Eve of Destruction – Available Now!

Eve of DestructionEVE OF DESTRUCTION
A Marked Novel, Book #2
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Mass Market Paperback
Tor Books – June 2, 2009
ISBN-10: 076536042X
ISBN-13: 978-0765360427

When you’re learning to hunt demons, homework can be hell…

Class is in, but Evangeline Hollis is far from being the star pupil. She’s struggling to get through the required training to be a full-fledged Mark — one of thousands of sinners forced to hunt demons for God. When her class goes on a week-long field trip to an abandoned military base, passing the course suddenly isn’t just a matter of pride… it’s a matter of life and death. There’s a demon hidden among them, killing off Eve’s classmates one by one.

As the body count rises, a ragtag team of ghost hunters from a cable TV program unwittingly stumbles into the carnage. Now keeping the Mark system secret competes with the need to keep the “paranormal researchers” alive. With Cain on assignment and Abel investigating a new, terrifying class of demon, Eve must fly solo on her hunt to stop a killer before he strikes again.

Excerpt: www.sjday.net/books/marked-2/

Video: http://www.sjday.net/trailer/

Reviews: delicious.com/sj_day/destruction

Widgets and Wallpapers: www.sjday.net/extras/downloads/

May Is Looking Pretty Good!

On May 1, What Happens in Vegas…After Dark released from Harlequin Spice (also in the antho is Anya Bast!)

My story is Sensual Magic and it’s a follow up to last year’s Stripped – it features Nash’s brother William

Two years ago, William Emery believed in love. Deciding to make his permanent home in Boston and start a nightclub there, he was locking down funding and approving the font on wedding invitations.
Until he found out his fiancée was little more than a faithless gold digger.

Emotionally devastated, he moved to Las Vegas where his younger brother lived and began work to create the kind of club he’d always wanted to run. And to drown the memories of his idealism in a sea of female flesh. If you didn’t involve your heart, it never got broken.

Nell Hunter is a witch on the trail of a human who’s stolen from her people. This human is working with a group of mages stealing money and power from the clans and cabals, relying on the need for secrecy to keep their victims quiet and from going to the police. But they hadn’t banked on Nell.
She’s a bonded hunter to the court of the Owen clan.

In Vegas, Nell seeks William out, his ex-fiance is the woman she’s looking for. The sparks between them fly immediately and while Nell knows they’re meant to be, William has a harder time with it. They come together as bullets and magic fly – nothing worth having is ever easy

And then on the 5th, RELENTLESS released.

In this erotic universe, passion knows no rank…

Since the first settlers came through the portals from Earth, fifteen Families have held the rule of the Federated Universes in their hands. There’s never been a better time than now to throw out the old and usher in a new order. Give voice to the unranked. Abbie Haws has spent her life battling the system. A fighter, she’s always been too busy and driven to pay much attention to finding love. But when she’s granted audience with Roman Lyons, the head of House Lyons, who stands for everything she hates, her instant attraction catches Abbie off-guard…

It’s common knowledge that the Known Universe revolves around Ravena—and that Ravena revolves around Roman Lyons, bred to lead since birth. Roman dreads his meeting with a defiant—if stunning—rabble-rouser. But, sometimes, headstrong personalities in the conference room make for hot-and-heavy, guilty trysts in private….

Now, Abbie will show Roman the parts of her world he wouldn’t otherwise get to see. And he’ll give her a glimpse of the Families’ age old tradition and unleash a sexuality he’d never given rein to before.

Icing this cake is the fact that I learned there will be another Federation book – Insatiable, which will be about Daniel Haws, Abbie’s brother and the shadowy Phantom Corps. That will come out in July of next year and I’m beyond thrilled!

And today, I got an email informing me Righteous Blade, a paranormal romance set in Las Vegas, will be releasing from Samhain in September of next year! This book has been with me since March of 2006 when I visited Vegas with some friends and the seed of the story idea lodged in my brain. I can’t wait to get back to it.

So it’s all pretty awesome, I must say. New releases, new sales, great reviews – a very fine way to spend the last several weeks if I do say so myself.

Some dreams should never inspire a story…

I’m with Ashleigh (see May 09 post). May has been a fabulous month so far. Sure, it’s been raining cats and dogs here, but I could care less. My internal life has been radiant.

My muse, that part of my psyche who blesses me with flashes of brilliance at his whim, has been especially generous. I powered through the first one hundred pages of a new book (a very long proposal) without a single speed bump. He filled my waking dreams with enough fodder for the starts of several other projects, and my sleeping dreams have been satisfyingly vivid and intriguing.

Let me tell you about the dream I had last night.

I was leaving a shopping mall, juggling my purse and an infant in my arms. As soon as I left the glass doors and stepped into the parking lot, I was standing on beach, a long crescent of white sand rimming a pale blue sea. In front of me lay several blue dolphins and albino-skinned men with no genitalia (the men, that is). They all appeared to have washed ashore and I thought them dead, but one of the large, genitalia-challenged men leaned up on an elbow and pointed to the sky. He said, “Just wait a minute.”

I glanced up and saw more dolphins and dickless white men falling from the sky. Of course, I backed up on the beach, staring. Then large bubbles started floating down, and when they were just above my head, I saw that each one had a translucent face.

The albino who had spoken to me rose and approached me, staring at the child in my arms. When he met my gaze, his expression seemed sad. He turned away, bent at the waist and vomited a glob of clear gel, which he held out to me. “Take it. You need to smear this all over you.”

I was shocked but took the glob, staring at it and wondering if I should tell the alien I didn’t want his huge lugey.

One bubble popped on a man who walked up beside me, and he began to scrape at the goo stuck to his face. When he straightened, his expression grew blank. His eyes blinked and turned a burning yellow. His mouth opened and revealed a row of jagged teeth behind his human ones and surrounding a round, tunnel-like throat.

Intuitively, I knew the giant lugey was going to keep me from turning into an alien zombie, so I handed the alien the baby and quickly rubbed it all over me while more bubbles popped all around me.

The dream ended there, but I got curious. What was my crazy-assed muse trying to tell me? I borrowed my daughter’s dream dictionary and came up with this:

  •      Infant—may express an unconscious desire for a baby. Oh, hell no! Or it may represent a new development in myself. I’m always eager for new parts of me to creep up and greet me in the mirror.
  •      Sea-side Beach—the place where the conscious and the unconscious meet. Uh, yeah.
  •      Blue Dolphins— Blue: the collective unconscious; a live dolphin might symbolize communication between the unconscious and the conscious. Maybe I just need to drink myself into a stupor and this will all make sense.
  •      Dickless White Men—Not surprising, I didn’t find anything under “dickless white men”. So I looked up men, which might represent the male side of my psyche. Why I castrated that side of me, I have no clue.
  •      Bubble Faces—Nothing under “bubble” or “face”. Now this is going to drive me crazy. What does it all mean?
  •      Aliens—Hmmm. “A person of foreign appearance…may represent some part of your psyche which is unfamiliar to you…get acquainted with that foreign part of yourself.” So I guess I was doing the right thing when I rubbed the lugey all over my body.
  •      Giant Lugey—I was dying to figure out what this part meant. But it shall remain a mystery. No “lugey” or “bodily fluid” mentioned in the dictionary. It was clear like water—water might symbolize psychic energy. It felt like jelly. Nope, nothing under jelly. Will have to write the author to tell him his book has serious gaps of information.  

So put it all together and what does it mean? I haven’t a bloody clue. Of course now I’m wondering if I’d stayed long enough in the dream, would I have discovered that the lugey was the alien’s come and smearing it on me might have impregnated me?

CHAINS…new release by Shiloh Walker

To help promote her upcoming release, CHAINS, author Shiloh Walker is doing a dash through some of the blogs in romanceland, leaving behind excerpts. If you’d like to get entered to win a gift certificate for $100 (your choice from the online booksellers), all you have to do is visit the blogs, read the excerpts and leave a comment. The excerpts are in order, just visit the first blog, Karen Knows Best (http://karenknowsbest.com/) and go on from there!

chainsChains

An all new novel of erotic suspense

They weren’t friends. They weren’t enemies. The only thing the three girls had in common was the high school they went to in Madison, Ohio-until one tragic night. Now, fifteen years later, they’re returning home where passion-and danger-await…

Renee Lincoln was the homecoming queen-with the perfect boyfriend and the perfect life. After that horrible night, she rebelled the only way she knew how: by submitting to her wildest fantasies…

Tall, blonde, and athletic, Lacey Talbot was a golden girl with a bright future. She’s found success as a photographer, but no man has ever been able to satisfy her. No man but the bad boy she left behind…

Sherra Salinger has always looked like a princess out of some fairy tale. The books she writes, though, stem from the nightmare of that one night. And she shrinks from any man’s attention-especially the one stalking her…

They’re coming back to Madison-and it won’t be happy reunion. There are three men, all dangerous in a different way. And when each of them surrender their bodies to the heat, when they succumb to desire, they’ll find the safety they desperately need…

Order from Borders, BN.com, Bamm.com or Amazon

To enter visit the participating blogs, including Shiloh’s and leave a comment 🙂 Winner’s name will be drawn from those comments. Participating blogs, listed in order:

Karen Knows Best

The Good, the Bad, and the Unread

Book Binge

Stacy’s Place on Earth

It’s Not Chick Porn

Trivial Pursuits (Shiloh’s blog)

Disclaimer: Only one entry per household. Open to everybody, as long as the author is able to purchase/email you a gift certificate for one of the major online booksellers-Amazon, BN.com, Borders, Powell’s, etc. Winner’s name to be posted on Shiloh’s blog the last week in May-author will ATTEMPT to notify the winner via email, but cannot be held accountable if her email bounces back- please make sure you enter the correct email and that you add Shiloh (shilohwalker(at)gmail.com) to your addy book to prevent problems. Void where prohibited. Please do not post to sweepstakes sites-the author reserves the right to end the contest at anytime, and likely will end it early if the contest ends up posted to sweepstakes sites.

Beautiful May

Last month I posted a day late, so I decided to average it out by posting a day early. I think that works, right?

May has been a rockin’ awesome month so far. One of those months that my face is permanently locked in a smile. Why? A couple reasons that all add up to me feeling darn good.

After six months of bundling up in layers, with my numb fingers trying to find the right keys on my laptop, the weather has finally turned around. It’s warm. Gloriously so. I’d go so far as to say it’s hot. Today, for the first time, I’m wearing my favorite denim capris and a short-sleeved cotton tee that have been tucked away in my closet since last October. I took a walk today, enjoyed the feel of the sun soaking into my pasty white skin. I’m enjoying it now since within a month or so it’ll be hitting temps in the high 90s and low 100s and I’ll be avoiding outside as much as possible. But for now…for now, I’m opening the windows and enjoying the breeze.

Another reason May has been so good? Lisa and I are writing, really, honest-to-God writing, again. Now, for the last few months we’ve been trying to write a novella, and we were getting words on the page, but it was going ridiculously slow, even for us. We were suffering some serious writer constipation. Finally, we sat down and talked and realized that although we loved the idea behind the story, clearly it wasn’t what we were supposed to be writing since we’ve never suffered that type of challenge before in getting a story written. We put the novella to the side and pulled out the book of our heart. The book we get more fan mail requesting than any other. Eternal Talisman is back in progress. And all I can say is why the heck did we wait so long? In the last few days Lisa and I have written more than we managed in the last few months combined. The fire we’d thought had burned down to an ember has blazed up again. Not only do we want to write, but we love what we’re writing. We love writing so much we’re going without sleep to write, we’re skipping meals, we’re staying attached to our computers. The reason I’m writing this blog post now, a day before my scheduled blog day here at After Midnight Fantasies, is that I sent the scene in progress to Lisa, and figured I’d spend the time waiting for her to send it back to me taking care of my blogging responsibilities before diving right back into Talisman Bay as soon as Lisa sends it my way.

Is this what addiction feels like? Although addiction has such nasty negative connotations. I think this is pure and simple happiness. And you just can’t beat that feeling. So here’s wishing you and yours happiness, in whatever form pleases you most.

Eve of Darkness

9780765360410EVE OF DARKNESS
by S. J. Day

Tor Books
ISBN: 0765360411
ISBN-13: 9780765360410
April 28, 2009

Cursed by God, hunted by demons, desired by Cain and Abel… All in a day’s work.

For Evangeline Hollis, a long-ago fling with a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks just became a disaster of biblical proportions. One night with a leather-clad man of mystery has led to a divine punishment: the Mark of Cain.

Thrust into a world where sinners are drafted to kill demons, Eve knows her learning curve must be short. A longtime agnostic, she begrudgingly maneuvers through a celestial bureaucracy where she is a valuable but ill-treated pawn. She’s also become the latest point of contention in the oldest case of sibling rivalry in history…

But she’ll worry about all that later. Right now she’s more concerned with learning to kill while staying alive. And saving the soul she’d never quite believed she had.

“Great characters and terrific storytelling in a hot-blooded adrenaline ride. A keep-you-up-all-night read.”

Patricia Briggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Excerpt: http://www.sjday.net/excerpt/

Video: http://www.sjday.net/trailer/

Reviews: http://www.sjday.net/extras/

Sony eBook: ebookstore.sony.com/author/s-j-day_111324

Kindle format:
www.amazon.com/Eve-of-Darkness-ebook/dp/B002FSTJLQ/

Unleashing another story…and a contest!

Unleashing the TigerTomorrow, I’m heading off to Orlando. This is just a quick flyby to let you know about the book releasing this Friday while I’m gone and the contest I’m running to celebrate the new release. This is what my story is about:

An analyst in a secret government agency, Casey McTaggert’s professional life has been dedicated to the capture of one suspected terrorist. Even before she’s abducted by Khalid in the midst of a firefight, she’s completely fascinated with the man they call the “The Tiger.” But what began as a professional obsession quickly becomes lust as his dark, Persian features and harshly hewn body awaken a forbidden passion.

Khalid Razeh can’t fight the genetic programming that makes him shift into a tiger any more than he can resist the sensual allure of his lovely hostage. While forcing her to accompany him on one last mission, he fights the overwhelming attraction, knowing that he is walking into a trap that will end in death. Casey’s tender lovemaking and growing belief in his innocence are a sweet balm to his wild, savage soul.

The book releases on Friday from Ellora’s Cave, but I’ll be in Orlando partying…er, working it. If you’d like to win a box of Romantic Times swag and a couple of books, be sure to post a comment here. For more chances to win, visit my blog.

ALWAYS is now Available!

Sometimes you have to go more than halfway to meet in the middle.

Caitlin Moore has every reason to celebrate. She’s through with law-school finals, and out for some post-semester fun when she runs smack dab into Eamon Blake, the Irishman with whom she had a summer fling years ago. Time hasn’t dimmed their lingering friendship—or their sexual chemistry.

Eamon isn’t looking for love when he bumps into Cat while he’s in Seattle on a job. Yet over the next year, he finds himself involved in a rekindled long-distance romance that moves from casual to a lot more.

That’s the rub. Cat is determined not to repeat her past mistakes with men and give up the dream job for which she’s worked so hard. Independence is something she’s spent years achieving. Eamon can start over so much easier than she can—why shouldn’t he make the sacrifice this time?

But Eamon doesn’t much relish leaving the life he’s been building in Los Angeles—and he really doesn’t like ultimatums. At an impasse, goodbye seems the only direction to go. Ending it is the right thing to do…or the biggest mistake they ever made.

April for Ashleigh Raine

Ack! I forgot to post yesterday. Can I blame spring fever?

April’s been a great month so far for us. Why you ask? The redone, spit-shined, hot, happy and yummy Forsaken Talisman was released a week ago from Samhain Publishing.

Between all the contests and chats and other release-day stuff we’ve been doing, Lisa and I have been making progress on what we hope will be our next release, which is a novella based in the Talisman Bay world. I can’t really say too much more about it than that, other than we’re in love with the heroes and wish we could be the heroine.

Keep an eye on Ashleighraine.com this week. We’ll be posting a new contest, and we’re going to begin posting quite a few deleted scenes from Forsaken Talisman. We’d also love to start chatting with readers more, so make sure to come on by and post comments on our blog. If there’s anything you’re dying to know, any questions you want to ask, we want to hear from you!