Ruby's Fire Tour Kicks Off, July 29-Aug 16, mega prizes, including a Kindle!

The Ruby's Fire tour, sponsored by the fabulous Giselle at Xpresso Book Tours starts today and runs from July 29 through August 16! It's packed with reviews, juicy excerpts, posts on how to find and keep inspiration going, love triangles (Team Blane or Team Armonk), and interviews. Of course, we have epic prizes, including the grand prize: a Kindle with built-in WiFi and a USB charger tossed in as icing on the cake. Other prizes include a signed poster of Catherine's illustration of the flying Reds from Ruby's

Thorn's flying Reds,
from Ruby's Fire by Catherine Stine

Fire, and loads of free books and ebooks. Check to see which prizes are US/Can and which are INTL. So, without further ado, here's the lineup. Links will go live as the bloggers post. Enjoy hopping around and sampling, and do leave comments! We love getting feedback.

July 29th
YA’s the Word >>  Review
Lazy Day>> Excerpt
Christine’s Blog >> Review

July 30th
Jessabella Reads >> Interview
Escaping… One Book@ a Time  >> Excerpt/Special Sneak Peek: Ruby's Three Big Problems!
Comfort Books>>Review

July 31st
Simply Infatuated >> Interview
M. Pax >> Review
Seeing Night Reviews >>  Review

August 1st
The Indigo Quill >> Interview
Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile >> Guest Post: How do You Create Your Characters?

August 2nd
Share My Destiny >> Excerpt/Special Sneak Peek
Nazish Reads >> Excerpt/Special Sneak Peek

August 5th
JeanBookNerd >>  Guest Post: Fiction that Inspired You and its Effect on Ruby's Fire

August 6th
Whimsically Yours >> Interview

August 7th
Feed Your Fiction Addiction >> Review
alwaysjoart >>  Excerpt/Special Sneak Peek

August 8th
Donna Galanti >>  Post: Extreme Beauty-Pleasure, Power, Peril

August 9th
FlutterealFlight >>  Review
Rally the Readers >> Review of Ruby's Fire & bonus review of Fireseed One

August 12th
Words Create Scenes >> Review

August 13th
Bookmarks, Spoilers and Happily Ever After >> Excerpt/Special Sneak Peek
Starbucks & Books Obsession >> Review

August 14th
Fae Books >> Guest Post: What Inspires You to Write?
Read Books and Live Green >>  Review

August 15th
Mousehead&tales >> Review

August 16th
Marked By Books >> Sneak Peeks & BONUS mini-review!
Brooke Blogs >> Review

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Refreshing writers' retreats, BBF winners & epic Ruby Tour starts on Monday!

My writing station
at the Cape retreat

Summer's for vacations and taking time to refill the inspiration flask. I've been going to a small writing retreat in Cape Cod for years now, and I look forward to it, starting in February or March when the ice is thick and slippery and the thrill of winter has worn thin.
Here are pictures from our latest. A few times, I've started entire

Path to the inlet

novels there. This time, I did an 80-page revise on a new adult novella.
There's coffee, shameless gossip and shop talk in the morning, writing all day on the porch, a swim in the ocean at 5 pm. Each night, it's someone's turn to cook, and then we do writers' games. Encore is a big one, and a game we call The Dictionary Game. How to play? Someone picks a very obscure word from the dictionary and writes the definition down. Each player

The guilty parties

And our fave Colombian expat

writes a fake but hopefully believable def of that same word down. The host reads all of the defs and the players guess which one is the real def. Each person whose definition got a vote gets a point. It is a hilarious game, and it's very hard to read the fake defs with a straight face! I challenge you to try.

I've attended retreats in Squaw Valley, Mendocino, the SCBWI cons in LA and in NYC. I know there's a good summer writing workshop in Southampton, LI. Other retreats anyone? Spill!

On another note, I have winners from my Book Blog Fest giveaway. And before I announce, thanks so much to all of my new subscribers! You rock. Okay, drum roll.... winners:
Shannon A wins the $25 Amazon gift card, Krystina B wins a signed copy of Ruby's Fire, Jak C wins The Eleventh Palgue by Jeff Hirsch, Dayna J wins Rick Yancey's Fifth Wave, and C Lee  wins the illustrated Einstein quote poster!

Stay tuned for another epic giveaway when my Ruby's Fire tour with Xpresso Books begins this Monday, July 29! Grand prize? A KINDLE!!!

Blogger Book Fair with epic giveaways! Today, featured authors are Jessica Jaster, Jamie Canosa and Barbara Billig

Welcome to the Blogger Book Fair! Thursday and Friday I'm featuring indie dystopian authors Jamie Canosa, Jessica Jasper and Barbara Billig. Oh, and check out the Rafflecopter below to win free books and an Amazon gift card, plus check other blogs for lots more events and prizes here.

Jamie Canosa

Dissidence on Amazon
In dystopian America, sixteen-year-old Kaleigh finds out quickly what having a big mouth and not enough brains to keep it shut can earn you. A one-way ticket to the work camps that no one even knows exists. Nuclear war has ravished the nation, and a century later, the survivors are living in an entirely new world. In a society where everything is decided for you, from where you work to who you marry, dissidence is not taken lightly. But, even inside the camps, Kaleigh’s fiery spirit refuses to be extinguished. In a single moment of defiance, she manages to spark a riot that ignites into a full-blown rebellion.


With growing numbers counting on her, not just for their freedom, but for their very lives, two different boys vying for her heart, and trouble brewing from within the camp itself, can Kaleigh find a way to step up and become the leader everyone is counting on her to be, or will even the most carefully laid plans come crashing down around her?

And Book 2 Vengeance on Amazon

Jessica Jaster

Delta Project Hide on Amazon, and Delta Project Rescue (book 2) on Amazon
D005 has been a part of a secret government program known as the Delta Project her entire life. She has been genetically modified to be stronger, faster, smarter and to heal faster. Trained in hand-to-hand combat, weaponry and battle tactics, she has been worked to physical and mental exhaustion every day of her life. Raised without love or care of any kind, she has no idea what it means to be happy – to be free. And now she has run away. But then she wakes up on the rocky shore of the Missouri River with no memory of how she got there, or why there are bullet wounds, scratches and bruises riddling her body. Her entire past has become a blank sheet except for a recurring nightmare of her running through the woods with dogs chasing her and voices shouting at her that she can never hide. As she struggles to understand the kind of life she has never had, emotions she has never felt before, and the mystery of her past, she is helped by Brianna Hartman and Reid Phelps – the two teenagers who

discover her. When she goes to live with Brianna at the Hartman Ranch, she must also learn to deal with Bri’s brother, the gruff Cormac Hartman, who is running from his own past. He seems to hate her from the word go, but when she discovers his crude attitude is just his way of dealing with the hurt he is feeling, she decides to make it her mission to draw him back into life. Then a mysterious stranger comes to the ranch and her new world comes crashing down around her as her past comes back to haunt her.

Barbara Billig

The Nuclear Catastrophe on Amazon

THE NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE is set in Southern California and deals with characters caught in a disaster that they thought could never happen. Ben, head of Whitewater Nuclear Power Plant & his pregnant wife Sara live in San Mirado, near the ocean. One fateful day the unexpected happens.....Ben and Sara, the plant workers, the people living in San Mirado and those in adjacent cities all have to make decisions as to what to do, where to go. 


One reader says: "A frightening tale of survival. You never really think about the events that take place after you have been stripped of normal day to day resources. No police, hospitals, you are your own 911 and now have to protect yourself against the world."

Earlier in the week I focused on indie sci-fi author, Tuan Ho. Here's where you can find Tuan and his work online: his blog, Twitter, Goodreads. His story The Oldest Man in the Universe is FREE this week. Download it here.

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Ellie Garratt's Story Collection Launch & the Apocalypse Blog Hop Continues!

I've got two events: the continuation of the apocalypse blog hop and the launch of sci-fi and horror writer, Ellie Garratt's story collection, Taking Time.
For those who hopped over for the apoc-hop, scroll down to the awesome prizes and the Rafflecopter!!!

A blurb about Ellie Garratt's Taking Time:
Science fiction stories of time and space...

The future of humanity must be decided in Next Phase. Winning the Planetary Lottery is not as lucky as it first seems in Schrodinger's Gamble. An apocalypse and its aftermath threaten to tear one couple apart in Daiker's Children. In Life As I Know It a reclusive man finds both his heart and home invaded during an alien harvest. In Taking Time a demon seeking shelter on a distant planet finds himself facing a very different kind of demon, after answering a frontier settlement's plea for help. Stories range from flash fiction to novelette in length.

Amazon, Amazon UK, Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, Ellie's website
About Ellie:

A life-long addiction to reading science fiction and horror meant writing was the logical outlet for Ellie Garratt’s passions. She is a reader, writer, blogger, Trekkie, and would happily die to be an extra in The Walking Dead. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and online. Passing Time: Nine Short Tales of the Strange and Macabre was published in March 2013 and contains nine previously published stories. Taking Time and Other Science Fiction Stories is her second short story collection.

As far as apocalypse goes, one of my favorite writers, Don DeLillo posits in his novel, Point Omega, we have an irrepressible urge to become “dumb as stones”, to unburden ourselves of our consciousness in one great, cataclysmic endgame explosion? What happens after the Omega Point—the rising timeline that rushes to the point of maximum complexity, after which the universe will become unrecognizable due to its enormous changes?

Or is it more an urge to reconstruction and reinvention—to a re-virgined world, fresh and exciting in its newness? Why else would we keep creating these explosive “ends”?

In DeLillo’s Point Omega, his characters who discuss the state of the world, have a very personal omega point after a shocking turn of events.

In Ruby’s Fire, my post-apoc fantasy, the world has already experienced a fiery sort of death, and is in the infant stages of reforming—that perilous place that could tip to metamorphosis or final death.

In Jonathan Maberry’s Rot and Ruin, the world is being overrun by Zombies.

In this blog hop, I'm giving away a copy of each of these books (and more), to the person who leaves the most insightful and creative comment about their take on apocalypse. That and entering the Rafflecopter suggestions. Get your apocalypse on, and after you’re done here, visit other great sites in the apoc-hop.
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Winners, winners, WINNERS!

Ruby's launch party might be over but the announcement of the prize winners has just begun!

Robyn K won the $40 Amazon card

Ariel S won the illustrated book illustration

Jennifer C won a signed copy of Ruby's Fire

Jess H won ebooks of Ruby's Fire & Fireseed One

Jak C won an ebook or paperback of Ruby’s Fire

And now, the winner(s) of the most creative guess as to what that Red flying critter is..... drum roll please... ta dum!

A detail of the Reds by Catherine Stine

Maureen won for her creative guess that the Red is Ruby's hallucination (not necessarily correct).
Debbie also won for her equally creative guess that the red critter is a manifestation of Ruby's inner desires (also not necessarily correct) Curious now? You'll have to read Ruby's Fire to really find out what that thing is!).

Thank you all for Liking my new author page, and subscribing to my shiny, new newsletter. Or if you haven't yet, here's the link.

For anyone who won copies of Ruby, a review is certainly appreciated if you're inspired to. I'll give you virtual hugs and chocolate.
Also, stand by for the Apocalypse Blogfest coming up from July 13-20, where I'll be running another Rafflecopter that includes a bunch of bad*ss apocalyptic novels, including a signed copy of Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry!

What hijinx have you all been up to during July?