Atria Indies VBB Takeover Recap!!!!

This past Tuesday, we had the fabulous Atria Indie authors take over Vilma’s Book Blog. I’m talking Colleen Hoover, Abbi Glines, Jamie McGuire and K.A. Tucker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was excited. I was nervous. I was trying to keep my inner fangirl calm. And failed.

Luckily, you all showed up, ready to talk to our rock star authors and it was totally awesome and fun!!!! I also LOVED LOVED LOVED the pictures you posted with all your books!!! If you missed it, check out the questions asked to:

• Colleen
• Abbi
• Jamie
• K.A.

And… I’ve also got some author-to-author question videos to show you that we didn’t get a chance to post during the takeover! Check ’em out!

And since the theme of the Atria Indies Tour is Falling In Love, I asked the authors a question about a book they’ve fallen in love with. Watch here.

✦✦✦

As a part of the takeover event, we also got to see two never-before-seen excerpts!!! Read up below!

One More Chance
by Abbi Glines
(Read my full review)

Grant 

“It’s me, but then you know that. This is the forty-eighth message . . . which means I haven’t seen your face in forty-eight days. I haven’t held you. I haven’t seen your smile. I don’t know where you are, Harlow. I’ve looked, baby. God, I’ve done everything I could. Where are you? Are you even listening to these messages? Your voice-mail box is all I have left of you. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad. Just call me or answer my calls or send me a text. No, call me. Don’t just text me. I need to hear your voice. I just . . . I need to see you, Harlow. I can’t make this right if I can’t hold you—”

BEEP

Another message cut off. Damn voice-mail never let me fin­ish. But then I wasn’t sure she was even listening to her voice mail. I’d been calling every damn night since the moment she walked out my door, and still nothing. I had gone to her dad’s house in Los Angeles, and no one had been there, though I hadn’t been able to see for myself—I wasn’t even allowed past the gate. Security threatened to call the police.

Rush assured me she wasn’t in Beverly Hills. But he knew where she was. She had told him where she was going the day she left my house for the last time, but he wouldn’t tell me. He said she needed time, and I had to give it to her. The night he told me he couldn’t tell me where she was, I had planted my fist in his face for the first time since we’d known each other. He’d taken the hit and shaken it off like the badass he was. Then he’d warned me that was my only shot. He understood, but the next time, he was fighting back.

I had felt like a shithead for hitting him. He was protecting Harlow, and she needed someone to protect her. I just couldn’t stand not being able to hold her. Not explaining why I had acted like a jackass.

Blaire had just started talking to me again. She’d been so mad at me when she’d seen the bruise on Rush’s face and his bloody nose. She’d refused to speak to me for almost a month.

I couldn’t talk to anyone but Harlow’s voice mail.

I would wake up in the morning and go to work doing manual labor for one of my construction jobs. I needed the physical abuse in order to sleep at night. Once the sun set and I couldn’t work anymore, I would come home, eat, take a bath, call Harlow’s voice mail, and go to bed. Then I would do it all over again the next day.

Nannette had stopped trying to contact me. After I kept refusing to answer her calls or the door when she came over, she got the hint and left me alone. Seeing her only brought back all the pain I’d caused Harlow, and I hated seeing Nan’s face. I didn’t need any more reminders of all I had done to hurt Harlow.

Was it possible to hate yourself? Because I was pretty damn sure I did. Why hadn’t I controlled the shit pouring out of my mouth the last time I’d seen Harlow? I’d ruined it. I’d hurt her. Remembering her face as I’d ranted about her not telling me about her illness made it impossible for me to look in the mirror. She had been scared, and I had been worried about me and my fucking fears. How had I become so selfish? I had been terrified of losing her, but all I’d done was send her running.

I was a bastard, a heartless bastard. I didn’t deserve her, but I wanted her more than I wanted to breathe.

I was losing precious time with her. I wanted to make sure she was safe and protected. I wanted to be there to take care of her and make sure she was healthy. Make sure her heart was OK. I didn’t trust anyone else to keep her alive. Fuck! The idea of her being anything other than alive ripped open my chest, and I had to double over to breathe.

“You gotta call me, baby. I can’t live like this. I have to be with you,” I cried out into the empty room.

Burying Water 
by K.A.Tucker

Prologue

Jesse

— now —

This can’t be real . . . This can’t be real . . . This can’t be real . . .

The words cycle round and round in my mind like the wheels on my speeding ’Cuda as its ass-end slips and slides over the gravel and ice.This car is hard to handle on the best of days, built front-heavy and overloaded with horsepower. I’m going to put myself into one of these damn trees if I don’t slow down.

I jam my foot against the gas pedal.

I can’t slow down now.

Not until I know that Boone was wrong about what he claimsto have overheard. His Russian is mediocre at best. I’ll give any­thing for him to be wrong about this.

My gut clenches as my car skids around another turn, the cone shape of Black Butte looming like a monstrous shadow ahead of me in the pre-dawn light. The snowy tire tracks framed by my headlights might not even be the right ones, but they’re wide like Viktor’s Hummer and they’re sure as hell the only ones down this old, deserted logging road. No one comes out here in January.

The line of trees marking the dead end comes up on me before I expect it. I slam on my brakes, sending my car sliding side­ways toward the old totem pole. It’s still sliding when I cut the rumbling engine, throw open the door, and jump out, fumbling with my flashlight. It takes three hard presses with my shaking hands to get the light to hold.

I begin searching the ground. The mess of tread marks tells me that someone pulled a U-turn. The footprints tell me that more than one person got out. And when I see the half-finished cigarette butt with that weird alphabet on the filter, I know Boone wasn’t wrong.

“Alex!” My echo answers once . . . twice . . . before the vast wilderness swallows up my desperate cry. With frantic passes of my flashlight, my knuckles white against its body, I search the area until I spot the sets of footprints that lead off the old, narrow road and into the trees.

Frigid fingers curl around my heart.

Darting back to my car, I snatch the old red-and-blue plaid wool blanket that she loves so much from the backseat. Ice-cold snow packs into the sides of my sneakers as I chase the trail past the line of trees and into the barren field ahead, my blood rushing through my ears the only sound I process.

The only sign of life.

Raw fear numbs my senses, the Pacific Northwest winter numbs my body, but I push forward because if . . .

The beam of light passes over a still form lying facedown in the snow. I’d recognize that pink coat and platinum-blond hair of hers anywhere; the sparkly blue dress that she hates so much lookslike a heap of sapphires against a white canvas.

My heart freezes.

“Alex.” It’s barely a whisper. I’m unable to produce more, my lungs giving up on me. I run, stumbling through the foot of snow until I’m on my knees and crawling forward to close the distance.A distance of no more than ten feet and yet one that seems like miles.

There’s no mistaking the spray of crimson freckling the snow around her head. Or that most of her long hair is now dark and matted. Or that her silver stockings are torn and stained red, and apool of blood has formed where her dress barely covers her thighs.Plenty of footprints mark the ground around her. He must have been here for a while.

I know that there are rules to follow, steps to make sure that I don’t cause her further harm. But I ignore them because the sinking feeling in my stomach tells me I can’t possibly hurt her more than he already has. I nestle her head with one hand while I slide the other under her shoulder. I roll her over.

Cold shock knocks the wind out of me.

I’ve never seen anybody look like this.

I scoop her limp body into my arms, cradling the once beau­tiful face that I’ve seen in every light—rage to ecstasy and the full gamut in between—yet is now unrecognizable. Placing two blood-coated fingers over her throat, I wait. Nothing.

A light pinch against her lifeless wrist. Nothing.

Maybe a pulse does exist but it’s hidden, masked by my own racing one.

Then again, by the look of her, likely not.

One . . . two . . . three . . . plump, serene snowflakes begin floating down from the unseen sky above. Soon, they will con­verge and cover the tracks, the blood. The evidence. Mother Nature’s own blanket to hide the unsightly blemish in her yard.

“I’m so sorry.” I don’t try to restrain the hot tears as they roll down my cheeks to land on her mangled lips—lips I had stolen plenty of kisses from, back when I was too stupid to realize how dangerous that really was. This is my fault. She had warned me.If I had just listened, had stayed away from her, had not told her how I felt . . .

. . . had not fallen wildly in love with her.

✦✦✦✦

Follow VBB: Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Subscribe by Email | Join Vixens Reading Group

Subscribe for Updates: