This week is the book blitz for Heart in a Box and the big Facebook party is tomorrow. There’s still time to join the party. I will be giving away my handmade heart boxes with messages in them like my character Joss writes, and there’s a lineup of great guest authors. Thanks SOOO much to everyone who is posting about Heart this week!!! I am very humbled by the response. I want to invite you all to enter the blitz Rafflecopter below. Prizes include a $40 gift card, signed paperback of Heart in a Box, signed paperback of Dorianna, ebooks of my Amazon bestselling YA futuristic thrillers Fireseed One and Ruby’s Fire, and a super-pack of very cool YA eBooks: The Danaan Trilogy by Howard, Changeling by Herbert and Drawn by Ledbetter.

Heart took a long while to brew and polish and it contains elements very close to my own heart: addicted family members, identity issues, a close, yet complicated mom – daughter relationship, creativity, healing through art, and of course, a sweet romance. Here is a mini-excerpt to get a taste of what I’m talking about.

Thoughts on school veer off when I spot the box on my mother’s night table. The box. I know its black, lacquered form by heart. It’s the size of a large jewelry box. My father painted it with Bengali pink roses and a tangle of red cardinal vines. He must’ve used the tiniest brush, as if the objects inside were treasures—emeralds from Mumbai or silk doll clothes from Kancheepuram.
      The box sits next to Mom’s organic remedies: tea-tree oil, Saint John’s Wort, aromatherapy ampules, zinc, monster-dose wheat grass capsules. She thinks these keep her functional. But I see how one accelerates her and the next slows her down, adding up to zero. The box is close enough she doesn’t even have to get out of bed in the morning. She can reach, with trembling fingers, light up and space out even before her first cup of black tea.
      I crack open the box. Pre-rolled blunts sit like tainted royalty on a plush, purple pillow. Their sharp floral resin makes me sneeze.
      Once when I was twelve, Mom offered me a doob after closing the store for the night. She claimed to be worried about how uptight I was getting. It was around the time when I was sprouting zits, boobs, hips and my period. Who wouldn’t be down in the dumps? Mom claimed that if I got stoned I might relax. “Cave women probably used it for cramps, before all these greedy pharmacists crawled on the earth, trying to sell Midol and Tylenol and—”
      “Gee, thanks,” I snapped. “Are you serious? You want me to be a stoner too?”
      “Darling, I want you to be less anxious, that’s all. I want you to be whoever you want to be,” Mom answered cryptically. “Look, weed is superior to all those anti-depressants shrinks prescribe to kids these days. It won’t poison your liver like Prozac. It’s organic.”
      “Arsenic’s organic too,” I argued. Plus, some kids at my school would bounce off the walls without their so-called evil-shrink pills. But maybe I was too stiff.
      Soon after, I opened the box, took one and lit up. After only two inhales, I felt trapped inside a thick glass room. Then, when I ventured down to the street for a soda, people seemed in a galaxy eons away. It scared me. I vowed not to try it again. How could my mother stand to feel so cut off? Or was it different for her?
Here are the buy links. Books make great Christmas presents! LOL.
Amazon, iTunes, Amazon UK, B&N, Kobo, All Romance eBooks

As a token of my appreciation for the indie book community, nab a FREE download of Beyond Secret Worlds, a fun, fantasy-filled short story collection that includes my brand new story Blue House Magic! Blue House Magic is the lead-in to the forthcoming book three of my Fireseed series! Find out what Ruby and Blane are up to in Vegas-by-the-Sea.
Get it FREE at: Amazon, iTunes, Kobo
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Stop by these fabulous bloggers, spreading word about Heart in a Box and other great book deals (more added as I get them): MS Kaye, Alyse Miller, River Fairchild, Elodie’s blog, Heather Gardner, Lucy Leroux, Christine Rains