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Spotlight Author of The Month

This is where I will be posting info on my Author of the Month. Links, contests, bios...you name it, it will be found here. Always looking for feedback on who the month's author should be...so let me know :)


June's Pick


I don't know about you, but Jeaniene Frost has got to be one of my all time favorite authors. I mean, who wouldn't love the woman responsible for creating one of the best book vampires; Bones. Ok, you read on...I'm going to go daydream a bit about my vamp-guy...mmmmmm Bones.


Jeaniene Frost is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Night Huntress series and the Night Huntress World novels. Foreign rights for her novels have sold to fourteen different countries. Frost lives in Florida with her husband Matthew. Aside from writing, she enjoys reading, poetry, watching movies with her husband, exploring old cemeteries, spelunking and traveling by car.  In addition to the Night Huntress series, she has contributed to a number of anthologies.
The author came up with the idea for the Night Huntress series from a dream. "In my dream, I saw a man and a woman arguing. Somehow I knew the woman was a half-vampire, the man was a full vampire, and they were arguing because he was angry that she'd left him."

Bibliography:

Cat and Bones/The Night Huntress Series
  1. Halfway to the Grave (October 30, 2007)
  2. One Foot in the Grave (April 29, 2008)
  3. At Grave's End (December 30, 2008)
  5. This Side Of The Grave (February 22, 2011)
  6. One Grave at a Time (August 30, 2011)

The Night Huntress World Series

  1. First Drop of Crimson (February 9, 2010)
  2. Eternal Kiss of Darkness (July 27, 2010)









May's Pick



Everyone I know is reading Charlaine Harris's new Sookie Stackhouse book Dead Reckoning. With this great read hitting the shelves, I decided that who better to make our Author of the Month than the creator of the books who inspired one of my favorite HBO series'.


Harris was born in Tunica, Mississippi. After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris began the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with Real Murders, a Best Novel 1990 nomination for the Agatha Awards. Harris wrote several books in the series before the mid-1990s when she began branching out into other works.[2] She did not resume the series until 1999, with the exception of one short story in a Murder,She Wrote anthology titled "Murder, They Wrote".
In 1996, she released the first in the Shakespeare series, set in rural Arkansas. Harris "lives in small-town Arkansas", according to a New York Times interview.[2] The fifth book in the series, Shakespeare's Counselor, was printed in fall 2001, followed by the short story "Dead Giveaway" published in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in December of the same year. Harris has stated on her website that she has finished with the series.
After Shakespeare, Harris created The Southern Vampire Mysteries series about a telepathic waitress named Sookie Stackhouse who works in a northern Louisiana bar.[2] The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001. Each book follows Sookie as she tries to solve mysteries involving vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures.[2] The series has been released in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Spain, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Argentina, Poland, Brazil, Great Britain, Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Portugal, Iceland, Czech Republic and Romania.
Sookie Stackhouse has proven to be so popular that Alan Ball, creator of the HBO television series Six Feet Under, announced he would undertake the production of a new HBO series based upon The Southern Vampire Mysteries.[3] He also wrote and directed the pilot episode for the series, True Blood, which premiered on September 7, 2008 on HBO.[4] Harris has written eleven novels in the series, and the television show is a hit for HBO.[2]
October 2005 marked the debut of Harris's new series entitled The Harper Connelly Mysteries, with the release of Grave Sight. The series is told by a young woman named Harper Connelly, who after being struck by lightning, is able to locate dead bodies and to see their last moments through the eyes of the deceased. In October 2010, it was announced Harper Connelly's series had been optioned for a television series named, "Grave Sight".
Professionally, Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League. She is a member of the board of Sisters in Crime, and alternates with Joan Hess as president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance.
In her personal life, Harris is married and the mother of three teenagers.[2] A former weightlifter and karate student,[5] she is an avid reader and cinemaphile. Harris resides in Magnolia, Arkansas, where she is the senior warden of St. James Episcopal Church.[2][6]

Bibliography

Aurora Teagarden Series
Lily Bard (Shakespeare) Series

Sookie Stackhouse (Southern Vampire) Series

  1. Dead Until Dark (2001)
  2. Living Dead in Dallas (March 2002)
  3. Club Dead (May 2003)
  4. Dead to the World (May 2004)
  5. Dead as a Doornail (May 2005)
  6. Definitely Dead (May 2006)
  7. All Together Dead (May 2007)
  8. From Dead to Worse (May 2008)
  9. Dead and Gone (May 2009)
  10. Dead in the Family (May 2010)
  11. "Dead Reckoning" (May 2011)
Harper Connelly Series
  1. Grave Sight (2005)
  2. Grave Surprise (2006)
  3. An Ice Cold Grave (2007)
  4. Grave Secret (2009)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlaine_Harris



April's Pick


With her letest release Lover Unleashed that just hit the shelves March 29, I thought it would be appropriate to make J.R.Ward our Spotlight Author of the Month for April! Enjoy!!

Wikipedia Bio:

Born Jessica Rowley Pell Bird on 1969 in Massachusetts, U.S.A., she is the daughter of W. Gillette Bird, Jr. and Maxine F. Bird. She began writing as a child, penning her thoughts in diaries as well as inventing short stories. The summer before she went to college she wrote her first book , a romance novel. After that, she wrote regularly, but for herself. Bird attended Smith College where she double majored in history and art history, concentrating on medieval period. She then received a law degree from Albany Law School and worked in healthcare administration for many years, including as the Chief of Staff at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 2001, Bird married John Neville Blakemore III. Her new husband encouraged her to try to get an agent and market her manuscripts. She found an agent, and in 2002 her first novel, a contemporary romance called Leaping Hearts, was published. Several years later, Bird invented a world populated by vampires and began writing single-title paranormal romance novels under the pen name J.R. Ward. These novels are a series, known as the Black Dagger Brotherhood.
Bird likes to write series novels which incorporate characters from her previous books. She likens the process of creating a series to "meeting friends through other friends". Her heroes are most often alpha males, "the tougher, the cockier, the more arrogant, the better", while the heroines are smart and strong.
The Romance Writers of America awarded her the RITA Award for Best Short Contemporary Romance in 2007 for her novel From the First. She has also been nominated six times for Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Awards, winning once for Lover Awakened.

Bibliography

 As Jessica Bird

 Single novels


 The Moorehouse Legacy Series
  1. Beauty and the Black Sheep
  2. His Comfort and Joy
  3. From The First
  4. A Man in a Million

The O'Banyon Brothers Series
  1. The Billionaire Next Door

 Omnibus
  • From the First / What are Friends for? (2006)

 Collections in collaboration

 As J. R. Ward

 Black Dagger Brotherhood series





  2. Lover Eternal
  3. Lover Awakened
  4. Lover Revealed
  5. Lover Unbound
  6. Lover Enshrined
  7. Lover Avenged
  8. Lover Mine
  9. Lover Unleashed
  10. The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider's Guide
  11. J.R. Ward Box Set: Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, Lover Awakened, Lover Unbound, Lover Revealed, Lover Enshrined (omnibus) (2009)

 Fallen Angels series

  1. Covet
  2. Crave



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