New Cover Unveiling — Plus a Giveaway

I'm so excited! I have a few things to share with you today.

First, I've gotten a new cover for my urban fantasy for young adults and older, Destiny's Kiss, created by the talented Najla Qamber. She took my concept cover ideas and came up with something that fit what I wanted.

Moreover, she tackled working with me. I'm not the easiest person for an artist to work with. (Thus why I've learned to buy images from artists and do my own typography.)

In celebration of this new—gorgeous—cover, I'm hosting a giveaway, and the winner gets their choice of 1 of my stories in e-format (as a Smashwords coupon or e-mail attachment)—

And nobody entered. That puts this on my list of "ideas that seemed good at the time but evidently weren't."

Ah, well.

And one of the options available is the original draft of A Fistful of Fire. Considering the original edition of A Fistful of Fire was perhaps 17k words and the final book is 79k words, I think it'll be of interest for comparison.

This is an e-book giveaway, open worldwide, except where some law would interfere with it.

How the Winner Will Be Picked:

From a drawing. See "How to Enter" to see how to get entries into the drawing.

How to Enter:

(Each entry method can only count once.)

• Leave a comment on this post: +1
• Mention the giveaway on social media or your blog: +1
• Leave a review for one of my stories: +1
• Leave a comment one one of my blog posts* other than this one: +1
• Blog about one of my stories or blog posts*: +2 per story or post blogged about

*Only substantial blog posts like "How to Serialize Your Novel (or Not)" are eligible. Miscellaneous ones like "Website Down" aren't. I'll assume you're intelligent enough figure out what "substantial" means.

You must leave a comment tallying up your points, with links to off-site entries. (And if you've already done something that would've qualified for an entry, like left a review for or blogged about a story, you can count that retroactively.)

If you have to tally points more than once,, I'll edit your comments to combine them.

Giveaway closes 7am Tuesday, December 13th, 2011. Winners will be announced the next day.

When I announce the winner, I'll also be raising the price for Destiny's Kiss and announcing the title for its sequel.

Now let's see the pretty cover that made me decide to do this:

Destiny Walker is an exceptional student despite her youth, sullenness, and the werewolf baby she had to leave on a stranger's doorstep. Across the Atlantic, Kismet Baros was a rare type of Magik who was under the protection of the vampire court. Only Destiny and the judge who emancipated her know why Kismet no longer exists.

When powerful Magiks from Kismet's past show up, Destiny must face her demons. She must decide what she is—person or property—and if she'll sacrifice the few friends she has to save the many.

If she doesn't, she'll be the gunpowder that sparks World War III.

(A novel of about 59,000 words / 215 pages.)

ALERT: Contains mature themes, some violence and gore, and a handful of cases of objectionable language.

And if you like this giveaway, just wait until you see what I have planned for when its sequel comes out!

—Misti

The Great INDIE Summer Read Giveaway

See the pretty pink button in my sidebar? I'm a participating author in The Great INDIE Summer Read Giveaway being hosted by Coffee Mugged, which for whatever reason has put "indie" in all-caps. It starts tomorrow, 6/15/11, and will go through 7/31/11.

This is one giveaway to check out. Over a hundred books will be given away, and it isn't US-only. I've seen a draft list of who's participating and what they're offering. You want to sign up for this giveaway.

My offerings? An e-copy each of A Fistful of Fire and Destiny's Kiss.

I'll also be guest posting on what made me come up with those two books. Per the last contact I had with the hostess, my post will go up this Saturday, 6/18/11.

For further news, you might notice that page I have in my navigation bar: "Why I Self Pub". Self publication isn't for everyone, and I chose it for a variety of reasons, some that are perhaps a bit different than you might expect.

I'm also in the process of prepping both Destiny's Kiss for e-publication and A Fistful of Fire for print publication… and I'm working on the sequels to both. I'm currently hoping to have another book ready for release the first week of October, but I'm in no position to set that in stone.

So. What are you still doing here? Go bookmark that giveaway!

—Misti