Blog Tour: BEING ME by LISA RENÉE JONES - Q&A + GIVEAWAY (US/Canada)

FROM STORAGE LOCKER TO

BESTSELLER LIST

LISA RENÉE JONES COLLABORATES WITH STORAGETREASURES.COM

- CO-FOUNDED BY A&E STORAGE WARS STARS DAN AND LAURA DOTSON -

TO PRESENT INSIDE OUT NOVELLA

Lisa Renée Jones's INSIDE OUT series debuted in the Amazon top 40 within the first 10 days of release. Who knew that a small, musty journal forgotten in a storage locker would be the inspiration for a bestselling series of books, TV buzz, and legions of fans counting the days until the next installment? Jones is a powerhouse literary entrepreneur. Her TALL, DARK & DEADLY series spent 10 weeks on the USA Today bestseller list and 8 weeks on the New York Times and sold 300,000 copies. Jones released IF I WERE YOU, the first book of INSIDE OUT series, herself for 10 days before Gallery/Simon & Schuster took it over. The reception by fans was overwhelming.

Now Jones is teaming up with StorageTreasures.com, co-founded by Dan and Laura Dotson, stars of the A&E's Storage Wars, to present the exclusive thrilling and chilling  serialized mystery BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: An Inside Out Novella. Each exciting installment will appear once a week through June and July 2013 on the storage and auction omnibus site and draw fans into the INSIDE OUT world.

The eagerly awaited second installment of the INSIDE OUT series, BEING ME, was released June 11, 2013 by Gallery Books. It's the continuing story of Sara McMillan, an ordinary school teacher with an uneventful life whose surprise acquisition of a storage unit key leads her to discover the journals of a woman she never met. Riveted by the journal writer's erotic adventures, Sara begins to obsess until she takes steps that lead her to living out the other woman's life. But the writer's path is dark and the men Sara meets are darker still - can she solve the riddle of what happened to the writer before she meets the same fate? 

NOW OPTIONED TO STARZ FOR TV!!! Check it out on Goodreads and Amazon 

Q&A With LISA RENÉE JONES 

1. Throughout your career so far, you’ve written a wide range of genres, from paranormal romance to erotic thrillers. Which has been your favorite to write and what inspires you to jump around?

I love suspense and it's where I started. Opportunity lead me other places but my heart is always in a good sexy mystery. 

2. Your latest series, The Inside Out Trilogy, begins with a character who discovers a woman’s “lost journals” in an old storage unit she purchases. How have your real-life experiences buying storage units inspired you to write this story?

My fiancée found a journal when we were buying and selling storage units and it inspired the idea. He got absorbed in the journal and insisted I write a sexy mystery involving a journal found in a storage unit. It took me years to listen to him but he never stopped pushing me. By the time I wrote INSIDE OUT  had been developing the idea so long, that it made the fictional world and characters felt very real to me. 

3. Before publishing your books, you owned your own staffing agency, which was named Entrepreneur Magazine’s #7 growing women-owned business (1998) and recognized by the Austin Business Journal and Dallas Women Magazine. How has your experience in the business world helped shape your female characters?

It helped me understand the dynamics of personalities and relationships. It also  exposed me to some of the good and bad sides of people and situations I do not think I would have known existed otherwise. 

4. In your opinion, what ingredients are needed to make up a good erotic thriller?

Well, great sex is a must. And not the same sex. And not sex just for sex. If I Were You didn't have a ton of sex because the characters weren't ready. I wasn't going to make them have sex to make sex scenes appear on pages. And a good mystery is a true mystery. It's woven into the story with subtle little clues. For me, it also has to be deeply rooted in something one or more characters have some emotional attachment to.

5. What’s up next for you and your writing career?

I have a new series Escaping Reality, another sexy mystery, out in July. A novella coming up with Random House and more books in the INSIDE OUT series. There will be 5 Inside Out books and a spinoff series. Books 4 and 5 are highly focused on the man who did not get Sara. And you will know what the spinoff series is by the end of Revealing Us. You will have no question.

ABOUT LISA LISA RENÉE JONES

The author of more than 30 best-selling novels, Jones has impressive roots in the business world as the owner and CEO of a multi-state staffing agency that was consistently recognized by the The Austin Business Journal and Dallas Women magazine and grossed up to $ 16 million in sales. In 1998  her company was listed seventh in a list of fastest growing women-owned businesses by Enterpreneur magazine. She has brought this aptitude to the business of marketing her novels to create a smashing success using social media. Her publishing career began in 2007 and has grown to encompass her successful self-publishing career as well as more than 30 books with Simon & Schuster, Avon, Kensington, Harlequin, NAL, Berkley and Elloras Cave. To know more about her, please visit her website.

GIVEAWAY!

Lisa is generously offering a copy of IF I WERE YOU  and BEING ME (book #1 and #2 in the INSIDE OUT series) to a lucky reader of this blog.  Leave a comment about Lisa's books or this interview for a chance to win. Open to US and Canada residents. Don't forget to add your email address at the end of your comment. Thank you and good luck!

Author Spotlight + Excerpt: SUMMER ON THE P BAR J RANCH by PATRICK BOLES

Author: Patrick Boles

Paperback, 368 pages

Published April 22, 2012 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Genre: fiction, contemporary novel, '50s nostalgia, western

Amazon

About the book

Get ready to experience an action filled Summer on the P Bar J Ranch. Long time Arizona rancher Jeff Dean is thinking back to a particular summer over 60 years ago. The time is 1952 and 11-year-old Jeff Dean is spending his first summer on the P Bar J Ranch in north central Arizona near Route 66. The story is told from the perspective of the grown man rather than the child.

     Jeff’s parents are separated and his dad has recently become the manager of this large cattle ranch. The story takes place from June through August of that year and follows the adventures of Jeff (a big fan of Roy Rogers) and his friends, as well as the adults on the ranch, including the parents and cowboys. The summer begins with Jeff getting settled in, meeting & becoming friends with the ranch owners’ 11 year old twins, and getting to know the hired hands and the ranch.

     Readers will experience an action filled Summer on the P Bar J Ranch and in the process will pick up true bits of history, cowboy etiquette, tips on handling horses, and a feeling for the early 1950s.  There are also shoot outs with bank robbers, a nighttime ride with a posse, and a good dose of early ‘50s nostalgia, e.g. Route 66, Roy Rogers, cap guns, B westerns, and Schwinn bicycles. Life on a western ranch is never boring. At any moment an accident can cause injury of death.

     One reviewer, a retired English professor who actually lived on a ranch in Montana as a boy in the early ’50s commented, “I think your sense of specific detail is very good, and believe it will find a niche with SW/history/ranching and "looking-back" enthusiasts.”

About Patrick

Patrick H. Boles was born in Owosso, Michigan and grew up in the nearby small town of Corunna. He arrived in the Southwest courtesy of the U.S. Air Force when he was assigned to a base in Albuquerque, N.M. He received a B.S. degree in biology from Eastern New Mexico University and a M.S. degree, also in biology, from New Mexico State University. He has worked as an environmental specialist, biologist, ecologist, and rangeland manager for government agencies in Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona.

     The author has spent over 20 years working with long time ranchers in Arizona and listening to their stories of ranch life and “the old days.” He spent many days out roaming over ranches and backcountry afoot, in four wheel drive vehicles, and horseback. He filled several journals with notes on the field work and the conversations with ranchers/old-timers as well as on his own experiences out on the ranches. This firsthand experience was drawn upon when writing the P Bar J books in order to give a realistic feeling to the setting (a real cattle ranch with the name changed), events, and characters.

     He lives in the Southwest with his wife where he is working on other book projects (both fiction and non-fiction), including the third, and final, P Bar J Ranch book, and a biography of Arizona cowboy John Lovelace. They have two grown children. 

Author’s email: muchocanones72@yahoo.com

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Summer On The P Bar J Ranch

We were on Route 66 heading west toward the P Bar J Ranch by 9:00 a.m. that morning.  During the drive from Winslow, Dad told me about his two full-time cowboys, Jay Kirby and Michael T.  He also told me a little story about the special relationship that a cowboy has with his hat. A few months earlier, Dad had received word that an old cowboy he knew named Ben was in the hospital in Kingman. He wasn’t expected to live. Dad had worked on a ranch with him a number of years earlier and thought highly of him. Jay had known Ben since they had done some cowboying together on a ranch up on the Mogollon Rim in the 1920s. Dad and Jay decided they should make a trip into Kingman to pay Ben a visit before it was too late. 

     The next day they left for Kingman after an early breakfast. At the hospital they spent a couple of hours with Ben talking about the good times they had shared.  Ben had been the foreman and Dad’s boss on the ranch they had worked on together.  Dad told me that he had learned a lot about being a cowboy from Ben. Dad said, “In all the years I had known Ben, I couldn’t remember seeing him without his old, well-worn black Stetson hat. So it seemed really strange when I first saw him lying in that hospital bed.  I almost didn’t recognize him.” 

     Dad continued, “The first thing I asked Ben was ‘where’s your hat?’ He replied sadly that they wouldn’t allow him to wear it. Recalling how the last time I had seen it, it was pretty much encrusted with dust and sweat I figured the hospital staff would be afraid to touch it.”

     When Dad and Jay looked around the hospital room they noticed the hat sitting on its brim on a small table. Jay walked over and carefully picked up his friend’s hat by the brim and flipped it over so that it was sitting on the top of the crown.

     Obviously, whoever had placed the hat on the table wasn’t familiar with the proper way of setting a hat down. Ben watched, and as Jay turned back to the bed, he grinned and said, “Thanks, pard.” Ben had seen how his prized hat had been placed on the table but wasn’t able to get up and move it himself. He told his visitors that it had been bothering him but he hadn’t wanted to ask any of the hospital staff to move it. Ben figured that one of them, since they wouldn’t have known any better, would have picked it up by the crown.

     Dad finished his story of Ben and his hat with, “After a few hours a nurse came by to let us know that visiting hours were over. As Jay and I said goodbye to our friend and started down the hall, the same nurse stopped us and mentioned how our friend was sure fond of his old, beat-up cowboy hat. We asked her what she meant, and she proceeded to tell us about what happened when Ben was brought into the hospital after suffering a stroke.  He was on a gurney with a sheet over him and a couple of nurses were removing his clothes. They were careful to keep him covered while they took off his shirt and jeans.  When they finished, they saw him lifting his head, looking around the room. Ben was looking for his cowboy hat. He finally managed to say, ‘would someone please be kind enough to get me my hat … I feel plumb nekkid without it.’ When Ben died a few weeks later, Jay made sure that he was buried with his cowboy hat.” Even though I hadn’t met Jay yet, I was already starting to like him. 

 

Live Chat With CLAIRE COOK, Author Of TIME FLIES (BookTrib - June 18, 2013 - 1:30 pm ET)

New York Times Best Selling Author Of Eight Novels

Claire Cook

Tuesday, June 18 At 1:30 PM (ET)

About TIME FLIES: A Novel
YEARS AGO, Melanie followed her husband, Kurt, from the New England beach town where their two young sons were thriving to the suburbs of Atlanta. She’s carved out a life as a successful metal sculptor, but when Kurt leaves her for another woman, having the tools to cut up their marriage bed is small consolation. She’s old enough to know that high school reunions are often a big disappointment, but when her best friend makes her buy a ticket and an old flame gets in touch to see

if she’ll be going, she fantasizes that returning to her past might help her find her future . . . until her highway driving phobia resurfaces and threatens to hold her back from the adventure of a lifetime.
Time Flies is an epic trip filled with fun, heartbreak, and friendship that explores what it takes to conquer your worst fears . . . so you can start living your future. (Goodreads)

(Photo Credit: Claire Cook)

About CLAIRE 

I wrote my first novel in my minivan when I was 45. At 50, I walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the adaptation of my second novel, MUST LOVE DOGS, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. Midlife rocks! 

Must Love Dogs (Photo Credit: Warner Bros.)

Time will fly when you join BookTrib to chat live with Claire! What’s more— BookTrib will be giving away FREE copies of TIME FLIES! All you have to do is go to http://booktribchat.com/chat.html at 1:30 p.m. ET! 


To read more about Claire Cook visit her page on BookTrib, http://booktrib.com/come-meet-claire-cook/

STAGED (Broadway Trilogy) by Ruby Preston: What happens in Broadway stays in Broadway. Or does it?

Paperback, 320 pages

Published March 12, 2013 by Dress Circle Publishing 

Genre: chick lit, women's fiction, contemporary novel, Broadway

Rating: 4 stars

Amazon

"She hadn't come this far just to let the multi-million dollar Broadway machine chew her up and spit her out now."








STAGED by Ruby Preston

For those who like me are firmly convinced that the marriage between iconic actor Tom Cruise and tv teen drama starlet Katie Holmes was just a big hoax, it won't be hard to accept the idea that, in a business that plays on 'dress up, pretend and make-believe', staged affairs and marriage contracts happen more often than we, paying audience, would imagine. 

(Photo Credit: Bing)

The way Mission Impossible couch-jumping star and Dawson's Creek young actress rushed their already sudden engagement (courtship, if there ever was any, fell completely under the radar of tabloids and gossip columnists) to the 'altar' (or whatever is used to exchange vows during a Scientology rite) didn't convince the media. More speculations about the contractual nature of their relationship were fueled by the news (summer 2012) that their 5 year marriage had come to an equally abrupt ending. The foreshadowing of their split-up had fallen, once again, under the radar of the public eye. And, if it's reasonable to think that the marriage between a traditional Irish Catholic (Holmes) and a rumored-to-be-gay top-rank Scientologist (Cruise) may be a mission beyond impossible, too many red flags pointed from the start in the direction of a charade, with Broadway show castings, out-of-this-world shopping sprees and allowances, stellar divorce settlement and a huge pay out in terms of celebrity as part of the deal for the young actress.

(Photo Credit: Bing)

Well, when an award-winning Broadway producer such as Ruby Preston decides to enter the literary arena with a series of chick lit novels evolving around a young Broadway producer and the lengths she has to go in order to bring her first musical to the stage, you can be sure that a plot otherwise implausible to any stretch of imagination (aspiring Broadway producer Scarlett Savoy accepts to pose as girlfriend of a theater mogul Graham Steward in order to secure a stage for her first musical) becomes an entertaining and 'not too hard to believe' portrayal of a world where acting goes on even when the curtains are down and where more than appears on the scene is staged. Through the expert perspective of an insider we can expect back-room business deals and behind-the-scene dramas to be spilled in the pages of a work of fiction.

Showbiz: A Novel
Dress Circle Publishing, 2012

In  Staged, Scarlet is an up and coming producer in desperate need of a theater for her first musical, Swan Song. Graham is a theater tycoon in desperate need of a "prop" fiancee in order to convince his family and board members that he is the most reliable heir of the Stuart Broadway empire. The young producer will enter into a fictional relationship with the powerful CFO as part of a business proposition. After all, she isn't looking for real romance at this point of her life  and, like Graham, she is focusing all her energy on the achievement of her career goals. So far so good: up to this point I didn't have to try too hard to suspend my disbelief. Less convincing for me was the characterization of the two protagonists: to be able to carry on in the Broadway showbiz, Scarlet is supposed to be a tough-as-nails producer, and Graham is introduced as a hard-as-granite tycoon, but there are circumstances throughout the narration where they both come off as inconsistently insecure, vulnerable, and swinging between conflicting moods. Graham's character is not fully nuanced (I think the author willingly left part of his story and personality in the dark in view of a future development), while Scarlet has a back-story and emotional arc that go back to the prequel book published in 2012 (Showbiz). Staged is, in fact, the transition installment of a trilogy (the sequel, Starstruck, should be in the works) and it reads as a transition novel, where new characters are introduced in order to set the scene for open-ended plot developments, and old acquaintances complete the picture and add zest with their colorful and somehow more convincing characterization (see Scarlet's drag queen brother, her best friend Cassie, the gay playwriters Buff and Jeremy Jersey). Overall, Staged is an enjoyable read: it features the addicting qualities of a light tv drama and it definitely fired my interest. I will read the sequel.

About Ruby
Author Ruby Preston is an award-winning Broadway producer who has helped to bring many musicals to the stage. Her first novel “SHOWBIZ,” described as “The Devil Wears Prada” meets Broadway, received widespread praise and was featured in various theater publications. Now a promising talent in the literary as well as the theater world, Preston’s newest release is the second book in her Broadway Trilogy. To know more about her,  please visit her website, Dress Circle Publishing, Amazon, Goodreads, or connect with her on Twitter

*Review copy generously offered by the author in return of an unbiased opinion.