Author Interview + Giveaway: The Inside Out Trilogy by Lisa Renee Jones

Hey!! I've missed blogging SO MUCH. I've been reading, but I couldn't write reviews or post them because of my exams. Ugh. More exams are coming up though (double triple friple ugh), but I've managed to snag some down time to interview the amazing Lisa Renee Jones about her up and rising Inside Out trilogy.



The Author

About Lisa

Bestselling author Lisa Renée Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed INSIDE OUT TRILOGY which will debut internationally across many countries in 2013. Booklist says that Jones’ suspense truly sizzles with an energy similar to FBI tales with a paranormal twist by Julie Garwood or Suzanne Brockmann. Alpha, military, and paranormal romance readers will want Jones’ entire series. (About the Zodius Series — Storm that is Sterling)

In 2003, award winning author Lisa Renée Jones sold her Austin, Texas based multi-state staffing agency and has since published over thirty novels and novellas across several genres. Her staffing agency LRJ Staffing was recognized many times by The Austin Business Journal and also praised by Dallas Women Magazine. In 1998 LRJ was listed as the #7 growing women owned business in Entrepreneur Magazine.

  Her debuts with Blaze and Nocturne hit Bookscan’s Top 100 list and her Blaze Hot Zone trilogy made a showing on the list in 2011 also. --Cited from Lisa's Official Website

Connect with the author: Author's Website | Blog | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

And her highly acclaimed Inside Out trilogy...

If I Were You

Book 1 in series

The Blurb

The steamy first installment in the Inside Out erotic romance trilogy by Lisa Renee Jones, in the bestselling tradition of Fifty Shades of Grey.

When Sara McMillan finds a stack of journals in a storage unit, she’s shocked and enthralled by the erotic life the writer led. Unable to stop reading, she vicariously lives out dark fantasies through Rebecca, the writer—until the terrifying final entry.

Certain something sinister has happened, Sara sets out to discover the facts, immersing herself in Rebecca’s life. Soon she’s working at the art gallery Rebecca worked at and meeting Rebecca’s friends. Finding herself drawn to two dangerously sexy men, the manager of the gallery and a famed artist, Sara realizes she’s going down the same path Rebecca took. But with the promise of her dark needs being met by a man with confident good looks and a desire for control, she’s not sure anything else matters. Just the burn for more.

Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

Being Me
Book 2 in series

The Blurb

The sexy second installment in the Inside Out erotic romance trilogy, following If I Were You—in the seductive tradition of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Fascinated by the dark fantasies in the journals she’s discovered, and the two men who have now found a place in her life, Sara McMillan finds herself torn between her new life and her past. Now, more than ever, Sara identifies with the lost journal writer, Rebecca, and is certain that something sinister has happened.

In the arms of the sexy, tormented artist Chris Merit, Sara seeks answers about Rebecca and ends up discovering things about herself she never knew existed. Chris forces Sara to reconsider who she is and what she truly wants from life, but not before his dark desires threaten to tear them apart. Her boss, Mark Compton, offers her the shelter to understand just what those needs mean to her, and what they might have meant to Rebecca, but can she trust him to lead her to a final conclusion to Rebecca’s story?

Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

Revealing Us
Book 3 in series

The Blurb

The third and final installment in the sexy Inside Out erotic romance trilogy—in the seductive tradition of Fifty Shades of Grey.

You’ve discovered Rebecca’s secrets. You’ve discovered Sara’s secrets. Now Sara will discover “his” deepest, darkest secrets…but will those secrets bind them together—or tear them apart?

Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

Inside Out trilogy BREAKING NEWS! I quote from Lisa's amazing publicist, Brandy:

“Back in September it was announced that Lisa Renee Jones sold her indie series THE INSIDE OUT TRILOGY in a major deal to by Simon and Schuster. Since then the highly acclaimed series has sold to ten foreign countries, with more under negotiation, and now it’s been optioned by STARZ for television and it’s moving fast. They hope to be in production within 90 days.”

Read more about it HERE.

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Now, let us welcome, Lisa!

An Interview with Lisa Renee Jones

Hey Lisa, thank you so much for coming to the blog today!

To get started, tell us something about yourself, something that's uniquely you maybe?

I owned a multi-state staffing agency for 11 years and left to write romance. People find it strange that I was in the corporate world for years but really I did a lot acting and even some independent films so creativity was always my real love.

Wow, I'm hardly coping with my studies and reading all the books I love, it's amazing how you managed to work in the corporate world, act and write.

What got you started on writing? And why erotica of all genres!

I craved putting the creativity to use and needed an outlet when I was in business that allowed me to do both. To me romance is always sexy. There is something wonderful about how consuming new love can be physically and emotionally. It's very intoxicating and our sexuality as human beings is very much a part of who we are.

I've never really thought about it that way before. We're more conservative here in Singapore, but that's also why I love reading romance novels.

What was the inspiration behind the INSIDE OUT trilogy?

Years ago my fiancé was buying and selling storage auction units and he found a journal. The idea took root then and I had a lot of deadlines so it had a lot of time to simmer and take shape. By the time I started writing I really knew the characters which I think makes it more special to me and I hope readers.

Haha, that's SO cool! What if that was another Tom Riddles' diary? ;) Haha, kidding!

Do you think INSIDE OUT was your best publication so far?

Oh yes. I love this series and the characters and it's attached to a personal experience. I think it shows.

For all budding authors out there, can you share how you got your movie deal with STARZ? Which, by the way, is so amazing! Congrats!! :D

It's actually TV and my agent made it all happen but timing is everything. They were looking for something that fit this series. The dark erotic suspense and mystery really were a big part of the appeal for the producers and the network.

I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit though! The Inside Out trilogy is definitely a very unique series, the idea about the journal and all. It's still really cool though!

Have you casts your own characters yet? Imagined where they would film the entire thing and how in the world their going to film all those ahem, kinky, ahem scenes?? I've been wondering for so long how they're going to film FIFTY SHADES ever since James announced that the movie rights' been optioned.. Haha

I can't say much yet but the project is moving quickly. The hope is that it will be in production very very soon. I have ideas on casting but that is up to the experts. I trust they know what will work and who will be amazing. I'm excited to see who becomes the characters.

True true. Talking about FIFTY SHADES, do you have a favorite genre to read or write? Is it erotica??

I don't have a favorite genre. I read a lot and all over the board. I love Hunger Games and I love Karen Monings Fever and I love Linda Howard. I have lots of fav authors and genres.

I did like The Hunger Games, and I LOVED Shadowfever by Karen! I think that'll be true for most bookies out there. ;)

Which do you think is the best book you've written so far? Which character did you have the most fun writing about?

BEING ME is my best book ever. I love how dark, gritty and real it is. I love this series and the characters and letting them go at some point will be very, very hard.

Haha, sometimes I just want to indulge in some dark and gritty too, though I'm still not yet brave enough to bring erotica books out with me and read on the train! Aw, yeah, I've heard how authors get very attached to characters. :/ Are you planning/working on any other books/series now?

I just finished REVEALING US and there is a spinoff series I plan to start on in the next month.

I love spin-offs! Though sometimes I get overly attached to the characters in the previous books that I refuse to pick the spin off up. :P (Like The Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa. Sigh...) I'm sure fans all over the world will be thrilled by this announcement!

Just a little side question, do you feel awkward or self-conscious whenever a family member/relative/friend read a romance scene in your novels?

No. I'm proud of what I write and they all know what I write. Sometimes people blush talking to me about books they have read I wrote but I figure that means I did a good job with the sexy scenes:)

Random rapid fire questions!

1) Paper and pen or Microsoft?  Mac all the way

2) Hot chocolate or champagne?   Love them both

3) Night owl or early bird?   Night owl. I spent my corp days as an early bird and hated it

4) Macho man or lean athlete?  Macho man. My men are always alpha. I love a sexy alpha man. (Me and half the women out there too! Hehe)

Thanks for coming over to the blog!

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~~Giveaway~~

Lisa's publisher, Simon and Schuster, is offering up a copy of If I Were You and a goodie bag FILLED with AMAZING swag.

This giveaway is international, and it ends a week from now (4/5)! Just fill in the Rafflecopter form below to enter! Good luck, and happy Good Friday everyone! :) a Rafflecopter giveaway

Quickie Review: Archangel's Blade by Nalini Singh

Publication Date: September 6th, 2011
Finished Date: October 26th, 2012
Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 310
Series: Guild Hunter #4
My Rating: 4/5

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Book Depository | Author's Website

Blurb from Goodreads:
The severed head marked by a distinctive tattoo on its cheek should have been a Guild case, but dark instincts honed over hundreds of years of life compel the vampire Dmitri to take control. There is something twisted about this death, something that whispers of centuries long past...but Dmitri's need to discover the truth is nothing to the vicious strength of his response to the hunter assigned to decipher the tattoo.

Savaged in a brutal attack that almost killed her, Honor is nowhere near ready to come face to face with the seductive vampire who is an archangel's right hand, and who wears his cruelty as boldly as his lethal sensuality...the same vampire who has been her secret obsession since the day she was old enough to understand the inexplicable, violent emotions he aroused in her.

As desire turns into a dangerous compulsion that might destroy them both, it becomes clear the past will not stay buried. Something is hunting...and it will not stop until it brings a blood-soaked nightmare to life once more...

My Review

“So he held this hunter whose midnight green eyes said she saw him, shadows and all, who touched him as (view spoiler)Ingrede used to do, who made him imagine an impossible truth, held her so close that she was a part of his very soul.”

Usually I give every Guild Hunter novel an immediate and resounding 5 stars. I wasn't the biggest fan of Dmitri...and I still ain't one, but I'm starting to understand him more now. And respect. Wow, he gave his heart to this amazing village woman centuries ago, and even after her very tragic demise, his heart and soul still remained with her. Until now.

Enter Honor, a Guild Hunter who was very recently saved from some crazy vampire. Honor's sanity was on verge of cracking, and only after months of therapy and stuff, she just managed to walk out on her own. But she prefers locking herself up in the Guild library. That is, until a job at the Angel Tower required her expertise and Honor forced herself to meet up with Dmitri. From there, you can probably deduce the rest for yourself. As they spent more time together solving a series of murder cases in which Honor finds out how deadly--and sexy--Dmitri is and Dmitri finding out the side of Honor that made her a hunter in the first place, the courage and innate strength before her unfortunate abduction.

As always, Singh's delivery was AMAZING, and she knew just how to feed us little tidbits about Dmitri's past here and there, which was hard to piece together a complete picture until right at the very end when she gave a final piece and bam, everything just falls into place. And the gradual change in Honor and Dmitri in the end was really heartwarming. Quiiiiiite a typical wounded hero/heroine finding love and healing (that's why I docked off one star), but well, it's Nalini Singh, so naturally it is still in a league of its own.

A dark novel about an inspiring love that heals. A sort of spinoff to the main plot, so it is technically fine to skip this go directly to book 6 which is confirmed to be in Elena's and Raphael's POV where, I'm assuming, the main arc will continue but I have to admit it, now that I have read it, I do feel this bond to Dmitri (and Honor) now that wasn't there. I'll be noticing him more now. ;)

My Rating

      

 

Review: Losing It by Cora Carmack

Publication Date: October 15th, 2012
Finished Date: December 29th, 2012
Format: eBook
Pages: 204
My Rating: 4.5/5!

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Book Depository | Author's Website

Blurb from Goodreads:

Virginity.

Bliss Edwards is about to graduate from college and still has hers. Sick of being the only virgin among her friends, she decides the best way to deal with the problem is to lose it as quickly and simply as possible-- a one-night stand. But her plan turns out to be anything but simple when she freaks out and leaves a gorgeous guy alone and naked in her bed with an excuse that no one with half-a-brain would ever believe. And as if if that weren't embarrassing enough, when she arrives for her first class of her last college semester, she recognizes her new theatre professor. She'd left him naked in her bed about 8 hours earlier.

 

My Review

LOSING IT, I admit, is one of those little guilty pleasures I let myself indulge in once in awhile to take a break from all the PNR/UFs that I normally read. I usually like my romances interlaced with some crazy action going on, but sometimes, a girl just needs a nice, clean and sweet romance to curl her toes and accompany her to the beach. Ok, I admit, it was the cover that first attracted me. I mean, look at that, that that..that.. Handsome male specimen alert~

LOSING IT wouldn't really be a guilty read, seeing as it is still within the premises of the YA genre, just with a little sexual content in it. Looking at that synopsis, you'd think that there'd be tons of pages on Bliss Edwards having some mind-blowing horizontal tango, but no, fortunately or unfortunately (haha). Well, I thought that little in this case was really good; It was still intense, but slow, sweet and romannnnnntik. It is YA also because the plot was rather simplistic and it just lacked the dark and dirty element of eroticas/adult romance novels.

I won't go much into a summary of the book, cause what you see in the synopsis is pretty much what you'll get, and since this is a pretty short novel I don't want to spoiler it to much. It's basically Bliss Edwards (lead girl) still having her V-card which her best friend thought was totally not natural, so naturally, she saw fit to take Bliss to this high end club immediately to hook up with a guy and have a one-night stand. Just when she thought the night would be as futile as any other nights in the past, she may just have stumbled upon her happy ever after... Literally!

Let's go into the characters first, shall we? Let's see, who do we start with......hmm...... Let's start with Garrick Taylor. OMG GARRICK. He has this certain similarity to Christian Grey but more realistic. No troubled, dark past, not as intense (come on, who can be as intense as Grey?) or overbearing, and wealth is totally out of the question. Garrick just graduated from the college Bliss is at and is working as an actor somewhere in Philadelphia when Bliss' school's stage director called on Garrick and offered him a job as an instructor in their school, being one of the best students when he was still there. I won't say much on how Bliss and him met and their subsequent encounters and all cause I really enjoyed slowly savoring every one of them and I don't want to spoil it for you. But the embarrassment when Garrick walked into class and was introduced as their new acting teacher-instructor... That scene was priceless! Carmack described it so well I could totally see the scene unfolding in my head and laugh with sadistic glee, anticipating the embarrassment when Bliss recognized him as the man she'd left naked on her bed a mere few hours ago and all that tension (both sexual and non-sexual). Oh, and did I mention that Garrick has a British accent? Yeah, and I'll leave you to find out every sexy piece of him yourself.

Bliss was a really witty character, so full of emotions and life, and also clumsily cute! She's conservative, she mature, and she's sooooo funny when she rambles and crazy-talks. The side characters were well-developed too, all having their own distinct personalities.

One of my only grievances about this book is not explaining what "mono" was. Some STD, I think. It might be a slang from somewhere (America, perhaps?), but I didn't, and still don't, know what it was.

LOSING IT made for an easy, addictive read, and it has one of my favorite endings! It'll make any reader smile. Seriously, this is such a fun and addictive book with humor and romance that is sometimes intensely sexy and others heartwarmingly sweet. I'd recommend this to any fans of YA contemporary romance!

P.S. Carmack's biography at the back of the book's kinda cool too! Haha here's just a portion of it:

“She enjoys placing her characters in the most awkward situations possible, and then trying to help them get a boyfriend out of it. Awkward people need love, too.”

(Ditto!)

My Rating

   

Freebie On Amazon...and a Giveaway!

Oh wow, how long have I not been on my precious white-purple blog space? *Err hur hur* Anyway, I got my lazy ass to the keyboard today because I, and quite a few other readers, received an email from lovely author, Rhiannon Paille, author of The Ferryman + The Flame series and a few others.

She's trying to hit the 10,000 downloads mark on Amazon, so the first novel in her acclaimed series, Surrender, will be free only on THURSDAY, January 17th. Here's more about the book:

Surrender
Book 1 in The Ferryman + The Flame series

Blurb from Goodreads:
How far would you go to save everything you ever loved? Kaliel was warned about her love for the Ferryman. One day he will marry the land and leave Avristar forever. She doesn't listen, and because of what she is-- a Flame-- one of nine apocalyptic weapons, she sparks a war. In a desperate attempt to save her home and her love, Kaliel tries to awaken Avred, not knowing she may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

And here is the link to the free download:

 

 

Here are some other links if you want to find out more about it:

Goodreads | B&N | Abe Book | Author's Website

Paille's also currently hosting a giveaway of signed books, swag, bookmarks, etc, for her upcoming book, Justice. a Rafflecopter giveaway