Zoe Winters – Guest Author & Giveaway Back to Blog
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 6th 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:
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:
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:
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.)
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Great post. Glad Cynthia let you take over today. Don’t you just love it when you can prove them wrong ;)? Vampires will NEVER be over :).
Thanks for the blurb, I haven’t read the first, do I need to or is it stand alone? And I still love vampires and shifters!!!
diane dot sadler at gmail dot com
Hey Viki, thanks! I know right? Vampires will be over like hot guys with washboard abs will be over. 😛
Also, I should mention to you guys that ALL of my earlier pretverse titles are 99 cents right now at B&N, Amazon, Google Play, and Kobo (though Kobo hasn’t gotten all the sale prices updated yet as of this moment.) There is more info and links on the front page of my blog (click my name here). I decided to go ahead and run that sale in tandem with the new release.
Hey Diane,
All the books “in some sense” stand alone because they each feature a different couple. And I keep everyone pretty updated book to book on the key need-to-know stuff. So you can read in any order you want. But there is a link up there in the post to the reading order if you are a reader who really wants to read in order even if they don’t have to. 🙂
Sounds like an interesting series
I am behind on this series, but I am glad you can read the as stand alones! Congrats on your newest book! Thanks for sharing Zoe! 😀
I was wondering when you are going back to check on https://katyarath.wordpress.com giveaway? I am awaiting for my questions to be answered with your responses. Would there be any new characters appearing through out the serials? Congrats on the new book release! ;D
Hey Colleen, thanks! The whole rest of the series is on sale for 99 cents through Friday at Kobo (If the sale has gone live over there yet. they were a little sluggish), Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Google Play. So you can get caught up and grab any in the series you’re missing.
Linda, Hey, sorry, I am working not only on all the promotional stuff for this book but promo stuff for my pre-order release for my other pen name for tomorrow. This is a crazy, hectic week, but I was going to go back there and comment.
The serial is going to be mostly new characters. While there might be brief cameos from some of these characters they are not the main point of the upcoming serial. I do have plans for past characters in other works, but just not this serial.
Thanks!
sounds like an interesting read. I am off to check out the first book
How have I missed this series!?! It sounds fab! I paranormal critters :D. I just downloaded book 1 (still free at Amz). Thanks for all the good info. And thanks to Cynthia for letting you hang out today.
Thanks everyone!
Okay winners of Unleash the moon signed print copies:
Colleen
WildAboutBones
winners please contact me via my contact form on my blog (click my name here to get there.)
Thank you so much Zoe!!! 😀
Congrats also to WildAboutBones!
E-mail sent!