Cover Reveal: Desolate Mantle (Street Games #2)

I'm finally getting ready to release Desolate Mantle, book 2 of Street Games! I've seriously been trying to get this book out for a year. But life happens and it kept getting back-burnered. Well, it's finally time! I'm aiming to get book 2 out in February, though I don't have an exact date yet. 

Meanwhile, courtesy of the the great Kelean Patrick Burke, here is the cover of book 2. Enjoy!

Desolate Mantle (Street Games #2)

Synopsis:

In the most dangerous city in the country, one controlled by the sadistic Sons of Ares gang, Kyra Roberts recently crossed paths with detective Gabe Nichols. She dismissed any liaison with him as impossible, but telling him the truth may prove inevitable...

Walking the Slip Mire nightly, dressed in her disguise and trying to infiltrate a homicidal gang, Kyra sees plenty of things she can’t explain. When she begins to suspect a serial killer might be at work, she decides to approach Gabe again.

Gabe has plenty to keep him busy: a bizarre missing persons case, a new development in his brother’s cold case, a new neighbor, and the grisly murders that are a nightly ritual in the Slip Mire. When Kyra shows up unexpectedly, he jumps at the chance keep her around, but it’s harder than he bargained for. She’s not an average source any more than she’s an average Mireling.

Their partnership crumbles, but when things become even darker than usual in the Slip Mire, they’ll need one another get survive a hellish situation. If they can’t work together to shoulder their burdens, they’ll find themselves utterly alone. In Abstreuse, it’s not a matter of not coming out of the darkness, but of being absorbed by the darkness itself…

(Check out book 1, Dark Remnants HERE)

What do you think of the cover?

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Citadels of Fire Cover Reveal!!!

A whaw-hoo! It's finally arrived! The cover art for Citadels of Fire, Book 1 of the Kremlins trilogy. Citadels of Fire is slated for release on May 27, 2014. This has been SO long in coming. For details on why I've been waiting for four years to see this cover, read THIS POST.

Meanwhile, without further ado, here is the Citadels of Fire cover and description. Below is the original press release from Jolly Fish Press, Inc. I'd appreciate all the help I can get in sharing, tweeting, and posting this cover! Hope everyone loves it as much as I do! 

In a world where power is paid for in blood, no one ever aspires to more than what they were born to, and danger hides in plain sight, Inga, a maid in the imperial Russian palace, must find the courage to break the oppressive chains she’s been bound with since birth.

Inga’s life in sixteenth century Russia is bleak until a man she crossed paths with as a child returns to the Kremlin.  Taras is convinced his mother’s death when he was a boy was no mere accident and has returned to try and discover what really happened, all during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the most brutal and notorious ruler ever to sit on the throne of Russia.

While Taras only finds lies and silence where he seeks truth, Inga struggles with the feelings of oppression that have plagued her for most of her life.  Taras gives her the chance to leave her loneliness behind forever, but the cost and future of such a liaison is uncertain and Inga is afraid.

Up against the social confines of the time, the shadowy conspiracies that cloak their history, and the sexual politics of the Russian imperial court, Inga and Taras must discover their past, plan for their future, and survive the brutality that permeates life within the four walls that tower over them, or they may end up like so many citizens of ancient Russia: nothing but flesh and bone mortar for the stones of the Kremlin wall.

JFP Press Release:

PROVO, UT—Jolly Fish Press (JFP) is proud to announce the successful acquisition of L. K. Hill's stunning historical novel, Citadels of Fire, the first installment in Kremlins, a three-book series depicting the rise and fall of fifteenth-century Russia under the violent rule of Ivan the Terrible. 

Following the literary traditions of Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth and Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Citadels of Fire chronicles the unexpected turn of events that transpire within the walls of the Kremlin through the eyes of a palace maid as she is unwillingly pulled into the dangerous web of political espionage, royal scandals, rebellion, and savage wars, in her pursuit of love and a better life outside of the palace walls. 

In Citadels of Fire, Hill captures the grandeur of Russia in her meticulous description of a country that is both breathtaking and desolate, leaving the reader with the appetite for more, yet the fear of what comes next.Hill has a degree from Weber State University, and has won numerous writing awards, including garnering first place in the 2011 League of Utah Writer Writing Contest. Citadels of Fire is slated for a Fall 2013 release. (Source)

What do you think of the cover art for Citadels of Fire?

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Citadels of Fire--A Four-Year Wait for Cover Art: My Road to Publication

I finally got the cover art for the first installment of my historical fiction trilogy! (YEAH!) I'm doing a cover reveal on Wednesday on this blog and several others, so be sure to drop by and see it. It's kind of surreal, given how long it's all taken.

Let me explain. No. Is too much. Let me sum up.

Kremlins was the first full-length book I ever wrote. I remember that I graduated collect in December of 2009 and had finished the manuscript by then. I wanted to have a finished, full-length manuscript read to peddle as soon as I had my diploma. 

Source

At the time, it was entirely too long and terribly written, as all first manuscripts are. But it was a passion project for me, and one I dearly wanted to see published. Most writers complete a handful of books before they gain enough skill to actually be considered for publication by a traditional publishing house. It's common to hear a writer talk about their first book, and how terrible it was, and how eventually they realize how un-publishable it is and move on to other things.

That's probably what I should have done, just based on how terrible I know the writing was, but I loved the story. I very much wanted to share it to the world. Because of that, every time I learned something new, or found a way to fix a weakness in my writing, I re-edited the manuscript. I must have done it fifteen times. I also, somewhere in this time, I divided the manuscript into three parts. A trilogy, to make it more publishable.

Eventually, I had a fairly well-polished first book. It was picked up by Jolly Fish Press last year. Originally, it was supposed to be published in September, 2013. As the date got nearer, it got pushed back to October. Then, it got pushed back again. The first push was just a logistically thing. The second was because of the partnership of Jolly Fish and the international distributor IPG. (See my full post on the ramifications of that partnership HERE.)

So now, Citadels of Fire is set to be released in May of 2014, which a much more far-reaching distribution than originally planned. (Again, YEA!) And, finally, after all this time. I have cover art. Not that I'm entirely objective, or anything, but let me assure you: It's AMAZING!

Come back on Wednesday to get the first look at it!

What do you think of my publishing journey? Has anyone else waited so long for cover art?

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Double Cover Reveal!!!

For those who don't know, I'm putting out two books next month. I know that sounds insane, but I've been working on both for some time and they just both came to fruition at the same time. I want to get them both out quickly. Besides, one is a short novel, so it wasn't as much work as my novels generally are. 

Anyway, I'm doing a double cover reveal today! Yea!

Dark Remnants, book 1 of my Street Games series will be available September 3, 2013. This first one is an introduction to the series, so it's a shorter novel for me, though still not quite short enough to be considered a novella. It's full length, just not very long. Does that make sense? :D

This book will be available for $0.99 for a limited time upon release. Get your fast before the price goes up! I'll post links here on the 3rd!

In the most dangerous city in the country, one controlled by a sadistic gang called the Sons of Ares, Kyra Roberts is searching the deep places for someone…

Kyra has come to Abstreuse city to find someone she’s lost, but walking the underbelly—a dark alley system residents call the Slip Mire—even in disguise, is rife with dangers. Kyra must stay on her toes if she intends to live. After crossing paths several times with the same detective, she wonders if his work and hers might be connected.

Gabe Nichols has worked homicide in Abstreuse for three years. Dead prostitutes and gang violence are part of the night shift. When a woman who looks like a street junkie but acts like an intellectual saves his life, he’s intrigued. Another woman shows up at his crime scene, and Gabe’s instincts kick into high gear when she clams up. Two cases involving strange women who won’t tell what they know are too coincidental.

If Gabe and Kyra can’t find a way to collaborate, they may not live to see the sunrise. Doomed, like so many others, to become gray, unmarked graves in a forgotten fracture of the Slip Mire.

Quantum Entanglement, book 2 of Interchron will be available September 17, 2013. This is the sequel to the acclaimed, award-winning novel, Persistence of Vision!

This novel will also be $0.99 for a limited time when it releases. Come back on the 17th for purchase links! 

Five months after traveling to a post-apocalyptic future where collectives reign supreme and individuals have been hunted to the verge of extinction, Maggie Harper was returned to her own time until the threat to her life could be neutralized. She thought Marcus and the others would return for her within a few weeks, and now she’s beginning to worry.

When travelers from the future finally show up to collect her, it’s not who she expected. With the return of her memories, she wants more than ever to see Marcus again, but a snake-like woman whose abilities are a perfect match for Maggie’s, an injured Traveler, and decades of civil unrest to wade through all stand in the way of their reunion.

Meanwhile, Marcus and Karl traipse through the countryside, trying to neutralize Colin, who’s promised to brutalize and murder Maggie if he can get his hands on her. When a collective woman is left for dead, Marcus heals her, hoping she’ll be the key to killing Colin and bringing Maggie back. But she may prove as much a hindrance as a help.

The team struggles to get their bearings, but things happen faster than they know. The collectives are coalescing, power is shifting, and the one called B is putting sinister plans into action. If the team can’t reunite and get a handle on the situation, their freedom and individuality—perhaps their very identity—will be ripped away before they can catch their breath.

So excited to get these out! I've been working on Quantum Entanglement since the beginning of the year and, while it hasn't been that long for Dark Remnants, I've had this story in my head for probably two full years. So glad to see them both completed! *Squee* 

What do you think? Which cover do you like more?

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