Dark Cotillion By Hadena James Interview & Giveaway

Dark Cotillion

By Hadena James

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BLURB:

Brenna Strachan is half-Demon, half-Witch and it’s the eve of her 30th birthday. This means that she will stop aging and come into all her Demon powers. But there are forces at work hoping to keep her from Maturing. They must kill her in the short time that she is mortal. If they fail, she will take her place among the most powerful beings on Earth. What will it cost her to survive?

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Excerpt:

“I met him once,” Gabriel took a long drag off a cigarette. His eyes were glassy, searching for some long lost memory. Until that moment, I had been reading a book, and was completely clueless whom he was talking about. Especially, since he did seem to be talking to me, as opposed to talking to some imaginary person in the room. He hadn’t spoken in well over an hour. His mind had been preoccupied with other things, possibly my safety, possibly not.

“Who?” I asked, after I put the bookmark in between the pages.

“Conan Doyle.” He made a motion towards my book. I had been reading Sherlock Holmes stories.

“Was he as bright as Holmes?”

“No one is as bright as Holmes, except Mycroft, and even that could be debated.” Gabriel stretched and yawned, before turning his vivid green eyes on me. “Pleasant man though.”

“I see,” I frowned at him. “Decided to break the silent treatment?”

“I figured it wasn’t doing me any good to sit here chain smoking and trying to ignore you into submission, since you seemed to be rather casually reading.”

“I’m slightly disturbed that it took you so long to figure it out.” I tossed the hard back onto the coffee table. It made a satisfying “thunk” sound as it hit the wood.

“You shouldn’t do that to your books.”

“No, I shouldn’t do that to your books, my books are nice hard bound editions that can be purchased at any local book store.”

“Someday, your books will be like my books.”

“Gabriel, no one’s books will be like your books. What is it with Angels and book hoarding anyway?”

“We all have our idiosyncrasies.” He gave a shrug.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

I’ve been writing for over two decades and before that, I was creating my own bedtime stories to tell myself.  I penned my first short story at the ripe old age of 8.  It was a fable about how the raccoon got its eye-mask and was roughly three pages of handwritten, 8 year old scrawl.  My mother still has it and occasionally, I still dig it out and admire it.

When I got my first computer, I took all my handwritten stories and typed them in.  Afterwards, I tossed the originals.  In my early twenties, I had a bit of a writer’s meltdown and deleted everything.  So, with the exception of the story about the raccoon, I actually have none of my writings from before I was 23.  Which is sad, because I had a half dozen other novels and well over two hundred short stories.  It has all been offered up to the computer and writing gods as a sacrifice and show of humility or some such nonsense that makes me feel less like an idiot about it.

I have been offered contracts with publishing houses in the past and always turned them down.  Now that I have experimented with being an Indie Author, I really like it and I’m really glad I turned them down.  However, if you had asked me this in the early years of 2000, I would have told you that I was an idiot (and it was a huge contributing factor to my deleting all my work). 

When I’m not writing, I play in a steel-tip dart league and enjoy going to dart tournaments.  I enjoy renaissance festivals and sanitized pirates who sing sea shanties.  My appetite for reading is ferocious and I consume two to three books a week as well as writing my own.  Aside from introducing me to darts, my SO has introduced me to camping, which I, surprisingly, enjoy.  We can often be found in the summer at Mark Twain Lake in Missouri, where his parents own a campground. 

I am a native of Columbia, Missouri, which I will probably call home for the rest of my life, but I love to travel.  Day trips, week trips, vacations on other continents, wherever the path takes me is where I want to be and I’m hoping to be able to travel more in the future.

Interview:

Where are you from?

Columbia, Missouri

Tell us your latest news?

I just published my fourth book in my thriller series and am starting on my new fantasy trilogy.  The first book in it should publish in August 2014.

When and why did you begin writing?

I began writing when I could pick up a pen and use it.  I come from a family of people that told stories, it was just natural for me to do the same.  Then I learned how to make up stories and that was the real prize.  I loved using my imagination.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I’m not sure I have ever considered myself a “writer.”  The term seems so formal and I don’t consider what I do to be a job or formal.  I write, but I still think of myself as a teller of tales and not a writer. 

What inspired you to write your first book?

I’d been writing short stories for almost a decade and decided I wanted to see if I could write a full novel.  I finished writing it in two and half months.  It was 100,000 words long and a teen drama. 

What would you like my readers to know?

I admit, I went to my writers’ group to figure out what to put here and the first suggestions were about my playing in a steel-tip dart league.  It’s a dying sport, being replaced by soft-tip darts (which is so sad in my opinion, because soft-tip isn’t as much fun) and I have the added advantage of looking at it from a woman’s point-of-view.  However, the conversation quickly went from discussing my active participation in darts to “how on earth you write with the TV on.”  For the record, I do occasionally write with the TV on.  Sometimes, I just write better when I’m not staring at my computer screen. 

Now, back to darts… Before I started playing darts, I had the same opinion as most people; it was a bar game and so everyone involved was an alcoholic whose goal was to drink heavily while occasionally throwing a dart at a board.  This is so not the case.  Darts is about friendships and families.  Like most writers, I’m an introvert and the friendships I’ve made through the sport have been amazing.  Also, I get to travel for darts, as my SO and I love going to tournaments.  This gives me the ability to see new cities that I wouldn’t normally see.  For example, we went to the Wichita Air-Cap Open this year and despite living in Missouri, I had never been to Wichita. 

My first ebook sale was to a darter.  I’d met her before, lost to her in a few tournaments, but we lived in different states, so we weren’t “friends.”  However, I posted on my personal Facebook page that I had taken the leap and published and she almost instantly posted back that she had just bought it.  We’ve become good friends since then.

Dart league is a good night out, a tournament is a great weekend away and the people I’ve met have been great. 

http://www.facebook.com/hadenajames

hadenajames.wordpress.com

@hadenajames

Newsletter:  http://forms.aweber.com/form/77/48212477.htm

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Cotillion-Book-Strachan-Brenna-ebook/dp/B0093UKS82/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395661931&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+cotillion

Barnes & Noble Nook:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-cotillion-hadena-james/1113959473?ean=2940045115919

Barnes & Noble Print: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-cotillion-hadena-james/1112797339?ean=9781479212279

Hadena will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn host.
Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here: 

http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-nbtm-book-tour-dark-cotillion.html