My Week to celebrate the Launch of Carina Press starts of with a guest blog by a woman I truly admire for how she manages to combine professionalism, knowledge and social skills. I hope you all join me in welcoming Angela James, Executive Editor with Carina Press on this first day of Carina Week. (Oh and don't forget to check out the CarinaWeek giveaway at the end of this post)


In the past few years of working in digital publishing, when people have asked me and wondered about its growth, where it's going and if it will go anywhere, the one question they always asked was: what large traditional publisher do you think will be the first to get into digital-first publishing? My answer was always the same: Harlequin.

I hadn't been between jobs for more than a day (possibly not even a full day) when I got a phone call from Harlequin last September: we've been discussing the possibility of a digital-first imprint, would you be interested in coming to consult with us? Of course I said "yes" so fast I'm pretty sure I may have spoken it in a language closely resembling Tongues.

So of course, I wasn't there for the conception stages of Carina Press, but when I hear the story told by one of the digital team (such as Malle Vallik, Aideen O'Leary-Chung, or Eleanor Elliott) this is what I hear "We had been discussing starting this imprint, but were still in the planning stages when we learned you were available. Choirs of angels started to sing and words of rejoicing were heard ringing around the Harlequin offices. We dropped everything and called you immediately, because we knew this was the sign the imprint was meant to be and we couldn't possibly do it without you."

Okay, possibly I paraphrased a lot and am relating that through my own personal filter but I'm pretty sure that's REALLY close to how it went. Well, kind of close, anyway...in some small way.

Getting Carina up and running has been a learning experience for all of us, though. I was brought on because of my experience with the digital-first industry and my understanding of behind-the-scenes workings and details of digital-first. Harlequin and the Harlequin team bring to the table a few years (you know, just a few) of successful publishing and innovating. The digital-first business model is a bit different than that of a traditional publisher such as Harlequin and we've had an exciting time working out how the two can come together to create Carina Press in these past few months.

The authors who've been contracted to publish with us have been experiencing the Carina model behind-the-scenes in a variety of ways. Today, readers will finally get to experience how we've brought that together in the form of everything from the editorial content to how we've packaged the books (take note of what's at the front of the book versus what's at the back). It's a tremendously nerve-wracking time for me, waiting to see the response, but at the end of the day, I'm so incredibly proud of how our team came together and created Carina, that I feel we've managed to build something amazing and awesome. Now we have the opportunity to show it to you, the readers, not just today, but in the weeks, months and years to come. I hope you'll take the journey with us.

~AJ

Angela James is the Executive Editor at Carina Press
You can find her on Twitter, the Carina Press website and her own blog


As announced last week my Carina Week will not be without a fabulous giveaway, courtesy of Carina Press! Up for grabs here on the blog is one coupon code worth $ 15 to spend at Carina Press, buying the books you'd like to try out. Believe me, if what I've read is an indication, there is something for everybody and the books I've read were gems in their genres, each and every one of them. Okay, now to the important part. How can you win this coupon code? That's easy.

• Just leave a (meaningful) comment on the posts during my Carina Week.
• Each comment will give you an entry.
• There will be 6 Carina Week blog-posts so that gives you a maximum of 6 entries if you comment on every post. Mind you, you don't have to comment on every post, it just gives you more chances if you do.
• Make sure you leave your email address with your comment (or email it to me, through the contact link in the left sidebar if you don't want to publicly leave your email address) because it's needed to be able to claim the code.
• On Saturday June 12th I'll tally up the entries and pick a winner via random.org

I also announced last week that there would be 2 coupon codes of $ 15 each so you might wonder, what of the other code. That one will be the prize in a Twitter-giveaway so if you want another chance at it...keep an eye on my Twitter-account this week and get tweeting because each tweet including the hashtag #CarinaWeek will be entered for the Twitter-giveaway.

So there you have it...2 chances to win an opportunity to get your mitts on some Carina Press gems!

Have fun! And hope to see a lot of you this week!

Carina Press Giveaway!
Today I received word that next to the reviews, interviews and a guestpost to enjoy, there will also be an awesome giveaway during my Carina Week! 
Up for grabs are two coupon codes of $ 15 each so you can indulge in some of the wonderful Carina e-books! Is that awesome or what! 


Make sure you return next week to see how to win! 



When I read on Twitter and several blogs/websites last year that Harlequin was starting a new digital-first publishing venture, Carina Press, I immediately got excited and started following anyone involved in the project as to not miss a thing about it.  Then towards the end of the year, author names, titles and unofficial blurbs started showing up and my excitement only grew as there were several familiar favorite author names being mentioned and also enough enticing new author names.

Then in the beginning of 2010, covers and official blurbs were being announced, and more author names, new and enticing ones. More and more twitter announcements of acquisitions and contracts until about a month ago the official list with Carina Press Launch titles and authors was announced and I got as giddy as anyone can get over names and titles, covers and blurbs.








An idea started to take form and the Launch contest/giveaway was the little fuel I needed to turn the little idea into a blaze...called Carina Week at Pearl's World of Romance. So without further ado I hereby announce my tribute and welcome week for Carina Press:


For the past 2 weeks I have been engrossed in the world of really good stuff Carina Press has to offer. Not only for my personal book-blog Pearl's World of Romance but also for the Realms on our Bookshelves-Blog.



I've enjoyed a short and scorching erotic romance with a wonderful co-workers to lovers trope, a lovely historical romance set in Austria with an enthralling and endearing couple, an amazing   contemporary romance with family dynamics that will rip your heartstrings apart and put a smile on your face at the same time and a romantic suspense that will send chills down your spine and make you bite all your fingernails to the flesh.
At the moment I'm reading a paranormal thriller that is taking me to the edges of my comfort zone in a very good way!



So what's in store during my Carina Week:

Today I want to welcome Tracy Cooper-Posey on the Blog! Her latest romantic suspense DEAD AGAIN was released on April 27th with Cerridwen Press (Look for my review in the course of next week!). Today I am happy to have her tell you a bit about how she loves to screw with formulas and how she applied that to DEAD AGAIN. Let's give her a warm welcome and don't forget to check out the giveaway!

Ticking Clock, Romance Locks, and Screwing With The Formula...There’s Fun In Them Thar Tropes!

I make a habit of going against the grain. Most of the time I do it quite unconsciously, but I usually end up doing things very much the opposite of the way most other people do it. As a consequence, my kids have grown up being able to tell their friends that their dad is a professional wrestler and their mum (never “mom”) is a romance writer, that their accents are Australian, and they moved here when they were five and eight, because I met my husband on the Internet before most people were really sure what the Internet was (that was in 1996). When they were still in school, and depending on the context and my kid’s moods, that was sometimes a good thing or a bad thing. These days, they just find it all hilarious.

When it came to Dead Again, I also screwed with the formula there, too, and again, it wasn’t intentional.

Most romantic suspense derives its tension from the immediacy of the problems harassing the hero and heroine. They’ve captured the heroine’s baby sister, so naturally the hero and heroine must act immediately before the bad guy does nasty and unspeakable things to her. Or the bad guy is going to blow up the city in twelve hours. This second example is what is called a “ticking clock” in the movie trade – a device that sets a countdown going in the storyline. The ship is going to sink in 90 minutes: Titanic. When both suns are eclipsed in twenty minutes, the carnivorous, unstoppable creatures are going to take over the planet and eat everything that moves: Pitch Black. The bad guys are coming to town at high noon to kill the sherriff: High Noon. If Marty doesn’t get back to the future before the picture of himself fades away he’ll be erased from existence: Back To The Future.

In all these movies and in a high proportion of all thrillers, suspense and romantic suspense movies, there are two factors that make them work apart from the ticking clock factor, which is not essential to the plot (although it always helps!).

1) The story takes places over a fairly short space of time. A couple of days, if not a few hours. The more tightly compacted the timeline, the tighter the tension can be ratchetted up. The movie Angels & Demons took place over four hours once the initial set-up was finished, and you felt like you barely had time to draw breath. Nor did the main characters.

2) Particularly in romantic suspense, the hero and heroine should be thrown together and kept together in tightly enclosed, intimate conditions, whether they like it or not, for as long as possible. North by Northwest is a good example of how even a non-romantic suspense managed to squeeze in at least twelve hours of intimacy for the hero and heroine in the midst of some of the best and classic suspense/thriller action of the last fifty years.

Dead Again did neither. First, the story is spread over nearly nine years in time. And during that time, the hero and heroine spend years and weeks apart. There is no enforced intimacy anywhere in the book at all, except at the beginning, and there’s a factor that prevents that intimacy from being anything but romantic.

But it is still a romantic suspense, and judging by the reviews I received from the first edition of the book, a damned good one. The dictionary defines suspense as “apprehension about what is going to happen,” and Dead Again must deliver on that score, for the first edition reviews said, and I quote: “The suspense is beautifully dragged out... so full of suspense... a suspense-filled book.”

So I feel fairly certain that once again I’ve managed to do the complete opposite of what I’m supposed to, but still deliver the goods.

Have you ever read a book that was so totally against type, but still a damned good read, all the same?


Dead Again by Tracy Cooper-Posey

A small plane crashes in the Rockies, and the only two survivors, Jack and Sophie, help each other live until rescue arrives, seven days later. Only Sophie goes on to pick up the pieces of her life, which has now been irrevocably changed by big, gentle Jack’s love…and death.

But Sophie learns that Jack’s death didn’t close that chapter of her life, after all.
A drifter called Martin holds the key to her heart, alongside a deadly secret. Combined with a corrupt and desperate police chief and her pressure-cooker life as a single mother in a small town, they plunge her head-deep into the after-shocks caused by those seven days in the mountains. The consequences will reach out to rock state governors, district attorneys, and one of the deadliest crime lords in the land, and all of them have reason to react. For Sophie, life is about to change again…for the worse.

Excerpt

In ninety minutes, he had stripped the plane of hundreds of yards of electrical wiring, which sat in a stiff spaghetti nest to one side. The sun was up high now, bathing him with unrelenting light. At this altitude there was little bite in it. The day was barely warm but he was sweating anyway and his heart was pounding as it worked to compensate for the altitude. He went back to the gouge in the ravine and called down, “You okay?”
“Thirsty.”
“Not long now,” he assured her.
On his way back to the wreck, he checked out the distance of the nearest tree to the edge, estimating he’d need thirteen extra feet.
For the next two hours, he wound strands of wire around each other, braiding himself a rope half the thickness of his forearm and the twenty-five feet long he needed to get to the ledge, plus thirteen extra feet. By the time the wire rope was long enough, he’d run out of collected wire and gone looking for extra, digging through smaller pieces of fuselage and ripping up a seat or two for the wiring inside.
Finally, he was ready. He picked up his rope and dragged it to the cliff edge. Damn but that sucker was heavy.
Fifteen minutes later, he finally reached the ledge and saw her for the first time.
Absurdly, happiness touched him as she lifted her head to look at him.
She lay on the damp ground, half-in and half-out of the sun. Even if she hadn’t told him, he would have guessed her leg was broken by the odd way she tried to sit up, as if her leg was glued to the ground.
Jack crouched down beside her. For a moment, he stared at her, too pleased to be face to face with someone else to be able to speak words of concern or comfort. Then, he saw blood matting her red-gold hair and shivers racking her frame.
“Here.” He offered her a sealed bottle of Evian, which he’d salvaged.
“You remembered.” Her voice was croak.
After cracking the seal, he gave it to her. “Drink up. We can get more. Water isn’t going to be one of our problems.”
She drank, very nearly draining the bottle with two or three deep swallows. Jack studied her while she sipped the last inch in the bottle, wetting her lips and clearing her throat, coughing, water dripping onto the white silky shirt. Sensible trekking gear, it was not.
He’d seen her come aboard the little aircraft at Vegas. She was all legs and pedigree and the smart business suit she wore told him more plainly than words that she was as far removed from his world as a woman could get. The impossible-to-bridge gap allowed him to watch her with a detached interest as she pushed a heavy briefcase and day-old L.A. newspaper beneath the seat in front of her and buckled her seat belt.
She hadn’t given him so much as a glance. Instead, she sank into her seat and turned her head to stare out the window into the night. One row ahead, he could see a sliver of her profile between the seats. Her chin was sharp, with that little outward thrust that most people took for stubborn assertiveness.
He was well acquainted with aggressive females. Isobel had it in spades. It made him uncomfortable—the constant need to be on guard.
He’d given a mental shrug, dismissing the redhead. The endless legs weren’t worth the price.
But, her calm acceptance of his long delay getting down to her didn’t seem to fit his first assessment of her. He’d actually thought it had been the one other woman on the plane—a middle-aged woman, who had settled down to read a two-inch thick paperback as soon as she was seated and hadn’t looked up once throughout the taxiing, take-off and steep ascent to cruising height.
This woman before him put the empty bottle on the ground beside her. “Aahhh, that was good.” She smiled. “I think my leg’s busted in a couple of places and it hurts like hell. So does my head. But for the last couple of hours, all I could think about was water. Crazy, huh?”
He considered this. “No. It’s just your survival instinct at work. Priorities first. Water is the critical one.”
“You know something about this stuff, then. Thank god.” She grimaced. “Wilderness survival doesn’t seem like all that big a deal when you live in the middle of L.A. but I’ve been lying here most of the night wishing like crazy that I’d read at least one book about it.”
Jack moved, so he could study the angle of her leg. “Well, I’ve read zero law books in my life, so we’re even.” It was a tiny lie, a drop in the bucket, comparatively.
“How did you know?”
“That you’re in the legal profession?” He shrugged. “Lucky guess. The suit and the big heavy briefcase you lugged on board helped.”
“And the expensive, useless look?” she asked, with another small smile. “I’ve heard all the jokes about lawyers at least twice over.”
He felt a twinge. Even though she was being cynical about her profession, it was a paraphrasing of the conclusions he’d drawn about her personality when they’d been taking off.
“What’s the S.K. stand for?” he asked, deliberately changing the subject.
“Of course, my briefcase. Sophie Kingston.”
He nodded. “I’ll have to straighten out your leg, Sophie.”
She grimaced. “I would have done it myself but every time I tried to move it, it hurt so much I quit.”
“I’m just going to feel for the bone, first,” he warned her as he reached for it.
Her lips compressed as he probed gently, feeling the angle of the leg through the soft fabric of her trousers.
“I think you’re right. Two places at least,” he said. “Ready?”
Gently, he straightened her leg. Her steadiness was another surprise. All she did was chew her lip and, once, suck in her breath, whistling it through her teeth, although, he knew damn well that the pain was enough to make her want to scream. She turned chalk white and for a moment he thought she was going to pass out but she only blinked for a few seconds.
“Thanks.” Her voice was husky. She tilted her head back, exposing a long column of throat, looking back up the cliff.
“Not a hope,” Jack said quietly.
She didn’t pretend to not understand. “I won’t last long on this shelf…just getting through the last few hours of the night since the crash was bad enough.” She bit her lip. “The plane didn’t catch fire, did it? There might be food, warm clothing…”
He looked back up the cliff himself, then back at her. There was no entreaty in her eyes or irresolute hope. Just steady determination.
He realized then that he’d been wrong. Sophie wasn’t aggressive. She wasn’t out there claiming victories for womanhood, racking up a tally of smaller souls destroyed in her wake. No, she was serenely getting on with her life, going her own way. There was a quietness about her that he’d overlooked until now. A sense of wisdom. Maybe, old hurts buried deep. All good roots for strength of character that had nothing to do with aggressiveness and everything to do with purpose and resolve.
For the first time since the plane had lurched without warning to one side and begun its long sideways slip down through the night sky, Jack felt his guilt lighten a little. This woman was a born survivor. A fighter. He’d promised himself he’d get her out of this but now he knew she would be doing her best to make sure it happened too.
Abruptly, he felt their fledging relationship shift from rescuer and victim into something warm and comfortable. Partners.
“We’ll just have to bring it down to you, won’t we?” he said.
The climb back up nearly finished killing him. He’d slipped three or four times, only to lunge for the wire just in time to hold himself up. Each little fall jerked on his ribs in a way that sent hot pokers of agony through him and made his vision swim. But after his sight cleared, he doggedly carried on, aware of the woman sitting below him, watching and listening to every move he made.
By the time he climbed back onto on the edge of the cliff, his whole body trembled and his muscles and sinews shrieked white agony.
For a very short moment, he rested on the edge, while his heart settled back into something that could be called a rhythm and his head stopped throbbing from the thick rush of blood. The throbbing underscored a sore spot at the back of his skull. With careful fingers, he probed under his hair and found a place so tender he jerked his fingers away. But there was no broken skin—the thick thatch of his hair would have helped prevent that—and his fingers were clean, so no blood. He couldn’t even remember being hit.
Considering the others, he’d been lucky.
He grimaced but before he could drift off into that black pool of guilt again, he got to his feet and strode to the broken fuselage. Sophie was waiting for him to return.
He let the memory of those startling, sea-green eyes swim into his mind, the eyes with the ancient, wise soul staring out of them. The quiet determination he’d felt emanating from her when he’d looked into her eyes washed over him now like a calming tonic. His mind floated in that serene pool, while he worked at scavenging through the wreckage, stripping it of anything that would aid their survival.
He had been speaking a simple truth when he’d told her water would be the least of their problems.
Now he realized that the arrival of a rescue party would not be quick.
Given the circumstances, rescue wasn’t even guaranteed.

To buy Dead Again, click here.

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One woman, one man, and a love that won’t let either of them go.

Born on the wrong side of the tracks and dealt a fair share of hardship, Nikki Kline never gives up a fight. Even when her reason to keep going is ripped from her, Nikki tries desperately to hang on. But when the man who broke Nikki’s heart comes back into her life she doesn’t know how much she can take. Especially since that man seems determined to win back her damaged heart.

Wade Lightfoot is a man who knows he’s made more mistakes than most. As much as he would like to repair the damage he’s done to those he loves, Wade also knows there is no going back. But when he sets out to put things right the last thing he’s prepared to find out is that he had a son. A son he’ll never get the chance to meet.

When the truth is out and all the old wounds are bared, it seems impossible that Nikki and Wade will find their way back to each other. But true love is an undeniable force that even past hurts can’t destroy.

This book has been previously published and has been revised from its original release.

Warning: This title contains heartbreaking tragedy, lies and deception, and a scorching passion that nothing can deny.

Title: Rocky Mountain Haven
Author: Vivian Arend
Website: Go to Viv's fabulous website HERE
Series: Six Pack Ranch, book 2
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Liquid Silver Books - Buy it HERE
Release Date: April 19th, 2010
Format: eBook

Read an excerpt HERE

Blurb:
Welcome to the Six Pack Ranch, where learning to live again takes some sensual twists.

Beth Danube has escaped to a small Alberta town to make a new start for herself and her three little boys. Her emotionally abusive husband may be dead and buried, but so is her heart. What she doesn’t want is another man in her life—not now, maybe not ever. Yet when her libido reawakens after ten years of unsatisfactory sex in the missionary position is any woman strong enough to turn down sex-in-boots, Daniel Coleman?

The middle child of the rowdy Coleman boys, Daniel’s the quiet one who has always subdued his desires and acted as peacemaker. His powerful attraction to the young widow takes him by storm, and he’s willing to pursue her until they both find satisfaction—in and out of the bedroom.

Only Beth isn’t sure she’s ready to cross the line. Becoming friends with blazing hot benefits means she’s still the one in control. Letting her heart trust again? She isn’t that brave—or foolish. Daniel is going to have to be mighty convincing to help her overcome the past.

Note from Pearl:
As I am posting this promo I was hoping to have finished and reviewed Rocky Mountain Heat, book 1 in this series, alas due to circumstances and other obligations I didn't make it but didn't want to pass up the opportunity to help Viv let the world know that the second book in this series has been set out on us hot cowboy story-lovers! I am definitely getting it as soon as I've finished Rocky Mountain Heat! In the meantime, enjoy some of these delicious cowboys to get in the mood!