Hi, everyone! Today, author Zoe Winters is taking over the blog–she’s chatting about her new release and offering a giveaway.  Thanks for coming by, Zoe!

 

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Dystopia: Coming to a Zoe Winters Book Near You: With Free Prize Inside! (And… $2.99 Release Day Sale!)

Thank you so much to Cindy for hosting me on the release day for my newest book! It’s been a while since I’ve been here.

I often feel like I’m the last person on every train. When I started writing vampires (not the only paranormal species in my series—but one of them), everyone was saying “vampires are over.” And of course now “dystopians are over”. But I love them so much. I love these end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it stories and the Big Brother creepiness. And I love it in all flavors, from Ally Conde’s Matched series to Margaret Atwood’s uber creepy and terrifying A Handmaid’s Tale.

At some point I wanted to get around to trying something in the dystopian category, and if I could keep my vampires, werewolves, and demons, so much the better. In my current book, Unleash The Moon, I get to start doing that. 🙂

For the past 8 years I’ve been writing in a world I’ve fallen in love with. My mom always said I don’t stick with anything. Apparently there are things I stick with. If it is “bad”, has fangs, and rock-hard abs, I’m so so loyal.

And as I come to the end of this particular series, I find that I’m just getting started with this world and many of these characters, but I want readers to have a lot of little side doors by which to find and engage with world. So there will be series like this one, stand alones, trilogies, and serials all happening in this big sandbox I’ve been quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) building.

If I could sound byte the Preternaturals series for the new people, the basic theme is: “Everyone is the hero of his own story (and the villain of somebody else’s)”. What I’ve enjoyed about writing this series the most is creating heroes who then become villains (at least from another hero’s perspective), and villains who become heroes. And then some you don’t know what they’re going to do.

I like the amoral shades of gray where no one is absolute good or absolute evil. It’s more interesting to me when good people sometimes do terrible things or bad people extend mercy to someone unexpectedly.

I like when weak characters find their strength and strong characters discover a weakness.

In this series I have many different paranormal factions: Vampires, Demons, Angels, Therians (shapeshifting species), Guardians (fallen angels… also a demon breed technically), Magic Users (of different stripes: mostly human), and of course the garden-variety Humans. (Yes, I really did just capitalize all that. Don’t judge me.)

And they are all at odds which each other over humans finding out their secret, over control of both the preternatural world and the regular world, on how society is even going to run as the ground shifts under their feet.

And in the middle of that running backstory… the backdrop the romance happens against… we meet these couples in each book who develop their own romances as the gang gets created and they all come together to try to find a commonality for survival.

Those who’ve read my series and are up to date, in the 6^th and final book (of this series, but not the world!), we will be going 26 years into the future for Sydney and Noah’s book. Sydney is Anthony and Charlee’s daughter and Noah is Jane and Cole’s son. (If you’re familiar with the series, these names mean something. Nobody ever sat me down to explain the difficulty of figuring out how to market a series this far into it. So apologies for the eye-sporking quantity of random information being thrown at you.)

 

Unleash The Moon, is the book I get to introduce some of the slightly dystopian elements… setting you up for the dark paranormal serial I’ll be releasing next spring which will happen in this world being set up.

The first book in my Preternaturals series, Blood Lust, will either be free or 99 cents by the time you read this—and depending on which store you go to. (Sales transitions are tricky, and we’re going from free back to 99 cents for the first book. But either way is a great way to get into this series if you’re new.)

Blood Lust can be found for free or 99 cents at:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Lust-Preternaturals-Book-1-ebook/dp/B004183MZM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414954235&sr=8-1&keywords=blood+lust+zoe

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/blood-lust-the-preternaturals-book-1

Barnes and Noble:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/blood-lust-zoe-winters/1100247180?ean=2940150489257

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Zoe_Winters_Blood_Lust?id=6tSLBAAAQBAJ

 

Here’s a description for the new book, Unleash The Moon (which you actually can read out of order like any of my other titles. Readers generally pick the book that sounds best to them—or what’s on sale—then go back to the beginning to read the rest.):

 

Unleash The Moon:

… Can two souls trapped in separate cages ever find each other?

Twenty-six years have passed since the link between heaven and earth was severed and all hell broke loose. The fighting raged until the human magic users took over the cities, driving most of the preternaturals into hiding.

This is the world Sydney Burgess has grown up in, locked inside her father’s compound. As the daughter of a human mother and a vampire king, she has all the weaknesses of a vampire but none of their strengths. Anthony keeps her on a tight leash, ever-vigilant against the constant imagined threats to her safety. But all she wants is to break free and start a real life.

Noah Riley has lived in captivity for the past twenty years, so long he barely knows how to be a werewolf anymore. Even with a photographic memory, most of his past before the facility feels fuzzy at best. His strongest memories are of the little girl he protected during his childhood: Sydney. When he reaches his full power on his twenty-eighth birth moon, he’ll have a chance to break free to find her and finally reunite with his family.

But vampires and werewolves are mortal enemies. Even if Sydney is Noah’s true mate, the vampire king would kill him before he ever let a filthy werewolf near her, especially one of questionable sanity.

 

Unleash The Moon is on introductory sale, today only for $2.99 (regular retail $4.95) at:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Unleash-Moon-Preternaturals-Book-6-ebook/dp/B00OKIUIAK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1414954307&sr=1-1&keywords=zoe+winters

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/unleash-the-moon

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Zoe_Winters_Unleash_The_Moon?id=teznBAAAQBAJ

 

 

 

Unleash The Moon is also available at Barnes and Noble but unfortunately not for sale (long, boring marketing story you don’t want to hear.):

Barnes and Noble $4.95: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/unleash-the-moon-zoe-winters/1120627387?ean=2940046361919&itm=1&usri=unleash+the+moon

 

If you’d like to know more about the reading order for the series go here (Even though reading in order isn’t strictly necessary, some people really like to read in order no matter what. So here you go):

http://zoewintersbooks.com/books-in-the-preternaturals-series/

 

If you’re a reader/fan and you’d like to know what is coming next, go here for that:

http://zoewintersbooks.com/2014/10/29/where-does-the-pretverse-go-from-here/

 

If you’re new and you’re like “Wow, this is SO much information without really telling me anything at all to judge whether or not I’m into this”… you might want to check out an excerpt for Unleash The Moon here:

 http://zoewintersbooks.com/2014/10/23/unleash-the-moon-sneak-peek-pre-order-links-at-the-bottom-new-outlets-added/

 

GIVEAWAY:

And now… I want to do a giveaway. I’m going to give two signed copies of Unleash the Moon to commenters in the comments section. I’m happy to answer any questions you have about the series or any of the characters or about where we’re going in the future. If your post contains spoilers, please write SPOILERS, and I will do the same if my reply contains spoilers.

Don’t forget to grab Blood Lust on free or super sale while it is that way… and Unleash the Moon while it’s on sale for $2.99 (today only!)

And, tonight I’ll be having a release day party with some more giveaways at my Facebook page from 8pm to 10pm Eastern. Be there! Come chat with me! 🙂 I love talking to my readers. (And my maybe potential future readers. Also, I swear I have not had any Red Bull today.)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zoe-Winters/216919815012598

 

 

Okay… hit me with comments. 🙂 (If you can recover from all that blah blah.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to Amanda Gylling! Amanda, you are the newsletter winner for October–you’ve won a $50 gift card!  If you did not receive your email notification, please contact me at info@cynthiaeden.com to claim your prize.

Thanks so much, everyone! Have a great week!

Happy Halloween, everyone! Be safe, treat hard, and have fun!

 

LAST HERO STANDING is available now–and the anthology is just .99! That means you get eleven stories, 2000 pages, for just .99–that’s a serious deal!   And you can find this anthology at:

Kindle: http://amzn.to/1x1oo3u

Nook: http://bit.ly/1CGXHEr

iTunes http://bit.ly/1x1qD6W

Kobo http://bit.ly/1xEK48M

 

CHARMING THE BEAST is available now! You can get it for the Kindle or the Nook. It’s also available at iBooks, All Romance eBooks, and Google Play. (It is currently publishing at Kobo and should be available there soon!)

 

BLURB:

New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Cynthia Eden spins a dark and sexy new paranormal romance tale…

He’s a man with a beast inside…

Connor Marrok never intended to work for the Seattle Para Unit. He’s not one of the good guys—he’s a real monster, and the beast he carries doesn’t exactly play nicely. But now he finds himself being blackmailed into a new assignment. It’s supposed to be his last gig. His mission? Protect the beautiful Chloe Quick. Keep her alive. Destroy her enemies. Easy enough…until he starts to fall for Chloe.

She just wants to escape.

Chloe is tired of being a prisoner. She wants to get away from her Para Unit guard and run fast into the night. So what if Connor is the sexiest guy she’s ever met? Chloe knows trouble when she sees it, and Connor is one big, dangerous package of trouble. But, when an obsessed werewolf begins stalking Chloe, she realizes that her paranormal bodyguard may just be the one man she needs the most.

Their attraction is primal.

Every moment that Chloe and Connor spend together increases their attraction. Chloe has never felt a need so strong or a desire so dark. The beast that Chloe carries inside has always been silent, but Connor is stirring up her animal instincts.   And as the danger and desire begin to twist together, Chloe wonders just how far she’d be willing to go…in order to spend one more night in Connor’s arms.

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And you can check out an excerpt from CHARMING THE BEAST here.

(A quick note for readers who prefer print copies–the print version of CHARMING THE BEAST should be available next week.)

Have a fantastic Monday!

Also…be sure to stop by my Facebook page this week–I’ll be posting lots of giveaways!