Month: October 2013
BLOG TOUR: IF FOREVER COMES BY A.L. JACKSON (Review and Giveaways)
Take This Regret).
“Maybe that was the problem between Christian and me. Maybe the connection that bouns us was too overwhelming, too powerful, too much. Maybe a love that flamed so bright could only burn us into the ground. Maybe it was inevitable, our ruin. Maybe we’d already been set up for destruction, because something so strong made it inherently weak.”
BLOG TOUR: TORN BY KIM KARR (review and giveaways)
“Nothing has changed. She belongs with me.”
“You filled a void, when I wasn’t here, but you’re no substitute for the real thing.”
“ Then I’ve been your substitute for way longer than you’ve been dead.”
“She’s mine. You don’t deserve her, you never did.”
“I want to believe your love is only for me, That your lips are mine. That your kisses are meant for me. That your body belongs to me. But when you leave me to see him, it’s hard to know for sure.
“You left me a fucking note that you were going to see the man you spent your whole life with. The man you left me for the first tiem we met. The man whose ghost I have had to compete with every day of our lives together.”
“Relationships are made up of so many different emotions, but the one thing that keeps a relationship strong is love. Can doubt weaken such a strong bond? Not if two people don’t let it…”
Close your eyes and you can imagine what it was like. Hot, sticky, crowded. Smoke, flashing screens, and lighters flickering. Fans screaming, laughing, clapping, and crying. Bodies pushing, shoving, trying to catch a glimpse. Everyone wanting to see the stage—the lights, the equipment, the musician himself.
He was running back and forth singing, headbanging, and playing his guitar. The lyrics were jumbled. His movements out of sync. The sound of the bass thumped through the crowd so loud my body vibrated with every wrong note played. I just wanted it to end.
Nick Wilde had opened for the Counting Crows at the Hollywood Bowl. It was his second chance— and he blew it. The crowd was exhilarated at the start of his first song and he owned the stage but it didn’t last long. By the third song he was improvising, pulling notes, and forgetting words. He was lost in his own trance, soaked in alcohol, and no one could help him…not Xander, not my mother, and definitely not me. “Mr. Jones” started playing before he even finished his fourth song…and he never played onstage again.
Music was his soul. Music was in all of our souls. When we were younger he taught us everything he could…how to play, to sing, the right way to command a stage. We knew every song by every artist. We traveled to concert after concert. Music was his life and it became ours.
But he wasn’t happy just playing. He had a dream—he wanted to be famous. And somewhere along the way his dream became an obsession. I’ll give it to him, he got further than most do. By the age of nineteen he had been signed by a label and cut his first album. But after a disappointing run they released him. He spent the next fifteen years working the circuit—clubs, churches, weddings, birthday parties, as he waited for another big break. And then, just like that, he blew his golden opportunity.
Everything in our life changed after that. The drinking got worse, Grandpa came around more to check on us, and Mom went back to work. Every day left another kink in his chain as he lived in his own world. I was sixteen when his plan A became my plan B and, just like him, at a young age, I cut my first album. But unlike him I had Xander. He wasn’t going to let me fail. The band’s album had a slow start but after a year of touring, it started to gain popularity.
I remember the first time the Wilde Ones graced a real stage. We were restless. We had been sitting around for hours waiting. When we were finally up we strutted confidently across the stage like we had in rehearsal, but, really, we were nervous as hell. The lights were much brighter and the audience so much bigger than we were used to. When the guys started to play, soft, barely audible words flew out of my mouth so fast I forgot to breathe. The band was drowning me out and I knew it. Looking around, I adjusted the microphone height and took in the crowd. They were cheering me on with such enthusiasm that my voice finally soared over them. It was the same voice I’d grown up with, the one my dad had fostered. It was raw and present and soulful, and, in that moment, my music came alive. The crowd went crazy and just like that my life changed again.
Xander struck while the iron was hot. He arranged to go on tour. That was the beginning of the end for me. We started out small. Smaller venues, shitty hotels, crappy food, and a lot of drinking. We opened for band after band and the relationships I made…they kept me going, that and being up on that stage doing what I loved…it kept me going, wanting to make my dad proud…yeah, that, too.
But touring was a constant infringement on my personal space. I hated the cramped quarters, lack of privacy, constant strict schedule, never being in the same city for more than two nights, people following you everywhere, people always wanting something from you. Even the girls throwing themselves at you got old. It was the longest year of my life, but I did it for him because somewhere along the way his dream morphed into mine. What I came to realize was that his dream wasn’t mine—my dad thought being on tour meant you had made it. His dream was about being famous. Mine is about the music.
As the venues got bigger so did the crowds, the fanfare, and I could see how you could get lost in it, caught up in it—but I was determined not to end up like my father. He was addicted to the fame. I’m addicted to the creative process. I hope that difference between us is enough. The tour ended and we wrote, we played around LA, and as time passed life was good. But I had managed to put off cutting another album long enough. This time I was doing it for the band and for my brother and for me—because I love the music. Cutting the album—that’s the fun part. It’s the promoting I dreaded, at least until the day I saw her through the glass. The girl who inspired our song “Once in a Lifetime,” the girl Xander always referred to as my muse, the girl who stole my heart one night and then crushed it at the very same time.
She was as beautiful as I remembered and with one glance she took my breath away. She walked my way, pulling a suitcase behind her, and my heart skipped a beat. I knew immediately she was the one sent to interview me and suddenly any negativity I had about doing press was gone. I couldn’t help but watch her. I wanted her unlike anyone I had ever wanted before. I had to stifle a laugh when her briefcase fell off the top of her suitcase and she glanced around to see who saw. I wanted to yell, “Only me and don’t worry because everything about you is sexy as fuck.”
I rushed to grab the door for her, but she pushed it forward and fell into me—not that I minded in the least. I’d catch her over and over. There wasn’t a thing about her that I didn’t remember from the first time we met and even the awkwardness of the moment brought me to full attention. When her body pressed against mine, I knew in that instant…this time I wasn’t letting her get away so easily. I’d go on a thousand tours to have her in my life—there was just something about her, a light in her eyes that made everything wrong feel right. And just like my dad, I got a second chance—it was her. But unlike him, I wasn’t going to blow it.
When she extended her hand and said, “Hello, I’m Dahlia London from Sound Music. I’m so sorry I’m late,” I knew she had to be mine.
PROMO BLITZ SCHEDULE: THE MISSIONARY BY JACK WILDER
PROMO BLITZ: IN TOO DEEP BY SELENE CHARDOU
“Mr. Cox—”
“Call me Dizzy…everyone else does.”
“Dizzy, my wife was not privy to my background. I purposely didn’t tell her because I didn’t want to scare her away. However, now that she does know, I’m no longer involved with any criminal activities and I will do whatever it takes to help her brother be found.” Linx’s eyes stayed glued to the man in charge and refused to look at me.
“You see, Trista, that is true love and the man who finds it is worthy enough indeed.” Dizzy’s bright blue eyes locked with mine and held my gaze firmly this time. “Although I am not crazy about Cillian’s choice in women, he and Gisela are truly in love as are you and Linx. Your husband will become a club member and will sit for a Saint tattoo because he is overwhelmingly in love with you, Trista. He’d do anything, even sell his soul for you. You were lucky to find them but then again, like mother, like daughter.”
I didn’t understand where this conversation was going but I was sure I wasn’t going to like it, not that I was all that enamored with what I’d heard so far. It was like the blows kept coming and they wouldn’t fucking stop. When would I dig out the truth from underneath a stack of lies so high, no one knew if it even existed any longer.
I swallowed my Macallan and poured myself another drink. What I wouldn’t give for a joint right now; I seriously needed to get high and fucked up just to forget this clusterfuck called my life.
“What about my mother?” I questioned as evenly as possible.
As a woman, I wasn’t allowed to raise my voice or talk to Dizzy in any kind of way. He could order something very distasteful to happen, like all his sons, fucking me one after the other while Linx watched and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do about it. I was the lone vagina in the room and this situation made me feel uncomfortable instead of empowered.
They all surveyed me like another piece of meat. I might as well been club ass but what did I expect with my skinny jeans riding the curves I was quickly beginning to lose and the full breasts that had once been my pride and joy but were now the bane of my existence?
Dizzy glared at me with I could only describe as cold, desolate eyes. “Your father, that two-timing, no good son of a bitch bastard left in just the right amount of time. Not only was I going to personally shoot his dirty, good for nothing Federal agent ass in the head but I was going to leave Bronaugh for Antoinette. God knows I have been in love with that woman from the first time I met her in Boston. I was just a small time thug at the time with a motorcycle club but she was beauty personified. How she ended up with that no good son of a bitch is beyond me. They were never a good match but her parents liked him so she did what she had to do.”
I couldn’t listen to the rest. I bolted from my seat and ran to the bathroom.
BLOG TOUR SCHEDULE: BEAT OF THE HEART BY KATIE ASHLEY
PROMO BLITZ: SKIPPING STONES BY J.B. MCGEE
They say there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Not everyone will grieve in this order, nor will everyone go through every stage. It’s during the stage of denial when Alex Hart meets Andrew Foster. He takes her one-step closer to acceptance: the stage when new, meaningful relationships are formed. The stage when the realization occurs that this is now the new state of normal.
Just when Alex thinks she is on her way to healing, she enters the bargaining phase. That’s the phase where you wonder what you could have done differently. You wonder “what if?” Specifically, what if the ones you loved hadn’t left you?
Leaving…this is what makes heading off to war so difficult and frightening for Alex. She knows all too well what it’s like to be the one on the losing end of life, which is why she’s made it her personal mission in life to save as many lives as possible. The extreme high she gets from treating trauma victims turns into Alex’s own form of therapy, or so she thinks.
When faced with her world being turned upside down, Alex may just find that her true therapy is in the one who has always saved her.
J.B. McGee was born and raised in Aiken, South Carolina. After graduating from South Aiken High School, she toured Europe as a member of the 1999 International Bands of America Tour, playing the clarinet. While attending Converse College, an all-girls school in Spartanburg, South Carolina, she visited Charleston often. It quickly became one of her favorite vacation spots. She met her husband, Chad, during Christmas break her freshman year, and they married in 2001 and she moved back to her home town.
In 2005, the couple welcomed their first son, Noah. J.B. finished her Bachelor of Arts degree in Early Childhood Education at the University of South Carolina-Aiken in 2006. During her time studying children’s literature, a professor had encouraged her to become a writer.
In 2007, she welcomed their second child, Jonah, and she became a stay at home mom/entrepreneur. In 2009, the found out their two children and J.B. have Mitochondrial Disease. In 2011, a diagnosis also was given to Chad. Please take a moment and learn more about Mitochondrial Disease. Awareness is key to this disease that has no cure or treatments.
J.B. McGee and her family now reside in Buford, Georgia, to be closer to their children’s medical team. After a passion for reading had been re-ignited, J.B. decided to finally give writing a shot. Broken (This Series), is her first book and first series.