JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS: COVER REVEAL - BELIEVE IN ME

In the late ‘70s/early-‘80s, Kenny Rogers had a major hit with the song “The Gambler”. I remember that song well, even though I was very young when it first came out. The lines to the chorus are running through my head right now as I type this: “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run…”

The cover for BELIEVE IN ME was the first one that I ever tried to create for myself. It was good, I thought. Other people said it was nice… But when I compared it to the covers of the bestsellers out there, there was something that was missing. I finally put my finger on what it was – the professional edge.

I’d taken a gamble in developing my own cover, and after a year or so, it became clear that BELIEVE IN ME needed a professional face lift; that is, this became clearer to me once I started working with professional artist Barbara Ivie Green on a cover for another one of my books (my upcoming historical novel, THE FADING SUN).

It was instant, love at first sight. Barbara took my story ideas, and she made my characters come to life right before my eyes. I was amazed and so excited. I couldn’t wait to share this amazing cover with the rest of the world. So, without further ado, here it is.

<Insert cover image here>

BELIEVE IN ME is a sweet romance/Christmas novella that is currently available on Amazon in both paperback  (http://www.amazon.com/Believe-Me-Mishael-Austin-Witty/dp/1478100885/)  and ebook (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008EDNBD8)  form.  

And, as a special bonus, the Kindle price is being lowered to 99 cents for the entire month of November through Cyber Monday, December 2, 2013. Don’t miss this chance to get into the holiday spirit at a greatly reduced rate.

About Mishael Austin Witty

Mishael Austin Witty is a professional editor and the internationally bestselling author of SHADOWS OF THINGS TO COME, a Christian thriller/suspense novel, and BELIEVE IN ME, a sweet contemporary romance/women’s fiction novella. In addition to these books, she has newly released a zombie fairy tale, CAMPANULA, which marks a departure from the usual for her, but it was great fun to write, and she already has plans for another.

She lives in Louisville, KY (where most of the action of CAMPANULA takes place), with her husband, two cats, and two daughters. Connect with her online in the following places:

Website: http://www.wittyonlineeditor.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/MishaelAustinWitty

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/woweditor12

Links to her other books on Amazon:

SHADOWS OF THINGS TO COME http://www.amazon.com/dp/1475146930
CAMPANULA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DBZ1DF2

Waking Dream Released Today

I'm thrilled to have the privilege of announcing the release of Book 5 in J.J. DiBenedetto's Dream Series. I fell in love with these books when I read Dream Student and immediately downloaded the other three books.  J.J. has an amazing talent, and I strongly endorse each of his books.

Here's a little bit about Waking Dream

"We can hurt each other. Whatever we do to each other in the dream, we’ll do it to ourselves for real…”

When her own dreams are visited by a mysterious woman in a red dress, Sara realizes she has something she never expected: a counterpart, someone outside her family who shares her talent to see other people’s dreams.

When the woman in red keeps showing up in other dreams as well, leaving ruined lives in her wake, Sara knows she has something she never imagined: a nemesis.

Now, Sara must track the woman in red down in the waking world, before she’s forced to fight for her life in her dreams…

“Waking Dream” is the exciting fifth novel in the “Dreams” series.

Excerpt from Waking Dream

As Sara watches herself, she suddenly feels a cold breeze, as though one of the windows was open.  But they’re all closed; there’s nowhere for the breeze to have come from.  And then Sara turns away from herself and her husband and she sees it – sees her.   

    

Only for an instant, and only from the back.  The driver’s door is already open, and a woman – a woman in a red dress, with long black hair falling down just past her shoulders – is out of the car and running away…

***

As my eyes open, I’m looking at the door very intently.  Why?  What am I expecting to see?  It’s still closed, the chair is still wedged there…

It was a car door.  My car door.  I was dreaming, and – she was there.  That woman.  The same one I saw a few months ago in Brian’s dream.  The woman who can do what I can do.  I let myself forget about it.  Brian and I talked about it, and we convinced ourselves that I must have misunderstood what I saw, or something.

Not this time.  I know for sure now.  I felt a draft, as though a window had opened.  Every time Lizzie or my mother came into my dreams, I felt an invisible door opening.  They go through the door, this woman climbs in through the window.  It makes perfect sense.  And she just appeared, the way I – usually – just appear.  And the moment she realized she wasn’t alone in Brian’s dream, she ran for it.

I have to tell Brian.  It’s – God, it has to be someone he knows.  That’s how it works for me.  We have to figure out who, and then – what? 

I don’t have the slightest idea.  

About J.J. DiBenedetto

J.J. (James) DiBenedetto was born in Yonkers, New York. He attended Case Western Reserve University, where as his classmates can attest, he was a complete nerd. Very little has changed since then.

He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia with his beautiful wife and their cat (who has thoroughly trained them both). When he's not writing, James works in the direct marketing field, enjoys the opera, photography and the New York Giants, among other interests.

The "Dreams" series is James' first published work.

You can find J.J.'s books here:

Amazon

EbookOnFire

Smashwords

Dream Series page

Connect with J.J. here:

Facebook

http://www.writingdreams.net

Finding My Way Back Released!

I'm so excited about the release of Finding My Way Back, Book 2 in the Finding My Escape Trilogy.  Writing the sequel has been a lot of fun.  I hope you'll enjoy this excerpt.

Liz knew she needed to tell Hannah soon.  She’d hoped she’d be able to confirm her belief about the island first.  Charles argued that they needed to tell Hannah everything before they excavated.  Just in case.

“All right,” she finally agreed, closing the box and turning the tumblers to lock it.  “We’ll talk to Hannah about it tomorrow.”

As she was turning the last of the tumblers, the doorbell rang, and Charles went to answer it. 

“Yes?” she heard her husband ask.

“Hello, Charles,” a man’s voice spoke.  “Where’s your wife?”

Liz felt her knees grow weak.  The man’s voice was malicious. Cruel. 

Her intuition told her what was happening.  Somehow, the Others had learned what she’d found, and they’d sent someone to get the location. 

She had to hide the box.  She ran out to the garage, looking around frantically, her eyes falling on a spot that might work.  She shoved the box inside, and then ran back in the house to help her husband.  As her foot crossed the threshold of the kitchen, she heard a shot.  She grabbed the door jamb and covered her mouth to stifle the sound of her scream.  She heard a thud.  Charles…

Footsteps headed toward the kitchen, and she looked wildly around the room for any kind of weapon.  The man walked in, brandishing a knife before she could find one.

“Hello, Liz.  I believe you have something I want.”

Liz sank to the floor, her body wracked with sobs.

I’m so sorry, Hannah.

FINDING MY WAY BACK - EXCERPT

I'm about a third of the way through on the edits for Finding My Way Back, the sequel to Finding My Escape.  Now I want to encourage everyone to read book 1 before you get this one.  It should be out in August, barring any set-backs.

Excerpt from Finding My Way Back

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the task I was undertaking or what I expected to get out of it.  Closure, maybe?  No.  After everything I’d been through, closure just didn’t seem adequate.  Maybe I just needed to see.  To be sure that I hadn’t mixed everything up in my dreams.  But closure?  No, definitely not to find closure.

I’d left Aunt Laura back at the hotel, telling her that I just needed some time to myself.  She understood that.  After sitting at my bed side for two weeks in the hospital, she needed some time to herself.  Wow.  Two weeks.  For me, it had seemed much longer.  Between Valeria and my dreams, it had seemed like a year.  But you weren’t supposed to dream when you were in a coma.  Were you?

I parked the car and grabbed the cardboard box that sat on the seat next to me, bracing myself for what I was going to do.  To see.  I slipped out of the car, straightened my dress and began walking across the lawn, inwardly grateful that I’d decided to wear flats instead of heels.  I kept up this inward dialogue...flats vs. heels...as I walked down the path to my destination.  My heart beat faster as I got closer, and my palms began to sweat around the box I was now gripping so tight that my hands began to hurt.

I paused for one brief moment - eyes closed -  breathing a silent prayer.

Then I looked up.

They shared a single monument:

Charles Morgan Jordan, born March 22, 1969

Emily Elizabeth Jordan, born August 18, 1970

One shared date.  The date they died.  Three weeks ago today.  Did they seem less dead because I’d missed the memorial?  No.  I still had violent dreams of the night my parents were murdered. 

In a way, I was glad I had missed the ceremony with its endless line of mourners and their endless barrage of condolences.  As it was, I’d only had to hear “I’m so sorry for your loss” three times:  once, in the hospital after I woke up and the doctor expressed her sympathy, once in the police station when the detectives assigned to my parents case told me how sorry they were, and then at my hotel, when Matt’s parents came by.  At least that one was genuine.

I took the flowers out of the box I carried and spread them across the mounds of dirt.  I wasn’t prepared for the violence of the grief that stabbed my heart repeatedly, assaulting me like some vicious killer.  I felt like I was dying.  Falling to my knees, I crawled to the monument, tracing their names, tears running down my cheeks.  I’m not sure how long I lay there on the dirt before I cried myself to sleep.

I woke up and looked around.  I wasn’t in the cemetery any more.  I was back in Summer Cove in Dave’s Diner.  There weren’t any customers – just Jessie – wiping down the booth where I found myself sitting.

She turned her auburn head toward me and winked.

“It wasn’t a coma, you know.”

“Wh…what did you say?”

She stopped wiping down the table, looked me in the eye, one hand on her hip.

“Your coma.  It wasn’t real.  It was drug induced because of your head injury.”

“O-k-a-y,” I said slowly.  I was trying to wrap my head around being back in Summer Cove again.  Had I been dreaming all along. 

Jessie shook her head and rolled her eyes at me, plopping herself down in the seat across from mine.  “You weren’t always this dense.  Your. Coma. Wasn’t. Real.”  She gestured toward me impatiently, rolling her eyes again, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what she was trying to get at.

Shaking her head, she leaned across the table and whispered in my ear.  “Maybe Matt’s coma isn’t real either.”

It took several seconds for that to sink in, then a smile spread across my face.  I was just about to thank her when she grabbed my arm, cocked her head to the right, eyes glassy like one of those Stepford wives and said, “You’d better wake up.  You’re asleep in a cemetery and you never know who might be watching.”

Author Appearance - Saturday, July 6!

Hey, everyone!  If you happen to be in Murfreesboro, TN this weekend, I'd like to invite you to come by Hastings Book Store.  I'll be there Saturday from 5 until 9 signing copies of my book, Finding My Escape.  And, if I can get it ready in time, I'll be giving away excerpts to the sequel, Finding My Way Back, which is coming out this summer.  

The address is 1660 Memorial Blvd., Murfreesboro, TN.  I'd love to see you there! 

Finding My Way Back Almost Finished

For those of you who read Finding My Escape, I just wanted to let you know that the sequel, Finding My Way Back is half finished! *Cue applause*  The target deadline for the completion of the first draft is April 24, 2013, my mother's birthday.  Kind of fitting since I finished Finding My Escape on my dad's birthday back in 2011.  Look for an announcement regarding the release date in a couple of weeks.  *Hint: I'm shooting for early summer.

Anyway, for those of you who have been patient enough to hang in there with me, I wanted to thank you.  And if you haven't read it, yet, you can get it for $2.99 at Amazon.com or Smashwords.com.   The third and final segment will (hopefully) be out by the end of the year.

News! News! News!

I have an announcement to make, well a couple actually.  Shh, I'm waiting for the drum rolls. 

Okay, first, I'm hoping to have the sequel to Finding My Escape finished by mid April.  I'm shooting for tax day, April 15.  I don't have a title, yet.  I'm thinking about My Way Out, but I'm not sure how that will work with the story line.  It might be Finding My Way Back, which actually fits better.  I'm looking for beta readers, so if you've read Finding My Escape and want to be one of the first to read the sequel, leave me a comment here.  I'm going to choose one person from the blog to be a beta.

Second, I now have my own web page.  It's a real hard one to remember.  Just http://franveal.com.  Check it out and leave a comment.

Well, I have to get back to writing.

Is It Real or Just a Dream, an Excerpt from Finding My Escape

I've posted the prologue, now here's another taste of Finding My Escape.  I want to give a shout out to Tammie Clark Gibbs for hosting today's excerpt page.  And fans of the book don't have long to wait for not one, but TWO sequels which I hope to have ready this year.  Look for My Way Out this summer.

My nose itched.  Well, it wasn’t exactly an itch, more of a tickle.

“Leave me alone Matt, I’m trying to sleep.”

I brushed my hand across my face.  If Matt didn’t leave me alone, I was going to clobber him.

The tickling continued.

“Matt, I’m warning you!”

I felt the tickle again, which had now become more than just a little irritating.

“That’s it!”  I sat up and looked around.

I was definitely not in my room any more.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the sun, but my other senses were exploding with sensation.  The combination of salt with something floral assaulted my nose.  Simultaneously, my ears were filled with a familiar roar.  The ocean?  My eyes finally caught up with the rest of me, and my breath came out in a rush.  Josh!

“Hello, beautiful.  About time you woke up.”  Josh leaned back against a rock, a white flower in his hand.

“Were you tickling me with that flower?”

“Guilty.”

“You’re lucky you stopped when you did.  I thought you were someone else.”

“Speaking of which,” he began, “should I be jealous of this ‘Matt’ guy?” His eyes sparkled as if he had some private joke.  He didn’t really seem jealous.

“For your information, Matt is a friend.  A good-but-annoying friend.  Tickling my nose while I try to sleep would be just like him.  You, however, are either just a dream or a figment of my imagination, anyway, so why should it matter?”  I shrugged and looked out at the ocean.  I plastered a pout on my face which I hoped screamed Hayden Panetierre.

“Ouch.  You really know how to hurt a guy.  And after I brought you to one of my favorite places, too," said Josh, holding the flower out as a peace offering.  I pretended to ignore it.

“Okay, so where are we, anyway?” I asked as I took in my surroundings.

Josh leaned over to brush a strand of hair off my face, his hand lingered on my cheek for a second.

“Hmm, so beautiful,” his eyes bore into mine, “but I digress.”  He spread his arms wide.  “This is paradise, or at least the nearest thing to it in this place.  It’s a replica of one of the smaller, less known of the Hawaiian Islands.  Welcome to my world.”

I looked around, and it was amazingly, achingly beautiful.  The water was the clearest blue I’d ever seen, not like some of the Gulf beaches I’d been to.  Part of the beach was shaded by draping palms.  To the left of the beach area was a steep cliff and to the right what appeared to be giant lava rocks.

How could a dream be this vivid?  Maybe there was something to this other world stuff after all.

Best Book on Writing? 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love

As a mom, wife, business owner, and what was that other one again?...oh yes, writer, I am constantly looking for ways to be more efficient at whatever role I'm working on at the moment.  Since I decided to become a novelist some three years ago, I've read countless books on the structure of writing, how to write with proper grammar, bird by bird, whatever, but I didn't come across anything that really helped me write more efficiently until I came across Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love (hereafter referred to as 2k to 10k in order to keep me from going bonkers recopying the title over and over).  And to be honest, I didn't stumble across it, it was recommended by my cousin and fellow author, Russell Elledge.

This book was absolutely one of those 'I could have had a V-8' moments for me.  At the time I read 2k to 10k, I was 30,000 words into the sequel to Finding My Escape.  And I'd been about 30,000 words into the sequel of Finding My Escape for almost a year.  I just could not bring myself to finish the book.  After reading 2k to 10k I realized why:  I hated what I was writing.  I was bored with it, and after letting my sister read a few chapters, I learned that what I was basically doing was regurgitating book one.  I loved writing the first book because it was exciting and interesting.  Writing it a second time?  Not so much. 

So I chucked the draft.  All (well almost all) 30,000 words and, following the plan in 2k to 10k, wrote a detailed outline for the new book, taking the story in an entirely new and exciting direction.  Here's the really exciting part.  Are you ready for this?  I wrote over 12,000 words in one week.  And this particular week I picked up a new business client, had double my normal business meetings, took my fifteen year-old to get her learner's permit (and to practice driving, which I managed to do without having a heart attack), participated in a Pinterest Pinning Party (to be blogged about later this week), and had two events at church.  I'm exhausted just writing about it.

Did I mention you can have this little gem for only 99 cents?  Yes, the book is short, but let's face it, with time a factor, I'd rather have a short, succinct book packed with valuable information than read a how-to book that is 300 pages that I'm going to have a hard time getting around to read.

Thinking of trying a new look....

I've been playing around with a lot of fun things lately, including Pinterest so I thought it was probably time I revive the blog and possibly go for a new look.  I'm still learning, so I'm sure it will take some time to get this looking as professional as I'd like, but here it is.

I'm starting with a new picture.  That's actually me on the glass overlook of the Sears Tower.  (Yes, I know it's not the Sears Tower anymore, but the actual name escapes me at the moment.)

So what look do you think works best for a blog?  Simple, elegant? 

I welcome your input!