Colour Wielders by Dawna Raver

Interview with Quinn Sinclair

I walk in and sit down, taking in the women before me. She's very pretty, but I have a sense future changes will make her a real beauty. She shifts uncomfortably in her chair as if she rather be doing anything than talking to me. She smiles when she sees me, and I can't help but be taken in by her bright, purple-tanzanite eyes. They're stunning.)

Dawna Raver: Hi Quinn. Thanks for joining me. I understand you've had a rough go of it recently.

Quinn Sinclair: Yeah. (She winces and nervously plays with her long, auburn hair.) Kind of.

Dawna Raver: Sorry about your birthday.

(She laughs, but it doesn't reach her eyes. For a split second, they turn jade in color. I take a quick breath and try to hide my reaction. I wonder if she knows her eyes can change color? I quickly change subjects.)

Dawna Raver: I understand when you got home your mother was missing? Any word on her whereabouts?

Quinn Sinclair:  No. (She sighs, resigned.) Mother will show up whens she ready—or she won't. Whatever.

Dawna Raver: So, I understand your brother Iain is home from the Army. You must be trilled.

(She perks up at this.)

Quinn Sinclair:  Yes, I'm very excited. It's nice to have Iain home.

Dawna Raver: And he's brought a friend, Devin MacGregor?

(She blushes and toys with the gold signet ring on her finger.)

Quinn Sinclair: Yeah. He's … nice.

(Her smile dips into a quick frown then back to a smile.) Yeah, nice.

(Having met Devin MacGregor, I understand her reticence. He's a man of power. Extreme power.)

Dawna Raver:  You like him, don't you?

Quinn Sinclair: Sure. What's not to like.

Dawna Raver: But?

Quinn Sinclair: But nothing. You know, things are kind of crazy right now. Weird things keep happening. (She leans in and whispers.) I think I might have some kind of magic. I see these really weird colors around Devin. I think he has magic too.

Dawna Raver: Like Thaene?

(She vehemently shakes her head.)

Quinn Sinclair:  No. Not like Thaene. How do you know about Thaene and magic anyway?

(Her eyes narrow.)

Dawna Raver: I'm afraid most people know about Thaene or they soon will.

(Her eyes flash jade again. I try not to react so she doesn't. I happen to know about her Magyk and have no desire to experience it first hand.)

Quinn Sinclair: Great! I really wanted the whole world to know about my disastrous birthday. This is effing perfect.

Quinn stands up and straightens the skirt of her black dress.

Dawna Raver: Are you leaving? So soon? (I hold up the bottle of tequila.) I have tequila.

She waves me off and strolls out of the room, she her shoulders a little slumped. I hear her mumble something under her breath, but I can't quite make it out. Something about me and a cow?

Sighing, I pour myself another shot and down it. I seem to have a knack for pissing people off. Oh well. I can always get my revenge in book two.

Colour Wielders 
Heirs of the Magykal Realm Series Book One

Dawna Raver

Genre: New Adult, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy Romance

Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press

Word Count: 133k

Cover Artist: Ricky Gunawan

Book Description:

Behind the Faerying Mysts, hidden from Mortal eyes, is a land where Gods, creatures of myth and legend dwell. And in the Mortal Realm, their Princess lives.

Quinn Sinclair is clueless to who she is. She thinks she's an ordinary young woman—well, mostly ordinary—living an ordinary life with her less than loving mother in Conifer, Colorado. On the night of her birthday, Quinn finds herself betrayed by a man who sends her life spinning out-of-control.

As she struggles to pick up the pieces, a vision of a man with haunting tourmaline-blue eyes begs her for help, and she finds herself transported into a Magykal battle forever changing her life.

Arik Morgaine—Demigod bad boy and outcast of the Magykal Realm—tried to avoid contact with Princess Quinn Sinclair for eighteen years, not wanting to make good on an old threat. But the fates have other plans. Arik can no longer deny his growing desire for Quinn, or the need to protect her from those wanting to control her burgeoning powers. Can the two of them come together and save the Magykal Realm from being destroyed by the Darkest of Magyks, or will powers beyond their control destroy them and their world forever?

Here is the link for Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00CFKG7DM

About the Author:

Dawna Raver is an author of paranormal romance and urban fantasy. Colour Wielders, book one of the Heirs of the Magykal Realm series, is debut first novel. When she's not spending time in her fantasy world, Dawna loves football, reading, and pretending she's a top chef in the kitchen. Oh, and fawning over her dogs and husband, sometimes in that order.

https://www.facebook.com/DawnaRaver 

https://twitter.com/DawnaRaver

https://dawnaraver.com

Support indie authors by reviewing this book at:

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Thank you!

When I read reviews like this one below, it makes all the hours of editing and banging my head on the keyboard worth it.   I write for readers to enjoy and love it when they do!

"5 heartwarming, oh my god my heart is going to burst of happiness with sighs!!"

Stop by and read the rest of the review for the first book in the MSS.

http://2bibliophiles.blogspot.ca/2013/05/today-we-are-reviewing-from-beltane.html?showComment=1368548849411#c4487955304456830295

Jacqueline Paige

Step into a world of magic and passions. . .

All Things Paranormal

http://jacqpaige.webs.com/

http://jacqpaige.blogspot.com/ 

The Sentinels of New Orleans by Suzanne Johnson

Meet the Merpeople of River Road

As an author, it’s always a fun challenge to take a mythology and put a new spin on it. Which parts of the traditional lore do you want to keep, and what do you want to turn on its head?

In River Road, my new urban fantasy (with a dash of romance) that comes out this week, I wanted to take some of the water species—primarily Merpeople—and figure out a way to bring them into my world of a post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. It’s a world already peopled with wizards, werewolves, and a species I call the “Historical Undead”—formerly famous New Orleanians kept alive by the magic of human memory. Think that guy walking down the sidewalk looks a lot like the late Louis Armstrong? Are you so sure it isn’t the REAL Louis Armstrong? And the undead pirate Jean Lafitte is everywhere!

These books have a very deep sense of place. You couldn’t uproot the characters and set them down in another city and have the book make any sense. So I wanted to make sure my Merpeople were tightly woven into the fabric of South Louisiana. And what does one find in South Louisiana? Cajuns. Fishermen. Alligators. Swamps.

Meet the Merpeople, River Road-style. They are aquatic shapeshifters (not wereanimals, so they’re not tied to the cycles of the moon and are born, not made). They can shift halfway into the classic human head to waist, with the fishy lower half and the big caudal fin. Or they can fully shift into big fish. Different mer clans shift into different types of fish.

Oh, yeah, and they’re Cajuns who work in the South Louisiana fishing industry, mainstreaming with humans who don’t have a clue. (You know, if you think about that too hard, it’s kind of cannibalistic—LOL.)

I have two feuding clans of Merpeople in River Road, the Delachaises and the Villeres. Merpeople in my world are a little cranky, tend to be on the shortish side (twins Rene and Robert Delachaise, at 5-10, are quite tall for mers), and, well, they like to fight. Diplomacy is not one of their finer-honed skills. They are long-lived but not immortal, and can mate with humans—although their kids will not be mers. (Probably just good swimmers, I’d think!)

And how are the Nymphs different from the Merpeople? Um…let’s just say the local group has unionized into the Greater Mississippi River Nymphs and their human mainstreaming occupation is a French Quarter escort service. Last I heard, they were bringing in some satyrs for the female clientele…

Want to win a copy of either River Road (or Royal Street, book one in the Sentinels of New Orleans series)? Leave a comment to win a signed copy (US and Canada) or a copy of the print book plus a signed bookplate (international).

Royal Street

Sentinels of New Orleans Book One

Suzanne Johnson

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Tor Books

ISBN: 978-0765327796

ASIN: B006OM459U

Number of pages: 337

Word Count: approx. 94,000

Cover Artist: Cliff Nielsen

Amazon    Barnes and Noble  

Book Depository

Book Description:

As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco's job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ's boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.

Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans' fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters. While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering soldiers sent to help the city recover.

To make it worse, Gerald St. Simon has gone missing, the wizards' Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ's new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and the killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter roux.

River Road

Sentinels of New Orleans, Book 2
Suzanne Johnson

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Tor Books

ISBN: 978-0765327802

ASIN: B00842H5VI

Number of pages: 336

Word Count: approx. 92,000

Cover Artist: Cliff Nielsen

Amazon  Barnes & Noble

Book Depository  Indiebound

Book Description:

Hurricane Katrina is long gone, but the preternatural storm rages on in New Orleans. New species from the Beyond moved into Louisiana after the hurricane destroyed the borders between worlds, and it falls to wizard sentinel Drusilla Jaco and her partner, Alex Warin, to keep the preternaturals peaceful and the humans unaware. But a war is brewing between two clans of Cajun merpeople in Plaquemines Parish, and down in the swamp, DJ learns, there’s more stirring than angry mermen and the threat of a were-gator.

Wizards are dying, and something—or someone—from the Beyond is poisoning the waters of the mighty Mississippi, threatening the humans who live and work along the river. DJ and Alex must figure out what unearthly source is contaminating the water and who—or what—is killing the wizards. Is it a malcontented merman, the naughty nymph, or some other critter altogether? After all, DJ’s undead suitor, the pirate Jean Lafitte, knows his way around a body or two.

It’s anything but smooth sailing on the bayou as the Sentinels of New Orleans series continues.

About the Author: 


Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance from Auburn, Alabama, after a career in educational publishing that has spanned five states and six universities. She grew up halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis' birthplace and lived in New Orleans for fifteen years, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football and fried gator on a stick.

Website: www.suzanne-johnson.com

Blog: http://suzanne-johnson.blogspot.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Suzanne_Johnson

FB: http://www.facebook.com/Suzanne.Johnson.author

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5046525.Suzanne_Johnson

Publisher Page: http://us.macmillan.com/author/suzannejohnson

Contest winners and more...

I'm thrilled to announce the two winners for the Magic Seasons Books blog contest...

Julie Barrett was the March winner for the swag bag and the grand prize winner is Amber Hall!!

Congratts!!

I love contests and draws and meeting new people by having them.  Thanks to everyone that has supported the Magic Seasons.

The brand new Class Act Books website is up and running, I absolutely love the new set up.  Swing by and check it out http://www.classactbooks.com/

And now onto some other stuff...

I really need to apologize to all those that contact or email me, I am so far behind my to-do list is still covered in snowbanks from the winter.  I had an unofficial assistant that helped to keep me caught up on all the little things - which translate into really big things when you look at the picture as a whole - and she experienced some life changing events that made it impossible for her to jump in and help me.  This leaves me standing here staring at the to-do list and wondering if it ever ends!   I'm slowly getting caught up.  The key word in that sentence is slowly...

I too have been buried in the reality things that I'd love to ignore, but can't.  My work has been going through some interesting (annoying) changes and I have to invest a lot more time there than I'd really prefer.  To add to the fun and excitement of my world we found out that we have to move and it's been a street of dead ends trying to find a place that works for my family and all the various jobs/schools etc...

And just because I don't like to do anything the easy way... I hurt my shoulder/arm at work and have been going through physio for it (which oddly enough makes it hurt more) so I've had to limit my writing, or rather the pain in my arm has limited my writing. 

Thanks to my wonderful Beta-reader-amazing-editing-person, Gaele, I am still plucking away at it and won't have to make anyone wait even longer for final proofs before getting the stories off to the publishers.  

Thanks again to everyone that has been supporting my writing and of course to everyone that reads it, without you I would be sitting here, lost.

Jacqueline Paige

Step into a world of magic and passions. . .

All Things Paranormal

http://jacqpaige.webs.com/
http://jacqpaige.blogspot.com/

http://magicseasonsbooks.blogspot.ca/