Welcome to the Book Derby!

The champions are out of the gate! Ink Jockeys announce their first ever . . .

BOOK DERBY

All books FREE or 99 Cents
TWO DAYS ONLY:  December 5 and December 6

All books written by bestselling, award-winning, traditionally published authors who have broken out of the starting gate to publish independently.  Join us at the ticket window.

WIN A $25 AMAZON GIFT CARD*

SCROLL ON DOWN. FILL YOUR KINDLE

Don't forget to send a few as gifts! You can specify delivery date on Amazon, so your gift is received at Christmas! Don't have a Kindle? Check out Amazon's FREE reading apps

CLICK ON THE LINK 

BELOW THE COVER  

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BOOK

 

ROMANTIC SUSPENSE & PARANORMAL ROMANTIC SUSPENSE -- 99c

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS

DEATHSCAPE

AGENTS UNDER FIRE

DARK MOON

 ROMANCE -- 99c   or   FREE    

THE THIRD SCROLL

IT'S IN HIS KISS

SEPTEMBER RAIN

 

THRILLER -- 99c

PUSHED TOO FAR

SKIN

EXPOSED

SHORT STORIES -- 99c   or   FREE 

AMBUSHED

WILD NIGHT - 99c

OLD BONES

ROMANTIC SUSPENSE -- FREE

PUSHED TO THE LIMIT

PARANORMAL ROMANTIC SUSPENSE -- FREE

THE FIRE OPAL

DARK POWERS

SHADOW OF THE WOLF

*We love to hear from our readers so please leave a comment. If you include the email address where you can be notified, you will be entered into the gift card drawing. The winner will be selected through Random Org. By entering, you understand that you may be added to Ink Jockey member's mailing lists.  Your address will not be given to others and if you later decide you don't want to continue,  feel free to unsubscribe.

A Scary and Exciting Time

Patricia Rosemoor

This is both a scary and an exciting time to be an author. In little more than a year, publishing has been turned on its head. Authors can now be their own publishers with little to no investment, and that has brought a huge change as to how traditional houses -- or legacy houses as they are now called -- and how agents are reinventing themselves. As someone who has lasted in the industry for a squeak away from thirty years, I have reinvented myself multiple times. And now, with all the opportunities available to authors, I am keeping my fingers in every pie I can.

I’m really happy to be able to make my backlist available to readers, who might not have caught those stories the first time around. I can't tell you how many times I've had readers ask me how to get titles they missed. I have a large backlist both of my Patricia Rosemoor titles, but also novels written with a co-author as Lynn Patrick, Jeanne Rose and Roslynn Griffith. Samhain is publishing most of the Lynn Patrick backlist, and Lynn Patrick is once more appearing at Harlequin for their new Heartwarming line. Backlist Jeanne Rose titles are available again at Amazon, BN and Smashwords.

My first novel was a young adult romance. It won the 1983 Golden Heart for Best Young Adult Romance. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the RWA National Conference that year. A chapter mate called me to tell me I'd won and that the editor of Silhouette Young Love was saying that I was her new author. I had submitted the book to her and had done a rewrite to lengthen it, but the editor hadn’t called or written to say she wanted the book. So I waited for the call. And waited. And waited. And then gave up.

Three weeks after the conference, the editor finally called and asked if she’d made me an offer. I said no. She said she wanted to buy the book and hoped that I would accept her offer...because she’d already put it in production. A CHANGE OF HEART (by “RoseAnne McKenna”) was the only young adult book I ever wrote. Books that followed were romantic comedies, long contemporary romances, paranormal romances, paranormal historical romances. I was determined to continue to be published, no matter the changing market. As I said, I keep reinventing myself.

My favorite subgenre, the type of novel that composes more than half of my backlist, is romantic suspense. I’ve written 93 published novels, sold over seven million copies worldwide. Fifty-three of those novels were Harlequin Intrigues. RT BookReviews has honored me with two awards for Best Intrigue and two Career Achievement Awards recognizing my career as a romantic suspense author.

Currently, I am writing for Entangled Publishing's Dead Sexy line. I had a little fun writing Christmas romantic mysteries -- HOLIDAY IN CRIMSON and NIGHTMARE IN CRIMSON -- by killing Santa Claus. Twice.

Holiday in Crimson

See Me in Your Dreams

SKIN

So far, I’ve gone indie with several of my Patricia Rosemoor backlist titles, including SEE ME IN YOUR DREAMS, TELL ME NO LIES and TOUCH ME IN THE DARK, the first three novels in my bestselling series, The McKenna Legacy. (The most requested books by my new readers.) And I’ve written one original indie romantic thriller, SKIN.

Pushed to the Limit

HAUNTED

Drop Dead Gorgeous

We Ink Jockeys are all traditionally published authors who also are producing indie work, whether backlist or original titles. We've banded together, hoping to entertain you endlessly!

Watch this space for our exciting Book Derby on Wednesday and Thursday, December 5-6. We'll offer readers Kindle books ON SALE at 99¢ ... and some will even be FREE! So come back and scoop up the bargains.

Pushing the Boundaries of Imagination

Click here to check out all my Kindle releases!

It's a great time to be a writer and an even greater time to be a reader!

As an author, I have more freedom now than ever before in my career. I can choose to publish my books however I want, push creative boundaries, go where no wo/man has gone before (yes, I'm a Star Trek fan <g>).

This freedom doesn't only give writers choices; more importantly, it gives readers choices. One glance at Amazon.com (and other ebook stores) and you can see how much variety is out there; far more than any brick-and-mortar store had space to shelve or any publisher had the resources to publish before.

Pushed Too Far

I don't know about you, but I grew up reading a vast range of stories, many of which didn't neatly fit one genre or another. My mom would take my brothers and me to the library, and I'd load up on books of all kinds. All the different stories made me feel as if there might be room in this magical world of books to write what fired –my- imagination, and at the ripe old age of seven, that's what I started to do.

FLEE

When it came time to choose a major at the University of Wisconsin, the only subject I could choose was creative writing. And in 2000, I published my first novel with Harlequin Intrigue. For eleven years, I had a blast writing a pulse-pounding blend of romance and suspense.

Finally after twenty-five books with Intrigue, I decided it was time to push myself a little further. Or maybe a lot.  Ebooks were coming into their own, and the possibilities were endless.

SPREE

I teamed up with my friend J.A. Konrath, a man known for both pushing boundaries and bringing his wacky imagination to a variety of different genres, and together we started the Codename: Chandler series, an action-packed, over-the-top series of spy thrillers staring a super assassin known only by her code name (FLEE, SPREE, and novella EXPOSED are out now, with THREE and more novellas on the way). And earlier this year, I released my solo police procedure thriller, PUSHED TOO FAR. I've been having a blast, to say the least.

EXPOSED

Ebooks have been great for me as a writer, but that's only a small part of why I love them. My favorite thing about my Kindle is that it makes me feel like I did as a kid, browsing through shelves of books that seemed as vast as my imagination and picking out whatever suits my fancy; traditionally published books, indie published books, backlist books, and hidden gems.

What's your favorite thing about ebooks? And what boundaries have ebooks inspired you to push, either in reading choices or in the stories you write? And lastly, are you a trekker?

Check back on Wednesday, when we'll be offering some of our books for 99 cents and FREE, to pick out whatever –you- feel like reading and comment to win a gift card! Spread the word!

Paula Graves, Living Vicariously

I've always wanted to be interesting, but apparently I lack the drive or the internal resources for it.  I'm ruthlessly average, a bit on the nerdy side, and my life is so ordinary it even puts me to sleep.

So how on earth did I come to write romantic thrillers for a living?

I figure, the next best thing to doing something exciting is writing about it. I'm too afraid of heights to stand on a chair, but that doesn't keep my heroines from dangling thirty feet from a truss bridge in a hallucinatory state.  Fire scares the heck out of me, but I've been known to stick a hero in a burning house trying to open a nailed-shut trap door to save the heroine.

When I was a kid, my play time was all about pretending to be something I wasn't.  I guess writing books is the grown-up equivalent to playing pretend for me.

I've always thought of writing as a fun sort of therapy, in which I deal with my neuroses by living them out on page and winning. I get thrills through my characters, who get to do the interesting, exciting, and important things that I'll probably never get the chance to do.  Like take on a Mexican drug lord and fall in love with a smokin' hot cowboy.

My December story, "Wyatt" is part of a Harlequin Intrigue Christmas anthology called THREE COWBOYS.  My co-conspirators, Julie Miller and Dana Marton, wrote the first two stories, and mine wraps up the overarching mystery.  It's a tale about three brothers, estranged by time and circumstance, who join forces when the little sister they never knew existed is kidnapped by a ruthless drug cartel just a few days before Christmas.  There's plenty of danger and thrills, but there's also a heart-warming story about a family finding its way back together at a time of year when family and forgiveness take center stage.

 

I also have three indie e-books available now, books I chose to publish myself in order to help them find an audience.  Talk about living vicariously—one of them actually features a former President's daughter seeking help and protection from the former Secret Service agent who once protected her.  Check them out on my website:

 

CODE NAME: WILLOW

 

PLAYING DEAD IN DIXIE

 

MURDER ON LOVERS' LANE

 

 

So here's my question for you.  Do you read books to meet interesting people?

 

Don't forget to watch for our upcoming Book Derby!  Lots of free and 99¢ books up for grabs! Don't miss it!