Half-Blood Cover Reveal!

It's cover reveal time again! Half-Blood is a prequel novella to Jaye L. Knight's amazing Ilyon Chronicles. Learn more about beloved character Jace and the hard life he led prior to Resistance. It's an amazing, heart-wrenching story, and I love it. Fans of Ilyon Chronicles, wait anxiously for this book. Those of you who haven't read Ilyon yet, you have to join in with this amazing series. It's the best

Check out the cover of Jaye L. Knight’s upcoming novella, Half-Blood, and learn about this prequel story to Ilyon Chronicles! Make sure you also enter the giveaway at the bottom!

About the Book
The gasps and murmuring grew. Though some were hardly more than whispers, clear words reached Jace’s ears—dangerous, monster, animal, soulless. He tried to back away from their accusing eyes, but the collar pulled hard against his throat and held him in place.
For all his years as a slave, Jace has known nothing but the hatred people hold for his mixed blood—one half human, the other half the blood of a race considered monsters. Always, he is the outsider and quickly learns it is better to keep to himself. But, when his volatile ryrik blood leads him to do the unthinkable, he is thrown into a world of violence and bloodshed.
Forced to become a gladiator, Jace finds more and more of his heart dying as his master works to break down his will not to become the monster everyone believes he is. When a stranger interferes with his master’s harsh punishment, Jace’s world is upended yet again. But with it comes the possibility of hope that has long since died. Could the man possibly hold the key to escaping the hopeless darkness that is Jace’s life? Is there such a thing as life beyond the cruelty of slavery?
See where Jace’s story all began . . .

Coming This Summer

About the Author
Jaye L. Knight is an award-winning author, homeschool graduate, and shameless tea addict with a passion for Christian fantasy. Armed with an active imagination and love for adventure, Jaye weaves stories of truth, faith, and courage with the message that even in the deepest darkness, God’s love shines as a light to offer hope. She has been penning stories since the age of eight and resides in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.
You can connect with Jaye on her website, blog, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

Giveaway
As part of a month long celebration for the one year publication anniversary of Resistance (Ilyon Chronicles - Book 1), Jaye is giving away several fun prizes! Enter for a chance to win using the form below! U.S. entries only please.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Participating Bloggers
A Writer's Faith
Morgan Elizabeth Huneke
A Writer's Heart
Thoughts and Rants
Written Rest
To Be A Person
Tialla's Tellings
The American Anglophile
Knitted By God's Plan
Elvish Pens, Fantastical Writings
Pencils Can Change The World
Crafty Booksheeps
Zerina Blossom's Books
Ryebrynn's Random Ramblings
Through the Realm of Dreams
Red Lettering
Leah's Bookshelf
The Official Website of Brent King
Writings, Ramblings, and Reflections
Shattered Fractals
Flights from the Aerie
E. Rawls
The Pen of a Ready Writer
Scattered Journal Pages
Sutori no Hana
The Art of Storytelling
poetree

Pre-order Creighton Hill on Kindle!

*throws confetti* Creighton Hill is available for pre-order on kindle! This is the first book I've released since KDP added the pre-order feature, so it's exciting to be able to offer a book for pre-order for the very first time. So you can go ahead and buy it for only $2.99, and it will be automatically delivered to your kindle on June 8th. How cool is that?

As much as I'd like to offer the same exact thing for the paperback, CreateSpace doesn't work that way, so there can't be any day of deliveries on the paperback. However, I do have a compromise as I went ahead and set up the PayPal button for signed copies and put it on my website this morning. So if you want, you can order your signed copy now, and I will send it to you ASAP when I get my first shipment, which I will order as soon as I click publish on June 8th.

Speaking of paperbacks...

 

I got my first proof last week! Doesn't it look amazing? I'm not entirely happy with the shade of green underneath the back cover text and the top margins ended up a little too small, so new proof it is, but I'm confident I can get out of this one with less proofs than The Experiment. I love the matte finish on the cover, the cream pages look amazing, and they appear to be using a thinner paper that looks more like that of a traditionally published book, and it's just so super cool to be able to hold it in my hands. It's a real book!

Looking Like a Real Book!

Creighton Hill is starting to look like a real book! This is so super exciting. Let me show you another picture.

I just may be a little addicted to the print preview. It's so cool to see it looking like a real book! The print preview isn't quite as cool as CreateSpace's interior reviewer, but it's pretty close. And after working long and hard on Creighton Hill, it's starting to look like a real book! A real book that should be ready in just four short weeks!

It's so neat. I love those fonts, and how they look together, I'd better, after all the time I spent trying to design it just so. I haven't formatted a book since last fall, so doing it again, and doing all this design was fun. And, sorry, Ashley, it's just more exciting to do one's own book, however much you may love your friend's, so I'm a bit more excited about Creighton Hill than I was Becoming Nikki.

Now, there still will definitely be some changes to the interior, as I have some people still proofreading, and others who I asked last minute to send me some things to put in the book (I don't always procrastinate like that, I just didn't make that final decision until last Friday morning), but I think I'm going to go ahead and order my first proof early on this week. See, it took me four proofs to be mostly satisfied with the cover of The Experiment, so I want to be sure I have plenty of time to get the cover right, and the printing of the map in the interior. I'm doing a matte cover for the first time (they added the feature after I did my last book) and I'm doing cream pages instead of stark white, so it'll all be a bit different. And I'm anxious to see how those differences look. Not that I haven't seen those printing choices in friends' books but it's different in your own. Plus, I'm really anxious to hold this book in my hands. I want to be able to hold a tangible book, not my kindle or a manuscript printed on printer paper. But I'll still be able to edit it for awhile (not edit it for Swahili, as autocorrect insisted on texting my friend), so all the changes should get in there. And I'm hoping to have it available for preorder on kindle by next week. That's another new feature I'm super excited about.

And the blog tour is still exciting me. I've written up three guest posts on various interesting topics, two character spotlights on characters whose identity I will not yet divulge, and I received some character interview questions this morning that I'm looking forward to answering. Plus, I know at least one of my reviewers really enjoyed Creighton Hill, and really wanted book two. I love getting that response. :)

Just four weeks to go! A lot will happen in those next four weeks, both in the publishing process and in my personal life, so I'm hanging in for a wild ride.

Alons-y!!

Blessed by Beta Readers

Beta readers are so absolutely necessary. I've been blessed to find some very good ones. I always have my family read my books before they go outside the family. I know there are some people who don't have their family read their books until they are published, but I kind of take it for granted that my family will read my stuff. Without them, my books would really be a mess. They have helped me fix so many big things, or told me the book just needs an entire rewrite (The Crossways). But even my family doesn't catch everything. I chalk it up to the fact that they've been hearing me talk about the book for years, and so they know almost everything there is to know about the stories. My beta readers, however, are seeing it with fresh eyes. Which means they catch things.

One noticed that Emily referenced something she wouldn't find out about for several chapters. Oops. Two pointed out that Joey thought about how he had one nice sister when he gets along with two out of his three sisters. Still another pointed out that taking a certain sentence literally created an odd mental picture. And she compared it to saying "Her eyes floated to the ceiling." She told me that in a text which I received while I was cooking. So I'm mixing together baked beans and thinking of floating eyeballs. That was...interesting. And there was the fact that watching mostly BBC shows for the past year and several months kind of rubbed off on me, which meant some of my American characters, um, sounded British. After a beta reader pointed that out, which was something my sister had been onto me for, I found some more American alternatives.

All these things just serve to make it just that much better. And my proofreaders will help me polish it up to perfection. Well, as close to perfection as humans can make it. And then my blogger friends will help me tell everyone all about it. Speaking of which, I'm planning on sending out the tentative blog tour schedule this morning. If you don't get an email by about noon, but you thought you signed up, or you meant to sign up but forgot (I've done that, sorry), it's not too late. Just shoot me an email and/or go ahead and fill out the form (it's still on the "Creighton Hill Blog Tour" tab) and I'll still work you in. Though it is possible that this is a scheduled post actually written the last day of April, and some life thing happened to prevent my actually sending the email as planned. I hope not. That would be bad. But I'm getting excited about my first blog tour. It's going to be super awesome because I have super awesome bloggers involved, so it can't help but be so. :)

I also have a brand new Creighton Hill trailer to share with you. Enjoy!

 

And in other news, Across the Stars is now available to be borrowed through Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program. So if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free!

A Sneak Peek at Creighton Hill

Today I'm going to share with you an excerpt from Creighton Hill. This is out of Chapter Three, "The Door at the Back of the Wardrobe."

   Anna handed Jill a dark blue cotton dress from the wardrobe. She selected a pink gingham for herself. As she closed the door, a flash of light caught Joey’s attention.

   “Wait a minute.” Anna opened the door again. Joey came up behind them. “What’s that light in there?”

   Anna frowned. “I don’t see anything.”

   “You’re right, Joey,” said Jill.

   Joey stepped past the girls and pushed the dresses aside.

   Allan came into the room buttoning up his shirt. “What are you looking at?”

   “Jill and Joey see something in the wardrobe,” Anna said.

   “What is it?” Allan came closer. “That’s weird.”

   “What?” Anna demanded.

   “It’s a spot of light,” Joey said.

   “But it’s making words,” Jill added.

   The point of light lengthened and curved. Writing appeared on the back of the wardrobe. The children watched as lines became letters, letters became words. Jill read them aloud for Anna’s benefit.

   “When these words are spoken,

   A land will appear.”

   The words shone out at them for a moment, then faded away. Allan stepped into the wardrobe. He ran his hand over the wood.
   “No trace of them now,” he said. “There’s only a knot in the wood. Odd it wasn’t sanded down.”
   The back of the wardrobe swung away from them. Only pitch black could be seen through the opening. Allan looked back at his siblings, then stepped inside. Anna followed.
   “What’s in there, Allan?” Joey stepped through the wardrobe into the secret passage, Jill close behind him. The back of the wardrobe slammed shut. Jill let out a muffled shriek. 

Read the rest of the story when Creighton Hill is released on June 8th. Help spread the word by joining the blog tour celebrating its release!

 

Creighton Hill is Coming Soon!

The release date is approaching quickly! It's less than two months away now. I have some beta reader feedback already that I've applied to the book, just minor things but minor things that make it SOOO much better. I should have the rest of my feedback by the end of the week, which means I can finish applying it, send it to my proofreaders and prepare ARCs for those reviewing Creighton Hill for the blog tour. And I can start formatting! Strangely enough, I actually like formatting. After all, it means I can listen to musicals (*cough* Phantom of the Opera and Into the Woods, as if I haven't listened to them enough already). And speaking of ARCs and blog tours...

You are more than welcome to be a part of it. I still have plenty of spots left. Just sign up with the above form and I'll put you on the schedule. I'll probably leave the form up through mid May, but I'm planning on sending out the tentative schedule in early May, so if you want to actually get the post and posting date you want, I recommend signing up by the end of April. Plus, um, remember what I said last week about wanting to move and things happening with that and stuff? Well, it all lines up badly with my release date (hey, I scheduled my thing first!) so I need to have everything done in advance.

But I'm super excited about doing a blog tour. I've never done one for one of my books before. It's going to be amazing! I hope, anyway. At least the book is great from what my betas have said. I'm too closely connected to know myself, plus being biased both for and against it :P, but I have received a lot of good feedback from beta readers who are already anxious to move on to The Crossways. Because friends get to read however many of them they want. Others have to wait for release. Muahaha. But really, I haven't heard anyone say they hate Time Captives, well, except me when I was stuck and my characters were making it feel like pulling teeth to write it (and me pulling teeth...don't ask, mouth pain is terror inducing). Everyone else seems to love the book tremendously. And I love it now too, though I love book 2 more. That's when My Precious comes in, and My Other Precious gets to have her story told.

So gear up for the release on June 8th! Help spread the word by signing up for the blog tour! And when you get to the end of book one, try to get to be one of my good friends or wait in agony for late Fall. AGONYYYY!!! (You know nothing of madness, till you're climbing her hair.), sorry, Into the Woods is too amazing not to.

A Little Bit of Life

This has been a week. A crazy one, for sure. The main thing that happened, well, I'm not going to give any details because one: They aren't firmed up, and two: I'm not the sort of person who likes posting personal things on the internet. So suffice it to say that we want to move closer to church and music things and friends and stuff, and that has made this week super crazy, and, yeah. My church friends know what I'm talking about, and probably all my complaints about timing too.

So instead, let me show you a new love of mine:

I saw it yesterday for the first time, live on stage, and it was AMAZING! A few friends of mine were playing in the orchestra for it, and I went with some other friends to go see it. The acting was fantastic, the singing was amazing, the musicians were fabulous, the costumes were terrific...I knew little of the story before going to the play, so it was all new to me. I now have the movie on hold at the library because my family just has to see it. It was previews for the movie that first piqued my curiosity for Into the Woods, because I saw James Corden aka Craig in them. And I like Craig. He may be starting to look like his sofa, but he blew up the cybermen with love, so I think (I know) I really want to see him play the Baker. Because Into the Woods is fantabulous! What was interesting about this performance was that I found out behind the scenes stuff afterwards from my friends. Apparently they had a mishap with the hen that lays golden eggs, it fell over, but they covered so incredibly well, I wouldn't have known it wasn't supposed to happen that way if my friend hadn't said so.

In other news, since Creighton Hill is out with beta readers, my sister and I had a writing competition to see which of us could write the most words this past week. She beat me by 1,533 words, but since I wrote 7,589 words in the Cassie story with a sore arm and a cold, which equates to more than an eighth of the book, I'm happy. Except for the doing an extra day of dishes part. Because we had to have an actual incentive to write other than the glory of winning, right? But because I got some feedback on Creighton Hill and the cover reveal is over and recent developments have sort of increased the stress level for this publishing, I probably won't be able to focus on Cassie for a little while. And it might be interesting to note that my sister burst out laughing when she read the part where the main guy, Luke Winston, mentioned texting his copilot, Cassie, to tell her when he would need her back in the cockpit. See, I cast Bradley James as Luke on my Pinterest board, and I do have to admit it is rather funny to think of Prince/King Arthur texting. :)

And I've been watching Green Gables Fables. It's a modernized Anne of Green Gables video blog webseries, and my friend Katelyn assumes full blame for getting me and our friend Ashley addicted to it. Now, I'm not a big fan of modernizations as a general rule, and there are certainly things I don't like (like Diana living over an hour away rather than just across the Haunted Wood), but all in all, I like GGF a lot. They have the characters down pat, and I finally saw Gilbert a few days ago! The other night, GGF inspired me to revisit favorite moments in my L. M. Montgomerys, which includes certain chapters in Emily Climbs, and caused me to rediscover this gem of a description in Anne of the Island.

L. M. Montgomery has such a way with words. I'm envious, and now I want to go and read all the books in the house that she wrote just to soak in the loveliness.

And if you're wondering why I had a sore arm, I slipped on the mud and pinestraw a little over a week ago trying to push the lawn mower up the hill (it was off) and banged my arm on the handle, falling on it with pretty much my whole weight. Once the first pain wore off, it didn't really hurt much, but we think I hit a nerve because it made my arm tingly and weak for awhile. It's on the mend and our writing contest kept me from babying it, as I'm prone to do, so, even though it's a bit sore now, I should be able to play in my first orchestra concert a week from tonight.

Ta ta for now! Alons-y!