#Giveaway! #Ghosts + #Romance HAUNTED SOULS #FridayReads

An ebook copy of HAUNTED SOULS is up for grabs over at The Romance Review site - you can enter to win from March 10 - 12, all you need to do is put in your email (which will be kept private), so hurry! (There are 7 other contests running too, so you can check out all the books and sets being offered!) 

If you enjoy romance, you can also participate in their 6th Anniversary Party, which is going on all month.  You have to register to play the games, but it's free and easy.  There are slews of prizes, from ebooks to paperbacks to swag, with a $50 Amazon gift card grand prize.  

Here's the link for the contest to enter to win Haunted Souls, and the link to the party fun.  Good luck if you enter/play!

A damaged soldier, a secret baby, and a haunting mystery collide in
Haunted Souls ~ Steamy Romance + Spooky Suspense

#HAUNTED SOULS made Top 3 Best #Books 2016! #amreading #amwriting

Earlier in the year, Read Freely, a website that highlights small-press and indie books, invited people to nominate their favorite titles for their annual "The 50 Best Indie Books" contest.  Titles had to meet the requirement of being published either by a small press outside the "Big 5" or be self-published, with a release date in 2016.  When the nominations closed, I was thrilled to hear my romance/ghost story Haunted Souls was one of 100 books to make the Finals round.  Voting then opened up for about three weeks in order to whittle that list down to the Top 50.

An exciting addition this year was the introduction of a cash prize for the Top 3 winners--something most authors would be especially grateful for this time of year!  So with the incentive of the honor of making the list, plus a monetary award, competition was bound to be fierce!  And it was--apparently, over 10,000 votes were cast, according to the site.

I did my best to make sure my readers knew about the contest and had the link information.  Thankfully, I have a Street Team that helps me spread news about my books online, and a number of wonderful friends active on social media who wanted to share the contest information as well. Family members sent emails to those who've read my books. For the past 20 years, I have worked at an all-women's gym, teaching classes, and many of the members have been supporting my writing journey since I began my first manuscript.  In addition, the owner is kind enough to allow me to sell my paperbacks at the gym, and I've done a number of books signings there as well.  Many of the members and employees who read my novels were eager to help by signing up to vote.

I picked up new readers as well along the way, which is one of the great things about these contests--your title lands on the radar of people who haven't heard of your book before as word spreads.  In fact, I found a new fan who took the time to email me about how much she enjoyed my latest novel and compare my work to her favorite romance authors: Julia Kent, Marie Force, Kristan Higgins and Jill Shalvis.  Quite an honor! That made my day.

The contest closed December 16, and the results trickled in day by day, starting with 50-41, then 40-31, etc.  Each day I both wanted to see my cover in the results and didn't want to see it...because if I didn't see it, maybe I made the next highest group.  Last night, before I could even check (okay, before I hit refresh for the hundredth time to see if the final 10 results had been posted), I got a text full of excited emojis from one of my friends, announcing I'd won $200.  If that was true, I knew I'd come in within the Top 3, in second place.  I sprinted to the computer to check, and it was there!  My book had come in at 2nd place in a competition that began with 100 books--very exciting! 

Happy Dance!

Check out the link below to see the Top 10 of Read Freely's 50 Best Indie Books of 2016, and find some new reads for the holidays! Last but not at all least, a HUGE thank you to everyone who voted - we're all busy these days, especially with all the winter holidays, so I very much appreciate your taking the time to support me.  Thanks! xo

Top 10 - 50 Best Indie Books

Last Days to Vote Best #Indie #Books 2016! #amwriting

"These two are smokin' hot!" ~Romance 4 the Beach Reviews

Each year, Read Freely accepts nominations for the 50 Best Small Press and Indie Books of 2016, and from all the initial nominations, the list is whittled down to 100 titles in 11 categories.  From there, half will make the final 50.  I’m thrilled to announce Haunted Souls made the list in the Romance category!  This is a steamy military romance with a spooky mystery on the side, set on Cape Cod and published by The Wild Rose Press.  I’m hoping visitors to my blog will take a second to vote for my book along with their other choices—you get 2 votes per category—and help small and indie authors gain more visibility for their books!  Voting is easy, and while an email address is required to keep people from voting multiple times, it is very safe.  In fact, you don’t even get an email confirmation, just a page on the site that says “Thank you for voting”.

Best part?  Three voters will receive a $50 Amazon gift card!

This contest closes on December 16, so don't miss your chance to weigh in and also get entered for the gift cards.  I’d so appreciate a vote for Haunted Souls, and the link to the Romance category is here: Read Freely – Romance.  Thank you!

Pick the 50 Best #Books + Win a #Giftcard! #amwriting #amreading

"These two are smokin' hot!" - Romance 4 the Beach

Each year, Read Freely accepts nominations for the 50 Best Small Press and Indie Books of 2016, and from all the initial nominations, the list is whittled down to 100 titles in 11 categories.  I’m thrilled to announce Haunted Souls made the list in the Romance category!  This is a steamy military romance with a spooky mystery on the side, set on Cape Cod and published by The Wild Rose Press.  I’m hoping visitors to my blog will take a second to vote for my book along with their other choices—you get 2 votes per category—and help small and indie authors gain more visibility for their books!  Voting is easy, and while an email address is required to keep people from voting multiple times, it is very safe.  In fact, you don’t even get an email confirmation, just a page on the site that says “Thank you for voting”.

Best part?  Three voters will receive a $50 Amazon gift card!

I’d so appreciate votes for Haunted Souls, and the link to the Romance category is here: Read Freely – Romance.  Thank you!

DIVINE FALL is up for the Red Carpet Award! #YA #angels #romance

Over the summer, DIVINE FALL received a fabulous 4.5 star review from BTS eMag, calling it a "delicious YA filled with love, rich in history, suspense, and enough twists to keep the reader turning the pages".  The reviewer also said it was perfect for fans of The Mortal Instruments series, which had me grinning ear to ear.

Books the receive high reviews in their magazine automatically get nominated for their Red Carpet Book Awards, which is very exciting!  I'll admit, with the voting period over our crazy Thanksgiving travels, I'm way behind on asking people to vote.  But I'd still love to get a few before the voting closes on December 8th.

So if you have time for one click -- no sign in, no registration -- I'd appreciate it!  The voting link is HERE, and Divine Fall is a little less than halfway down.  Thank you!  And if you want to give it a read, it's currently only 99 cents - less than a cup of coffee for hours of entertainment involving forbidden first love and supernatural secrets.  Find it on Kindle here and the blurb and other retailers here.

#Kindle #Book Awards SemiFinals~ DIVINE FALL made the cut! #YA #angels #horses

Last week I received an email from The Kindle Book Reviews with a link announcing the first round of books to move on - the Semi-Finalists.  Only 20 books per category were chosen, so that's fairly stiff competition.  But my ghost story/romance GULL HARBOR made it last year to the Semi-Finals, in the very crowded "Romance" category, so I held my breath and clicked.

DIVINE FALL was there!  This is a YA book, so regardless of the romantic and paranormal elements, it fits into the "Young Adult" category in this contest - another large category with all sorts of sub-genres.

I've really struggled with this book in a few ways, so I was over the moon.  My first two books are steamy romances mixed with suspenseful ghost mysteries, but after writing SILVER LAKE and GULL HARBOR, I felt like doing something a bit different.  I had an idea for a YA novel involving the last Nephilim, the half-angels, half-humans from the Book of Genesis.  And the main character, 16-year-old Jamie, was going to tell the story through deep first person point-of-view. She was also going to love riding horses and spend all her time at the barn--a nod to my own childhood passions.

By the time I finished this manuscript, though, the Paranormal Romance market was absolutely saturated.  Young Adult books involving angels in particular.  Publishers just weren't looking to acquire anything in this glutted genre, and my current publisher did not have a Young Adult line.

But my fans were waiting for my latest release, and it was ready to go...so I decided to use all the knowledge I've gathered in the years I've been in the writing business and publish this one on my own.  Yes, it was scary to not have the backing of a publisher.  Not to mention, all the marketing and promotion would be solely on me.  But there are some perks of publishing independently, and designing your own cover art is one of them.  I had so much fun designing Divine Fall's cover with the artists I chose!

My regular readers were certainly ready to take the plunge into YA with me, but in terms of marketing, I'm not as adept at connecting with a younger readership.  So it's been stressful trying to figure that part out.

Given these struggles, the fact that Divine Fall made the first cut in the Kindle Awards for YA really boosts my spirits!  I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll move onto the Finals.  I'm also encouraged by the fact that Divine Fall was one of only five books to make the Finals in the YA RomCon Reader's Crown Award, and that this book is also currently up for the Red Carpet Awards at BTS Book Reviews--a fantastic review in their magazine secured Divine Fall an entry!

Since I control the price on this one, I've put it at 99 cents lately to make it virtually risk-free to try!  If you like romance, first love, supernatural secrets, angels, horses, and/or YA books, download it today for your next summer read!  Links are right below in blue.  And if you like it, tell a friend or two!  Happy reading :)

Kindle

Nook

iPad   

$100 #Amazon Gift Card #Giveaway! #Rafflecopter #amreading #Kindle

A short and sweet post, so you can quickly get to the "How to win $100" part.  A wonderful site called Great Books Great Deals is sponsoring a $100 Amazon gift card giveaway via a Rafflecopter.  There are lots of ways to enter...follow some of the authors on twitter or Facebook, plus download some sale-priced books to gain more entries to win.  Right now GULL HARBOR is one of the books that can gain you more entries, and it's only 99c...you get a page-turning read full of spooky suspense and steamy romance, along with more chances to win that gift card! Click the link below, scroll down to the Rafflecopter, and start earning some chances at the grand prize while you get some new books for your Kindle!  Good luck and happy reading:

Click here to visit the Rafflecopter

HAUNTED SOULS is Finished! #amwriting #romance + ghostly #suspense

Haunted Souls, like Gull Harbor,
is set on beautiful Cape Cod

Today, I typed the final sentence of HAUNTED SOULS, my fourth novel.  I'm still kind of in a daze...I wrote this novel very quickly.  It's now complete at 80,000 words, another steamy romance mixed with a suspenseful haunting, which is my favorite type of book to write (and read)!


I finished my first Young Adult novel, DIVINE FALL, in December of 2013.  Between edits for that book and author events for my other novels, I didn't have a lot of time or energy to work on anything else.  But I did have an idea brewing, and as writers know, eventually the characters and the story win out.  I did mountains of research, pages of timelines and character Goal-Motivation-Conflict charts, and managed 20,000 words before the summer release of Divine Fall.

A haunting mystery intertwines
with a reunion romance in
Haunted Souls

After that, I was toast.  New release promotion plus tons of events in October (a huge month for me, as all of my novels have a paranormal element) left me zero time for anything.  I didn't even buy a pumpkin until a few days before Halloween.  But all the time, those characters were relentlessly creating dialog in my head, and my mind was constantly spinning plot twists.  As busy as I was, I felt empty without a work-in-progress underway.  That file with 20,000 words entitled "Novel #4" stared at me from my desktop.

So, I decided to use the start of NaNoWriMo as inspiration.  I told myself when November 1st hit, I'd start writing again, full-force.  I had no expectations of finishing in one month--that's not the way I write. But it was great motivation and I managed about another 20,000 words--not bad for a month filled with my son's birthday and the Thanksgiving holiday.

Then, in December, I entered the first page of Haunted Souls into a contest, and it won an exclusive submission to a literary agent!  How's that for motivation?  But of course, agents can't do much with partial manuscripts.  I decided to wait to submit until I had it finished.

Now I knew I could do 20,000 words in a month.  And I did it--60K by the end of Dec., even during the crazy holiday rush!  A little over a month later--today, February 4th, I finished the last chapter, and it clocked in at 80,078.  I'd done another 20K in about 30 days.  Whew!

CLINK! :)

So, tonight is celebration time!  I'm going to crack open a bottle of champagne when my hubby gets home.  It almost feels like I'm returning to the land of reality, after submersing myself into my characters' world so deeply for so long.  Soon, I'll feel that familiar ache that comes with the story being over.  But tonight, I'm over the moon.

Tomorrow, I'll think about that dreaded synopsis...yep, tomorrow.

A Thank You and a #Romance #Giveaway!

Short and sweet today...first off, a huge thank you to everyone who voted for GULL HARBOR in the January You Gotta Read Cover Contest...it won!  There was stiff competition and a number of truly gorgeous covers, and I'm thrilled artist Rae Monet's beautiful cover came in first.  It will receive a spot on the website's home page for three months, which is great promotion. 

Secondly, my Goodreads giveaway for a signed print copy of GULL HARBOR went live today...it's a 3-day giveaway, so if you'd like to enter, don't wait!  Here is the link:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Gull Harbor

by Kathryn Knight

Giveaway ends February 06, 2014.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Have a great week everyone!

The Number 13 - Lucky or Unlucky? #Superstitions

I embraced the number 13 long ago, since it is the date of my birth...I've had plenty of birthdays on Friday the 13th, in fact.  I do sometimes wonder if being born on the 13th has anything to do with my love of all things spooky, though.  All my novels incorporate some type of supernatural suspense, whether it's a mystery surrounding a haunting (GULL HARBOR and SILVER LAKE) or a quest for revenge undertaken by the world's last half-angel (DIVINE FALL).

Some of my most popular posts discuss the reasons behind our superstitions.  This one delves deeper into the number 13 - while I consider it a lucky number for myself, many people don't!

A fear of the number 13 is known as Triskaidekaphobia.  I actually once worked in a building that lacked a 13th floor.  To me, this made little sense...did the people on the 14th floor not realize they were actually on the 13th floor?  Still, the button in the elevator did not exist.  Why does the number 13 get such a bad rap, anyway?





Some reasons stem from various religions.  In Christianity, for example, 13 people sat down to The Last Supper: Jesus Christ and 12 disciples.  The last to sit down, the 13th, was Judas Iscariot, who would betray Jesus. 

According to Norse legends, the 13th (uninvited) guest to arrive at a banquet of the gods was Loki, who then killed another god and set in motion a series of tragedies.

Historically, condemned people climbed 13 steps to the gallows.

A coven was traditionally made up of 13 witches.

In the deck of tarot cards, XIII is the card of death - a pale horse and rider.

Apollo 13 was the only unsuccessful mission to the moon; the oxygen tank exploded, putting the lives of the astronauts at risk.





Finally, 12 is considered a perfect and magical number in many disciplines and traditions.  There are 12 months, 12 zodiac signs, 12 days of Christmas, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles of Christ, 12 principal Olympian gods of the pantheon...the list goes on and on.  It follows, then, in some people's minds, that to add a number to 12 would make it unlucky.

I find the reasoning fascinating, but I still like the number 13.  But I also have black cats, and we cross paths all day long.  But of course, I have my good luck rituals as well...I have to pick up every penny I see on the ground!

I may pick up a few extra today, just to be safe!  Have a happy Friday the 13th, and grab one of my steamy romance + ghost stories for this combination Friday the 13th/Valentine's Day weekend!

Halloween winners of sugar-free treats! Kathryn Knight

I had a busy month - October is a great time for ghost stories!  I gave a presentation on my books at a local library, ran an Amazon gift card giveaway, contributed prizes to the All Romance Halloween Party, and participated in the Snarkology Paranormal Blog Hop.  I drew some winners today - drumroll -

Winner of the $20 Amazon gift card - Sherry!  We'd love to hear what you end up "treating" yourself to!  Enjoy!

Winner of an e-copy of GULL HARBOR - Meghan!  I hope you enjoy the read, and reviews are always appreciated if you have time!

Winner of the $60 Amazon gift card Blog Hop Raffle - Silvia!  Congratulations!  Have fun shopping.

A big thank you to everyone who participated in all the events...I sincerely appreciate all the comments, likes, follows, etc.  Happy November :)

"Breakfast with the Authors" October Event

The Romance Reviews Party - grand prize $100

Happy March!  I personally have had it with winter this year.  With all the storms that hit New England and all the trees we have in our yard, I now have enough downed branches to build a good-sized fort, complete with fence.  Spring clean-up is going to be an ordeal.

For the entire month of March, The Romance Reviews site is hosting its 2nd Anniversary Party contest - the grand prize is a $100 gift certificate and there are plenty of other prizes along the way (one being an e-copy of Silver Lake)!  And if you love romance, you'll get plenty of new ideas for your reading list as you play the game.  I've included the link below - good luck if you play (and the answer to my contest question can be found under the Silver Lake tab on this blog :) ).

http://www.theromancereviews.com/event.php

Tons of prizes at The Romance Reviews YES Party!

Today I'm participating in the Year-End Splash (YES) Party at The Romance Reviews.  There are over 100 prizes to win this week, including a chance at a $100 gift certificate!  Silver Lake's question is #19, the correct answer will enter you in the drawing for a free e-copy!  (Hint - the answer can easily be found on this blog or my website).

Here's the link to the contest page, have fun!  http://www.theromancereviews.com/event.php

The cover-matching game is for the grand prize, or you can play for the individual weekly prizes.  You must register to play but that's free and easy.  Good luck!