free from Lifes
Distreƒsing Care,
A loving Wife…” 

The scream gurgled up again in Mandy’s throat.  She squeezed her eyes shut and let the scream surround her in the dark night until her throat felt like it would collapse in on itself.