I’ll be at the Teen Author Carnival in New York City on Tuesday, June 5th from 6:30-9:30 along with some of my most favorite authors in the world. If you’re going to be in New York for BEA, you should stop on by!

I’ll also be doing a signing at Books of Wonder on Wednesday, June 6th with Gretchen McNeil, Holly Black (!!!), Leah Clifford, Victoria Schwab, Hannah Moskowitz, Zoraida Cordova and my friend-slash-nemesis Karsten Knight. Place your bets on what happens first: I make a fool of myself trying to talk to Holly, or Karsten and I get into a slap fight. Either way, it sounds like it will be an epic event.

There’s still four days left to enter the contest for an ARC of DEMON EYES, and multiple ways to enter.  Already entered and just killing time?  Get your friends to enter, too, and increase your odds of reading the book early.

If you’re a book blogger or reviewer on Netgalley, you can request DEMON EYES now.  Be sure to check out Flux’s request criteria while you’re there, and maybe request some of the other awesome books they have coming out this fall!

And his job isn’t getting any easier. Their new town brings a new threat against them, and a gorgeous girl who fascinates Justin. Ash is enigmatic and fun, and carefree in a way that he adores. But his new home also harbors a dangerous threat: a warlock who wants to pick up where their parents left off, and has his sights set on Justin. Their guardians are no help: they can’t decide whether the siblings  should be saved or sacrificed. The only thing Justin knows for sure is that the sins of the father definitely pass down to the son, and if he falters, everyone he cares about will fall.

What do you think?  I’m obsessed with this cover.  Flux has done it again, and it’s a thing of beauty.  And that tag line! “Past sins. Present tense.” My editor came up with that and it’s probably my favorite part!

Moonset will be released sometime in the spring of 2013.

Add MOONSET on Goodreads!

I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson about that now.  No hugging the Demon Eyes.

But I didn’t want to JUST do a Twitter giveaway.  I wanted to give you guys a chance to stretch your creative muscles.  One of my favorite parts of writing the Witch Eyes series is getting to create and play with language during Braden’s visions – a thousand different thoughts coalescing into one.

So how can you enter?

Well, on the surface, it’s very simple.  All you HAVE to do is tweet.

But there are also additional ways to enter, like:

• following Witch Eyes on Facebook
• leaving a blog comment here about your favorite character,
• following me on Twitter

There are also some big ways to enter, worth more entries into the contest.

The big ones:

1) Create a mock cover for any of the books in the Witch Eyes series.  These can be any style, any design.  Just have fun with it!  Post them somewhere and leave the link here so I can track it down later!

2) Write a blog post about one of the books and use some creativity.  Do something fun with it.

Some examples:

• If the book was going to be made into a movie, who would YOU cast in each of the roles?
• Come up with a playlist that you think fits the books or the characters.
• Make predictions about what will happen in Demon Eyes, or even in Phantom Eyes.  Do a tarot reading to see what the cards say, or use a magic 8-ball.
• Anything else you can think of but it has to be creative in some way.  Have fun with it!

The contest will run from today, May 1st thru May 22nd.It will be open to anyone, anywhere.  Yes, for this contest only, I’ll ship worldwide.  So spread the word, and get cracking on those blog posts! I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with!        
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Edits for MOONSET are due tomorrow, and what am I doing instead of finishing them off?  Blogging about something neat that apparently went up sometime in the last week.  A few months ago, my editor Brian came to me, asking about a scene we cut from Witch Eyes, and did I have any ideas for sprucing that up a bit?  Of course, I said, because there’s nothing I like better than reusing something that never got to see the light of day.

So I present to you guys Homecoming: A Witch Eyes prequel ebook.  It’s a short story set about a year before Witch Eyes, dealing with what Braden’s life was like in Montana, and a Homecoming game that plays heavily in Braden’s direction in life.  I love a title with a double meaning, don’t you?  The official blurb:

A fast-paced short story from the author of Witch Eyes.

When it comes to making friends, witch-in-training Braden is no rock star. But he gets more than he bargained for when one little charisma spell goes disastrously wrong at the social event of the season.

If you haven’t read Witch Eyes yet, but you’ve always been curious, then this is also good news for you.  Because at the back end of the Homecoming ebook is an excerpt from the beginning of Witch Eyes. So you can get a taste for the book and see if it’s something you would like or not.

It’s available for purchase at most places I could find – except for Barnes & Noble.  As soon as/if that changes, I’ll let you guys know.  But for now, here’s some of the links where you can pick up a copy of Homecoming.  If I missed any major place, let me know!

I hope you enjoy.

Anyway, the rules are simple:

Open your most recent novel or work-in-progress.
Turn to page 7 or page 77.
Count 7 lines down.
Copy (or read aloud in a vlog post) the next 7 sentences…in their entirety. No cheating or editing!!!
Then tag 7 more authors!

I actually had to shift this from Scrivener to Word to figure out where the 7th page began, and the formatting ended up a little wonky, so this might not be entirely accurate.  This is from my oft-abandoned WIP codenamed HACKYSACK:

All he wants is the reaction.

“Talk about a dream worth remembering,” he chuckles. Arc is a bit full of himself. No actually, his defining feature is that he’s full of himself. I’m not sure he can fit an actual personality in there, with his ego taking up all the room. Then again, he’s an incubus, so maybe all that arrogance is hard-wired. It’s hard to be humble when you’re a one-man panty-dropper.

And now, because I’m evil, I must tag others and make them suffer the way that I suffer!

Tiffany Schmidt
Emily Hainsworth
Leah Clifford
Kathleen Peacock
Kiersten White
Courtney Allison Moulton
Mr. Karsten Knight

Also, let’s just pretend I haven’t basically let this blog suffer over the last few months.  I’ll try to be more entertaining in the future, I swear. Or at least I’ll be better at pretending I haven’t been ignoring you all.

The prompt I selected was something that struck me the moment I read it.  I knew it was  different story than what the request had in mind, but I also knew that it was right. So here it is, all about how a teenage Catherine Lansing fell in love, and what that meant for Jason Thorpe and Belle Dam itself.

BIRTHRIGHT

Love and death had always been entwined in my life.

Before I had even graduated from college, I’d already fallen in love, learned of my birthright, entered a loveless marriage, and manipulated a man’s death.  After college, the husband I liked but didn’t love nearly died, my son nearly died with him, former friends have become enemies, and former enemies have become ghosts.  And although my true love always eluded me, I’ve never forgotten it.

“Catherine, look at this,” Jason said, pushing the volume in front of me. His eyes were burning, excitement and passion  so brilliant it almost hurt to look at him.  Jason rarely let the mask fade, rarely showing any emotion at all on his poker face.  When he did, it was too much, like staring into the sun.

We were supposed to be rivals, enemies.  And I think we were, in our way.  Challenging each other had forced us both to hone our abilities, to anticipate what the other would come up with next.  The student body president elections were tumultuous: clean campaigns that turned dirty overnight, spells and counterspells and enchantments so thick that the school was nearly bleeding with magic. I gained the presidency, but lost Homecoming Queen to the girl that Jason convinced to run against me.  That was our way, gains and losses in equal measure.

But somehow, we were still friendly.  Maybe not friends, but not yet the enemies that our fathers expected us to be. For us, high school had been a testing and training ground.  We pitted ourselves against each other, even as we pushed each other into new heights.

I think Jason hoped for more than friendship.  It was hard to tell with him.  But I much preferred Jonathan. He was only a year apart from us, but the brothers were as different as land and sea. John had a laugh that made you want to laugh, and a light that never died from his eyes.  He couldn’t use magic nearly as well as either Jason or I, but there was still something enchanting about him just the same.

But when I am to marry, it could never be with someone who was my equal. I was a Lansing, and I always would be. There would be no taking of my husband’s name, or dwelling in his shadow.  I would marry, and continue my family, but I would do so on my terms.

If I could have chosen between the brothers, it would have been John.  But even if it was what I wanted, it could never be. There had never been a union between Thorpe and Lansing, and god willing, there never would be.

“What am I looking at?” I asked, hiding my thoughts behind a veil of exasperation.

“Right here,” Jason said, pointing to a paragraph halfway down the book.  It was an older volume, likely something out of the library’s special collections.  He was always investigating something, but he’d never reveal what.  More Thorpe secrets, I assumed.

The origins of the Key Festival are hard to decipher, I read, but the town knows enough to attribute it to the Widow.  Her secret treasure, never seen and never touched, was said to be hidden away behind doors that no key could open.

“Bennett pointed it out.”

Bennett Armstrong was not one of my favorite people, but he was the only other one who understood what it was like to live in Belle Dam.  Each of our families: Thorpe, Lansing, and Armstrong, had existed here since the beginning.  The city was ours.  But Bennett was not like us. Most magic slid off of him like water, leaving us unable to defend ourselves if we needed to.  He was too wild; uncontrolled.

A journal from one of my great-aunts had described the Armstrongs as: the spirits of a thousand animals shaped into a ghost of a soul. Bennett could take the form of any animal he could conjure up, a shapeshifter who could also control the animals themselves.  It made me nervous, sometimes, when I saw birds hanging around outside, or when a stray cat turned up just as I was leaving a friends.  Was it Bennett, spying on me?

“There must always be an Armstrong in Belle Dam,” Father had said, once when he was deep into his cups.  But he would never tell me what he meant, and I had mostly shrugged it off as more Belle Dam superstition. Like how you never walked into a bathroom with a candle, lest the Grimm sneak through the glass and steal the secrets from your head.

I did not trust Bennett.  He was older than us by almost three years, married to a girl before either of them were even eighteen.

I looked up at Jason, not mirroring his excitement.  “We’ve all heard the legends.  A secret Lansing treasure, hidden away by the Widow Witch, Grace.  So?”

“Bennett thinks it’s a spell.  The ‘door no key can open.’ And a treasure that has never been seen or touched?  I think it’s some kind of power. Like an untapped mine.”

Magic was just another form of energy, but there was only so much to go around in Belle Dam.  If Jason was right, and there was a hidden source of power in the city, how powerful was it? And what would the Thorpes do if they got to it first? “Do you think we could find it?” I asked, still trying to gather my thoughts together.

“There’s a reason why no one’s ever found it before,” Jason said in reply.  “I think maybe it’s because it would take all of us to find it.” All of us, meaning himself, Bennett, and I.

“I…see.” That might make some sense.  It would certainly explain Father’s insistence about ‘always an Armstrong in Belle Dam.’

“If we’re right, and it is a spell, then we should be able to find it, don’t you think?”

Why was Jason telling me any of this?  Why not strike out on his own and try to find it first? Regardless of how he did or didn’t feel about me, a lifetime of tradition didn’t just disappear overnight.  Of course.  He already had.  And failed.  I was surprised that this realization chafed a bit.  I wouldn’t have thought Jason’s betrayal would ever affect me.  “How long have you been searching for it before you got tired of failure?” I asked.

The mask slid firmly back into place, and Jason’s jaw tightened.  As I thought, he’s bringing this here as a backup plan. Now I had to worry about the pair of them, Jason and Bennett.  How long had they been cutting me out of their little investigation?

If there was a Lansing treasure, it was mine by rights.  Not Jason’s.  Not Bennett’s.  I was the Widow’s heir. And I couldn’t trust what either of them would have done with the power if I didn’t claim it first.

I remembered the visit from the lawyer, only a few days ago.  Our conversation had grown thorns in my mind, refusing to sink far from my thoughts.  “You’re friends with the Armstrong boy, aren’t you?” he asked silkily, like he knew secrets I didn’t.

“He might call himself my friend,” I countered with an indifferent shrug.

My father always spoke so highly of the lawyer.  Fallon.  Even though he worked for the Thorpes, and always had, Father never gave up hope that we could draw him away with the right incentive.  “Imagine it, Cat, all the knowledge trapped in that mind of his. Secrets we wouldn’t even know to ask,” he had said, once.

At the time, I’d wondered why he approached me.  Why he was asking me questions about Bennett. What he wanted from me.  But I hadn’t come up with any easy answers.

“Aren’t you concerned for your safety?” the lawyer asked.  Did he know something I didn’t? Rumors said the lawyer was a spirit, and sometimes knew things.  Did he know something about Bennett?   ”You’ve seen him when he loses himself.”

I had.  The Achilles heel to Bennett’s power was the animal instincts that could overwhelm him.  He was especially vulnerable after having shifted, especially if he’d chosen a form known for its predatory nature.  Only a week ago, he’d lost control in front of Marjorie, his wife, and I.  There was a spark in his eyes, a glint that said he liked the way Marjorie screamed.  That he liked the way her fear smelled.

At the time, I’d confided in Jason that Bennett didn’t scare me, not exactly, but he worried me.

Maybe it was time to extricate myself from the boys.  High school was almost over, and we were almost adults.  We could never associate the way we did, once we were in the real world.  There were expectations of the Lansings and Thorpes, and I knew my duty as well as anyone.

I leaned forward, affecting just a hint of nerves.  Jason would never buy that I was truly afraid.  He would understand caution, though.  Caution, and just a touch of uncertainty.  “I’m worried about Bennett…” I began.  If I was careful, by the time this played out the divide between Jason and Bennett would be irreparable.  ”Marjorie’s terrified of him.  And you know that’s not good for the baby…”

Sometimes, love wasn’t a person.  Sometimes it was a piece of a puzzle, the only thing in the world that would make you whole again.  The only thing that you could truly say took precedence over all other things.

If there was a secret power in  Belle Dam, it would be mine. I would do anything, sacrifice anything, to make it so.

Even someone that thought me a friend.

Moonset will tentatively be released Spring of 2013, so it’s not a horrific wait, either!

This is  a special book to me, because its one of those books that sprung up from literally one line of dialogue (though that line is sadly not in the book any more).  Concept, setting, plot, all of it came out of one line of dialogue, just fully formed.  I wrote the first draft like a crazy person, pretty much pulling a Kiersten White (though it took me 6 weeks, not 1).

Unlike the world of Witch Eyes, in Moonset, witches are far more plentiful, though just as secretive.  Witches are divided into Covens (the magical upper class) and the Solitaries (the lower/middle class), and the Moonset kids are stuck in the middle. You can find out more by clicking on the Moonset tab above.

And because inevitably someone will ask me, there IS a gay character in Moonset, but he’s not the main character.

Major thanks to Mr. Karsten Knight, who helped me turn the pitch from drab to fab.

I’m super excited to keep working with Flux, and my editor Brian, and definitely couldn’t have done ANY of this without rock star agent Ginger Clark!  Seriously, you guys, she’s amazing.

And don’t worry, this news doesn’t mean that the wait for Demon Eyes/Phantom Eyes will be any longer than normal. The Moonset series will be coming out in between those books.

Can we just talk about how in love with this cover I am? Seriously.  It’s EVERYTHING.  I thought I loved the WITCH EYES cover, and now I’m like “WITCH who?”  Yeah, it’s like that.

So….what do you guys think?  Creepy, right?  I love it!

Edit: If you click on the book cover, it’ll take you to the Witch Eyes series Facebook page.  You should like it for all the latest news about Witch/Demon/Phantom Eyes.

WITCH EYES is nominated for Best LGBT debut in the Best of 2011 Debuts (Hint: you can vote here).  And in one of their many bids to get extra content, Rachel from Fiktshun and Erica from the The Book Cellar, kept pestering me for more spoilers and things from book 2. So what I ended up agreeing to, after AGES of nudging, was that if Witch Eyes wins in its category, then I’ll write up some kind of short snippet featuring some of the characters, or a blog post).

So think about it.  Ever wanted to see:

• one of John and Lucien’s secret phone conversations
• Lucien and Jason scheming
• the event that caused Drew to flee Belle Dam
• the time that Trey tried to kill Drew
• sibling rivalry between Trey and Jade
• Riley in full on investigation mode
• Lucien’s last conversation with Grace
• Catherine and Jason in high school
• Catherine and Jason now
• throw me a random pairing, like Jason/Drew or Lucien/Gregory. Like Tim Gunn says, I’ll make it work
• one of the many, many attempted murders that have gone on before

Or you can suggest I write a blog post.  That works too. Or maybe we can do some sort of spoiler chat, that’s also an option.

Either way! Don’t post your ideas here; head on over to either Fiktshun’s blog, or The Book Cellar’s, and post on their entries!  And also let them know that you vote.

So I’m at my computer, bemoaning the fact that I have no coffee (because I forgot to turn the coffee maker on).  I couldn’t even SPELL my bemoaning tweet correctly, that’s how bad it was.

I opened up my word document, remembering that I was so tired last night I started writing a new scene in third person present (and in a really weird sort of omniscient third person, at that), instead of first person past.  It’s not like it conflicts with the other 85,000 words of the manuscript or anything.  So I set about changing everything to fit.

And then I get a tweet, asking if I’ve seen the Amazon Best of lists.  I of course go and look, see a bunch of books I love on the Teen list, and don’t think anything of it.  Then I realize they were talking about the LGBT portion of the list.  The list that WITCH EYES was on.

I may or may not have literally emailed my agent and editor with the following:

I’m pretty sure this is a mistake, right?

…….

RIGHT?

You can see the list over here, but apparently it’s all official and such.  WITCH EYES is listed as one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2011 in the Gay and Lesbian category.