#BookReview of "Space Cowboys and Indians" (Cosmic Cowboys Book 1) by @LisaMedley #MondayBlogs

I can't say enough good things about author Lisa Medley. You've probably heard me squee about her before, but if not, go grab a copy of the first novel in her Reaper series (for FREE) and you'll totally understand:

Kindle | Smashwords | Nook | Kobo

Meanwhile, in addition to writing about ridiculously hot and hilarious reapers, Lisa's also tackled sci-fi space opera. And I do mean tackled. I LOVE this new series!

Get it on Amazon HERE

How can the chance of a lifetime go so horribly wrong? 

Mining Engineer Cole Hudson signed up for NASA astronaut training, but after washing out short of getting his gold wings, he retreats to Alaska where he stakes out a gold claim. When billionaire entrepreneur Duncan Janson offers him an opportunity to join a mining team on an asteroid, Cole jumps at the chance. 

But nothing is as it seems. Former NASA reject and rival classmate, Tessa Hernandez, is also a member of the team, and from the beginning of the mission test flight, things go wrong. They soon discover they’re not the only ones on the asteroid. As they try to escape, they are pulled through a wormhole and back to the early 1800s New Mexico desert where aliens and Apaches may be the least of their problems. 




My review:

I don't read a lot of space fiction, preferring more fantasy than sci-fi, but after reading Lisa Medley's Reaper series, I'll give anything she writes a go. So when she came out with Space Cowboys and Indians, the first episode in her Cosmic Cowboys series, I was ready to dive in! I'm so glad I did, too. 

This novella packs a punch, with non-stop action and a super fun cast. The banter and sexual tension between Tess and Cole is great, and even Noah, the apparent third wheel of their crew, has some fun lines. I really had no idea how they were going pull through all the trouble they ran into on their mission, but I was so anxious to find out, I read the entire story in one sitting. Now I'm patiently (okay, maybe not patiently, but I'm waiting, all right) for the next episode, The Astronaut's Princess. Good stuff!

Get it on Kindle for only $2.99

Lisa Medley writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance about monsters in love, because monsters need love too. Look for Reap & Repent (Bk 1) and Reap & Redeem (Bk 2) of The Reaping Series, available now. 

A lover of beasties of all sorts, she has a farm full of them in her SW MO home including: one child, one husband, two dogs, two cats, a dozen hens, thousands of Italian bees and a guinea pig. Not so in love with the guinea pig. She can do ten pushups IN A ROW and may or may not have a complete zombie apocalypse bug-out bag in her trunk at all times. Just. In. Case. 

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Spotlight and Excerpt for HAUNT MY HEART by @LisaMedley #ParanormalRomance

A Civil War soldier dies to save his men. Can he find true love to live again?

Haunt My Heart by Lisa Medley 

Paranormal Romance: Ghost, 

Witchcraft, Hex and Sex. 

KINDLE | PRINT

Sarah Knight has a job she’s good at, a quirky BFF, and a boyfriend who’s bad for her. When Sarah unearths a Civil War artifact on a ghost hunt at Chatham Manor, she brings home more than a souvenir. 

Lieutenant James “Tanner” Dawson fought for the Union, working as a supernatural liaison for his Major General in a secret Masonic offset called the Brothers of Peril. When he’s hexed by a witch, he learns the only way to save his men is to die himself. But death is not the end. Awakening 150 years later, he knows if he wants to be corporeal again, he has to find true love to break the hex—a task no easier in 21st century than it was in the 19th. 




Excerpt from Haunt My Heart: It all starts when Sarah finds a ring on the grounds of Chatham Manor after a night of ghost-hunting. She takes home much more than a souvenir. 

Ellie opened the driver’s side door, and Sarah waited for her to crawl across the seat of the old Mustang and pop the passenger-side lock. The broken power locks were one of many deficiencies in the classic car. Sarah retrieved her betraying phone from her pocket and powered it up as Ellie shuffled about inside the car. 

As she checked her phone display, a glint of light on the ground to her right caught her eye. Aiming her screen at the ground like a flashlight, she bent low and searched for the source of the flash. Just as she began investigating, though, she heard the lock pop, and Ellie pushed the door open. The door hit Sarah in the head, knocking her to the cold, hard ground. 

“Sorry,” Ellie said, scrambling to catch the door before it slammed closed again. 

Sarah mumbled a few choice obscenities and rubbed her head. She reached down and ran her finger over something half-buried in the ground. 

“What is that?” Ellie was hanging out the car, her body stretched across the seats. 

“I don’t know.” Sarah turned the flashlight of her phone up to full beam and picked at the object in the frozen turf. “Do you have a pen or something?” 

Ellie scuffled around inside the dark, rolling landfill that was her car—the interior lights long burned out—and produced a screwdriver instead. “Will this work?” 

Sarah took the offered screwdriver and dug at the buried treasure. After breaking it free from its cold grave, she examined it by the light of her cell phone. “It’s a ring.” 

“Let me see.” 

Ellie scrambled back into the driver’s seat. Sarah joined her in the car, then shut the door against the cold. 

“Hold the light,” Sarah said, digging a Kleenex from her coat pocket to clear as much of the mud from the ring as possible. 

The ring remained caked with mud, which filled the engraved edges, but the stone cleaned off easily enough. The set, a square cut black onyx, glinted. The cold metal of the band warmed in her hand. 

“You know what that is, right?” Ellie asked.

“A ring?” Sarah couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice, not after the night she’d had. 

“An artifact.” 

“No. Someone just lost a class ring. Like one of the sorority girls.” 

“Does that look like a woman’s ring? No. No is the answer. That is a man’s ring. An officer’s ring or something. That could be a real-life, true-blue Civil War artifact.” 

“I doubt it. And if it is, we’ll return it. This is a national park. There are rules.” 

“I say finders keepers. Let me see it better.” 

Lisa Medley writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance about monsters in love, because monsters need love too. Look for Reap & Repent (Bk 1) and Reap & Redeem (Bk 2) of The Reaping Series, available now. 

A lover of beasties of all sorts, she has a farm full of them in her SW MO home including: one child, one husband, two dogs, two cats, a dozen hens, thousands of Italian bees and a guinea pig. Not so in love with the guinea pig. She can do ten pushups IN A ROW and may or may not have a complete zombie apocalypse bug-out bag in her trunk at all times. Just. In. Case. 

Website | Facebook  | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads | Google+ | Amazon Author Page 

 

Read 'Em & Reap Blog Hog

I've been terrible about blogging lately. Sorry y'all. I'm hoping to make up for it today with an explosion of awesome! I met the lovely Lisa Medley at the RT convention in New Orleans last May, and it was inevitable that we would hit it off, because A) she also writes reapers, and B) she too is from Missouri. So when she asked me if I wanted to be part of a kick-ass blog hop featuring a dozen reaper writers, I was all the YES. That it would be taking place the week of Halloween was just a bonus.

So from now until the big day, come play with us, and you could win books and swag and even a $100 Amazon Gift Card! It's as easy as share/like/following the grim writers listed in the Rafflecopter below.

As for games... the first reaper reader to unscramble the following quote and post its author in the comments will have a character named after them in Death Wish, book 5 of my Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. series. The character will be harvested by Lana and the gang at some point in the book. I promise to make it an interesting death. ; )

The scrambled quote: he never may is going he that know to can himself To immortal. but know that is He everyone is die, he dead.

Hint: Punctuation marks go with the words they follow, and the capitalized words are meant to be. Good luck!


If you're new to my Lana series, you can grab book 1, Graveyard Shift, for FREE on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, & Smashwords.

The Inferno has Evolved… 

Lana Harvey is a reaper, and a lousy one at that. She resides in Limbo City, the modern capital of the collective afterlives, where she likes to stick it to the man (the legendary Grim Reaper himself) by harvesting the bare minimum of souls required of her. She’d much rather be hanging out with Gabriel, her favorite archangel, at Purgatory Lounge. But when a shocking promotion falls in her lap, Lana learns something that could unravel the very fabric of Eternity. If the job isn’t completed, there could be some real hell to pay.

For more grim entertainment, check out the following authors and blogs!

An InLinkz Link-up

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Big Easy Blog Tour: Reblog

So, the writing process hop is really making the rounds! I posted this back in April, but I was tagged a second time by Lisa Medley, fellow reaper-writing Missourian. It is pretty neat to see how other writers "do it". (immature snorts go here) If you'd like to know more about Lisa, check out this interview she gave on my blog HERE.

 Lisa has always enjoyed reading about monsters in love and now she writes about them. Reapers. The grim kind.

She adores beasties of all sorts, fictional as well as real, and has a farm full of them in her Southwest Missouri home, including: one child, one husband, two dogs, two cats, a dozen hens, thousands of Italian bees, and a guinea pig.

She may or may not keep a complete zombie apocalypse bug-out bag in her trunk at all times, including a machete. Just. In. Case. 



You can take a peek at Lisa's writing process HERE.


My process as seen last April... with a few alterations.

What am I working on?

I am juggling several projects, which I really don’t recommend. At least, not to the extent I’m doing right now. I’m finishing up edits for PSYCHOPOMP, the fourth novel in my Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. series. And I'm working on a new YA trilogy for an agent I adore. I am also working on a few short stories for anthologies and magazines.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My Lana series, which is my baby, is technically urban fantasy. I love vampires and werewolves, but they’ve been done. A lot. I was afraid that I wouldn’t have anything new to offer in that arena. I still knew I wanted to stick with urban fantasy. It just sets my heart on fire. I really enjoy studying world religions and mythology, so I decided to take my writing in that direction. My series is set in a modern afterlife, where all the faiths are right and all the deities exist… and have to work together. So, while it’s an urban setting, it’s still not quite “of this world”, and I’m playing with less familiar supernatural beings than most urban fantasy readers are used to.

Why do I write what I do?

Aside from my love of urban fantasy, I thought it would be fun to put my mythology and religious research to good use. I’m also a big supporter of religious tolerance, and while the deities in my series don’t always get along, my readers are still learning things about different faiths that they might not have known before. Intolerance is a cousin of ignorance. We fear the things we don’t understand. While my primary goal is entertainment, I still like the notion that I might also be subliminally promoting tolerance and peace.

How does my writing process work?

Not very well. I wish that was a joke.

Ok. Seriously… I have a plot board. I’m a bit OCD and ADD, so I NEED the plot board to stay on track. I have oversized post-its that represent my chapters. The post-its are big enough to hold a 2-3 sentence description of what’s going down in that particular scene. I fill out the big events first and shuffle them around until they make some sort of sense. Then I fill in the chapters where foreshadowing needs to happen, where character bonding and development is crucial, ect. ect. ect. Until I have somewhere between 25 and 35 chapters.

Then the actual writing happens. Once again, ADD, so the plot board comes in handy. I do not write my books in order. I often have the last chapter written before the fourth or fifth. If I don’t feel like a lovey-dovey scene, I skip ahead to a fight scene. If I’m not feeling the dialog in one spot, I play with the scenery or narrative somewhere else. My muse has mood swings, so I just go with it. Eventually, I have a book written. Then I read through it and make sure everything is still in order. I do some shuffling again. I polish up a scene here or there. I rebalance the dialog/narrative ratio where it feels off.

Then I email the draft to an author friend or two, a couple beta readers, my husband. I print it out and deliver it to my former college comp professor who volunteers to edit my novels (this is why he has the honorary title of THE professor—he also teaches Shakespeare, and he introduced me to Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, so I trust his judgment and taste in literature). Then I’m bombarded by a plethora of plot holes, grammatical errors, and general typos… which I face palm my way through as I fix. A final read through and BING! It’s done. Yes, it sounds like an Easy-Bake Oven in my head. This has happened in a matter of three months… or a matter of three years. Once again, I wish that was a joke. I have become more consistent and persistent over the past few years, so I’m hoping that means it’s a skill I’m able to hone… and not just a sadistic muse I’m at the mercy of. 

So that's about it.  


P.S. I'm not tagging anyone in particular. If you haven't been tagged and would like to participate in the writing process hop, consider yourself invited! You can totally blame me. ♥

Interview with Lisa Medley: Reapers of Missouri Unite!

The RT Booklovers Convention is over for this year, but I’m still basking in the afterglow of its awesomeness! And I’m doing my best to stay in touch with the incredible writers I met while in New Orleans. One of these writers is Lisa Medley, who not only lives just a few hours away from me in Missouri, but she also writes reaper fiction! How have we not met before? How do we not have an exclusive Missouri reapers club with a secret handshake? We’ll get to that eventually, I’m sure. For now, I’m just excited to be interviewing Lisa on my blog. Enjoy!

Hi Lisa! Thanks for visiting my blog! Reapers are the best! Can you tell us your take on them in your series?

Thanks for having me here, Angela! The reapers in my series are responsible for collecting human souls on Earth. They don’t hasten any departures but collect those who pass in their respective territories. The hero of Reap & Repent is 200+ years old and burned out. He’s going through the motions and running his death circuits when he runs into a human woman with no aura. Reapers don’t have auras either. In fact, that’s how they know when someone is about to pass by.  The aura is gone or turns white.  Intrigued, Deacon tracks her down and nothing will ever be the same for him again.

I know you’ve got a soft spot for beasts. Are any featured in your series?

The only beasts in book one are imps, which are demon spies and look like black cats to humans. In book two, we get a hellhound named Bocephus. Bo eats demons for breakfast, lunch and dinner and drools like a river.

How many books do you have planned for your series? And when is the next one coming out?

I have three finished in the series. Book two, Reap & Redeem, comes out in October and three, Reap & Reveal, publishes in January.  I have at least six more characters who need stories and to find their love. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen to them!

Now for a few random wildcard questions…


What’s your favorite word?

Ever since the old television show The Greatest American Hero, my favorite word has been ‘scenario’. Robert Culp’s character used it all the dang time and it stuck with me!

If you were in a fictional fantasy world, what would be your profession? Demon hunter? Psychic gumshoe? Dragon tamer? 

I think it would be extremely satisfying to kill me some demons. In my head, I’ve got all the moves. In a fictional world I could totally rock Demon Hunter.

Zombie apocalypse. What are your top 3 essentials?

Listen, I think about this an unhealthy amount of time.  I’m just waiting to pull my ninja skills out for the zombie apocalypse. I travel a lot for my day job, and I figure I’ll get caught far away from home.  I WILL get home. I have a complete zombie bug-out bag in my trunk with a roll of Duct tape, food, and a machete. Just. In. Case.

What’s a random question you’ve always wanted to be asked, but no one ever asks?

How about…What is your secret superhero power?
Thanks for asking. Apparently, my secret superhero power is the ability to see cat yak because no one else in my family seems to see it to clean it up. Figures. Flying would be so much cooler.

Okay. Back to business…Who or what do you read for inspiration?

I started this paranormal romance rollercoaster with J.R. Ward, and I buy her new release on PRE-ORDER, then count down the days until release. Seriously.  I’m a little obsessed with her. I love me some Black Dagger Brothers. I also love Charlaine Harris and Patricia Briggs and, and, and… My TBR bookshelf is embarrassing. We aren’t going to talk about my decreasing Kindle storage.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I started writing sad and angsty, pre-teen poetry and look where I am now.  In HS and through the years, I wrote some newspaper columns and in the back of my mind, writer was somewhere around plan M. I always thought writing a novel was something I probably COULD do, but hadn’t really tried. Finally after reading more than a hundred paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels, I decided it was time to put up or shut up. The first three novels of The Reaper Series will publish this year. 

Any advice for the aspiring writers out there?

Keep swimming. It’s going to seem impossible but if you just keep swimming, you’ll reach the shore before you know it. I had no idea if my book would sell or ever be published. By the time it did contract, I already had book two completed so they bought it as well as book three which I hadn’t even started yet! I’ll have a backlist by the end of the year. The more you write the more you’ll publish. Keep swimming and keep writing!

I’m really looking forward to checking out your reapers! Thanks for stopping by, Lisa. : )

Lisa has always enjoyed reading about monsters in love and now she writes about them. Reapers. The grim kind. 

She adores beasties of all sorts, fictional as well as real, and has a farm full of them in her Southwest Missouri home, including: one child, one husband, two dogs, two cats, a dozen hens, thousands of Italian bees, and a guinea pig. 

She may or may not keep a complete zombie apocalypse bug-out bag in her trunk at all times, including a machete. Just. In. Case. 

Website | Facebook  | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads | Google+ | Amazon Author Page

They see death. Can they share a life? Ruth Scott can read the energy of every person she meets. Then she meets Deacon Walker. She can see his ice-blue eyes, his black hair, and his gorgeous face. But this beautiful stranger has no aura. 

Deacon is just as unsettled by Ruth—and, having spent more than two hundred years ushering souls to Purgatory, Deacon is seldom shocked by anything. As he helps Ruth to understand her true nature, she awakens desires that he decided long ago a Reaper can’t afford. 

A demon invasion forces Deacon to confront the darkness in his own past even as he fights to save the human souls he’s charged to protect. When he’s taken captive, his first concern is for Ruth. But Ruth just might be able to save herself—and the Reaper she can’t live without—if she can learn to wield her newfound power. 

 AMAZON | B&N  | KOBO

He’s a reaper who has given up on saving souls. Will a dying woman be his salvation? 

After a century of enslavement to pure evil, Kylen Larson is finally free. But he’s long past caring. The only woman he ever loved is dead, and he’s tormented by memories of the horrors his demon parasite forced him to commit. Now, he lives for nothing more than hunting down the infernal creatures invading Meridian, Arkansas, and destroying them. 

Olivia Evans is in the final stages of cancer when Kylen accidentally saves her from demonic possession. When he rescues this innocent soul, Kylen rediscovers his mission—and his heart. All he wants is to help Alivia stay alive. He’ll just have to fight off an invasion from Hell first… 

AMAZON