SUMMER SALE!

★✩★SUMMER SALE!! ★✩★

Happy "official" summer and, oh yeah, I HAVE EXCITING NEWS!

This week (6/9/14-6/16/14) only, each of my 7 YA paranormal romance books will be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for just 99 cents each! So be sure to fill your eReader for the summer months ahead before they return to $2.99!

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

Book Review: Ever (The Ever Trilogy) by Jessa Russo

Seventeen-year-old Ever’s love life has been on hold for the past two years. She’s secretly in love with her best friend Frankie, and he’s completely oblivious.

Of course, it doesn't help that he’s dead, and waking up to his ghost every day has made moving on nearly impossible.

Frustrated and desperate for something real, Ever finds herself falling for her hot new neighbor Toby. His relaxed confidence is irresistible, and not just Ever knows it. But falling for Toby comes with a price that throws Ever’s life into a whirlwind of chaos and drama. More than hearts are on the line, and more than Ever will suffer.

Some girls lose their hearts to love.

Some girls lose their minds.

Ever Van Ruysdael could lose her soul.

Ever immediately hooked me in with its original story line. Right away we discover that our heroine is haunted by her old neighbor and best friend—a handsome guy she developed feelings for just before he died. Ever can see Frankie and speak to him, but he's nothing more than a mist, unable hold her as she wishes he would. Poor Ever is struggling with her feelings for Frankie that can never been realized when a cute guy moves into Frankie's old house across the street. Ever soon finds herself in the most unique love story, knowing she'll never have a relationship with Frankie although she loves him, and totally falling for mysterious Toby, the old guy next door.

The story was a fast read. I fell for Toby right along with Ever, and was blindsided by the twist toward the end. Interestingly enough, the twist reminded me of one of my own books, and made me enjoy the story even more. The characters were likable, filled with individual flaws and quirks that made them interesting.

The only thing that almost made me stop reading was the pet nickname Frankie has for Ever: "Doll". I had a hard time shaking the image of a 1950s teen donning cropped jeans and a cardigan. But once I was able to get past that, I really enjoyed the story, and can't wait for the sequel as we were left with quite the cliffhanger. Four zombies for Ever!

When not writing or reading, Jessa Russo is out and about making memories with some seriously awesome people - for an introvert, she's pretty extroverted. You can bet that she's also ALWAYS secretly planning her next trip to New Orleans. (If her eyes glaze over, she's in one of her stories, or NOLA.) Southern California will always be her home, but she's open to suggestions. An unashamed super fan of all things paranormal romance, Jessa reads, writes and breathes paranormal YA, rarely straying from her comfort zone.

Follow Jessa Russo:

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Book Review: Anna Dressed in Blood

Cas Lowood, armed with his late father's athame knife, kills ghosts. In Thunder Bay, Anna, forever 16, drips blood on her white dress from throat slit in 1958, and rips apart anyone who enters her house - except Cas. He makes new friends - high school queen Carmel, jock Will, admiring nerd Thomas and Tom's voodoo grandpa Morfran - to fight this demon.

This April I attended a writing conference in which Literary Agent Bree Ogden listed off dozens of YA books she recommended for great style and original story lines. Being a crazy reading fanatic, I added most of them to my Amazon shopping cart as she named them. Some of the books were pretty decent, while some of them barged their way onto my bookshelf of favorites. Anna Dressed in Blood made its way right to the tippy top.

The story follows Cas Lowood, teenage ghost hunter, and his witch mother as they move to a new town after getting a tip from an anonymous "friend" of this ghost named Anna. Cas is a pretty laid back guy who knows he will only be in his new high school for a short while, and he knows how to manipulate people to get what he wants. When he sets his sights on the school queen bee and a quiet nerd, he finds unexpected friendships, as well as fellow ghost hunters. While at first I couldn't get over the idea that the ghosts in this story go corporeal, once I was able to accept it, I couldn't stop reading. There's so much more to the story than just a boy hunting ghosts, and it continues on to its sequel, Girl of Nightmares (I will review another time).

Reasons I love Anna Dressed in Blood:

1. Cas is an amazing character, humorous and brave, plus it was quite refreshing to read from a guy's point of view.

2. The horror scenes were executed extremely well. On one of Kendare's books there was a quote that read "Stephen King better watch his back". At first I thought that was blasphemy as SK is one of my favorite authors, but after reading Kendare's writing, I understand.

3. The unexpected grouping of loner ghost hunter, queen bee and nerd made for a fun, interesting group.

4. The humor. I've said it a hundred times, but when something involves horror and humor, it wins me over every time.

5. Kendare Blake grew up in Minnesota. I'm always pleased to see one of my own break free and do well in society.

6. The twist near the end. Although I had an inkling that something else was going on, I never would've guessed something that creepy was going to happen.

7. THE COVER! I almost never read a book if I'm not drawn in by its cover.

8. And of course, the writing. A story is ten times better when the writing is the best of the best, and Kendare's prose is definitely first rate!

Anna Dressed in Blood certainly earned its 5 zombies rating!

Now excuse me while I fangirl and prepare to attend Kendare's book signing in September...

Kendare Blake grew up in the small city of Cambridge, Minnesota. She is a graduate of Ithaca College, in Ithaca, New York and received a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Middlesex University in London, England. She loves to travel, is an advocate for animals, and cheats a lot when she plays Final Fantasy. Adopted from South Korea at the age of seven months, she arrived with the following instruction: "Feed her chocolate." Though not medically advisable, she and her parents are eternally grateful for this advice.

Book Cover Release: Cheating Death

As promised, here's the cover for my fourth novel, Cheating Death, as well as a hot-off-the-press description!

Lysandra Brooks remembers everything about the day she almost drowned alongside her grandma, especially the set of mysterious eyes she saw at the bottom of the lake. Ever since then, she's been seeing strange things when she is near water - things that aren't really there. Because of it, Lysandra has the tendency to avoid anything that isn't on dry land. On her last day of high school, however, the biggest party of the year is set to take place at a fellow senior's lakeside mansion. Despite her fears, Lysandra decides to prove to her friends and herself that she can handle it.

But after a horrific night of drinking and drama that leaves Lysandra feeling lonely and confused, she nearly drowns for a second time, only to be saved by the new guy in town. From that moment on, Lysandra's world is turned upside down with the discovery of mind blowing secrets, including a revelation that something sinister is after her soul.

While I take great pride in doing all the design work for my covers - including the photography, this time I broke down and purchased a stock image. I really wanted something hauntingly beautiful and underwater as my main character nearly drowns twice in this story. The minute I found this picture I knew it was absolutely perfect.

Now that THAT'S out of the way, this is totally how I feel right now.

Cheating Death is (very tentatively) set to release some time in March. I really hope that I'm able to freak you out with this story, if only just a little. I know I've been losing a lot of sleep at night writing it, waiting for things to come bother me at night. As one of my cousins suggested, I may end up writing about rainbows and puppy dogs for a while.

Be sure to add Cheating death to your Goodreads list here!

Cover Reveal Coming Soon!

I'm so excited about my new book cover, I can't wait any longer!

I know I keep saying it's coming soon, but this time I really mean it. This coming Monday, February 4th is my best friend's birthday, so I randomly picked that date to reveal the cover of Cheating Death (formerly Falling Away), my fourth novel that will hopefully scare the pants off of you. So mark your calendars!

Writing Things That Go Bump in the Night

Another confession: I love creepy things.

Okay not that kind of creepy (although I do totally adore this song and anything Andy Samberg or The Lonely Island create). But for the purpose of this post, I'm talking creepy like Se7en or Silence of the Lambs kind of creepy. You know, the kind that makes you look behind you twice before you run up the basement steps or the kind that plays tricks on your mind, making you think you're seeing things that aren't really there.

My fourth book has completely transformed from the story of a teenage girl whose life goes terribly wrong and falls in love with the wrong guy to the story of a teenage girl who sees ghosts, almost dies and has dark things chasing after her soul.

Yep, I'm writing scary stories again.

And I didn't realize before now just how much I missed it. My third book Shymers was a break away from the dark undertone of the first two, which was fine because I really enjoyed the change of pace. Don't worry, dear readers, I am still writing a sequel to it later on this year, but first will come this story that has undergone a major overhaul and is so much better than it originally started out to be.

With a change of plot also comes a change of title. What was once Falling Away has now become Cheating Death. And a cover reveal is on its way really soon! I did not do the photography on this one as I was set on using a picture of a girl underwater and I found an amazing image that I think is both beautiful and chilling - can't wait to show you guys!

In the meantime, I've traded some of my daytime hours of writing into nighttime so I can set the right mood. Yes that makes me way more jumpy (the other night I was seriously seeing things that weren't there, just like my character) and yes that means I will most likely be more irritable and have a harder time getting kids off to school in the morning, but in the end it will have been totally worth it.

At least I hope. Because I'm super tired and need a really long night's sleep.

Supernatural: Super Awesome!

Confession: I only work out because I know two hot guys named Sam and Dean are waiting for me.

For those of you who don't watch Supernatural, those are the two brothers on the CW series who hunt paranormal myths and urban legends mostly across the Midwest. I don't watch the show just because they're hot (because if I admitted that it would make me a cougar and I'm not ready for that kind of commitment). I watch it because it's so awesome - like X-Files awesome. And yes, I know I'm really late to the party considering the series is in its 8th season.

I've known about this show for a long time and I usually watch a lot of the shows on CW. For some reason, however, I didn't try watching an episode until a later season and just couldn't get into it. I have a bad habit of giving up on shows if I don't watch them from the very beginning.

Enter Netflix.

For Christmas we bought a large flatscreen with internet for our theatre room, so I decided to give Netflix another try. There are probably a dozen series waiting in my queue, but I really wanted to give Supernatural a chance. From the first episode I was hooked. The brothers have a relationship that's amusing to watch, the paranormal stories are so right up my alley and there's just enough of the scare factor to keep me satisfied and not overly freaked out.

So every morning when I have a hard time crawling out of bed and getting on the elliptical machine, I think of Dean's beautiful eyes the creepy stories that are just waiting to be told and just like that, I'm up. If only the Winchester brothers could motivate me to do everything hard in life...maybe I could reward myself for cooking and cleaning each time with an episode.

How Para is Your Normal?

Picture of clouds in our backyard. UFO cover?

Personally, I've never experienced anything strange that could be explained only as a paranormal encounter (if you don't count the weirdness brought on by a bunch of teenaged girls with a Ouija board in junior high or the really strange clouds that once hung over our backyard). Yet one friend told me that she always saw her grandmother's ghost after she moved into her house, while another swears she saw some crazy lights that could only be UFOs. A few of my Twitter friends recently shared very detailed stories of some pretty creepy things that happened to them that really don't have any other logical explanation.

House I grew up in. Haunted?

Last weekend I met a man who lived in the same house as I did growing up. It was a rather large old house, built in the late 1800s. There were servant stairways, old-fashioned radiators for heat and stained glass windows throughout. This 50-something-year-old man looked me in the eye and said he knew there were ghosts in that house. Whatever wisdom he held in those eyes actually gave me the shivers. All I kept thinking was how happy I was that I didn't know this 20 years ago.

Still, I remain a skeptic. We live in a time where just about everyone knows how to photoshop images. Old houses have old boilers and really creaky doors that don't stay closed. How much of paranormal stuff is a result of imagines fueled by television shows and scary stories? If you see a shift in shadows, it could just be your overactive imagination telling you that you saw a ghost. If you ever watch the ghost hunter reality shows, you know how those guys are good at scaring the crap out of themselves just by walking through these old buildings more than anything. And I always get a good laugh out of the "voices" they "translate". How they ever get actual words out of those noises, I'll never understand.

Relax, I found this one on the internet.

If there really are ghosts among us, I would think that every single person would have experienced an encounter of sorts. If there really are aliens that come and experiment on people in the night, I doubt the government would be able to keep a total lid on that kind of information.

I would love to tour a well-known haunted site (it's on my bucket list) or see strange lights floating in the sky. The very thought of it is exciting (did I mention I'm a big X-Files fan?). But I think the only reason I can get excited about these things is because in my heart I don't think it's real. Therefore, it's just fun entertainment. Or so I tell myself.

What do you think? Have you ever experienced anything that couldn't be explained by plain logic? I'd love to hear your stories!