Monday, December 22, 2014

2014 Top Ten Book Covers - Jax's Edition

At the end of each year I love to look over some of my favorite book covers and these are my Top Ten!

Each one has that IT FACTOR which draws me in and holds my attention.

The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #3) by Michelle Hodkin

After the End (After the End #1) by Amy Plum

City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments #6) by Cassandra Clare

Night Broken (Mercy Thompson #8) by Patricia Briggs

California by Edan Lepucki

Sanctum (Asylum #2) by Madeleine Roux

Gates of Thread and Stone (Gates of Thread and Stone #1) by Lori M. Lee

Trial by Fire (The Worldwalker Trilogy #1) by Josephine Angelini

Stray (Four Sisters #1) by Elissa Sussman

The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles #1) by Mary E. Pearson

Which covers of 2014 are some of your favorites!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Jax

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

A Love Story in Three Parts Book Tour

A Love Story in Three Parts

By Hannah Seevers

Genre: Romance, Literary Fiction

On Amazon: http://amzn.to/1y8bZhQ

Synopsis:

Justine Holland is living quite a normal life (thank you very much). She's a successful artist, upper middle class, pregnant with baby number one, and twenty-seven. But her cozy life is turned on its head when her husband, Sean, finally realizes what everyone else already has- he's actually in love with his best college mate, Gabriel. Even though everyone says she's nuts, Justine decides that having the enigmatic Czech man around might not be such a bad idea. Who knows? All she does know is that losing either of them isn't an option. Break all the rules, shatter all the traditions. Will it be perfect? Or a perfect disaster...

Character Spotlight: Justine Holland

Polyamory (from Greek πολύ [poly], meaning "many" or "several", and Latin amor, "love") is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

Dear Reader,

I don’t expect you to understand my choices. I've spent a very long time with this book- the two years its taken me to write it and the five years the book itself covers- and every day I have tried to come up with a clear reason for you, my reader. A reason why I chose the life and path I did.

For a while, I thought fear had motivated me. I feared losing Sean and being alone, so maybe I grabbed onto the one thing that would keep him with me. Half of Sean's heart would be better than none, I could reason. Then I realized that I still had every bit of him I'd ever had before and I developed a theory of complacency which paradoxically had moved events along. I couldn't fathom life without him, so somehow polyamory was a lesser evil.

Continuing onward, I blamed my hippie commune upbringing and thought it might have stunted the monogamy reflex that everyone around me seemed to possess. Sometimes I linger on divine intervention. Usually after these moments I wake up with a blistering hangover.

So, yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I chose a very non-traditional relationship and have no explanations for you.

But before you start thinking things about polyamory (which is a five dollar word I think Gabriel made up, but he proved me wrong via google), we humbly implore you to remove from your mind the image of an old man and his twelve teenage wives dressed in long, calico dresses at their fundamentalist ranch. Also kindly forget harems; none of us are running around in see through Princess Jasmine pants with bells on our ankles, although if Vogue pronounced it stylish Sean would happily. We also aren't swingers. There's no house keys in a bowl style casual hook ups and we don't frequent nudist resorts, although that might be fun- the naked, not the random sex. We've never marched in a Pride parade, even though they're fun, and we don't live in Portland or San Francisco.

But we do this: we cook dinner for each other, watch movies, play Scrabble, go to the grocery store and even go to the Olive Garden upon occasion. We have real jobs and get our hair cut. We bitch about traffic, drink too much, question our decisions and forget to pick up the dry cleaning.

Even though I can't give you a reason, at least not the tidy, clean one sentence explanation you probably want, I can tell you the words that ran through my head every day, and still does:

Love is not a finite resource.

I can tell you what I did and you can try to decipher my true motivations if you'd like. Anyway, take out story and absorb it. See us as people. Forget about trying to understand unless you read James Joyce for fun. The themes are universal and I'll give you a hint. One of them might be “’’’’if you can't beat 'em, join 'em”.

Justine May 7, 2014

PS, Sean and Gabriel are bitching at me to say that they helped me write the introduction. So, there. Consider these two ill-mannered man children to be contributors. I love them.

Author Bio:

An author who blurs lines and pushes envelopes. Hannah hails from Southeastern Indiana, but considers Austin, TX and South Korea home. When she's not saving the world, the author's strapping husband lives with her and their redheaded wondertwins. A Love Story in Three Parts is her first published novel.

Twitter: @hannahseevers

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hannah-Seevers

Friday, December 12, 2014

2014 Top Ten Book Covers - Dani's Edition

At the end of each year I love to look over some of my favorite book covers and these are my Top Ten, er... Eleven...

And my choices are based strictly on the covers alone, since I have not read any of them. However, I plan to cause the covers look that good!

Each one has that IT FACTOR which draws me in and holds my attention.

Captive (The Blackcoat Rebellion #2) by Aimee Carter

White Space (Dark Passages #1) by Ilsa J. Bick

Alienated (Alienated #1) by Melissa Landers

Uninvited (Uninvited #1) by Sophie Jordan

Mortal Danger (Immortal Game #1) by Ann Aguirre

Snow Like Ashes (Snow Like Ashes #1) by Sara Raasch

Minders by Michele Jaffe

Fiendish by Brenna Yovanoff

Lailah (The Styclar Saga #1) by Nikki Kelly

This Shattered World (Starbound #2) by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Honorable mention: Winter Falls (Twin Willows Trilogy #1) by Nicole Maggi

Which covers of 2014 are some of your favorites!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Dani

Friday, December 05, 2014

NEW 2015 Weekly Blog Hop

NEW 2015 WEEKLY BLOG HOP!

Use this badge

Fast Five Friday is a weekly blog hop created by, us, Cover Girls. Its purpose is to connect with writers, readers, viewers, and bloggers. With that aim in mind, we would love for you to join us!

We're suckers for lists, so we thought it'd be cool to do a weekly blog hop where we list things. We've provided the topics for each week below, with five being the focus .

You're not required to post every week. You can pick and choose which topics you'd like to participate in.

Whatever topics you decide to do, please include the link to your Fast Five Friday post in the comments section of our FFF post each week, so we can stop by and show our FFF love to you!

Thanks for stopping by! We appreciate you guys!

FAST FIVE FRIDAY TOPICS

Jan. 2: Five Favorite Novels Read in 2014

Jan. 9: Five 2014 Adored Book Covers

Jan. 16: Five Most Anticipated 2015 Novels

Jan. 23: Five TV Character Crushes

Jan. 30: Five Favorite Authors

Feb. 6: Five Novels You Wish You Wrote

Feb. 13: Five Romantic Movies You Love

Feb. 20: Five Book Characters You’re Crushing On

Feb. 27: Five Top TV Shows

Mar. 6: Five Book Characters You Relate To

Mar. 13: Five Books You Recommend

Mar. 20: Five Best Writing Songs

Mar. 27: Five Movie Character Crushes

We post Fast Five Friday topics quarterly so make sure to stop by and get the new list then.

Cheers!
~ Dani & Jax

Friday, November 21, 2014

The Big Reveal, 2015 CG News & Plenty of Blitz's, Memes & a Fest

Hello fellow bloggers!

Have you guys checked out The Big Reveal yet? It's hosted by Suzi @ Literary Engineer.

For 8 weeks both Cover Girls, Dani & Jax, will be featured. Learn a few little tidbits about our writing styles, techniques, and resources we use to help us get through the thick of it all.

Also...

In 2015 we are looking to shake things up here at CG. New ideas flow in and out on a daily basis and we think we are weeding our way through them and selecting the more hopeful concepts.

As always, we are still blogging weekly at our individual blogs:

Bouquet of Books
Entertaining Interests

Where we host the Express Yourself meme.

Speaking of memes:

DL Hammons is still hosting the Blog Blitz 2.0 version. He has rebooted the blitz so make sure to resign-up if you haven't already.

And don't forget about Alex J. Cavanaugh's IWSG hosted the first Wednesday of every month.

Hosted by Andrew Leon, Alex J. Cavanaugh, and Matthew MacNish the return of Oh, How I Miss You Blogfest is back.

Additionally:

Do you have any upcoming news you want to share? Blogfest, bloghop, meme, etc? Please let us know in a comment below or send us an email and we will compile it in a weekly post to help spread the word!

Thanks for stopping by,

~Dani & Jax

Friday, October 31, 2014

Spooktoberfest 2014 Winners!!!

Another Spooktoberfest has come to an end. Thank you for sharing your amazing entries with us! It was super hard to choose winners, because these were all so good, but we finally decided....

Dani's choice is:

To read "12 past 2" by DRC at Writing Through Fiction, click HERE

Jax's choice is:

To read "Under the Glass" by Sarah at Sarah Marsh Writes, click HERE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We each chose Runner-Up's, too. You can find those at Entertaining Interests and Bouquet of Books.

Again, thank you for sharing your writing talents with us and letting us read your incredible stories! You guys rock!

Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Friday, October 24, 2014

SPOOKTOBERFEST Starts Today

Today is the day! From today, Oct. 24 thru Oct. 28, Spooktoberfest is on its way!

The details are below... and btw, it's never too late to join! Sign up today!

Are you feeling spookerific?

It’s baaaaack!

Welcome to the 3^rd annual SPOOKTOBERFEST hosted by Cover Girls!

This year we are doing a bit of a rewind and using the original Spooktoberfest requirements.

Requirements:

1. Follow Cover Girls blog if you don’t already. It will be reciprocated!
          And on Twitter: @covergirlsdj
You can also follow our individual accounts: @jackiefel & @danibertrand
If you do have a Twitter account, please feel free to tweet using the hashtag #spooktoberfest14

2. Your Flash Fiction piece cannot be any longer than 300 words. Sorry… that’s part of the challenge.

3. You must use the 5 MANDATORY words listed below…
      (You may use any variation of these words as you like.)

            chill
            cocoon
            commotion
            curse
            virus

4. Post your Flash Fiction piece any day from Friday Oct 24^th thru Tuesday, Oct. 28^th.

5. It’s a blog hop, so… hop around to other participating blogs and leave them some awesome comments.

6. Have fun.

Your flash fiction piece can be scary, comical, romantic, or whatever you choose, just be creative! You can use pictures to set the scene and/or a song to set the mood.

The winners will be posted on HALLOWEEN, Oct. 31st!

Jackie and I will each choose a winner. That’s right – two winners!

PRIZES: Each winner will receive a $25 e-giftcard of their choice.

Oh, and yes, this blogfest is international.

So what are you ghouls waiting for?
Sign up using the Linkie Thing below and please, help spread the word!