Ash Krafton's new Review Zoo: For readers that are wild about books

When it comes to publishing, every indie author will agree that it's a total zoo out there.

In an age where millions of new books are published every year, an indie author has to work harder than ever to get noticed. We don't have massive publishing houses behind us, or sprawling PR teams, or worldwide celebrity.

Can you rattle another reader's cage?

That doesn't mean an indie author stands alone. We have a very special team standing with us—our readers.

Our readers inspire us to hang tough when the going gets rough. Our readers encourage us to keep writing new tales. Our readers make homes within their hearts for our books. Writing may be a solitary effort, but our readers help make writing a community event.

After all, to ruin a quote by the Bard: What books are books if readers be not by?

The Review Zoo

Reviews are so important to a writer's success. Here's why:

·       Reviews provide a book with "social proof". They show prospective readers that other readers read the book and were engaged enough to share their thoughts.

·       Reviews allow authors to promote their work through certain ads and email services, which often require a certain number of reviews. A book with few reviews is pretty much an unknown book and those promo companies won't take a chance on sharing it.

·       Reviews let an author know what they are doing right—or wrong.

Over the years, I have been blessed by the special support many readers have shown for my work by leaving a review. Some have been so eloquently written that I was truly, deeply moved by the words. Some have been quick, short, sweet, and perfect in their brevity. Some have let me know that a book missed the mark for them. But they all made such a difference in what I write today.

That's why I'm recruiting for the Review Zoo. Readers who put effort into leaving reviews deserve special treatment because of the tremendous service they provide. I'd love a way to be able to make it easy to get books to readers like these.

So if you're a reader who loves to talk about books and is willing to leave reviews for them, I want you to join my Zoo.

·       If you join my Review Zoo, you'll get a free digital copy (Kindle or PDF) of each new release.

·       You must post your review to Amazon within one week of the release, but readers who post their review to Amazon within twenty-four hours of release will be pooled into a drawing for a 100$ gift card.

·       Older books need love and reviews, too. If you post a new review for any book on my backlist, you'll be eligible to win a gift card in one of my regularly-scheduled Catch-Up Contests.

·       The Zoo will always get first crack at the swag. (If you've been with me a while, you know I love the swag…remember the Turn of the Wheel concert shirts I did for WOLF'S BANE?)

Are you with us? Simply fill out this form https://goo.gl/forms/QTUSTktM59GtiwfD3 with your contact info and answer a few easy questions. You'll also be asked to provide the link to a review you've already left on Amazon, so pick your favorite.

If you are unable to fill out the form, then email me at ashkrafton (at) Hotmail (dot) com with the following: Name, address, digital format preference, and a link to one of your previous reviews.

Don't forget to tell me which of my books you've read and which one you're still dying to read.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Let's rattle some cages and talk some books!

CHARM CITY (The Demon Whisperer #1): Urban Fantasy Making Magic on Wattpad

A few months ago I posted my latest novel on Wattpad as a serial. I thought I'd try a new approach to pre-publication promotion as well as a new way to meet new readers. So far, so awesome...

Once it was complete, I submitted it for consideration as a Featured Story and it made it in :) CHARM CITY was listed on the Featured page about three weeks ago and...

...wow. It just blew up. Like, ba-BOOM.

And I'm thrilled to say that CHARM CITY (The Demon Whisperer #1) hit 10K reads on Wattpad today! Woo Hoo!!!

Follow me on Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/user/AshKrafton

I've been trying to keep in touch with followers over there and, as promised, I'm holding a name-a-character contest for readers who follow my profile and read CHARM CITY...

I'll pick one reader's suggestion for a particular character's name. Simply comment in the right spot to win. Read on for details...

The 10K character contest: Name That Ghost! (A Chapter 10 contest)

In CHARM CITY, chapter 10, Simon meets a sweet but very confused ghost in a diner. So confused, in fact, I doubt she remembers her own name. Help her out by suggesting a name for her! Leave the name in a comment right in Chapter 10 to enter.

Tell me her name and why you choose it. I'll pick one of those names to use when Simon sees the ghost again in book 2, MURDER THE LIGHT.

Also, the winner gets personally acknowledged in the book, even when the series eventually goes to print. That means you and your name will forever be a part of the story.

Thanks for helping this story get noticed. Keep reading...and don't forget to suggest a name. Leave it in a comment right in Chapter 10 itself so I can keep track of all the entries!

Name a Character in AJ Krafton's Upcoming Book!

Stop by Facebook for a gift card giveaway! You'll find the post here on my AJ Krafton, New Adult spec fic author page...

To enter, do two things... one little and one big. Little thing: like the page. Big thing: name a character in my book-in-progress!

THE HEARTBEAT THIEF begins in Surrey, Victorian England. Our heroine, Senza, is a young woman who has recently come out in society.

Her best friend's family recently moved to town from Australia after her father made his fortune in the gold rush. She's spunky, mischievous, clever, and not afraid to speak her mind.

She's also nameless. You can change that!

Suggest a name for Senza's dearest friend and it may make it into the book... as well as score you an Amazon gift card.

Remember  to visit AJ Krafton's page on Facebook to leave a comment in the post and enter to win!

You'll also keep up with exciting news about my new line of books: new adult speculative fiction, dark and dangerous and my kind of delightful...

You can also find news on AJ Krafton's upcoming projects by following Twitter or stopping by the blog. You'll be among the first to see the cover for THE HEARTBEAT THIEF ... Coming soon!

Good luck...and be creative!

Up For Grabs: Signed ARC of BLOOD RUSH (Demimonde #2)

BLOOD RUSH (Demimonde #2) is coming out next month...you can win an advance copy by entering this Goodreads giveaway!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Blood Rush

by Ash Krafton

Giveaway ends May 15, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Blood Rush has already gotten some very telling reviews. Want to see what readers are loving about it? Check out the Blood Rush Goodreads page!

I'm so grateful to my reviewers and I'm extremely proud of this book...so much so that I'm ready to dive right into writing WOLF'S BANE (Demimonde #3). I love getting lost in Sophie's world. :)

Join me in the Demimonde and enter to win today...

PS: If you haven't done so yet, be sure to enter the Pre-Launch Giveaway here...your chance to win books and shiny things. Good luck and thanks for entering!

Signed ARC of Blood Rush in Goodreads G!veaway

BLOOD RUSH (Demimonde #2) is coming out next month...you can win an advance copy by entering this Goodreads giveaway!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Blood Rush

by Ash Krafton

Giveaway ends May 15, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Blood Rush has already gotten some very telling reviews. Want to see what readers are loving about it? Check out the Blood Rush Goodreads page!

I'm so grateful to my reviewers and I'm extremely proud of this book...so much so that I'm ready to dive right into writing WOLF'S BANE (Demimonde #3). I love getting lost in Sophie's world. :)

Join me in the Demimonde and enter to win today...

PS: If you haven't done so yet, be sure to enter the Pre-Launch Giveaway here...your chance to win books and shiny things. Good luck and thanks for entering!

Bloody Hearts Blog Hop

I love to scare myself.

It helps that I'm a big coward. Always have been. I remember being seven years old and hanging out on the sidewalks in front of our neighbors' houses as my brothers delivered newspapers. I could overhear them from behind the hedges, selling Girl Scout cookies. That's right. Girl Scout cookies.

And no, neither of my brothers was actually a Girl Scout.

I was. And I was too damn scared to ask anyone if they wanted to buy my cookies. My mom figured, if she could convince me to at least go along with my brothers, she'd make them take my order form around. They hated it.

I loved it. I always the top seller in my troop. Even though my brothers would disdainfully point out I was too chicken to come up on the porch myself, my neighbors always bought a few boxes. I guess they caught a glimpse of the skinny red-head hiding behind the bushes and pitied all three of us.

Whatever. I totally raked in the incentives. And it was all because I was a coward. I won't even lie and say it was part of a master plan to delegate authority to my underling older brothers.

Although I could if I wanted to.

I'm still a coward, although I've gotten really good at pretending otherwise. Now I save it for special times when I need a good scare. I love the feeling that I might go completely out of my mind from fright.

I still have a very low tolerance for adrenaline. Now, don't get me wrong. The coward in me is still very much alive and kicking (and screaming.) I am not a reckless thrill-seeker. I do not taunt Death with a thumb to the nose or a well-timed moon as I streak past him.

I have to be in a controlled and safe environment before I can tolerate a good scaring-myself-silly. But when I do…watch out, dog. I'm gonna get squirrely.

Sometimes, a good TV show will do it. I love ghost-chaser shows because, although they never catch a *real* ghost (shucks), I convince myself they just might. Then, I convince myself that ghosts know I'm watching ghost shows and they are angry and they want to get me. I tremble so hard I threaten to shake the couch apart.

Then I don't sleep and my husband yells at me all the next day.

I watch movies from behind my hands or, in the case of The Blob, from around the corner of the living room wall in case it gets so scary I have to hide in the bathroom. And forget Hitchcock and his Birds. I hate them all, the bastards. I can't stand listening to the flocks of starlings that like to mob my trees, screaming and laughing and daring me to come outside. Frigging flesh eating birds.

Other times, I do goofy things like play the game "What if…?" For instance: on our last trip to New York, the hubby and I went to the top of the You-know-what Building. (He hates it so I refrain from speaking it aloud for his sake.) I marched over the edge, looked down at the street below, and thought "What if…I fell over the side?" And immediately I get a surge of adrenaline so huge that I can't feel my legs.

See what I mean about being in a safe and controlled environment? If I'd played that game standing *on* the rail instead of safely behind it, the loss of leg strength would have turned "What if…?" into "There you go!" Game over.

No thanks. I like my thrills to be non-fatal, thank you. Every once in a while, it's not a game. It'll be a moment right before I fall asleep and I imagine a voice. Or I'll be in the bathroom with the lights off and I'll have my eyes shut anyway because maybe Bloody Mary will be in the mirror this time.

Maybe I don't go back to sleep for a while but it's still demented fun. For a coward like me, anyway.

My bucket list might be too boring for most nursing home residents but ah, well. I gotta be me. (Not like I have a choice, but anyways.)

The main character in my soon-to-debut book BLEEDING HEARTS: Book One of the Demimonde, Sophie Galen, is kind of a coward, too. I don't think she ever set out to become a kick-ass action hero, but she has her moments. "Take no chances, risk no defeats" she'd say.

But she also learns that one discovers the depths of a heart only after it's been broken. That's a pretty big lesson for a coward to handle. It helps to have a strong hero to help her, a mission to drive her, and redemption for which to fight.

Okay, so there's a lot at stake, like a dark underworld of bad beasties and the scorn of a really nasty co-worker (sometimes, she can't tell which is worse.) But Sophie isn't so much of a coward that she won't try to face it all down and, in the end, she might even surprise herself.

Somehow, I doubt Sophie believes Bloody Mary lives in her bathroom mirror (I'll ask her the next time I see her.) But one thing is for sure: we both know life has its scared-silly moments and we're both okay with that, as long as we're somewhere safe.

But, not perfectly safe. Life wouldn't be living without a little adrenaline.

In honor of the Bloody Valentine Blog Hop, I'm giving away an eARC of my upcoming debut, BLEEDING HEARTS: Book One of the Demimonde, which will be released March 15th. Winner will also snag a Victorian-style heart pendant (I love shiny things!)

Simply follow this blog either by email or Google Friend Connect (see right upper sidebar) then leave a comment to be entered in this quick and dirty contest. Bonus entries if you Like my Facebook page or follow me on the Twitter!



Winners will be announced Wednesday.

You Never Forget Your First...

…vampire sweetheart, that is.

What is it about these creatures that haunt us, possess us, and draw us away from the well-lit safe places of our everyday lives?

Is it…eternal love? The promise of an eternity of dwelling in another's eyes, of being loved to the point of consumption. To quench the desire of someone who would starve without us. To become their life, their reason to exist.

Yeah. That's probably it.

Or…is it the danger, the rush of treading that silver blade between life and death, pleasure and pain?

But then again, with vampires, there is no "line between". Life and death, pleasure and pain, light and dark, good and bad. They are everything, all at once.

Heroes with unimaginable power, undone by a brush of sunlight. Strength and weakness, entwined.

No wonder vamps ensnare us: we do like our men complex, after all.

WELCOME TO THE V4V GIVEAWAY HOP! Be sure to enter to win...the entry form is at the end of the post...
I have to go back a long time to remember my first vampire crush. I cut my teeth on Anne Rice when I was in college. My boyfriend had an English assignment on Interview with a Vampire and wanted me to read it so I could help him with the paper. (Come to think of it, I read a LOT of extra novels in college for the same purpose.)

I balked at first. Vampires weren't my thing.

Then, Boyfriend turned big baby brown eyes on me and fluttered those long lashes. Seriously. He had eyes like the puppies on those rip-your-heart-out animal fundraiser posters. So, I heaved a sigh and read it.

I WAS BLOWN AWAY. Louis had such depth, such tragic humanity. And Lestat? What an ass. I hated him. He was cocky, he was mean, he was so in love with himself that he eclipsed the sun. That jerk had little regard for anyone else, no matter how much I wish he would.

I didn't realize he was setting himself up to be a Bad Boy. Uh oh. My first human crush was a Bad Boy. Unrequited love all the way for six solid years. I listened to more miserable music over him than I did for the boys I actually dated. That crush was my secret agony.

Lestat didn't disappoint. And, unrequited? Heck yeah. I still ache a little inside when I think of him (or when I see old Reutger Hauer movies.) I'd never invested myself in a character the way I did Lestat. I hadn't known it was possible.

It was tough but eventually I moved on and found other vampire crushes. Jean Claude: I never wanted him more than the way I did in the very first Anita Blake installment. That hint of a suggestion of a tease was a complete PHEROMONE. Eric Northman: I have not the words. (The suggestions, I got a million of them, but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.)

There's Eric chum Bill Compton but he's off limits. That's Sookie's first vampire love. I understand the sacredness of that bond. Sookie needs to keep that all to herself, to keep it in her heart-shaped box and cherish it always. Eric, on the other hand, is free game. =)

Not all vampires aren't loveable. I know there are some really bad ones out there and some of them are downright Nosferatu. Some of them—like Still-Heart in my upcoming release BLEEDING HEARTS—are beautiful creatures but don't be fooled: inside is a demon. He may act like a Bad Boy but deep down, he's just bad.

In fact, all the vamps in my book are bad, bad, bad. But the Demivampire? Another story altogether. *wicked grin*

But don't worry…that story will be told when BLEEDING HEARTS: Book One of the Demimonde is released on March 15th through Pink Narcissus Press (http://pinknarc.com)

Follow this blog to stay up-to-date on release news—we'll be going on a Bleeding Hearts Blog Tour in March, with lots of fun giveaways and visits to incredible blogs.

And although the vampires in my book are better off left alone, there's plenty of crush-worthy vamps in countless other books to love. I mean, have you visited any of the other stops on this blog hop? ;)

Which leads me to…the CONTEST! I am nothing if not an enabler. Everyone has their own favorite flavor of vampire. It was really tough to decide what to give away on this blog hop. So I decided to give away a build-your-own-vampire-sundae of sorts by offering an ebook spending spree at Amazon!

You can enter to win a $25 gift card to that monstrous online bookstore—that way you have a little cash to pick up some of the other vampires you've met along this blog hop. The cherry on top of said sundae is an eARC of my soon-to-debut urban fantasy BLEEDING HEARTS: Book One of the Demimonde. You can visit my demivampires any time you want. ;)

What did I tell you? I'm an enabler.

You can enter to win my goodies by Liking my Facebook page. You can get up to three extra entries by following me in other places (you'll see the links on the Rafflecopter form.) If you've never entered a Rafflecopter giveaway, it's really easy: you sign in with either your Facebook profile or your email and just follow the easy steps to Winning Land. Good luck!

The Proof Is In The Mail!

Happy New Year!

"New" being the thing right now, I'm excited to enter the newest phase of publishing--the promotion.

I returned the proof to my editors and, for the first time since I wrote the first words of Bleeding Hearts, I am done editing. I deleted, I changed, I corrected my last. It's definitely a weird feeling.

While I await word from my Lord Editor, I supposed it's time to put serious thought to promotion.

Trouble is, I never promoted a debut novel before. It's time for me to hit the virtual books...so wish me luck!

In the meantime, I thought I'd give a shout-out to all the writers organizations I met along this wonderful journey. Over the last few years, I entered a lot of competitions. (I wrote about my experiences here and here and here.) I'd love to share a list of recognitions Bleeding Hearts has received.

Second Place, Abilene Writers Guild Summer 2007

Grand Prize, Maryland Writers' Association
2008 Novel Writing Contest

First Place, Fantasy, Maryland Writers' Association 2008 Novel Writing Contest

Third Place, Pikes Peak Writers 2009

Third Place,  Houston Writers Guild Spring 2009

Finalist, RWA Chick Lit Writers
"Get Your Stiletto In The Door" 2009

Finalist, RWA New Hampshire
"Query Quandary" 2011

Finalist, RWA Kiss of Death
"Daphne Unpublished" 2011

Finalist, RWA Northeast Ohio
"Cleveland Rocks" 2011

Finalist, RWA Heart and Scroll
"Magic Moments" 2011

Finalist, RWA Alaska "Break-Up" 2011

Finalist, Smoke City Narrators “
Pitch and First Five Pages” 2011

These contests were amazing experiences because of the generous feedback I've received from the judges. They definitely steered me in the right direction early on and, as you can see, affirmed I was on the right track in 2011.

These contests were also my earliest steps in promotion, which is why I so highly recommend writers to enter writing contests whenever possible. If you didn't click on the links above, you can still go back and do it. =)

Thank you to each of these organizations for being a partner in my achievement...and Happy New Year to all.

Win a Website From Querytracker.net!

Not from me, of course. I tried building my own site. My Serif program is still laying on my desk where I dropped it after giving up on it. I think I had vague designs about waiting until the summer, but that makes no sense. Me get things done while the children are home? Me, concentrate? Right. Sure. Not.

My one year anniversary of querying is approaching. How discouraging. I'd originally had dreams of landing my perfect agent in six months flat. I guess the real world has different plans for me, number one plan being WAITING. And waiting. And getting old as I wait.

The only thing that makes it a happy anniversary is the fact that I spent it on Query Tracker. I consider myself far ahead of the querying game since I began using that little gem of a website--I've improved myself in countless ways when it comes to marketing my work, plus I've met some great people. (Lots of good karma there.)

And I'm not the only one having a happy: Query Tracker is turning two years old. (Glad I'm not the oldest one in the room.) To celebrate, they are giving away a free custom-built website. Snag yours here and see why Query Tracker is quickly becoming one of the best tools for writers.


By QueryTracker 2nd Anniversary Carnival

Spread the word and win extra entries by passing this along! Read the blog for details.

And someone get cake. We can't do any of this without happy cake.