Join Gena Showalter's TWISTED Tour and Win a $250 Ticketmaster Gift Card, Mini-Shopping Spree, Moolah for Dinner and an Urban Decay Gift Set

To celebrate the release of TWISTED, the third book in her Intertwined series, Gena Showalter is throwing a mega contest and several young adult authors are joining her for the ride, including: Julie Kagawa, PC Cast, Rachel Caine, Rosemary Clement-Moore, Tina Ferraro, Jonathan Friesen, Marley Gibson, Linda Gerber and Chloe Neill. Plus, our very own Knight Agency blog will host one day of the contest.

The Grand Prize is being hailed as "The Best Night Ever," and with concert tix to your fave music act, an American Eagle gift card for new duds, a glam Urban Decay makeup set for a "new" face AND cash (in the form of a Visa gift card) for dinner, how can it not turn into the best night you ever had?

The TWISTED Tour spans almost two weeks and 11 author websites, including this one, from August 22nd through September 2nd. The Grand Prize winner will be awarded all the essentials for a perfect night out, including:

- $250 Ticketmaster Gift Card
- $100 American Eagle Outfitters Gift Card
- $100 Visa Gift Card for Dinner
- Glam Urban Decay Makeup Gift Set

A Second Prize winner will receive an autographed set of Gena’s Intertwined series, including INTERTWINED, UNRAVELED and TWISTED.

HOW TO PLAY: Visit www.KnightAgency.net/twistedtour.php and check the tour schedule. Visit the sites of each author on their assigned tour date and locate the concert ticket image.

At the end of the tour, fill out the form on the aforementioned TWISTED Tour contest webpage by matching the concert ticket images to the authors’ websites that they were located on before Sunday, September 4th at 11:59pm ET. The winners will be randomly drawn and notified on or around September 9th, 2011.

Don Piper on ABC Special "Beyond Belief" Tonight @ 10pmET!

Tune in tonight for Don Piper's apperance on ABC's Beyond Belief. Bob Woodruff is interviewing the New York Times bestselling author of 90 MINUTES IN HEAVEN, co-written with Cecil Murphey, about his life after death experience. More details at ABC!

First Impressions For August

It's time for the monthly First Impressions critique.  If you'd like the opportunity to have your first page receive feedback, be sure to follow the submission guidelines below.  Everyone should feel free to add their constructive thoughts in the comments section.

The Willow
Young Adult
Leah Burroughs

 Prologue

Before you die, there’s always some kind of to-do list. (See comment below on first sentence.) For some, that list might contain becoming rich or famous. For others, it might include having a family and growing old. But what if you died before you had time to even think about setting any lifetime goals? What if fate didn’t plan on letting you live past sixteen? 

I’d always been afraid of the water, and I couldn’t swim to save my life. But I tried...and I failed miserably.

I was drowning, I knew that much. The water was deepening, the coordinal directions muddled (What does this mean--her sense of direction was muddled?) and lost in a dark cave of blue. The muted anguish swashed through my eardrums, leaking into places it was never meant to go.(I'm not sure what this all means. How can anguish swash through eardums?) My body was weak now, my useless kicking slowing as I felt myself go limp.

There was only so much time left; only so much air my lungs could hold on to. The breath I was fighting to hold was getting tighter, and I wanted to ease that pain, even if the escape was death. (Nice.  Simply stated but very meaningful.)

There was one thing I regretted, and it might haunt me in any otherworldly place my soul was sent to. I regretted not finding true love, and conclusively decided that’s what would’ve topped my bucket list. I’d never even been kissed…

Fate is cruel. We all know this. But sometimes it decides to give up on you, and in the instant it does, a miracle can happen. (Not of fan of this heavy foreshadowing.  Simpler to say: I'd given up hope and then a miracle happened.) 

Just as my eyes fell heavy with defeat, my lungs about to cave under the pressure of constricted air collapse, a relentless grasp fastened around my waist to with a godlike strength I’d never dreamt of imagined… (Toning down the descriptives makes the paragraph easier to read.)

Comments:

The first sentence is a bit unclear.  I know what you're trying to get across but it's worded in a way that made me read it several times.  Maybe something like: Everyone has a to-do list they want to complete before they die. 

I'm not a big fan of the narrarator speaking directly to the reader as done in the first paragraph (and again in the penultimate paragraph).  It's so important that the opening have a bang.  If you start with the second paragraph I believe it would hold more impact.

Also, pull back on the flowery language.  The use of some phrasing here was very confusing and felt like you were using words just for the sake of flow and not meaning. 

I was eager to see what happened next; if in fact we would find out who was rescuing her (I am guessing this is a female protagonist) or if we would then jump to chapter one and be presented with a different scene.  So my attention has been captured.

 _____
To enter First Impressions, email your first page (300 words or less) to Contests(AT)KnightAgency.net with “First Impressions” in the subject line. Include the title and genre in the email, as well as the name you wish us to use when referring to you publicly. All genres are welcome. Do not send your entry as an attachment; it must be within the body of the email. Winners are randomly selected using http://www.random.org/.


**Disclaimers, Rules, Stipulations, What Not, and All That Jazz: By emailing your entry to Contests(AT)KnightAgency.net, you agree to have your first page posted on our blog for critique. Entrants will remain in the selection queue indefinitely, so your number could come up tomorrow or two years from now. Such is life. We will drop you a line if your email is pulled out of the hat. Maybe. It’s best to just swing by our blog often and check things out, no? Winning a first page critique does not in any way indicate an interest or offer of representation by The Knight Agency, and we reserve the right to delete any material that we find improper or offensive. Though we encourage blog readers to offer positive, thoughtful feedback, we cannot control their opinions with Imperius Curses. However, we will promptly banish nasty, mean-spirited comments to the outer limits of cyberspace. Dontcha wish you could do that with people in real life? Addendum (11/03/2010): In order to give everyone a fair chance, only one entry is allowed per person. If you've submitted more than one first page, your initial email will be added to the queue; however, subsequent emails have been deleted



Guest Blogger Janet Mullany Shares Details on TELL ME MORE + Giveaway!

UPDATE: The winner of TELL ME MORE by Janet Mullany is Lolarific! Congrats! Please email your addy to Contests(AT)KnightAgency.net.

What does C.S. Lewis have to do with erotic romance, you may well ask. One thing I find fascinating about writing is how my reading cross-pollinates my writing, particularly books I read long ago. The C.S. Lewis link to my recent release TELL ME MORE is a little obscure, but here’s how it came about.

While I was writing the book I read Lev Grossman’s THE MAGICIANS, a brilliant and complex novel that starts out at a sort of Potteresque school for magicians. The book becomes darker and more dangerous as its characters travel to a fantastical land invented by a writer who wrote a series of children’s books. Just like Narnia?—no, Narnia gritty and grownup and cruel.

So I had THE MAGICIANS on my mind and that led to me thinking about C. S. Lewis’s books which I read and loved as a child, totally oblivious of the rather heavy-handed Christian subtext.

But back to my book and my heroine and her adventures. At one point in the book she becomes involved in a community with a rigid social structure that gets together for various sexual activities. Jo, as a newcomer, is one of the apprentices who serve the higher levels, but she finds a way into the main part of the house, seeking her fascinating mentor who she’s spoken to only on the phone. Almost immediately she takes refuge in a coat closet. This coat closet does not lead to enchanted lands. Instead, she finds herself an unwilling voyeur when a couple uses the closet for other activities:

Clothing rustled. A zipper slid down.

One of her hands emerged from between the coats and almost smacked me in the nose.

I ducked.

Her hand grasped, fluttered, and grabbed the coat rack. I squeezed myself away from them.

It was a bit too late to reveal myself to them at this point; what the heck could I say?

Jo escapes from the closet and explores the rest of the house. Here’s an excerpt from THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER by C. S. Lewis.

Now she had come to the top of the stairs, Lucy looked and saw a long, wide passage with a large window at the far end. Apparently the passage ran the whole length of the house. It was carved and paneled and carpeted and very many doors opened off it on each side. She stood still and couldn't hear the squeak of a mouse, or the buzzing of a fly, or the swaying of a curtain, or anything--except the beating of her own heart.

There isn’t much similarity between the two but I was definitely channeling C.S. Lewis now, remembering how spellbound I was as Lucy walked down that passage, seeing mysterious magic symbols on the doors and at one point a mirror that has a frame of hair and a beard, making her reflection strange and sinister. She’s in a magician’s house to find a spell and solve a mystery. Here’s mine:

A corridor led off at the top of the stairs and I peered down it. The smell of food was stronger now. As I hesitated, there was a muffled thump and a ringing sound, and two wall panels slid apart—an elevator. Waiters emerged with a rolling cart of food. They took no notice of me, but pushed the cart and its covered dishes into a room. I peered around the door. Masked people, Jake and Cathy among them, sat at a long banquet table with an elaborate centerpiece, laughing and talking…
At the table a guy wearing a mask that gave him the face of a lion, stood, and headed for the doorway and me, cellphone at his ear. He was tall and slender, a few threads of gray in his dark hair. As he passed me, I heard a few words, to my surprise apparently about investments.

“But of course…” He sounded slightly annoyed.

He sounded familiar. Very familiar.

“Mr. D?” My voice rose to a squeak.

He turned and looked at me and the lion’s eyes gazed at me, unreadable, in his mask.
Aha! A lion mask! You may remember that the central deity in the Narnia chronicles is a lion called Aslan (the Persian word for lion), and that little detail just wrote itself in there.

Leave a comment answering the following question, and enter to win an autographed copy of TELL ME MORE: Which books did you enjoy as a kid that have stayed with you or even come back to surprise you?

The winner will be randomly selected and announced tomorrow morning.
What people are saying about TELL ME MORE:

… a deliciously naughty novel with an intense steamy narrative. Jo's humble yet enthusiastic attitude makes the bedroom scenes fun and provocative, with more than enough tension to make your heart race. This novel is a hot, spicy adventure you shouldn't miss! --RT Book Reviews

This novel is erotica at its best. A good, strong story driven by interesting characters, and steamy scenes that will leave you smiling secretly to yourself. --The Raunch Dilettante